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FORS CLAVIGERA.

LETTERS

TO THE WORKMEN AND LABOURERS OF GREAT BRITAIN.

BY
JOHN RUSKIN, LL.D.,
HONORARY STUDENT OF CHRIST CHURCH, AND SLADE PROFESSOR OF FINE ART.

Vol. V.
GEORGE ALLEN,
SUNNYSIDE, ORPINGTON, KENT.
1875.

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FORS CLAVIGERA.

LETTER XLIX.

I wonder if Fors will let me say any small proportion, this year, of what I intend. I wish she would, for my readers have every right to be doubtful of my plan till they see it more defined; and yet to define it severely would be to falsify it, for all that is best in it depends on my adopting whatever good I can find, in men and things, that will work to my purpose; which of course means action in myriads of ways that I neither wish to define, nor attempt to anticipate. Nay, I am wrong, even in speaking of it as a plan or scheme at all. It is only a method of uniting the force of all good plans and wise schemes; it is a principle and tendency, like the law of form in a crystal; not a plan. If I live, as I said at first, I will endeavour to show some small part of it in action; but it would be a poor design indeed, for the bettering of the world, which any man could see either quite round the outside, or quite into the inside of. [[2]]

But I hope in the letters of this next year to spend less time in argument or attack; what I wish the reader to know, of principle, is already enough proved, if only he take the pains to read the preceding letters thoroughly; and I shall now, as far as Fors will let me, carry out my purpose of choosing and annotating passages of confirmatory classical literature; and answering, as they occur, the questions of my earnest correspondents, as to what each of them, in their place of life, may immediately do with advantage for St. George’s help.

If those of my readers who have been under the impression that I wanted them to join me in establishing some model institution or colony, will look to the [fifth page of Letter I.], they will see that so far from intending or undertaking any such thing, I meant to put my whole strength into my Oxford teaching; and, for my own part, to get rid of begging letters and live in peace.

Of course, when I have given fourteen thousand pounds away in a year,[1] everybody who wants some money thinks I have plenty for them. But my having given fourteen thousand pounds is just the reason I have not plenty for them; and, moreover, have no time to attend to them, (and generally, henceforward, my friends will please to note that I have spent my life in helping other [[3]]people, and am quite tired of it; and if they can now help me in my work, or praise me for it, I shall be much obliged to them; but I can’t help them at theirs).

But this impression of my wanting to found a colony was founded on [page 23 of Letter V.], and [page 15 of Letter VIII]. Read them over again now, altogether.

If the help I plead for come, we will indeed try to make some small piece of English ground beautiful; and if sufficient help come, many such pieces of ground; and on those we will put cottage dwellings, and educate the labourers’ children in a certain manner. But that is not founding a colony. It is only agreeing to work on a given system. Any English gentleman who chooses to forbid the use of steam machinery—be it but over a few acres,—and to make the best of them he can by human labour, or who will secure a piece of his mountain ground from dog, gun, and excursion party, and let the wild flowers and wild birds live there in peace;—any English gentleman, I say, who will so command either of these things, is doing the utmost I would ask of him;—if, seeing the result of doing so much, he felt inclined to do more, field may add itself to field, cottage rise after cottage,—here and there the sky begin to open again above us, and the rivers to run pure. In a very little while, also, the general interest in education will assuredly discover that healthy habits, and not mechanical drawing nor church catechism, are the staple of it; and then, not in my model colony only, but as best it can be [[4]]managed in any unmodelled place or way—girls will be taught to cook, boys to plough, and both to behave; and that with the heart,—which is the first piece of all the body that has to be instructed.

A village clergyman, (an excellent farmer, and very kind friend of my earliest college days,) sent me last January a slip out of the ‘Daily Telegraph,’ written across in his own hand with the words “Advantage of Education.” The slip described the eloquence and dexterity in falsehood of the Parisian Communist prisoners on their trial for the murder of the hostages. But I would fain ask my old friend to tell me himself whether he thinks instruction in the art of false eloquence should indeed receive from any minister of Christ the title of ‘education’ at all; and how far display of eloquence, instead of instruction in behaviour, has become the function, too commonly, of these ministers themselves.

I was asked by one of my Oxford pupils the other day why I had never said any serious word of what it might seem best for clergymen to do in a time of so great doubt and division.

I have not, because any man’s becoming a clergyman in these days must imply one of two things—either that he has something to do and say for men which he honestly believes himself impelled to do and say by the Holy Ghost,—and in that case he is likely to see his way without being shown it,—or else he is one of the group [[5]]of so-called Christians who, except with the outward ear “have not so much as heard whether there be any Holy Ghost,” and are practically lying, both to men and to God;—persons to whom, whether they be foolish or wicked in their ignorance, no honest way can possibly be shown.

The particular kinds of folly also which lead youths to become clergymen, uncalled, are especially intractable. That a lad just out of his teens, and not under the influence of any deep religious enthusiasm, should ever contemplate the possibility of his being set up in the middle of a mixed company of men and women of the world, to instruct the aged, encourage the valiant, support the weak, reprove the guilty, and set an example to all;—and not feel what a ridiculous and blasphemous business it would be, if he only pretended to do it for hire; and what a ghastly and murderous business it would be, if he did it strenuously wrong; and what a marvellous and all but incredible thing the Church and its power must be, if it were possible for him, with all the good meaning in the world, to do it rightly;—that any youth, I say, should ever have got himself into the state of recklessness, or conceit, required to become a clergyman at all, under these existing circumstances, must put him quite out of the pale of those whom one appeals to on any reasonable or moral question, in serious writing. I went into a ritualistic church, the other day, for instance, in the West End. It was built of bad Gothic, lighted [[6]]with bad painted glass, and had its Litany intoned, and its sermon delivered—on the subject of wheat and chaff—by a young man of, as far as I could judge, very sincere religious sentiments, but very certainly the kind of person whom one might have brayed in a mortar among the very best of the wheat with a pestle, without making his foolishness depart from him. And, in general, any man’s becoming a clergyman in these days implies that, at best, his sentiment has overpowered his intellect; and that, whatever the feebleness of the latter, the victory of his impertinent piety has been probably owing to its alliance with his conceit, and its promise to him of the gratification of being regarded as an oracle, without the trouble of becoming wise, or the grief of being so.

It is not, however, by men of this stamp that the principal mischief is done to the Church of Christ. Their foolish congregations are not enough in earnest even to be misled; and the increasing London or Liverpool respectable suburb is simply provided with its baker’s and butcher’s shop, its alehouse, its itinerant organ-grinders for the week, and stationary organ-grinder for Sunday, himself his monkey, in obedience to the commonest condition of demand and supply, and without much more danger in their Sunday’s entertainment than in their Saturday’s. But the importunate and zealous ministrations of the men who have been strong enough to deceive themselves before they deceive others;—who give the grace and glow of vital sincerity to falsehood, and lie for God [[7]]from the ground of their heart, produce forms of moral corruption in their congregations as much more deadly than the consequences of recognizedly vicious conduct, as the hectic of consumption is more deadly than the flush of temporary fever. And it is entirely unperceived by the members of existing churches that the words, “speaking lies in hypocrisy, having their conscience seared with a hot iron,” do not in the least apply to wilful and self-conscious hypocrites, but only to those who do not recognize themselves for such. Of wilful assumption of the appearance of piety, for promotion of their own interests, few, even of the basest men, are frankly capable; and to the average English gentleman, deliberate hypocrisy is impossible. And, therefore, all the fierce invectives of Christ, and of the prophets and apostles, against hypocrisy, thunder above their heads unregarded; while all the while Annas and Caiaphas are sitting in Moses’ seat for ever; and the anger of God is accomplished against the daughter of His people, “for the sins of her prophets, and the iniquities of her priests, that have shed the blood of the just in the midst of her. They have wandered blind in the streets; they have polluted themselves with blood, so that men could not touch their garments.”[2]

Take, for example, the conduct of the heads of the existing Church respecting the two powers attributed to them in this very verse. There is certainly no Bishop now in the Church of England who would either dare in a full drawing-room [[8]]to attribute to himself the gift of prophecy, in so many words; or to write at the head of any of his sermons, “On such and such a day, of such and such a month, in such and such a place, the Word of the Lord came unto me, saying.” Nevertheless, he claims to have received the Holy Ghost himself by laying on of hands; and to be able to communicate the Holy Ghost to other men in the same manner. And he knows that the office of the prophet is as simply recognized in the enumeration of the powers of the ancient Church, as that of the apostle, or evangelist, or doctor. And yet he can neither point out in the Church the true prophets, to whose number he dares not say he himself belongs, nor the false prophets, who are casting out devils in the name of Christ, without being known by Him;—and he contentedly suffers his flock to remain under the impression that the Christ who led captivity captive, and received gifts for men, left the gift of prophecy out of the group as one needed no longer.

But the second word, ‘priest,’ is one which he finds it convenient to assume himself, and to give to his fellow-clergymen. He knows, just as well as he knows prophecy to be a gift attributed to the Christian minister, that priesthood is a function expressly taken away from the Christian minister.[3] He dares not say in the open [[9]]drawing-room that he offers sacrifice for any soul there; and he knows that he cannot give authority for calling himself a priest from any canonical book of the New Testament. So he equivocates on the sound of the word ‘presbyter,’ and apologizes to his conscience and his flock by declaring, “The priest I say,—the presbyter I mean,” without even requiring so much poor respect for his quibble as would be implied by insistance that a so-called priest should at least be an Elder. And securing, as far as he can, the reverence of his flock, while he secretly abjures the responsibility of the office he takes the title of, again he lets the rebuke of his God fall upon a deafened ear, and reads that “from the Prophet unto the Priest, every one dealeth falsely,” without the slightest sensation that his own character is so much as alluded to.

Thus, not daring to call themselves prophets, which they know they ought to be; but daring, under the shelter of equivocation, to call themselves priests, which they know they are not, and are forbidden to be; thus admittedly, without power of prophecy, and only in stammering pretence to priesthood, they yet claim the power to forgive and retain sins. Whereupon, it is to be strictly asked of them, whose sins they remit; and whose sins they retain. For truly, if they have a right to claim any authority or function whatever—this is it. Prophesy, they cannot;—sacrifice, they cannot;—in their hearts [[10]]there is no vision—in their hands no victim. The work of the Evangelist was done before they could be made Bishops; that of the Apostle cannot be done on a Bishop’s throne: there remains to them, of all possible office of organization in the Church, only that of the pastor,—verily and intensely their own; received by them in definite charge when they received what they call the Holy Ghost;—“Be to the flock of Christ, a shepherd, not a wolf;—feed them, devour them not.”

Does any man, of all the men who have received this charge in England, know what it is to be a wolf?—recognize in himself the wolfish instinct, and the thirst for the blood of God’s flock? For if he does not know what is the nature of a wolf, how should he know what it is to be a shepherd? If he never felt like a wolf himself, does he know the people who do? He does not expect them to lick their lips and bare their teeth at him, I suppose, as they do in a pantomime? Did he ever in his life see a wolf coming, and debate with himself whether he should fight or fly?—or is not rather his whole life one headlong hireling’s flight, without so much as turning his head to see what manner of beasts they are that follow?—nay, are not his very hireling’s wages paid him for flying instead of fighting?

Dares any one of them answer me?—here from my college of the Body of Christ I challenge every mitre of them: definitely, the Lord of St. Peter’s borough, whom I note as a pugnacious and accurately worded [[11]]person, and hear of as an outspoken one, able and ready to answer for his fulfilment of the charge to Peter: How many wolves does he know in Peterborough—how many sheep?—what battle has he done—what bites can he show the scars of?—whose sins has he remitted in Peterborough—whose retained?—has he not remitted, like his brother Bishops, all the sins of the rich, and retained all those of the poor?—does he know, in Peterborough, who are fornicators, who thieves, who liars, who murderers?—and has he ever dared to tell any one of them to his face that he was so—if the man had over a hundred a year?

“Have mercy upon all Jews, Turks, infidels, and heretics, and so fetch them home, blessed Lord, to Thy flock, that they may be saved among the remnant of the true Israelites.” Who are the true Israelites, my lord of Peterborough, whom you can definitely announce for such, in your diocese? Or, perhaps, the Bishop of Manchester will take up the challenge, having lately spoken wisely—in generalities—concerning Fraud. Who are the true Israelites, my lord of Manchester, on your Exchange? Do they stretch their cloth, like other people?—have they any underhand dealings with the liable-to-be-damned false Israelites—Rothschilds and the like? or are they duly solicitous about those wanderers’ souls? and how often, on the average, do your Manchester clergy preach from the delicious parable, savouriest of all Scripture to rogues, at least since the eleventh century, when I find it to have been specially headed with golden [[12]]title in my best Greek MS. “of the Pharisee and Publican”—and how often, on the average, from those objectionable First and Fifteenth Psalms?

For the last character in St. Paul’s enumeration, which Bishops can claim, and the first which they are bound to claim, for the perfecting of the saints, and the work of the ministry, is that of the Doctor or Teacher.

In which character, to what work of their own, frank and faithful, can they appeal in the last fifty years of especial danger to the Church from false teaching? On this matter, my challenge will be most fittingly made to my own Bishop, of the University of Oxford. He inhibited, on the second Sunday of Advent of last year, another Bishop of the English Church from preaching at Carfax. By what right? Which of the two Bishops am I, their innocent lamb, to listen to? It is true that the insulted Bishop was only a colonial one;—am I to understand, therefore, that the Church sends her heretical Bishops out as Apostles, while she keeps her orthodox ones at home? and that, accordingly, a stay-at-home Bishop may always silence a returned Apostle? And, touching the questions which are at issue, is there a single statement of the Bishop of Natal’s, respecting the Bible text, which the Bishop of Oxford dares to contradict before Professor Max Müller, or any other leading scholar of Europe? Does the Bishop of Oxford himself believe every statement in the Bible? If not,—which does he disbelieve, and why? He suffers the whole collection [[13]]of books to be spoken of—certainly by many clergymen in his diocese—as the Word of God. If he disbelieves any portion of it, that portion he is bound at once to inhibit them from so calling, till inquiry has been made concerning it; but if he and the other orthodox home-Bishops,—who would very joyfully, I perceive, burn the Bishop of Natal at Paul’s, and make Ludgate Hill safer for the omnibuses with the cinders of him,—if they verily believe all, or even, with a living faith, any, vital part of the Bible, how is it that we, the incredulous sheep, see no signs following them that believe;—that though they can communicate the Holy Spirit, they cannot excommunicate the unholy one, and apologetically leave the healing of sick to the physician, the taking up of serpents to the juggler, and the moving of mountains to the railway-navvy?

“It was never meant that any one should do such things literally, after St. Paul’s time.”

Then what was meant, and what is, doctors mine?

Challenge enough, for this time, it seems to me; the rather that just as I finish writing it, I receive a challenge myself, requiring attentive answer. Fors could not have brought it me at better time. The reader will find it the first in the Notes and Correspondence of this year; and my answer may both meet the doubts of many readers who would not so frankly have expressed them; and contain some definitions of principle which are necessary for our future work. [[14]]

My correspondent, referring to my complaint that no matron nor maid of England had yet joined the St. George’s Company, answers, for her own part, first that her husband and family prevent her from doing it; secondly, that she has done it already; thirdly, that she will do it when I do it myself. It is only to the third of these pleas that I at present reply.

She tells me, first, that I have not joined the St. George’s Company because I have no home. It is too true. But that is because my father, and mother, and nurse, are dead; because the woman I hoped would have been my wife is dying; and because the place where I would fain have stayed to remember all of them, was rendered physically uninhabitable to me by the violence of my neighbours;—that is to say, by their destroying the fields I needed to think in, and the light I needed to work by. Nevertheless, I have, under these conditions, done the best thing possible to me—bought a piece of land on which I could live in peace; and on that land, wild when I bought it, have already made, not only one garden, but two, to match against my correspondent’s; nor that without help from children who, though not mine, have been cared for as if they were.

Secondly; my correspondent tells me that my duty is to stay at home, instead of dating from places which are a dream of delight to her, and which, therefore, she concludes, must be a reality of delight to me.

She will know better after reading this extract from [[15]]my last year’s diary; (worth copying, at any rate, for other persons interested in republican Italy). “Florence, 20th September, 1874.—Tour virtually ended for this year. I leave Florence to-day, thankfully, it being now a place of torment day and night for all loving, decent, or industrious people; for every face one meets is full of hatred and cruelty; and the corner of every house is foul; and no thoughts can be thought in it, peacefully, in street, or cloister, or house, any more. And the last verses I read, of my morning’s readings, are [Esdras II., xv. 16, 17]: ‘For there shall be sedition among men, and invading one another; they shall not regard their kings nor princes, and the course of their actions shall stand in their power. A man shall desire to go into the city, and shall not be able.’ ”

What is said here of Florence is now equally true of every great city of France or Italy; and my correspondent will be perhaps contented with me when she knows that only last Sunday I was debating with a very dear friend whether I might now be justified in indulging my indolence and cowardice by staying at home among my plants and minerals, and forsaking the study of Italian art for ever. My friend would fain have it so; and my correspondent shall tell me her opinion, after she knows—and I will see that she has an opportunity of knowing—what work I have done in Florence, and propose to do, if I can be brave enough.

Thirdly; my correspondent doubts the sincerity of my [[16]]abuse of railroads because she suspects I use them. I do so constantly, my dear lady; few men more. I use everything that comes within reach of me. If the devil were standing at my side at this moment, I should endeavour to make some use of him as a local black. The wisdom of life is in preventing all the evil we can; and using what is inevitable, to the best purpose. I use my sicknesses, for the work I despise in health; my enemies, for study of the philosophy of benediction and malediction; and railroads, for whatever I find of help in them—looking always hopefully forward to the day when their embankments will be ploughed down again, like the camps of Rome, into our English fields. But I am perfectly ready even to construct a railroad, when I think one necessary; and in the opening chapter of ‘Munera Pulveris’ my correspondent will find many proper uses for steam machinery specified. What is required of the members of St. George’s Company is, not that they should never travel by railroads, nor that they should abjure machinery; but that they should never travel unnecessarily, or in wanton haste; and that they should never do with a machine what can be done with hands and arms, while hands and arms are idle.

Lastly, my correspondent feels it unjust to be required to make clothes, while she is occupied in the rearing of those who will require them.

Admitting (though the admission is one for which I do not say that I am prepared) that it is the patriotic [[17]]duty of every married couple to have as large a family as possible, it is not from the happy Penelopes of such households that I ask—or should think of asking—the labour of the loom. I simply require that when women belong to the St. George’s Company they should do a certain portion of useful work with their hands, if otherwise their said fair hands would be idle; and if on those terms I find sufficient clothing cannot be produced, I will use factories for them,—only moved by water, not steam.

My answer, as thus given, is, it seems to me, sufficient; and I can farther add to its force by assuring my correspondent that I shall never ask any member of St. George’s Company to do more, in relation to his fortune and condition, than I have already done myself. Nevertheless, it will be found by any reader who will take the trouble of reference, that in recent letters I have again and again intimated the probable necessity, before the movement could be fairly set on foot, of more energetic action and example, towards which both my thoughts and circumstances seem gradually leading me; and, in that case, I shall trustfully look to the friends who accuse me of cowardice in doing too little, for defence against the, I believe, too probable imputations impending from others, of folly in doing too much. [[19]]

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NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE.

I. I hope my kind correspondent will pardon my publication of the following letter, which gives account of an exemplary life, and puts questions which many desire to have answered.

“My dear Mr. Ruskin,—I do not know if you have forgotten me, for it is a long time since I wrote to you; but you wrote so kindly to me before, that I venture to bring myself before you again, more especially as you write to me (among others) every month, and I want to answer something in these letters.

“I do answer your letters (somewhat combatively) every month in my mind, but all these months I have been waiting for an hour of sufficient strength and leisure, and have found it now for the first time. A family of eleven children, through a year of much illness, and the birth of another child in May, have not left me much strength for pleasure, such as this is.

“Now a little while ago, you asked reproachfully of Englishwomen in general, why none of them had joined St. George’s Company. I can only answer for myself, and I have these reasons.

“First. Being situated as I am, and as doubtless many others are more or less, I cannot join it. In my actions I am subject first to my husband, and then to my family. Any one who is entirely free cannot judge how impossible it is to make inelastic and remote rules apply to all the ever-varying and incalculable changes and accidents and personalities of life. They are a [[20]]disturbing element to us visionaries, which I have been forced to acknowledge and submit to, but which you have not. Having so many to consider and consult, it is all I can do to get through the day’s work; I am obliged to take things as I find them, and do the best I can, in haste; and I might constantly be breaking rules, and not able to help it, and indeed I should not have time to think about it. I do not want to be hampered more than I am. I am not straitened for money; but most people with families are so more or less, and this is another element of difficulty.

“Secondly. Although I do not want to be further bound by rules, I believe that as regards principles I am a member of St. George’s Company already; and I do not like to make any further profession which would seem to imply a renunciation of the former errors of my way, and the beginning of a new life. I have never been conscious of any other motives or course of life than those which you advocate; and my children and all around me do not know me in any other light; and I find a gradual and unconscious conformation to them growing up round me, though I have no sort of teaching faculty. I cannot tell how much of them I owe to you, for some of your writings which fell in my way when I was very young made a deep impression on me, and I grew up embued with their spirit; but certainly I cannot now profess it for the first time.

“Thirdly (and this is wherein I fear to offend you), I will join St. George’s Company whenever you join it yourself. Please pardon me for saying that I appear to be more a member of it than you are. My life is strictly bound and ruled, and within those lines I live. Above all things, you urge our duties to the land, the common earth of our country. It seems to me that the first duty any one owes to his country is to live in it. I go further, and maintain that every one is bound to have a home, and live in that. You speak of the duty of acquiring, if possible, [[21]]and cultivating, the smallest piece of ground. But, (forgive the question,) where is your house and your garden? I know you have got places, but you do not stay there. Almost every month you date from some new place, a dream of delight to me; and all the time I am stopping at home, labouring to improve the place I live at, to keep the lives entrusted to me, and to bring forth other lives in the agony and peril of my own. And when I read your reproaches, and see where they date from, I feel as a soldier freezing in the trenches before Sebastopol might feel at receiving orders from a General who was dining at his club in London. If you would come and see me in May, I could show you as pretty a little garden of the spade as any you ever saw, made on the site of an old rubbish heap, where seven tiny pairs of hands and feet have worked like fairies. Have you got a better one to show me? For the rest of my garden I cannot boast; because out-of-door work or pleasure is entirely forbidden me by the state of my health.

“Again, I agree with you in your dislike of railroads, but I suspect you use them, and sometimes go on them. I never do. I obey these laws and others, with whatever inconvenience or privation they may involve; but you do not; and that makes me revolt when you scold us.

“Again, I cannot, as you suggest, grow, spin, and weave the linen for myself and family. I have enough to do to get the clothes made. If you would establish factories where we could get pure woven cotton, linen, and woollen, I would gladly buy them there; and that would be a fair division of labour. It is not fair that the more one does, the more should be required of one.

“You see you are like a clergyman in the pulpit in your books: you can scold the congregation, and they cannot answer; behold the congregation begins to reply; and I only hope you will forgive me.

“Believe me,

“Yours very truly.”

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II. It chances, I see, while I print my challenge to the Bishop of my University, that its neighbouring clergymen are busy in expressing to him their thanks and compliments. The following address is worth preserving. I take it from the ‘Morning Post’ of December 16, and beneath it have placed an article from the ‘Telegraph’ of the following day, describing the results of clerical and episcopal teaching of an orthodox nature in Liverpool, as distinguished from ‘Doctor’ Colenso’s teaching in Africa.

“The Inhibition of Bishop Colenso.—The clergy of the rural deanery of Witney, Oxford, numbering thirty-four, together with the rural dean (the Rev. F. M. Cunningham), have subscribed their names to the following circular, which has been forwarded to the Bishop of Oxford:—‘To the Right Rev. Father in God, John Fielder, by Divine permission Lord Bishop of Oxford.—We, the undersigned clergy of the rural deanery of Witney, in your Lordship’s diocese, beg respectfully to offer to your Lordship our cordial sympathy under the painful circumstances in which you have been placed by the invitation to the Right Rev. Dr. Colenso to preach in one of the churches in your diocese. Your firm and spontaneous refusal to permit Dr. Colenso to preach will be thankfully accepted by all consistent members of our Church as a protest much needed in these times against the teaching of one who has grievously offended many consciences, and has attempted as far as in him lay to injure the “faith which was delivered to the saints.”[4] That your Lordship may long be spared to defend the truth, is the prayer of your Lordship’s obedient and attached clergy.’ ”

III. “Something startling in the way of wickedness is needed to astonish men who, like our Judges, see and hear the periodical [[23]]crop of crime gathered in at Assizes; yet in two great cities of England, on Tuesday, expressions of amazement, shame, and disgust fell from the seat of Justice. At York, Mr. Justice Denman was driven to utter a burst of just indignation at the conduct of certain people in his court, who grinned and tittered while a witness in a disgraceful case was reluctantly repeating some indelicate language. ‘Good God!’ exclaimed his Lordship, ‘is this a Christian country? Let us at least have decency in courts of justice. One does not come to be amused by filth which one is obliged to extract in cases that defame the land.’ At Liverpool a sterner declaration of judicial anger was made, with even stronger cause. Two cases of revolting barbarism were tried by Mr. Justice Mellor—one of savage violence towards a man, ending in murder; the other of outrage upon a woman, so unspeakably shameful and horrible that the difficulty is how to convey the facts without offending public decency. In the first, a gang of men at Liverpool set upon a porter named Richard Morgan, who was in the company of his wife and brother, and because he did not instantly give them sixpence to buy beer they kicked him completely across the street, a distance of thirty feet, with such ferocity, in spite of all the efforts made to save him by the wife and brother, that the poor man was dead when he was taken up. And during this cruel and cowardly scene the crowd of bystanders not only did not attempt to rescue the victim, but hounded on his murderers, and actually held back the agonized wife and the brave brother from pursuing the homicidal wretches. Three of them were placed at the bar on trial for their lives, and convicted; nor would we intervene with one word in their favour, though that word might save their vile necks. This case might appear bad enough to call forth the utmost wrath of Justice; but the second, heard at the same time and place, was yet more hideous. A tramp-woman, drunk, and wet to the skin with rain, was going along a road near Burnley, in company with a navvy, [[24]]who by-and-by left her helpless at a gate. Two out of a party of young colliers coming from work found her lying there, and they led her into a field. They then sent a boy named Slater to fetch the remaining eight of their band, and, having thus gathered many spectators, two of them certainly, and others of the number in all probability, outraged the hapless creature, leaving her after this infernal treatment in such plight that next day she was found lying dead in the field. The two in question—Durham, aged twenty, and Shepherd, aged sixteen—were arraigned for murder; but that charge was found difficult to make good, and the minor indictment for rape was alone pressed against them. Of the facts there was little or no doubt; and it may well be thought that in stating them we have accomplished the saddest portion of our duty to the public.

“But no! to those who have learned how to measure human nature, we think what followed will appear the more horrible portion of the trial—if more horrible could be. With a strange want of insight, the advocate for these young men called up the companions of their atrocity to swear—what does the public expect?—to swear that they did not think the tramp woman was ill-used, nor that what was done was wrong. Witness after witness, present at the time, calmly deposed to his personal view of the transaction in words like those of William Bracewell, a collier, aged nineteen. Between this precious specimen of our young British working man and the Bench, the following interchange of questions and answers passed. ‘You did not think there was anything wrong in it?’—‘No.’ ‘Do you mean to tell me that you did not think there was anything wrong in outraging a drunken woman?’—‘She never said nothing.’ ‘You repeat you think there was nothing wrong—that there was no harm in a lot of fellows outraging a drunken woman: is that your view of the thing?’—‘Yes.’ And, in reply to further questions by Mr. Cottingham, this fellow Bracewell said he [[25]]only ‘thought the matter a bit of fun. None of them interfered to protect the woman.’ Then the boy Slater, who was sent to bring up the laggards, was asked what he thought of his errand. Like the others, ‘he hadn’t seen anything very wrong in it.’ At this point the Judge broke forth, in accents which may well ring through England. His Lordship indignantly exclaimed: ‘I want to know how it is possible in a Christian country like this that there should be such a state of feeling, even among boys of thirteen, sixteen, and eighteen years of age. It is outrageous. If there are missionaries wanted to the heathen, there are heathens in England who require teaching a great deal more than those abroad.’ (Murmurs of ‘Hear hear,’ from the jury-box, and applause in court.) His Lordship continued: ‘Silence! It is quite shocking to hear boys of this age come up and say these things.’ How, indeed, is it possible? that is the question which staggers one. Murder there will be—manslaughter, rape, burglary, theft, are all unfortunately recurring and common crimes in every community. Nothing in the supposed nature of ‘Englishmen’ can be expected to make our assizes maiden, and our gaol deliveries blank. But there was thought to be something in the blood of the race which would somehow serve to keep us from seeing a Liverpool crowd side with a horde of murderers against their victim, or a gang of Lancashire lads making a ring to see a woman outraged to death. A hundred cases nowadays tell us to discard that idle belief; if it ever was true, it is true no longer. The most brutal, the most cowardly, the most pitiless, the most barbarous deeds done in the world, are being perpetrated by the lower classes of the English people—once held to be by their birth, however lowly, generous, brave, merciful, and civilized. In all the pages of Dr. Livingstone’s experience among the negroes of Africa, there is no single instance approaching this Liverpool story, in savagery of mind and [[26]]body, in bestiality of heart and act. Nay, we wrong the lower animals by using that last word: the foulest among the beasts which perish is clean, the most ferocious gentle, matched with these Lancashire pitmen, who make sport of the shame and slaying of a woman, and blaspheme nature in their deeds, without even any plea whatever to excuse their cruelty.”

The clergy may vainly exclaim against being made responsible for this state of things. They, and chiefly their Bishops, are wholly responsible for it; nay, are efficiently the causes of it, preaching a false gospel for hire. But, putting all questions of false or true gospels aside, suppose that they only obeyed St. Paul’s plain order in [1st Corinthians v. 11]. Let them determine as distinctly what covetousness and extortion are in the rich, as what drunkenness is, in the poor. Let them refuse, themselves, and order their clergy to refuse, to go out to dine with such persons; and still more positively to allow such persons to sup at God’s table. And they would soon know what fighting wolves meant; and something more of their own pastoral duty than they learned in that Consecration Service, where they proceeded to follow the example of the Apostles in Prayer, but carefully left out the Fasting. [[27]]

[[Contents]]

Accounts.

The following Subscriptions have come in since I made out the list in the December number; but that list is still incomplete, as I cannot be sure of some of the numbers till I have seen my Brantwood note-book:—

[[29]]

[1] Seven thousand to St. George’s Company; five, for establishment of Mastership in Drawing in the Oxford Schools; two, and more, in the series of drawings placed in those schools to secure their efficiency. [↑]

[2] [Lamentations v. 13]. [↑]

[3] As distinguished, that is to say, from other members of the Church. All are priests, as all are kings; but the kingly function exists apart: the priestly, not so. The subject is examined at some length, and with a clearness [[9]]which I cannot mend, in my old pamphlet on the ‘Construction of Sheepfolds,’ which I will presently reprint. See also Letter XIII., in ‘Time and Tide.’ [↑]

[4] I append a specimen of the conduct of the Saints to whom our English clergymen have delivered the Faith. [↑]

[[Contents]]

FORS CLAVIGERA.

LETTER L.

A friend, in whose judgment I greatly trust, remonstrated sorrowfully with me, the other day, on the desultory character of Fors; and pleaded with me for the writing of an arranged book instead.

But he might as well plead with a birch-tree growing out of a crag, to arrange its boughs beforehand. The winds and floods will arrange them according to their wild liking; all that the tree has to do, or can do, is to grow gaily, if it may be; sadly, if gaiety be impossible; and let the black jags and scars rend the rose-white of its trunk where Fors shall choose.

But I can well conceive how irritating it must be to any one chancing to take special interest in any one part of my subject—the life of Scott for instance,—to find me, or lose me, wandering away from it for a year or two; and sending roots into new ground in every direction: or (for my friend taxed me with this graver error also) needlessly re-rooting myself in the old.

And, all the while, some kindly expectant people are [[30]]waiting for ‘details of my plan.’ In the presentment of which, this main difficulty still lets me; that, if I told them, or tried to help them definitely to conceive, the ultimate things I aim at, they would at once throw the book down as hopelessly Utopian; but if I tell them the immediate things I aim at, they will refuse to do those instantly possible things, because inconsistent with the present vile general system. For instance—I take (see [Letter V].) Wordsworth’s single line,

“We live by admiration, hope, and love,”

for my literal guide, in all education. My final object, with every child born on St. George’s estates, will be to teach it what to admire, what to hope for, and what to love: but how far do you suppose the steps necessary to such an ultimate aim are immediately consistent with what Messrs. Huxley and Co. call ‘Secular education’? Or with what either the Bishop of Oxford, or Mr. Spurgeon, would call ‘Religious education’?

What to admire, or wonder at! Do you expect a child to wonder at—being taught that two and two make four—(though if only its masters had the sense to teach that, honestly, it would be something)—or at the number of copies of nasty novels and false news a steam-engine can print for its reading?

What to hope? Yes, my secular friends—What? That it shall be the richest shopman in the street; and be buried with black feathers enough over its coffin? [[31]]

What to love—Yes, my ecclesiastical friends, and who is its neighbour, think you? Will you meet these three demands of mine with your three Rs, or your catechism?

And how would I meet them myself? Simply by never, so far as I could help it, letting a child read what is not worth reading, or see what is not worth seeing; and by making it live a life which, whether it will or no, shall enforce honourable hope of continuing long in the land—whether of men or God.

And who is to say what is worth reading, or worth seeing? sneer the Republican mob. Yes, gentlemen, you who never knew a good thing from a bad, in all your lives, may well ask that!

Let us try, however, in such a simple thing as a child’s book. Yesterday, in the course of my walk, I went into a shepherd-farmer’s cottage, to wish whoever might be in the house a happy new year. His wife was at home, of course; and his little daughter, Agnes, nine years old; both as good as gold, in their way.

The cottage is nearly a model of those which I shall expect the tenants of St. George’s Company, and its active members, to live in;—the entire building, parlour, and kitchen, (in this case one, but not necessarily so,) bedrooms and all, about the size of an average dining-room in Grosvenor Place or Park Lane. The conversation naturally turning to Christmas doings and havings,—and I, as an author, of course inquiring whether Agnes had [[32]]any new books, Agnes brought me her library—consisting chiefly in a good pound’s weight of the literature which cheap printing enables the pious to make Christmas presents of for a penny. A full pound, or it might be, a pound and a half, of this instruction, full of beautiful sentiments, woodcuts, and music. More woodcuts in the first two ounces of it I took up, than I ever had. to study in the first twelve years of my life. Splendid woodcuts, too, in the best Kensington style, and rigidly on the principles of high, and commercially remunerative, art, taught by Messrs. Redgrave, Cole, and Company.

Somehow, none of these seem to have interested little Agnes, or been of the least good to her. Her pound and a half of the best of the modern pious and picturesque is (being of course originally boardless) now a crumpled and variously doubled-up heap, brought down in a handful, or lapful, rather; most of the former insides of the pamphlets being now the outsides; and every form of dog’s ear, puppy’s ear, cat’s ear, kitten’s ear, rat’s ear, and mouse’s ear, developed by the contortions of weary fingers at the corners of their didactic and evangelically sibylline leaves. I ask if I may borrow one to take home and read. Agnes is delighted; but undergoes no such pang of care as a like request would have inflicted on my boyish mind, and needed generous stifling of;—nay, had I asked to borrow the whole heap, I am not sure whether Agnes’s first tacit sensation would not have been one of deliverance.

Being very fond of pretty little girls, (not, by any [[33]]means, excluding pretty—tall ones,) I choose, for my own reading, a pamphlet[1] which has a picture of a beautiful little girl with long hair, lying very ill in bed, with her mother putting up her forefinger at her brother, who is crying, with a large tear on the side of his nose; and a legend beneath: ‘Harry told his mother the whole story.’ The pamphlet has been doubled up by Agnes right through the middle of the beautiful little girl’s face, and no less remorselessly through the very middle of the body of the ‘Duckling Astray,’ charmingly drawn by Mr. Harrison Weir on the opposite leaf. But my little Agnes knows so much more about real ducklings than the artist does, that her severity in this case is not to be wondered at.

I carry my Children’s Prize penny’s-worth home to Brantwood, full of curiosity to know “the whole story.” I find that this religious work is edited by a Master of Arts—no less—and that two more woodcuts of the most finished order are given to Harry’s story,—representing Harry and the pretty little girl, (I suppose so, at least; but, alas, now with her back turned to me,—the cuts came cheaper so,) dressed in the extreme of fashion, down to her boots,—first running with Harry, in snow, after a carriage, and then reclining against Harry’s shoulder in a snowstorm.

I arrange my candles for small print, and proceed to read this richly illustrated story.

Harry and his sister were at school together, it appears, [[34]]at Salisbury; and their father’s carriage was sent, in a snowy day, to bring them home for the holidays. They are to be at home by five; and their mother has invited a children’s party at seven. Harry is enjoined by his father, in the letter which conveys this information, to remain inside the carriage, and not to go on the box.

Harry is a good boy, and does as he is bid; but nothing whatever is said in the letter about not getting out of the carriage to walk up hills. And at ‘two-mile hill’ Harry thinks it will be clever to get out and walk up it, without calling to, or stopping, John on the box. Once out himself, he gets Mary out;—the children begin snowballing each other; the carriage leaves them so far behind that they can’t catch it; a snowstorm comes on, etc., etc.; they are pathetically frozen within a breath of their lives; found by a benevolent carter, just in time; warmed by a benevolent farmer, the carter’s friend; restored to their alarmed father and mother; and Mary has a rheumatic fever, “and for a whole week it was not known whether she would live or die,” which is the Providential punishment of Harry’s sin in getting out of the carriage.

Admitting the perfect appositeness and justice of this Providential punishment; I am, parenthetically, desirous to know of my Evangelical friends, first, whether from the corruption of Harry’s nature they could have expected anything better than his stealthily getting out of the carriage to walk up the hill?—and, secondly, whether [[35]]the merits of Christ, which are enough to save any murderer or swindler from all the disagreeable consequences of murder and swindling, in the next world, are not enough in this world, if properly relied upon, to save a wicked little boy’s sister from rheumatic fever? This, I say, I only ask parenthetically, for my own information; my immediate business being to ask what effect this story is intended to produce on my shepherd’s little daughter Agnes?

Intended to produce, I say: what effect it does produce, I can easily ascertain; but what do the writer and the learned editor expect of it? Or rather, to touch the very beginning of the inquiry, for what class of child do they intend it? ‘For all classes,’ the enlightened editor and liberal publisher doubtless reply. ‘Classes, indeed! In the glorious liberty of the Future, there shall be none!’

Well, be it so; but in the inglorious slavery of the Past, it has happened that my little Agnes’s father has not kept a carriage; that Agnes herself has not often seen one, is not likely often to be in one, and has seen a great deal too much snow, and had a great deal too much walking in it, to be tempted out,—if she ever has the chance of being driven in a carriage to a children’s party at seven,—to walk up a hill on the road. Such is our benighted life in Westmoreland. In the future, do my pious and liberal friends suppose that all little Agneses are to drive in carriages? That is their [[36]]Utopia. Mine, so much abused for its impossibility, is only that a good many little Agneses who at present drive in carriages, shall have none.

Nay, but perhaps, the learned editor did not intend the story for children ‘quite in Agnes’s position.’ For what sort did he intend it, then? For the class of children whose fathers keep carriages, and whose mothers dress their girls by the Paris modes, at three years old? Very good; then, in families which keep carriages and footmen, the children are supposed to think a book is a prize, which costs a penny? Be that also so, in the Republican cheap world; but might not the cheapeners print, when they are about it, prize poetry for their penny? Here is the ‘Christmas Carol,’ set to music, accompanying this moral story of the Snow.

“Hark, hark, the merry pealing,

List to the Christmas chime,

Every breath and every feeling

Hails the good old time;

Brothers, sisters, homeward speed,

All is mirth and play;

Hark, hark, the merry pealing,—

Welcome Christmas Day.

Sing, sing, around we gather,

Each with something new, [[37]]

Cheering mother, cheering father,

From the Bible true;

Bring the holly, spread the feast,

Every heart to cheer,

Sing, sing, a merry Christmas,

A happy, bright New Year.”

Now, putting aside for the moment all questions touching the grounds of the conviction of the young people for whom these verses are intended of the truth of the Bible; or touching the propriety of their cheering their fathers and mothers by quotations from it; or touching the difficultly reconcileable merits of old times and new things; I call these verses bad, primarily, because they are not rhythmical. I consider good rhythm a moral quality. I consider the rhythm in these stanzas demoralized, and demoralizing. I quote, in opposition to them, one of the rhymes by which my own ear and mind were educated in early youth, as being more distinctly, and literally ‘moral,’ than that Christmas carol.

“Dame Wiggins of Lee

Was a worthy old soul,

As e’er threaded a nee-

Dle, or washed in a bowl.

She held mice and rats

In such antipa-thy,

That Seven good Cats

Kept Dame Wiggins of Lee.”

[[38]]

Putting aside also, in our criticism of these verses, the very debateable question, whether Dame Wiggins kept the Seven Cats, or the Seven Cats Dame Wiggins; and giving no judgment as to the propriety of the license taken in pronunciation, by the accent on the last syllable of ‘antipathy,’ or as to the evident plagiarism of the first couplet from the classical ballad of King Cole, I aver these rhymes to possess the primary virtue of rhyme,—that is to say, to be rhythmical, in a pleasant and exemplary degree. And I believe, and will venture also to assert my belief, that the matter contained in them, though of an imaginative character, is better food for a child’s mind than either the subject or sentiment of the above quoted Christmas Carol.

The mind of little Agnes, at all events, receives from story, pictures, and carol, altogether, no very traceable impression; but, I am happy to say, certainly no harm. She lives fifteen miles from the nearest manufacturing district,—sees no vice, except perhaps sometimes in the village on Sunday afternoons;—hears, from week’s end to week’s end, the sheep bleat, and the wind whistle,—but neither human blasphemy, nor human cruelty of command. Her shepherd father, out on the hills all day, is thankful at evening to return to his fireside, and to have his little daughter to look at, instead of a lamb. She suffers no more from schooling than serves to make her enjoy her home;—knows already the mysteries of butter-making and poultry-keeping;—curtsies to me without [[39]]alarm when I pass her door, if she is outside of it;—and, on the whole, sees no enemy but winter and rough weather.

But what effect this modern Christmas carol would have had on her mind, if she had had the full advantage of modern education in an advanced and prosperous town,—the following well written letter,—happily sent me by Fors at the necessary moment,—enables me at once to exhibit:—

“10th January, 1874.

Dear Mr. Ruskin,

Your appendix to the Fors this month contains a chapter on what some will assert is very exceptional ——shire brutality. After nine years’ residence in a ——shire village, I am compelled to believe that the vileness which horrified Judge Mellor is everywhere ingrained where factory and colliery rule prevails.

Could you but hear the blasphemous and filthy language our rosy village bairns use as soon as they are out of the parson’s earshot, even when leaving the Sabbath School!

Yet we have a rural dean as incumbent, an excellent schoolmaster, and model school. The Government Inspector is highly satisfied, and there are the usual edifying tea parties, prize-givings, and newspaper puffs, yearly.

I know that the children are well taught six days a week, yet there is little fruit of good behaviour among them, and an indecency of speech which is amazing in [[40]]rural children. On Christmas morn a party of these children, boys and girls, singing carols, encountered my young daughter going alone to the church service. The opportunity was tempting, and as if moved by one vile spirit, they screamed at her a blast of the most obscene and profane epithets that vicious malice could devise. She knew none of them; had never harmed them in her life. She came home with her kind, tender heart all aghast. ‘Why do they hate me so?’ she asked.

Yet a short time after the same children came into the yard, and began, with the full shrill powers of their young lungs,

‘Why do I love Jesus?’

the refrain,

‘Because He died for me,’

with especial gusto. My husband, ignorant of their previous conduct, gave them a bright shilling, which evoked three more hymns of similar character. What does all this mean?

Our Bishop says that we have a model parish, a model school, and a model parson—yet we have children like this. Our parson knows it, and says to me that he can do nothing to prevent it.

More than this. It is almost incredible; but my own horrified ears have borne witness of it. Young boys will threaten girls of their own age, in the vilest terms, with outrage like that at Burnley. I have heard it again and again. Had Judge Mellor had nine years’ experience of [[41]]——shire life, he would not have been surprised at the utter brutality of mind exhibited.

Yet we are not criminal compared with other districts. Bastardy and drunkenness are at present the darkest shades we can show; but there is perhaps some better influence at work from the vicinage of two great squires which secures us pure air and wide fields.

I am glad to read that you purpose vexing yourself less with the sins of the times during the coming summer. It is too great a burthen for a human mind to bear the world’s sins in spirit, as you do. If you mean to preserve yourself for the many thousands whose inner heart’s bitterness your voice has relieved, you must vex yourself less about this age’s madness.

The sure retribution is at hand already.”[2]

‘What does all this mean?’ my correspondent asks, in wise anxiety.

National prosperity, my dear Madam, according to Mr. Goschen, the ‘Times,’ and ‘Morning Post’;—national prosperity carried to the point of not knowing what to do with our money. Enlightenment, and Freedom, and orthodox Religion, and Science of the superbest and trustworthiest character, and generally the Reign of Law, answer the Duke of Argyll and Professor Huxley. Ruin—inevitable and terrible, such as no nation has yet suffered,—answer God and the Fates. [[42]]

Yes—inevitable. England has to drink a cup which cannot pass from her—at the hands of the Lord, the cup of His fury;—surely the dregs of it, the wicked of the earth shall wring them and drink them out.

For let none of my readers think me mad enough or wild enough to hope that any effort, or repentance, or change of conduct, could now save the country from the consequences of her follies, or the Church from the punishment of her crimes. This St. George’s Company of ours is mere raft-making amidst irrevocable wreck—the best we can do, to be done bravely and cheerfully, come of it what may.

Let me keep, therefore, to-day wholly to definite matters, and to little ones. What the education we now give our children leads to, my correspondent’s letter shows. What education they should have, instead, I may suggest perhaps in some particulars.

What should be done, for instance, in the way of gift-giving, or instruction-giving, for our little Agnes of the hill-side? Would the St. George’s Company, if she were their tenant, only leave her alone,—teach her nothing?

Not so; very much otherwise than so. This is some part of what should be done for her, were she indeed under St. George’s rule.

Instead of the “something new,” which our learned Master of Arts edits for her in carolling, she should learn, by heart, words which her fathers had known, many and [[43]]many a year ago. As, for instance, these two little carols of grace before meat:—

What God gives, and what we take,

’Tis a gift for Christ His sake;

Be the meale of Beanes and Pease,

God be thanked for those and these.

Have we flesh, or have we fish,

All are Fragments from His dish:

He His Church save; and the King;

And our Peace here, like a Spring,

Make it ever flourishing.

Here, a little child, I stand

Heaving up my either hand;

Cold as Paddocks though they be,

Here I lift them up to Thee.

For a Benizon to fall,

On our meat, and on us all.

These verses, or such as these, Agnes should be able to say, and sing; and if on any state occasion it were desired of her to say grace, should be so mannered as to say obediently, without either vanity or shame. Also, she should know other rhymes for her own contentment such as she liked best, out of narrow store offered to, [[44]]her, if she chose to learn to read. Reading by no means being enforced upon her—still less, writing; nothing enforced on her but household help to her mother; instant obedience to her father’s or mother’s word; order and cleanliness in her own departments and person; and gentleness to all inoffensive creatures—paddocks as well as lambs and chickens.

Further, instead of eighteen distinct penny Children’s Prizes, containing seventy-two elaborate woodcuts of ‘Ducklings Astray,’ and the like, (which I should especially object to, in the case of Agnes, as too personal, she herself being little more at present than a duckling astray,) the St. George’s Company would invest for her, at once, the ‘ridiculously small sum of eighteenpence,’ in one coloured print—coloured by hand, for the especial decoration of her own chamber. This colouring by hand is one of the occupations which young women of the upper classes, in St. George’s Company, will undertake as a business of pure duty; it was once a very wholesome means of livelihood to poorer art students. The plates of Sibthorpe’s Flora Græca, for instance, cost, I am informed, on their first publication, precisely the sum in question,—eighteen-pence each,—for their colouring by hand:—the enterprising publisher who issued the more recent editions, reducing, in conformity with modern views on the subject of economy, the colourist’s remuneration to thirty shillings per hundred. But in the St. George’s Company, young ladies who have the gift of [[45]]colouring will be taught to colour engravings simply as well as they can do it, without any reference whatever to pecuniary compensation; and such practice I consider to be the very best possible elementary instruction for themselves, in the art of watercolour painting.

And the print which should be provided and thus coloured for little Agnes’s room should be no less than the best engraving I could get made of Simon Memmi’s St. Agnes in Paradise; of which—(according to the probable notions of many of my readers, absurd and idolatrous)—image, little Agnes should know the legend as soon as she was able to understand it; though, if the St. George’s Company, could manage it for her, she should be protected from too early instruction in the meaning of that legend, by such threats from her English playfellows as are noticed in my correspondent’s letter.

Such should be some small part of her religious education. For beginning of secular education, the St. George’s Company would provide for her, above and before all things, a yard or two square of St. George’s ground, which should be wholly her own; together with instruments suited to her strength, for the culture, and seeds for the sowing, thereof. On which plot of ground, or near it, in a convenient place, there should be a bee-hive, out of which it should be considered a crowning achievement of Agnes’s secular virtues if she could produce, in its season, a piece of snowy and well-filled comb. And, (always if she chose to learn to read), [[46]]books should be given her containing such information respecting bees, and other living creatures as it appeared to the St. George’s Company desirable she should possess. But touching the character of this desirable information, what I have to say being somewhat lengthy, must be deferred to my March letter.

Castleton, Peak of Derbyshire,
27th January.

Since finishing this letter, I have driven leisurely through the midland manufacturing districts, which I have not traversed, except by rail, for the last ten years. The two most frightful things I have ever yet seen in my life are the south-eastern suburb of Bradford, (six miles long,) and the scene from Wakefield bridge, by the chapel; yet I cannot but more and more reverence the fierce courage and industry, the gloomy endurance, and the infinite mechanical ingenuity of the great centres, as one reverences the fervid labours of a wasp’s nest, though the end of all is only a noxious lump of clay. [[47]]

[[Contents]]

NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE.

In my last December’s letter, I promised, for January, some statement of real beginning of operations by our Company; but, as usual, was hindered from fulfilling my promise at the time I intended. And the hindrance lay, as in all useful business it is pretty sure in some measure to lie, in the state of British law. An acre of ground, with some cottages on it, has been given me for our Company; but it is not easy to find out how the Company is to lay hold of it. I suppose the conveyancing will cost us, in the end, half a dozen times the value of the land; and in the meantime I don’t care to announce our possession of it, or say what I mean to do with it. I content myself for the present with reprinting, and very heartily, as far as my experience holds, ratifying, the subjoined portions of a letter, sent me the other day out of a country paper. The writer is speaking, at the point where my quotation begins, of the difficulty of getting a good bankruptcy act passed:—

“The reason alleged is that almost any lawyer is ready to help any lying and false-trading person to drive his coach and four through any Act, however good in intention it may be. This is a sad state of things, and is wasteful of more things than money or good temper. It is, however, on the matter of conveyancing that we wish to say a few words.…

“We are accustomed to look at the matter as a very simple one. We have before us the deeds of our dwelling-house. [[48]]The real point is, why can we not sell these papers to, say John Smith, for £1,000, if John is satisfied that our little cottage, with all its admirable rooms so well arranged, is worth that amount? Why can’t we sell him this matter in a simple and clear way? Or, for a case the least bit complicated, take our six shops in the chief street. Why can’t we sell one each to Brown, Jones, Robinson, Thompson, Atkinson, or Williams, their respective and respectable tenants, in an equally simple way? The English law steps in and says that we must have a cumbrous deed prepared for each case, and the total cost to all of us, without stamps, would be about one hundred pounds, at a reasonable computation. What do we get for this large sum? Absolutely nothing but jargon on parchment, instead of plain and simple English, which all the Smiths and Browns might understand, and get for a tenth of the cost. This is all the more irritating, because sensible people are agreed that our present plan is a cumbrous farce, and, moreover, nobody laughs at it but the lawyers who get the picking. Any six honest, clear-headed, educated men could devise a system in a month which would put an end to the needless and costly worry entailed by the existing legal paraphernalia. We have never yet seen any tangible objections to the simple system, nor any salient and satisfactory reasons for retaining the present circumlocutory, wasteful, and foolish one.

“Another monstrous anomaly is that we might sell each of our before-mentioned shops in our chief street, and yet retain the original deed untouched; so that after drawing cash from each of our present tenants, we could mortgage the whole block again, and clear off with the double cash.[3] [[49]]

“But even the present system might be made endurable, and herein lies its greatest blame, namely—that you never know what you are going to pay for the foolish and needless work you are having done. You are entirely at the mercy of the lawyer. When we consider that this so-called difficult and skilful work is always managed in the best offices by a mere clerk, and seldom, if ever, by the principal, we have a reasonable ground of complaint against the enormous and unfair charges usually made for work so done by wholesale.

“We will conclude with a practical suggestion or two. Building clubs have been a great boon to the saving element in our community. It is the wish of most people to have a house of their own, and these clubs find, for hundreds, the readiest means to that end. They have made easy the borrowing and the paying back of money, and they have been the means of simplifying mortgage deeds which, for clubs, are only £2 ,, 5s., and if got up simpler, and printed, instead of being written, might easily and profitably be done for a guinea. Could not they confer a still greater boon on the community by combining, and compelling by a strong voice, the lawyers to systematize and cheapen the present mode of conveyancing? This would be a great work, and might be done. Still better would it be to combine to send up suggestions to Parliament for a simpler and better plan, such as would lead to the passing of an Act for the embodiment of this great and much-needed reform.” [[51]]

[[Contents]]

Accounts.

The following additional subscriptions complete the account of receipts for St. George’s Fund to 15th January, 1875.

[[53]]

[1] The Children’s Prize. No. XII. December, 1873. Price one penny. [↑]

[2] Yes, I know that; but am I to be cheerfuller therefore? [↑]

[3] I don’t vouch for the particular statements in this letter. It seems to me incredible that any practical absurdity so great as this should exist in tenure of property. [↑]

[[Contents]]

FORS CLAVIGERA.

LETTER LI.

Herne Hill, 9th Feb., 1875.

I have been so much angered, distressed, and defeated, by many things, during these last autumn and winter months, that I can only keep steadily to my business by insisting to myself on my own extreme value and importance to the world; and quoting, in self-application, the most flattering texts I can find, such as, “Simon, Simon, Satan hath desired to have you,” and so on; hoping that at least a little more of my foolishness is being pounded out of me at every blow; and that the dough I knead for Fors may be daily of purer wheat.

I wish I could raise it with less leaven of malice; but I dislike some things and some people so much, that, having been always an impetuous, inconsiderate, and weakly communicative person, I find it impossible to hold my tongue in this time of advanced years and petulance. I am thankful, to-day, to have one most [[54]]pleasant thing first to refer to;—the notable speech, namely, of Mr. Johnson, the President of the Manchester Chamber of Commerce, on the immorality of cheapness; the first living words respecting commerce which I have ever known to be spoken in England, in my time;—on which, nevertheless, I can in no wise dilate to-day, but most thankfully treasure them for study in a future letter; having already prepared for this one, during my course of self-applause taken medicinally, another passage or two of my own biography, putting some of the reasons for my carelessness about Agnes’ proficiency in reading or writing, more definitely before the reader.

Until I was more than four years old, we lived in Hunter Street, Brunswick Square, the greater part of the year; for a few weeks in the summer breathing country air by taking lodgings in small cottages (real cottages, not villas, so-called) either about Hampstead, or at Dulwich, at ‘Mrs. Ridley’s,’ the last of a row in a lane which led out into the Dulwich fields on one side, and was itself full of buttercups in spring, and blackberries in autumn. But my chief remaining impressions of those days are attached to Hunter Street. My mother’s general principles of first treatment were, to guard me with steady watchfulness from all avoidable pain or danger; and, for the rest, to let me amuse myself as I liked, provided I was neither fretful nor troublesome. But the law was, that I should find my own amusement. No toys of any kind were at first [[55]]allowed;—and the pity of my Croydon aunt for my monastic poverty in this respect was boundless. On one of my birthdays, thinking to overcome my mother’s resolution by splendour of temptation, she bought the most radiant Punch and Judy she could find in all the Soho bazaar—as big as a real Punch and Judy, all dressed in scarlet and gold, and that would dance, tied to the leg of a chair. I must have been greatly impressed, for I remember well the look of the two figures, as my aunt herself exhibited their virtues. My mother was obliged to accept them; but afterwards quietly told me it was not right that I should have them; and I never saw them again.

Nor did I painfully wish, what I was never permitted for an instant to hope, or even imagine, the possession of such things as one saw in toyshops. I had a bunch of keys to play with, as long as I was capable only of pleasure in what glittered and jingled; as I grew older, I had a cart, and a ball; and when I was five or six years old, two boxes of well-cut wooden bricks. With these modest, but, I still think, entirely sufficient possessions, and being always summarily whipped if I cried, did not do as I was bid, or tumbled on the stairs, I soon attained serene and secure methods of life and motion; and could pass my days contentedly in tracing the squares and comparing the colours of my carpet;—examining the knots in the wood of the floor, or counting the bricks in the opposite houses; with [[56]]rapturous intervals of excitement during the filling of the water-cart, through its leathern pipe, from the dripping iron post at the pavement edge; or the still more admirable proceedings of the turncock, when he turned and turned till a fountain sprang up in the middle of the street. But the carpet, and what patterns I could find in bed covers, dresses, or wall-papers to be examined, were my chief resources, and my attention to the particulars in these was soon so accurate, that when at three and a half I was taken to have my portrait painted by Mr. Northcote, I had not been ten minutes alone with him before I asked him why there were holes in his carpet. The portrait in question represents a very pretty child with yellow hair, dressed in a white frock like a girl, with a broad light-blue sash and blue shoes to match; the feet of the child wholesomely large in proportion to its body; and the shoes still more wholesomely large in proportion to the feet.

These articles of my daily dress were all sent to the old painter for perfect realization; but they appear in the picture more remarkable than they were in my nursery, because I am represented as running in a field at the edge of a wood with the trunks of its trees striped across in the manner of Sir Joshua Reynolds; while two rounded hills, as blue as my shoes, appear in the distance, which were put in by the painter at my own request; for I had already been once, if not [[57]]twice, taken to Scotland; and my Scottish nurse having always sung to me as we approached the Tweed or Esk,—

“For Scotland, my darling, lies full in my view,

With her barefooted lassies, and mountains so blue,”

I had already generally connected the idea of distant hills with approach to the extreme felicities of life, in my (Scottish) aunt’s garden of gooseberry bushes, sloping to the Tay.

But that, when old Mr. Northcote asked me (little thinking, I fancy, to get any answer so explicit) what I would like to have in the distance of my picture, I should have said “blue hills” instead of “gooseberry bushes,” appears to me—and I think without any morbid tendency to think overmuch of myself—a fact sufficiently curious, and not without promise, in a child of that age.

I think it should be related also that having, as aforesaid, been steadily whipped if I was troublesome, my formed habit of serenity was greatly pleasing to the old painter; for I sat contentedly motionless, counting the holes in his carpet, or watching him squeeze his paint out of its bladders,—a beautiful operation, indeed, it seemed to me; but I do not remember taking any interest in Mr. Northcote’s applications of the pigments to the canvas; my ideas of delightful art, in that respect, involving indispensably the possession of a large pot, filled with paint of the [[58]]brightest green, and of a brush which would come out of it soppy. But my quietude was so pleasing to the old man that he begged my father and mother to let me sit to him for the face of a child which he was painting in a classical subject; where I was accordingly represented as reclining on a leopard skin, and having a thorn taken out of my foot by a wild man of the woods.

In all these particulars, I think the treatment, or accidental conditions, of my childhood, entirely right, for a child of my temperament; but the mode of my introduction to literature appears to me questionable, and I am not prepared to carry it out in St. George’s schools, without much modification. I absolutely declined to learn to read by syllables; but would get an entire sentence by heart with great facility, and point with accuracy to every word in the page as I repeated it. As, however, when the words were once displaced, I had no more to say, my mother gave up, for the time, the endeavour to teach me to read, hoping only that I might consent, in process of years, to adopt the popular system of syllabic study. But I went on, to amuse myself, in my own way, learnt whole words at a time, as I did patterns;—and at five years old was sending for my ‘second volumes’ to the circulating library.

This effort to learn the words in their collective aspect, was assisted by my real admiration of the look [[59]]of printed type, which I began to copy for my pleasure, as other children draw dogs and horses. The following inscription, facsimile’d from the fly leaf of my ‘Seven Champions of Christendom,’ I believe, (judging from the independent views taken in it of the character of the letter L, and the relative elevation of G,) to be an extremely early art study of this class; and as, by the will of Fors, the first lines of the note written the other day underneath my copy of it, in direction to Mr. Burgess, presented some notable points of correspondence with it, I thought it well he should engrave them together, as they stood.

The noble knight like a bold and daring hero then entered the valley where the dragon had his abode who no sooner had sight of him but his leathern throat sent forth a sound more

Bolton Abbey

24th Jan. 75

Dear Arthur

Will you kindly facsimile with moderate care, the above piece of ancient manuscript in Fors.

It would be difficult to give more distinct evidence than is furnished by these pieces of manuscript, of the incurably desultory character which has brought on me [[60]]the curse of Reuben, “Unstable as water, thou shalt not excel.” But I reflect, hereupon, with resolute self-complacency, that water, when good, is a good thing, though it be not stable; and that it may be better sometimes to irrigate than excel. And of the advantage, in many respects, of learning to write and read, if at all, in the above pictorial manner, I have much to say on some other occasion; but, having to-day discoursed enough about myself, will assume that Agnes, wholly at her own sweet will, has made shift to attain the skill and temper necessary for the use of any kind of good book, or bible. It is, then, for the St. George’s Company to see that all the bibles she has, whether for delight or instruction, shall be indeed holy bibles; written by persons, that is to say, in whom the word of God dwelt, and who spoke or wrote according to the will of God; and, therefore, with faithful purpose of speaking the truth touching what they had to tell, or of singing, rhyming, or what not else, for the amusement whether of children or grown-up persons, in a natural, modest, and honest manner, doing their best for the love of God and men, or children, or of the natural world; and not for money, (though for the time necessary to learn the arts of singing or writing, such honest minstrels and authors, manifestly possessing talent for their business, should be allowed to claim daily moderate maintenance, and for their actual toil, in performance of their arts, modest reward, and daily bread). [[61]]

And, passing by for the present the extremely difficult and debateable question, by what kind of entertaining and simple bibles Agnes shall be first encouraged in the pursuits of literature, I wish to describe to-day more particularly the kind of book I want to be able to give her about her bees, when she is old enough to take real charge of them. For I don’t in the least want a book to tell her how many species of bees there are; nor what grounds there may be for suspecting that one species is another species; nor why Mr. B—— is convinced that what Mr. A—— considered two species are indeed one species; nor how conclusively Mr. C—— has proved that what Mr. B—— described as a new species is an old species. Neither do I want a book to tell her what a bee’s inside is like, nor whether it has its brains in the small of its back, or nowhere in particular, like a modern political economist; nor whether the morphological nature of the sternal portion of the thorax should induce us, strictly, to call it the prosternum, or may ultimately be found to present no serious inducement of that nature. But I want a book to tell her, for instance, how a bee buzzes; and how, and by what instrumental touch, its angry buzz differs from its pleased or simply busy buzz.[1] Nor have I any objection to the [[62]]child’s learning, for good and all, such a dreadful word as ‘proboscis’ though I don’t, myself, understand why in the case of a big animal, like an elephant, one should be allowed, in short English, to say that it takes a bun with its trunk; and yet be required to state always, with severe accuracy, that a bee gathers honey with its proboscis. Whatever we were allowed to call it, however, our bee-book must assuredly tell Agnes and me, what at present I believe neither of us know,—certainly, I don’t, myself,—how the bee’s feeding instrument differs from its building one, and what either may be like.

I pause, here, to think over and put together the little I do know; and consider how it should be told Agnes. For to my own mind, it occurs in a somewhat grotesque series of imagery, with which I would not, if possible, infect hers. The difference, for instance, in the way of proboscis, between the eminent nose of an elephant, and the not easily traceable nose of a bird: the humorous, and, it seems to me, even slightly mocking and cruel contrivance of the Forming Spirit, that we shall always, unless we very carefully mind what we are about, think that a bird’s beak is its nose:—the, to me, as an epicure, greatly disturbing, question, how much, when I see that [[63]]a bird likes anything, it likes it at the tip of its bill, or somewhere inside. Then I wonder why elephants don’t build houses with their noses, as birds build nests with their faces;—then, I wonder what elephants’ and mares’ nests are like, when they haven’t got stables, or dens in menageries; finally, I think I had better stop thinking and find out a fact or two, if I can, from any books in my possession, about the working tools of the bee.

And I will look first whether there is any available account of these matters in a book which I once all but knew by heart, ‘Bingley’s Animal Biography,’ which, though it taught me little, made me desire to know more, and neither fatigued my mind nor polluted it, whereas most modern books on natural history only cease to be tiresome by becoming loathsome.

Yes,—I thought I had read it, and known it, once. “They” (the worker bees) “are so eager to afford mutual assistance” (bestial, as distinct from human competition, you observe), “and for this, purpose so many of them crowd together, that their individual operations can scarcely be distinctly observed.” (If I re-write this for Agnes, that last sentence shall stand thus: ‘that it is difficult to see what any one is doing.’) “It has, however, been discovered that their two jaws are the only instruments they employ in modelling and polishing the wax. With a little patience we perceive cells just begun, we likewise remark the quickness with which a bee moves its teeth against a small portion of the cell; this portion [[64]]the animal, by repeated strokes on each side, smooths, renders compact, and reduces to a proper thinness.”

Here I pause again,—ever so many questions occurring to me at once,—and of which, if Agnes is a thoughtful child, and not frightened from asking what she wants to know, by teachers who have been afraid they wouldn’t be able to answer, she may, it is probable, put one or two herself. What are a bee’s teeth like? are they white, or black? do they ever ache? can it bite hard with them? has it got anything to bite? Not only do I find no satisfaction in Mr. Bingley as to these matters, but in a grand, close-printed epitome of entomology[2] lately published simultaneously in London, Paris, and New York, and which has made me sick with disgust by its descriptions, at every other leaf I opened, of all that is horrible in insect life, I find, out of five hundred and seventy-nine figures, not one of a bee’s teeth, the chief architectural instruments of the insect world. And I am the more provoked and plagued by this, because, my brains being, as all the rest of me, desultory and ill under control, I get into another fit of thinking what a bee’s lips can be like, and of wondering why whole meadows-full of flowers are called “cows’ lips” and none called “bees’ lips.” And finding presently, in Cassell, Petter, and Galpin, something really interesting about bees’ tongues, and that they don’t suck, but lick up honey, I go on wondering [[65]]how soon we shall have a scientific Shakespeare printed for the use of schools, with Ariel’s song altered into

‘Where the bee licks, there lurk I,’

and “the singing masons building roofs of gold,” explained to be merely automatic arrangements of lively viscera.

Shaking myself at last together again, I refer to a really valuable book—Dr. Latham Ormerod’s ‘History of Wasps’:—of which, if I could cancel all the parts that interest the Doctor himself, and keep only those which interest Agnes and me, and the pictures of wasps at the end,—I would make it a standard book in St. George’s Library, even placing it in some proper subordinate relation to the Fourth Georgic: but as it is, I open in every other page on something about ‘organs,’ a word with which I do not care for Agnes’s associating any ideas, at present, but those of a Savoyard and his monkey.

However, I find here, indeed, a diagram of a wasp’s mouth; but as it only looks like what remains of a spider after being trodden on, and, as I find that this “mandibulate form of mouth” consists of

• “a, the labium, with the two labial palpi;
• b, the maxilla, whose basilar portions bear at one end the cardo, at the other the hairy galea and the maxillary palpas;
• c, the labrum, and d, the mandible,”

[[66]]

Agnes and I perceive that for the present there is an end of the matter for us; and retreat to our Bingley, there to console ourselves with hearing how Mr. Wildman, whose remarks on the management of bees are well known, possessed a secret by which “he could at any time cause a hive of bees to swarm upon his head, shoulders, or body, in a most surprising manner. He has been seen to drink a glass of wine, having at the same time the bees all over his head and face more than an inch deep: several fell into the glass, but they did not sting him. He could even act the part of a general with them, by marshalling them in battle array upon a large table. There he divided them into regiments, battalions, and companies, according to military discipline, waiting only for his word of command. The moment he uttered the word ‘march!’ they began to march in a regular manner, like soldiers. To these insects he also taught so much politeness, that they never attempted to sting any of the numerous company.”

Agnes, on reading this, is sure to ask me ‘how he taught them?’ Which is just what, as a student of new methods of education, I should like to know myself; and not a word is said on the matter: and we are presently pushed on into the history of the larger animal which I call a humble, but Agnes, a bumble, bee. Not, however, clearly knowing myself either what the ways of this kind are, or why they should be called humble, when I always find them at the top of a thistle rather [[67]]than the bottom, I spend half my morning in hunting through my scientific books for information on this matter, and find whole pages of discussion whether the orange-tailed bee is the same as the white-tailed bee, but nothing about why either should be called humble or bumble:—at last I bethink me of the great despiser of natural history; and find that stout Samuel, with his good editor Mr. Todd, have given me all I want; but there is far more and better authority for ‘bumble’ than I thought. However;—this first guess of Johnson’s own assuredly touches one popular, though it appears mistaken, reason for the Shakespearian form. “The humble bee is known to have no sting. The Scotch call a cow without horns a ‘humble cow.’ ” But truly, I have never myself yet had clear faith enough in that absence of sting to catch a humble bee in my fingers;[3] only I suppose Bottom would have warned Cobweb against that danger, if there had been such, as well as against being overflown with the honey bag.[4] Red-hipped, Bottom calls them; and yet I find nothing about their red hips anywhere in my books. [[68]]

We have not done with the name yet, however. It is from the Teutonic ‘hommolen,’ bombum edere: (in good time, some years hence, Agnes shall know what Teutons are,—what bombs are,—shall read my great passage in ‘Unto this Last’ about bombshells and peaches; and shall know how distinct the Latin root of Edition and Editor is from that of Edification).

Next,—Chaucer, however, uses ‘humbling’ in the sense of humming or muttering: “like to the humblinge after the clap of a thunderinge.” So that one might classically say—a busy bee hums and a lazy bee humbles; only we can’t quite rest even in this; for under Bumble-bee in Johnson, I find a quantity of other quotations and branched words, going off into silk and bombazine;—of which I shall only ask Agnes to remember—

“The Bittern, with his bump,

The crane, with his trump,”

and Chaucer’s single line,

“And as a bytorne bumblith in the mire.”

This, however, she should write out carefully, letter by letter, as soon as she had learned to write; and know at least that the image was used of a wife telling her husband’s faults—and, in good time, the whole story of Midas. Meanwhile, we remain satisfied to teach her to call her large brown friends, humble bees, because Shakespeare does, which is reason enough: and then the next thing I want to know, and tell her, is, why they [[69]]are so fond of thistles. Before she can know this, I must be able to draw a thistle-blossom rightly for her; and as my botany has stood fast for some years at the point where I broke down in trying to draw the separate tubes of thistle-blossom, I can’t say any more on that point to-day: but, going on with my Bingley, I find four more species of bees named, which I should like to tell Agnes all I could about: namely, the Mason Bee; the Wood-piercing Bee; and the one which Bingley calls the Garden Bee; but which, as most bees are to be found in gardens, I shall myself call the Wool-gathering Bee; the Leaf-cutting Bee.

1. The mason bee, it appears, builds her nest of sand, which she chooses carefully grain by grain; then sticks, with bee-glue, as many grains together as she can carry, (like the blocks of brick we see our builders prepare for circular drains)—and builds her nest like a swallow’s, in any angle on the south side of a wall; only with a number of cells inside, like—a monastery, shall we say?—each cell being about the size of a thimble. But these cells are not, like hive bees’, regularly placed, but anyhow—the holes between filled up with solid block building;—and this disorder in the architecture of mason bees seems to be connected with moral disorder in their life; for, instead of being ‘so eager to afford mutual assistance’ that one can’t see what each is doing, these mason bees, if they can, steal each other’s nests, just like human beings, and [[70]]fight, positively, like Christians. “Sometimes the two bees fly with such rapidity and force against each other that both fall to the ground”; and the way their cells are built—back of one to side of the other, and so on, is just like what a friend was telling me only the day before yesterday of the new cottages built by a speculative builder, who failed just afterwards, on some lots of land which a Lord of the Manor, near my friend, had just stolen from the public common and sold.

2. The wood-piercing bee cuts out her nest in decayed wood; the nest being a hollow pipe like a chimney, or a group of such pipes, each divided by regular floors, into cells for the children; one egg is put in each cell, and the cell filled with a paste made of the farina of flowers mixed with honey, for the young bee to eat when it is hatched. Now this carpentering work, I find, is done wholly by the wood-piercing bee’s strong jaws; but here again is no picture of her jaws, or the teeth in them; though the little heaps of sawdust outside where she is working “are of grains nearly as large as those produced by a handsaw”; and she has to make her floors of these grains, by gluing them in successive rings from the outside of her cell to the centre. Yes; that’s all very well; but then I want to know if she cuts the bits of any particular shape, as, suppose, in flattish pieces like tiles, and if then she glues these sideways or edgeways in their successive rings. [[71]]

But here is the prettiest thing of all in her work. It takes, of course, a certain time to collect the farina with which each cell is filled, and to build the floor between it and the nest; so that the baby in the room at the bottom of the pipe will be born a day or two before the baby next above, and be ready to come out first; and if it made its way upwards, would disturb the next baby too soon. So the mother puts them all upside down, with their feet—their tails, I should say—uppermost; and then when she has finished her whole nest, to the last cell at the top, she goes and cuts a way at the bottom of it, for the oldest of the family to make her way out, as she naturally will, head-foremost, and so cause the others no discomfort by right of primogeniture.

3. The wool-gathering bee is described by White of Selborne, as “frequenting the Garden Campion, for the sake of its Tomentum.” I lose half an hour in trying to find out the Garden Campion among the thirty-two volumes of old Sowerby: I find nothing but the sort of white catchfly things that grow out of hollow globes, (which Mary of the Giessbach, by the way, spoken of in a former letter, first taught me to make pops with). I vainly try to find out what “Campion” means. Johnson fails me this time. “Campion, the name of a plant.” I conjecture it must be simple for champion, “keeper of the field,”—and let that pass; but lose myself again presently in the derivation of Tomentum, and its relation [[72]]to Tome, in the sense of a volume. Getting back out of all that, rather tired, I find at last in Bingley that the Garden Campion is Agrostemma Coronaria of Linnæus; and I look in my Linnæus, and find it described as Tomentosum; and then I try my two Sowerbys, ancient and modern, where I find nothing under Agrostemma but the corn-cockle, and so have to give in at last; but I can tell Agnes, at least, that there’s some sort of pink which has a downy stem, and there’s some sort of bee which strips off the down from the stalk of this pink, “running from the top to the bottom of a branch, and shaving it bare with all the dexterity of a hoop-shaver.”

Hoop-shaver? but I never saw so much as a hoop-shaver! Must see one on the first chance, only I suppose they make hoops by steam now.

“When it has got a bundle almost as large as itself it flies away, holding it secure between its chin and forelegs.”

Chin?—what is a bee’s chin like?

Then comes a story about a knight’s finding the key wouldn’t turn in the lock of his garden gate; and there being a wool-gathering bee’s nest inside: and it seems she makes her cells or thimbles of this wool, but does not fill them with honey inside; so that I am in doubt whether the early life of the young bees who live in wood, and have plenty to eat, be not more enviable than the lot of those who live in wool and have no larders. I can’t find any more about [[73]]the wool-gatherer; and the fourth kind of bee, most interesting of all, must wait till next Fors’ time, for there’s a great deal to be learnt about her.

‘And what of the St. George’s Company meanwhile’?

Well, if I cannot show it some better method of teaching natural history than has been fallen upon by our recent Doctors, we need not begin our work at all. We cannot live in the country without hunting animals, or shooting them, unless we learn how to look at them. [[75]]

[[Contents]]

NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE.

“The Parsonage, Werrington, Peterborough, Feb. 12th, 1875.

“My dear Sir,—In your ‘Fors’ published last month you have charged the Pastors, and especially the Chief Pastors of our Church, with ‘preaching a false gospel for hire,’ and thus becoming responsible for the hideous immorality which prevails.

It is very painful to be told this by you, of whom some of us have learned so much.

I have been reading your words to my conscience, but—is it my unconscious hypocrisy, my self-conceit, or my sentiment overpowering intellect which hinders me from hearing the word ‘Guilty’?

The gospel I endeavour with all my might to preach and embody is this—Believe on, be persuaded by, the Lord Jesus Christ; let His life rule your lives, and you shall be ‘safe and sound’ now and everlastingly.

Is this ‘a false gospel preached for hire’? If not, what other gospel do you refer to?

“I am very faithfully yours,
“John Ruskin, Esq. Edward Z. Lyttel.”

The gospel which my correspondent preaches (or, at the least, desires to preach)—namely, “Let His life rule your lives,” is eternally true and salutary. The “other gospel which I [[76]]refer to” is the far more widely preached one, “Let His life be in the stead of your lives,” which is eternally false and damnatory.

The rest of my correspondent’s letter needs, I think, no other reply than the expression of my regret that a man of his amiable character should be entangled in a profession, respecting which the subtle questions of conscience which he proposes can be answered by none but himself; nor by himself with security.

I do not know if, in modern schools of literature, the name of Henry Fielding is ever mentioned; but it was of repute in my early days, and I think it right, during the discussion of the subjects to which Fors is now approaching, to refer my readers to a work of his which gives one of the most beautiful types I know of the character of English clergymen, (the ‘Vicar of Wakefield’ not excepted). His hero is thus introduced: “He was a perfect master of the Greek and Latin languages, to which he added a great share of knowledge in the Oriental tongues, and could read and translate French, Italian, and Spanish. He had applied many years to the most severe study, and had treasured up a fund of learning rarely to be met with in a university.[5] He was besides a man of good sense, good parts, and good-nature;—his virtue, and his other qualifications, as they rendered him equal to his office, so they made him an agreeable and valuable companion, and had so much endeared and well recommended him to a Bishop, that, at the age of fifty, he was provided with a handsome income of twenty-three pounds a year, which, however, he could not make any great figure with; because he lived in a dear country, and was a little encumbered with a wife and six children.” [[77]]

Of course, in our present estimate of the good Bishop’s benevolence, we must allow for the greater value of money in those times:—nevertheless, it was even then to be obtained in considerable sums, as it is now, by persons who knew the right channels and proper methods of its accumulation, as our author immediately afterwards shows us by the following account of part of the economy of an English gentleman’s estate:—

“Joseph had not quite finished his letter when he was summoned downstairs by Mr. Peter Pounce to receive his wages; for, besides that out of eight pounds a year, he allowed his father and mother four, he had been obliged, in order to furnish himself with musical instruments,” (Mr. Fielding countenances my own romantic views respecting the propriety of the study of music even by the lower classes, and entirely approves of these apparently extravagant purchases,) “to apply to the generosity of the aforesaid Peter, who on urgent occasions used to advance the servants their wages, not before they were due, but before they were payable,—that is, perhaps half a year after they were due; and this at the moderate premium of fifty per cent., or a little more; by which charitable methods, together with lending money to other people, and even to his own master and mistress, the honest man had, from nothing, in a few years amassed a small sum of twenty thousand pounds or thereabouts.”

Of the character of the modern English country clergyman, from my own personal knowledge, I could give some examples quite deserving place with the Fielding and Goldsmith type;—but these have influence only in their own villages, and are daily diminishing in number; while another type, entirely modern, is taking their place, of which some curious illustration has been furnished me by the third Fors as I was looking over the Christmas books of last year to see if I could find a prize or two for Agnes and some other of my younger cottage friends. Among them, I get two books on natural history, by a country [[78]]clergyman, who takes his children out on beach and moorland expeditions, and puts a charming portrait of himself, in his best coat, and most elegant attitude of instruction, for the frontispiece. His little daughter has been taught to express herself in such terms as the following:—

(Of a jelly-fish.) “Let me look. If you hold it up to the light, you see it is nearly transparent, and the surface is marked with numerous angular spaces.”

(Of a sand-worm.) “Oh—in this respect the little Pectinaria resembles the fresh-water Melicerta we find abundantly on the weeds in the canal at home.”

(Of a sea-mouse.) “Oh, papa, I do think here is a sea-mouse lying on the shore. Bah! I don’t much like to touch it.”

The childish simplicity and ladylike grace of these expressions need no comment; but the clergyman’s education of his children in gentleness is the point peculiarly striking to me in the books, collated with my own experience in the case of the boy and the squirrel. The following two extracts are sufficiently illustrative:—

“ ‘Well, papa,’ said Jack, ‘I am tired of sitting here; let us now go and hunt for peewits’ eggs.’ ‘All right, Jack, and if you find any you shall each have one for your breakfast in the morning. When hard-boiled and cold, a peewit’s egg is a very delicious thing, though I think the peewits are such valuable birds, and do so much good, that I should not like to take many of their eggs. We had better separate from each other, so as to have a better chance of finding a nest.’ Soon we hear a shout from Willy, whose sharp eyes had discovered a nest with four eggs in it; so off we all scamper to him. See how the old bird screams and flaps, and how near she comes to us; she knows we have found her eggs, and wishes to lure us away from the spot; so she pretends she has been wounded, and tries to make us follow after her. ‘Now, Jack, run and catch her. Hah! hah! [[79]]There they go. I will back the peewit against the boy. So you have given up the chase, have you? Well, rest again, and take breath.’ ”

“ ‘Well, Mr. Parry Evans, how many salmon have you counted in the pool?’ ‘There are seven or eight good fish in, sir, this time; and one or two will be ten or eleven pounds each.’ Look at the dog ‘Jack’; he is evidently getting a little impatient, as he sees in the retiring water of the pool every now and then a salmon darting along. And now Mr. Evans takes the silver collar off, and sets ‘Jack’ free; and in a second he is in the middle of the pool. Now for the fun! Willy and Jack[6] tuck up their trousers, take off their shoes and stockings, and with nets in their hands enter the water. Bah! it is rather cold at first, but the excitement soon warms them. There goes a salmon, full tilt, and ‘Jack’ after him. What a splashing in the water, to be sure! There is another dog learning the trade, and ‘Jack’ is his tutor in the art; he is a brown retriever, and dashes about the water after the salmon as if he enjoyed the fun immensely, but he has not yet learned how to catch a slippery fish. There! there! see! see! good dog; now you have him! No! off again; well done, salmon! Now dog! have at him!

“How immensely rapid is the motion of a frightened salmon ‘Quick as an arrow’ is hardly a figure of speech. Bravo, ‘Jack,’ bravo! Do you see? He has caught the salmon firmly by the head. Good dog! Mr. Parry Evans is immediately on the spot, and takes the fish from old ‘Jack,’ whom he kindly pats on the back, holds the salmon aloft for us all to see, and, consigns him to the basket which his man is guarding on the shore. See, see, again! off they go, dogs and men, and soon another salmon is captured; and there is lots of fun, meanwhile, in catching the mackerel and garfish. Well, the sport of catching [[80]]the various fish in the pool—there were nine salmon, averaging about five pounds each—lasted about half an hour. ‘Jack’ behaved admirably; it was wonderful to see his skill in the pursuit; he generally caught hold of the salmon by the head, on which he gave one strong bite, and the fish was rendered helpless almost instantaneously. Sometimes he would catch hold of the back fin. When the sport was finished, we went to survey the spoils; and a nice ‘kettle of fish’ there was. I bought one salmon and the gurnard; the rest were soon disposed of by Mr. Evans to his numerous visitors, all of whom were much pleased with the sport. But wait a little; some of the fish lie on the sand. I will look for parasites. Here, on this salmon, is a curious parasite, with a body an inch long, and with two long tail-like projections three times the length of the creature itself. It is a crustacean, and related to the Argulus foliaceus.”

The reverend and learned author will perhaps be surprised to hear that the principal effect of these lively passages on me has been slightly to diminish my appetite for salmon, no less than for sea-side recreations. I think I would rather attend my pious instructor, in discourse on the natural history of the Land. I get his ‘Country Walks of a Naturalist,’ therefore, in which I find a graceful preface, thanking Mr. Gould for permission to copy his Birds of England; and two very gummy and shiny copies (so-called) adorning the volume.

Now there was boundless choice for the pleasing of children in Gould’s marvellous plates. To begin with, the common sparrow’s nest, in the ivy, with the hen sitting:

The sparrow’s dwelling, which, hard by,

My sister Emmeline and I

Together visited.

She looked at it as if she feared it,—

Still wishing, dreading to be near it,

Such heart was in her.

But the reverend naturalist will none of this. Sparrows indeed! [[81]]are not five sold for two farthings? Shall any note be taken of them in our modern enlightened science? No; nor yet of the dainty little Bramble Finch, couched in her knotty hollow of birch trunk; though England, and mainland Europe, and Asia Minor, Persia, China, and Japan, all know the little Brambling;—and though in the desolate region of the Dovrefeldt,[7] too high for the Chaffinch, she decorates the outer walls of her nest with flat pieces of lichen and other materials,—though she is attractive in her winter dress; and in her summer costume, “no pencil can do her justice,” clerical taste and propriety will none of her;—no, nor even of the dear little fellow who looks so much like the properest of clergymen himself, in the sprucest of white ties—the Stone-Chat,—preaching, or chattering, or chatting, from the highest twig of his furze-bush;—no, nor of the Fire-crested Wren, poised on long spray of larch with purple buds; nor even, though she, at least might, one would have thought, have provided some ‘fun’ for the ecclesiastical family, the long-tailed Tit, or Bottle-tit, with her own impatient family of six Bottle tits, every one with a black eye, as if to illustrate the sympathy of their nature with bottle-tits of the human species, and every one with its mouth open; and the nest, of their mother’s exquisite building, with the pale sides of the lichens always turned to the light, and 2,000 feathers used in its lining, and these, nothing to the amount of “invisible cobwebs” taken to attach the decorative pieces of lichen to the outside. All this is contemptible to my religious author; but he hunts Mr. Gould’s whole book through, to find the horriblest creature in it—the Butcher-bird! transfixing mice on the spines of the blackthorn, and tearing their flesh from them as they hang, ‘invariably breaking the skull,’ with farther parental direction of the youthful mind. “Do you see that great [[82]]tit on a branch of this poplar? He is actually at work doing a bit of butchering on a small warbler. See how he is beating the poor little fellow about the head; he wants to get at his brains.” This—for one of his two plates, besides the frontispiece, of the back of his own head and its hat; with his two children ‘wanting to get at’—something in his hand—and his only remaining plate is of the heron, merely because it is big; for his miserable copyist has taken care to change every curve of the bird’s neck and body, so as to destroy every gracious character it has in Mr. Gould’s plate, to an extent so wonderful that I mean to impale the two together—on the stem of a blackthorn—in my Oxford schools.

I have much to say, eventually, about this extraordinary instinct for the horrible, developing itself at present in the English mind. The deep root of it is cruelty, indulged habitually by the upper classes in their sports, till it has got into the blood of the whole nation; then, the destruction of beautiful things, taking place ever since the sixteenth century, and of late ending in utter blackness of catastrophe, and ruin of all grace and glory in the land; so that sensation must be got out of death, or darkness, or frightfulness; else it cannot be had at all—while it is daily more and more demanded by the impatient cretinism of national dotage.

And the culmination of the black business is, that the visible misery drags and beguiles, to its help, all the enthusiastic simplicity of the religious young, and the honest strength of the really noble type of English clergymen; and swallows them as Charybdis would lifeboats. Courageous and impulsive men, with just sense enough to make them soundly practical, and therefore complacent in immediate business; but not enough to enable them to see what the whole business comes to, when done, are sure to throw themselves desperately into the dirty work, and die like lively moths in candle-grease. Here is one of them at [[83]]this instant—“dangerously ill of scarlet fever,”—alas! his whole generous life having been but one fit of scarlet fever;—and all aglow in vain.

The London correspondent of the Brighton Daily News writes:—“On Sunday morning Mr. Moncure Conway, preaching his usual sermon in his chapel in Finsbury, made a strong attack upon the National Church, but subsequently modified it so far as to admit that it was possible for some clergymen of the Church to be of use in their day and generation; and he referred especially to the rector of a neighbouring parish, whom he did not name, but who was evidently Mr. Septimus Hansard, rector of Bethnal-green, who is now lying dangerously ill of scarlet fever. This is the third perilous illness he has had since he has been in this parish; each time it was caught while visiting the sick poor. On one occasion he fell down suddenly ill in his pulpit. It was found that he was suffering from smallpox, and he at once said that he would go to an hospital. A cab was brought to take him there, but he refused to enter it, lest he should be the means of infecting other persons; and, a hearse happening to pass, he declared that he would go in that, and in it he went to the hospital—a rare instance this of pluck and self-devotion. His next illness was typhus fever; and now, as I have said, he is suffering from a disease more terrible still. Five hundred a year (and two curates to pay out of it) is scarcely excessive payment for such a life as that.”

For such a life—perhaps not. But such a death, or even perpetual risk of it, it appears to me, is dear at the money.

“But have I counted the value of the poor souls he has saved in Bethnal?”

No—but I am very sure that while he was saving one poor soul in Bethnal, he was leaving ten rich souls to be damned, at Tyburn,—each of which would damn a thousand or two more by their example—or neglect. [[84]]

The above paragraph was sent me by a friend, of whose accompanying letter I venture to print a part together with it.

“I send you a cutting from a recent Times, to show you there are some faithful men left. I have heard of this Mr. Hansard before, and how well he works. I want to tell you, too, that I am afraid the coarseness and shamelessness you write about, in Fors, is not wholly caused by the neighbourhood of large manufacturing towns, for in the lonely villages I used to know long ago, it was exactly the same. I don’t mean that brutal crimes, such as you speak of, were heard of or even possible; but the conversation of men and women, working in the fields together, was frequently such that no young girl working with them could keep modesty. Nor if a girl had what they termed a “misfortune,” was she one bit worse off for it. She was just as certain to be married as before. Reform in all these things—i.e., immodest conversation—ought to begin with women. If women in cottages, and indeed elsewhere, were what they ought to be, and kept up a high tone in their households, their sons would not dare to speak in their presence as I know they often do, and their daughters would feel they fell away from much more than they do now, when they go wrong. Men are, I fancy, very much what women make them, and seem to like them to be; and if women withdrew from those who hurt their sense of what is right, I do believe they would try to be different; but it seems very difficult to preserve a high tone of maidenly dignity in poor girls, who, from youth up, hear every possible thing usually left unspoken of freely discussed by fathers and mothers and brothers, and sometimes very evil deeds treated as jests. This is the case painfully often.”

Though my notes, for this month, far exceed their usual limits, I cannot close them without asking my readers to look back, for some relief of heart, to happier times. The following [[85]]piece of biography, printed only for private circulation, is so instructive that I trust the friend who sent it me will forgive my placing it in broader view; and the more because in the last section of the ‘Queen of the Air,’ my readers will find notice of this neglected power of the tide. I had imagined this an idea of my own, and did not press it,—being content to press what is already known and practically proved to be useful; but the following portion of a very interesting letter, and the piece of biography it introduces, show the tide-mill to be in this category:

“My father, who began life humbly, dates the prosperity of his family to the time when—being the tenant of a small tide-mill—he laboured with spade and barrow (by consent of the Earl of Sheffield) to enclose an increased area—overflowed by the tide—in order to lay under contribution as motive power this wasted energy of rising and falling waters. He thereby nearly quadrupled the power of the mill, and finally became its possessor.”

“William Catt was the son of Mr. John Catt, a Sussex farmer, who married the daughter of a yeoman named Willett, living on a small estate at Buxted. He was born in the year 1780, and soon after that date his parents removed to the Abbey Farm at Robertsbridge. There he passed his early years, and there obtained such education as a dame’s school could afford. This of course was limited to very rudimentary English. He was not a particularly apt scholar: he hated his books—but liked cricket.

“When little more than nineteen, he married a daughter of Mr. Dawes, of Ewhurst. Farming in the Weald of Sussex was then, as now, a laborious and unremunerative occupation; and as an interesting record of the habits of his class at that period, it may be stated, that[8] on the morning of his wedding-day he went [[86]]into a wood with his father’s team for a load of hop-poles, was afterwards married in a white ‘round-frock,’ and returned to his usual work the next morning. He commenced business at Stonehouse, in Buxted, a farm of between 100 and 200 acres. Banking was in those days in its infancy, and travelling notoriously unsafe;[9] so his good and prudent mother sewed up beneath the lining of his waistcoat the one-pound notes which he carried from Robertsbridge to Buxted to meet the valuation of his farm. When settled in his little homestead, his household arrangements were of the simplest kind. One boy, one girl, and one horse, formed his staff; yet he throve and prospered. And no wonder: for both himself and his young wife often rose at three in the morning; he to thrash by candlelight in his barn, she to feed or prepare her poultry for the market. His principle was—‘earn a shilling, and spend elevenpence;’ and hence, no doubt, his subsequent success.

“After two years’ farming he took a small mill at Lamberhurst, where a journeyman miller, Saunders Ditton, gave him all the instruction that he ever received in the manufacture and business in which he was afterwards so extensively engaged. Hard work was still a necessity; the mill by night, the market and his customers by day, demanded all his time; and on one occasion, overcome by cold and fatigue, he crept for warmth into his meal-bin, where he fell asleep, and would certainly have been suffocated but for the timely arrival of Ditton. This worthy man afterwards followed his master to Bishopston, and survived him—a pensioner in his old age.

“At this time the Bishopston Tide-mills were in the occupation of Messrs. Barton and Catt. The former exchanged with Mr. Catt, of Lamberhurst, who went into partnership with his cousin Edmund. The power of the mill was then only five pair of [[87]]stones, though he ultimately increased it to sixteen.[10] In this much more important sphere the same habits of industry still marked his character, amidst all disadvantages. It was war-time; corn was of inferior quality and high price; and privateering prevented trading by water. His cousin and he were not suited to each other, and dissolved partnership; but, by the aid of a loan from his worthy friends and neighbours, Mr. Cooper, of Norton, and Mr. Farncombe, of Bishopston, he was enabled to secure the whole of the business to himself. Subsequently Mr. Edmund Cooper, the son of his friend, became his partner in the mills, and the business was for many years carried on under the title of Catt and Cooper.

“During this partnership a lease was obtained, from the Earl of Sheffield, of the waste lands between the Mills and Newhaven harbour. This was embanked and reclaimed as arable land at first, and subsequently partly used as a reservoir of additional water power. Mr. Catt took great interest in the work; laboured at it himself with spade and barrow; and to it he always referred as the main cause of his success in life. In the third year a crop of oats was grown on the arable portion, which repaid the expenses of reclamation and induced him to increase the power of the mill as mentioned above. Mr. Cooper retired from the concern by agreement, and afterwards, under the firm of William Catt and Sons, in conjunction with his children, Mr. Catt completed fifty years of business at Bishopston. During a considerable portion of those years he had also a large stake with other sons in West Street Brewery, Brighton.

“His faithful wife died in 1823, leaving him the responsible legacy of eleven children—the youngest being not an hour old. [[88]]This bereavement seemed to stimulate him to renewed exertion and to extraordinary regard for little savings. He would always stop to pick up a nail or any scrap of old iron that lay in the road, and in the repeated enlargements and construction of his mills he was his own architect and surveyor; he was always pleased with the acquisition of a bit of wreck timber, any old materials from Blatchington barracks, or from the dismantled mansion of Bishopston Place, formerly the seat of the Duke of Newcastle. Yet he was ever bountiful as a host, liberal to his neighbours, and charitable to his dependants and the deserving poor.

“To a man of Mr. Catt’s experience in life, ordinary amusements would have few charms. His business was his pleasure, yet he delighted in his garden, and the culture of pears afforded him much recreation. A more bleak and unpromising place for horticulture than the Bishopston Mills could hardly exist; but by the aid of good walls, and the observation of wind effects, he was eminently successful, and no garden in Sussex produced a greater variety, or finer specimens, of that pleasant fruit. His maxim on this subject was, ‘Aim to get a good pear all the year round.’

“In the latter years of his life, Mr. Catt retired from active business and resided at Newhaven, where he died in 1853, in the seventy-third year of his age, leaving behind him not only the good name which an honourable life deserves, but a substantial fortune for his somewhat numerous descendants.” [[89]]

[1] I am not sure, after all, that I should like her to know even so much as this. For on inquiring, myself, into the matter, I find (Ormerod, quoting Dr. H. Landois) that a humble bee has a drum in its stomach, and that one half of this drum can be loosened and then drawn tight again, and that the bee breathes through the slit between the loose half and tight half; [[62]]and that in this slit there is a little comb, and on this comb the humble bee plays while it breathes, as on a Jew’s harp, and can’t help it. But a honey bee hums with its “thoracic spiracles,” not with its stomach. On the whole—I don’t think I shall tell Agnes anything about all this. She may get through her own life, perhaps, just as well without ever knowing that there’s any such thing as a thorax, or a spiracle. [↑]

[2] “The Insect World.” Cassell, Petter, and Galpin. [↑]

[3] Alas, that incredulity, the least amiable of the virtues, should often be the most serviceable! Here is a pleasant little passage to fall in with, after Dr. Johnson’s “it is well known”! I find it in Ormerod, discussing the relative tenability of insects between the fingers for the study of their voices. “Wasps are obviously ill fitted for this purpose, and humble bees are no better; they are so strong and so slippery that they need all our attention to prevent their putting their long stings through our gloves while we are examining them.” [↑]

[4] Foolish of me; a cobweb may be overthrown, but cannot be stung. [↑]

[5] His debate with Barnabas, on the occasion of the latter’s visit to the wounded Joseph, throws some clear light on the questions opened in Mr. Lyttel’s letter. [↑]

[6] Some ambiguity is caused in this passage by the chance of both dog and boy having the same name, as well as the same instincts. [↑]

[7] I don’t put inverted commas to all Mr. Gould’s words, having necessarily to mix up mine with them in a patchwork manner; but I don’t know anything worth telling, whatever, about—so much as a sparrow,—but what he tells me. [↑]

[8] Italics mine throughout. [↑]

[9] Nowadays the travelling is of course ‘notoriously safe’! but what shall we say of the banking? [↑]

[10] The oldest windmill on record in this country (I speak under correction) stood in this parish, and was given by Bishop Seffrid to the see of Chichester about the year 1199. The largest watermill ever constructed in Sussex was that of Mr. Catt. [↑]

[[Contents]]

FORS CLAVIGERA.

LETTER LII.

I must steadily do a little bit more autobiography in every Fors, now, or I shall never bring myself to be of age before I die—or have to stop writing,—for which last turn of temper, or fortune, my friends, without exception, (and I hope—one or two of my enemies,) are, I find, praying with what devotion is in them.

My mother had, as she afterwards told me, solemnly devoted me to God before I was born; in imitation of Hannah.

Very good women are remarkably apt to make away with their children prematurely, in this manner: the real meaning of the pious act being, that, as the sons of Zebedee are not, (or at least they hope not,) to sit on the right and left of Christ, in His kingdom, their own sons may perhaps, they think, in time be advanced to that respectable position in eternal life; especially if they ask Christ very humbly for it every day;—and they always forget in the most naïve way that the position is not His to give! [[90]]

‘Devoting me to God’ meant, as far as my mother knew herself what she meant, that she would try to send me to college, and make a clergyman of me: and I was accordingly bred for ‘the Church.’ My father, who—rest be to his soul—had the exceedingly bad habit of yielding to my mother in large things and taking his own way in little ones, allowed me, without saying a word, to be thus withdrawn from the sherry trade as an unclean thing; not without some pardonable participation in my mother’s ultimate views for me. For, many and many a year afterwards, I remember while he was speaking to one of our artist friends, who admired Raphael, and greatly regretted my endeavours to interfere with that popular taste,—while my father and he were condoling with each other on my having been impudent enough to think I could tell the public about Turner and Raphael,—instead of contenting myself, as I ought, with explaining the way of their souls’ salvation to them—and what an amiable clergyman was lost in me,—“Yes,” said my father, with tears in his eyes—(true and tender tears—as ever father shed,) “he would have been a Bishop.”

Luckily for me, my mother, under these distinct impressions of her own duty, and with such latent hopes of my future eminence, took me very early to church;—where, in spite of my quiet habits, and my mother’s golden vinaigrette, always indulged to me there, and there only, with its lid unclasped that I [[91]]might see the wreathed open pattern above the sponge, I found the bottom of the pew so extremely dull a place to keep quiet in, (my best story-books being also taken away from me in the morning,) that—as I have somewhere said before—the horror of Sunday used even to cast its prescient gloom as far back in the week as Friday—and all the glory of Monday, with church seven days removed again, was no equivalent for it.

Notwithstanding, I arrived at some abstract in my own mind of the Rev. Mr. Howell’s sermons; and occasionally—in imitation of him—preached a sermon at home over the red sofa cushions;—this performance being always called for by my mother’s dearest friends, as the great accomplishment of my childhood. The sermon was—I believe—some eleven words long;—very exemplary, it seems to me, in that respect—and I still think must have been the purest gospel, for I know it began with ‘People, be good.’

We seldom had company, even on week days; and I was never allowed to come down to dessert, until much later in life—when I was able to crack nuts neatly. I was then permitted to come down to crack other people’s nuts for them; (I hope they liked the ministration)—but never to have any myself; nor anything else of dainty kind, either then or at other times. Once, at Hunter Street, I recollect my mother’s giving me three raisins, in the forenoon—out of the store cabinet; and I remember perfectly [[92]]the first time I tasted custard, in our lodgings in Norfolk Street—where we had gone while the house was being painted, or cleaned, or something. My father was dining in the front room, and did not finish his custard; and my mother brought me the bottom of it into the back room.

I’ve no more space for garrulity in this letter, having several past bits of note to bring together.

Bolton Bridge, 24th January, 1875.

I have been driving by the old road[1] from Coniston here, through Kirby Lonsdale, and have seen more ghastly signs of modern temper than I yet had believed possible.

The valley of the Lune at Kirby is one of the loveliest scenes in England—therefore, in the world. Whatever moorland hill, and sweet river, and English forest foliage can be at their best, is gathered there; and chiefly seen from the steep bank which falls to the stream side from the upper part of the town itself. There, a path leads from the churchyard, out of which [[93]]Turner made his drawing of the valley, along the brow of the wooded bank, to open downs beyond; a little bye footpath on the right descending steeply through the woods to a spring among the rocks of the shore. I do not know in all my own country, still less in France or Italy, a place more naturally divine, or a more priceless possession of true “Holy Land.”

Well, the population of Kirby cannot, it appears, in consequence of their recent civilization, any more walk, in summer afternoons, along the brow of this bank, without a fence. I at first fancied this was because they were usually unable to take care of themselves at that period of the day: but saw presently I must be mistaken in that conjecture, because the fence they have put up requires far more sober minds for safe dealing with it than ever the bank did; being of thin, strong, and finely sharpened skewers, on which if a drunken man rolled heavily, he would assuredly be impaled at the armpit. They have carried this lovely decoration down on both sides of the wood-path to the spring, with warning notice on ticket,—“This path leads only to the Ladies’[2] well—all trespassers will be prosecuted”—and the iron rails leave so narrow footing that I myself scarcely ventured to go down,—the morning being frosty, and the path slippery,—lest I should fall on the spikes. The well at the bottom was choked up and defaced, though ironed all [[94]]round, so as to look like the ‘pound’ of old days for strayed cattle: they had been felling the trees too; and the old wood had protested against the fence in its own way, with its last root and branch,—for the falling trunks had crashed through the iron grating in all directions, and left it in already rusty and unseemly rags, like the last refuse of a railroad accident, beaten down among the dead leaves.

Just at the dividing of the two paths, the improving mob[3] of Kirby had got two seats put for themselves—to admire the prospect from, forsooth. And these seats were to be artistic, if Minerva were propitious,—in the style of Kensington. So they are supported on iron legs, representing each, as far as any rational conjecture can extend—the Devil’s tail pulled off, with a goose’s head stuck on the wrong end of it. Thus: and what is more—two of the geese-heads are without eyes (I stooped down under the seat and rubbed the frost off them to make sure,) and the whole symbol is perfect, therefore,—as typical of our English populace, fashionable and other, [[95]]which seats itself to admire prospects, in the present day.

Now, not a hundred paces from these seats there is a fine old church, with Norman door, and lancet east windows, and so on; and this, of course, has been duly patched, botched, plastered, and primmed up; and is kept as tidy as a new pin. For your English clergyman keeps his own stage properties, nowadays, as carefully as a poor actress her silk stockings. Well, all that, of course, is very fine; but, actually, the people go through the churchyard to the path on the hill-brow, making the new iron railing an excuse to pitch their dust-heaps, and whatever of worse they have to get rid of, crockery and the rest,—down over the fence among the primroses and violets to the river,—and the whole blessed shore underneath, rough sandstone rock throwing the deep water off into eddies among shingle, is one waste of filth, town-drainage, broken saucepans, tannin, and mill-refuse.

The same morning I had to water my horses at the little village of Clapham, between Kirby and Settle. There is another exquisite rocky brook there; and an old bridge over it. I went down to the brook-side to see the bridge; and found myself instantly, of course, stopped by a dunghill,—and that of the vilest human sort; while, just on the other side of the road,—not twenty yards off,—were the new schools, with their orthodox Gothic belfry—all spick and span—and the [[96]]children playing fashionably at hoop, round them, in a narrow paved yard—like debtor children in the Fleet, in imitation of the manners and customs of the West End. High over all, the Squire’s house, resplendent on the hillside, within sound alike of belfry, and brook.

I got on here, to Bolton Bridge, the same day; and walked down to the Abbey in the evening, to look again at Turner’s subject of the Wharfe shore. If there is one spot in England, where human creatures pass or live, which one would expect to find, in spite of their foul existence, still clean—it is Bolton Park. But to my final and utter amazement, I had not taken two steps by the waterside at the loveliest bend of the river below the stepping-stones, before I found myself again among broken crockery, cinders, cockle-shells, and tinkers’ refuse;—a large old gridiron forming the principal point of effect and interest among the pebbles. The filth must be regularly carried past the Abbey, and across the Park, to the place.

But doubtless, in Bolton Priory, amiable school teachers tell their little Agneses the story of the white doe;—and duly make them sing, in psalm tune, “As the hart panteth after the waterbrooks.”

Very certainly, nevertheless, the young ladies of Luneside and Wharfedale don’t pant in the least after their waterbrooks; and this is the saddest part of the business to me. Pollution of rivers!—yes, that is to be considered also;—but pollution of young ladies’ minds [[97]]to the point of never caring to scramble by a riverside, so long as they can have their church-curate and his altar-cloths to their fancy—this is the horrible thing, in my own wild way of thinking. That shingle of the Lune, under Kirby, reminded me, as if it had been yesterday, of a summer evening by a sweeter shore still: the edge of the North Inch of Perth, where the Tay is wide, just below Scone; and the snowy quartz pebbles decline in long banks under the ripples of the dark clear stream.

My Scotch cousin Jessie, eight years old, and I, ten years old, and my Croydon cousin, Bridget, a slim girl of fourteen, were all wading together, here and there; and of course getting into deep water as far as we could,—my father and mother and aunt watching us,—till at last, Bridget, having the longest legs, and, taking after her mother, the shortest conscience,—got in so far, and with her petticoats so high, that the old people were obliged to call to her, though hardly able to call, for laughing; and I recollect staring at them, and wondering what they were laughing at. But alas, by Lune shore, now, there are no pretty girls to be seen holding their petticoats up. Nothing but old saucepans and tannin—or worse—as signs of modern civilization.

‘But how fine it is to have iron skewers for our fences; and no trespassing, (except by lords of the manor on poor men’s ground,) and pretty legs exhibited where they can be so without impropriety, [[98]]and with due advertisement to the public beforehand; and iron legs to our chairs, also, in the style of Kensington!’ Doubtless; but considering that Kensington is a school of natural Science as well as Art, it seems to me that these Kirby representations of the Ophidia are slightly vague. Perhaps, however, in conveying that tenderly sagacious expression into his serpent’s head, and burnishing so acutely the brandished sting in his tail, the Kirby artist has been under the theological instructions of the careful Minister who has had his church restored so prettily;—only then the Minister himself must have been, without knowing it, under the directions of another person, who had an intimate interest in the matter. For there is more than failure of natural history in this clumsy hardware. It is indeed a matter of course that it should be clumsy, for the English have always been a dull nation in decorative art: and I find, on looking at things here afresh after long work in Italy, that our most elaborate English sepulchral work, as the Cockayne tombs at Ashbourne and the Dudley tombs at Warwick, (not to speak of Queen Elizabeth’s in Westminster!) are yet, compared to Italian sculpture of the same date, no less barbarous than these goose heads of Kirby would appear beside an asp head of Milan. But the tombs of Ashbourne or Warwick are honest, though blundering, efforts to imitate what was really felt to be beautiful; whereas the serpents of Kirby are ordered and shaped by the [[99]]“least erected spirit that fell,” in the very likeness of himself!