FORS CLAVIGERA.

[Contents]FORS CLAVIGERA.LETTER LIII.Brantwood,Good Friday, 1875.I am ashamed to go on with my own history to-day; for though, as already seen, I was not wholly unacquainted with the practice of fasting, at times of the year when it was not customary with Papists, our Lent became to us a kind of moonlight Christmas, and season of reflected and soft festivity. For our strictly Protestant habits of mind rendering us independent of absolution, on Shrove Tuesday we were chiefly occupied in the preparation of pancakes,—my nurse being dominant on that day over the cook in all things, her especially nutritive art of browning, and fine legerdemain in turning, pancakes, being recognised as inimitable. The interest of Ash-Wednesday was mainly—whether the bits of egg should be large or small in the egg-sauce;—nor do I recollect having any ideas connected with the day’s name, until I was puzzled by the French of it when I fell in love with a Roman Catholic French girl, as hereafter to be related:—only, by the way, let me note, as I chance now to remember, two others of my[118]main occupations of an exciting character in Hunter Street: watching, namely, the dustmen clear out the ash-hole, and the coalmen fill the coal-cellar through the hole in the pavement, which soon became to me, when surrounded by its cone of débris, a sublime representation of the crater of a volcanic mountain. Of these imaginative delights I have no room to speak in this Fors; nor of the debates which used to be held for the two or three days preceding Good Friday, whether the hot-cross-buns should be plain, or have carraway seeds in them. For, my nurse not being here to provide any such dainties for me, and the black-plague wind which has now darkened the spring for five years,1veiling all the hills with sullen cloud, I am neither in a cheerful nor a religious state of mind; and am too much in the temper of the disciples who forsook Him, and fled, to be able to do justice to the childish innocence of belief, which, in my mother, was too constant to need resuscitation, or take new colour, from fast or festival.Yet it is only by her help, to-day, that I am able to do a piece of work required of me by the letter printed in the second article of this month’s correspondence. It is from a man of great worth, conscientiousness, and kindliness; but is yet so perfectly expressive of the irreverence, and incapacity of admiration, which[119]maintain and, in great part, constitute, the modern liberal temper, that it makes me feel, more than anything I ever yet met with in human words, how much I owe to my mother for having so exercised me in the Scriptures as to make me grasp them in what my correspondent would call their ‘concrete whole’; and above all, taught me to reverence them, as transcending all thought, and ordaining all conduct.This she effected, not by her own sayings or personal authority; but simply by compelling me to read the book thoroughly, for myself. As soon as I was able to read with fluency, she began a course of Bible work with me, which never ceased till I went to Oxford. She read alternate verses with me, watching, at first, every intonation of my voice, and correcting the false ones, till she made me understand the verse, if within my reach, rightly, and energetically. It might be beyond me altogether;thatshe did not care about; but she made sure that as soon as I got hold of it at all, I should get hold of it by the right end.In this way she began with the first verse of Genesis and went straight through to the last verse of the Apocalypse; hard names, numbers, Levitical law, and all; and began again at Genesis the next day; if a name was hard, the better the exercise in pronunciation,—if a chapter was tiresome, the better lesson in patience,—if loathsome, the better lesson in faith that there was some use in its being so outspoken. After[120]our chapters, (from two to three a day, according to their length, the first thing after breakfast, and no interruption from servants allowed,—none from visitors, who either joined in the reading or had to stay upstairs,—and none from any visitings or excursions, except real travelling,) I had to learn a few verses by heart, or repeat, to make sure I had not lost, something of what was already known; and, with the chapters above enumerated, (Letter XLII.2), I had to learn the whole body of the fine old Scottish paraphrases, which are good, melodious, and forceful verse; and to which, together with the Bible itself, I owe the first cultivation of my ear in sound.It is strange that of all the pieces of the Bible which my mother thus taught me, that which cost me most to learn, and which was, to my child’s mind, chiefly repulsive—the 119th Psalm—has now become of all the most precious to me, in its overflowing and glorious passion of love for the Law of God: “Oh, how love I Thy law! it is my meditation all the day; I have refrained my feet from every evil way, that I might keep Thy word”;—as opposed to the ever-echoing words of the modern money-loving fool: “Oh, how hate I thy law! it is my abomination all the day; my feet are swift in running to mischief, and I have done all the[121]things I ought not to have done, and left undone all I ought to have done; have mercy upon me, miserable sinner,—and grant that I, worthily lamenting my sins and acknowledging my wretchedness, may obtain of Thee, the God of all mercy, perfect remission and forgiveness,—and give me my long purse here and my eternal Paradise there, all together, for Christ’s sake, to whom, with Thee and the Holy Ghost, be all honour and glory,” etc. And the letter of my liberal correspondent, pointing out, in the defence of usury (of which he imagines himself acquainted with the history!) how the Son of David hit his father in the exactly weak place, puts it in my mind at once to state some principles respecting the use of the Bible as a code of law, which are vital to the action of the St. George’s Company in obedience to it.All the teaching of God, and of the nature He formed round Man, is not only mysterious, but, if received with any warp of mind, deceptive, and intentionally deceptive. The distinct and repeated assertions of this in the conduct and words of Christ are the most wonderful things, it seems to me, and the most terrible, in all the recorded action of the wisdom of Heaven. “Toyou” (His disciples) “it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom,—but to others, in parables, that, hearing, they mightnotunderstand.” Now this is written not for the twelve only, but for all disciples of Christ in all ages,—of whom the sign is one and unmistakable: “They have forsakenallthat they[122]have”; while those who “say they are Jews and are not, but do lie,” or who say they are Christians and are not, but do lie, try to compromise with Christ,—to give Him a part, and keep back a part;—this being the Lie of lies, the Ananias lie, visited always with spiritual death.3There is a curious chapter on almsgiving, by Miss Yonge, in one of the late numbers of the “Monthly Packet”, (a good magazine, though, on the whole, and full of nice writing,) which announces toherdisciples, that “at least the tenth of their income is God’s part.” Now, in the name of the Devil, and of Baal to back him,—are nine parts, then, of all we have—our own? or theirs? The tithe may, indeed, be set aside for some special purpose—for the maintenance of a priesthood—or as by the St. George’s Company, for distant labour, or any other purpose out of their own immediate range of action. But to the Charity or Alms of men—to Love, and to the God of Love,alltheir substance is due—and all their strength—and all their time. That is the first commandment: Thou shalt love the Lord with all thy strength and soul. Yea, says the false disciple—but not with all my money. And of these it is written, after thatthirty-third verse of Luke xiv.: “Salt is good; but if the salt have lost his savour, it is neither fit for the land nor the dunghill. He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.”[123]Now in Holbein’s great sermon against wealth, the engraving, in the Dance of Death, of the miser and beggar, he chose for his text the verse: “He that stoppeth his ears at the cry of the poor, he also shall cry himself, and shall not be heard.” And he shows that the ear is thus deafened by being filled with a murmuring of its own: and how the ear thus becomes only as a twisted shell, with the sound of the far-away ocean of Hell in it for ever, he teaches us, in the figure of the fiend which I engraved for you in the seventh of these letters,4abortive, fingerless, contemptible, mechanical, incapable;—blowing the winds of death out of its small machine: Behold,thisis your God, you modern Israel, which has brought you up out of the land of Egypt in which your fathers toiled for bread with their not abortive hands; and set your feet in the large room, of Usury, and in the broad road to Death!Now the moment that the Mammon devil gets his bellows put in men’s ears,—however innocent they may be, however free from actual stain of avarice, they become literally deaf to the teaching of true and noble men. My correspondent imagines himself to have read Shakespeare and Goethe;—he cannot understand a sentence of them, or he would have known the meaning of the Merchant of Venice,5and of the vision of Plutus,[124]and speech of Mephistopheles on the Emperor’s paper-money6in the second part of Faust, and of the continual under-current of similar teaching in it, from its opening in the mountain sunrise, presently commented on by the Astrologer, under the prompting of Mephistopheles,—“the Sun itself is pure Gold,”—to the ditch-and-grave-digging scene of its close. He cannot read Xenophon, nor Lucian,—nor Plato, nor Horace, nor[125]Pope,—nor Homer, nor Chaucer—nor Moses, nor David.All these are mere voices of the Night to him; the bought bellows-blower of the “Times” is the only piper who is in tune to his ear.And the woe of it is that all the curse comes on him merely as one of the unhappy modern mob, infected by the rest; for he is himself thoroughly honest, simple-hearted, and upright: only mischance made him take up literature as a means of life; and so brought him necessarily into all the elements of modern insolent thought: and now, though David and Solomon, Noah, Daniel, and Job, altogether say one thing, and the correspondent of the “Times” another, it is David, Solomon, and Daniel who are Narrs to him.Now the Parables of the New Testament are so constructed that to men in this insolent temper, they arenecessarilymisleading. It is very awful that it should be so; but that is the fact. Why prayer should be taught by the story of the unjust judge; use of present opportunity by that of the unjust steward; and use of the gifts of God by that of the hard man who reaped where he had not sown,—there is no human creature wise enough to know;—but there are the traps set; and every slack judge, cheating servant, and gnawing usurer may, if he will, approve himself in these.“Thou knewest that I was a hard man.” Yes—and if God were also a hard God, and reaped whereHehad not sown—the conclusion would be true that earthly[126]usury was right. But which of God’s gifts to us arenotHis own?The meaning of the parable, heard with ears unbesotted, is this:—“You, among hard and unjust men, yet suffer their claim to the return of what they never gave; you sufferthemto reap, where they have not strawed.—But to me, the Just Lord of your life—whose is the breath in your nostrils, whose the fire in your blood, who gave you light and thought, and the fruit of earth and the dew of heaven,—to me, of all this gift, will you return no fruit but only the dust of your bodies, and the wreck of your souls?”Nevertheless, the Parables have still their living use, as well as their danger; but the Psalter has become practically dead; and the form of repeating it in the daily service only deadens the phrases of it by familiarity. I have occasion to-day, before going on with any work for Agnes, to dwell on another piece of this writing of the father of Christ,—which, read in its full meaning, will be as new to us as the first-heard song of a foreign land.I will print it first in the Latin, and in the letters and form in which it was read by our Christian sires.[127]The Eight Psalm. Thirteenth Century Text.7Domine dominus nosterq̄madmirabile est nomen tuum in universa terra. Quoniam elevata est magnificentia tua super celos. Ex ore infantiumt̄lactentiump̄fecistilaudemp̄pterinimicos tuos ut destruasinimicūt̄ultorem. Quoniam videbo celos tuos operadigitor.tuor.lunamt̄stellas que tu fundasti Quid esth̥̊quod memor es ejus,aūfiliush̥ōisquia visitas eum. Minuisti eumpaulominus; ab angelis, gloriat̄honore coronasti eumt̄cstituistieum super opera manuumtuar.Om̄iasubjecisti sub pedibs ejus, ovest̄bovesuniv̄sas, insupert̄pecora campi. Volucres celit̄pisces marisq̄p̄ambulantsemitas maris. Domine dominus noster quam admirabile est nomen tuum inuniv̄saterra.[128]I translate literally; the Septuagint confirming the Vulgate in the differences from our common rendering, several of which are important.“1. Oh Lord, our own Lord, how admirable is thy Name in all the earth!2. Because thy magnificence is set above the heavens.3. Out of the mouth of children and sucklings thou hast perfected praise, because of thine enemies, that thou mightest scatter the enemy and avenger.4. Since I see thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars which thou hast founded,5. What is man that thou rememberest him, or the son of man, that thou lookest on him?6. Thou hast lessened him a little from the angels; thou hast crowned him with glory and honour, and hast set him over all the works of thy hands.7. Thou hast put all things under his feet; sheep, and all oxen—and the flocks of the plain.8. The birds of the heaven and the fish of the sea, and all that walk in the paths of the sea.9. Oh Lord, our own Lord, how admirable is thy Name in all the earth!”Note in Verses 1 and 9.—Domine, Dominus noster; ourownLord;Κύριε, ὁ Κύριος ἡμῶν; claiming thus the Fatherhood. The ‘Lord our Governour’ of the Prayer Book entirely loses the meaning. Howadmirableis Thy[129]Name!θαυμαστον, ‘wonderful,’ as in Isaiah, “His name shall be called Wonderful, the Counsellor.” Again our translation ‘excellent’ loses the meaning.Verse 2.—Thy magnificence. Literally, ‘thy greatness in working’ (Gk.μεγαλοπρέπεια—splendour in aspect), distinguished from mere ‘glory’ or greatness in fame.Verse 3.—Sidney has it:“From sucklings hath thy honour sprung,Thy force hath flowed from babies’ tongue.”The meaning of this difficult verse is given by implication inMatt. xxi. 16. And again, that verse, like all the other great teachings of Christ, is open to a terrific misinterpretation;—namely, the popular evangelical one, that children should be teachers and preachers,—(“cheering mother, cheering father, from the Bible true”). The lovely meaning of the words of Christ, which this vile error hides, is that children,remaining children, and uttering, out of their own hearts, such things as their Maker puts there, are pure in sight, and perfect in praise.8Verse 4.—The moon and the stars which thou hast founded—‘fundasti’—ἐθεμελίωσας. It is much more than ‘ordained’: the idea of stable placing in space being the main one in David’s mind. And it remains to this day[130]the wonder of wonders in all wise men’s minds. The earth swings round the sun,—yes, but what holds the sun? The sun swings round something else. Be it so,—then, what else?Sidney:—“When I upon the heavens do look,Which all from thee their essence took,When moon and stars mythoughtbeholdeth,Whose life no life but of thee holdeth.”Verse 5.—That thou lookest on him;ἐπισκέπτῃ αυτον, ‘art a bishop to him.’ The Greek word is the same in the verse “I was sick and yevisitedme.”Verse 6.—Thou hast lessened him;—perhaps better, thou hast made him but by a little, less, than the angels:ἠλάττωσας αὐτὸν βραχύ τι. The inferiority is not of present position merely, but of scale in being.Verse 7.—Sheep, and all oxen, and theflocks of the plain:κτήνη τοῦ πεδίον. Beasts for service in the plain, traversing great spaces,—camel and horse. ‘Pecora,’ in Vulgate, includes all ‘pecunia,’ or property in animals.Verse 8.—In the Greek, “that walk the paths of the seas” is only an added description of fish, but the meaning of it is without doubt to give an expanded sense—a generalization of fish, so as to include the whale, seal, tortoise, and their like. Neither whales nor seals, however, from what I hear of modern fishing, are[131]likely to walk the paths of the sea much longer; and Sidney’s verse becomes mere satire:—“The bird, free burgesse of the aire,The fish, of sea the native heire,And what things els of waters tracethThe unworn pathes, his rule embraceth.Oh Lord, that rul’st our mortal lyne,How through the world thy name doth shine!”These being, as far as I can trace them, the literal meanings of each verse, the entire purport of the psalm is that the Name, orknowledge, of God was admirable to David, and the power and kingship of God recognizable to him, through the power and kingship of man, His vicegerent on the earth, as the angels are in heavenly places. And that final purport of the psalm is evermore infallibly true,—namely, that when men rule the earth rightly, and feel the power of their own souls over it, and its creatures, as a beneficent and authoritative one, they recognise the power of higher spirits also; and the Name of God becomes ‘hallowed’ to them, admirable and wonderful; but if they abuse the earth and its creatures, and become mere contentious brutes upon it, instead of order-commanding kings, the Name of God ceases to be admirable to them, and His power to be felt; and gradually, license and ignorance prevailing together, even what memories of law or Deity remain to them become intolerable; and in the exact[132]contrary to David’s—“My soul thirsteth for God, for the Living God; when shall I come and appear before God?”—you have the consummated desire and conclusive utterance of the modern republican:“S’il y avait un Dieu, il faudrait le fusiller.”Now, whatever chemical or anatomical facts may appear to our present scientific intelligences, inconsistent with the Life of God, the historical fact is that no happiness nor power has ever been attained by human creatures unless in that thirst for the presence of a Divine King; and that nothing but weakness, misery, and death have ever resulted from the desire to destroy their King, and to have thieves and murderers released to them instead. Also this fact is historically certain,—that the Life of God is not to be discovered by reasoning, but by obeying; that on doing what is plainly ordered, the wisdom and presence of the Orderer become manifest; that only so His way can be known on earth, and His saving health among all nations; and that on disobedience always follows darkness, the forerunner of death.And now for corollary on the eighth Psalm, read the first and second of Hebrews, and to the twelfth verse of the third, slowly; fitting the verse of the psalm—“lunam et stellas quæ tu fundasti,” with “Thou, Lord, in the beginning hast laid the foundations of the earth”; and then noting how the subjection which is merely of the lower creature, in the psalm, becomes the subjection of[133]all things, and at last of death itself, in the victory foretold to those who are faithful to their Captain, made perfect through sufferings; their Faith, observe, consisting primarily in closer and more constant obedience than the Mosaic law required,—“For if the word spoken by angels was stedfast, and every transgression and disobedience received its just recompence of reward, how shallweescape, if we neglect so great salvation?” The full argument is: “Moses, with but a little salvation, saved you from earthly bondage, and brought you to an earthly land of life; Christ, with a great salvation, saves you from soul bondage, and brings you to an eternal land of life; but, if he who despised the little salvation, and its lax law, (left lax because of the hardness of your hearts,) died without mercy, how shall we escape, if now, with hearts of flesh, we despise so great salvation, refuse the Eternal Land of Promise, and break the stricter and relaxless law of Christian desert-pilgrimage?” And if these threatenings and promises still remain obscure to us, it is only because we have resolutely refused to obey the orders which were not obscure, and quenched the Spirit which was already given. How far the world around us may be yet beyond our control, only because a curse has been brought upon it by our sloth and infidelity, none of us can tell; still less may we dare either to praise or accuse our Master, for the state of the creation over which He appointed us kings, and in which we have[134]chosen to live as swine. One thing we know, or may know, if we will,—that the heart and conscience of man are divine; that in his perception of evil, in his recognition of good, he is himself a God manifest in the flesh; that his joy in love, his agony in anger, his indignation at injustice, his glory in self-sacrifice, are all eternal, indisputable proofs of his unity with a great Spiritual Head; that in these, and not merely in his more availing form, or manifold instinct, he is king over the lower animate world; that, so far as he denies or forfeits these, he dishonours the Name of his Father, and makes it unholy and unadmirable in the earth; that so far as he confesses, and rules by, these, he hallows and makes admirable the Name of his Father, and receives, in his sonship, fulness of power with Him, whose are the kingdom, the power, and the glory, world without end.And now we may go back to our bees’ nests, and to our school-benches, in peace; able to assure our little Agnes, and the like of her, that, whatever hornets and locusts and serpents may have been made for, this at least is true,—that we may set, and are commanded to set, an eternal difference between ourselves and them, by neither carrying daggers at our sides, nor poison in our mouths: and that the choice for us is stern, between being kings over all these creatures, by innocence to which they cannot be exalted, or more weak, miserable and detestable than they, in resolute guilt to which they cannot fall.[135]Of their instincts, I believe we have rather held too high than too low estimate, because we have not enough recognized or respected our own. We do not differ from the lower creatures by not possessing instinct, but by possessing will and conscience, to order our innate impulses to the best ends.The great lines of Pope on this matter, however often quoted fragmentarily, are I think scarcely ever understood in their conclusion.9Let us, for once, read them to their end:—“See him, from Nature, rising slow to Art,To copy instinct then was reason’s part.Thus then to man the voice of Nature spake:Go,—from the creatures thy instructions take,Learn from the birds what food the thickets yield,Learn from the beasts the physic of the field,Thy arts of building from the bee receive,Learn of the mole to plough, the worm to weave.Here too all forms of social union find,And hence let reason, late, instruct mankind.Here subterranean works and cities see,There, towns aerial on the waving tree;Learn each small people’s genius, policies,The ants’ republic, and the realm of bees:[136]How those in common all their wealth bestow,And anarchy without confusion know;And these for ever, though a monarch reign,Their separate cells and properties maintain.Mark what unvaried laws preserve each state—Laws wise as nature, and as fixed as fate;In vain thy reason finer webs shall draw,Entangle justice in her net of law,And right, too rigid, harden into wrong—Still for the strong too weak, the weak, too strong.Yet go, and thus o’er all the creatures sway,Thus let the wiser make the rest obey,And for those arts mere instinct could affordBe crowned as monarchs, or as gods ador’d.”There is a trace, in this last couplet, of the irony, and chastising enforcement of humiliation, which generally characterize the ‘Essay on Man’; but, though it takes this colour, the command thus supposed to be uttered by the voice of Nature, is intended to be wholly earnest. “In the arts of which I set you example in the unassisted instinct of lower animals, I assistyouby the added gifts of will and reason: be therefore, knowingly, in the deeds of Justice, kings under the Lord of Justice, while in the works of your hands, you remain happy labourers under His guidanceWho taught the nations of the field and woodTo shun their poison, and to choose their food,[137]Prescient, the tides or tempests to withstand,Build on the wave, or arch beneath the sand.”Nor has ever any great work been accomplished by human creatures, in which instinct was not the principal mental agent, or in which the methods of design could be defined by rule, or apprehended by reason. It is therefore that agency through mechanism destroys the powers of art, and sentiments of religion, together.And it will be found ultimately by all nations, as it was found long ago by those who have been leaders in human force and intellect, that the initial virtue of the race consists in the acknowledgment of their own lowly nature and submission to the laws of higher being. “Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return,” is the first truth we have to learn of ourselves; and to till the earth out of which we were taken, our first duty: in that labour, and in the relations which it establishes between us and the lower animals, are founded the conditions of our highest faculties and felicities: and without that labour, neither reason, art, nor peace, are possible to man.But in that labour, accepting bodily death, appointed to us in common with the lower creatures, in noble humility; and kindling day by day the spiritual life, granted to us beyond that of the lower creatures, in noble pride, all wisdom, peace, and unselfish hope and love, may be reached, on earth, as in heaven, and our lives indeed be but a little lessened from those of the angels.As I am finishing this Fors, I note in the journals[138]accounts of new insect-plague on the vine; and the sunshine on my own hills this morning (7th April), still impure, is yet the first which I have seen spread from the daybreak upon them through all the spring; so dark it has been with blight of storm,—so redolent of disease and distress; of which, and its possible causes, my friends seek as the only wise judgment, that of the journals aforesaid. Here, on the other hand, are a few verses10of the traditional wisdom of that king whose political institutions were so total a failure, (according to my supremely sagacious correspondent,) which nevertheless appear to me to reach the roots of these, and of many other hitherto hidden things.“His heart is ashes, his hope is more vile than earth, and his life of less value than clay.Forasmuch as he knew not his Maker, and him that inspired into him an active soul, and breathed in him a living spirit.But they counted our life a pastime, and our time here a market for gain; for, say they, we must be getting every way, though it be by evil means.11Yea, they worshipped those beasts also that are most hateful; (for being compared together, some are worse than others,12neither are they beautiful in respect of beasts,)[139]but they went without the praise of God, and his blessing.Therefore by the like were they punished worthily, and by the multitude of beasts tormented.And in this thou madest thine enemies confess, that it is thou who deliverest them from all evil.But thy sons not the very teeth of venomous dragons overcame: for thy mercy was ever by them, and healed them.For thou hast power of life and death: thou leadest to the gates of hell, and bringest up again.For the ungodly, that denied to know thee, were scourged by the strength of thine arm: with strange rains, hails, and showers, were they persecuted, that they could not avoid, for through fire were they consumed.Instead whereof thou feddest thine own people with angels’ food, and didst send them, from heaven, bread prepared without their labour, able to content every man’s delight, and agreeing to every taste.For thy sustenance declared thy sweetness unto thy children, and serving to the appetite of the eater, tempered itself to every man’s liking.For the creature that serveth thee, who art the Maker, increaseth his strength against the unrighteous for their[140]punishment, and abateth his strength for the benefit of such as put their trust in thee.Therefore even then was it altered into all fashions, and was obedient to thy grace, that nourisheth all things, according to the desire of them that had need:That thy children, O Lord, whom thou lovest, might know that it is not the growing of fruits that nourisheth man: but that it is thy word, which preserveth them that put their trust in thee.For that which was not destroyed of the fire, being warmed with a little sunbeam, soon melted away:That it might be known, that we must prevent the sun to give thee thanks, and at the dayspring pray unto thee.”[141][Contents]NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE.“The Parsonage, Werrington, Peterborough,April 7, 1875.“My dear Sir,—Your lady correspondent brings out in her own experience that sound Christian truth, of which the condemnable doctrines of ‘substitution’ and ‘vicarious righteousness’ are but the perversions. Her experience shows how true it is that one man may so live and suffer that others shall be morally the better for his life and suffering.“Such a man’s righteousness is ‘imputed’ because reallyimparted13to those who have faith in him.“Of Felix Neff I know less than I ought, but if his ministry tended to bring more sweetness and light into your correspondent’s life, surely his influence in her mind is moral and healthful.“I am very faithfully yours,“Edward Z. Lyttel.“John Ruskin, Esq.”[142]I transgress the laws of courtesy, in printing, without asking the writer’s permission, part of a letter which follows: but my correspondent is not, as far as I know him, a man who shrinks from publicity, or who would write in a private letter anything on general subjects which he would be unwilling openly to maintain; while the letter itself is so monumental as a type of the condition to which the modern average literary mind has been reduced, in its reading of authoritative classical authors, and touches so precisely on points which it happens to be my immediate business to set at rest in the minds of many of my readers, that I cannot but attribute to the Third Fors the direct inspiration of the epistle—and must leave on her hands what blame may be attached to its publication. I had been expressing some surprise to my correspondent (an acquaintance of long standing) at his usually bright and complacent temper; and making some enquiry about his views respecting modern usury, knowing him to have read, at least for literary purposes, large portions of the Old Testament. He replies,—“I am sure I would not be wiser if I were ‘more uncomfortable’ in my mind; I am perfectly sure, if I can ever do good to any mortal, it will be by calm working, patient thinking, not by running, or raging, or weeping, or wailing. But for this humour, which I fancy I caught from Shakespeare and Goethe, the sorrow of the world would drive me mad.“You ask what I think ‘the Psalmist’ means by ‘usury.’ I find from Cruden that usury is mentioned only in the fifteenth Psalm. That is a notable and most beautiful lyric, quite sufficient to demonstrate the superiority, in spirituality and morality, of the Hebrew religion to anything Greek. But the bit about usury is pure nonsense—the only bit of nonsense in the piece. Nonsense, because the singer has no notion whatever of the employment of money for thecommonbenefit[143]of lender and borrower. As the Hebrew monarchy was politically a total and disastrous failure, I should not expect any opinion worth listening to from a psalmist, touching directly or indirectly on the organisation of industry. Jesus Christ and Matthew the publican lived in a time of extended intercourse and some commerce; accordingly, inMatthew xxv., verse 27, you have a perfect statement of the truth about usury: ‘Thou oughtest to have put my money to the exchangers, and at my coming I should have received mine own with usury.’ Ricardo, with all Lombard Street to help him, could not improve upon that. A legitimate, useful, profitable use of money is to accommodate strangers who come with money that will not circulate in the country. The exchanger gives them current money; they pay a consideration for the convenience; and out of this comes the legitimate profit to be divided between lender and borrower. The rule which applies to one fruitful use of money will apply to a thousand, and, between wise lending and honest borrowing, swamp and forest become field and garden, and mountains wave with corn. Some professor or other had written what seemed outrageous rubbish; you confuted or thrust aside, in an early Fors, that rubbish; but against legitimate interest, usury, call it what you like, I have never heard any argument. Mr. Sillar’s tracts I have never seen,—he does not advertise, and I have not the second sight.“My view of the grievous abuses in the publishing and bookselling trades has not altered. But, since writing you first on the subject, I have had careful conversations with publishers, and have constantly pondered the matter; and though I do not see my way to any complete reform, I cannot entertain hope from your methods.“I am tired, being still very weak. It would only bother you if I went on. Nothing you have ever written has, I think, enabled me to get so near comprehending you as your picture[144]of yourself learning to read and write in last Fors. You can see an individual concrete fact better than any man of the generation; but an invisible fact, an abstraction, anaverage, you have, I fancy, been as incapable of seeing as of seeing through a stone wall. Political Economy is the science of social averages.“Ever affectionately and faithfully yours.“P.S. (Sunday morning). Some fancy has been haunting me in the night of its being presumptuous, or your thinking it presumptuous, in me to say that David, or whoever wrote the fifteenth Psalm, spoke, on the subject of interest, pure nonsense. After carefully going over the matter again, I believe that I am accurately correct. Not knowing what lending and borrowing, as a normal industrial transaction, or trading transaction, was, the Psalmist spoke in vague ethical terms, meaning ‘you should be friendly to your neighbour’; just as a lady economist of to-day might shriek against the pawn-shop, which, with all its defects, had, in capacity of Poor Man’s Bank, saved many a child, or woman, or man, from sheer starvation. Not understanding the matter, the Psalmist could not distinguish between use and abuse, and so talked nonsense. It is exquisitely interesting to me to observe that Christ hits the Psalmist exactly on the point where he goes wrong.Τὸ ἀργύριον ἀυτοῦ οὐκ ἔδωκεν ἐπὶ τόκῳ, says thePsalmist;Πονηρὲ δοῦλε .… ἔδει σεοὖνβαλεῖν τὸ ἀργύριόν μου τοῖς τραπαζίταις, καὶ ἐλθὼν ἐγὼ ἐκομισάμην ἂν τὸ ἐμὸνσυν τόκῳ, saysChrist. The use of thesame wordin the Septuagint (the only Old Testament circulating in Palestine in Christ’s time) and in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, to denote in the one case what no good man would take, in the other, what it was a flagrant dereliction of dutynotto secure, is most precious as illustrating the simple common sense with which Christ used the old Scriptures, and[145]the infinite falsity of the modern doctrine of infallibility, whether of church, book, or man. One of those transcendencies of rightness which I find in Fors (amid things about Marmontel and Drury Lane, and Darwin and Huxley, worthy only of a Psalmist or pretty economist of fifteen) was your idea of policemen-bishops. I always agree also with what you say about the entirely obsolete and useless bishops at £5000 a-year.… But what I was going to say is, that you ought to ask your bishop, or the whole bench of them, to find a place, in their cart-loads of sermons, for one on ‘usury,’14as condemned by the Psalmist and enjoined by Christ. CompareLuke xix., ver. 23. The only sound basis of banking is the fruitful, industrial use of money. I by no means maintain that the present banking system of Europe is safe and sound.”I submitted the proof of this Fors to my correspondent, and think it due to him and to my readers to print, with the above letter, also the following portions of that which he sent in gentle reply. So far as I have misconceived or misrepresented him, he knows me to be sorry. For the rest, our misconceptions of each other are of no moment: the misconception, by either, of the nature of profit by the loan of money, or tools, is of moment to every one over whom we have influence; we neither of us have any business to be wrong in that matter; and there are few on which it is more immediately every man’s business to be right.“Remonstrance were absurd, where misconception is so total as yours. My infidelity is simply that I worship Christ, thanking every one who gives me any glimpse that enables me to get nearer Christ’s meaning. In this light, what you say of a[146]hidden sense or drift in the parables interests me profoundly; but the more I think of the question of interest, the more I feel persuaded that Christ distinguished the use from the abuse. Tradition, almost certainly authentic, imputes to Him the sayingγίνεσθε τραπεζιται δόκιμοι(see M. Arnold’s article in MarchContemporary), and I don’t see how there can be honourable bankers,—men, living honourably by banking,—ifalltaking of interest is wrong. You speak of my ‘supreme confidence’ in my own opinions. I absolutely have confidence only in the resolution to keep my eyes open for light and, if I can help it, not to be to-day exactly where I was yesterday. I have not only read, but lived in, (as a very atmosphere) the works of men whom you say I went to because somebody said it was fine to do so. They have taught me some comprehensiveness, some tolerance, some moderation in judging even the mob. They have taught me to consume my own smoke, and it is this consumption of my own smoke which you seem to have mistaken for confidence in my opinions. Which prophet, from Moses to Carlyle, would notyouconfess to have been sometimes in the wrong? I said that I worship Christ. In Him I realize, so far as I can realize, God. Therefore I speak not of Him. But the very key-stone of any arch of notions in my mind is that inspiration is one of the mightiest and most blessed of forces, one of the most real of facts, but that infallibility is the error of errors. From no prophet, from no book, do I take what I please and leave what I please; but, applying all the lights I have, I learn from each as wisely as, with my powers and my lights, is possible for me.“Affectionately yours.”I have received, “with the respects of the author,” a pamphlet on the Crystal Palace; which tells me, in its first sentence, that the Crystal Palace is a subject which every cultivated Englishman[147]has at heart; in its second, that the Crystal Palace is a household word, and is the loftiest moral triumph of the world; and in its third, that the Palace is declining, it is said,—verging towards decay. I have not heard anything for a long time which has more pleased me; and beg to assure the author of the pamphlet in question that I never get up at Herne Hill after a windy night without looking anxiously towards Norwood in the hope that ‘the loftiest moral triumph of the world’ may have been blown away.I find the following lovely little scene translated into French from the Dutch, (M. J. Rigeveld, Amsterdam, C. L. Brinkman, 1875,) in a valuable little periodical for ladies, ‘l’Espérance,’ of Geneva, in which the entirely good purpose of the editor will, I doubt not, do wide service, in spite of her adoption of the popular error of the desirability of feminine independence.“A PROPOS D’UNE PAIRE DE GANTS.“ ‘Qu’y a-t-il, Elise?’ dit Madame, en se tournant du côté d’une fenêtre ouverte, où elle entend quelque bruit. ‘Oh! moins que rien, maman!’ répond sa fille aînée, en train de faire la toilette des cadets, pour la promenade et le concert. ‘Ce que c’est, maman?’ crie un des petits garçons, ‘c’est que Lolotte ne veut pas mettre des gants.’ ‘Elle dit qu’elle a assez chaud sans cela,’ reprend un autre, ‘et qu’elle ne trouve pas même joli d’avoir des gants.’ Et chacun de rire. Un des rapporteurs continue: ‘Elise veut qu’elle le fasse par convenance; mais Lolotte prétend que la peau humaine est plus convenable qu’une peau de rat.’ Cette boutade excite de nouveau l’hilarité de la compagnie. ‘Quelle idée, Lolotte,’ dit son père d’un ton enjoué: ‘montre-toi donc!’“Apparemment Lolotte n’est pas d’humeur à obéir; mais les[148]garçons ne lui laissent pas le choix et la poussent en avant. La voilà donc, notre héroïne. C’est une fillette d’environ quatorze ans, dont les yeux pétillent d’esprit et de vie; on voit qu’elle aime à user largement de la liberté que lui laisse encore son âge, pour dire son opinion sur tout ce qui lui passe par la tête sans conséquence aucune. Mais bien qu’elle soit forte dans son opinionanti-gantière, l’enfant est tant soit peu confuse, et ne paraît pas portée à défendre sa cause en présence d’un étranger. ‘Quoi donc,’ lui dit son père, en la prenant par la taille, ‘tu ne veux pas porter des gants, parce qu’ils sont faits de peaux de rats! Je ne te croyais pas si folle. Le rat est morte et oublié depuis longtemps, et sa peau est glacée.’—‘Non, papa, ce n’est pasça.’—‘Qu’est-ce donc, mon enfant? Tu est trop grande fille pour ces manières sans façon. Ne veux-tu pas être une demoiselle comme il faut?’ ‘Et ces petites mains qui touchent si bien du piano,’ reprend le visiteur, désireux de faire oublier la gêne que cause sa présence, par un mot gracieux. ‘Ne veux-tu pas plutôt renoncer à la musique, et devenir sarcleuse?’ lui demande son père.—‘Non, papa, point du tout. Je ne puis pas dire au juste ma pensée.…’ Et elle se dégagea doucement de ses bras; et en se sauvant, grommela: ‘Mort aux gants, et vive la civilisation!’ On rit encore un peu de l’enfant bizarre; puis on parle d’autres choses, et l’on se prépare pour la promenade. Lolotte a mis les gants en question, ‘pour plaire à maman,’ et personne ne s’en occupe plus.“Mais l’étranger avait saisi au passage sa dernière phrase, qui sans cesse, lui revenait à l’esprit. Se reprochait-il devant cette enfant naïve sa complicité à l’interprétation futile que son hôte avait donné dela civilisation? Tant est, que pendant le cours de la soirée, se trouvant un moment en tête-à-tête avec Lolotte, il revint à l’histoire des gants. Il tâcha de réparer sa gaucherie et fit si bien, qu’il gagna la confiance de la petite. ‘Sans doute[149]j’en conviens,’ dit-il, ‘il faut plus pour être civilisé que de porter des gants, mais il faut se soumettre à certaines convenances que les gens comme il faut.…’ ‘C’est ça, Monsieur,’ dit-elle, en lui coupant la parole, ‘quelle est donc la chance des gens qui voudraient se civiliser, mais qui n’ont pas d’argent pour acheter des gants?’ C’était-là sa peine. ‘Chère enfant!’ dit-il tout bas. Et l’homme, si éloquent d’ordinaire, pressa la petite main sous le gant obligatoire, parce que pour le moment les paroles lui manquaient pour répondre.… Est-ce étonnant que, malgré lui, plus tard en s’occupant de la question sociale, il pensa souvent à cette jeune fille?“Et vous, lecteurs, que pensez-vous d’elle et de sa question gantière? Vous paraît-elle un enfantillage, ou bien la considerez-vous tout bonnement comme une exagération? Vous attachez-vous à la surface,oubien y cherchez-vous un sens plus profond, comme l’ami visiteur? Ne croyez-vous pas aussi que dans ce temps de ‘besoins multipliés,’ un des plus grands services que les classes supérieures puissent rendre au peuple, serait de faire distinction entre tous ces besoins et de prêcher d’exemple?”This bit of letter must find room—bearing as it does on last Fors’ subject:—“I was asking a girl this morning if she still took her long walks; and she said she was as fond of them as ever, but that they could only walk in the town now—the field or country walks were not safe for ladies alone. Indeed, I fancy the girls lose all care for, or knowledge of the spring or summer—except as they bring new fashions into the shop windows, not fresh flowers any more here into the fields. It is pitiable to live in a place like this—even worse than in ——. For here the process of spoiling country is going on under one’s eyes;—in —— it was done long ago. And just now, when the feeling of spring is upon one, it is hard[150]to have the sky darkened, and the air poisoned. But I am wasting time in useless grumbling. Only listen to this:—after all our sacrifices, and with all our money and civilization——I can’t tell you now; it must wait.”—[Very well; but don’t keep it waiting longer than you need.]I have had some good help about bees’ tongues from a young correspondent at Merrow Grange, Guildford, and a very clear drawing, to which the subjoined piece of his last letter refers; but I must not lose myself in microscopic questions just now:—“The author of ‘The Microscope’ keeps to the old idea of bees sucking honey and not ‘licking it up,’ for he says, ‘The proboscis, being cylindrical, extracts the juice of the flower in a somewhat similar way to that of the butterfly.’ And of the tongue he says, ‘If a bee is attentively observed as it settles upon a flower, the activity and promptitude with which it uses the apparatus is truly surprising; it lengthens the tongue, applies it to the bottom of the petals, then shortens it, bending and turning it in all directions, for the purpose of exploring the interior and removing the pollen, which it packs in the pockets in its hind legs, (by, he supposes, the two shorter feelers,) and forms the chief food for the working-bees.’ He says that when the waxen walls of the cells are completed, they are strengthened by a varnish collected from the buds of the poplar and other trees, which they smear over the cells by the aid of the wonderful apparatus. That part of the proboscis that looks something like a human head, he says, ‘can be considerably enlarged … and thus made to contain a larger quantity of the collected juice of the flowers; at the same time it is in this cavity that the nectar is transformed into pure honey by some peculiar chemical process.’ ”[151]Note on page145.—My correspondent need not be at a loss for sermons on usury. When the Christian Church was living, there was no lack of such. Here are two specimens of their tenor, furnished me by one of Mr. Sillar’s pamphlets:—Extract from the Exposition upon theFirst Epistle to the Thessalonians, Ch. IV. ver. 6. By Bishop Jewell.“Usury is a kind of lending of money, or corn, or oil, or wine, or of any other thing, wherein, upon covenant and bargain,we receive again the whole principalwhich we delivered,and somewhat morefor the use and occupying of the same: as, if I lent one hundred pounds, and for it covenant to receive one hundred and five pounds, or any other sum greater than was the sum which I did lend. This is that that we call usury; such a kind of bargaining as no good man, or godly man, ever used; such a kind of bargaining as all men that ever feared God’s judgment have always abhorred and condemned.It is filthy gains, and a work of darkness: it is a monster in nature; the overthrow of mighty kingdoms; the destruction of flourishing states; the decay of wealthy cities; the plagues of the world, and the misery of the people. It is theft; it is the murdering of our brethren; it is the curse of God, and the curse of the people.This is usury: by these signs and tokens you may know it: for wheresoever it reigneth, all those mischiefs ensue. But how, and how many ways, it may be wrought, I will not declare: it were horrible to hear; and I come now to reprove usury, and not to teach it.“Tell me, thou wretched wight of the world, thou unkind creature, which art past all sense and feeling of God; which knowest the will of God, and doest the contrary: how darest thou come into the church? It is the church of that God which hath said, ‘Thou shalt take no usury’; and thou knowest He hath so said. How darest thou read or hear the word of[152]God? It is the word of that God which condemneth usury; and thou knowest He doth condemn it. How darest thou come into the company of thy brethren? Usury is the plague, and destruction, and undoing of thy brethren; and this thou knowest. How darest thou look upon thy children? thou makest the wrath of God fall down from heaven upon them; thy iniquity shall be punished in them to the third and fourth generation: this thou knowest. How darest thou look up into heaven? thou hast no dwelling there; thou shalt have no place in the tabernacle of the Highest: this thou knowest. Because thou robbest the poor, deceivest the simple, and eatest up the widows’ houses: therefore shall thy children be naked, and beg their bread; therefore shalt thou and thy riches perish together.”Extract from the Farewell Sermon preached in the Church of St. Mary Woolnoth, Lombard Street, by the Rev. David Jones, when the present system was in its infancy.“And the Pharisees also, who were covetous, heard all these things, and they derided him.”—Lukexvi. 14.“I do openly declare that every minister and every churchwarden throughout all England are actually perjured and foresworn by the 109th canon of our church, if they suffer any usurer to come to the sacrament till he be reformed, and there is no reformation without restitution.*   *   *“And that you may know what usury is forbid by the word of God, turn toEzekiel xviii. 8, 13, and you will find that, whoever giveth upon usury or taketh any increase,—Mark it,—he that takethanyincrease above the principal,—not six in the hundred, but let it be never so little, and never so moderate,—he that takethanyincrease, is a usurer, and such a one as shall surely[153]die for his usury, and his blood shall be upon his own head. This is that word of God by which you shall all be saved or damned at the last day, and all those trifling and shuffling distinctions that covetous usurers ever invented shall never be able to excuse your damnation.“Heretofore all usurious clergymen were degraded from Holy Orders, and all usurious laymen were excommunicated in their lifetime, and hindered Christian burial after death, till their heirs had made restitution for all they had gotten by usury.”As this sheet is going to press, I receive a very interesting letter from “a poor mother.” That no wholesome occupation is at present offered in England to youths of the temper she describes, is precisely the calamity which urged my endeavour to found the St. George’s Company. But if she will kindly tell me the boy’s age, and whether the want of perseverance she regrets in him has ever been tested by giving him sufficient motive for consistent exertion, I will answer what I can, in next ‘Fors.’[155]1See my first notice of it in the beginning of the Fors of August 1871; and further account of it in appendix to my Lecture on Glaciers, given at the London Institution this year.↑2Will the reader be kind enough, in thelasttwo lines of page 128, to put, with his pen, a semicolon after “age”, a comma after “unclean,” and a semicolon after “use”? He will find the sentence thus take a different meaning.↑3Isaiah xxviii. 17 and 18.↑4The whole woodcut is given in facsimile in the fifth part of ‘Ariadne Florentina.’↑5See ‘Munera Pulveris,’ pp. 99 to 103; and ‘Ariadne Florentina,’ Lecture VI.↑6“Narr.Fünftausend Kronen wären mir zu Handen.Meph.Zweibeiniger Schlauch, bist wieder auferstanden?Narr.Geschieht mir oft, doch nicht so gut als jetzt.Meph.Du freust dich so, dass dich’s in Schweiss versetzt.Narr.Da seht nur her, ist das wohl Geldes werth?Meph.Du hast dafür was Schlund und Bauch begehrt.Narr.Und kaufen kann ich Acker, Haus, und Vieh?Meph.Versteht sich!Bietenur, das fehlt dir nie!Narr.Und Schloss mit Wald und Jagd, und Fischbach?Meph.Traun!Ich möchte dich gestrengen Herrn wohl schaun.Narr.Heute Abend wieg’ ich mich im Grundbesitz.(ab.)Meph.(solus.)Wer zweifelt noch anunsresNarren Witz!”7I have written it out from a perfect English psalter of early thirteenth century work, with St. Edward, St. Edmund, and St. Cuthbert in its calendar; it probably having belonged to the cathedral of York. The writing is very full, but quick; meant for service more than beauty; illuminated sparingly, but with extreme care. Its contractions are curiously varied and capricious: thus, here in the fifth verse, c inconstituististands for ‘con’ merely by being turned the wrong way. I prefer its text, nevertheless, to that of more elaborate MSS., for when very great attention is paid to the writing, there are apt to be mistakes in the words. In the best thirteenth-century service-book I have, ‘tuos’ in the third verse is written ‘meos.’↑8Compare the ‘Crown of Wild Olive,’ p. 57; and put in the fifth line of that page, a comma after ‘heaven,’ and in the eighth line a semicolon after ‘blessing.’↑9I am sensitive for other writers in this point, my own readers being in the almost universal practice of choosing any bit they may happen to fancy in what I say, without ever considering what it was said for.↑10Collated out of Sapientia xv. and xvi.↑11CompareJeremiah ix. 6; in the Septuagint,τόκος ἐπὶ τόκῳ, καὶ δόλος ἐπὶ δόλῳ: “usury on usury, and trick upon trick.”↑12The instinct for the study of parasites, modes of disease, the lower forms of undeveloped creatures, and the instinctive processes of digestion and[139]generation, rather than the varied and noble habit of life,—which shows itself so grotesquely in modern science, is the precise counterpart of the forms of idolatry (as of beetle and serpent, rather than of clean or innocent creatures,) which were in great part the cause of final corruption in ancient mythology and morals.↑13If my good correspondent will try practically the difference in the effect on the minds of the next two beggars he meets, between imputing a penny to the one, and imparting it to the other, he will receive a profitable lesson both in religion and English.Of Felix Neff’s influence, past and present, I will take other occasion to speak.↑14See the note at p.151.↑

[Contents]FORS CLAVIGERA.LETTER LIII.Brantwood,Good Friday, 1875.I am ashamed to go on with my own history to-day; for though, as already seen, I was not wholly unacquainted with the practice of fasting, at times of the year when it was not customary with Papists, our Lent became to us a kind of moonlight Christmas, and season of reflected and soft festivity. For our strictly Protestant habits of mind rendering us independent of absolution, on Shrove Tuesday we were chiefly occupied in the preparation of pancakes,—my nurse being dominant on that day over the cook in all things, her especially nutritive art of browning, and fine legerdemain in turning, pancakes, being recognised as inimitable. The interest of Ash-Wednesday was mainly—whether the bits of egg should be large or small in the egg-sauce;—nor do I recollect having any ideas connected with the day’s name, until I was puzzled by the French of it when I fell in love with a Roman Catholic French girl, as hereafter to be related:—only, by the way, let me note, as I chance now to remember, two others of my[118]main occupations of an exciting character in Hunter Street: watching, namely, the dustmen clear out the ash-hole, and the coalmen fill the coal-cellar through the hole in the pavement, which soon became to me, when surrounded by its cone of débris, a sublime representation of the crater of a volcanic mountain. Of these imaginative delights I have no room to speak in this Fors; nor of the debates which used to be held for the two or three days preceding Good Friday, whether the hot-cross-buns should be plain, or have carraway seeds in them. For, my nurse not being here to provide any such dainties for me, and the black-plague wind which has now darkened the spring for five years,1veiling all the hills with sullen cloud, I am neither in a cheerful nor a religious state of mind; and am too much in the temper of the disciples who forsook Him, and fled, to be able to do justice to the childish innocence of belief, which, in my mother, was too constant to need resuscitation, or take new colour, from fast or festival.Yet it is only by her help, to-day, that I am able to do a piece of work required of me by the letter printed in the second article of this month’s correspondence. It is from a man of great worth, conscientiousness, and kindliness; but is yet so perfectly expressive of the irreverence, and incapacity of admiration, which[119]maintain and, in great part, constitute, the modern liberal temper, that it makes me feel, more than anything I ever yet met with in human words, how much I owe to my mother for having so exercised me in the Scriptures as to make me grasp them in what my correspondent would call their ‘concrete whole’; and above all, taught me to reverence them, as transcending all thought, and ordaining all conduct.This she effected, not by her own sayings or personal authority; but simply by compelling me to read the book thoroughly, for myself. As soon as I was able to read with fluency, she began a course of Bible work with me, which never ceased till I went to Oxford. She read alternate verses with me, watching, at first, every intonation of my voice, and correcting the false ones, till she made me understand the verse, if within my reach, rightly, and energetically. It might be beyond me altogether;thatshe did not care about; but she made sure that as soon as I got hold of it at all, I should get hold of it by the right end.In this way she began with the first verse of Genesis and went straight through to the last verse of the Apocalypse; hard names, numbers, Levitical law, and all; and began again at Genesis the next day; if a name was hard, the better the exercise in pronunciation,—if a chapter was tiresome, the better lesson in patience,—if loathsome, the better lesson in faith that there was some use in its being so outspoken. After[120]our chapters, (from two to three a day, according to their length, the first thing after breakfast, and no interruption from servants allowed,—none from visitors, who either joined in the reading or had to stay upstairs,—and none from any visitings or excursions, except real travelling,) I had to learn a few verses by heart, or repeat, to make sure I had not lost, something of what was already known; and, with the chapters above enumerated, (Letter XLII.2), I had to learn the whole body of the fine old Scottish paraphrases, which are good, melodious, and forceful verse; and to which, together with the Bible itself, I owe the first cultivation of my ear in sound.It is strange that of all the pieces of the Bible which my mother thus taught me, that which cost me most to learn, and which was, to my child’s mind, chiefly repulsive—the 119th Psalm—has now become of all the most precious to me, in its overflowing and glorious passion of love for the Law of God: “Oh, how love I Thy law! it is my meditation all the day; I have refrained my feet from every evil way, that I might keep Thy word”;—as opposed to the ever-echoing words of the modern money-loving fool: “Oh, how hate I thy law! it is my abomination all the day; my feet are swift in running to mischief, and I have done all the[121]things I ought not to have done, and left undone all I ought to have done; have mercy upon me, miserable sinner,—and grant that I, worthily lamenting my sins and acknowledging my wretchedness, may obtain of Thee, the God of all mercy, perfect remission and forgiveness,—and give me my long purse here and my eternal Paradise there, all together, for Christ’s sake, to whom, with Thee and the Holy Ghost, be all honour and glory,” etc. And the letter of my liberal correspondent, pointing out, in the defence of usury (of which he imagines himself acquainted with the history!) how the Son of David hit his father in the exactly weak place, puts it in my mind at once to state some principles respecting the use of the Bible as a code of law, which are vital to the action of the St. George’s Company in obedience to it.All the teaching of God, and of the nature He formed round Man, is not only mysterious, but, if received with any warp of mind, deceptive, and intentionally deceptive. The distinct and repeated assertions of this in the conduct and words of Christ are the most wonderful things, it seems to me, and the most terrible, in all the recorded action of the wisdom of Heaven. “Toyou” (His disciples) “it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom,—but to others, in parables, that, hearing, they mightnotunderstand.” Now this is written not for the twelve only, but for all disciples of Christ in all ages,—of whom the sign is one and unmistakable: “They have forsakenallthat they[122]have”; while those who “say they are Jews and are not, but do lie,” or who say they are Christians and are not, but do lie, try to compromise with Christ,—to give Him a part, and keep back a part;—this being the Lie of lies, the Ananias lie, visited always with spiritual death.3There is a curious chapter on almsgiving, by Miss Yonge, in one of the late numbers of the “Monthly Packet”, (a good magazine, though, on the whole, and full of nice writing,) which announces toherdisciples, that “at least the tenth of their income is God’s part.” Now, in the name of the Devil, and of Baal to back him,—are nine parts, then, of all we have—our own? or theirs? The tithe may, indeed, be set aside for some special purpose—for the maintenance of a priesthood—or as by the St. George’s Company, for distant labour, or any other purpose out of their own immediate range of action. But to the Charity or Alms of men—to Love, and to the God of Love,alltheir substance is due—and all their strength—and all their time. That is the first commandment: Thou shalt love the Lord with all thy strength and soul. Yea, says the false disciple—but not with all my money. And of these it is written, after thatthirty-third verse of Luke xiv.: “Salt is good; but if the salt have lost his savour, it is neither fit for the land nor the dunghill. He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.”[123]Now in Holbein’s great sermon against wealth, the engraving, in the Dance of Death, of the miser and beggar, he chose for his text the verse: “He that stoppeth his ears at the cry of the poor, he also shall cry himself, and shall not be heard.” And he shows that the ear is thus deafened by being filled with a murmuring of its own: and how the ear thus becomes only as a twisted shell, with the sound of the far-away ocean of Hell in it for ever, he teaches us, in the figure of the fiend which I engraved for you in the seventh of these letters,4abortive, fingerless, contemptible, mechanical, incapable;—blowing the winds of death out of its small machine: Behold,thisis your God, you modern Israel, which has brought you up out of the land of Egypt in which your fathers toiled for bread with their not abortive hands; and set your feet in the large room, of Usury, and in the broad road to Death!Now the moment that the Mammon devil gets his bellows put in men’s ears,—however innocent they may be, however free from actual stain of avarice, they become literally deaf to the teaching of true and noble men. My correspondent imagines himself to have read Shakespeare and Goethe;—he cannot understand a sentence of them, or he would have known the meaning of the Merchant of Venice,5and of the vision of Plutus,[124]and speech of Mephistopheles on the Emperor’s paper-money6in the second part of Faust, and of the continual under-current of similar teaching in it, from its opening in the mountain sunrise, presently commented on by the Astrologer, under the prompting of Mephistopheles,—“the Sun itself is pure Gold,”—to the ditch-and-grave-digging scene of its close. He cannot read Xenophon, nor Lucian,—nor Plato, nor Horace, nor[125]Pope,—nor Homer, nor Chaucer—nor Moses, nor David.All these are mere voices of the Night to him; the bought bellows-blower of the “Times” is the only piper who is in tune to his ear.And the woe of it is that all the curse comes on him merely as one of the unhappy modern mob, infected by the rest; for he is himself thoroughly honest, simple-hearted, and upright: only mischance made him take up literature as a means of life; and so brought him necessarily into all the elements of modern insolent thought: and now, though David and Solomon, Noah, Daniel, and Job, altogether say one thing, and the correspondent of the “Times” another, it is David, Solomon, and Daniel who are Narrs to him.Now the Parables of the New Testament are so constructed that to men in this insolent temper, they arenecessarilymisleading. It is very awful that it should be so; but that is the fact. Why prayer should be taught by the story of the unjust judge; use of present opportunity by that of the unjust steward; and use of the gifts of God by that of the hard man who reaped where he had not sown,—there is no human creature wise enough to know;—but there are the traps set; and every slack judge, cheating servant, and gnawing usurer may, if he will, approve himself in these.“Thou knewest that I was a hard man.” Yes—and if God were also a hard God, and reaped whereHehad not sown—the conclusion would be true that earthly[126]usury was right. But which of God’s gifts to us arenotHis own?The meaning of the parable, heard with ears unbesotted, is this:—“You, among hard and unjust men, yet suffer their claim to the return of what they never gave; you sufferthemto reap, where they have not strawed.—But to me, the Just Lord of your life—whose is the breath in your nostrils, whose the fire in your blood, who gave you light and thought, and the fruit of earth and the dew of heaven,—to me, of all this gift, will you return no fruit but only the dust of your bodies, and the wreck of your souls?”Nevertheless, the Parables have still their living use, as well as their danger; but the Psalter has become practically dead; and the form of repeating it in the daily service only deadens the phrases of it by familiarity. I have occasion to-day, before going on with any work for Agnes, to dwell on another piece of this writing of the father of Christ,—which, read in its full meaning, will be as new to us as the first-heard song of a foreign land.I will print it first in the Latin, and in the letters and form in which it was read by our Christian sires.[127]The Eight Psalm. Thirteenth Century Text.7Domine dominus nosterq̄madmirabile est nomen tuum in universa terra. Quoniam elevata est magnificentia tua super celos. Ex ore infantiumt̄lactentiump̄fecistilaudemp̄pterinimicos tuos ut destruasinimicūt̄ultorem. Quoniam videbo celos tuos operadigitor.tuor.lunamt̄stellas que tu fundasti Quid esth̥̊quod memor es ejus,aūfiliush̥ōisquia visitas eum. Minuisti eumpaulominus; ab angelis, gloriat̄honore coronasti eumt̄cstituistieum super opera manuumtuar.Om̄iasubjecisti sub pedibs ejus, ovest̄bovesuniv̄sas, insupert̄pecora campi. Volucres celit̄pisces marisq̄p̄ambulantsemitas maris. Domine dominus noster quam admirabile est nomen tuum inuniv̄saterra.[128]I translate literally; the Septuagint confirming the Vulgate in the differences from our common rendering, several of which are important.“1. Oh Lord, our own Lord, how admirable is thy Name in all the earth!2. Because thy magnificence is set above the heavens.3. Out of the mouth of children and sucklings thou hast perfected praise, because of thine enemies, that thou mightest scatter the enemy and avenger.4. Since I see thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars which thou hast founded,5. What is man that thou rememberest him, or the son of man, that thou lookest on him?6. Thou hast lessened him a little from the angels; thou hast crowned him with glory and honour, and hast set him over all the works of thy hands.7. Thou hast put all things under his feet; sheep, and all oxen—and the flocks of the plain.8. The birds of the heaven and the fish of the sea, and all that walk in the paths of the sea.9. Oh Lord, our own Lord, how admirable is thy Name in all the earth!”Note in Verses 1 and 9.—Domine, Dominus noster; ourownLord;Κύριε, ὁ Κύριος ἡμῶν; claiming thus the Fatherhood. The ‘Lord our Governour’ of the Prayer Book entirely loses the meaning. Howadmirableis Thy[129]Name!θαυμαστον, ‘wonderful,’ as in Isaiah, “His name shall be called Wonderful, the Counsellor.” Again our translation ‘excellent’ loses the meaning.Verse 2.—Thy magnificence. Literally, ‘thy greatness in working’ (Gk.μεγαλοπρέπεια—splendour in aspect), distinguished from mere ‘glory’ or greatness in fame.Verse 3.—Sidney has it:“From sucklings hath thy honour sprung,Thy force hath flowed from babies’ tongue.”The meaning of this difficult verse is given by implication inMatt. xxi. 16. And again, that verse, like all the other great teachings of Christ, is open to a terrific misinterpretation;—namely, the popular evangelical one, that children should be teachers and preachers,—(“cheering mother, cheering father, from the Bible true”). The lovely meaning of the words of Christ, which this vile error hides, is that children,remaining children, and uttering, out of their own hearts, such things as their Maker puts there, are pure in sight, and perfect in praise.8Verse 4.—The moon and the stars which thou hast founded—‘fundasti’—ἐθεμελίωσας. It is much more than ‘ordained’: the idea of stable placing in space being the main one in David’s mind. And it remains to this day[130]the wonder of wonders in all wise men’s minds. The earth swings round the sun,—yes, but what holds the sun? The sun swings round something else. Be it so,—then, what else?Sidney:—“When I upon the heavens do look,Which all from thee their essence took,When moon and stars mythoughtbeholdeth,Whose life no life but of thee holdeth.”Verse 5.—That thou lookest on him;ἐπισκέπτῃ αυτον, ‘art a bishop to him.’ The Greek word is the same in the verse “I was sick and yevisitedme.”Verse 6.—Thou hast lessened him;—perhaps better, thou hast made him but by a little, less, than the angels:ἠλάττωσας αὐτὸν βραχύ τι. The inferiority is not of present position merely, but of scale in being.Verse 7.—Sheep, and all oxen, and theflocks of the plain:κτήνη τοῦ πεδίον. Beasts for service in the plain, traversing great spaces,—camel and horse. ‘Pecora,’ in Vulgate, includes all ‘pecunia,’ or property in animals.Verse 8.—In the Greek, “that walk the paths of the seas” is only an added description of fish, but the meaning of it is without doubt to give an expanded sense—a generalization of fish, so as to include the whale, seal, tortoise, and their like. Neither whales nor seals, however, from what I hear of modern fishing, are[131]likely to walk the paths of the sea much longer; and Sidney’s verse becomes mere satire:—“The bird, free burgesse of the aire,The fish, of sea the native heire,And what things els of waters tracethThe unworn pathes, his rule embraceth.Oh Lord, that rul’st our mortal lyne,How through the world thy name doth shine!”These being, as far as I can trace them, the literal meanings of each verse, the entire purport of the psalm is that the Name, orknowledge, of God was admirable to David, and the power and kingship of God recognizable to him, through the power and kingship of man, His vicegerent on the earth, as the angels are in heavenly places. And that final purport of the psalm is evermore infallibly true,—namely, that when men rule the earth rightly, and feel the power of their own souls over it, and its creatures, as a beneficent and authoritative one, they recognise the power of higher spirits also; and the Name of God becomes ‘hallowed’ to them, admirable and wonderful; but if they abuse the earth and its creatures, and become mere contentious brutes upon it, instead of order-commanding kings, the Name of God ceases to be admirable to them, and His power to be felt; and gradually, license and ignorance prevailing together, even what memories of law or Deity remain to them become intolerable; and in the exact[132]contrary to David’s—“My soul thirsteth for God, for the Living God; when shall I come and appear before God?”—you have the consummated desire and conclusive utterance of the modern republican:“S’il y avait un Dieu, il faudrait le fusiller.”Now, whatever chemical or anatomical facts may appear to our present scientific intelligences, inconsistent with the Life of God, the historical fact is that no happiness nor power has ever been attained by human creatures unless in that thirst for the presence of a Divine King; and that nothing but weakness, misery, and death have ever resulted from the desire to destroy their King, and to have thieves and murderers released to them instead. Also this fact is historically certain,—that the Life of God is not to be discovered by reasoning, but by obeying; that on doing what is plainly ordered, the wisdom and presence of the Orderer become manifest; that only so His way can be known on earth, and His saving health among all nations; and that on disobedience always follows darkness, the forerunner of death.And now for corollary on the eighth Psalm, read the first and second of Hebrews, and to the twelfth verse of the third, slowly; fitting the verse of the psalm—“lunam et stellas quæ tu fundasti,” with “Thou, Lord, in the beginning hast laid the foundations of the earth”; and then noting how the subjection which is merely of the lower creature, in the psalm, becomes the subjection of[133]all things, and at last of death itself, in the victory foretold to those who are faithful to their Captain, made perfect through sufferings; their Faith, observe, consisting primarily in closer and more constant obedience than the Mosaic law required,—“For if the word spoken by angels was stedfast, and every transgression and disobedience received its just recompence of reward, how shallweescape, if we neglect so great salvation?” The full argument is: “Moses, with but a little salvation, saved you from earthly bondage, and brought you to an earthly land of life; Christ, with a great salvation, saves you from soul bondage, and brings you to an eternal land of life; but, if he who despised the little salvation, and its lax law, (left lax because of the hardness of your hearts,) died without mercy, how shall we escape, if now, with hearts of flesh, we despise so great salvation, refuse the Eternal Land of Promise, and break the stricter and relaxless law of Christian desert-pilgrimage?” And if these threatenings and promises still remain obscure to us, it is only because we have resolutely refused to obey the orders which were not obscure, and quenched the Spirit which was already given. How far the world around us may be yet beyond our control, only because a curse has been brought upon it by our sloth and infidelity, none of us can tell; still less may we dare either to praise or accuse our Master, for the state of the creation over which He appointed us kings, and in which we have[134]chosen to live as swine. One thing we know, or may know, if we will,—that the heart and conscience of man are divine; that in his perception of evil, in his recognition of good, he is himself a God manifest in the flesh; that his joy in love, his agony in anger, his indignation at injustice, his glory in self-sacrifice, are all eternal, indisputable proofs of his unity with a great Spiritual Head; that in these, and not merely in his more availing form, or manifold instinct, he is king over the lower animate world; that, so far as he denies or forfeits these, he dishonours the Name of his Father, and makes it unholy and unadmirable in the earth; that so far as he confesses, and rules by, these, he hallows and makes admirable the Name of his Father, and receives, in his sonship, fulness of power with Him, whose are the kingdom, the power, and the glory, world without end.And now we may go back to our bees’ nests, and to our school-benches, in peace; able to assure our little Agnes, and the like of her, that, whatever hornets and locusts and serpents may have been made for, this at least is true,—that we may set, and are commanded to set, an eternal difference between ourselves and them, by neither carrying daggers at our sides, nor poison in our mouths: and that the choice for us is stern, between being kings over all these creatures, by innocence to which they cannot be exalted, or more weak, miserable and detestable than they, in resolute guilt to which they cannot fall.[135]Of their instincts, I believe we have rather held too high than too low estimate, because we have not enough recognized or respected our own. We do not differ from the lower creatures by not possessing instinct, but by possessing will and conscience, to order our innate impulses to the best ends.The great lines of Pope on this matter, however often quoted fragmentarily, are I think scarcely ever understood in their conclusion.9Let us, for once, read them to their end:—“See him, from Nature, rising slow to Art,To copy instinct then was reason’s part.Thus then to man the voice of Nature spake:Go,—from the creatures thy instructions take,Learn from the birds what food the thickets yield,Learn from the beasts the physic of the field,Thy arts of building from the bee receive,Learn of the mole to plough, the worm to weave.Here too all forms of social union find,And hence let reason, late, instruct mankind.Here subterranean works and cities see,There, towns aerial on the waving tree;Learn each small people’s genius, policies,The ants’ republic, and the realm of bees:[136]How those in common all their wealth bestow,And anarchy without confusion know;And these for ever, though a monarch reign,Their separate cells and properties maintain.Mark what unvaried laws preserve each state—Laws wise as nature, and as fixed as fate;In vain thy reason finer webs shall draw,Entangle justice in her net of law,And right, too rigid, harden into wrong—Still for the strong too weak, the weak, too strong.Yet go, and thus o’er all the creatures sway,Thus let the wiser make the rest obey,And for those arts mere instinct could affordBe crowned as monarchs, or as gods ador’d.”There is a trace, in this last couplet, of the irony, and chastising enforcement of humiliation, which generally characterize the ‘Essay on Man’; but, though it takes this colour, the command thus supposed to be uttered by the voice of Nature, is intended to be wholly earnest. “In the arts of which I set you example in the unassisted instinct of lower animals, I assistyouby the added gifts of will and reason: be therefore, knowingly, in the deeds of Justice, kings under the Lord of Justice, while in the works of your hands, you remain happy labourers under His guidanceWho taught the nations of the field and woodTo shun their poison, and to choose their food,[137]Prescient, the tides or tempests to withstand,Build on the wave, or arch beneath the sand.”Nor has ever any great work been accomplished by human creatures, in which instinct was not the principal mental agent, or in which the methods of design could be defined by rule, or apprehended by reason. It is therefore that agency through mechanism destroys the powers of art, and sentiments of religion, together.And it will be found ultimately by all nations, as it was found long ago by those who have been leaders in human force and intellect, that the initial virtue of the race consists in the acknowledgment of their own lowly nature and submission to the laws of higher being. “Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return,” is the first truth we have to learn of ourselves; and to till the earth out of which we were taken, our first duty: in that labour, and in the relations which it establishes between us and the lower animals, are founded the conditions of our highest faculties and felicities: and without that labour, neither reason, art, nor peace, are possible to man.But in that labour, accepting bodily death, appointed to us in common with the lower creatures, in noble humility; and kindling day by day the spiritual life, granted to us beyond that of the lower creatures, in noble pride, all wisdom, peace, and unselfish hope and love, may be reached, on earth, as in heaven, and our lives indeed be but a little lessened from those of the angels.As I am finishing this Fors, I note in the journals[138]accounts of new insect-plague on the vine; and the sunshine on my own hills this morning (7th April), still impure, is yet the first which I have seen spread from the daybreak upon them through all the spring; so dark it has been with blight of storm,—so redolent of disease and distress; of which, and its possible causes, my friends seek as the only wise judgment, that of the journals aforesaid. Here, on the other hand, are a few verses10of the traditional wisdom of that king whose political institutions were so total a failure, (according to my supremely sagacious correspondent,) which nevertheless appear to me to reach the roots of these, and of many other hitherto hidden things.“His heart is ashes, his hope is more vile than earth, and his life of less value than clay.Forasmuch as he knew not his Maker, and him that inspired into him an active soul, and breathed in him a living spirit.But they counted our life a pastime, and our time here a market for gain; for, say they, we must be getting every way, though it be by evil means.11Yea, they worshipped those beasts also that are most hateful; (for being compared together, some are worse than others,12neither are they beautiful in respect of beasts,)[139]but they went without the praise of God, and his blessing.Therefore by the like were they punished worthily, and by the multitude of beasts tormented.And in this thou madest thine enemies confess, that it is thou who deliverest them from all evil.But thy sons not the very teeth of venomous dragons overcame: for thy mercy was ever by them, and healed them.For thou hast power of life and death: thou leadest to the gates of hell, and bringest up again.For the ungodly, that denied to know thee, were scourged by the strength of thine arm: with strange rains, hails, and showers, were they persecuted, that they could not avoid, for through fire were they consumed.Instead whereof thou feddest thine own people with angels’ food, and didst send them, from heaven, bread prepared without their labour, able to content every man’s delight, and agreeing to every taste.For thy sustenance declared thy sweetness unto thy children, and serving to the appetite of the eater, tempered itself to every man’s liking.For the creature that serveth thee, who art the Maker, increaseth his strength against the unrighteous for their[140]punishment, and abateth his strength for the benefit of such as put their trust in thee.Therefore even then was it altered into all fashions, and was obedient to thy grace, that nourisheth all things, according to the desire of them that had need:That thy children, O Lord, whom thou lovest, might know that it is not the growing of fruits that nourisheth man: but that it is thy word, which preserveth them that put their trust in thee.For that which was not destroyed of the fire, being warmed with a little sunbeam, soon melted away:That it might be known, that we must prevent the sun to give thee thanks, and at the dayspring pray unto thee.”[141][Contents]NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE.“The Parsonage, Werrington, Peterborough,April 7, 1875.“My dear Sir,—Your lady correspondent brings out in her own experience that sound Christian truth, of which the condemnable doctrines of ‘substitution’ and ‘vicarious righteousness’ are but the perversions. Her experience shows how true it is that one man may so live and suffer that others shall be morally the better for his life and suffering.“Such a man’s righteousness is ‘imputed’ because reallyimparted13to those who have faith in him.“Of Felix Neff I know less than I ought, but if his ministry tended to bring more sweetness and light into your correspondent’s life, surely his influence in her mind is moral and healthful.“I am very faithfully yours,“Edward Z. Lyttel.“John Ruskin, Esq.”[142]I transgress the laws of courtesy, in printing, without asking the writer’s permission, part of a letter which follows: but my correspondent is not, as far as I know him, a man who shrinks from publicity, or who would write in a private letter anything on general subjects which he would be unwilling openly to maintain; while the letter itself is so monumental as a type of the condition to which the modern average literary mind has been reduced, in its reading of authoritative classical authors, and touches so precisely on points which it happens to be my immediate business to set at rest in the minds of many of my readers, that I cannot but attribute to the Third Fors the direct inspiration of the epistle—and must leave on her hands what blame may be attached to its publication. I had been expressing some surprise to my correspondent (an acquaintance of long standing) at his usually bright and complacent temper; and making some enquiry about his views respecting modern usury, knowing him to have read, at least for literary purposes, large portions of the Old Testament. He replies,—“I am sure I would not be wiser if I were ‘more uncomfortable’ in my mind; I am perfectly sure, if I can ever do good to any mortal, it will be by calm working, patient thinking, not by running, or raging, or weeping, or wailing. But for this humour, which I fancy I caught from Shakespeare and Goethe, the sorrow of the world would drive me mad.“You ask what I think ‘the Psalmist’ means by ‘usury.’ I find from Cruden that usury is mentioned only in the fifteenth Psalm. That is a notable and most beautiful lyric, quite sufficient to demonstrate the superiority, in spirituality and morality, of the Hebrew religion to anything Greek. But the bit about usury is pure nonsense—the only bit of nonsense in the piece. Nonsense, because the singer has no notion whatever of the employment of money for thecommonbenefit[143]of lender and borrower. As the Hebrew monarchy was politically a total and disastrous failure, I should not expect any opinion worth listening to from a psalmist, touching directly or indirectly on the organisation of industry. Jesus Christ and Matthew the publican lived in a time of extended intercourse and some commerce; accordingly, inMatthew xxv., verse 27, you have a perfect statement of the truth about usury: ‘Thou oughtest to have put my money to the exchangers, and at my coming I should have received mine own with usury.’ Ricardo, with all Lombard Street to help him, could not improve upon that. A legitimate, useful, profitable use of money is to accommodate strangers who come with money that will not circulate in the country. The exchanger gives them current money; they pay a consideration for the convenience; and out of this comes the legitimate profit to be divided between lender and borrower. The rule which applies to one fruitful use of money will apply to a thousand, and, between wise lending and honest borrowing, swamp and forest become field and garden, and mountains wave with corn. Some professor or other had written what seemed outrageous rubbish; you confuted or thrust aside, in an early Fors, that rubbish; but against legitimate interest, usury, call it what you like, I have never heard any argument. Mr. Sillar’s tracts I have never seen,—he does not advertise, and I have not the second sight.“My view of the grievous abuses in the publishing and bookselling trades has not altered. But, since writing you first on the subject, I have had careful conversations with publishers, and have constantly pondered the matter; and though I do not see my way to any complete reform, I cannot entertain hope from your methods.“I am tired, being still very weak. It would only bother you if I went on. Nothing you have ever written has, I think, enabled me to get so near comprehending you as your picture[144]of yourself learning to read and write in last Fors. You can see an individual concrete fact better than any man of the generation; but an invisible fact, an abstraction, anaverage, you have, I fancy, been as incapable of seeing as of seeing through a stone wall. Political Economy is the science of social averages.“Ever affectionately and faithfully yours.“P.S. (Sunday morning). Some fancy has been haunting me in the night of its being presumptuous, or your thinking it presumptuous, in me to say that David, or whoever wrote the fifteenth Psalm, spoke, on the subject of interest, pure nonsense. After carefully going over the matter again, I believe that I am accurately correct. Not knowing what lending and borrowing, as a normal industrial transaction, or trading transaction, was, the Psalmist spoke in vague ethical terms, meaning ‘you should be friendly to your neighbour’; just as a lady economist of to-day might shriek against the pawn-shop, which, with all its defects, had, in capacity of Poor Man’s Bank, saved many a child, or woman, or man, from sheer starvation. Not understanding the matter, the Psalmist could not distinguish between use and abuse, and so talked nonsense. It is exquisitely interesting to me to observe that Christ hits the Psalmist exactly on the point where he goes wrong.Τὸ ἀργύριον ἀυτοῦ οὐκ ἔδωκεν ἐπὶ τόκῳ, says thePsalmist;Πονηρὲ δοῦλε .… ἔδει σεοὖνβαλεῖν τὸ ἀργύριόν μου τοῖς τραπαζίταις, καὶ ἐλθὼν ἐγὼ ἐκομισάμην ἂν τὸ ἐμὸνσυν τόκῳ, saysChrist. The use of thesame wordin the Septuagint (the only Old Testament circulating in Palestine in Christ’s time) and in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, to denote in the one case what no good man would take, in the other, what it was a flagrant dereliction of dutynotto secure, is most precious as illustrating the simple common sense with which Christ used the old Scriptures, and[145]the infinite falsity of the modern doctrine of infallibility, whether of church, book, or man. One of those transcendencies of rightness which I find in Fors (amid things about Marmontel and Drury Lane, and Darwin and Huxley, worthy only of a Psalmist or pretty economist of fifteen) was your idea of policemen-bishops. I always agree also with what you say about the entirely obsolete and useless bishops at £5000 a-year.… But what I was going to say is, that you ought to ask your bishop, or the whole bench of them, to find a place, in their cart-loads of sermons, for one on ‘usury,’14as condemned by the Psalmist and enjoined by Christ. CompareLuke xix., ver. 23. The only sound basis of banking is the fruitful, industrial use of money. I by no means maintain that the present banking system of Europe is safe and sound.”I submitted the proof of this Fors to my correspondent, and think it due to him and to my readers to print, with the above letter, also the following portions of that which he sent in gentle reply. So far as I have misconceived or misrepresented him, he knows me to be sorry. For the rest, our misconceptions of each other are of no moment: the misconception, by either, of the nature of profit by the loan of money, or tools, is of moment to every one over whom we have influence; we neither of us have any business to be wrong in that matter; and there are few on which it is more immediately every man’s business to be right.“Remonstrance were absurd, where misconception is so total as yours. My infidelity is simply that I worship Christ, thanking every one who gives me any glimpse that enables me to get nearer Christ’s meaning. In this light, what you say of a[146]hidden sense or drift in the parables interests me profoundly; but the more I think of the question of interest, the more I feel persuaded that Christ distinguished the use from the abuse. Tradition, almost certainly authentic, imputes to Him the sayingγίνεσθε τραπεζιται δόκιμοι(see M. Arnold’s article in MarchContemporary), and I don’t see how there can be honourable bankers,—men, living honourably by banking,—ifalltaking of interest is wrong. You speak of my ‘supreme confidence’ in my own opinions. I absolutely have confidence only in the resolution to keep my eyes open for light and, if I can help it, not to be to-day exactly where I was yesterday. I have not only read, but lived in, (as a very atmosphere) the works of men whom you say I went to because somebody said it was fine to do so. They have taught me some comprehensiveness, some tolerance, some moderation in judging even the mob. They have taught me to consume my own smoke, and it is this consumption of my own smoke which you seem to have mistaken for confidence in my opinions. Which prophet, from Moses to Carlyle, would notyouconfess to have been sometimes in the wrong? I said that I worship Christ. In Him I realize, so far as I can realize, God. Therefore I speak not of Him. But the very key-stone of any arch of notions in my mind is that inspiration is one of the mightiest and most blessed of forces, one of the most real of facts, but that infallibility is the error of errors. From no prophet, from no book, do I take what I please and leave what I please; but, applying all the lights I have, I learn from each as wisely as, with my powers and my lights, is possible for me.“Affectionately yours.”I have received, “with the respects of the author,” a pamphlet on the Crystal Palace; which tells me, in its first sentence, that the Crystal Palace is a subject which every cultivated Englishman[147]has at heart; in its second, that the Crystal Palace is a household word, and is the loftiest moral triumph of the world; and in its third, that the Palace is declining, it is said,—verging towards decay. I have not heard anything for a long time which has more pleased me; and beg to assure the author of the pamphlet in question that I never get up at Herne Hill after a windy night without looking anxiously towards Norwood in the hope that ‘the loftiest moral triumph of the world’ may have been blown away.I find the following lovely little scene translated into French from the Dutch, (M. J. Rigeveld, Amsterdam, C. L. Brinkman, 1875,) in a valuable little periodical for ladies, ‘l’Espérance,’ of Geneva, in which the entirely good purpose of the editor will, I doubt not, do wide service, in spite of her adoption of the popular error of the desirability of feminine independence.“A PROPOS D’UNE PAIRE DE GANTS.“ ‘Qu’y a-t-il, Elise?’ dit Madame, en se tournant du côté d’une fenêtre ouverte, où elle entend quelque bruit. ‘Oh! moins que rien, maman!’ répond sa fille aînée, en train de faire la toilette des cadets, pour la promenade et le concert. ‘Ce que c’est, maman?’ crie un des petits garçons, ‘c’est que Lolotte ne veut pas mettre des gants.’ ‘Elle dit qu’elle a assez chaud sans cela,’ reprend un autre, ‘et qu’elle ne trouve pas même joli d’avoir des gants.’ Et chacun de rire. Un des rapporteurs continue: ‘Elise veut qu’elle le fasse par convenance; mais Lolotte prétend que la peau humaine est plus convenable qu’une peau de rat.’ Cette boutade excite de nouveau l’hilarité de la compagnie. ‘Quelle idée, Lolotte,’ dit son père d’un ton enjoué: ‘montre-toi donc!’“Apparemment Lolotte n’est pas d’humeur à obéir; mais les[148]garçons ne lui laissent pas le choix et la poussent en avant. La voilà donc, notre héroïne. C’est une fillette d’environ quatorze ans, dont les yeux pétillent d’esprit et de vie; on voit qu’elle aime à user largement de la liberté que lui laisse encore son âge, pour dire son opinion sur tout ce qui lui passe par la tête sans conséquence aucune. Mais bien qu’elle soit forte dans son opinionanti-gantière, l’enfant est tant soit peu confuse, et ne paraît pas portée à défendre sa cause en présence d’un étranger. ‘Quoi donc,’ lui dit son père, en la prenant par la taille, ‘tu ne veux pas porter des gants, parce qu’ils sont faits de peaux de rats! Je ne te croyais pas si folle. Le rat est morte et oublié depuis longtemps, et sa peau est glacée.’—‘Non, papa, ce n’est pasça.’—‘Qu’est-ce donc, mon enfant? Tu est trop grande fille pour ces manières sans façon. Ne veux-tu pas être une demoiselle comme il faut?’ ‘Et ces petites mains qui touchent si bien du piano,’ reprend le visiteur, désireux de faire oublier la gêne que cause sa présence, par un mot gracieux. ‘Ne veux-tu pas plutôt renoncer à la musique, et devenir sarcleuse?’ lui demande son père.—‘Non, papa, point du tout. Je ne puis pas dire au juste ma pensée.…’ Et elle se dégagea doucement de ses bras; et en se sauvant, grommela: ‘Mort aux gants, et vive la civilisation!’ On rit encore un peu de l’enfant bizarre; puis on parle d’autres choses, et l’on se prépare pour la promenade. Lolotte a mis les gants en question, ‘pour plaire à maman,’ et personne ne s’en occupe plus.“Mais l’étranger avait saisi au passage sa dernière phrase, qui sans cesse, lui revenait à l’esprit. Se reprochait-il devant cette enfant naïve sa complicité à l’interprétation futile que son hôte avait donné dela civilisation? Tant est, que pendant le cours de la soirée, se trouvant un moment en tête-à-tête avec Lolotte, il revint à l’histoire des gants. Il tâcha de réparer sa gaucherie et fit si bien, qu’il gagna la confiance de la petite. ‘Sans doute[149]j’en conviens,’ dit-il, ‘il faut plus pour être civilisé que de porter des gants, mais il faut se soumettre à certaines convenances que les gens comme il faut.…’ ‘C’est ça, Monsieur,’ dit-elle, en lui coupant la parole, ‘quelle est donc la chance des gens qui voudraient se civiliser, mais qui n’ont pas d’argent pour acheter des gants?’ C’était-là sa peine. ‘Chère enfant!’ dit-il tout bas. Et l’homme, si éloquent d’ordinaire, pressa la petite main sous le gant obligatoire, parce que pour le moment les paroles lui manquaient pour répondre.… Est-ce étonnant que, malgré lui, plus tard en s’occupant de la question sociale, il pensa souvent à cette jeune fille?“Et vous, lecteurs, que pensez-vous d’elle et de sa question gantière? Vous paraît-elle un enfantillage, ou bien la considerez-vous tout bonnement comme une exagération? Vous attachez-vous à la surface,oubien y cherchez-vous un sens plus profond, comme l’ami visiteur? Ne croyez-vous pas aussi que dans ce temps de ‘besoins multipliés,’ un des plus grands services que les classes supérieures puissent rendre au peuple, serait de faire distinction entre tous ces besoins et de prêcher d’exemple?”This bit of letter must find room—bearing as it does on last Fors’ subject:—“I was asking a girl this morning if she still took her long walks; and she said she was as fond of them as ever, but that they could only walk in the town now—the field or country walks were not safe for ladies alone. Indeed, I fancy the girls lose all care for, or knowledge of the spring or summer—except as they bring new fashions into the shop windows, not fresh flowers any more here into the fields. It is pitiable to live in a place like this—even worse than in ——. For here the process of spoiling country is going on under one’s eyes;—in —— it was done long ago. And just now, when the feeling of spring is upon one, it is hard[150]to have the sky darkened, and the air poisoned. But I am wasting time in useless grumbling. Only listen to this:—after all our sacrifices, and with all our money and civilization——I can’t tell you now; it must wait.”—[Very well; but don’t keep it waiting longer than you need.]I have had some good help about bees’ tongues from a young correspondent at Merrow Grange, Guildford, and a very clear drawing, to which the subjoined piece of his last letter refers; but I must not lose myself in microscopic questions just now:—“The author of ‘The Microscope’ keeps to the old idea of bees sucking honey and not ‘licking it up,’ for he says, ‘The proboscis, being cylindrical, extracts the juice of the flower in a somewhat similar way to that of the butterfly.’ And of the tongue he says, ‘If a bee is attentively observed as it settles upon a flower, the activity and promptitude with which it uses the apparatus is truly surprising; it lengthens the tongue, applies it to the bottom of the petals, then shortens it, bending and turning it in all directions, for the purpose of exploring the interior and removing the pollen, which it packs in the pockets in its hind legs, (by, he supposes, the two shorter feelers,) and forms the chief food for the working-bees.’ He says that when the waxen walls of the cells are completed, they are strengthened by a varnish collected from the buds of the poplar and other trees, which they smear over the cells by the aid of the wonderful apparatus. That part of the proboscis that looks something like a human head, he says, ‘can be considerably enlarged … and thus made to contain a larger quantity of the collected juice of the flowers; at the same time it is in this cavity that the nectar is transformed into pure honey by some peculiar chemical process.’ ”[151]Note on page145.—My correspondent need not be at a loss for sermons on usury. When the Christian Church was living, there was no lack of such. Here are two specimens of their tenor, furnished me by one of Mr. Sillar’s pamphlets:—Extract from the Exposition upon theFirst Epistle to the Thessalonians, Ch. IV. ver. 6. By Bishop Jewell.“Usury is a kind of lending of money, or corn, or oil, or wine, or of any other thing, wherein, upon covenant and bargain,we receive again the whole principalwhich we delivered,and somewhat morefor the use and occupying of the same: as, if I lent one hundred pounds, and for it covenant to receive one hundred and five pounds, or any other sum greater than was the sum which I did lend. This is that that we call usury; such a kind of bargaining as no good man, or godly man, ever used; such a kind of bargaining as all men that ever feared God’s judgment have always abhorred and condemned.It is filthy gains, and a work of darkness: it is a monster in nature; the overthrow of mighty kingdoms; the destruction of flourishing states; the decay of wealthy cities; the plagues of the world, and the misery of the people. It is theft; it is the murdering of our brethren; it is the curse of God, and the curse of the people.This is usury: by these signs and tokens you may know it: for wheresoever it reigneth, all those mischiefs ensue. But how, and how many ways, it may be wrought, I will not declare: it were horrible to hear; and I come now to reprove usury, and not to teach it.“Tell me, thou wretched wight of the world, thou unkind creature, which art past all sense and feeling of God; which knowest the will of God, and doest the contrary: how darest thou come into the church? It is the church of that God which hath said, ‘Thou shalt take no usury’; and thou knowest He hath so said. How darest thou read or hear the word of[152]God? It is the word of that God which condemneth usury; and thou knowest He doth condemn it. How darest thou come into the company of thy brethren? Usury is the plague, and destruction, and undoing of thy brethren; and this thou knowest. How darest thou look upon thy children? thou makest the wrath of God fall down from heaven upon them; thy iniquity shall be punished in them to the third and fourth generation: this thou knowest. How darest thou look up into heaven? thou hast no dwelling there; thou shalt have no place in the tabernacle of the Highest: this thou knowest. Because thou robbest the poor, deceivest the simple, and eatest up the widows’ houses: therefore shall thy children be naked, and beg their bread; therefore shalt thou and thy riches perish together.”Extract from the Farewell Sermon preached in the Church of St. Mary Woolnoth, Lombard Street, by the Rev. David Jones, when the present system was in its infancy.“And the Pharisees also, who were covetous, heard all these things, and they derided him.”—Lukexvi. 14.“I do openly declare that every minister and every churchwarden throughout all England are actually perjured and foresworn by the 109th canon of our church, if they suffer any usurer to come to the sacrament till he be reformed, and there is no reformation without restitution.*   *   *“And that you may know what usury is forbid by the word of God, turn toEzekiel xviii. 8, 13, and you will find that, whoever giveth upon usury or taketh any increase,—Mark it,—he that takethanyincrease above the principal,—not six in the hundred, but let it be never so little, and never so moderate,—he that takethanyincrease, is a usurer, and such a one as shall surely[153]die for his usury, and his blood shall be upon his own head. This is that word of God by which you shall all be saved or damned at the last day, and all those trifling and shuffling distinctions that covetous usurers ever invented shall never be able to excuse your damnation.“Heretofore all usurious clergymen were degraded from Holy Orders, and all usurious laymen were excommunicated in their lifetime, and hindered Christian burial after death, till their heirs had made restitution for all they had gotten by usury.”As this sheet is going to press, I receive a very interesting letter from “a poor mother.” That no wholesome occupation is at present offered in England to youths of the temper she describes, is precisely the calamity which urged my endeavour to found the St. George’s Company. But if she will kindly tell me the boy’s age, and whether the want of perseverance she regrets in him has ever been tested by giving him sufficient motive for consistent exertion, I will answer what I can, in next ‘Fors.’[155]1See my first notice of it in the beginning of the Fors of August 1871; and further account of it in appendix to my Lecture on Glaciers, given at the London Institution this year.↑2Will the reader be kind enough, in thelasttwo lines of page 128, to put, with his pen, a semicolon after “age”, a comma after “unclean,” and a semicolon after “use”? He will find the sentence thus take a different meaning.↑3Isaiah xxviii. 17 and 18.↑4The whole woodcut is given in facsimile in the fifth part of ‘Ariadne Florentina.’↑5See ‘Munera Pulveris,’ pp. 99 to 103; and ‘Ariadne Florentina,’ Lecture VI.↑6“Narr.Fünftausend Kronen wären mir zu Handen.Meph.Zweibeiniger Schlauch, bist wieder auferstanden?Narr.Geschieht mir oft, doch nicht so gut als jetzt.Meph.Du freust dich so, dass dich’s in Schweiss versetzt.Narr.Da seht nur her, ist das wohl Geldes werth?Meph.Du hast dafür was Schlund und Bauch begehrt.Narr.Und kaufen kann ich Acker, Haus, und Vieh?Meph.Versteht sich!Bietenur, das fehlt dir nie!Narr.Und Schloss mit Wald und Jagd, und Fischbach?Meph.Traun!Ich möchte dich gestrengen Herrn wohl schaun.Narr.Heute Abend wieg’ ich mich im Grundbesitz.(ab.)Meph.(solus.)Wer zweifelt noch anunsresNarren Witz!”7I have written it out from a perfect English psalter of early thirteenth century work, with St. Edward, St. Edmund, and St. Cuthbert in its calendar; it probably having belonged to the cathedral of York. The writing is very full, but quick; meant for service more than beauty; illuminated sparingly, but with extreme care. Its contractions are curiously varied and capricious: thus, here in the fifth verse, c inconstituististands for ‘con’ merely by being turned the wrong way. I prefer its text, nevertheless, to that of more elaborate MSS., for when very great attention is paid to the writing, there are apt to be mistakes in the words. In the best thirteenth-century service-book I have, ‘tuos’ in the third verse is written ‘meos.’↑8Compare the ‘Crown of Wild Olive,’ p. 57; and put in the fifth line of that page, a comma after ‘heaven,’ and in the eighth line a semicolon after ‘blessing.’↑9I am sensitive for other writers in this point, my own readers being in the almost universal practice of choosing any bit they may happen to fancy in what I say, without ever considering what it was said for.↑10Collated out of Sapientia xv. and xvi.↑11CompareJeremiah ix. 6; in the Septuagint,τόκος ἐπὶ τόκῳ, καὶ δόλος ἐπὶ δόλῳ: “usury on usury, and trick upon trick.”↑12The instinct for the study of parasites, modes of disease, the lower forms of undeveloped creatures, and the instinctive processes of digestion and[139]generation, rather than the varied and noble habit of life,—which shows itself so grotesquely in modern science, is the precise counterpart of the forms of idolatry (as of beetle and serpent, rather than of clean or innocent creatures,) which were in great part the cause of final corruption in ancient mythology and morals.↑13If my good correspondent will try practically the difference in the effect on the minds of the next two beggars he meets, between imputing a penny to the one, and imparting it to the other, he will receive a profitable lesson both in religion and English.Of Felix Neff’s influence, past and present, I will take other occasion to speak.↑14See the note at p.151.↑

FORS CLAVIGERA.LETTER LIII.

Brantwood,Good Friday, 1875.I am ashamed to go on with my own history to-day; for though, as already seen, I was not wholly unacquainted with the practice of fasting, at times of the year when it was not customary with Papists, our Lent became to us a kind of moonlight Christmas, and season of reflected and soft festivity. For our strictly Protestant habits of mind rendering us independent of absolution, on Shrove Tuesday we were chiefly occupied in the preparation of pancakes,—my nurse being dominant on that day over the cook in all things, her especially nutritive art of browning, and fine legerdemain in turning, pancakes, being recognised as inimitable. The interest of Ash-Wednesday was mainly—whether the bits of egg should be large or small in the egg-sauce;—nor do I recollect having any ideas connected with the day’s name, until I was puzzled by the French of it when I fell in love with a Roman Catholic French girl, as hereafter to be related:—only, by the way, let me note, as I chance now to remember, two others of my[118]main occupations of an exciting character in Hunter Street: watching, namely, the dustmen clear out the ash-hole, and the coalmen fill the coal-cellar through the hole in the pavement, which soon became to me, when surrounded by its cone of débris, a sublime representation of the crater of a volcanic mountain. Of these imaginative delights I have no room to speak in this Fors; nor of the debates which used to be held for the two or three days preceding Good Friday, whether the hot-cross-buns should be plain, or have carraway seeds in them. For, my nurse not being here to provide any such dainties for me, and the black-plague wind which has now darkened the spring for five years,1veiling all the hills with sullen cloud, I am neither in a cheerful nor a religious state of mind; and am too much in the temper of the disciples who forsook Him, and fled, to be able to do justice to the childish innocence of belief, which, in my mother, was too constant to need resuscitation, or take new colour, from fast or festival.Yet it is only by her help, to-day, that I am able to do a piece of work required of me by the letter printed in the second article of this month’s correspondence. It is from a man of great worth, conscientiousness, and kindliness; but is yet so perfectly expressive of the irreverence, and incapacity of admiration, which[119]maintain and, in great part, constitute, the modern liberal temper, that it makes me feel, more than anything I ever yet met with in human words, how much I owe to my mother for having so exercised me in the Scriptures as to make me grasp them in what my correspondent would call their ‘concrete whole’; and above all, taught me to reverence them, as transcending all thought, and ordaining all conduct.This she effected, not by her own sayings or personal authority; but simply by compelling me to read the book thoroughly, for myself. As soon as I was able to read with fluency, she began a course of Bible work with me, which never ceased till I went to Oxford. She read alternate verses with me, watching, at first, every intonation of my voice, and correcting the false ones, till she made me understand the verse, if within my reach, rightly, and energetically. It might be beyond me altogether;thatshe did not care about; but she made sure that as soon as I got hold of it at all, I should get hold of it by the right end.In this way she began with the first verse of Genesis and went straight through to the last verse of the Apocalypse; hard names, numbers, Levitical law, and all; and began again at Genesis the next day; if a name was hard, the better the exercise in pronunciation,—if a chapter was tiresome, the better lesson in patience,—if loathsome, the better lesson in faith that there was some use in its being so outspoken. After[120]our chapters, (from two to three a day, according to their length, the first thing after breakfast, and no interruption from servants allowed,—none from visitors, who either joined in the reading or had to stay upstairs,—and none from any visitings or excursions, except real travelling,) I had to learn a few verses by heart, or repeat, to make sure I had not lost, something of what was already known; and, with the chapters above enumerated, (Letter XLII.2), I had to learn the whole body of the fine old Scottish paraphrases, which are good, melodious, and forceful verse; and to which, together with the Bible itself, I owe the first cultivation of my ear in sound.It is strange that of all the pieces of the Bible which my mother thus taught me, that which cost me most to learn, and which was, to my child’s mind, chiefly repulsive—the 119th Psalm—has now become of all the most precious to me, in its overflowing and glorious passion of love for the Law of God: “Oh, how love I Thy law! it is my meditation all the day; I have refrained my feet from every evil way, that I might keep Thy word”;—as opposed to the ever-echoing words of the modern money-loving fool: “Oh, how hate I thy law! it is my abomination all the day; my feet are swift in running to mischief, and I have done all the[121]things I ought not to have done, and left undone all I ought to have done; have mercy upon me, miserable sinner,—and grant that I, worthily lamenting my sins and acknowledging my wretchedness, may obtain of Thee, the God of all mercy, perfect remission and forgiveness,—and give me my long purse here and my eternal Paradise there, all together, for Christ’s sake, to whom, with Thee and the Holy Ghost, be all honour and glory,” etc. And the letter of my liberal correspondent, pointing out, in the defence of usury (of which he imagines himself acquainted with the history!) how the Son of David hit his father in the exactly weak place, puts it in my mind at once to state some principles respecting the use of the Bible as a code of law, which are vital to the action of the St. George’s Company in obedience to it.All the teaching of God, and of the nature He formed round Man, is not only mysterious, but, if received with any warp of mind, deceptive, and intentionally deceptive. The distinct and repeated assertions of this in the conduct and words of Christ are the most wonderful things, it seems to me, and the most terrible, in all the recorded action of the wisdom of Heaven. “Toyou” (His disciples) “it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom,—but to others, in parables, that, hearing, they mightnotunderstand.” Now this is written not for the twelve only, but for all disciples of Christ in all ages,—of whom the sign is one and unmistakable: “They have forsakenallthat they[122]have”; while those who “say they are Jews and are not, but do lie,” or who say they are Christians and are not, but do lie, try to compromise with Christ,—to give Him a part, and keep back a part;—this being the Lie of lies, the Ananias lie, visited always with spiritual death.3There is a curious chapter on almsgiving, by Miss Yonge, in one of the late numbers of the “Monthly Packet”, (a good magazine, though, on the whole, and full of nice writing,) which announces toherdisciples, that “at least the tenth of their income is God’s part.” Now, in the name of the Devil, and of Baal to back him,—are nine parts, then, of all we have—our own? or theirs? The tithe may, indeed, be set aside for some special purpose—for the maintenance of a priesthood—or as by the St. George’s Company, for distant labour, or any other purpose out of their own immediate range of action. But to the Charity or Alms of men—to Love, and to the God of Love,alltheir substance is due—and all their strength—and all their time. That is the first commandment: Thou shalt love the Lord with all thy strength and soul. Yea, says the false disciple—but not with all my money. And of these it is written, after thatthirty-third verse of Luke xiv.: “Salt is good; but if the salt have lost his savour, it is neither fit for the land nor the dunghill. He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.”[123]Now in Holbein’s great sermon against wealth, the engraving, in the Dance of Death, of the miser and beggar, he chose for his text the verse: “He that stoppeth his ears at the cry of the poor, he also shall cry himself, and shall not be heard.” And he shows that the ear is thus deafened by being filled with a murmuring of its own: and how the ear thus becomes only as a twisted shell, with the sound of the far-away ocean of Hell in it for ever, he teaches us, in the figure of the fiend which I engraved for you in the seventh of these letters,4abortive, fingerless, contemptible, mechanical, incapable;—blowing the winds of death out of its small machine: Behold,thisis your God, you modern Israel, which has brought you up out of the land of Egypt in which your fathers toiled for bread with their not abortive hands; and set your feet in the large room, of Usury, and in the broad road to Death!Now the moment that the Mammon devil gets his bellows put in men’s ears,—however innocent they may be, however free from actual stain of avarice, they become literally deaf to the teaching of true and noble men. My correspondent imagines himself to have read Shakespeare and Goethe;—he cannot understand a sentence of them, or he would have known the meaning of the Merchant of Venice,5and of the vision of Plutus,[124]and speech of Mephistopheles on the Emperor’s paper-money6in the second part of Faust, and of the continual under-current of similar teaching in it, from its opening in the mountain sunrise, presently commented on by the Astrologer, under the prompting of Mephistopheles,—“the Sun itself is pure Gold,”—to the ditch-and-grave-digging scene of its close. He cannot read Xenophon, nor Lucian,—nor Plato, nor Horace, nor[125]Pope,—nor Homer, nor Chaucer—nor Moses, nor David.All these are mere voices of the Night to him; the bought bellows-blower of the “Times” is the only piper who is in tune to his ear.And the woe of it is that all the curse comes on him merely as one of the unhappy modern mob, infected by the rest; for he is himself thoroughly honest, simple-hearted, and upright: only mischance made him take up literature as a means of life; and so brought him necessarily into all the elements of modern insolent thought: and now, though David and Solomon, Noah, Daniel, and Job, altogether say one thing, and the correspondent of the “Times” another, it is David, Solomon, and Daniel who are Narrs to him.Now the Parables of the New Testament are so constructed that to men in this insolent temper, they arenecessarilymisleading. It is very awful that it should be so; but that is the fact. Why prayer should be taught by the story of the unjust judge; use of present opportunity by that of the unjust steward; and use of the gifts of God by that of the hard man who reaped where he had not sown,—there is no human creature wise enough to know;—but there are the traps set; and every slack judge, cheating servant, and gnawing usurer may, if he will, approve himself in these.“Thou knewest that I was a hard man.” Yes—and if God were also a hard God, and reaped whereHehad not sown—the conclusion would be true that earthly[126]usury was right. But which of God’s gifts to us arenotHis own?The meaning of the parable, heard with ears unbesotted, is this:—“You, among hard and unjust men, yet suffer their claim to the return of what they never gave; you sufferthemto reap, where they have not strawed.—But to me, the Just Lord of your life—whose is the breath in your nostrils, whose the fire in your blood, who gave you light and thought, and the fruit of earth and the dew of heaven,—to me, of all this gift, will you return no fruit but only the dust of your bodies, and the wreck of your souls?”Nevertheless, the Parables have still their living use, as well as their danger; but the Psalter has become practically dead; and the form of repeating it in the daily service only deadens the phrases of it by familiarity. I have occasion to-day, before going on with any work for Agnes, to dwell on another piece of this writing of the father of Christ,—which, read in its full meaning, will be as new to us as the first-heard song of a foreign land.I will print it first in the Latin, and in the letters and form in which it was read by our Christian sires.[127]The Eight Psalm. Thirteenth Century Text.7Domine dominus nosterq̄madmirabile est nomen tuum in universa terra. Quoniam elevata est magnificentia tua super celos. Ex ore infantiumt̄lactentiump̄fecistilaudemp̄pterinimicos tuos ut destruasinimicūt̄ultorem. Quoniam videbo celos tuos operadigitor.tuor.lunamt̄stellas que tu fundasti Quid esth̥̊quod memor es ejus,aūfiliush̥ōisquia visitas eum. Minuisti eumpaulominus; ab angelis, gloriat̄honore coronasti eumt̄cstituistieum super opera manuumtuar.Om̄iasubjecisti sub pedibs ejus, ovest̄bovesuniv̄sas, insupert̄pecora campi. Volucres celit̄pisces marisq̄p̄ambulantsemitas maris. Domine dominus noster quam admirabile est nomen tuum inuniv̄saterra.[128]I translate literally; the Septuagint confirming the Vulgate in the differences from our common rendering, several of which are important.“1. Oh Lord, our own Lord, how admirable is thy Name in all the earth!2. Because thy magnificence is set above the heavens.3. Out of the mouth of children and sucklings thou hast perfected praise, because of thine enemies, that thou mightest scatter the enemy and avenger.4. Since I see thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars which thou hast founded,5. What is man that thou rememberest him, or the son of man, that thou lookest on him?6. Thou hast lessened him a little from the angels; thou hast crowned him with glory and honour, and hast set him over all the works of thy hands.7. Thou hast put all things under his feet; sheep, and all oxen—and the flocks of the plain.8. The birds of the heaven and the fish of the sea, and all that walk in the paths of the sea.9. Oh Lord, our own Lord, how admirable is thy Name in all the earth!”Note in Verses 1 and 9.—Domine, Dominus noster; ourownLord;Κύριε, ὁ Κύριος ἡμῶν; claiming thus the Fatherhood. The ‘Lord our Governour’ of the Prayer Book entirely loses the meaning. Howadmirableis Thy[129]Name!θαυμαστον, ‘wonderful,’ as in Isaiah, “His name shall be called Wonderful, the Counsellor.” Again our translation ‘excellent’ loses the meaning.Verse 2.—Thy magnificence. Literally, ‘thy greatness in working’ (Gk.μεγαλοπρέπεια—splendour in aspect), distinguished from mere ‘glory’ or greatness in fame.Verse 3.—Sidney has it:“From sucklings hath thy honour sprung,Thy force hath flowed from babies’ tongue.”The meaning of this difficult verse is given by implication inMatt. xxi. 16. And again, that verse, like all the other great teachings of Christ, is open to a terrific misinterpretation;—namely, the popular evangelical one, that children should be teachers and preachers,—(“cheering mother, cheering father, from the Bible true”). The lovely meaning of the words of Christ, which this vile error hides, is that children,remaining children, and uttering, out of their own hearts, such things as their Maker puts there, are pure in sight, and perfect in praise.8Verse 4.—The moon and the stars which thou hast founded—‘fundasti’—ἐθεμελίωσας. It is much more than ‘ordained’: the idea of stable placing in space being the main one in David’s mind. And it remains to this day[130]the wonder of wonders in all wise men’s minds. The earth swings round the sun,—yes, but what holds the sun? The sun swings round something else. Be it so,—then, what else?Sidney:—“When I upon the heavens do look,Which all from thee their essence took,When moon and stars mythoughtbeholdeth,Whose life no life but of thee holdeth.”Verse 5.—That thou lookest on him;ἐπισκέπτῃ αυτον, ‘art a bishop to him.’ The Greek word is the same in the verse “I was sick and yevisitedme.”Verse 6.—Thou hast lessened him;—perhaps better, thou hast made him but by a little, less, than the angels:ἠλάττωσας αὐτὸν βραχύ τι. The inferiority is not of present position merely, but of scale in being.Verse 7.—Sheep, and all oxen, and theflocks of the plain:κτήνη τοῦ πεδίον. Beasts for service in the plain, traversing great spaces,—camel and horse. ‘Pecora,’ in Vulgate, includes all ‘pecunia,’ or property in animals.Verse 8.—In the Greek, “that walk the paths of the seas” is only an added description of fish, but the meaning of it is without doubt to give an expanded sense—a generalization of fish, so as to include the whale, seal, tortoise, and their like. Neither whales nor seals, however, from what I hear of modern fishing, are[131]likely to walk the paths of the sea much longer; and Sidney’s verse becomes mere satire:—“The bird, free burgesse of the aire,The fish, of sea the native heire,And what things els of waters tracethThe unworn pathes, his rule embraceth.Oh Lord, that rul’st our mortal lyne,How through the world thy name doth shine!”These being, as far as I can trace them, the literal meanings of each verse, the entire purport of the psalm is that the Name, orknowledge, of God was admirable to David, and the power and kingship of God recognizable to him, through the power and kingship of man, His vicegerent on the earth, as the angels are in heavenly places. And that final purport of the psalm is evermore infallibly true,—namely, that when men rule the earth rightly, and feel the power of their own souls over it, and its creatures, as a beneficent and authoritative one, they recognise the power of higher spirits also; and the Name of God becomes ‘hallowed’ to them, admirable and wonderful; but if they abuse the earth and its creatures, and become mere contentious brutes upon it, instead of order-commanding kings, the Name of God ceases to be admirable to them, and His power to be felt; and gradually, license and ignorance prevailing together, even what memories of law or Deity remain to them become intolerable; and in the exact[132]contrary to David’s—“My soul thirsteth for God, for the Living God; when shall I come and appear before God?”—you have the consummated desire and conclusive utterance of the modern republican:“S’il y avait un Dieu, il faudrait le fusiller.”Now, whatever chemical or anatomical facts may appear to our present scientific intelligences, inconsistent with the Life of God, the historical fact is that no happiness nor power has ever been attained by human creatures unless in that thirst for the presence of a Divine King; and that nothing but weakness, misery, and death have ever resulted from the desire to destroy their King, and to have thieves and murderers released to them instead. Also this fact is historically certain,—that the Life of God is not to be discovered by reasoning, but by obeying; that on doing what is plainly ordered, the wisdom and presence of the Orderer become manifest; that only so His way can be known on earth, and His saving health among all nations; and that on disobedience always follows darkness, the forerunner of death.And now for corollary on the eighth Psalm, read the first and second of Hebrews, and to the twelfth verse of the third, slowly; fitting the verse of the psalm—“lunam et stellas quæ tu fundasti,” with “Thou, Lord, in the beginning hast laid the foundations of the earth”; and then noting how the subjection which is merely of the lower creature, in the psalm, becomes the subjection of[133]all things, and at last of death itself, in the victory foretold to those who are faithful to their Captain, made perfect through sufferings; their Faith, observe, consisting primarily in closer and more constant obedience than the Mosaic law required,—“For if the word spoken by angels was stedfast, and every transgression and disobedience received its just recompence of reward, how shallweescape, if we neglect so great salvation?” The full argument is: “Moses, with but a little salvation, saved you from earthly bondage, and brought you to an earthly land of life; Christ, with a great salvation, saves you from soul bondage, and brings you to an eternal land of life; but, if he who despised the little salvation, and its lax law, (left lax because of the hardness of your hearts,) died without mercy, how shall we escape, if now, with hearts of flesh, we despise so great salvation, refuse the Eternal Land of Promise, and break the stricter and relaxless law of Christian desert-pilgrimage?” And if these threatenings and promises still remain obscure to us, it is only because we have resolutely refused to obey the orders which were not obscure, and quenched the Spirit which was already given. How far the world around us may be yet beyond our control, only because a curse has been brought upon it by our sloth and infidelity, none of us can tell; still less may we dare either to praise or accuse our Master, for the state of the creation over which He appointed us kings, and in which we have[134]chosen to live as swine. One thing we know, or may know, if we will,—that the heart and conscience of man are divine; that in his perception of evil, in his recognition of good, he is himself a God manifest in the flesh; that his joy in love, his agony in anger, his indignation at injustice, his glory in self-sacrifice, are all eternal, indisputable proofs of his unity with a great Spiritual Head; that in these, and not merely in his more availing form, or manifold instinct, he is king over the lower animate world; that, so far as he denies or forfeits these, he dishonours the Name of his Father, and makes it unholy and unadmirable in the earth; that so far as he confesses, and rules by, these, he hallows and makes admirable the Name of his Father, and receives, in his sonship, fulness of power with Him, whose are the kingdom, the power, and the glory, world without end.And now we may go back to our bees’ nests, and to our school-benches, in peace; able to assure our little Agnes, and the like of her, that, whatever hornets and locusts and serpents may have been made for, this at least is true,—that we may set, and are commanded to set, an eternal difference between ourselves and them, by neither carrying daggers at our sides, nor poison in our mouths: and that the choice for us is stern, between being kings over all these creatures, by innocence to which they cannot be exalted, or more weak, miserable and detestable than they, in resolute guilt to which they cannot fall.[135]Of their instincts, I believe we have rather held too high than too low estimate, because we have not enough recognized or respected our own. We do not differ from the lower creatures by not possessing instinct, but by possessing will and conscience, to order our innate impulses to the best ends.The great lines of Pope on this matter, however often quoted fragmentarily, are I think scarcely ever understood in their conclusion.9Let us, for once, read them to their end:—“See him, from Nature, rising slow to Art,To copy instinct then was reason’s part.Thus then to man the voice of Nature spake:Go,—from the creatures thy instructions take,Learn from the birds what food the thickets yield,Learn from the beasts the physic of the field,Thy arts of building from the bee receive,Learn of the mole to plough, the worm to weave.Here too all forms of social union find,And hence let reason, late, instruct mankind.Here subterranean works and cities see,There, towns aerial on the waving tree;Learn each small people’s genius, policies,The ants’ republic, and the realm of bees:[136]How those in common all their wealth bestow,And anarchy without confusion know;And these for ever, though a monarch reign,Their separate cells and properties maintain.Mark what unvaried laws preserve each state—Laws wise as nature, and as fixed as fate;In vain thy reason finer webs shall draw,Entangle justice in her net of law,And right, too rigid, harden into wrong—Still for the strong too weak, the weak, too strong.Yet go, and thus o’er all the creatures sway,Thus let the wiser make the rest obey,And for those arts mere instinct could affordBe crowned as monarchs, or as gods ador’d.”There is a trace, in this last couplet, of the irony, and chastising enforcement of humiliation, which generally characterize the ‘Essay on Man’; but, though it takes this colour, the command thus supposed to be uttered by the voice of Nature, is intended to be wholly earnest. “In the arts of which I set you example in the unassisted instinct of lower animals, I assistyouby the added gifts of will and reason: be therefore, knowingly, in the deeds of Justice, kings under the Lord of Justice, while in the works of your hands, you remain happy labourers under His guidanceWho taught the nations of the field and woodTo shun their poison, and to choose their food,[137]Prescient, the tides or tempests to withstand,Build on the wave, or arch beneath the sand.”Nor has ever any great work been accomplished by human creatures, in which instinct was not the principal mental agent, or in which the methods of design could be defined by rule, or apprehended by reason. It is therefore that agency through mechanism destroys the powers of art, and sentiments of religion, together.And it will be found ultimately by all nations, as it was found long ago by those who have been leaders in human force and intellect, that the initial virtue of the race consists in the acknowledgment of their own lowly nature and submission to the laws of higher being. “Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return,” is the first truth we have to learn of ourselves; and to till the earth out of which we were taken, our first duty: in that labour, and in the relations which it establishes between us and the lower animals, are founded the conditions of our highest faculties and felicities: and without that labour, neither reason, art, nor peace, are possible to man.But in that labour, accepting bodily death, appointed to us in common with the lower creatures, in noble humility; and kindling day by day the spiritual life, granted to us beyond that of the lower creatures, in noble pride, all wisdom, peace, and unselfish hope and love, may be reached, on earth, as in heaven, and our lives indeed be but a little lessened from those of the angels.As I am finishing this Fors, I note in the journals[138]accounts of new insect-plague on the vine; and the sunshine on my own hills this morning (7th April), still impure, is yet the first which I have seen spread from the daybreak upon them through all the spring; so dark it has been with blight of storm,—so redolent of disease and distress; of which, and its possible causes, my friends seek as the only wise judgment, that of the journals aforesaid. Here, on the other hand, are a few verses10of the traditional wisdom of that king whose political institutions were so total a failure, (according to my supremely sagacious correspondent,) which nevertheless appear to me to reach the roots of these, and of many other hitherto hidden things.“His heart is ashes, his hope is more vile than earth, and his life of less value than clay.Forasmuch as he knew not his Maker, and him that inspired into him an active soul, and breathed in him a living spirit.But they counted our life a pastime, and our time here a market for gain; for, say they, we must be getting every way, though it be by evil means.11Yea, they worshipped those beasts also that are most hateful; (for being compared together, some are worse than others,12neither are they beautiful in respect of beasts,)[139]but they went without the praise of God, and his blessing.Therefore by the like were they punished worthily, and by the multitude of beasts tormented.And in this thou madest thine enemies confess, that it is thou who deliverest them from all evil.But thy sons not the very teeth of venomous dragons overcame: for thy mercy was ever by them, and healed them.For thou hast power of life and death: thou leadest to the gates of hell, and bringest up again.For the ungodly, that denied to know thee, were scourged by the strength of thine arm: with strange rains, hails, and showers, were they persecuted, that they could not avoid, for through fire were they consumed.Instead whereof thou feddest thine own people with angels’ food, and didst send them, from heaven, bread prepared without their labour, able to content every man’s delight, and agreeing to every taste.For thy sustenance declared thy sweetness unto thy children, and serving to the appetite of the eater, tempered itself to every man’s liking.For the creature that serveth thee, who art the Maker, increaseth his strength against the unrighteous for their[140]punishment, and abateth his strength for the benefit of such as put their trust in thee.Therefore even then was it altered into all fashions, and was obedient to thy grace, that nourisheth all things, according to the desire of them that had need:That thy children, O Lord, whom thou lovest, might know that it is not the growing of fruits that nourisheth man: but that it is thy word, which preserveth them that put their trust in thee.For that which was not destroyed of the fire, being warmed with a little sunbeam, soon melted away:That it might be known, that we must prevent the sun to give thee thanks, and at the dayspring pray unto thee.”[141][Contents]NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE.“The Parsonage, Werrington, Peterborough,April 7, 1875.“My dear Sir,—Your lady correspondent brings out in her own experience that sound Christian truth, of which the condemnable doctrines of ‘substitution’ and ‘vicarious righteousness’ are but the perversions. Her experience shows how true it is that one man may so live and suffer that others shall be morally the better for his life and suffering.“Such a man’s righteousness is ‘imputed’ because reallyimparted13to those who have faith in him.“Of Felix Neff I know less than I ought, but if his ministry tended to bring more sweetness and light into your correspondent’s life, surely his influence in her mind is moral and healthful.“I am very faithfully yours,“Edward Z. Lyttel.“John Ruskin, Esq.”[142]I transgress the laws of courtesy, in printing, without asking the writer’s permission, part of a letter which follows: but my correspondent is not, as far as I know him, a man who shrinks from publicity, or who would write in a private letter anything on general subjects which he would be unwilling openly to maintain; while the letter itself is so monumental as a type of the condition to which the modern average literary mind has been reduced, in its reading of authoritative classical authors, and touches so precisely on points which it happens to be my immediate business to set at rest in the minds of many of my readers, that I cannot but attribute to the Third Fors the direct inspiration of the epistle—and must leave on her hands what blame may be attached to its publication. I had been expressing some surprise to my correspondent (an acquaintance of long standing) at his usually bright and complacent temper; and making some enquiry about his views respecting modern usury, knowing him to have read, at least for literary purposes, large portions of the Old Testament. He replies,—“I am sure I would not be wiser if I were ‘more uncomfortable’ in my mind; I am perfectly sure, if I can ever do good to any mortal, it will be by calm working, patient thinking, not by running, or raging, or weeping, or wailing. But for this humour, which I fancy I caught from Shakespeare and Goethe, the sorrow of the world would drive me mad.“You ask what I think ‘the Psalmist’ means by ‘usury.’ I find from Cruden that usury is mentioned only in the fifteenth Psalm. That is a notable and most beautiful lyric, quite sufficient to demonstrate the superiority, in spirituality and morality, of the Hebrew religion to anything Greek. But the bit about usury is pure nonsense—the only bit of nonsense in the piece. Nonsense, because the singer has no notion whatever of the employment of money for thecommonbenefit[143]of lender and borrower. As the Hebrew monarchy was politically a total and disastrous failure, I should not expect any opinion worth listening to from a psalmist, touching directly or indirectly on the organisation of industry. Jesus Christ and Matthew the publican lived in a time of extended intercourse and some commerce; accordingly, inMatthew xxv., verse 27, you have a perfect statement of the truth about usury: ‘Thou oughtest to have put my money to the exchangers, and at my coming I should have received mine own with usury.’ Ricardo, with all Lombard Street to help him, could not improve upon that. A legitimate, useful, profitable use of money is to accommodate strangers who come with money that will not circulate in the country. The exchanger gives them current money; they pay a consideration for the convenience; and out of this comes the legitimate profit to be divided between lender and borrower. The rule which applies to one fruitful use of money will apply to a thousand, and, between wise lending and honest borrowing, swamp and forest become field and garden, and mountains wave with corn. Some professor or other had written what seemed outrageous rubbish; you confuted or thrust aside, in an early Fors, that rubbish; but against legitimate interest, usury, call it what you like, I have never heard any argument. Mr. Sillar’s tracts I have never seen,—he does not advertise, and I have not the second sight.“My view of the grievous abuses in the publishing and bookselling trades has not altered. But, since writing you first on the subject, I have had careful conversations with publishers, and have constantly pondered the matter; and though I do not see my way to any complete reform, I cannot entertain hope from your methods.“I am tired, being still very weak. It would only bother you if I went on. Nothing you have ever written has, I think, enabled me to get so near comprehending you as your picture[144]of yourself learning to read and write in last Fors. You can see an individual concrete fact better than any man of the generation; but an invisible fact, an abstraction, anaverage, you have, I fancy, been as incapable of seeing as of seeing through a stone wall. Political Economy is the science of social averages.“Ever affectionately and faithfully yours.“P.S. (Sunday morning). Some fancy has been haunting me in the night of its being presumptuous, or your thinking it presumptuous, in me to say that David, or whoever wrote the fifteenth Psalm, spoke, on the subject of interest, pure nonsense. After carefully going over the matter again, I believe that I am accurately correct. Not knowing what lending and borrowing, as a normal industrial transaction, or trading transaction, was, the Psalmist spoke in vague ethical terms, meaning ‘you should be friendly to your neighbour’; just as a lady economist of to-day might shriek against the pawn-shop, which, with all its defects, had, in capacity of Poor Man’s Bank, saved many a child, or woman, or man, from sheer starvation. Not understanding the matter, the Psalmist could not distinguish between use and abuse, and so talked nonsense. It is exquisitely interesting to me to observe that Christ hits the Psalmist exactly on the point where he goes wrong.Τὸ ἀργύριον ἀυτοῦ οὐκ ἔδωκεν ἐπὶ τόκῳ, says thePsalmist;Πονηρὲ δοῦλε .… ἔδει σεοὖνβαλεῖν τὸ ἀργύριόν μου τοῖς τραπαζίταις, καὶ ἐλθὼν ἐγὼ ἐκομισάμην ἂν τὸ ἐμὸνσυν τόκῳ, saysChrist. The use of thesame wordin the Septuagint (the only Old Testament circulating in Palestine in Christ’s time) and in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, to denote in the one case what no good man would take, in the other, what it was a flagrant dereliction of dutynotto secure, is most precious as illustrating the simple common sense with which Christ used the old Scriptures, and[145]the infinite falsity of the modern doctrine of infallibility, whether of church, book, or man. One of those transcendencies of rightness which I find in Fors (amid things about Marmontel and Drury Lane, and Darwin and Huxley, worthy only of a Psalmist or pretty economist of fifteen) was your idea of policemen-bishops. I always agree also with what you say about the entirely obsolete and useless bishops at £5000 a-year.… But what I was going to say is, that you ought to ask your bishop, or the whole bench of them, to find a place, in their cart-loads of sermons, for one on ‘usury,’14as condemned by the Psalmist and enjoined by Christ. CompareLuke xix., ver. 23. The only sound basis of banking is the fruitful, industrial use of money. I by no means maintain that the present banking system of Europe is safe and sound.”I submitted the proof of this Fors to my correspondent, and think it due to him and to my readers to print, with the above letter, also the following portions of that which he sent in gentle reply. So far as I have misconceived or misrepresented him, he knows me to be sorry. For the rest, our misconceptions of each other are of no moment: the misconception, by either, of the nature of profit by the loan of money, or tools, is of moment to every one over whom we have influence; we neither of us have any business to be wrong in that matter; and there are few on which it is more immediately every man’s business to be right.“Remonstrance were absurd, where misconception is so total as yours. My infidelity is simply that I worship Christ, thanking every one who gives me any glimpse that enables me to get nearer Christ’s meaning. In this light, what you say of a[146]hidden sense or drift in the parables interests me profoundly; but the more I think of the question of interest, the more I feel persuaded that Christ distinguished the use from the abuse. Tradition, almost certainly authentic, imputes to Him the sayingγίνεσθε τραπεζιται δόκιμοι(see M. Arnold’s article in MarchContemporary), and I don’t see how there can be honourable bankers,—men, living honourably by banking,—ifalltaking of interest is wrong. You speak of my ‘supreme confidence’ in my own opinions. I absolutely have confidence only in the resolution to keep my eyes open for light and, if I can help it, not to be to-day exactly where I was yesterday. I have not only read, but lived in, (as a very atmosphere) the works of men whom you say I went to because somebody said it was fine to do so. They have taught me some comprehensiveness, some tolerance, some moderation in judging even the mob. They have taught me to consume my own smoke, and it is this consumption of my own smoke which you seem to have mistaken for confidence in my opinions. Which prophet, from Moses to Carlyle, would notyouconfess to have been sometimes in the wrong? I said that I worship Christ. In Him I realize, so far as I can realize, God. Therefore I speak not of Him. But the very key-stone of any arch of notions in my mind is that inspiration is one of the mightiest and most blessed of forces, one of the most real of facts, but that infallibility is the error of errors. From no prophet, from no book, do I take what I please and leave what I please; but, applying all the lights I have, I learn from each as wisely as, with my powers and my lights, is possible for me.“Affectionately yours.”I have received, “with the respects of the author,” a pamphlet on the Crystal Palace; which tells me, in its first sentence, that the Crystal Palace is a subject which every cultivated Englishman[147]has at heart; in its second, that the Crystal Palace is a household word, and is the loftiest moral triumph of the world; and in its third, that the Palace is declining, it is said,—verging towards decay. I have not heard anything for a long time which has more pleased me; and beg to assure the author of the pamphlet in question that I never get up at Herne Hill after a windy night without looking anxiously towards Norwood in the hope that ‘the loftiest moral triumph of the world’ may have been blown away.I find the following lovely little scene translated into French from the Dutch, (M. J. Rigeveld, Amsterdam, C. L. Brinkman, 1875,) in a valuable little periodical for ladies, ‘l’Espérance,’ of Geneva, in which the entirely good purpose of the editor will, I doubt not, do wide service, in spite of her adoption of the popular error of the desirability of feminine independence.“A PROPOS D’UNE PAIRE DE GANTS.“ ‘Qu’y a-t-il, Elise?’ dit Madame, en se tournant du côté d’une fenêtre ouverte, où elle entend quelque bruit. ‘Oh! moins que rien, maman!’ répond sa fille aînée, en train de faire la toilette des cadets, pour la promenade et le concert. ‘Ce que c’est, maman?’ crie un des petits garçons, ‘c’est que Lolotte ne veut pas mettre des gants.’ ‘Elle dit qu’elle a assez chaud sans cela,’ reprend un autre, ‘et qu’elle ne trouve pas même joli d’avoir des gants.’ Et chacun de rire. Un des rapporteurs continue: ‘Elise veut qu’elle le fasse par convenance; mais Lolotte prétend que la peau humaine est plus convenable qu’une peau de rat.’ Cette boutade excite de nouveau l’hilarité de la compagnie. ‘Quelle idée, Lolotte,’ dit son père d’un ton enjoué: ‘montre-toi donc!’“Apparemment Lolotte n’est pas d’humeur à obéir; mais les[148]garçons ne lui laissent pas le choix et la poussent en avant. La voilà donc, notre héroïne. C’est une fillette d’environ quatorze ans, dont les yeux pétillent d’esprit et de vie; on voit qu’elle aime à user largement de la liberté que lui laisse encore son âge, pour dire son opinion sur tout ce qui lui passe par la tête sans conséquence aucune. Mais bien qu’elle soit forte dans son opinionanti-gantière, l’enfant est tant soit peu confuse, et ne paraît pas portée à défendre sa cause en présence d’un étranger. ‘Quoi donc,’ lui dit son père, en la prenant par la taille, ‘tu ne veux pas porter des gants, parce qu’ils sont faits de peaux de rats! Je ne te croyais pas si folle. Le rat est morte et oublié depuis longtemps, et sa peau est glacée.’—‘Non, papa, ce n’est pasça.’—‘Qu’est-ce donc, mon enfant? Tu est trop grande fille pour ces manières sans façon. Ne veux-tu pas être une demoiselle comme il faut?’ ‘Et ces petites mains qui touchent si bien du piano,’ reprend le visiteur, désireux de faire oublier la gêne que cause sa présence, par un mot gracieux. ‘Ne veux-tu pas plutôt renoncer à la musique, et devenir sarcleuse?’ lui demande son père.—‘Non, papa, point du tout. Je ne puis pas dire au juste ma pensée.…’ Et elle se dégagea doucement de ses bras; et en se sauvant, grommela: ‘Mort aux gants, et vive la civilisation!’ On rit encore un peu de l’enfant bizarre; puis on parle d’autres choses, et l’on se prépare pour la promenade. Lolotte a mis les gants en question, ‘pour plaire à maman,’ et personne ne s’en occupe plus.“Mais l’étranger avait saisi au passage sa dernière phrase, qui sans cesse, lui revenait à l’esprit. Se reprochait-il devant cette enfant naïve sa complicité à l’interprétation futile que son hôte avait donné dela civilisation? Tant est, que pendant le cours de la soirée, se trouvant un moment en tête-à-tête avec Lolotte, il revint à l’histoire des gants. Il tâcha de réparer sa gaucherie et fit si bien, qu’il gagna la confiance de la petite. ‘Sans doute[149]j’en conviens,’ dit-il, ‘il faut plus pour être civilisé que de porter des gants, mais il faut se soumettre à certaines convenances que les gens comme il faut.…’ ‘C’est ça, Monsieur,’ dit-elle, en lui coupant la parole, ‘quelle est donc la chance des gens qui voudraient se civiliser, mais qui n’ont pas d’argent pour acheter des gants?’ C’était-là sa peine. ‘Chère enfant!’ dit-il tout bas. Et l’homme, si éloquent d’ordinaire, pressa la petite main sous le gant obligatoire, parce que pour le moment les paroles lui manquaient pour répondre.… Est-ce étonnant que, malgré lui, plus tard en s’occupant de la question sociale, il pensa souvent à cette jeune fille?“Et vous, lecteurs, que pensez-vous d’elle et de sa question gantière? Vous paraît-elle un enfantillage, ou bien la considerez-vous tout bonnement comme une exagération? Vous attachez-vous à la surface,oubien y cherchez-vous un sens plus profond, comme l’ami visiteur? Ne croyez-vous pas aussi que dans ce temps de ‘besoins multipliés,’ un des plus grands services que les classes supérieures puissent rendre au peuple, serait de faire distinction entre tous ces besoins et de prêcher d’exemple?”This bit of letter must find room—bearing as it does on last Fors’ subject:—“I was asking a girl this morning if she still took her long walks; and she said she was as fond of them as ever, but that they could only walk in the town now—the field or country walks were not safe for ladies alone. Indeed, I fancy the girls lose all care for, or knowledge of the spring or summer—except as they bring new fashions into the shop windows, not fresh flowers any more here into the fields. It is pitiable to live in a place like this—even worse than in ——. For here the process of spoiling country is going on under one’s eyes;—in —— it was done long ago. And just now, when the feeling of spring is upon one, it is hard[150]to have the sky darkened, and the air poisoned. But I am wasting time in useless grumbling. Only listen to this:—after all our sacrifices, and with all our money and civilization——I can’t tell you now; it must wait.”—[Very well; but don’t keep it waiting longer than you need.]I have had some good help about bees’ tongues from a young correspondent at Merrow Grange, Guildford, and a very clear drawing, to which the subjoined piece of his last letter refers; but I must not lose myself in microscopic questions just now:—“The author of ‘The Microscope’ keeps to the old idea of bees sucking honey and not ‘licking it up,’ for he says, ‘The proboscis, being cylindrical, extracts the juice of the flower in a somewhat similar way to that of the butterfly.’ And of the tongue he says, ‘If a bee is attentively observed as it settles upon a flower, the activity and promptitude with which it uses the apparatus is truly surprising; it lengthens the tongue, applies it to the bottom of the petals, then shortens it, bending and turning it in all directions, for the purpose of exploring the interior and removing the pollen, which it packs in the pockets in its hind legs, (by, he supposes, the two shorter feelers,) and forms the chief food for the working-bees.’ He says that when the waxen walls of the cells are completed, they are strengthened by a varnish collected from the buds of the poplar and other trees, which they smear over the cells by the aid of the wonderful apparatus. That part of the proboscis that looks something like a human head, he says, ‘can be considerably enlarged … and thus made to contain a larger quantity of the collected juice of the flowers; at the same time it is in this cavity that the nectar is transformed into pure honey by some peculiar chemical process.’ ”[151]Note on page145.—My correspondent need not be at a loss for sermons on usury. When the Christian Church was living, there was no lack of such. Here are two specimens of their tenor, furnished me by one of Mr. Sillar’s pamphlets:—Extract from the Exposition upon theFirst Epistle to the Thessalonians, Ch. IV. ver. 6. By Bishop Jewell.“Usury is a kind of lending of money, or corn, or oil, or wine, or of any other thing, wherein, upon covenant and bargain,we receive again the whole principalwhich we delivered,and somewhat morefor the use and occupying of the same: as, if I lent one hundred pounds, and for it covenant to receive one hundred and five pounds, or any other sum greater than was the sum which I did lend. This is that that we call usury; such a kind of bargaining as no good man, or godly man, ever used; such a kind of bargaining as all men that ever feared God’s judgment have always abhorred and condemned.It is filthy gains, and a work of darkness: it is a monster in nature; the overthrow of mighty kingdoms; the destruction of flourishing states; the decay of wealthy cities; the plagues of the world, and the misery of the people. It is theft; it is the murdering of our brethren; it is the curse of God, and the curse of the people.This is usury: by these signs and tokens you may know it: for wheresoever it reigneth, all those mischiefs ensue. But how, and how many ways, it may be wrought, I will not declare: it were horrible to hear; and I come now to reprove usury, and not to teach it.“Tell me, thou wretched wight of the world, thou unkind creature, which art past all sense and feeling of God; which knowest the will of God, and doest the contrary: how darest thou come into the church? It is the church of that God which hath said, ‘Thou shalt take no usury’; and thou knowest He hath so said. How darest thou read or hear the word of[152]God? It is the word of that God which condemneth usury; and thou knowest He doth condemn it. How darest thou come into the company of thy brethren? Usury is the plague, and destruction, and undoing of thy brethren; and this thou knowest. How darest thou look upon thy children? thou makest the wrath of God fall down from heaven upon them; thy iniquity shall be punished in them to the third and fourth generation: this thou knowest. How darest thou look up into heaven? thou hast no dwelling there; thou shalt have no place in the tabernacle of the Highest: this thou knowest. Because thou robbest the poor, deceivest the simple, and eatest up the widows’ houses: therefore shall thy children be naked, and beg their bread; therefore shalt thou and thy riches perish together.”Extract from the Farewell Sermon preached in the Church of St. Mary Woolnoth, Lombard Street, by the Rev. David Jones, when the present system was in its infancy.“And the Pharisees also, who were covetous, heard all these things, and they derided him.”—Lukexvi. 14.“I do openly declare that every minister and every churchwarden throughout all England are actually perjured and foresworn by the 109th canon of our church, if they suffer any usurer to come to the sacrament till he be reformed, and there is no reformation without restitution.*   *   *“And that you may know what usury is forbid by the word of God, turn toEzekiel xviii. 8, 13, and you will find that, whoever giveth upon usury or taketh any increase,—Mark it,—he that takethanyincrease above the principal,—not six in the hundred, but let it be never so little, and never so moderate,—he that takethanyincrease, is a usurer, and such a one as shall surely[153]die for his usury, and his blood shall be upon his own head. This is that word of God by which you shall all be saved or damned at the last day, and all those trifling and shuffling distinctions that covetous usurers ever invented shall never be able to excuse your damnation.“Heretofore all usurious clergymen were degraded from Holy Orders, and all usurious laymen were excommunicated in their lifetime, and hindered Christian burial after death, till their heirs had made restitution for all they had gotten by usury.”As this sheet is going to press, I receive a very interesting letter from “a poor mother.” That no wholesome occupation is at present offered in England to youths of the temper she describes, is precisely the calamity which urged my endeavour to found the St. George’s Company. But if she will kindly tell me the boy’s age, and whether the want of perseverance she regrets in him has ever been tested by giving him sufficient motive for consistent exertion, I will answer what I can, in next ‘Fors.’[155]

Brantwood,Good Friday, 1875.

I am ashamed to go on with my own history to-day; for though, as already seen, I was not wholly unacquainted with the practice of fasting, at times of the year when it was not customary with Papists, our Lent became to us a kind of moonlight Christmas, and season of reflected and soft festivity. For our strictly Protestant habits of mind rendering us independent of absolution, on Shrove Tuesday we were chiefly occupied in the preparation of pancakes,—my nurse being dominant on that day over the cook in all things, her especially nutritive art of browning, and fine legerdemain in turning, pancakes, being recognised as inimitable. The interest of Ash-Wednesday was mainly—whether the bits of egg should be large or small in the egg-sauce;—nor do I recollect having any ideas connected with the day’s name, until I was puzzled by the French of it when I fell in love with a Roman Catholic French girl, as hereafter to be related:—only, by the way, let me note, as I chance now to remember, two others of my[118]main occupations of an exciting character in Hunter Street: watching, namely, the dustmen clear out the ash-hole, and the coalmen fill the coal-cellar through the hole in the pavement, which soon became to me, when surrounded by its cone of débris, a sublime representation of the crater of a volcanic mountain. Of these imaginative delights I have no room to speak in this Fors; nor of the debates which used to be held for the two or three days preceding Good Friday, whether the hot-cross-buns should be plain, or have carraway seeds in them. For, my nurse not being here to provide any such dainties for me, and the black-plague wind which has now darkened the spring for five years,1veiling all the hills with sullen cloud, I am neither in a cheerful nor a religious state of mind; and am too much in the temper of the disciples who forsook Him, and fled, to be able to do justice to the childish innocence of belief, which, in my mother, was too constant to need resuscitation, or take new colour, from fast or festival.

Yet it is only by her help, to-day, that I am able to do a piece of work required of me by the letter printed in the second article of this month’s correspondence. It is from a man of great worth, conscientiousness, and kindliness; but is yet so perfectly expressive of the irreverence, and incapacity of admiration, which[119]maintain and, in great part, constitute, the modern liberal temper, that it makes me feel, more than anything I ever yet met with in human words, how much I owe to my mother for having so exercised me in the Scriptures as to make me grasp them in what my correspondent would call their ‘concrete whole’; and above all, taught me to reverence them, as transcending all thought, and ordaining all conduct.

This she effected, not by her own sayings or personal authority; but simply by compelling me to read the book thoroughly, for myself. As soon as I was able to read with fluency, she began a course of Bible work with me, which never ceased till I went to Oxford. She read alternate verses with me, watching, at first, every intonation of my voice, and correcting the false ones, till she made me understand the verse, if within my reach, rightly, and energetically. It might be beyond me altogether;thatshe did not care about; but she made sure that as soon as I got hold of it at all, I should get hold of it by the right end.

In this way she began with the first verse of Genesis and went straight through to the last verse of the Apocalypse; hard names, numbers, Levitical law, and all; and began again at Genesis the next day; if a name was hard, the better the exercise in pronunciation,—if a chapter was tiresome, the better lesson in patience,—if loathsome, the better lesson in faith that there was some use in its being so outspoken. After[120]our chapters, (from two to three a day, according to their length, the first thing after breakfast, and no interruption from servants allowed,—none from visitors, who either joined in the reading or had to stay upstairs,—and none from any visitings or excursions, except real travelling,) I had to learn a few verses by heart, or repeat, to make sure I had not lost, something of what was already known; and, with the chapters above enumerated, (Letter XLII.2), I had to learn the whole body of the fine old Scottish paraphrases, which are good, melodious, and forceful verse; and to which, together with the Bible itself, I owe the first cultivation of my ear in sound.

It is strange that of all the pieces of the Bible which my mother thus taught me, that which cost me most to learn, and which was, to my child’s mind, chiefly repulsive—the 119th Psalm—has now become of all the most precious to me, in its overflowing and glorious passion of love for the Law of God: “Oh, how love I Thy law! it is my meditation all the day; I have refrained my feet from every evil way, that I might keep Thy word”;—as opposed to the ever-echoing words of the modern money-loving fool: “Oh, how hate I thy law! it is my abomination all the day; my feet are swift in running to mischief, and I have done all the[121]things I ought not to have done, and left undone all I ought to have done; have mercy upon me, miserable sinner,—and grant that I, worthily lamenting my sins and acknowledging my wretchedness, may obtain of Thee, the God of all mercy, perfect remission and forgiveness,—and give me my long purse here and my eternal Paradise there, all together, for Christ’s sake, to whom, with Thee and the Holy Ghost, be all honour and glory,” etc. And the letter of my liberal correspondent, pointing out, in the defence of usury (of which he imagines himself acquainted with the history!) how the Son of David hit his father in the exactly weak place, puts it in my mind at once to state some principles respecting the use of the Bible as a code of law, which are vital to the action of the St. George’s Company in obedience to it.

All the teaching of God, and of the nature He formed round Man, is not only mysterious, but, if received with any warp of mind, deceptive, and intentionally deceptive. The distinct and repeated assertions of this in the conduct and words of Christ are the most wonderful things, it seems to me, and the most terrible, in all the recorded action of the wisdom of Heaven. “Toyou” (His disciples) “it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom,—but to others, in parables, that, hearing, they mightnotunderstand.” Now this is written not for the twelve only, but for all disciples of Christ in all ages,—of whom the sign is one and unmistakable: “They have forsakenallthat they[122]have”; while those who “say they are Jews and are not, but do lie,” or who say they are Christians and are not, but do lie, try to compromise with Christ,—to give Him a part, and keep back a part;—this being the Lie of lies, the Ananias lie, visited always with spiritual death.3

There is a curious chapter on almsgiving, by Miss Yonge, in one of the late numbers of the “Monthly Packet”, (a good magazine, though, on the whole, and full of nice writing,) which announces toherdisciples, that “at least the tenth of their income is God’s part.” Now, in the name of the Devil, and of Baal to back him,—are nine parts, then, of all we have—our own? or theirs? The tithe may, indeed, be set aside for some special purpose—for the maintenance of a priesthood—or as by the St. George’s Company, for distant labour, or any other purpose out of their own immediate range of action. But to the Charity or Alms of men—to Love, and to the God of Love,alltheir substance is due—and all their strength—and all their time. That is the first commandment: Thou shalt love the Lord with all thy strength and soul. Yea, says the false disciple—but not with all my money. And of these it is written, after thatthirty-third verse of Luke xiv.: “Salt is good; but if the salt have lost his savour, it is neither fit for the land nor the dunghill. He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.”[123]

Now in Holbein’s great sermon against wealth, the engraving, in the Dance of Death, of the miser and beggar, he chose for his text the verse: “He that stoppeth his ears at the cry of the poor, he also shall cry himself, and shall not be heard.” And he shows that the ear is thus deafened by being filled with a murmuring of its own: and how the ear thus becomes only as a twisted shell, with the sound of the far-away ocean of Hell in it for ever, he teaches us, in the figure of the fiend which I engraved for you in the seventh of these letters,4abortive, fingerless, contemptible, mechanical, incapable;—blowing the winds of death out of its small machine: Behold,thisis your God, you modern Israel, which has brought you up out of the land of Egypt in which your fathers toiled for bread with their not abortive hands; and set your feet in the large room, of Usury, and in the broad road to Death!

Now the moment that the Mammon devil gets his bellows put in men’s ears,—however innocent they may be, however free from actual stain of avarice, they become literally deaf to the teaching of true and noble men. My correspondent imagines himself to have read Shakespeare and Goethe;—he cannot understand a sentence of them, or he would have known the meaning of the Merchant of Venice,5and of the vision of Plutus,[124]and speech of Mephistopheles on the Emperor’s paper-money6in the second part of Faust, and of the continual under-current of similar teaching in it, from its opening in the mountain sunrise, presently commented on by the Astrologer, under the prompting of Mephistopheles,—“the Sun itself is pure Gold,”—to the ditch-and-grave-digging scene of its close. He cannot read Xenophon, nor Lucian,—nor Plato, nor Horace, nor[125]Pope,—nor Homer, nor Chaucer—nor Moses, nor David.All these are mere voices of the Night to him; the bought bellows-blower of the “Times” is the only piper who is in tune to his ear.

And the woe of it is that all the curse comes on him merely as one of the unhappy modern mob, infected by the rest; for he is himself thoroughly honest, simple-hearted, and upright: only mischance made him take up literature as a means of life; and so brought him necessarily into all the elements of modern insolent thought: and now, though David and Solomon, Noah, Daniel, and Job, altogether say one thing, and the correspondent of the “Times” another, it is David, Solomon, and Daniel who are Narrs to him.

Now the Parables of the New Testament are so constructed that to men in this insolent temper, they arenecessarilymisleading. It is very awful that it should be so; but that is the fact. Why prayer should be taught by the story of the unjust judge; use of present opportunity by that of the unjust steward; and use of the gifts of God by that of the hard man who reaped where he had not sown,—there is no human creature wise enough to know;—but there are the traps set; and every slack judge, cheating servant, and gnawing usurer may, if he will, approve himself in these.

“Thou knewest that I was a hard man.” Yes—and if God were also a hard God, and reaped whereHehad not sown—the conclusion would be true that earthly[126]usury was right. But which of God’s gifts to us arenotHis own?

The meaning of the parable, heard with ears unbesotted, is this:—“You, among hard and unjust men, yet suffer their claim to the return of what they never gave; you sufferthemto reap, where they have not strawed.—But to me, the Just Lord of your life—whose is the breath in your nostrils, whose the fire in your blood, who gave you light and thought, and the fruit of earth and the dew of heaven,—to me, of all this gift, will you return no fruit but only the dust of your bodies, and the wreck of your souls?”

Nevertheless, the Parables have still their living use, as well as their danger; but the Psalter has become practically dead; and the form of repeating it in the daily service only deadens the phrases of it by familiarity. I have occasion to-day, before going on with any work for Agnes, to dwell on another piece of this writing of the father of Christ,—which, read in its full meaning, will be as new to us as the first-heard song of a foreign land.

I will print it first in the Latin, and in the letters and form in which it was read by our Christian sires.[127]

The Eight Psalm. Thirteenth Century Text.7

Domine dominus nosterq̄madmirabile est nomen tuum in universa terra. Quoniam elevata est magnificentia tua super celos. Ex ore infantiumt̄lactentiump̄fecistilaudemp̄pterinimicos tuos ut destruasinimicūt̄ultorem. Quoniam videbo celos tuos operadigitor.tuor.lunamt̄stellas que tu fundasti Quid esth̥̊quod memor es ejus,aūfiliush̥ōisquia visitas eum. Minuisti eumpaulominus; ab angelis, gloriat̄honore coronasti eumt̄cstituistieum super opera manuumtuar.Om̄iasubjecisti sub pedibs ejus, ovest̄bovesuniv̄sas, insupert̄pecora campi. Volucres celit̄pisces marisq̄p̄ambulantsemitas maris. Domine dominus noster quam admirabile est nomen tuum inuniv̄saterra.

Domine dominus nosterq̄madmirabile est nomen tuum in universa terra. Quoniam elevata est magnificentia tua super celos. Ex ore infantiumt̄lactentiump̄fecistilaudemp̄pterinimicos tuos ut destruasinimicūt̄ultorem. Quoniam videbo celos tuos operadigitor.tuor.lunamt̄stellas que tu fundasti Quid esth̥̊quod memor es ejus,aūfiliush̥ōisquia visitas eum. Minuisti eumpaulominus; ab angelis, gloriat̄honore coronasti eumt̄cstituistieum super opera manuumtuar.Om̄iasubjecisti sub pedibs ejus, ovest̄bovesuniv̄sas, insupert̄pecora campi. Volucres celit̄pisces marisq̄p̄ambulantsemitas maris. Domine dominus noster quam admirabile est nomen tuum inuniv̄saterra.

[128]

I translate literally; the Septuagint confirming the Vulgate in the differences from our common rendering, several of which are important.

“1. Oh Lord, our own Lord, how admirable is thy Name in all the earth!2. Because thy magnificence is set above the heavens.3. Out of the mouth of children and sucklings thou hast perfected praise, because of thine enemies, that thou mightest scatter the enemy and avenger.4. Since I see thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars which thou hast founded,5. What is man that thou rememberest him, or the son of man, that thou lookest on him?6. Thou hast lessened him a little from the angels; thou hast crowned him with glory and honour, and hast set him over all the works of thy hands.7. Thou hast put all things under his feet; sheep, and all oxen—and the flocks of the plain.8. The birds of the heaven and the fish of the sea, and all that walk in the paths of the sea.9. Oh Lord, our own Lord, how admirable is thy Name in all the earth!”

“1. Oh Lord, our own Lord, how admirable is thy Name in all the earth!

2. Because thy magnificence is set above the heavens.

3. Out of the mouth of children and sucklings thou hast perfected praise, because of thine enemies, that thou mightest scatter the enemy and avenger.

4. Since I see thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars which thou hast founded,

5. What is man that thou rememberest him, or the son of man, that thou lookest on him?

6. Thou hast lessened him a little from the angels; thou hast crowned him with glory and honour, and hast set him over all the works of thy hands.

7. Thou hast put all things under his feet; sheep, and all oxen—and the flocks of the plain.

8. The birds of the heaven and the fish of the sea, and all that walk in the paths of the sea.

9. Oh Lord, our own Lord, how admirable is thy Name in all the earth!”

Note in Verses 1 and 9.—Domine, Dominus noster; ourownLord;Κύριε, ὁ Κύριος ἡμῶν; claiming thus the Fatherhood. The ‘Lord our Governour’ of the Prayer Book entirely loses the meaning. Howadmirableis Thy[129]Name!θαυμαστον, ‘wonderful,’ as in Isaiah, “His name shall be called Wonderful, the Counsellor.” Again our translation ‘excellent’ loses the meaning.

Verse 2.—Thy magnificence. Literally, ‘thy greatness in working’ (Gk.μεγαλοπρέπεια—splendour in aspect), distinguished from mere ‘glory’ or greatness in fame.

Verse 3.—Sidney has it:

“From sucklings hath thy honour sprung,Thy force hath flowed from babies’ tongue.”

“From sucklings hath thy honour sprung,

Thy force hath flowed from babies’ tongue.”

The meaning of this difficult verse is given by implication inMatt. xxi. 16. And again, that verse, like all the other great teachings of Christ, is open to a terrific misinterpretation;—namely, the popular evangelical one, that children should be teachers and preachers,—(“cheering mother, cheering father, from the Bible true”). The lovely meaning of the words of Christ, which this vile error hides, is that children,remaining children, and uttering, out of their own hearts, such things as their Maker puts there, are pure in sight, and perfect in praise.8

Verse 4.—The moon and the stars which thou hast founded—‘fundasti’—ἐθεμελίωσας. It is much more than ‘ordained’: the idea of stable placing in space being the main one in David’s mind. And it remains to this day[130]the wonder of wonders in all wise men’s minds. The earth swings round the sun,—yes, but what holds the sun? The sun swings round something else. Be it so,—then, what else?

Sidney:—

“When I upon the heavens do look,Which all from thee their essence took,When moon and stars mythoughtbeholdeth,Whose life no life but of thee holdeth.”

“When I upon the heavens do look,

Which all from thee their essence took,

When moon and stars mythoughtbeholdeth,

Whose life no life but of thee holdeth.”

Verse 5.—That thou lookest on him;ἐπισκέπτῃ αυτον, ‘art a bishop to him.’ The Greek word is the same in the verse “I was sick and yevisitedme.”

Verse 6.—Thou hast lessened him;—perhaps better, thou hast made him but by a little, less, than the angels:ἠλάττωσας αὐτὸν βραχύ τι. The inferiority is not of present position merely, but of scale in being.

Verse 7.—Sheep, and all oxen, and theflocks of the plain:κτήνη τοῦ πεδίον. Beasts for service in the plain, traversing great spaces,—camel and horse. ‘Pecora,’ in Vulgate, includes all ‘pecunia,’ or property in animals.

Verse 8.—In the Greek, “that walk the paths of the seas” is only an added description of fish, but the meaning of it is without doubt to give an expanded sense—a generalization of fish, so as to include the whale, seal, tortoise, and their like. Neither whales nor seals, however, from what I hear of modern fishing, are[131]likely to walk the paths of the sea much longer; and Sidney’s verse becomes mere satire:—

“The bird, free burgesse of the aire,The fish, of sea the native heire,And what things els of waters tracethThe unworn pathes, his rule embraceth.Oh Lord, that rul’st our mortal lyne,How through the world thy name doth shine!”

“The bird, free burgesse of the aire,

The fish, of sea the native heire,

And what things els of waters traceth

The unworn pathes, his rule embraceth.

Oh Lord, that rul’st our mortal lyne,

How through the world thy name doth shine!”

These being, as far as I can trace them, the literal meanings of each verse, the entire purport of the psalm is that the Name, orknowledge, of God was admirable to David, and the power and kingship of God recognizable to him, through the power and kingship of man, His vicegerent on the earth, as the angels are in heavenly places. And that final purport of the psalm is evermore infallibly true,—namely, that when men rule the earth rightly, and feel the power of their own souls over it, and its creatures, as a beneficent and authoritative one, they recognise the power of higher spirits also; and the Name of God becomes ‘hallowed’ to them, admirable and wonderful; but if they abuse the earth and its creatures, and become mere contentious brutes upon it, instead of order-commanding kings, the Name of God ceases to be admirable to them, and His power to be felt; and gradually, license and ignorance prevailing together, even what memories of law or Deity remain to them become intolerable; and in the exact[132]contrary to David’s—“My soul thirsteth for God, for the Living God; when shall I come and appear before God?”—you have the consummated desire and conclusive utterance of the modern republican:

“S’il y avait un Dieu, il faudrait le fusiller.”

“S’il y avait un Dieu, il faudrait le fusiller.”

Now, whatever chemical or anatomical facts may appear to our present scientific intelligences, inconsistent with the Life of God, the historical fact is that no happiness nor power has ever been attained by human creatures unless in that thirst for the presence of a Divine King; and that nothing but weakness, misery, and death have ever resulted from the desire to destroy their King, and to have thieves and murderers released to them instead. Also this fact is historically certain,—that the Life of God is not to be discovered by reasoning, but by obeying; that on doing what is plainly ordered, the wisdom and presence of the Orderer become manifest; that only so His way can be known on earth, and His saving health among all nations; and that on disobedience always follows darkness, the forerunner of death.

And now for corollary on the eighth Psalm, read the first and second of Hebrews, and to the twelfth verse of the third, slowly; fitting the verse of the psalm—“lunam et stellas quæ tu fundasti,” with “Thou, Lord, in the beginning hast laid the foundations of the earth”; and then noting how the subjection which is merely of the lower creature, in the psalm, becomes the subjection of[133]all things, and at last of death itself, in the victory foretold to those who are faithful to their Captain, made perfect through sufferings; their Faith, observe, consisting primarily in closer and more constant obedience than the Mosaic law required,—“For if the word spoken by angels was stedfast, and every transgression and disobedience received its just recompence of reward, how shallweescape, if we neglect so great salvation?” The full argument is: “Moses, with but a little salvation, saved you from earthly bondage, and brought you to an earthly land of life; Christ, with a great salvation, saves you from soul bondage, and brings you to an eternal land of life; but, if he who despised the little salvation, and its lax law, (left lax because of the hardness of your hearts,) died without mercy, how shall we escape, if now, with hearts of flesh, we despise so great salvation, refuse the Eternal Land of Promise, and break the stricter and relaxless law of Christian desert-pilgrimage?” And if these threatenings and promises still remain obscure to us, it is only because we have resolutely refused to obey the orders which were not obscure, and quenched the Spirit which was already given. How far the world around us may be yet beyond our control, only because a curse has been brought upon it by our sloth and infidelity, none of us can tell; still less may we dare either to praise or accuse our Master, for the state of the creation over which He appointed us kings, and in which we have[134]chosen to live as swine. One thing we know, or may know, if we will,—that the heart and conscience of man are divine; that in his perception of evil, in his recognition of good, he is himself a God manifest in the flesh; that his joy in love, his agony in anger, his indignation at injustice, his glory in self-sacrifice, are all eternal, indisputable proofs of his unity with a great Spiritual Head; that in these, and not merely in his more availing form, or manifold instinct, he is king over the lower animate world; that, so far as he denies or forfeits these, he dishonours the Name of his Father, and makes it unholy and unadmirable in the earth; that so far as he confesses, and rules by, these, he hallows and makes admirable the Name of his Father, and receives, in his sonship, fulness of power with Him, whose are the kingdom, the power, and the glory, world without end.

And now we may go back to our bees’ nests, and to our school-benches, in peace; able to assure our little Agnes, and the like of her, that, whatever hornets and locusts and serpents may have been made for, this at least is true,—that we may set, and are commanded to set, an eternal difference between ourselves and them, by neither carrying daggers at our sides, nor poison in our mouths: and that the choice for us is stern, between being kings over all these creatures, by innocence to which they cannot be exalted, or more weak, miserable and detestable than they, in resolute guilt to which they cannot fall.[135]

Of their instincts, I believe we have rather held too high than too low estimate, because we have not enough recognized or respected our own. We do not differ from the lower creatures by not possessing instinct, but by possessing will and conscience, to order our innate impulses to the best ends.

The great lines of Pope on this matter, however often quoted fragmentarily, are I think scarcely ever understood in their conclusion.9Let us, for once, read them to their end:—

“See him, from Nature, rising slow to Art,To copy instinct then was reason’s part.Thus then to man the voice of Nature spake:Go,—from the creatures thy instructions take,Learn from the birds what food the thickets yield,Learn from the beasts the physic of the field,Thy arts of building from the bee receive,Learn of the mole to plough, the worm to weave.Here too all forms of social union find,And hence let reason, late, instruct mankind.Here subterranean works and cities see,There, towns aerial on the waving tree;Learn each small people’s genius, policies,The ants’ republic, and the realm of bees:[136]How those in common all their wealth bestow,And anarchy without confusion know;And these for ever, though a monarch reign,Their separate cells and properties maintain.Mark what unvaried laws preserve each state—Laws wise as nature, and as fixed as fate;In vain thy reason finer webs shall draw,Entangle justice in her net of law,And right, too rigid, harden into wrong—Still for the strong too weak, the weak, too strong.Yet go, and thus o’er all the creatures sway,Thus let the wiser make the rest obey,And for those arts mere instinct could affordBe crowned as monarchs, or as gods ador’d.”

“See him, from Nature, rising slow to Art,

To copy instinct then was reason’s part.

Thus then to man the voice of Nature spake:

Go,—from the creatures thy instructions take,

Learn from the birds what food the thickets yield,

Learn from the beasts the physic of the field,

Thy arts of building from the bee receive,

Learn of the mole to plough, the worm to weave.

Here too all forms of social union find,

And hence let reason, late, instruct mankind.

Here subterranean works and cities see,

There, towns aerial on the waving tree;

Learn each small people’s genius, policies,

The ants’ republic, and the realm of bees:[136]

How those in common all their wealth bestow,

And anarchy without confusion know;

And these for ever, though a monarch reign,

Their separate cells and properties maintain.

Mark what unvaried laws preserve each state—

Laws wise as nature, and as fixed as fate;

In vain thy reason finer webs shall draw,

Entangle justice in her net of law,

And right, too rigid, harden into wrong—

Still for the strong too weak, the weak, too strong.

Yet go, and thus o’er all the creatures sway,

Thus let the wiser make the rest obey,

And for those arts mere instinct could afford

Be crowned as monarchs, or as gods ador’d.”

There is a trace, in this last couplet, of the irony, and chastising enforcement of humiliation, which generally characterize the ‘Essay on Man’; but, though it takes this colour, the command thus supposed to be uttered by the voice of Nature, is intended to be wholly earnest. “In the arts of which I set you example in the unassisted instinct of lower animals, I assistyouby the added gifts of will and reason: be therefore, knowingly, in the deeds of Justice, kings under the Lord of Justice, while in the works of your hands, you remain happy labourers under His guidance

Who taught the nations of the field and woodTo shun their poison, and to choose their food,[137]Prescient, the tides or tempests to withstand,Build on the wave, or arch beneath the sand.”

Who taught the nations of the field and wood

To shun their poison, and to choose their food,[137]

Prescient, the tides or tempests to withstand,

Build on the wave, or arch beneath the sand.”

Nor has ever any great work been accomplished by human creatures, in which instinct was not the principal mental agent, or in which the methods of design could be defined by rule, or apprehended by reason. It is therefore that agency through mechanism destroys the powers of art, and sentiments of religion, together.

And it will be found ultimately by all nations, as it was found long ago by those who have been leaders in human force and intellect, that the initial virtue of the race consists in the acknowledgment of their own lowly nature and submission to the laws of higher being. “Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return,” is the first truth we have to learn of ourselves; and to till the earth out of which we were taken, our first duty: in that labour, and in the relations which it establishes between us and the lower animals, are founded the conditions of our highest faculties and felicities: and without that labour, neither reason, art, nor peace, are possible to man.

But in that labour, accepting bodily death, appointed to us in common with the lower creatures, in noble humility; and kindling day by day the spiritual life, granted to us beyond that of the lower creatures, in noble pride, all wisdom, peace, and unselfish hope and love, may be reached, on earth, as in heaven, and our lives indeed be but a little lessened from those of the angels.

As I am finishing this Fors, I note in the journals[138]accounts of new insect-plague on the vine; and the sunshine on my own hills this morning (7th April), still impure, is yet the first which I have seen spread from the daybreak upon them through all the spring; so dark it has been with blight of storm,—so redolent of disease and distress; of which, and its possible causes, my friends seek as the only wise judgment, that of the journals aforesaid. Here, on the other hand, are a few verses10of the traditional wisdom of that king whose political institutions were so total a failure, (according to my supremely sagacious correspondent,) which nevertheless appear to me to reach the roots of these, and of many other hitherto hidden things.

“His heart is ashes, his hope is more vile than earth, and his life of less value than clay.

Forasmuch as he knew not his Maker, and him that inspired into him an active soul, and breathed in him a living spirit.

But they counted our life a pastime, and our time here a market for gain; for, say they, we must be getting every way, though it be by evil means.11Yea, they worshipped those beasts also that are most hateful; (for being compared together, some are worse than others,12neither are they beautiful in respect of beasts,)[139]but they went without the praise of God, and his blessing.

Therefore by the like were they punished worthily, and by the multitude of beasts tormented.

And in this thou madest thine enemies confess, that it is thou who deliverest them from all evil.

But thy sons not the very teeth of venomous dragons overcame: for thy mercy was ever by them, and healed them.

For thou hast power of life and death: thou leadest to the gates of hell, and bringest up again.

For the ungodly, that denied to know thee, were scourged by the strength of thine arm: with strange rains, hails, and showers, were they persecuted, that they could not avoid, for through fire were they consumed.

Instead whereof thou feddest thine own people with angels’ food, and didst send them, from heaven, bread prepared without their labour, able to content every man’s delight, and agreeing to every taste.

For thy sustenance declared thy sweetness unto thy children, and serving to the appetite of the eater, tempered itself to every man’s liking.

For the creature that serveth thee, who art the Maker, increaseth his strength against the unrighteous for their[140]punishment, and abateth his strength for the benefit of such as put their trust in thee.

Therefore even then was it altered into all fashions, and was obedient to thy grace, that nourisheth all things, according to the desire of them that had need:

That thy children, O Lord, whom thou lovest, might know that it is not the growing of fruits that nourisheth man: but that it is thy word, which preserveth them that put their trust in thee.

For that which was not destroyed of the fire, being warmed with a little sunbeam, soon melted away:

That it might be known, that we must prevent the sun to give thee thanks, and at the dayspring pray unto thee.”[141]

[Contents]NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE.“The Parsonage, Werrington, Peterborough,April 7, 1875.“My dear Sir,—Your lady correspondent brings out in her own experience that sound Christian truth, of which the condemnable doctrines of ‘substitution’ and ‘vicarious righteousness’ are but the perversions. Her experience shows how true it is that one man may so live and suffer that others shall be morally the better for his life and suffering.“Such a man’s righteousness is ‘imputed’ because reallyimparted13to those who have faith in him.“Of Felix Neff I know less than I ought, but if his ministry tended to bring more sweetness and light into your correspondent’s life, surely his influence in her mind is moral and healthful.“I am very faithfully yours,“Edward Z. Lyttel.“John Ruskin, Esq.”[142]I transgress the laws of courtesy, in printing, without asking the writer’s permission, part of a letter which follows: but my correspondent is not, as far as I know him, a man who shrinks from publicity, or who would write in a private letter anything on general subjects which he would be unwilling openly to maintain; while the letter itself is so monumental as a type of the condition to which the modern average literary mind has been reduced, in its reading of authoritative classical authors, and touches so precisely on points which it happens to be my immediate business to set at rest in the minds of many of my readers, that I cannot but attribute to the Third Fors the direct inspiration of the epistle—and must leave on her hands what blame may be attached to its publication. I had been expressing some surprise to my correspondent (an acquaintance of long standing) at his usually bright and complacent temper; and making some enquiry about his views respecting modern usury, knowing him to have read, at least for literary purposes, large portions of the Old Testament. He replies,—“I am sure I would not be wiser if I were ‘more uncomfortable’ in my mind; I am perfectly sure, if I can ever do good to any mortal, it will be by calm working, patient thinking, not by running, or raging, or weeping, or wailing. But for this humour, which I fancy I caught from Shakespeare and Goethe, the sorrow of the world would drive me mad.“You ask what I think ‘the Psalmist’ means by ‘usury.’ I find from Cruden that usury is mentioned only in the fifteenth Psalm. That is a notable and most beautiful lyric, quite sufficient to demonstrate the superiority, in spirituality and morality, of the Hebrew religion to anything Greek. But the bit about usury is pure nonsense—the only bit of nonsense in the piece. Nonsense, because the singer has no notion whatever of the employment of money for thecommonbenefit[143]of lender and borrower. As the Hebrew monarchy was politically a total and disastrous failure, I should not expect any opinion worth listening to from a psalmist, touching directly or indirectly on the organisation of industry. Jesus Christ and Matthew the publican lived in a time of extended intercourse and some commerce; accordingly, inMatthew xxv., verse 27, you have a perfect statement of the truth about usury: ‘Thou oughtest to have put my money to the exchangers, and at my coming I should have received mine own with usury.’ Ricardo, with all Lombard Street to help him, could not improve upon that. A legitimate, useful, profitable use of money is to accommodate strangers who come with money that will not circulate in the country. The exchanger gives them current money; they pay a consideration for the convenience; and out of this comes the legitimate profit to be divided between lender and borrower. The rule which applies to one fruitful use of money will apply to a thousand, and, between wise lending and honest borrowing, swamp and forest become field and garden, and mountains wave with corn. Some professor or other had written what seemed outrageous rubbish; you confuted or thrust aside, in an early Fors, that rubbish; but against legitimate interest, usury, call it what you like, I have never heard any argument. Mr. Sillar’s tracts I have never seen,—he does not advertise, and I have not the second sight.“My view of the grievous abuses in the publishing and bookselling trades has not altered. But, since writing you first on the subject, I have had careful conversations with publishers, and have constantly pondered the matter; and though I do not see my way to any complete reform, I cannot entertain hope from your methods.“I am tired, being still very weak. It would only bother you if I went on. Nothing you have ever written has, I think, enabled me to get so near comprehending you as your picture[144]of yourself learning to read and write in last Fors. You can see an individual concrete fact better than any man of the generation; but an invisible fact, an abstraction, anaverage, you have, I fancy, been as incapable of seeing as of seeing through a stone wall. Political Economy is the science of social averages.“Ever affectionately and faithfully yours.“P.S. (Sunday morning). Some fancy has been haunting me in the night of its being presumptuous, or your thinking it presumptuous, in me to say that David, or whoever wrote the fifteenth Psalm, spoke, on the subject of interest, pure nonsense. After carefully going over the matter again, I believe that I am accurately correct. Not knowing what lending and borrowing, as a normal industrial transaction, or trading transaction, was, the Psalmist spoke in vague ethical terms, meaning ‘you should be friendly to your neighbour’; just as a lady economist of to-day might shriek against the pawn-shop, which, with all its defects, had, in capacity of Poor Man’s Bank, saved many a child, or woman, or man, from sheer starvation. Not understanding the matter, the Psalmist could not distinguish between use and abuse, and so talked nonsense. It is exquisitely interesting to me to observe that Christ hits the Psalmist exactly on the point where he goes wrong.Τὸ ἀργύριον ἀυτοῦ οὐκ ἔδωκεν ἐπὶ τόκῳ, says thePsalmist;Πονηρὲ δοῦλε .… ἔδει σεοὖνβαλεῖν τὸ ἀργύριόν μου τοῖς τραπαζίταις, καὶ ἐλθὼν ἐγὼ ἐκομισάμην ἂν τὸ ἐμὸνσυν τόκῳ, saysChrist. The use of thesame wordin the Septuagint (the only Old Testament circulating in Palestine in Christ’s time) and in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, to denote in the one case what no good man would take, in the other, what it was a flagrant dereliction of dutynotto secure, is most precious as illustrating the simple common sense with which Christ used the old Scriptures, and[145]the infinite falsity of the modern doctrine of infallibility, whether of church, book, or man. One of those transcendencies of rightness which I find in Fors (amid things about Marmontel and Drury Lane, and Darwin and Huxley, worthy only of a Psalmist or pretty economist of fifteen) was your idea of policemen-bishops. I always agree also with what you say about the entirely obsolete and useless bishops at £5000 a-year.… But what I was going to say is, that you ought to ask your bishop, or the whole bench of them, to find a place, in their cart-loads of sermons, for one on ‘usury,’14as condemned by the Psalmist and enjoined by Christ. CompareLuke xix., ver. 23. The only sound basis of banking is the fruitful, industrial use of money. I by no means maintain that the present banking system of Europe is safe and sound.”I submitted the proof of this Fors to my correspondent, and think it due to him and to my readers to print, with the above letter, also the following portions of that which he sent in gentle reply. So far as I have misconceived or misrepresented him, he knows me to be sorry. For the rest, our misconceptions of each other are of no moment: the misconception, by either, of the nature of profit by the loan of money, or tools, is of moment to every one over whom we have influence; we neither of us have any business to be wrong in that matter; and there are few on which it is more immediately every man’s business to be right.“Remonstrance were absurd, where misconception is so total as yours. My infidelity is simply that I worship Christ, thanking every one who gives me any glimpse that enables me to get nearer Christ’s meaning. In this light, what you say of a[146]hidden sense or drift in the parables interests me profoundly; but the more I think of the question of interest, the more I feel persuaded that Christ distinguished the use from the abuse. Tradition, almost certainly authentic, imputes to Him the sayingγίνεσθε τραπεζιται δόκιμοι(see M. Arnold’s article in MarchContemporary), and I don’t see how there can be honourable bankers,—men, living honourably by banking,—ifalltaking of interest is wrong. You speak of my ‘supreme confidence’ in my own opinions. I absolutely have confidence only in the resolution to keep my eyes open for light and, if I can help it, not to be to-day exactly where I was yesterday. I have not only read, but lived in, (as a very atmosphere) the works of men whom you say I went to because somebody said it was fine to do so. They have taught me some comprehensiveness, some tolerance, some moderation in judging even the mob. They have taught me to consume my own smoke, and it is this consumption of my own smoke which you seem to have mistaken for confidence in my opinions. Which prophet, from Moses to Carlyle, would notyouconfess to have been sometimes in the wrong? I said that I worship Christ. In Him I realize, so far as I can realize, God. Therefore I speak not of Him. But the very key-stone of any arch of notions in my mind is that inspiration is one of the mightiest and most blessed of forces, one of the most real of facts, but that infallibility is the error of errors. From no prophet, from no book, do I take what I please and leave what I please; but, applying all the lights I have, I learn from each as wisely as, with my powers and my lights, is possible for me.“Affectionately yours.”I have received, “with the respects of the author,” a pamphlet on the Crystal Palace; which tells me, in its first sentence, that the Crystal Palace is a subject which every cultivated Englishman[147]has at heart; in its second, that the Crystal Palace is a household word, and is the loftiest moral triumph of the world; and in its third, that the Palace is declining, it is said,—verging towards decay. I have not heard anything for a long time which has more pleased me; and beg to assure the author of the pamphlet in question that I never get up at Herne Hill after a windy night without looking anxiously towards Norwood in the hope that ‘the loftiest moral triumph of the world’ may have been blown away.I find the following lovely little scene translated into French from the Dutch, (M. J. Rigeveld, Amsterdam, C. L. Brinkman, 1875,) in a valuable little periodical for ladies, ‘l’Espérance,’ of Geneva, in which the entirely good purpose of the editor will, I doubt not, do wide service, in spite of her adoption of the popular error of the desirability of feminine independence.“A PROPOS D’UNE PAIRE DE GANTS.“ ‘Qu’y a-t-il, Elise?’ dit Madame, en se tournant du côté d’une fenêtre ouverte, où elle entend quelque bruit. ‘Oh! moins que rien, maman!’ répond sa fille aînée, en train de faire la toilette des cadets, pour la promenade et le concert. ‘Ce que c’est, maman?’ crie un des petits garçons, ‘c’est que Lolotte ne veut pas mettre des gants.’ ‘Elle dit qu’elle a assez chaud sans cela,’ reprend un autre, ‘et qu’elle ne trouve pas même joli d’avoir des gants.’ Et chacun de rire. Un des rapporteurs continue: ‘Elise veut qu’elle le fasse par convenance; mais Lolotte prétend que la peau humaine est plus convenable qu’une peau de rat.’ Cette boutade excite de nouveau l’hilarité de la compagnie. ‘Quelle idée, Lolotte,’ dit son père d’un ton enjoué: ‘montre-toi donc!’“Apparemment Lolotte n’est pas d’humeur à obéir; mais les[148]garçons ne lui laissent pas le choix et la poussent en avant. La voilà donc, notre héroïne. C’est une fillette d’environ quatorze ans, dont les yeux pétillent d’esprit et de vie; on voit qu’elle aime à user largement de la liberté que lui laisse encore son âge, pour dire son opinion sur tout ce qui lui passe par la tête sans conséquence aucune. Mais bien qu’elle soit forte dans son opinionanti-gantière, l’enfant est tant soit peu confuse, et ne paraît pas portée à défendre sa cause en présence d’un étranger. ‘Quoi donc,’ lui dit son père, en la prenant par la taille, ‘tu ne veux pas porter des gants, parce qu’ils sont faits de peaux de rats! Je ne te croyais pas si folle. Le rat est morte et oublié depuis longtemps, et sa peau est glacée.’—‘Non, papa, ce n’est pasça.’—‘Qu’est-ce donc, mon enfant? Tu est trop grande fille pour ces manières sans façon. Ne veux-tu pas être une demoiselle comme il faut?’ ‘Et ces petites mains qui touchent si bien du piano,’ reprend le visiteur, désireux de faire oublier la gêne que cause sa présence, par un mot gracieux. ‘Ne veux-tu pas plutôt renoncer à la musique, et devenir sarcleuse?’ lui demande son père.—‘Non, papa, point du tout. Je ne puis pas dire au juste ma pensée.…’ Et elle se dégagea doucement de ses bras; et en se sauvant, grommela: ‘Mort aux gants, et vive la civilisation!’ On rit encore un peu de l’enfant bizarre; puis on parle d’autres choses, et l’on se prépare pour la promenade. Lolotte a mis les gants en question, ‘pour plaire à maman,’ et personne ne s’en occupe plus.“Mais l’étranger avait saisi au passage sa dernière phrase, qui sans cesse, lui revenait à l’esprit. Se reprochait-il devant cette enfant naïve sa complicité à l’interprétation futile que son hôte avait donné dela civilisation? Tant est, que pendant le cours de la soirée, se trouvant un moment en tête-à-tête avec Lolotte, il revint à l’histoire des gants. Il tâcha de réparer sa gaucherie et fit si bien, qu’il gagna la confiance de la petite. ‘Sans doute[149]j’en conviens,’ dit-il, ‘il faut plus pour être civilisé que de porter des gants, mais il faut se soumettre à certaines convenances que les gens comme il faut.…’ ‘C’est ça, Monsieur,’ dit-elle, en lui coupant la parole, ‘quelle est donc la chance des gens qui voudraient se civiliser, mais qui n’ont pas d’argent pour acheter des gants?’ C’était-là sa peine. ‘Chère enfant!’ dit-il tout bas. Et l’homme, si éloquent d’ordinaire, pressa la petite main sous le gant obligatoire, parce que pour le moment les paroles lui manquaient pour répondre.… Est-ce étonnant que, malgré lui, plus tard en s’occupant de la question sociale, il pensa souvent à cette jeune fille?“Et vous, lecteurs, que pensez-vous d’elle et de sa question gantière? Vous paraît-elle un enfantillage, ou bien la considerez-vous tout bonnement comme une exagération? Vous attachez-vous à la surface,oubien y cherchez-vous un sens plus profond, comme l’ami visiteur? Ne croyez-vous pas aussi que dans ce temps de ‘besoins multipliés,’ un des plus grands services que les classes supérieures puissent rendre au peuple, serait de faire distinction entre tous ces besoins et de prêcher d’exemple?”This bit of letter must find room—bearing as it does on last Fors’ subject:—“I was asking a girl this morning if she still took her long walks; and she said she was as fond of them as ever, but that they could only walk in the town now—the field or country walks were not safe for ladies alone. Indeed, I fancy the girls lose all care for, or knowledge of the spring or summer—except as they bring new fashions into the shop windows, not fresh flowers any more here into the fields. It is pitiable to live in a place like this—even worse than in ——. For here the process of spoiling country is going on under one’s eyes;—in —— it was done long ago. And just now, when the feeling of spring is upon one, it is hard[150]to have the sky darkened, and the air poisoned. But I am wasting time in useless grumbling. Only listen to this:—after all our sacrifices, and with all our money and civilization——I can’t tell you now; it must wait.”—[Very well; but don’t keep it waiting longer than you need.]I have had some good help about bees’ tongues from a young correspondent at Merrow Grange, Guildford, and a very clear drawing, to which the subjoined piece of his last letter refers; but I must not lose myself in microscopic questions just now:—“The author of ‘The Microscope’ keeps to the old idea of bees sucking honey and not ‘licking it up,’ for he says, ‘The proboscis, being cylindrical, extracts the juice of the flower in a somewhat similar way to that of the butterfly.’ And of the tongue he says, ‘If a bee is attentively observed as it settles upon a flower, the activity and promptitude with which it uses the apparatus is truly surprising; it lengthens the tongue, applies it to the bottom of the petals, then shortens it, bending and turning it in all directions, for the purpose of exploring the interior and removing the pollen, which it packs in the pockets in its hind legs, (by, he supposes, the two shorter feelers,) and forms the chief food for the working-bees.’ He says that when the waxen walls of the cells are completed, they are strengthened by a varnish collected from the buds of the poplar and other trees, which they smear over the cells by the aid of the wonderful apparatus. That part of the proboscis that looks something like a human head, he says, ‘can be considerably enlarged … and thus made to contain a larger quantity of the collected juice of the flowers; at the same time it is in this cavity that the nectar is transformed into pure honey by some peculiar chemical process.’ ”[151]Note on page145.—My correspondent need not be at a loss for sermons on usury. When the Christian Church was living, there was no lack of such. Here are two specimens of their tenor, furnished me by one of Mr. Sillar’s pamphlets:—Extract from the Exposition upon theFirst Epistle to the Thessalonians, Ch. IV. ver. 6. By Bishop Jewell.“Usury is a kind of lending of money, or corn, or oil, or wine, or of any other thing, wherein, upon covenant and bargain,we receive again the whole principalwhich we delivered,and somewhat morefor the use and occupying of the same: as, if I lent one hundred pounds, and for it covenant to receive one hundred and five pounds, or any other sum greater than was the sum which I did lend. This is that that we call usury; such a kind of bargaining as no good man, or godly man, ever used; such a kind of bargaining as all men that ever feared God’s judgment have always abhorred and condemned.It is filthy gains, and a work of darkness: it is a monster in nature; the overthrow of mighty kingdoms; the destruction of flourishing states; the decay of wealthy cities; the plagues of the world, and the misery of the people. It is theft; it is the murdering of our brethren; it is the curse of God, and the curse of the people.This is usury: by these signs and tokens you may know it: for wheresoever it reigneth, all those mischiefs ensue. But how, and how many ways, it may be wrought, I will not declare: it were horrible to hear; and I come now to reprove usury, and not to teach it.“Tell me, thou wretched wight of the world, thou unkind creature, which art past all sense and feeling of God; which knowest the will of God, and doest the contrary: how darest thou come into the church? It is the church of that God which hath said, ‘Thou shalt take no usury’; and thou knowest He hath so said. How darest thou read or hear the word of[152]God? It is the word of that God which condemneth usury; and thou knowest He doth condemn it. How darest thou come into the company of thy brethren? Usury is the plague, and destruction, and undoing of thy brethren; and this thou knowest. How darest thou look upon thy children? thou makest the wrath of God fall down from heaven upon them; thy iniquity shall be punished in them to the third and fourth generation: this thou knowest. How darest thou look up into heaven? thou hast no dwelling there; thou shalt have no place in the tabernacle of the Highest: this thou knowest. Because thou robbest the poor, deceivest the simple, and eatest up the widows’ houses: therefore shall thy children be naked, and beg their bread; therefore shalt thou and thy riches perish together.”Extract from the Farewell Sermon preached in the Church of St. Mary Woolnoth, Lombard Street, by the Rev. David Jones, when the present system was in its infancy.“And the Pharisees also, who were covetous, heard all these things, and they derided him.”—Lukexvi. 14.“I do openly declare that every minister and every churchwarden throughout all England are actually perjured and foresworn by the 109th canon of our church, if they suffer any usurer to come to the sacrament till he be reformed, and there is no reformation without restitution.*   *   *“And that you may know what usury is forbid by the word of God, turn toEzekiel xviii. 8, 13, and you will find that, whoever giveth upon usury or taketh any increase,—Mark it,—he that takethanyincrease above the principal,—not six in the hundred, but let it be never so little, and never so moderate,—he that takethanyincrease, is a usurer, and such a one as shall surely[153]die for his usury, and his blood shall be upon his own head. This is that word of God by which you shall all be saved or damned at the last day, and all those trifling and shuffling distinctions that covetous usurers ever invented shall never be able to excuse your damnation.“Heretofore all usurious clergymen were degraded from Holy Orders, and all usurious laymen were excommunicated in their lifetime, and hindered Christian burial after death, till their heirs had made restitution for all they had gotten by usury.”As this sheet is going to press, I receive a very interesting letter from “a poor mother.” That no wholesome occupation is at present offered in England to youths of the temper she describes, is precisely the calamity which urged my endeavour to found the St. George’s Company. But if she will kindly tell me the boy’s age, and whether the want of perseverance she regrets in him has ever been tested by giving him sufficient motive for consistent exertion, I will answer what I can, in next ‘Fors.’[155]

NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE.“The Parsonage, Werrington, Peterborough,April 7, 1875.“My dear Sir,—Your lady correspondent brings out in her own experience that sound Christian truth, of which the condemnable doctrines of ‘substitution’ and ‘vicarious righteousness’ are but the perversions. Her experience shows how true it is that one man may so live and suffer that others shall be morally the better for his life and suffering.“Such a man’s righteousness is ‘imputed’ because reallyimparted13to those who have faith in him.“Of Felix Neff I know less than I ought, but if his ministry tended to bring more sweetness and light into your correspondent’s life, surely his influence in her mind is moral and healthful.“I am very faithfully yours,“Edward Z. Lyttel.“John Ruskin, Esq.”[142]

“The Parsonage, Werrington, Peterborough,April 7, 1875.“My dear Sir,—Your lady correspondent brings out in her own experience that sound Christian truth, of which the condemnable doctrines of ‘substitution’ and ‘vicarious righteousness’ are but the perversions. Her experience shows how true it is that one man may so live and suffer that others shall be morally the better for his life and suffering.“Such a man’s righteousness is ‘imputed’ because reallyimparted13to those who have faith in him.“Of Felix Neff I know less than I ought, but if his ministry tended to bring more sweetness and light into your correspondent’s life, surely his influence in her mind is moral and healthful.“I am very faithfully yours,“Edward Z. Lyttel.“John Ruskin, Esq.”

“The Parsonage, Werrington, Peterborough,April 7, 1875.

“My dear Sir,—Your lady correspondent brings out in her own experience that sound Christian truth, of which the condemnable doctrines of ‘substitution’ and ‘vicarious righteousness’ are but the perversions. Her experience shows how true it is that one man may so live and suffer that others shall be morally the better for his life and suffering.

“Such a man’s righteousness is ‘imputed’ because reallyimparted13to those who have faith in him.

“Of Felix Neff I know less than I ought, but if his ministry tended to bring more sweetness and light into your correspondent’s life, surely his influence in her mind is moral and healthful.

“I am very faithfully yours,“Edward Z. Lyttel.

“John Ruskin, Esq.”

[142]

I transgress the laws of courtesy, in printing, without asking the writer’s permission, part of a letter which follows: but my correspondent is not, as far as I know him, a man who shrinks from publicity, or who would write in a private letter anything on general subjects which he would be unwilling openly to maintain; while the letter itself is so monumental as a type of the condition to which the modern average literary mind has been reduced, in its reading of authoritative classical authors, and touches so precisely on points which it happens to be my immediate business to set at rest in the minds of many of my readers, that I cannot but attribute to the Third Fors the direct inspiration of the epistle—and must leave on her hands what blame may be attached to its publication. I had been expressing some surprise to my correspondent (an acquaintance of long standing) at his usually bright and complacent temper; and making some enquiry about his views respecting modern usury, knowing him to have read, at least for literary purposes, large portions of the Old Testament. He replies,—“I am sure I would not be wiser if I were ‘more uncomfortable’ in my mind; I am perfectly sure, if I can ever do good to any mortal, it will be by calm working, patient thinking, not by running, or raging, or weeping, or wailing. But for this humour, which I fancy I caught from Shakespeare and Goethe, the sorrow of the world would drive me mad.“You ask what I think ‘the Psalmist’ means by ‘usury.’ I find from Cruden that usury is mentioned only in the fifteenth Psalm. That is a notable and most beautiful lyric, quite sufficient to demonstrate the superiority, in spirituality and morality, of the Hebrew religion to anything Greek. But the bit about usury is pure nonsense—the only bit of nonsense in the piece. Nonsense, because the singer has no notion whatever of the employment of money for thecommonbenefit[143]of lender and borrower. As the Hebrew monarchy was politically a total and disastrous failure, I should not expect any opinion worth listening to from a psalmist, touching directly or indirectly on the organisation of industry. Jesus Christ and Matthew the publican lived in a time of extended intercourse and some commerce; accordingly, inMatthew xxv., verse 27, you have a perfect statement of the truth about usury: ‘Thou oughtest to have put my money to the exchangers, and at my coming I should have received mine own with usury.’ Ricardo, with all Lombard Street to help him, could not improve upon that. A legitimate, useful, profitable use of money is to accommodate strangers who come with money that will not circulate in the country. The exchanger gives them current money; they pay a consideration for the convenience; and out of this comes the legitimate profit to be divided between lender and borrower. The rule which applies to one fruitful use of money will apply to a thousand, and, between wise lending and honest borrowing, swamp and forest become field and garden, and mountains wave with corn. Some professor or other had written what seemed outrageous rubbish; you confuted or thrust aside, in an early Fors, that rubbish; but against legitimate interest, usury, call it what you like, I have never heard any argument. Mr. Sillar’s tracts I have never seen,—he does not advertise, and I have not the second sight.“My view of the grievous abuses in the publishing and bookselling trades has not altered. But, since writing you first on the subject, I have had careful conversations with publishers, and have constantly pondered the matter; and though I do not see my way to any complete reform, I cannot entertain hope from your methods.“I am tired, being still very weak. It would only bother you if I went on. Nothing you have ever written has, I think, enabled me to get so near comprehending you as your picture[144]of yourself learning to read and write in last Fors. You can see an individual concrete fact better than any man of the generation; but an invisible fact, an abstraction, anaverage, you have, I fancy, been as incapable of seeing as of seeing through a stone wall. Political Economy is the science of social averages.“Ever affectionately and faithfully yours.“P.S. (Sunday morning). Some fancy has been haunting me in the night of its being presumptuous, or your thinking it presumptuous, in me to say that David, or whoever wrote the fifteenth Psalm, spoke, on the subject of interest, pure nonsense. After carefully going over the matter again, I believe that I am accurately correct. Not knowing what lending and borrowing, as a normal industrial transaction, or trading transaction, was, the Psalmist spoke in vague ethical terms, meaning ‘you should be friendly to your neighbour’; just as a lady economist of to-day might shriek against the pawn-shop, which, with all its defects, had, in capacity of Poor Man’s Bank, saved many a child, or woman, or man, from sheer starvation. Not understanding the matter, the Psalmist could not distinguish between use and abuse, and so talked nonsense. It is exquisitely interesting to me to observe that Christ hits the Psalmist exactly on the point where he goes wrong.Τὸ ἀργύριον ἀυτοῦ οὐκ ἔδωκεν ἐπὶ τόκῳ, says thePsalmist;Πονηρὲ δοῦλε .… ἔδει σεοὖνβαλεῖν τὸ ἀργύριόν μου τοῖς τραπαζίταις, καὶ ἐλθὼν ἐγὼ ἐκομισάμην ἂν τὸ ἐμὸνσυν τόκῳ, saysChrist. The use of thesame wordin the Septuagint (the only Old Testament circulating in Palestine in Christ’s time) and in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, to denote in the one case what no good man would take, in the other, what it was a flagrant dereliction of dutynotto secure, is most precious as illustrating the simple common sense with which Christ used the old Scriptures, and[145]the infinite falsity of the modern doctrine of infallibility, whether of church, book, or man. One of those transcendencies of rightness which I find in Fors (amid things about Marmontel and Drury Lane, and Darwin and Huxley, worthy only of a Psalmist or pretty economist of fifteen) was your idea of policemen-bishops. I always agree also with what you say about the entirely obsolete and useless bishops at £5000 a-year.… But what I was going to say is, that you ought to ask your bishop, or the whole bench of them, to find a place, in their cart-loads of sermons, for one on ‘usury,’14as condemned by the Psalmist and enjoined by Christ. CompareLuke xix., ver. 23. The only sound basis of banking is the fruitful, industrial use of money. I by no means maintain that the present banking system of Europe is safe and sound.”I submitted the proof of this Fors to my correspondent, and think it due to him and to my readers to print, with the above letter, also the following portions of that which he sent in gentle reply. So far as I have misconceived or misrepresented him, he knows me to be sorry. For the rest, our misconceptions of each other are of no moment: the misconception, by either, of the nature of profit by the loan of money, or tools, is of moment to every one over whom we have influence; we neither of us have any business to be wrong in that matter; and there are few on which it is more immediately every man’s business to be right.“Remonstrance were absurd, where misconception is so total as yours. My infidelity is simply that I worship Christ, thanking every one who gives me any glimpse that enables me to get nearer Christ’s meaning. In this light, what you say of a[146]hidden sense or drift in the parables interests me profoundly; but the more I think of the question of interest, the more I feel persuaded that Christ distinguished the use from the abuse. Tradition, almost certainly authentic, imputes to Him the sayingγίνεσθε τραπεζιται δόκιμοι(see M. Arnold’s article in MarchContemporary), and I don’t see how there can be honourable bankers,—men, living honourably by banking,—ifalltaking of interest is wrong. You speak of my ‘supreme confidence’ in my own opinions. I absolutely have confidence only in the resolution to keep my eyes open for light and, if I can help it, not to be to-day exactly where I was yesterday. I have not only read, but lived in, (as a very atmosphere) the works of men whom you say I went to because somebody said it was fine to do so. They have taught me some comprehensiveness, some tolerance, some moderation in judging even the mob. They have taught me to consume my own smoke, and it is this consumption of my own smoke which you seem to have mistaken for confidence in my opinions. Which prophet, from Moses to Carlyle, would notyouconfess to have been sometimes in the wrong? I said that I worship Christ. In Him I realize, so far as I can realize, God. Therefore I speak not of Him. But the very key-stone of any arch of notions in my mind is that inspiration is one of the mightiest and most blessed of forces, one of the most real of facts, but that infallibility is the error of errors. From no prophet, from no book, do I take what I please and leave what I please; but, applying all the lights I have, I learn from each as wisely as, with my powers and my lights, is possible for me.“Affectionately yours.”I have received, “with the respects of the author,” a pamphlet on the Crystal Palace; which tells me, in its first sentence, that the Crystal Palace is a subject which every cultivated Englishman[147]has at heart; in its second, that the Crystal Palace is a household word, and is the loftiest moral triumph of the world; and in its third, that the Palace is declining, it is said,—verging towards decay. I have not heard anything for a long time which has more pleased me; and beg to assure the author of the pamphlet in question that I never get up at Herne Hill after a windy night without looking anxiously towards Norwood in the hope that ‘the loftiest moral triumph of the world’ may have been blown away.I find the following lovely little scene translated into French from the Dutch, (M. J. Rigeveld, Amsterdam, C. L. Brinkman, 1875,) in a valuable little periodical for ladies, ‘l’Espérance,’ of Geneva, in which the entirely good purpose of the editor will, I doubt not, do wide service, in spite of her adoption of the popular error of the desirability of feminine independence.“A PROPOS D’UNE PAIRE DE GANTS.“ ‘Qu’y a-t-il, Elise?’ dit Madame, en se tournant du côté d’une fenêtre ouverte, où elle entend quelque bruit. ‘Oh! moins que rien, maman!’ répond sa fille aînée, en train de faire la toilette des cadets, pour la promenade et le concert. ‘Ce que c’est, maman?’ crie un des petits garçons, ‘c’est que Lolotte ne veut pas mettre des gants.’ ‘Elle dit qu’elle a assez chaud sans cela,’ reprend un autre, ‘et qu’elle ne trouve pas même joli d’avoir des gants.’ Et chacun de rire. Un des rapporteurs continue: ‘Elise veut qu’elle le fasse par convenance; mais Lolotte prétend que la peau humaine est plus convenable qu’une peau de rat.’ Cette boutade excite de nouveau l’hilarité de la compagnie. ‘Quelle idée, Lolotte,’ dit son père d’un ton enjoué: ‘montre-toi donc!’“Apparemment Lolotte n’est pas d’humeur à obéir; mais les[148]garçons ne lui laissent pas le choix et la poussent en avant. La voilà donc, notre héroïne. C’est une fillette d’environ quatorze ans, dont les yeux pétillent d’esprit et de vie; on voit qu’elle aime à user largement de la liberté que lui laisse encore son âge, pour dire son opinion sur tout ce qui lui passe par la tête sans conséquence aucune. Mais bien qu’elle soit forte dans son opinionanti-gantière, l’enfant est tant soit peu confuse, et ne paraît pas portée à défendre sa cause en présence d’un étranger. ‘Quoi donc,’ lui dit son père, en la prenant par la taille, ‘tu ne veux pas porter des gants, parce qu’ils sont faits de peaux de rats! Je ne te croyais pas si folle. Le rat est morte et oublié depuis longtemps, et sa peau est glacée.’—‘Non, papa, ce n’est pasça.’—‘Qu’est-ce donc, mon enfant? Tu est trop grande fille pour ces manières sans façon. Ne veux-tu pas être une demoiselle comme il faut?’ ‘Et ces petites mains qui touchent si bien du piano,’ reprend le visiteur, désireux de faire oublier la gêne que cause sa présence, par un mot gracieux. ‘Ne veux-tu pas plutôt renoncer à la musique, et devenir sarcleuse?’ lui demande son père.—‘Non, papa, point du tout. Je ne puis pas dire au juste ma pensée.…’ Et elle se dégagea doucement de ses bras; et en se sauvant, grommela: ‘Mort aux gants, et vive la civilisation!’ On rit encore un peu de l’enfant bizarre; puis on parle d’autres choses, et l’on se prépare pour la promenade. Lolotte a mis les gants en question, ‘pour plaire à maman,’ et personne ne s’en occupe plus.“Mais l’étranger avait saisi au passage sa dernière phrase, qui sans cesse, lui revenait à l’esprit. Se reprochait-il devant cette enfant naïve sa complicité à l’interprétation futile que son hôte avait donné dela civilisation? Tant est, que pendant le cours de la soirée, se trouvant un moment en tête-à-tête avec Lolotte, il revint à l’histoire des gants. Il tâcha de réparer sa gaucherie et fit si bien, qu’il gagna la confiance de la petite. ‘Sans doute[149]j’en conviens,’ dit-il, ‘il faut plus pour être civilisé que de porter des gants, mais il faut se soumettre à certaines convenances que les gens comme il faut.…’ ‘C’est ça, Monsieur,’ dit-elle, en lui coupant la parole, ‘quelle est donc la chance des gens qui voudraient se civiliser, mais qui n’ont pas d’argent pour acheter des gants?’ C’était-là sa peine. ‘Chère enfant!’ dit-il tout bas. Et l’homme, si éloquent d’ordinaire, pressa la petite main sous le gant obligatoire, parce que pour le moment les paroles lui manquaient pour répondre.… Est-ce étonnant que, malgré lui, plus tard en s’occupant de la question sociale, il pensa souvent à cette jeune fille?“Et vous, lecteurs, que pensez-vous d’elle et de sa question gantière? Vous paraît-elle un enfantillage, ou bien la considerez-vous tout bonnement comme une exagération? Vous attachez-vous à la surface,oubien y cherchez-vous un sens plus profond, comme l’ami visiteur? Ne croyez-vous pas aussi que dans ce temps de ‘besoins multipliés,’ un des plus grands services que les classes supérieures puissent rendre au peuple, serait de faire distinction entre tous ces besoins et de prêcher d’exemple?”This bit of letter must find room—bearing as it does on last Fors’ subject:—“I was asking a girl this morning if she still took her long walks; and she said she was as fond of them as ever, but that they could only walk in the town now—the field or country walks were not safe for ladies alone. Indeed, I fancy the girls lose all care for, or knowledge of the spring or summer—except as they bring new fashions into the shop windows, not fresh flowers any more here into the fields. It is pitiable to live in a place like this—even worse than in ——. For here the process of spoiling country is going on under one’s eyes;—in —— it was done long ago. And just now, when the feeling of spring is upon one, it is hard[150]to have the sky darkened, and the air poisoned. But I am wasting time in useless grumbling. Only listen to this:—after all our sacrifices, and with all our money and civilization——I can’t tell you now; it must wait.”—[Very well; but don’t keep it waiting longer than you need.]I have had some good help about bees’ tongues from a young correspondent at Merrow Grange, Guildford, and a very clear drawing, to which the subjoined piece of his last letter refers; but I must not lose myself in microscopic questions just now:—“The author of ‘The Microscope’ keeps to the old idea of bees sucking honey and not ‘licking it up,’ for he says, ‘The proboscis, being cylindrical, extracts the juice of the flower in a somewhat similar way to that of the butterfly.’ And of the tongue he says, ‘If a bee is attentively observed as it settles upon a flower, the activity and promptitude with which it uses the apparatus is truly surprising; it lengthens the tongue, applies it to the bottom of the petals, then shortens it, bending and turning it in all directions, for the purpose of exploring the interior and removing the pollen, which it packs in the pockets in its hind legs, (by, he supposes, the two shorter feelers,) and forms the chief food for the working-bees.’ He says that when the waxen walls of the cells are completed, they are strengthened by a varnish collected from the buds of the poplar and other trees, which they smear over the cells by the aid of the wonderful apparatus. That part of the proboscis that looks something like a human head, he says, ‘can be considerably enlarged … and thus made to contain a larger quantity of the collected juice of the flowers; at the same time it is in this cavity that the nectar is transformed into pure honey by some peculiar chemical process.’ ”[151]Note on page145.—My correspondent need not be at a loss for sermons on usury. When the Christian Church was living, there was no lack of such. Here are two specimens of their tenor, furnished me by one of Mr. Sillar’s pamphlets:—Extract from the Exposition upon theFirst Epistle to the Thessalonians, Ch. IV. ver. 6. By Bishop Jewell.“Usury is a kind of lending of money, or corn, or oil, or wine, or of any other thing, wherein, upon covenant and bargain,we receive again the whole principalwhich we delivered,and somewhat morefor the use and occupying of the same: as, if I lent one hundred pounds, and for it covenant to receive one hundred and five pounds, or any other sum greater than was the sum which I did lend. This is that that we call usury; such a kind of bargaining as no good man, or godly man, ever used; such a kind of bargaining as all men that ever feared God’s judgment have always abhorred and condemned.It is filthy gains, and a work of darkness: it is a monster in nature; the overthrow of mighty kingdoms; the destruction of flourishing states; the decay of wealthy cities; the plagues of the world, and the misery of the people. It is theft; it is the murdering of our brethren; it is the curse of God, and the curse of the people.This is usury: by these signs and tokens you may know it: for wheresoever it reigneth, all those mischiefs ensue. But how, and how many ways, it may be wrought, I will not declare: it were horrible to hear; and I come now to reprove usury, and not to teach it.“Tell me, thou wretched wight of the world, thou unkind creature, which art past all sense and feeling of God; which knowest the will of God, and doest the contrary: how darest thou come into the church? It is the church of that God which hath said, ‘Thou shalt take no usury’; and thou knowest He hath so said. How darest thou read or hear the word of[152]God? It is the word of that God which condemneth usury; and thou knowest He doth condemn it. How darest thou come into the company of thy brethren? Usury is the plague, and destruction, and undoing of thy brethren; and this thou knowest. How darest thou look upon thy children? thou makest the wrath of God fall down from heaven upon them; thy iniquity shall be punished in them to the third and fourth generation: this thou knowest. How darest thou look up into heaven? thou hast no dwelling there; thou shalt have no place in the tabernacle of the Highest: this thou knowest. Because thou robbest the poor, deceivest the simple, and eatest up the widows’ houses: therefore shall thy children be naked, and beg their bread; therefore shalt thou and thy riches perish together.”Extract from the Farewell Sermon preached in the Church of St. Mary Woolnoth, Lombard Street, by the Rev. David Jones, when the present system was in its infancy.“And the Pharisees also, who were covetous, heard all these things, and they derided him.”—Lukexvi. 14.“I do openly declare that every minister and every churchwarden throughout all England are actually perjured and foresworn by the 109th canon of our church, if they suffer any usurer to come to the sacrament till he be reformed, and there is no reformation without restitution.*   *   *“And that you may know what usury is forbid by the word of God, turn toEzekiel xviii. 8, 13, and you will find that, whoever giveth upon usury or taketh any increase,—Mark it,—he that takethanyincrease above the principal,—not six in the hundred, but let it be never so little, and never so moderate,—he that takethanyincrease, is a usurer, and such a one as shall surely[153]die for his usury, and his blood shall be upon his own head. This is that word of God by which you shall all be saved or damned at the last day, and all those trifling and shuffling distinctions that covetous usurers ever invented shall never be able to excuse your damnation.“Heretofore all usurious clergymen were degraded from Holy Orders, and all usurious laymen were excommunicated in their lifetime, and hindered Christian burial after death, till their heirs had made restitution for all they had gotten by usury.”As this sheet is going to press, I receive a very interesting letter from “a poor mother.” That no wholesome occupation is at present offered in England to youths of the temper she describes, is precisely the calamity which urged my endeavour to found the St. George’s Company. But if she will kindly tell me the boy’s age, and whether the want of perseverance she regrets in him has ever been tested by giving him sufficient motive for consistent exertion, I will answer what I can, in next ‘Fors.’[155]

I transgress the laws of courtesy, in printing, without asking the writer’s permission, part of a letter which follows: but my correspondent is not, as far as I know him, a man who shrinks from publicity, or who would write in a private letter anything on general subjects which he would be unwilling openly to maintain; while the letter itself is so monumental as a type of the condition to which the modern average literary mind has been reduced, in its reading of authoritative classical authors, and touches so precisely on points which it happens to be my immediate business to set at rest in the minds of many of my readers, that I cannot but attribute to the Third Fors the direct inspiration of the epistle—and must leave on her hands what blame may be attached to its publication. I had been expressing some surprise to my correspondent (an acquaintance of long standing) at his usually bright and complacent temper; and making some enquiry about his views respecting modern usury, knowing him to have read, at least for literary purposes, large portions of the Old Testament. He replies,—

“I am sure I would not be wiser if I were ‘more uncomfortable’ in my mind; I am perfectly sure, if I can ever do good to any mortal, it will be by calm working, patient thinking, not by running, or raging, or weeping, or wailing. But for this humour, which I fancy I caught from Shakespeare and Goethe, the sorrow of the world would drive me mad.

“You ask what I think ‘the Psalmist’ means by ‘usury.’ I find from Cruden that usury is mentioned only in the fifteenth Psalm. That is a notable and most beautiful lyric, quite sufficient to demonstrate the superiority, in spirituality and morality, of the Hebrew religion to anything Greek. But the bit about usury is pure nonsense—the only bit of nonsense in the piece. Nonsense, because the singer has no notion whatever of the employment of money for thecommonbenefit[143]of lender and borrower. As the Hebrew monarchy was politically a total and disastrous failure, I should not expect any opinion worth listening to from a psalmist, touching directly or indirectly on the organisation of industry. Jesus Christ and Matthew the publican lived in a time of extended intercourse and some commerce; accordingly, inMatthew xxv., verse 27, you have a perfect statement of the truth about usury: ‘Thou oughtest to have put my money to the exchangers, and at my coming I should have received mine own with usury.’ Ricardo, with all Lombard Street to help him, could not improve upon that. A legitimate, useful, profitable use of money is to accommodate strangers who come with money that will not circulate in the country. The exchanger gives them current money; they pay a consideration for the convenience; and out of this comes the legitimate profit to be divided between lender and borrower. The rule which applies to one fruitful use of money will apply to a thousand, and, between wise lending and honest borrowing, swamp and forest become field and garden, and mountains wave with corn. Some professor or other had written what seemed outrageous rubbish; you confuted or thrust aside, in an early Fors, that rubbish; but against legitimate interest, usury, call it what you like, I have never heard any argument. Mr. Sillar’s tracts I have never seen,—he does not advertise, and I have not the second sight.

“My view of the grievous abuses in the publishing and bookselling trades has not altered. But, since writing you first on the subject, I have had careful conversations with publishers, and have constantly pondered the matter; and though I do not see my way to any complete reform, I cannot entertain hope from your methods.“I am tired, being still very weak. It would only bother you if I went on. Nothing you have ever written has, I think, enabled me to get so near comprehending you as your picture[144]of yourself learning to read and write in last Fors. You can see an individual concrete fact better than any man of the generation; but an invisible fact, an abstraction, anaverage, you have, I fancy, been as incapable of seeing as of seeing through a stone wall. Political Economy is the science of social averages.“Ever affectionately and faithfully yours.“P.S. (Sunday morning). Some fancy has been haunting me in the night of its being presumptuous, or your thinking it presumptuous, in me to say that David, or whoever wrote the fifteenth Psalm, spoke, on the subject of interest, pure nonsense. After carefully going over the matter again, I believe that I am accurately correct. Not knowing what lending and borrowing, as a normal industrial transaction, or trading transaction, was, the Psalmist spoke in vague ethical terms, meaning ‘you should be friendly to your neighbour’; just as a lady economist of to-day might shriek against the pawn-shop, which, with all its defects, had, in capacity of Poor Man’s Bank, saved many a child, or woman, or man, from sheer starvation. Not understanding the matter, the Psalmist could not distinguish between use and abuse, and so talked nonsense. It is exquisitely interesting to me to observe that Christ hits the Psalmist exactly on the point where he goes wrong.Τὸ ἀργύριον ἀυτοῦ οὐκ ἔδωκεν ἐπὶ τόκῳ, says thePsalmist;Πονηρὲ δοῦλε .… ἔδει σεοὖνβαλεῖν τὸ ἀργύριόν μου τοῖς τραπαζίταις, καὶ ἐλθὼν ἐγὼ ἐκομισάμην ἂν τὸ ἐμὸνσυν τόκῳ, saysChrist. The use of thesame wordin the Septuagint (the only Old Testament circulating in Palestine in Christ’s time) and in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, to denote in the one case what no good man would take, in the other, what it was a flagrant dereliction of dutynotto secure, is most precious as illustrating the simple common sense with which Christ used the old Scriptures, and[145]the infinite falsity of the modern doctrine of infallibility, whether of church, book, or man. One of those transcendencies of rightness which I find in Fors (amid things about Marmontel and Drury Lane, and Darwin and Huxley, worthy only of a Psalmist or pretty economist of fifteen) was your idea of policemen-bishops. I always agree also with what you say about the entirely obsolete and useless bishops at £5000 a-year.… But what I was going to say is, that you ought to ask your bishop, or the whole bench of them, to find a place, in their cart-loads of sermons, for one on ‘usury,’14as condemned by the Psalmist and enjoined by Christ. CompareLuke xix., ver. 23. The only sound basis of banking is the fruitful, industrial use of money. I by no means maintain that the present banking system of Europe is safe and sound.”

“My view of the grievous abuses in the publishing and bookselling trades has not altered. But, since writing you first on the subject, I have had careful conversations with publishers, and have constantly pondered the matter; and though I do not see my way to any complete reform, I cannot entertain hope from your methods.

“I am tired, being still very weak. It would only bother you if I went on. Nothing you have ever written has, I think, enabled me to get so near comprehending you as your picture[144]of yourself learning to read and write in last Fors. You can see an individual concrete fact better than any man of the generation; but an invisible fact, an abstraction, anaverage, you have, I fancy, been as incapable of seeing as of seeing through a stone wall. Political Economy is the science of social averages.

“Ever affectionately and faithfully yours.

“P.S. (Sunday morning). Some fancy has been haunting me in the night of its being presumptuous, or your thinking it presumptuous, in me to say that David, or whoever wrote the fifteenth Psalm, spoke, on the subject of interest, pure nonsense. After carefully going over the matter again, I believe that I am accurately correct. Not knowing what lending and borrowing, as a normal industrial transaction, or trading transaction, was, the Psalmist spoke in vague ethical terms, meaning ‘you should be friendly to your neighbour’; just as a lady economist of to-day might shriek against the pawn-shop, which, with all its defects, had, in capacity of Poor Man’s Bank, saved many a child, or woman, or man, from sheer starvation. Not understanding the matter, the Psalmist could not distinguish between use and abuse, and so talked nonsense. It is exquisitely interesting to me to observe that Christ hits the Psalmist exactly on the point where he goes wrong.Τὸ ἀργύριον ἀυτοῦ οὐκ ἔδωκεν ἐπὶ τόκῳ, says thePsalmist;Πονηρὲ δοῦλε .… ἔδει σεοὖνβαλεῖν τὸ ἀργύριόν μου τοῖς τραπαζίταις, καὶ ἐλθὼν ἐγὼ ἐκομισάμην ἂν τὸ ἐμὸνσυν τόκῳ, saysChrist. The use of thesame wordin the Septuagint (the only Old Testament circulating in Palestine in Christ’s time) and in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, to denote in the one case what no good man would take, in the other, what it was a flagrant dereliction of dutynotto secure, is most precious as illustrating the simple common sense with which Christ used the old Scriptures, and[145]the infinite falsity of the modern doctrine of infallibility, whether of church, book, or man. One of those transcendencies of rightness which I find in Fors (amid things about Marmontel and Drury Lane, and Darwin and Huxley, worthy only of a Psalmist or pretty economist of fifteen) was your idea of policemen-bishops. I always agree also with what you say about the entirely obsolete and useless bishops at £5000 a-year.… But what I was going to say is, that you ought to ask your bishop, or the whole bench of them, to find a place, in their cart-loads of sermons, for one on ‘usury,’14as condemned by the Psalmist and enjoined by Christ. CompareLuke xix., ver. 23. The only sound basis of banking is the fruitful, industrial use of money. I by no means maintain that the present banking system of Europe is safe and sound.”

I submitted the proof of this Fors to my correspondent, and think it due to him and to my readers to print, with the above letter, also the following portions of that which he sent in gentle reply. So far as I have misconceived or misrepresented him, he knows me to be sorry. For the rest, our misconceptions of each other are of no moment: the misconception, by either, of the nature of profit by the loan of money, or tools, is of moment to every one over whom we have influence; we neither of us have any business to be wrong in that matter; and there are few on which it is more immediately every man’s business to be right.

“Remonstrance were absurd, where misconception is so total as yours. My infidelity is simply that I worship Christ, thanking every one who gives me any glimpse that enables me to get nearer Christ’s meaning. In this light, what you say of a[146]hidden sense or drift in the parables interests me profoundly; but the more I think of the question of interest, the more I feel persuaded that Christ distinguished the use from the abuse. Tradition, almost certainly authentic, imputes to Him the sayingγίνεσθε τραπεζιται δόκιμοι(see M. Arnold’s article in MarchContemporary), and I don’t see how there can be honourable bankers,—men, living honourably by banking,—ifalltaking of interest is wrong. You speak of my ‘supreme confidence’ in my own opinions. I absolutely have confidence only in the resolution to keep my eyes open for light and, if I can help it, not to be to-day exactly where I was yesterday. I have not only read, but lived in, (as a very atmosphere) the works of men whom you say I went to because somebody said it was fine to do so. They have taught me some comprehensiveness, some tolerance, some moderation in judging even the mob. They have taught me to consume my own smoke, and it is this consumption of my own smoke which you seem to have mistaken for confidence in my opinions. Which prophet, from Moses to Carlyle, would notyouconfess to have been sometimes in the wrong? I said that I worship Christ. In Him I realize, so far as I can realize, God. Therefore I speak not of Him. But the very key-stone of any arch of notions in my mind is that inspiration is one of the mightiest and most blessed of forces, one of the most real of facts, but that infallibility is the error of errors. From no prophet, from no book, do I take what I please and leave what I please; but, applying all the lights I have, I learn from each as wisely as, with my powers and my lights, is possible for me.“Affectionately yours.”

“Remonstrance were absurd, where misconception is so total as yours. My infidelity is simply that I worship Christ, thanking every one who gives me any glimpse that enables me to get nearer Christ’s meaning. In this light, what you say of a[146]hidden sense or drift in the parables interests me profoundly; but the more I think of the question of interest, the more I feel persuaded that Christ distinguished the use from the abuse. Tradition, almost certainly authentic, imputes to Him the sayingγίνεσθε τραπεζιται δόκιμοι(see M. Arnold’s article in MarchContemporary), and I don’t see how there can be honourable bankers,—men, living honourably by banking,—ifalltaking of interest is wrong. You speak of my ‘supreme confidence’ in my own opinions. I absolutely have confidence only in the resolution to keep my eyes open for light and, if I can help it, not to be to-day exactly where I was yesterday. I have not only read, but lived in, (as a very atmosphere) the works of men whom you say I went to because somebody said it was fine to do so. They have taught me some comprehensiveness, some tolerance, some moderation in judging even the mob. They have taught me to consume my own smoke, and it is this consumption of my own smoke which you seem to have mistaken for confidence in my opinions. Which prophet, from Moses to Carlyle, would notyouconfess to have been sometimes in the wrong? I said that I worship Christ. In Him I realize, so far as I can realize, God. Therefore I speak not of Him. But the very key-stone of any arch of notions in my mind is that inspiration is one of the mightiest and most blessed of forces, one of the most real of facts, but that infallibility is the error of errors. From no prophet, from no book, do I take what I please and leave what I please; but, applying all the lights I have, I learn from each as wisely as, with my powers and my lights, is possible for me.

“Affectionately yours.”

I have received, “with the respects of the author,” a pamphlet on the Crystal Palace; which tells me, in its first sentence, that the Crystal Palace is a subject which every cultivated Englishman[147]has at heart; in its second, that the Crystal Palace is a household word, and is the loftiest moral triumph of the world; and in its third, that the Palace is declining, it is said,—verging towards decay. I have not heard anything for a long time which has more pleased me; and beg to assure the author of the pamphlet in question that I never get up at Herne Hill after a windy night without looking anxiously towards Norwood in the hope that ‘the loftiest moral triumph of the world’ may have been blown away.

I find the following lovely little scene translated into French from the Dutch, (M. J. Rigeveld, Amsterdam, C. L. Brinkman, 1875,) in a valuable little periodical for ladies, ‘l’Espérance,’ of Geneva, in which the entirely good purpose of the editor will, I doubt not, do wide service, in spite of her adoption of the popular error of the desirability of feminine independence.

“A PROPOS D’UNE PAIRE DE GANTS.“ ‘Qu’y a-t-il, Elise?’ dit Madame, en se tournant du côté d’une fenêtre ouverte, où elle entend quelque bruit. ‘Oh! moins que rien, maman!’ répond sa fille aînée, en train de faire la toilette des cadets, pour la promenade et le concert. ‘Ce que c’est, maman?’ crie un des petits garçons, ‘c’est que Lolotte ne veut pas mettre des gants.’ ‘Elle dit qu’elle a assez chaud sans cela,’ reprend un autre, ‘et qu’elle ne trouve pas même joli d’avoir des gants.’ Et chacun de rire. Un des rapporteurs continue: ‘Elise veut qu’elle le fasse par convenance; mais Lolotte prétend que la peau humaine est plus convenable qu’une peau de rat.’ Cette boutade excite de nouveau l’hilarité de la compagnie. ‘Quelle idée, Lolotte,’ dit son père d’un ton enjoué: ‘montre-toi donc!’“Apparemment Lolotte n’est pas d’humeur à obéir; mais les[148]garçons ne lui laissent pas le choix et la poussent en avant. La voilà donc, notre héroïne. C’est une fillette d’environ quatorze ans, dont les yeux pétillent d’esprit et de vie; on voit qu’elle aime à user largement de la liberté que lui laisse encore son âge, pour dire son opinion sur tout ce qui lui passe par la tête sans conséquence aucune. Mais bien qu’elle soit forte dans son opinionanti-gantière, l’enfant est tant soit peu confuse, et ne paraît pas portée à défendre sa cause en présence d’un étranger. ‘Quoi donc,’ lui dit son père, en la prenant par la taille, ‘tu ne veux pas porter des gants, parce qu’ils sont faits de peaux de rats! Je ne te croyais pas si folle. Le rat est morte et oublié depuis longtemps, et sa peau est glacée.’—‘Non, papa, ce n’est pasça.’—‘Qu’est-ce donc, mon enfant? Tu est trop grande fille pour ces manières sans façon. Ne veux-tu pas être une demoiselle comme il faut?’ ‘Et ces petites mains qui touchent si bien du piano,’ reprend le visiteur, désireux de faire oublier la gêne que cause sa présence, par un mot gracieux. ‘Ne veux-tu pas plutôt renoncer à la musique, et devenir sarcleuse?’ lui demande son père.—‘Non, papa, point du tout. Je ne puis pas dire au juste ma pensée.…’ Et elle se dégagea doucement de ses bras; et en se sauvant, grommela: ‘Mort aux gants, et vive la civilisation!’ On rit encore un peu de l’enfant bizarre; puis on parle d’autres choses, et l’on se prépare pour la promenade. Lolotte a mis les gants en question, ‘pour plaire à maman,’ et personne ne s’en occupe plus.“Mais l’étranger avait saisi au passage sa dernière phrase, qui sans cesse, lui revenait à l’esprit. Se reprochait-il devant cette enfant naïve sa complicité à l’interprétation futile que son hôte avait donné dela civilisation? Tant est, que pendant le cours de la soirée, se trouvant un moment en tête-à-tête avec Lolotte, il revint à l’histoire des gants. Il tâcha de réparer sa gaucherie et fit si bien, qu’il gagna la confiance de la petite. ‘Sans doute[149]j’en conviens,’ dit-il, ‘il faut plus pour être civilisé que de porter des gants, mais il faut se soumettre à certaines convenances que les gens comme il faut.…’ ‘C’est ça, Monsieur,’ dit-elle, en lui coupant la parole, ‘quelle est donc la chance des gens qui voudraient se civiliser, mais qui n’ont pas d’argent pour acheter des gants?’ C’était-là sa peine. ‘Chère enfant!’ dit-il tout bas. Et l’homme, si éloquent d’ordinaire, pressa la petite main sous le gant obligatoire, parce que pour le moment les paroles lui manquaient pour répondre.… Est-ce étonnant que, malgré lui, plus tard en s’occupant de la question sociale, il pensa souvent à cette jeune fille?“Et vous, lecteurs, que pensez-vous d’elle et de sa question gantière? Vous paraît-elle un enfantillage, ou bien la considerez-vous tout bonnement comme une exagération? Vous attachez-vous à la surface,oubien y cherchez-vous un sens plus profond, comme l’ami visiteur? Ne croyez-vous pas aussi que dans ce temps de ‘besoins multipliés,’ un des plus grands services que les classes supérieures puissent rendre au peuple, serait de faire distinction entre tous ces besoins et de prêcher d’exemple?”

“A PROPOS D’UNE PAIRE DE GANTS.

“ ‘Qu’y a-t-il, Elise?’ dit Madame, en se tournant du côté d’une fenêtre ouverte, où elle entend quelque bruit. ‘Oh! moins que rien, maman!’ répond sa fille aînée, en train de faire la toilette des cadets, pour la promenade et le concert. ‘Ce que c’est, maman?’ crie un des petits garçons, ‘c’est que Lolotte ne veut pas mettre des gants.’ ‘Elle dit qu’elle a assez chaud sans cela,’ reprend un autre, ‘et qu’elle ne trouve pas même joli d’avoir des gants.’ Et chacun de rire. Un des rapporteurs continue: ‘Elise veut qu’elle le fasse par convenance; mais Lolotte prétend que la peau humaine est plus convenable qu’une peau de rat.’ Cette boutade excite de nouveau l’hilarité de la compagnie. ‘Quelle idée, Lolotte,’ dit son père d’un ton enjoué: ‘montre-toi donc!’

“Apparemment Lolotte n’est pas d’humeur à obéir; mais les[148]garçons ne lui laissent pas le choix et la poussent en avant. La voilà donc, notre héroïne. C’est une fillette d’environ quatorze ans, dont les yeux pétillent d’esprit et de vie; on voit qu’elle aime à user largement de la liberté que lui laisse encore son âge, pour dire son opinion sur tout ce qui lui passe par la tête sans conséquence aucune. Mais bien qu’elle soit forte dans son opinionanti-gantière, l’enfant est tant soit peu confuse, et ne paraît pas portée à défendre sa cause en présence d’un étranger. ‘Quoi donc,’ lui dit son père, en la prenant par la taille, ‘tu ne veux pas porter des gants, parce qu’ils sont faits de peaux de rats! Je ne te croyais pas si folle. Le rat est morte et oublié depuis longtemps, et sa peau est glacée.’—‘Non, papa, ce n’est pasça.’—‘Qu’est-ce donc, mon enfant? Tu est trop grande fille pour ces manières sans façon. Ne veux-tu pas être une demoiselle comme il faut?’ ‘Et ces petites mains qui touchent si bien du piano,’ reprend le visiteur, désireux de faire oublier la gêne que cause sa présence, par un mot gracieux. ‘Ne veux-tu pas plutôt renoncer à la musique, et devenir sarcleuse?’ lui demande son père.—‘Non, papa, point du tout. Je ne puis pas dire au juste ma pensée.…’ Et elle se dégagea doucement de ses bras; et en se sauvant, grommela: ‘Mort aux gants, et vive la civilisation!’ On rit encore un peu de l’enfant bizarre; puis on parle d’autres choses, et l’on se prépare pour la promenade. Lolotte a mis les gants en question, ‘pour plaire à maman,’ et personne ne s’en occupe plus.

“Mais l’étranger avait saisi au passage sa dernière phrase, qui sans cesse, lui revenait à l’esprit. Se reprochait-il devant cette enfant naïve sa complicité à l’interprétation futile que son hôte avait donné dela civilisation? Tant est, que pendant le cours de la soirée, se trouvant un moment en tête-à-tête avec Lolotte, il revint à l’histoire des gants. Il tâcha de réparer sa gaucherie et fit si bien, qu’il gagna la confiance de la petite. ‘Sans doute[149]j’en conviens,’ dit-il, ‘il faut plus pour être civilisé que de porter des gants, mais il faut se soumettre à certaines convenances que les gens comme il faut.…’ ‘C’est ça, Monsieur,’ dit-elle, en lui coupant la parole, ‘quelle est donc la chance des gens qui voudraient se civiliser, mais qui n’ont pas d’argent pour acheter des gants?’ C’était-là sa peine. ‘Chère enfant!’ dit-il tout bas. Et l’homme, si éloquent d’ordinaire, pressa la petite main sous le gant obligatoire, parce que pour le moment les paroles lui manquaient pour répondre.… Est-ce étonnant que, malgré lui, plus tard en s’occupant de la question sociale, il pensa souvent à cette jeune fille?

“Et vous, lecteurs, que pensez-vous d’elle et de sa question gantière? Vous paraît-elle un enfantillage, ou bien la considerez-vous tout bonnement comme une exagération? Vous attachez-vous à la surface,oubien y cherchez-vous un sens plus profond, comme l’ami visiteur? Ne croyez-vous pas aussi que dans ce temps de ‘besoins multipliés,’ un des plus grands services que les classes supérieures puissent rendre au peuple, serait de faire distinction entre tous ces besoins et de prêcher d’exemple?”

This bit of letter must find room—bearing as it does on last Fors’ subject:—

“I was asking a girl this morning if she still took her long walks; and she said she was as fond of them as ever, but that they could only walk in the town now—the field or country walks were not safe for ladies alone. Indeed, I fancy the girls lose all care for, or knowledge of the spring or summer—except as they bring new fashions into the shop windows, not fresh flowers any more here into the fields. It is pitiable to live in a place like this—even worse than in ——. For here the process of spoiling country is going on under one’s eyes;—in —— it was done long ago. And just now, when the feeling of spring is upon one, it is hard[150]to have the sky darkened, and the air poisoned. But I am wasting time in useless grumbling. Only listen to this:—after all our sacrifices, and with all our money and civilization——I can’t tell you now; it must wait.”—[Very well; but don’t keep it waiting longer than you need.]

I have had some good help about bees’ tongues from a young correspondent at Merrow Grange, Guildford, and a very clear drawing, to which the subjoined piece of his last letter refers; but I must not lose myself in microscopic questions just now:—

“The author of ‘The Microscope’ keeps to the old idea of bees sucking honey and not ‘licking it up,’ for he says, ‘The proboscis, being cylindrical, extracts the juice of the flower in a somewhat similar way to that of the butterfly.’ And of the tongue he says, ‘If a bee is attentively observed as it settles upon a flower, the activity and promptitude with which it uses the apparatus is truly surprising; it lengthens the tongue, applies it to the bottom of the petals, then shortens it, bending and turning it in all directions, for the purpose of exploring the interior and removing the pollen, which it packs in the pockets in its hind legs, (by, he supposes, the two shorter feelers,) and forms the chief food for the working-bees.’ He says that when the waxen walls of the cells are completed, they are strengthened by a varnish collected from the buds of the poplar and other trees, which they smear over the cells by the aid of the wonderful apparatus. That part of the proboscis that looks something like a human head, he says, ‘can be considerably enlarged … and thus made to contain a larger quantity of the collected juice of the flowers; at the same time it is in this cavity that the nectar is transformed into pure honey by some peculiar chemical process.’ ”[151]

Note on page145.—My correspondent need not be at a loss for sermons on usury. When the Christian Church was living, there was no lack of such. Here are two specimens of their tenor, furnished me by one of Mr. Sillar’s pamphlets:—

Extract from the Exposition upon theFirst Epistle to the Thessalonians, Ch. IV. ver. 6. By Bishop Jewell.“Usury is a kind of lending of money, or corn, or oil, or wine, or of any other thing, wherein, upon covenant and bargain,we receive again the whole principalwhich we delivered,and somewhat morefor the use and occupying of the same: as, if I lent one hundred pounds, and for it covenant to receive one hundred and five pounds, or any other sum greater than was the sum which I did lend. This is that that we call usury; such a kind of bargaining as no good man, or godly man, ever used; such a kind of bargaining as all men that ever feared God’s judgment have always abhorred and condemned.It is filthy gains, and a work of darkness: it is a monster in nature; the overthrow of mighty kingdoms; the destruction of flourishing states; the decay of wealthy cities; the plagues of the world, and the misery of the people. It is theft; it is the murdering of our brethren; it is the curse of God, and the curse of the people.This is usury: by these signs and tokens you may know it: for wheresoever it reigneth, all those mischiefs ensue. But how, and how many ways, it may be wrought, I will not declare: it were horrible to hear; and I come now to reprove usury, and not to teach it.“Tell me, thou wretched wight of the world, thou unkind creature, which art past all sense and feeling of God; which knowest the will of God, and doest the contrary: how darest thou come into the church? It is the church of that God which hath said, ‘Thou shalt take no usury’; and thou knowest He hath so said. How darest thou read or hear the word of[152]God? It is the word of that God which condemneth usury; and thou knowest He doth condemn it. How darest thou come into the company of thy brethren? Usury is the plague, and destruction, and undoing of thy brethren; and this thou knowest. How darest thou look upon thy children? thou makest the wrath of God fall down from heaven upon them; thy iniquity shall be punished in them to the third and fourth generation: this thou knowest. How darest thou look up into heaven? thou hast no dwelling there; thou shalt have no place in the tabernacle of the Highest: this thou knowest. Because thou robbest the poor, deceivest the simple, and eatest up the widows’ houses: therefore shall thy children be naked, and beg their bread; therefore shalt thou and thy riches perish together.”

Extract from the Exposition upon theFirst Epistle to the Thessalonians, Ch. IV. ver. 6. By Bishop Jewell.

“Usury is a kind of lending of money, or corn, or oil, or wine, or of any other thing, wherein, upon covenant and bargain,we receive again the whole principalwhich we delivered,and somewhat morefor the use and occupying of the same: as, if I lent one hundred pounds, and for it covenant to receive one hundred and five pounds, or any other sum greater than was the sum which I did lend. This is that that we call usury; such a kind of bargaining as no good man, or godly man, ever used; such a kind of bargaining as all men that ever feared God’s judgment have always abhorred and condemned.It is filthy gains, and a work of darkness: it is a monster in nature; the overthrow of mighty kingdoms; the destruction of flourishing states; the decay of wealthy cities; the plagues of the world, and the misery of the people. It is theft; it is the murdering of our brethren; it is the curse of God, and the curse of the people.This is usury: by these signs and tokens you may know it: for wheresoever it reigneth, all those mischiefs ensue. But how, and how many ways, it may be wrought, I will not declare: it were horrible to hear; and I come now to reprove usury, and not to teach it.“Tell me, thou wretched wight of the world, thou unkind creature, which art past all sense and feeling of God; which knowest the will of God, and doest the contrary: how darest thou come into the church? It is the church of that God which hath said, ‘Thou shalt take no usury’; and thou knowest He hath so said. How darest thou read or hear the word of[152]God? It is the word of that God which condemneth usury; and thou knowest He doth condemn it. How darest thou come into the company of thy brethren? Usury is the plague, and destruction, and undoing of thy brethren; and this thou knowest. How darest thou look upon thy children? thou makest the wrath of God fall down from heaven upon them; thy iniquity shall be punished in them to the third and fourth generation: this thou knowest. How darest thou look up into heaven? thou hast no dwelling there; thou shalt have no place in the tabernacle of the Highest: this thou knowest. Because thou robbest the poor, deceivest the simple, and eatest up the widows’ houses: therefore shall thy children be naked, and beg their bread; therefore shalt thou and thy riches perish together.”

“Usury is a kind of lending of money, or corn, or oil, or wine, or of any other thing, wherein, upon covenant and bargain,we receive again the whole principalwhich we delivered,and somewhat morefor the use and occupying of the same: as, if I lent one hundred pounds, and for it covenant to receive one hundred and five pounds, or any other sum greater than was the sum which I did lend. This is that that we call usury; such a kind of bargaining as no good man, or godly man, ever used; such a kind of bargaining as all men that ever feared God’s judgment have always abhorred and condemned.It is filthy gains, and a work of darkness: it is a monster in nature; the overthrow of mighty kingdoms; the destruction of flourishing states; the decay of wealthy cities; the plagues of the world, and the misery of the people. It is theft; it is the murdering of our brethren; it is the curse of God, and the curse of the people.This is usury: by these signs and tokens you may know it: for wheresoever it reigneth, all those mischiefs ensue. But how, and how many ways, it may be wrought, I will not declare: it were horrible to hear; and I come now to reprove usury, and not to teach it.

“Tell me, thou wretched wight of the world, thou unkind creature, which art past all sense and feeling of God; which knowest the will of God, and doest the contrary: how darest thou come into the church? It is the church of that God which hath said, ‘Thou shalt take no usury’; and thou knowest He hath so said. How darest thou read or hear the word of[152]God? It is the word of that God which condemneth usury; and thou knowest He doth condemn it. How darest thou come into the company of thy brethren? Usury is the plague, and destruction, and undoing of thy brethren; and this thou knowest. How darest thou look upon thy children? thou makest the wrath of God fall down from heaven upon them; thy iniquity shall be punished in them to the third and fourth generation: this thou knowest. How darest thou look up into heaven? thou hast no dwelling there; thou shalt have no place in the tabernacle of the Highest: this thou knowest. Because thou robbest the poor, deceivest the simple, and eatest up the widows’ houses: therefore shall thy children be naked, and beg their bread; therefore shalt thou and thy riches perish together.”

Extract from the Farewell Sermon preached in the Church of St. Mary Woolnoth, Lombard Street, by the Rev. David Jones, when the present system was in its infancy.“And the Pharisees also, who were covetous, heard all these things, and they derided him.”—Lukexvi. 14.“I do openly declare that every minister and every churchwarden throughout all England are actually perjured and foresworn by the 109th canon of our church, if they suffer any usurer to come to the sacrament till he be reformed, and there is no reformation without restitution.*   *   *“And that you may know what usury is forbid by the word of God, turn toEzekiel xviii. 8, 13, and you will find that, whoever giveth upon usury or taketh any increase,—Mark it,—he that takethanyincrease above the principal,—not six in the hundred, but let it be never so little, and never so moderate,—he that takethanyincrease, is a usurer, and such a one as shall surely[153]die for his usury, and his blood shall be upon his own head. This is that word of God by which you shall all be saved or damned at the last day, and all those trifling and shuffling distinctions that covetous usurers ever invented shall never be able to excuse your damnation.“Heretofore all usurious clergymen were degraded from Holy Orders, and all usurious laymen were excommunicated in their lifetime, and hindered Christian burial after death, till their heirs had made restitution for all they had gotten by usury.”As this sheet is going to press, I receive a very interesting letter from “a poor mother.” That no wholesome occupation is at present offered in England to youths of the temper she describes, is precisely the calamity which urged my endeavour to found the St. George’s Company. But if she will kindly tell me the boy’s age, and whether the want of perseverance she regrets in him has ever been tested by giving him sufficient motive for consistent exertion, I will answer what I can, in next ‘Fors.’[155]

Extract from the Farewell Sermon preached in the Church of St. Mary Woolnoth, Lombard Street, by the Rev. David Jones, when the present system was in its infancy.

“And the Pharisees also, who were covetous, heard all these things, and they derided him.”—Lukexvi. 14.“I do openly declare that every minister and every churchwarden throughout all England are actually perjured and foresworn by the 109th canon of our church, if they suffer any usurer to come to the sacrament till he be reformed, and there is no reformation without restitution.*   *   *“And that you may know what usury is forbid by the word of God, turn toEzekiel xviii. 8, 13, and you will find that, whoever giveth upon usury or taketh any increase,—Mark it,—he that takethanyincrease above the principal,—not six in the hundred, but let it be never so little, and never so moderate,—he that takethanyincrease, is a usurer, and such a one as shall surely[153]die for his usury, and his blood shall be upon his own head. This is that word of God by which you shall all be saved or damned at the last day, and all those trifling and shuffling distinctions that covetous usurers ever invented shall never be able to excuse your damnation.“Heretofore all usurious clergymen were degraded from Holy Orders, and all usurious laymen were excommunicated in their lifetime, and hindered Christian burial after death, till their heirs had made restitution for all they had gotten by usury.”As this sheet is going to press, I receive a very interesting letter from “a poor mother.” That no wholesome occupation is at present offered in England to youths of the temper she describes, is precisely the calamity which urged my endeavour to found the St. George’s Company. But if she will kindly tell me the boy’s age, and whether the want of perseverance she regrets in him has ever been tested by giving him sufficient motive for consistent exertion, I will answer what I can, in next ‘Fors.’[155]

“And the Pharisees also, who were covetous, heard all these things, and they derided him.”—Lukexvi. 14.

“I do openly declare that every minister and every churchwarden throughout all England are actually perjured and foresworn by the 109th canon of our church, if they suffer any usurer to come to the sacrament till he be reformed, and there is no reformation without restitution.

*   *   *

“And that you may know what usury is forbid by the word of God, turn toEzekiel xviii. 8, 13, and you will find that, whoever giveth upon usury or taketh any increase,—Mark it,—he that takethanyincrease above the principal,—not six in the hundred, but let it be never so little, and never so moderate,—he that takethanyincrease, is a usurer, and such a one as shall surely[153]die for his usury, and his blood shall be upon his own head. This is that word of God by which you shall all be saved or damned at the last day, and all those trifling and shuffling distinctions that covetous usurers ever invented shall never be able to excuse your damnation.

“Heretofore all usurious clergymen were degraded from Holy Orders, and all usurious laymen were excommunicated in their lifetime, and hindered Christian burial after death, till their heirs had made restitution for all they had gotten by usury.”

As this sheet is going to press, I receive a very interesting letter from “a poor mother.” That no wholesome occupation is at present offered in England to youths of the temper she describes, is precisely the calamity which urged my endeavour to found the St. George’s Company. But if she will kindly tell me the boy’s age, and whether the want of perseverance she regrets in him has ever been tested by giving him sufficient motive for consistent exertion, I will answer what I can, in next ‘Fors.’[155]

1See my first notice of it in the beginning of the Fors of August 1871; and further account of it in appendix to my Lecture on Glaciers, given at the London Institution this year.↑2Will the reader be kind enough, in thelasttwo lines of page 128, to put, with his pen, a semicolon after “age”, a comma after “unclean,” and a semicolon after “use”? He will find the sentence thus take a different meaning.↑3Isaiah xxviii. 17 and 18.↑4The whole woodcut is given in facsimile in the fifth part of ‘Ariadne Florentina.’↑5See ‘Munera Pulveris,’ pp. 99 to 103; and ‘Ariadne Florentina,’ Lecture VI.↑6“Narr.Fünftausend Kronen wären mir zu Handen.Meph.Zweibeiniger Schlauch, bist wieder auferstanden?Narr.Geschieht mir oft, doch nicht so gut als jetzt.Meph.Du freust dich so, dass dich’s in Schweiss versetzt.Narr.Da seht nur her, ist das wohl Geldes werth?Meph.Du hast dafür was Schlund und Bauch begehrt.Narr.Und kaufen kann ich Acker, Haus, und Vieh?Meph.Versteht sich!Bietenur, das fehlt dir nie!Narr.Und Schloss mit Wald und Jagd, und Fischbach?Meph.Traun!Ich möchte dich gestrengen Herrn wohl schaun.Narr.Heute Abend wieg’ ich mich im Grundbesitz.(ab.)Meph.(solus.)Wer zweifelt noch anunsresNarren Witz!”7I have written it out from a perfect English psalter of early thirteenth century work, with St. Edward, St. Edmund, and St. Cuthbert in its calendar; it probably having belonged to the cathedral of York. The writing is very full, but quick; meant for service more than beauty; illuminated sparingly, but with extreme care. Its contractions are curiously varied and capricious: thus, here in the fifth verse, c inconstituististands for ‘con’ merely by being turned the wrong way. I prefer its text, nevertheless, to that of more elaborate MSS., for when very great attention is paid to the writing, there are apt to be mistakes in the words. In the best thirteenth-century service-book I have, ‘tuos’ in the third verse is written ‘meos.’↑8Compare the ‘Crown of Wild Olive,’ p. 57; and put in the fifth line of that page, a comma after ‘heaven,’ and in the eighth line a semicolon after ‘blessing.’↑9I am sensitive for other writers in this point, my own readers being in the almost universal practice of choosing any bit they may happen to fancy in what I say, without ever considering what it was said for.↑10Collated out of Sapientia xv. and xvi.↑11CompareJeremiah ix. 6; in the Septuagint,τόκος ἐπὶ τόκῳ, καὶ δόλος ἐπὶ δόλῳ: “usury on usury, and trick upon trick.”↑12The instinct for the study of parasites, modes of disease, the lower forms of undeveloped creatures, and the instinctive processes of digestion and[139]generation, rather than the varied and noble habit of life,—which shows itself so grotesquely in modern science, is the precise counterpart of the forms of idolatry (as of beetle and serpent, rather than of clean or innocent creatures,) which were in great part the cause of final corruption in ancient mythology and morals.↑13If my good correspondent will try practically the difference in the effect on the minds of the next two beggars he meets, between imputing a penny to the one, and imparting it to the other, he will receive a profitable lesson both in religion and English.Of Felix Neff’s influence, past and present, I will take other occasion to speak.↑14See the note at p.151.↑

1See my first notice of it in the beginning of the Fors of August 1871; and further account of it in appendix to my Lecture on Glaciers, given at the London Institution this year.↑2Will the reader be kind enough, in thelasttwo lines of page 128, to put, with his pen, a semicolon after “age”, a comma after “unclean,” and a semicolon after “use”? He will find the sentence thus take a different meaning.↑3Isaiah xxviii. 17 and 18.↑4The whole woodcut is given in facsimile in the fifth part of ‘Ariadne Florentina.’↑5See ‘Munera Pulveris,’ pp. 99 to 103; and ‘Ariadne Florentina,’ Lecture VI.↑6“Narr.Fünftausend Kronen wären mir zu Handen.Meph.Zweibeiniger Schlauch, bist wieder auferstanden?Narr.Geschieht mir oft, doch nicht so gut als jetzt.Meph.Du freust dich so, dass dich’s in Schweiss versetzt.Narr.Da seht nur her, ist das wohl Geldes werth?Meph.Du hast dafür was Schlund und Bauch begehrt.Narr.Und kaufen kann ich Acker, Haus, und Vieh?Meph.Versteht sich!Bietenur, das fehlt dir nie!Narr.Und Schloss mit Wald und Jagd, und Fischbach?Meph.Traun!Ich möchte dich gestrengen Herrn wohl schaun.Narr.Heute Abend wieg’ ich mich im Grundbesitz.(ab.)Meph.(solus.)Wer zweifelt noch anunsresNarren Witz!”7I have written it out from a perfect English psalter of early thirteenth century work, with St. Edward, St. Edmund, and St. Cuthbert in its calendar; it probably having belonged to the cathedral of York. The writing is very full, but quick; meant for service more than beauty; illuminated sparingly, but with extreme care. Its contractions are curiously varied and capricious: thus, here in the fifth verse, c inconstituististands for ‘con’ merely by being turned the wrong way. I prefer its text, nevertheless, to that of more elaborate MSS., for when very great attention is paid to the writing, there are apt to be mistakes in the words. In the best thirteenth-century service-book I have, ‘tuos’ in the third verse is written ‘meos.’↑8Compare the ‘Crown of Wild Olive,’ p. 57; and put in the fifth line of that page, a comma after ‘heaven,’ and in the eighth line a semicolon after ‘blessing.’↑9I am sensitive for other writers in this point, my own readers being in the almost universal practice of choosing any bit they may happen to fancy in what I say, without ever considering what it was said for.↑10Collated out of Sapientia xv. and xvi.↑11CompareJeremiah ix. 6; in the Septuagint,τόκος ἐπὶ τόκῳ, καὶ δόλος ἐπὶ δόλῳ: “usury on usury, and trick upon trick.”↑12The instinct for the study of parasites, modes of disease, the lower forms of undeveloped creatures, and the instinctive processes of digestion and[139]generation, rather than the varied and noble habit of life,—which shows itself so grotesquely in modern science, is the precise counterpart of the forms of idolatry (as of beetle and serpent, rather than of clean or innocent creatures,) which were in great part the cause of final corruption in ancient mythology and morals.↑13If my good correspondent will try practically the difference in the effect on the minds of the next two beggars he meets, between imputing a penny to the one, and imparting it to the other, he will receive a profitable lesson both in religion and English.Of Felix Neff’s influence, past and present, I will take other occasion to speak.↑14See the note at p.151.↑

1See my first notice of it in the beginning of the Fors of August 1871; and further account of it in appendix to my Lecture on Glaciers, given at the London Institution this year.↑

1See my first notice of it in the beginning of the Fors of August 1871; and further account of it in appendix to my Lecture on Glaciers, given at the London Institution this year.↑

2Will the reader be kind enough, in thelasttwo lines of page 128, to put, with his pen, a semicolon after “age”, a comma after “unclean,” and a semicolon after “use”? He will find the sentence thus take a different meaning.↑

2Will the reader be kind enough, in thelasttwo lines of page 128, to put, with his pen, a semicolon after “age”, a comma after “unclean,” and a semicolon after “use”? He will find the sentence thus take a different meaning.↑

3Isaiah xxviii. 17 and 18.↑

3Isaiah xxviii. 17 and 18.↑

4The whole woodcut is given in facsimile in the fifth part of ‘Ariadne Florentina.’↑

4The whole woodcut is given in facsimile in the fifth part of ‘Ariadne Florentina.’↑

5See ‘Munera Pulveris,’ pp. 99 to 103; and ‘Ariadne Florentina,’ Lecture VI.↑

5See ‘Munera Pulveris,’ pp. 99 to 103; and ‘Ariadne Florentina,’ Lecture VI.↑

6“Narr.Fünftausend Kronen wären mir zu Handen.Meph.Zweibeiniger Schlauch, bist wieder auferstanden?Narr.Geschieht mir oft, doch nicht so gut als jetzt.Meph.Du freust dich so, dass dich’s in Schweiss versetzt.Narr.Da seht nur her, ist das wohl Geldes werth?Meph.Du hast dafür was Schlund und Bauch begehrt.Narr.Und kaufen kann ich Acker, Haus, und Vieh?Meph.Versteht sich!Bietenur, das fehlt dir nie!Narr.Und Schloss mit Wald und Jagd, und Fischbach?Meph.Traun!Ich möchte dich gestrengen Herrn wohl schaun.Narr.Heute Abend wieg’ ich mich im Grundbesitz.(ab.)Meph.(solus.)Wer zweifelt noch anunsresNarren Witz!”

6

“Narr.Fünftausend Kronen wären mir zu Handen.Meph.Zweibeiniger Schlauch, bist wieder auferstanden?Narr.Geschieht mir oft, doch nicht so gut als jetzt.Meph.Du freust dich so, dass dich’s in Schweiss versetzt.Narr.Da seht nur her, ist das wohl Geldes werth?Meph.Du hast dafür was Schlund und Bauch begehrt.Narr.Und kaufen kann ich Acker, Haus, und Vieh?Meph.Versteht sich!Bietenur, das fehlt dir nie!Narr.Und Schloss mit Wald und Jagd, und Fischbach?Meph.Traun!Ich möchte dich gestrengen Herrn wohl schaun.Narr.Heute Abend wieg’ ich mich im Grundbesitz.(ab.)Meph.(solus.)Wer zweifelt noch anunsresNarren Witz!”

“Narr.Fünftausend Kronen wären mir zu Handen.Meph.Zweibeiniger Schlauch, bist wieder auferstanden?Narr.Geschieht mir oft, doch nicht so gut als jetzt.Meph.Du freust dich so, dass dich’s in Schweiss versetzt.Narr.Da seht nur her, ist das wohl Geldes werth?Meph.Du hast dafür was Schlund und Bauch begehrt.Narr.Und kaufen kann ich Acker, Haus, und Vieh?Meph.Versteht sich!Bietenur, das fehlt dir nie!Narr.Und Schloss mit Wald und Jagd, und Fischbach?Meph.Traun!Ich möchte dich gestrengen Herrn wohl schaun.Narr.Heute Abend wieg’ ich mich im Grundbesitz.(ab.)Meph.(solus.)Wer zweifelt noch anunsresNarren Witz!”

“Narr.Fünftausend Kronen wären mir zu Handen.Meph.Zweibeiniger Schlauch, bist wieder auferstanden?Narr.Geschieht mir oft, doch nicht so gut als jetzt.Meph.Du freust dich so, dass dich’s in Schweiss versetzt.Narr.Da seht nur her, ist das wohl Geldes werth?Meph.Du hast dafür was Schlund und Bauch begehrt.Narr.Und kaufen kann ich Acker, Haus, und Vieh?Meph.Versteht sich!Bietenur, das fehlt dir nie!Narr.Und Schloss mit Wald und Jagd, und Fischbach?Meph.Traun!Ich möchte dich gestrengen Herrn wohl schaun.Narr.Heute Abend wieg’ ich mich im Grundbesitz.(ab.)Meph.(solus.)Wer zweifelt noch anunsresNarren Witz!”

“Narr.Fünftausend Kronen wären mir zu Handen.

“Narr.

Fünftausend Kronen wären mir zu Handen.

Meph.Zweibeiniger Schlauch, bist wieder auferstanden?

Meph.

Zweibeiniger Schlauch, bist wieder auferstanden?

Narr.Geschieht mir oft, doch nicht so gut als jetzt.

Narr.

Geschieht mir oft, doch nicht so gut als jetzt.

Meph.Du freust dich so, dass dich’s in Schweiss versetzt.

Meph.

Du freust dich so, dass dich’s in Schweiss versetzt.

Narr.Da seht nur her, ist das wohl Geldes werth?

Narr.

Da seht nur her, ist das wohl Geldes werth?

Meph.Du hast dafür was Schlund und Bauch begehrt.

Meph.

Du hast dafür was Schlund und Bauch begehrt.

Narr.Und kaufen kann ich Acker, Haus, und Vieh?

Narr.

Und kaufen kann ich Acker, Haus, und Vieh?

Meph.Versteht sich!Bietenur, das fehlt dir nie!

Meph.

Versteht sich!Bietenur, das fehlt dir nie!

Narr.Und Schloss mit Wald und Jagd, und Fischbach?

Narr.

Und Schloss mit Wald und Jagd, und Fischbach?

Meph.Traun!Ich möchte dich gestrengen Herrn wohl schaun.

Meph.

Traun!

Ich möchte dich gestrengen Herrn wohl schaun.

Narr.Heute Abend wieg’ ich mich im Grundbesitz.(ab.)

Narr.

Heute Abend wieg’ ich mich im Grundbesitz.(ab.)

Meph.(solus.)Wer zweifelt noch anunsresNarren Witz!”

Meph.(solus.)

Wer zweifelt noch anunsresNarren Witz!”

7I have written it out from a perfect English psalter of early thirteenth century work, with St. Edward, St. Edmund, and St. Cuthbert in its calendar; it probably having belonged to the cathedral of York. The writing is very full, but quick; meant for service more than beauty; illuminated sparingly, but with extreme care. Its contractions are curiously varied and capricious: thus, here in the fifth verse, c inconstituististands for ‘con’ merely by being turned the wrong way. I prefer its text, nevertheless, to that of more elaborate MSS., for when very great attention is paid to the writing, there are apt to be mistakes in the words. In the best thirteenth-century service-book I have, ‘tuos’ in the third verse is written ‘meos.’↑

7I have written it out from a perfect English psalter of early thirteenth century work, with St. Edward, St. Edmund, and St. Cuthbert in its calendar; it probably having belonged to the cathedral of York. The writing is very full, but quick; meant for service more than beauty; illuminated sparingly, but with extreme care. Its contractions are curiously varied and capricious: thus, here in the fifth verse, c inconstituististands for ‘con’ merely by being turned the wrong way. I prefer its text, nevertheless, to that of more elaborate MSS., for when very great attention is paid to the writing, there are apt to be mistakes in the words. In the best thirteenth-century service-book I have, ‘tuos’ in the third verse is written ‘meos.’↑

8Compare the ‘Crown of Wild Olive,’ p. 57; and put in the fifth line of that page, a comma after ‘heaven,’ and in the eighth line a semicolon after ‘blessing.’↑

8Compare the ‘Crown of Wild Olive,’ p. 57; and put in the fifth line of that page, a comma after ‘heaven,’ and in the eighth line a semicolon after ‘blessing.’↑

9I am sensitive for other writers in this point, my own readers being in the almost universal practice of choosing any bit they may happen to fancy in what I say, without ever considering what it was said for.↑

9I am sensitive for other writers in this point, my own readers being in the almost universal practice of choosing any bit they may happen to fancy in what I say, without ever considering what it was said for.↑

10Collated out of Sapientia xv. and xvi.↑

10Collated out of Sapientia xv. and xvi.↑

11CompareJeremiah ix. 6; in the Septuagint,τόκος ἐπὶ τόκῳ, καὶ δόλος ἐπὶ δόλῳ: “usury on usury, and trick upon trick.”↑

11CompareJeremiah ix. 6; in the Septuagint,τόκος ἐπὶ τόκῳ, καὶ δόλος ἐπὶ δόλῳ: “usury on usury, and trick upon trick.”↑

12The instinct for the study of parasites, modes of disease, the lower forms of undeveloped creatures, and the instinctive processes of digestion and[139]generation, rather than the varied and noble habit of life,—which shows itself so grotesquely in modern science, is the precise counterpart of the forms of idolatry (as of beetle and serpent, rather than of clean or innocent creatures,) which were in great part the cause of final corruption in ancient mythology and morals.↑

12The instinct for the study of parasites, modes of disease, the lower forms of undeveloped creatures, and the instinctive processes of digestion and[139]generation, rather than the varied and noble habit of life,—which shows itself so grotesquely in modern science, is the precise counterpart of the forms of idolatry (as of beetle and serpent, rather than of clean or innocent creatures,) which were in great part the cause of final corruption in ancient mythology and morals.↑

13If my good correspondent will try practically the difference in the effect on the minds of the next two beggars he meets, between imputing a penny to the one, and imparting it to the other, he will receive a profitable lesson both in religion and English.Of Felix Neff’s influence, past and present, I will take other occasion to speak.↑

13If my good correspondent will try practically the difference in the effect on the minds of the next two beggars he meets, between imputing a penny to the one, and imparting it to the other, he will receive a profitable lesson both in religion and English.

Of Felix Neff’s influence, past and present, I will take other occasion to speak.↑

14See the note at p.151.↑

14See the note at p.151.↑

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