FORS CLAVIGERA.

FORS CLAVIGERA.LETTER LXXI.Venice,4th October, 1876.I am able at last to give you some of the long-promised opinions of Carpaccio on practical subjects; not that, except ironically, I ever call them ‘opinions.’ There are certain men whoknowthe truths necessary to human life; they do not ‘opine’ them; and nobody’s ‘opinions,’ on any subject, are of any consequence opposed to them. Hesiod is one of these, Plato another, Dante another, Carpaccio is another. He speaks little, and among the inspired painters may be thought of as one of the lesser prophets; but his brief book is of extreme value.I have been happy enough to get two of my faithful scholars to work upon it for me; and they have deciphered it nearly all—much more, at all events, than I can tell you either in this Fors, or in several to come.[340]His message is written in the Venetian manner, by painting the myths of the saints, in his own way.If you will look into the introduction to the ‘Queen of the Air,’ you will find it explained that a great mythcanonly be written in the central time of a nation’s power. This prophecy of Carpaccio’s may be thought of by you as the sweetest,becausethe truest, of all that Venice was born to utter: the painted syllabling of it is nearly the last work and word of her’s in true life. She speaks it, and virtually, thereafter, dies, or begins to die.It is written in a series of some eighteen to twenty pictures, chiefly representing the stories of St. Ursula, St. George, and St. Jerome.The first, in thoughtful order, of these, the dream of St. Ursula, has been already partly described in Fors; (August, 1872, p. 14). The authorities of the Venetian Academy have been kind enough to take the picture down and give it me to myself, in a quiet room, where I am making studies, which I hope will be of use in Oxford, and elsewhere.But there is this to be noted before we begin; that of these three saints, whose stories Carpaccio tells, one is a quite real one, on whose penman’s work we depend for our daily Bible-bread. Another, St. George, is a very dimly real one,—very disputable by American faith, and we owe to him, only in England, certain sentiments;—the Order of the Garter, and sundry sign-boards[341]of the George and Dragon. Venice supposed herself to owe more to him; but he is nevertheless, in her mind also, a very ghostly saint,—armour and all too light to sink a gondola.Of the third, St. Ursula, by no industry of my good scholars, and none has been refused, can I find the slightest material trace. Under scholarly investigation, she vanishes utterly into the stars and the æther,—and literally, as you will hear, and see, into moonshine, and the modern German meaning of everything,—the Dawn.1Not a relic, not a word remains of her, as what Mr. John Stuart Mill calls “a utility embodied in a material object.”The whole of her utility is Immaterial—to us in England, immaterial, of late years, in every conceivable sense. But the strange thing is that Carpaccio paints, of the substantial and indisputable saint, only three small pictures; of the disputable saint, three more important ones; but of the entirely ærial saint, a splendid series, the chief labour of his life.The chief labour;—and chief rest, or play, it seems also: questionable in the extreme as to the temper of Faith in which it is done.We will suppose, however, at first, for your better[342]satisfaction, that in composing the pictures he no more believed there ever had been a Princess Ursula than Shakspeare, when he wrote Midsummer Night’s Dream, believed there had been a Queen Hippolyta: and that Carpaccio had just as much faith in angels as Shakspeare in fairies—and no more. Both these artists, nevertheless, set themselves to paint, the one fairies, the other angels and saints, for popular—entertainment, (say your modern sages,) or popular—instruction, it may yet appear. But take it your own way; and let it be for popular amusement. This play, this picture which I am copying for you, were, both of them we will say, toys, for the English and Venetian people.Well, the next question is, whether the English and Venetians, when theycouldbe amused with these toys, were more foolish than now, when they can only be amused with steam merry-go-rounds.Below St. George’s land at Barmouth, large numbers of the English populace now go to bathe. Of the Venetians, beyond St. George’s island, many go now to bathe on the sands of Lido. But nobody thinks of playing a play about queens and fairies, to the bathers on the Welsh beach. The modern intellectual teacher erects swings upon the beach. There the suspended population oscillate between sea and sky, and are amused. Similarly in Venice, no decorative painter at Lido thinks of painting pictures of St. Nicholas of the Lido, to amuse the modern Venetian. The white-necktied orchestra[343]plays them a ‘pot-pourri,’ and their steamer squeaks to them, and they are amused.And so sufficiently amused, that I, hearing with sudden surprise and delight the voice of native Venetian Punch last night, from an English ship, and instantly inquiring, with impatience, why I had not had the happiness of meeting him before, found that he was obliged to take refuge as a runaway, or exile, under the British Flag, being forbidden in his own Venice, for evermore—such the fiat of liberty towards the first Apostolic Vicar thereof.I am willing, however, for my own part, to take Carpaccio a step farther down in the moral scale still. Suppose that he painted this picture, not even to amuse his public—but to amuse himself!To a great extent Iknowthat this is true. I know,—(you needn’t ask how, because you can’t be shown how,—but Idoknow, trust me,) that he painted this picture greatly to amuse himself, and had extreme delight in the doing of it; and if he did not actually believe that the princess and angels ever were, at least he heartily wished there had been such persons, and could be.Now this is the first step to real faith. There may never have been saints: there may be no angels,—there may be no God. Professors Huxley and Tyndall are of opinion that there is no God: they have never found one in a bottle. Well: possibly there isn’t;[344]but, my good Sheffield friends, do you wish there was? or are you of the French Republican opinion—“If there were a God, we should have to shoot him” as the first great step towards the “abolition of caste” proposed by our American friends?2You will say, perhaps,—It is not a proper intellectual state to approach such a question in, to wish anything about it. No, assuredly not,—and I have told you so myself, many a time. But it is an entirely proper state to fit you for being approached by the Spirits that you wish for, if there are such. And if there are not, it can do you no harm.Nor, so long as you distinctly understand it to be a wish, will it warp your intellect. “Oh, if I had but Aladdin’s lamp, or Prince Houssain’s carpet!” thinks the rightly-minded child, reading its ‘Arabian Nights.’ But he does not take to rubbing his mother’s lamps, nor to squatting on scraps of carpet, hopefully.Well—concerning these Arabian nights of Venice and the Catholic Church. Carpaccio thinks,—“Oh, if there had but been such a Princess as this—if there could but be! At least I can paint one, and delight myself in the image of her!”Now, can you follow him so far as this? Do you really wish there were such a Princess? Do you so much as want any kind of Princess? Or are your aims fixed on the attainment of a world so constituted[345]that there shall be no Princesses in it any more,—but only Helps in the kitchen, who shall “come upstairs to play the piano,” according to the more detailed views of the American Socialist, displayed in our correspondence.I believe you can scarcely so much as propose this question to yourselves, not knowing clearly what a Princess is. For a Princess is truly one of the members of that Feudal System which, I hear on all hands, is finally ended. If it be so, it is needful that I should explain to you specifically what the Feudal System was, before you can wish for a Princess, or any other part of it, back again.The Feudal System begins in the existence of a Master, or Mister; and a Mistress,—or, as you call her, Missis,—who have deputed authority over a piece of land, hereditarily theirs; and absolute authority in their own house, or home, standing on such land: authority essentially dual, and not by any means admitting two masters, or two missises, still less our American friend’s calculated desirable quantity of 150, mixed. And the office of a Master implies the office of Servants; and of a Mistress, the office of Maids. These are the first Four Chemical Elements of the Feudal System.The next members of it in order of rank are the Master of the Masters, and Mistress of the Mistresses; of whom they hold their land in fee, and who are recognized still, in a sort, as landlord and landlady, though for the most part now degenerate into mere[346]tax-gatherers; but, in their true office, the administrators of law concerning land, and magistrates, and hearers of appeal between household and household:3their duty involving perfect acquaintance and friendship with all the households under their rule; and their dominion, therefore, not by any possibility extending over very large space of territory,—what is commonly called in England an ‘estate’ being usually of approximately convenient space.The next members of the Feudal System in order of rank, are the Lord of the Landlords, and Lady of the Landladies; commonly called their Duke, Doge, or leader, and Duchess or Dogaressa: the authority of this fourth member of the Feudal System being to enforce law and hear appeal between Lord and Lord; and to consult with them respecting the harmonious government of their, estates over such extent of land as may from some speciality of character be managed by common law referring to some united interest,—as, for instance, Cumberland, by a law having reference to pastoral life, Cornwall by laws involving the inspection of mines of tin, and the like,—these provinces, or shires, having each naturally a capital city, cathedral, town hall, and municipality of merchants.As examples of which Fourth Order4in the Feudal System, the Dukes and Dukedoms of York, Lancaster,[347]Venice, Milan, Florence, Orleans, and Burgundy, may be remembered by you as having taken very practical part in the government, or, it may be, misgovernment, of the former world.Then the persons of the Fifth Order, in the Feudal System, are the Duke of the Dukes, and Duchess of the Duchesses, commonly called the King and Queen, having authority and magistracy over the Dukes of the provinces, to the extent in which such provinces may be harmoniously joined in a country or kingdom, separated from other portions of the world by interests, manners, and dialect.Then the Sixth Order in the Feudal System, much, of late years, misunderstood, and even forgotten, is that of the Commander or Imperator of the Kings; having the same authority and office of hearing appeal among the Kings of kingdoms, as they among the Dukes of provinces.The systems of all human civilized governments resolve themselves finally into the balance of the Semitic and lapetic powers under the anointed Cyrus of the East and Karl of the West.5The practical power of the office has been necessarily lost since the Reformation; and in recent debates in an English Parliament on this subject, it appeared that[348]neither the Prime Minister of England, nor any of her Parliamentary representatives, had the slightest notion of the meaning of the word.The reason that the power of the office has been lost since the Reformation, is that all these temporal offices are only perfected, in the Feudal System, by their relative spiritual offices. Now, though the Squire and the Rector still in England occupy their proper symmetrical position, the equally balanced authority of the Duke and Bishop has been greatly confused: that of the King and Cardinal was so even during the fully animated action of both; and all conception of that of the Emperor and Pope is of course dead in Protestant minds.But there was yet, in the Feudal System, one Seventh and Final Authority, of which the imagination is like to be also lost to Protestant minds. That of the King of Kings, and Ruler of Empires; in whose ordinances and everlasting laws, and in ‘feudom’ or faith and covenant with whom, as the Giver of Land and Bread, all these subordinate powers lived, and moved, and had their being.And truly if, since we cannot find this King of Kings in the most carefully digested residuum, we are sure that we cannot find Him anywhere; and if, since by no fineness of stopper we can secure His essence in a bottle, we are sure that we cannot stay Him anywhere, truly what I hear on all hands is correct; and the Feudal[349]System, with all consequences and members thereof, is verily at an end.In the meantime, however, you can now clearly understand the significance, in that system, of the word Princess, meaning a King’s daughter, bred in such ways and knowledges as may fit her for dominion over nations. And thus you can enjoy, if otherwise in a humour for its enjoyment, the story of the Princess Ursula, here following,—though for the present you may be somewhat at a loss to discern the practical bearings of it; which, however, if you will note that the chief work of the Princess is to convert the savage minds of the ‘English,’ or people of Over-sea, from the worship of their god ‘Malcometto,’ to the ‘rule of St. John the Baptist,’—you may guess to be in some close connection with the proposed ‘practice’ of St. George’s Company; not less, indeed, than the functions of Carpaccio’s other two chiefly worshipped saints.The legends of St. Ursula, which were followed by him, have been collated here at Venice, and reduced to this pleasant harmony, in true help to me, by my good scholar James Reddie Anderson. For whose spirit thus active with us, no less than for the spirit, at rest, of the monk who preserved the story for us, I am myself well inclined to say another Pater and Ave.[350]THE STORY OF ST. URSULA.6There was once a just and most Christian King of Britain, called Maurus. To him and to his wife Daria was born a little girl, the fairest creature that this earth ever saw. She came into the world wrapped in a hairy mantle, and all men wondered greatly what this might mean. Then the King gathered together his wise men to inquire of them. But they could not make known the thing to him, for only God in Heaven knew how the rough robe signified that she should follow holiness and purity all her days, and the wisdom of St. John the Baptist. And because of the mantle, they called her ‘Ursula,’ ‘Little Bear.’Now Ursula grew day by day in grace and loveliness, and in such wisdom that all men marvelled. Yet should they not have marvelled, since with God all things are possible. And when she was fifteen years old she was a light of all wisdom, and a glass of all beauty, and a fountain of scripture and of sweet ways. Lovelier woman there was not alive. Her speech was so full of all delight that it seemed as though an angel of Paradise had taken human flesh. And in all the kingdom no weighty thing was done without counsel of Ursula.So her fame was carried through the earth, and a King[351]of England, a heathen of over-seas, hearing, was taken with the love of her. And he set all his heart on having her for wife to his son Æther, and for daughter in his home. So he sent a mighty and honourable embassy, of earls and marquesses, with goodly company of knights, and ladies, and philosophers; bidding them, with all courtesy and discretion, pray King Maurus to give Ursula in marriage to Æther. “But,” he said, “if Maurus will not hear your gentle words, open to him all my heart, and tell him that I will ravage his land with fire, and slay his people, and make himself die a cruel death, and will, after, lead Ursula away with me. Give him but three days to answer, for I am wasted with desire to finish the matter, and hold Ursula in my ward.”But when the ambassadors came to King Maurus, he would not have his daughter wed a heathen; so, since prayers and gifts did not move him, they spoke out all the threats. Now the land of Britain was little, and its soldiers few, while the heathen was a mighty King and a conqueror; so Maurus, and his Queen, and his councillors, and all the people, were in sore distress.But on the evening of the second day, Ursula went into her chamber, and shut close the doors; and before the image of the Father, who is very pitiful, prayed all night with tears, telling how she had vowed in her heart to live a holy maiden all her days, having Christ alone for spouse. But, if His will were that she should wed the son of the heathen King, she prayed that wisdom[352]might be given her, to turn the hearts of all that people who knew not faith nor holiness; and power to comfort her father and mother, and all the people of her fatherland.And when the clear light of dawn was in the air, she fell asleep. And the Angel of the Lord appeared to her in a dream, saying, “Ursula, your prayer is heard. At the sunrising you shall go boldly before the ambassadors of the King of Over-sea, for the God of Heaven shall give you wisdom, and teach your tongue what it should speak.” When it was day, Ursula rose to bless and glorify the name of God. She put on for covering and for beauty an enwrought mantle like the starry sky, and was crowned with a coronet of gems. Then, straightway passing to her father’s chamber, she told him what grace had been done to her that night, and all that now was in her heart to answer to the ambassadors of Over-sea. So, though long he would not, she persuaded her father.Then Maurus, and his lords and councillors, and the ambassadors of the heathen King, were gathered in the Hall of Council. And when Ursula entered the place where these lords were, one said to the other, “Who is this that comes from Paradise?” For she moved in all noble gentleness, with eyes inclined to earth, learned, and frank, and fair, delightful above all women upon earth. Behind her came a hundred maidens, clothed in white silk, fair and lovely. They shone[353]brightly as the stars, but Ursula shone as the moon and the evening star.Now this was the answer Ursula made, which the King caused to be written, and sealed with the royal seal, and gave to the ambassadors of the King of Over-sea.“I will take,” she said, “for spouse, Æther, the son of my lord the King of Over-sea. But I ask of my lord three graces, and with heart and soul7pray of him to grant them.“The first grace I ask is this, that he, and the Queen, and their son, my spouse, be baptized in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.“The second grace is that three years may be given me, before the bridal, in which to go to and fro upon the sea, that I may visit the bodies of the Saints in Rome, and the blessed places of the Holy Land.“And for the last grace, I ask that he choose ten fair maidens of his kingdom, and with each of these a thousand more, all of gentle blood, who shall come to me here, in Britain, and go with me in gladness upon the sea, following this my holy pilgrimage.”Then spake one of the nobles of the land to Maurus, saying, “My lord the King, this your daughter is the Dove of Peace come from Paradise, the same that in the days of the Flood brought to the Ark of Noah the olive-branch of good news.” And at the answer, were the ambassadors so full of joy that they wellnigh could[354]not speak, and with praise and triumph they went their way, and told their master all the sweet answer of Ursula.Then my lord the King said, “Praised and blessed be the name of our God Malcometto, who has given my soul for comfort that which it desired. Truly there is not a franker lady under the wheel of the sun; and by the body of my mother I swear there is nothing she can ask that I will not freely give. First of the maidens she desires shall be my daughter Florence.” Then all his lords rose, man by man, and gladly named, each, his child.So the will of Ursula was done; and that King, and all his folk, were baptized into the Holy Faith. And Æther, with the English maidens, in number above ten thousand, came to the land of Britain.Then Ursula chose her own four sisters, Habila, and Julia, and Victoria, and Aurea, and a thousand daughters of her people, with certain holy bishops, and great lords, and grave councillors, and an abbot of the order of St. Benedict, men full of all wisdom, and friends of God.So all that company set sail in eleven ships, and passing this way and that upon the sea, rejoiced in it, and in this their maiden pilgrimage. And those who dwelt by the shores of the sea came forth in multitudes to gaze upon them as they passed, and to each man it appeared a delightful vision. For the ships sailed in fair order, side by side, with sound of sweet psalms and[355]murmur of the waters. And the maidens were clad, some in scarlet and some in pure samite, some in rich silk of Damascus, some in cloth of gold, and some in the purple robe that is woven in Judea. Some wore crowns, others garlands of flowers. Upon the shoulder of each was the visible cross, in the hands of each a pilgrim’s staff, by their sides were pilgrims’ scrips, and each ship’s company sailed under the gonfalon of the Holy Cross. Ursula in the midst was like a ray of sunlight, and the Angel of the Lord was ever with them for guide.So in the holy time of Lent they came to Rome. And when my Lord the Pope came forth, under the Castle of St. Angelo, with great state, to greet them, seeing their blessed assembly, he put off the mantle of Peter, and with many bishops, priests, and brothers, and certain cardinals, set himself to go with them on their blessed pilgrimage.At length they came to the land of Slavonia, whose ruler was friend and liegeman to the Soldan of Babylon. Then the Lord of the Saracens sent straightway to the Soldan, telling what a mighty company had come to his land, and how they were Christian folk. And the Soldan gathered all his men of war, and with great rage the host of the heathen made against the company of Ursula.And when they were nigh, the Soldan cried and said, “What folk are ye?” And Ursula spake in answer,[356]“We are Christian folk: our feet are turned to the blessed tomb of our Lord Jesus Christ, for the saving of our souls, and that we may win grace to pass into eternal life, in the blessed Paradise.” And the Soldan answered, “Either deny your God, or I will slay you all with the sword. So shall ye die a dolorous death, and see your land no more.” And Ursula answered, “Even so we desire to be sure witnesses for the name of God, declaring and preaching the glory of His name; because He has made heaven and earth and the sea by His Word; and afterward all living things; and afterward has willed, Himself, to die, for our salvation and glory. And who follows Him shall go to rejoice inHisFatherland and in His Kingdom.”Then she turned to her people: “My sisters and my brothers, in this place God has given us great grace. Embrace and make it sure, for our death in this place will be life perpetual, and joy, and sweetness never-ending. And there, above, we shall be with the Majesty and the angels of Paradise.” Then she called her spouse to comfort and teach him. And he answered her with these words, “To me it appears three thousand years that death is a-coming, so much have I already tasted of the sweetness of Paradise.”Then the Soldan gave commandment that they should all be slain with the sword. And so was it done.Yet when he saw Ursula standing, in the midst of all that slaughter, like the fairest stalk of corn in harvest,[357]and how she was exceeding lovely, beyond the tongues of this earth to tell, he would have saved her alive, and taken her for wife. But when she would not, and rebuked him, he was moved with anger. Now there was a bow in his hand, and he set an arrow on the string, and drew it with all his strength, and it pierced the heart of the glorious maiden. So she went to God.And one maiden only, whose name was Corbula, through fear hid herself in the ship. But God, who had chosen all that company, gave her heart, and with the dawn of the next day she came forth willingly, and received the martyr’s crown.Thus all were slain, and all are gone to Paradise, and sing the glad and sweet songs of Paradise.Whosoever reads this holy history, let him not think it a great thing to say an Our Father, and a Hail Mary, for the soul of him who has written it.Thus far the old myth. You shall hear now in what manner such a myth is re-written by a great man, born in the days of a nation’s strength.Carpaccio begins his story with what the myth calls a dream. But he wishes to tell you that it was no dream,—but a vision;—that a real angel came, and was seen by Ursula’s soul, when her mortal eyes were closed.“The Angel of the Lord,” says the legend. What!—thinks Carpaccio;—to this little maid of fifteen, the[358]angel that came to Moses and Joshua? Not so, but her own guardian angel.Guardian, and to tell her that God will guide her heart to-morrow, and put His own answer on her lips, concerning her marriage. Shall not such angel be crowned with light, and strew her chamber with lilies?There is no glory round his head; there is no gold on his robes; they are of subdued purple and gray. His wings are colourless—his face calm, but sorrowful,—wholly in shade. In his right hand he bears the martyr’s palm; in his left, the fillet borne by the Greek angels of victory, and, together with it, gathers up, knotted in his hand, the folds of shroud8with which the Etrurians veil the tomb.[359]He comes to her, “in the clear light of morning;” the Angel of Death.You see it is written in the legend that she had shut close the doors of her chamber.They have opened as the angel enters,—not one only, but all in the room,—all in the house. He enters by one at the foot of her bed; but beyond it is another—open into the passage; out of that another into some luminous hall or street. All the window-shutters are wide open; they are made dark that you may notice them,—nay, all the press doors are open! No treasure bars shall hold, wherethisangel enters.Carpaccio has been intent to mark that he comes in the light of dawn. The blue-green sky glows between the dark leaves of the olive and dianthus in the open window. But its light is low compared to that which entersbehindthe angel, falling full on Ursula’s face, in divine rest.In the last picture but one, of this story, he has painted her lying in the rest which the angel came to bring; and in the last, is her rising in the eternal Morning.For this is the first lesson which Carpaccio wrote[360]in his Venetian words for the creatures of this restless world,—that Death is better thantheirlife; and that not bridegroom rejoices over bride as they rejoice who marry not, nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God, in Heaven.[361]NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE.I. Affairs of the Company.Venice, October 20th.—I have sent for press, to-day, the fourth number of ‘Deucalion,’ in which will be found a statement of the system on which I begin the arrangement of the Sheffield Museum.There are no new subscriptions to announce. Another donation, of fifty pounds, by Mrs. Talbot, makes me sadly ashamed of the apathy of all my older friends. I believe, in a little while now, it will be well for me to throw them all aside, and refuse to know any one but my own Companions, and the workmen who are willing to listen to me. I have spoken enough to the upper classes, and they mock me;—in the seventh year of Fors I will speak more clearly than hitherto,—but not tothem.Meantime, my Sheffield friends must not think I am neglecting them, because I am at work here in Venice, instead of among them. They will know in a little while the use of my work here. The following portions of letter from the Curator of our Museum, with the piece of biography in it, which I venture to print, in haste, assuming permission, will be of good service to good workers everywhere.“H. Swan to J. Ruskin.“Walkley, Sheffield,October 18, 1876.“Dear Master,—The interest in the Museum seems still increasing. Yesterday (Sunday), in addition to our usual allotment of casual calls at the Museum, we had a visit from a party of working men; two or three of them from Barnsley, but the most Sheffielders, among which last were several of those who came[362]to meet thee on the last occasion. Their object was a double one; first, to see what progress we were making with the Museum; and, secondly, to discuss the subject of Usury, the unlawfulness of which, in its ordinary aspects, being (unlike the land question) a perfectly new notion to all except one or two. The objection generally takes this shape: ‘If I have worked hard to earn twenty pounds, and it is an advantage to another to have the use of that twenty pounds, why should he get that advantage without paying me for it?’ To which my reply has been, There may, or may not, be reasons why the lender should be placed in a better position for using his powers of body or mind; but the special question for you, with your twenty pounds, now is, not what right has he to use the money without payment—(he has every right, if you give him leave; and none, if you don’t;)—the questionyouhave to propose to yourself is this, ‘Why should I, as a man and a Christian, after having been paid for what I have earned, expect or desire to make an agreement by which I may get, from the labour of others, money I have not earned?’ Suppose, too, bail for a hundred pounds to be required for a prisoner in whose innocence you believed, would you say ‘I will be bail for the hundred pounds, but I shall expect five pounds from him for the advantage he will thereby get?’ No; the just man would weigh well whether it be right or no to undertake the bail; but, having determined, he would shrink from receiving the unearned money, as I believe the first unwarped instinct of a good man does still in the case of a loan.“Although, as I have said, all question as to the right of what is called a moderate rate of interest was new to most of our visitors, yet I found a greater degree of openness to the truth than might have been expected. One of the most interesting parts of the discussion was the relation by one of the party of his own experiences, in years past, as a money-lender. ‘In the place where I used to work at that time,’ said he, ‘there was a very many of[363]a good sort of fellows who were not so careful of their money as I was, and they used often to run out of cash before the time came for them to take more. Well, knowing I was one that always had a bit by me, they used to come to me to borrow a bit to carry them through to pay-day. When they paid me, some would ask if I wanted aught for the use of it. But I only lent to pleasure them, and I always said, No, I wanted nought. One day, however, Jack —— came to me, and said, “Now, my lad, dost want to get more brass for thyself, and lay by money? because I can put thee in the way of doing it.” I said that was a great object for me. “Well,” said he, “thou must do as I tell thee. I know thou’rt often lending thy brass to them as want a lift. Now thou must make them pay for using thy money, and if thou works as I tell thee, it’ll grow and grow. And by-and-by they’ll be paying and paying for the use of their own money over and over again.” Well, I thought it would be a good thing for me to have the bits of cash come in and in, to help along with what I earned myself. So I told each of the men, as they came, that I couldn’t go on lending for nothing, and they must pay me a bit more when they got their pay. And so they did. After a time, Jack —— came again, and said, “Well, how’rt getting on?” So I told him what I was doing, and that seemed all right. After a time, he came again, and said, “Now thou finds what I said was right. The men can spare thee a bit for thy money, and it makes things a deal more comfortable for thyself. Now I can show thee how a hundred of thy money shall bring another hundred in.” “Nay,” said I, “thou canst not do that. That can’t be done.” “Nay, but it can,” said Jack. And he told me how to manage; and that when I hadn’t the cash, he would find it, and we’d halve the profits. [Say a man wants to borrow twenty pounds, and is to pay back at three shillings a week. The interest is first deducted for the whole time, so that if he agrees to pay only five per cent. he will receive but nineteen pounds; then the interest is more[364]than five per cent. on the money actually out during the very first week, while the rate gradually rises as the weekly payments come,—slowly at first, but at the last more and more rapidly, till, during the last month, the money-lender is obtaining two hundred per cent. for the amount (now, however, very small) still unpaid.]“ ‘Well, it grew and grew. Hundreds and hundreds I paid and received every week, (and we found that among the poorest little shops it worked the best for us). At last it took such hold of me that I became a regular bloodsucker—a bloodsucker of poor folk, and nothing else. I was always reckoning up, night and day, how to get more and more, till I got so thin and ill I had to go to the doctor. It was old Dr. Sike, and he said, “Young man, you must give up your present way of work and life, or I can do nothing for you. You’ll get worse and worse.”“ ‘So I thought and thought, and at last I made up my mind to give it all up, though I was then getting rich. But there was no blessing on what I’d got, and I lost it every farthing, and had to begin again as poor as I was when I first left the workhouse to learn a trade. And now, I’ve prospered and prospered in my little way till I’ve no cause to worry anyways about money, and I’ve a few men at work with me in my shop.“ ‘Still, for all that, I don’t see why I shouldn’t have interest on the little capital I’ve saved uphonestly; or how am I to live in my old age?’“Another workman suggested, ‘Wouldn’t he be able to live on his capital?’ ‘Aye, but I want to leave that to somebody else,’ was the answer. [Yes, good friend, and the same excuse might be made for any form of theft.—J. R.]“I will merely add, that if there were enforced and public account of the amount of monies advanced on loan, and if the true conditions and workings of those loans could be shown, there would be revealed such an amount of cruel stress upon the foolish, weak, and poor of the small tradesmen (a class far more[365]numerous than are needed) as would render it very intelligible why so many faces are seamed with lines of suffering and anxiety. I think it possible that the fungus growth and increasing mischief of these loan establishments may reach such a pitch as to necessitate legislative interference, as has been the case with gambling. But there will never fail modes of evading the law, and the sufficient cure will be found only when men shall consider it a dishonour to have it imputed to them thatanyportion of their income is derived from usury.”The Union Bank of London (Chancery Lane Branch) in Account with the St. George’s Fund.1876.Dr.£s.d.Aug.16.To Balance.9434Oct.12.” Draft at Bridgwater (per Mr. Ruskin)500024.” (J. P. Stilwell)2500£16934Cr.£s.d.Oct.12.By Postage of Pass Book00325.Balance16931£16934II. Affairs of the Master.£s.d.£s.d.Sept.15.Balancea12210820.Kate1000026.—— at Venice, Antoniob5000Oct.1.Secretary25003.Downs50005.Giftc200010.Loan20000”Jackson5000———49500Oct.15.Balance£72608aBy report from Bank; but the ‘repayments’ named in it should not have been added to the cash account, being on separate account with the Company. I will make all clear in December.↑bFor Signora Caldara (Venetian botany).↑cNominally loan, to poor relation, but I do not suppose he will ever be able to pay me. The following £200 I do not doubt receiving again.↑[366]III. I print the following letter with little comment, because I have no wish to discuss the question of the uses of Dissent with a Dissenting Minister; nor do I choose at present to enter on the subject at all. St. George, taking cognizance only of the postscript, thanks the Dissenting Minister for his sympathy; but encourages his own servant to persist in believing that the “more excellent way” (of Charity), which St. Paul showed, in the 13th of Corinthians, is quite as truly followed in devoting the funds at his said servant’s disposal to the relief of the poor, as in the maintenance of Ruskinian Preachers for the dissemination of Ruskinian opinions, in a Ruskinian Society, with the especial object of saving Mr. Ruskin’s and the Society’s souls.“September 14th, 1876.“Dear Mr. Ruskin,—Mr. Sillar’s ‘valuable letter’ in last month’s Fors, (a) would have been more valuable if he had understood what he was writing about. Mr. Tyerman (in his ‘Life and Times of Wesley,’ p. 431,) gives the trifling differences between the present Rules of the Methodist Societies and the first edition issued in 1743. Instead of ‘interested personshaving altered old John Wesley’s rules’ (he was forty years old when he drew them up) ‘to suitmodern ideas’—the alterations, whether good or bad, were made by himself.“The first contributions in the ‘Classes’ were made for the express purpose of discharging a debt on a preaching house. Then they were devoted ‘to the relief of the poor,’ there being at the time no preachers dependent on the Society for support.After1743, when circuits had been formed and preachers stationed in certain localities, their maintenance gradually became the principal charge upon the Society’s funds. (See Smith’s ‘History of Methodism,’ vol. i., p. 669.) In 1771 Wesley says expressly that the contributions are applied ‘towards the expenses of the Society.’ (b) (‘Journal,’ vol. iii., p. 205.) Certainly Methodism, thus supported, has done far more to benefit the[367]poor and raise them, than any amount of mere almsgiving could have done. Methodist preachers have at least one sign of being in the apostolical succession. They can say, with Paul, ‘as poor, yet making many rich.’ (c)“ ‘Going to law’ was altered by Mr. Wesley to ‘brother going to law with brother,’ in order, no doubt, to bring the rule into verbal agreement with 1 Cor. vi. 6. (d)“ ‘Usury’ was defined by Mr. Wesley to be ‘unlawful interest,’ (e) in accordance with the ordinary notions of his day. He was greatly in advance of his age, yet he could scarcely have been expected to anticipate the definition of Usury given, as far as I know, (f) for the first time in Fors for August, 1876. I don’t see why we Methodists should be charged with breaking the laws of Moses, David, and Christ (Fors, p. 253), if we consider ‘old John Wesley’s’ definition to be as good as the ‘modern idea.’“Of course St. George, for whom I have the greatest respect and admiration, will correct Mr. Sillar’s mistake.“I am, Sir,“Another Reader of Fors(which I wish you would sell a little cheaper), and“A Methodist Preacher.“P.S.—Why should you not copy old John Wesley, and establish your St. George’s Company on a legal basis? In 1784 he drew up a Deed of Declaration, which was duly enrolled in Chancery. It stated the purposes for which his Society was formed, and the mode in which it was to be governed. A Deed of Trust was afterwards drawn up foroneof our chapels, reciting at length this Deed of Declaration, and all the purposes for which the property was to be used. All our other property is settled on the same trusts. A single line in each subsequent chapel deed—stating that all the trusts are to be the same as those of the ‘Model Deed,’ as we call the first one—obviates[368]the necessity and expense ofrepeatinga very long legal document.“Success to St. George,—yet there is, I think, ‘a more excellent way.’ ”a.Mr. Sillar’s letter did not appear in last month’s Fors. A small portion of it appeared, in which I regret that Mr. Sillar so far misunderstood John Wesley as to imagine him incapable of altering his own rules so as to make them useless.b.I wish the Wesleyans were the only Society whose contributions are applied to no better purpose.c.I envy my correspondent’s complacency in his own and his Society’s munificence, too sorrowfully to endeavour to dispel it.d.The ‘verbal’ agreement is indeed secured by the alteration. But as St. Paul, by a ‘brother,’ meant any Christian, I shall be glad to learn from my correspondent whether the Wesleyans understand their rule in that significance.e.Many thanks to Mr. Wesley. Doubtless his disciples know what rate of interest is lawful, and what not; and also by what law it was made so; and always pause with pious accuracy at the decimal point whereat the excellence of an investment begins to make it criminal. St. George will be grateful to their representative for information on these—not unimportant—particulars.f.How far thatis, my correspondent’s duly dissenting scorn of the wisdom of the Greeks, and legality of the Jews, has doubtless prevented his thinking it necessary to discover. I must not waste the time of other readers in assisting his elementary investigations; but have merely to point out to him that definitions either of theft, adultery, usury, or murder, have only becomenecessaryin modern times; and that Methodists,[369]and any other persons, are charged by me with breaking the law of Moses, David, and Christ, in so far only as they do accept Mr. John Wesley’s, or any other person’s, definition instead oftheirutterly unquestionable meaning. (Would T. S., of North Tyne, reprint his letters for me from the Sunderland paper, to be sent out with December Fors?)IV. I reprint the following paragraph chiefly as an example of our ineffable British absurdity. It is perfectly right to compel fathers to send their children to school; but, once sent, it is the schoolmaster’s business to keep hold of them. In St. George’s schools, it would have been the little runaway gentleman who would have got sent to prison; and kept,sotto piombi, on bread and water, until he could be trusted with more liberty. The fate of the father, under the present application of British law, leaves the problem, it seems to me, still insoluble but in that manner. But I should like to know more of the previous history of parent and child.“The story of George Widowson, aged fifty-seven, told at the inquest held on his remains at Mile End Old Town on Wednesday, is worth recording. Widowson was, as appears by the evidence of his daughter, a sober, hard-working man until he was sent to prison for three days in last December in default of paying a fine for not sending his son, a boy eleven years of age, to school. The deceased, as several witnesses deposed, constantly endeavoured to make the child go to school, and had frequently taken him there himself; but it was all in vain. Young Widowson when taken to school invariably ran away, the result being that his father was driven to distraction. His imprisonment in December had preyed on his mind, and he took to drinking. He frequently threatened to destroy himself rather than be imprisoned again. Hearing that another summons was about to be issued against him, he broke up his home, and on[370]the night of the 30th ultimo solved the educational problem by throwing himself into the Regent’s Canal. Fear of being again sent to prison by the School Board was, his daughter believed, the cause of his committing this act. The jury returned a verdict in accordance of this opinion; and although George Widowson was wrong to escape from the clutches of the friends of humanity by putting an end to his life, those who blame him should remember that imprisonment to abonâ fideworking man of irreproachable character, is simply torture. He loses all that in his own eyes makes life worth preservation.”—Pall Mall Gazette, July 7th, 1876.V. The next extract contains some wholesome comments on our more advanced system of modern education.“Indian Civil Service.—At a meeting of the Indian section of the Society of Arts, under the presidency of Mr. Andrew Cassels, a paper on ‘Competition and its Effects upon Education’ was read by Dr. George Birdwood. In the course of his remarks, he commented at length upon the India Office despatch of Feb. 24, regarding ‘the selection and training of candidates for the Indian Civil Service,’ and feared that it would but serve to confirm and aggravate and rapidly extend the very worst evil of the old system of competition—namely, the degeneration of secondary education throughout England.… The despatch tended to make over all the secondary schooling of the country to the crammers, or to reduce it to the crammers’ system. They were making the entrance examinations year by year more and more difficult—as their first object must necessarily now be, not the moral and intellectual discipline of the boyhood of England, but to show an ever-growing percentage of success at the various competitive examinations always going on for public services. ‘The devil take the hindermost’[371]was fast becoming the ideal of education, even in the public schools. If they seriously took to cramming little fellows from twelve to fourteen for entrance into public schools, the rising generation would be used up before it reached manhood. A well-known physician, of great experience, told him that the competition for all sorts of scholarships and appointments was showing its evil fruits in the increase of insanity, epilepsy, and other nervous diseases amongst young people of the age from seventeen to nineteen, and especially amongst pupil-teachers; and if admission into the public schools of England was for the future to be regulated by competition, St. Vitus’s dance would soon take the place of gout, as the fashionable disease of the upper classes. This was the inevitable result of the ill-digested and ill-regulated system of competition for the public services, and especially the Indian Civil Service, which had prevailed; and he feared that the recent despatch would only be to hasten the threatened revolution in their national secondary schools, and the last state of cramming under the despatch would be worse than the first.… The best of examiners was the examiner of his own pupils; for no man could measure real knowledge like the teacher. What should be aimed at was regular moderate study and sound and continuous discipline to start the growing man in life in the healthiest bodily and moral condition possible. He objected to children striving for prizes, whether in games or in studies. The fewer prizes won at school, the more would probably be won in life. Let their only anxiety be to educate their children well, and suffer no temptation to betray them into cramming, and the whole world was open to them.”—Daily Telegraph.VI. The development of ‘humanity’ in America is so brilliantly illustrated in the following paragraphs, that I have thought them worth preserving:—[372]From ‘The American Socialist, devoted to the Enlargement and Perfection of Home.’“THE FUTURE OF SOCIETY.“An American, visiting Europe, notices how completely there the various functions of the social body are performed. He finds a servant, an officer, a skilled workman, at every place. From the position of the stone-breaker on the highway, up to that of the highest Government official, every post is filled; every personal want of the traveller or the citizen is attended to. Policemen guard him in the streets, lackeys watch for his bidding at the hotels, railroad officials with almost superfluous care forward him on his way. As compared with American railroad management, the great English roads probably have fouremployésto our one. This plentitude of service results from three things—viz., density of population, which gives an abundant working class; cheapness of labour; and the aristocratic formation of society that tends to fix persons in the caste to which they were born. The effect is to produce a smoothness in the social movement—an absence of jar and friction, and a release in many cases from anxious, personal outlook, that are very agreeable. The difference between English and American life in respect to the supply of service is like that between riding on a highly-finished macadamized way, where every rut is filled and every stone is removed, and picking one’s way over our common country roads.“Another thing that the traveller observes in Europe is the abundance everywhere of works of art. One’s sense of beauty is continually gratified; now with a finished landscape, now with a noble building, now with statues, monuments, and paintings. This immense accumulation of art springs in part of course from the age of the nations where it is found; but it is also due in a very great degree to the employment given to artists by[373]persons of wealth and leisure. Painting, sculpture, and architecture have always had constant, and sometimes munificent, patrons in the nobility and the Established Church.“Observing these things abroad, the American asks himself whether the institutions of this country are likely to produce in time any similar result here. Shall we have the finished organization, the mutual service, and the wealth of art that characterize European society? Before answering this, let us first ask ourselves whether it is desirable that we should have them in the same manner that they exist abroad? Certainly not. No American would be willing to pay the price which England pays for her system of service. The most painful thing which one sees abroad is the utter absence of ambition in the class of household servants. Men who in this country would be looking to a seat in the legislature,9and who would qualify themselves for it, there dawdle away life in the livery of some noble, in smiling, aimless, do-nothing content, and beget children to follow in their steps. On seeing these servile figures, the American thanks heaven that the ocean rolls between his country and such a system. Rather rudeness, discomfort, self-service, and poverty, with freedom and the fire of aspiration, than luxury purchased by the enervation of man!“Still, cannot we have the good without the bad? Cannot we match Europe in culture and polish without sacrificing for it our manhood? And if so, what are the influences in this country that are working in that direction? In answering this question, we have to say frankly that we see nothing in democracy alone that promises to produce the result under consideration. In a country where every one is taught to disdain a situation[374]of dependence, where the hostler and the chambermaid see the way opened for them to stand even with the best in the land, if they will but exercise their privilege of ‘getting on,’ there will be no permanent or perfect service. And so long as every man’s possessions are divided and scattered at his death, there will be no class having the secured leisure and the inducement to form galleries of art. Why should John Smith take pains to decorate his house with works of art, when he knows that within a year after his death it will be administered upon by the Probate Court, and sold with its furniture for the benefit of his ten children?” (Well put,—republican sage.)“In a word, looking at the æsthetic side of things, our American system must be confessed to be not yet quite perfect.” (You don’t say so!) “Invaluable as it is for schooling men to independence and aspiration, it requires, to complete its usefulness, another element. The Republic has a sequel. That completing element, that sequel, is Communism. Communism supplies exactly the conditions that are wanting in the social life of America, and which it must have if it would compete with foreign lands in the development of those things which give ease and grace to existence.“For instance, in respect to service: Communism, by extinguishing caste and honouring labour, makes every man at once a servant and lord. It fills up, by its capacity of minute organization, all the social functions as completely as the European system does; while, unlike that, it provides for each individual sufficient leisure, and frequent and improving changes of occupation. The person who serves in the kitchen this hour may be experimenting with a microscope or giving lessons on the piano the next. Applying its combined ingenuity to social needs, Communism will find means to consign all repulsive and injurious labour to machinery. It is continually interested to promote labour-saving improvements. The service that is performed[375]by brothers and equals from motives of love will be more perfect than that of hired lackeys, while the constantly varying round of occupation granted to all will form the most perfect school for breadth of culture and true politeness. Thus Communism achieves through friendship and freedom that which the Old World secures only through a system little better than slavery.“In the interest of art and the cultivation of the beautiful, Communism again supplies the place of a hereditary aristocracy and a wealthy church. A Community family, unlike the ephemeral households of ordinary society, is a permanent thing. Its edifice is not liable to be sold at the end of every generation, but like a cathedral descends by unbroken inheritance. Whatever is committed to it remains, and is the care of the society from century to century. With a home thus established, all the members of a Community are at once interested to gather about it objects of art. It becomes a picture-gallery and a museum, by the natural accretion of time, and by the zeal of persons who know that every embellishment added to their home will not only be a pleasure to them personally, but will remain to associate them with the pleasure of future beholders in all time to come.“Thus in Communism we have the conditions that are necessary to carry this country to the summit of artistic and social culture. By this route, we may at one bound outstrip the laboured attainments of the aristocracies of the Old World. The New York Central Park shows what can be achieved by combination on the democratic plan, for a public pleasure-ground. No other park is equal to it. Let this principle of combination be extended to the formation of homes as well as to municipal affairs, and we shall simply dot this country over with establishments10as much[376]better than those of the nobles of England as they are better than those of a day-labourer. We say better, for they will make art and luxury minister to universal education, and they will replace menial service with downright brotherhood. Such must be the future of American society.”“To the Editor of the ‘American Socialist.’“In your first issue you raise the question, ‘How large ought a Home to be?’ This is a question of great interest to all; and I trust the accumulated answers you will receive will aid in its solution.“I have lived in homes varying in numbers from one (the bachelor’s home) to several hundred; and my experience and observation lead me to regard one hundred and twenty-five as about the right number to form a complete home. I would not have less than seventy-five nor more than one hundred and fifty. In my opinion a Home should minister to all the needs of its members, spiritual, intellectual, social, and physical. This ordinary monogamic homes cannot do; hence resort is had to churches, colleges, club-rooms, theatres, etc.; and in sparsely settled regions of country, people are put to great inconvenience and compelled to go great distances to supply cravings as imperative as the hunger for bread. This view alone would not limit the number of persons constituting a Home; but I take the ground that in a perfect Home there will be a perfect blending of all interests and perfect vibration in unison of all hearts; and of course thorough mutual acquaintance. My experience and observation convince me that it is exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, to secure these results in a family of over one hundred and fifty members.“In simply a monetary view it is undoubtedly best to have large Homes of a thousand or more; but money should not have great weight in comparison with a man’s spiritual, intellectual, and social needs.—D. E. S.”[377]1The primary form in which the legend shows itself is a Nature myth, in which Ursula is the Bud of flowers, enclosed in its rough or hairy calyx, and her husband, Æther—the air of spring. She opens into lovely life with ‘eleven’ thousand other flowers—their fading is their sudden martyrdom. And—says your modern philosopher—‘That’s all’!↑2Correspondence, Article VI.↑3Compare the last page of Fors, October 1875.↑4I. Servant. II. Master. III. Lord. IV. Duke.↑5I want to write a long note on Byzantine empire,—Commanders of the Faithful,—Grand Turks,—and the “Eastern question.” But can’t: and perhaps the reader will be thankful.↑6This Life of St. Ursula has been gathered from some of the stories concerning her which were current through Italy in the time of Carpaccio. The northern form of the legend, localized at Cologne, is neither so lovely nor so ancient.↑7Molto incarnalmente.↑8I could not see this symbol at the height at which the picture hung from the ground, when I described it in 1872. The folds of the drapery in thehandare all but invisible, even when the picture is seen close; and so neutral in their gray-green colour that they pass imperceptibly into violet, as the faint green of evening sky fades into its purple. But the folds are continued under the wrist in the alternate waves which the reader may see on the Etruscan tomb in the first room of the British Museum, with a sculpturesque severity which I could not then understand, and could only account for by supposing that Carpaccio had meant the Princess to “dream out the angel’s dress so particularly”! I mistook the fillet of victory also for a scroll; and could not make out the flowers in the window. They are pinks, the favourite ones in Italian windows to this day, and having a particular relation to St. Ursula in the way they rend their calyx; and I believe also in their peculiar relation to the grasses, (of which more in ‘Proserpina’). St. Ursula is not meant, herself, to recognize the angel. He enters under the door over which she has put her little statue of Venus; and through that door the room is filled with light, so that it will not seem to her strange[359]that his own form, as he enters, should be in shade: and she cannot see his dark wings. On the tassel of her pillow, (Etrurian also,) is written “Infantia”; and above her head, the carving of the bed ends in a spiral flame, typical of the finally ascending Spirit. She lies on her bier, in the last picture but one, exactly as here on her bed; only the coverlid is there changed from scarlet to pale violet. See notes on the meaning of these colours in third ‘Deucalion.’↑9May St. George be informed of how many members the American Legislature is finally to be composed; and over whom it is to exercise the proud function of legislation, which is to be the reward of heroic and rightly-minded flunkeys?↑10As a painter, no less than a philanthropist, I am curious to see the effect of scenery, in these ‘polite’ terms of description, “dotted over with establishments.”↑

FORS CLAVIGERA.LETTER LXXI.Venice,4th October, 1876.I am able at last to give you some of the long-promised opinions of Carpaccio on practical subjects; not that, except ironically, I ever call them ‘opinions.’ There are certain men whoknowthe truths necessary to human life; they do not ‘opine’ them; and nobody’s ‘opinions,’ on any subject, are of any consequence opposed to them. Hesiod is one of these, Plato another, Dante another, Carpaccio is another. He speaks little, and among the inspired painters may be thought of as one of the lesser prophets; but his brief book is of extreme value.I have been happy enough to get two of my faithful scholars to work upon it for me; and they have deciphered it nearly all—much more, at all events, than I can tell you either in this Fors, or in several to come.[340]His message is written in the Venetian manner, by painting the myths of the saints, in his own way.If you will look into the introduction to the ‘Queen of the Air,’ you will find it explained that a great mythcanonly be written in the central time of a nation’s power. This prophecy of Carpaccio’s may be thought of by you as the sweetest,becausethe truest, of all that Venice was born to utter: the painted syllabling of it is nearly the last work and word of her’s in true life. She speaks it, and virtually, thereafter, dies, or begins to die.It is written in a series of some eighteen to twenty pictures, chiefly representing the stories of St. Ursula, St. George, and St. Jerome.The first, in thoughtful order, of these, the dream of St. Ursula, has been already partly described in Fors; (August, 1872, p. 14). The authorities of the Venetian Academy have been kind enough to take the picture down and give it me to myself, in a quiet room, where I am making studies, which I hope will be of use in Oxford, and elsewhere.But there is this to be noted before we begin; that of these three saints, whose stories Carpaccio tells, one is a quite real one, on whose penman’s work we depend for our daily Bible-bread. Another, St. George, is a very dimly real one,—very disputable by American faith, and we owe to him, only in England, certain sentiments;—the Order of the Garter, and sundry sign-boards[341]of the George and Dragon. Venice supposed herself to owe more to him; but he is nevertheless, in her mind also, a very ghostly saint,—armour and all too light to sink a gondola.Of the third, St. Ursula, by no industry of my good scholars, and none has been refused, can I find the slightest material trace. Under scholarly investigation, she vanishes utterly into the stars and the æther,—and literally, as you will hear, and see, into moonshine, and the modern German meaning of everything,—the Dawn.1Not a relic, not a word remains of her, as what Mr. John Stuart Mill calls “a utility embodied in a material object.”The whole of her utility is Immaterial—to us in England, immaterial, of late years, in every conceivable sense. But the strange thing is that Carpaccio paints, of the substantial and indisputable saint, only three small pictures; of the disputable saint, three more important ones; but of the entirely ærial saint, a splendid series, the chief labour of his life.The chief labour;—and chief rest, or play, it seems also: questionable in the extreme as to the temper of Faith in which it is done.We will suppose, however, at first, for your better[342]satisfaction, that in composing the pictures he no more believed there ever had been a Princess Ursula than Shakspeare, when he wrote Midsummer Night’s Dream, believed there had been a Queen Hippolyta: and that Carpaccio had just as much faith in angels as Shakspeare in fairies—and no more. Both these artists, nevertheless, set themselves to paint, the one fairies, the other angels and saints, for popular—entertainment, (say your modern sages,) or popular—instruction, it may yet appear. But take it your own way; and let it be for popular amusement. This play, this picture which I am copying for you, were, both of them we will say, toys, for the English and Venetian people.Well, the next question is, whether the English and Venetians, when theycouldbe amused with these toys, were more foolish than now, when they can only be amused with steam merry-go-rounds.Below St. George’s land at Barmouth, large numbers of the English populace now go to bathe. Of the Venetians, beyond St. George’s island, many go now to bathe on the sands of Lido. But nobody thinks of playing a play about queens and fairies, to the bathers on the Welsh beach. The modern intellectual teacher erects swings upon the beach. There the suspended population oscillate between sea and sky, and are amused. Similarly in Venice, no decorative painter at Lido thinks of painting pictures of St. Nicholas of the Lido, to amuse the modern Venetian. The white-necktied orchestra[343]plays them a ‘pot-pourri,’ and their steamer squeaks to them, and they are amused.And so sufficiently amused, that I, hearing with sudden surprise and delight the voice of native Venetian Punch last night, from an English ship, and instantly inquiring, with impatience, why I had not had the happiness of meeting him before, found that he was obliged to take refuge as a runaway, or exile, under the British Flag, being forbidden in his own Venice, for evermore—such the fiat of liberty towards the first Apostolic Vicar thereof.I am willing, however, for my own part, to take Carpaccio a step farther down in the moral scale still. Suppose that he painted this picture, not even to amuse his public—but to amuse himself!To a great extent Iknowthat this is true. I know,—(you needn’t ask how, because you can’t be shown how,—but Idoknow, trust me,) that he painted this picture greatly to amuse himself, and had extreme delight in the doing of it; and if he did not actually believe that the princess and angels ever were, at least he heartily wished there had been such persons, and could be.Now this is the first step to real faith. There may never have been saints: there may be no angels,—there may be no God. Professors Huxley and Tyndall are of opinion that there is no God: they have never found one in a bottle. Well: possibly there isn’t;[344]but, my good Sheffield friends, do you wish there was? or are you of the French Republican opinion—“If there were a God, we should have to shoot him” as the first great step towards the “abolition of caste” proposed by our American friends?2You will say, perhaps,—It is not a proper intellectual state to approach such a question in, to wish anything about it. No, assuredly not,—and I have told you so myself, many a time. But it is an entirely proper state to fit you for being approached by the Spirits that you wish for, if there are such. And if there are not, it can do you no harm.Nor, so long as you distinctly understand it to be a wish, will it warp your intellect. “Oh, if I had but Aladdin’s lamp, or Prince Houssain’s carpet!” thinks the rightly-minded child, reading its ‘Arabian Nights.’ But he does not take to rubbing his mother’s lamps, nor to squatting on scraps of carpet, hopefully.Well—concerning these Arabian nights of Venice and the Catholic Church. Carpaccio thinks,—“Oh, if there had but been such a Princess as this—if there could but be! At least I can paint one, and delight myself in the image of her!”Now, can you follow him so far as this? Do you really wish there were such a Princess? Do you so much as want any kind of Princess? Or are your aims fixed on the attainment of a world so constituted[345]that there shall be no Princesses in it any more,—but only Helps in the kitchen, who shall “come upstairs to play the piano,” according to the more detailed views of the American Socialist, displayed in our correspondence.I believe you can scarcely so much as propose this question to yourselves, not knowing clearly what a Princess is. For a Princess is truly one of the members of that Feudal System which, I hear on all hands, is finally ended. If it be so, it is needful that I should explain to you specifically what the Feudal System was, before you can wish for a Princess, or any other part of it, back again.The Feudal System begins in the existence of a Master, or Mister; and a Mistress,—or, as you call her, Missis,—who have deputed authority over a piece of land, hereditarily theirs; and absolute authority in their own house, or home, standing on such land: authority essentially dual, and not by any means admitting two masters, or two missises, still less our American friend’s calculated desirable quantity of 150, mixed. And the office of a Master implies the office of Servants; and of a Mistress, the office of Maids. These are the first Four Chemical Elements of the Feudal System.The next members of it in order of rank are the Master of the Masters, and Mistress of the Mistresses; of whom they hold their land in fee, and who are recognized still, in a sort, as landlord and landlady, though for the most part now degenerate into mere[346]tax-gatherers; but, in their true office, the administrators of law concerning land, and magistrates, and hearers of appeal between household and household:3their duty involving perfect acquaintance and friendship with all the households under their rule; and their dominion, therefore, not by any possibility extending over very large space of territory,—what is commonly called in England an ‘estate’ being usually of approximately convenient space.The next members of the Feudal System in order of rank, are the Lord of the Landlords, and Lady of the Landladies; commonly called their Duke, Doge, or leader, and Duchess or Dogaressa: the authority of this fourth member of the Feudal System being to enforce law and hear appeal between Lord and Lord; and to consult with them respecting the harmonious government of their, estates over such extent of land as may from some speciality of character be managed by common law referring to some united interest,—as, for instance, Cumberland, by a law having reference to pastoral life, Cornwall by laws involving the inspection of mines of tin, and the like,—these provinces, or shires, having each naturally a capital city, cathedral, town hall, and municipality of merchants.As examples of which Fourth Order4in the Feudal System, the Dukes and Dukedoms of York, Lancaster,[347]Venice, Milan, Florence, Orleans, and Burgundy, may be remembered by you as having taken very practical part in the government, or, it may be, misgovernment, of the former world.Then the persons of the Fifth Order, in the Feudal System, are the Duke of the Dukes, and Duchess of the Duchesses, commonly called the King and Queen, having authority and magistracy over the Dukes of the provinces, to the extent in which such provinces may be harmoniously joined in a country or kingdom, separated from other portions of the world by interests, manners, and dialect.Then the Sixth Order in the Feudal System, much, of late years, misunderstood, and even forgotten, is that of the Commander or Imperator of the Kings; having the same authority and office of hearing appeal among the Kings of kingdoms, as they among the Dukes of provinces.The systems of all human civilized governments resolve themselves finally into the balance of the Semitic and lapetic powers under the anointed Cyrus of the East and Karl of the West.5The practical power of the office has been necessarily lost since the Reformation; and in recent debates in an English Parliament on this subject, it appeared that[348]neither the Prime Minister of England, nor any of her Parliamentary representatives, had the slightest notion of the meaning of the word.The reason that the power of the office has been lost since the Reformation, is that all these temporal offices are only perfected, in the Feudal System, by their relative spiritual offices. Now, though the Squire and the Rector still in England occupy their proper symmetrical position, the equally balanced authority of the Duke and Bishop has been greatly confused: that of the King and Cardinal was so even during the fully animated action of both; and all conception of that of the Emperor and Pope is of course dead in Protestant minds.But there was yet, in the Feudal System, one Seventh and Final Authority, of which the imagination is like to be also lost to Protestant minds. That of the King of Kings, and Ruler of Empires; in whose ordinances and everlasting laws, and in ‘feudom’ or faith and covenant with whom, as the Giver of Land and Bread, all these subordinate powers lived, and moved, and had their being.And truly if, since we cannot find this King of Kings in the most carefully digested residuum, we are sure that we cannot find Him anywhere; and if, since by no fineness of stopper we can secure His essence in a bottle, we are sure that we cannot stay Him anywhere, truly what I hear on all hands is correct; and the Feudal[349]System, with all consequences and members thereof, is verily at an end.In the meantime, however, you can now clearly understand the significance, in that system, of the word Princess, meaning a King’s daughter, bred in such ways and knowledges as may fit her for dominion over nations. And thus you can enjoy, if otherwise in a humour for its enjoyment, the story of the Princess Ursula, here following,—though for the present you may be somewhat at a loss to discern the practical bearings of it; which, however, if you will note that the chief work of the Princess is to convert the savage minds of the ‘English,’ or people of Over-sea, from the worship of their god ‘Malcometto,’ to the ‘rule of St. John the Baptist,’—you may guess to be in some close connection with the proposed ‘practice’ of St. George’s Company; not less, indeed, than the functions of Carpaccio’s other two chiefly worshipped saints.The legends of St. Ursula, which were followed by him, have been collated here at Venice, and reduced to this pleasant harmony, in true help to me, by my good scholar James Reddie Anderson. For whose spirit thus active with us, no less than for the spirit, at rest, of the monk who preserved the story for us, I am myself well inclined to say another Pater and Ave.[350]THE STORY OF ST. URSULA.6There was once a just and most Christian King of Britain, called Maurus. To him and to his wife Daria was born a little girl, the fairest creature that this earth ever saw. She came into the world wrapped in a hairy mantle, and all men wondered greatly what this might mean. Then the King gathered together his wise men to inquire of them. But they could not make known the thing to him, for only God in Heaven knew how the rough robe signified that she should follow holiness and purity all her days, and the wisdom of St. John the Baptist. And because of the mantle, they called her ‘Ursula,’ ‘Little Bear.’Now Ursula grew day by day in grace and loveliness, and in such wisdom that all men marvelled. Yet should they not have marvelled, since with God all things are possible. And when she was fifteen years old she was a light of all wisdom, and a glass of all beauty, and a fountain of scripture and of sweet ways. Lovelier woman there was not alive. Her speech was so full of all delight that it seemed as though an angel of Paradise had taken human flesh. And in all the kingdom no weighty thing was done without counsel of Ursula.So her fame was carried through the earth, and a King[351]of England, a heathen of over-seas, hearing, was taken with the love of her. And he set all his heart on having her for wife to his son Æther, and for daughter in his home. So he sent a mighty and honourable embassy, of earls and marquesses, with goodly company of knights, and ladies, and philosophers; bidding them, with all courtesy and discretion, pray King Maurus to give Ursula in marriage to Æther. “But,” he said, “if Maurus will not hear your gentle words, open to him all my heart, and tell him that I will ravage his land with fire, and slay his people, and make himself die a cruel death, and will, after, lead Ursula away with me. Give him but three days to answer, for I am wasted with desire to finish the matter, and hold Ursula in my ward.”But when the ambassadors came to King Maurus, he would not have his daughter wed a heathen; so, since prayers and gifts did not move him, they spoke out all the threats. Now the land of Britain was little, and its soldiers few, while the heathen was a mighty King and a conqueror; so Maurus, and his Queen, and his councillors, and all the people, were in sore distress.But on the evening of the second day, Ursula went into her chamber, and shut close the doors; and before the image of the Father, who is very pitiful, prayed all night with tears, telling how she had vowed in her heart to live a holy maiden all her days, having Christ alone for spouse. But, if His will were that she should wed the son of the heathen King, she prayed that wisdom[352]might be given her, to turn the hearts of all that people who knew not faith nor holiness; and power to comfort her father and mother, and all the people of her fatherland.And when the clear light of dawn was in the air, she fell asleep. And the Angel of the Lord appeared to her in a dream, saying, “Ursula, your prayer is heard. At the sunrising you shall go boldly before the ambassadors of the King of Over-sea, for the God of Heaven shall give you wisdom, and teach your tongue what it should speak.” When it was day, Ursula rose to bless and glorify the name of God. She put on for covering and for beauty an enwrought mantle like the starry sky, and was crowned with a coronet of gems. Then, straightway passing to her father’s chamber, she told him what grace had been done to her that night, and all that now was in her heart to answer to the ambassadors of Over-sea. So, though long he would not, she persuaded her father.Then Maurus, and his lords and councillors, and the ambassadors of the heathen King, were gathered in the Hall of Council. And when Ursula entered the place where these lords were, one said to the other, “Who is this that comes from Paradise?” For she moved in all noble gentleness, with eyes inclined to earth, learned, and frank, and fair, delightful above all women upon earth. Behind her came a hundred maidens, clothed in white silk, fair and lovely. They shone[353]brightly as the stars, but Ursula shone as the moon and the evening star.Now this was the answer Ursula made, which the King caused to be written, and sealed with the royal seal, and gave to the ambassadors of the King of Over-sea.“I will take,” she said, “for spouse, Æther, the son of my lord the King of Over-sea. But I ask of my lord three graces, and with heart and soul7pray of him to grant them.“The first grace I ask is this, that he, and the Queen, and their son, my spouse, be baptized in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.“The second grace is that three years may be given me, before the bridal, in which to go to and fro upon the sea, that I may visit the bodies of the Saints in Rome, and the blessed places of the Holy Land.“And for the last grace, I ask that he choose ten fair maidens of his kingdom, and with each of these a thousand more, all of gentle blood, who shall come to me here, in Britain, and go with me in gladness upon the sea, following this my holy pilgrimage.”Then spake one of the nobles of the land to Maurus, saying, “My lord the King, this your daughter is the Dove of Peace come from Paradise, the same that in the days of the Flood brought to the Ark of Noah the olive-branch of good news.” And at the answer, were the ambassadors so full of joy that they wellnigh could[354]not speak, and with praise and triumph they went their way, and told their master all the sweet answer of Ursula.Then my lord the King said, “Praised and blessed be the name of our God Malcometto, who has given my soul for comfort that which it desired. Truly there is not a franker lady under the wheel of the sun; and by the body of my mother I swear there is nothing she can ask that I will not freely give. First of the maidens she desires shall be my daughter Florence.” Then all his lords rose, man by man, and gladly named, each, his child.So the will of Ursula was done; and that King, and all his folk, were baptized into the Holy Faith. And Æther, with the English maidens, in number above ten thousand, came to the land of Britain.Then Ursula chose her own four sisters, Habila, and Julia, and Victoria, and Aurea, and a thousand daughters of her people, with certain holy bishops, and great lords, and grave councillors, and an abbot of the order of St. Benedict, men full of all wisdom, and friends of God.So all that company set sail in eleven ships, and passing this way and that upon the sea, rejoiced in it, and in this their maiden pilgrimage. And those who dwelt by the shores of the sea came forth in multitudes to gaze upon them as they passed, and to each man it appeared a delightful vision. For the ships sailed in fair order, side by side, with sound of sweet psalms and[355]murmur of the waters. And the maidens were clad, some in scarlet and some in pure samite, some in rich silk of Damascus, some in cloth of gold, and some in the purple robe that is woven in Judea. Some wore crowns, others garlands of flowers. Upon the shoulder of each was the visible cross, in the hands of each a pilgrim’s staff, by their sides were pilgrims’ scrips, and each ship’s company sailed under the gonfalon of the Holy Cross. Ursula in the midst was like a ray of sunlight, and the Angel of the Lord was ever with them for guide.So in the holy time of Lent they came to Rome. And when my Lord the Pope came forth, under the Castle of St. Angelo, with great state, to greet them, seeing their blessed assembly, he put off the mantle of Peter, and with many bishops, priests, and brothers, and certain cardinals, set himself to go with them on their blessed pilgrimage.At length they came to the land of Slavonia, whose ruler was friend and liegeman to the Soldan of Babylon. Then the Lord of the Saracens sent straightway to the Soldan, telling what a mighty company had come to his land, and how they were Christian folk. And the Soldan gathered all his men of war, and with great rage the host of the heathen made against the company of Ursula.And when they were nigh, the Soldan cried and said, “What folk are ye?” And Ursula spake in answer,[356]“We are Christian folk: our feet are turned to the blessed tomb of our Lord Jesus Christ, for the saving of our souls, and that we may win grace to pass into eternal life, in the blessed Paradise.” And the Soldan answered, “Either deny your God, or I will slay you all with the sword. So shall ye die a dolorous death, and see your land no more.” And Ursula answered, “Even so we desire to be sure witnesses for the name of God, declaring and preaching the glory of His name; because He has made heaven and earth and the sea by His Word; and afterward all living things; and afterward has willed, Himself, to die, for our salvation and glory. And who follows Him shall go to rejoice inHisFatherland and in His Kingdom.”Then she turned to her people: “My sisters and my brothers, in this place God has given us great grace. Embrace and make it sure, for our death in this place will be life perpetual, and joy, and sweetness never-ending. And there, above, we shall be with the Majesty and the angels of Paradise.” Then she called her spouse to comfort and teach him. And he answered her with these words, “To me it appears three thousand years that death is a-coming, so much have I already tasted of the sweetness of Paradise.”Then the Soldan gave commandment that they should all be slain with the sword. And so was it done.Yet when he saw Ursula standing, in the midst of all that slaughter, like the fairest stalk of corn in harvest,[357]and how she was exceeding lovely, beyond the tongues of this earth to tell, he would have saved her alive, and taken her for wife. But when she would not, and rebuked him, he was moved with anger. Now there was a bow in his hand, and he set an arrow on the string, and drew it with all his strength, and it pierced the heart of the glorious maiden. So she went to God.And one maiden only, whose name was Corbula, through fear hid herself in the ship. But God, who had chosen all that company, gave her heart, and with the dawn of the next day she came forth willingly, and received the martyr’s crown.Thus all were slain, and all are gone to Paradise, and sing the glad and sweet songs of Paradise.Whosoever reads this holy history, let him not think it a great thing to say an Our Father, and a Hail Mary, for the soul of him who has written it.Thus far the old myth. You shall hear now in what manner such a myth is re-written by a great man, born in the days of a nation’s strength.Carpaccio begins his story with what the myth calls a dream. But he wishes to tell you that it was no dream,—but a vision;—that a real angel came, and was seen by Ursula’s soul, when her mortal eyes were closed.“The Angel of the Lord,” says the legend. What!—thinks Carpaccio;—to this little maid of fifteen, the[358]angel that came to Moses and Joshua? Not so, but her own guardian angel.Guardian, and to tell her that God will guide her heart to-morrow, and put His own answer on her lips, concerning her marriage. Shall not such angel be crowned with light, and strew her chamber with lilies?There is no glory round his head; there is no gold on his robes; they are of subdued purple and gray. His wings are colourless—his face calm, but sorrowful,—wholly in shade. In his right hand he bears the martyr’s palm; in his left, the fillet borne by the Greek angels of victory, and, together with it, gathers up, knotted in his hand, the folds of shroud8with which the Etrurians veil the tomb.[359]He comes to her, “in the clear light of morning;” the Angel of Death.You see it is written in the legend that she had shut close the doors of her chamber.They have opened as the angel enters,—not one only, but all in the room,—all in the house. He enters by one at the foot of her bed; but beyond it is another—open into the passage; out of that another into some luminous hall or street. All the window-shutters are wide open; they are made dark that you may notice them,—nay, all the press doors are open! No treasure bars shall hold, wherethisangel enters.Carpaccio has been intent to mark that he comes in the light of dawn. The blue-green sky glows between the dark leaves of the olive and dianthus in the open window. But its light is low compared to that which entersbehindthe angel, falling full on Ursula’s face, in divine rest.In the last picture but one, of this story, he has painted her lying in the rest which the angel came to bring; and in the last, is her rising in the eternal Morning.For this is the first lesson which Carpaccio wrote[360]in his Venetian words for the creatures of this restless world,—that Death is better thantheirlife; and that not bridegroom rejoices over bride as they rejoice who marry not, nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God, in Heaven.[361]NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE.I. Affairs of the Company.Venice, October 20th.—I have sent for press, to-day, the fourth number of ‘Deucalion,’ in which will be found a statement of the system on which I begin the arrangement of the Sheffield Museum.There are no new subscriptions to announce. Another donation, of fifty pounds, by Mrs. Talbot, makes me sadly ashamed of the apathy of all my older friends. I believe, in a little while now, it will be well for me to throw them all aside, and refuse to know any one but my own Companions, and the workmen who are willing to listen to me. I have spoken enough to the upper classes, and they mock me;—in the seventh year of Fors I will speak more clearly than hitherto,—but not tothem.Meantime, my Sheffield friends must not think I am neglecting them, because I am at work here in Venice, instead of among them. They will know in a little while the use of my work here. The following portions of letter from the Curator of our Museum, with the piece of biography in it, which I venture to print, in haste, assuming permission, will be of good service to good workers everywhere.“H. Swan to J. Ruskin.“Walkley, Sheffield,October 18, 1876.“Dear Master,—The interest in the Museum seems still increasing. Yesterday (Sunday), in addition to our usual allotment of casual calls at the Museum, we had a visit from a party of working men; two or three of them from Barnsley, but the most Sheffielders, among which last were several of those who came[362]to meet thee on the last occasion. Their object was a double one; first, to see what progress we were making with the Museum; and, secondly, to discuss the subject of Usury, the unlawfulness of which, in its ordinary aspects, being (unlike the land question) a perfectly new notion to all except one or two. The objection generally takes this shape: ‘If I have worked hard to earn twenty pounds, and it is an advantage to another to have the use of that twenty pounds, why should he get that advantage without paying me for it?’ To which my reply has been, There may, or may not, be reasons why the lender should be placed in a better position for using his powers of body or mind; but the special question for you, with your twenty pounds, now is, not what right has he to use the money without payment—(he has every right, if you give him leave; and none, if you don’t;)—the questionyouhave to propose to yourself is this, ‘Why should I, as a man and a Christian, after having been paid for what I have earned, expect or desire to make an agreement by which I may get, from the labour of others, money I have not earned?’ Suppose, too, bail for a hundred pounds to be required for a prisoner in whose innocence you believed, would you say ‘I will be bail for the hundred pounds, but I shall expect five pounds from him for the advantage he will thereby get?’ No; the just man would weigh well whether it be right or no to undertake the bail; but, having determined, he would shrink from receiving the unearned money, as I believe the first unwarped instinct of a good man does still in the case of a loan.“Although, as I have said, all question as to the right of what is called a moderate rate of interest was new to most of our visitors, yet I found a greater degree of openness to the truth than might have been expected. One of the most interesting parts of the discussion was the relation by one of the party of his own experiences, in years past, as a money-lender. ‘In the place where I used to work at that time,’ said he, ‘there was a very many of[363]a good sort of fellows who were not so careful of their money as I was, and they used often to run out of cash before the time came for them to take more. Well, knowing I was one that always had a bit by me, they used to come to me to borrow a bit to carry them through to pay-day. When they paid me, some would ask if I wanted aught for the use of it. But I only lent to pleasure them, and I always said, No, I wanted nought. One day, however, Jack —— came to me, and said, “Now, my lad, dost want to get more brass for thyself, and lay by money? because I can put thee in the way of doing it.” I said that was a great object for me. “Well,” said he, “thou must do as I tell thee. I know thou’rt often lending thy brass to them as want a lift. Now thou must make them pay for using thy money, and if thou works as I tell thee, it’ll grow and grow. And by-and-by they’ll be paying and paying for the use of their own money over and over again.” Well, I thought it would be a good thing for me to have the bits of cash come in and in, to help along with what I earned myself. So I told each of the men, as they came, that I couldn’t go on lending for nothing, and they must pay me a bit more when they got their pay. And so they did. After a time, Jack —— came again, and said, “Well, how’rt getting on?” So I told him what I was doing, and that seemed all right. After a time, he came again, and said, “Now thou finds what I said was right. The men can spare thee a bit for thy money, and it makes things a deal more comfortable for thyself. Now I can show thee how a hundred of thy money shall bring another hundred in.” “Nay,” said I, “thou canst not do that. That can’t be done.” “Nay, but it can,” said Jack. And he told me how to manage; and that when I hadn’t the cash, he would find it, and we’d halve the profits. [Say a man wants to borrow twenty pounds, and is to pay back at three shillings a week. The interest is first deducted for the whole time, so that if he agrees to pay only five per cent. he will receive but nineteen pounds; then the interest is more[364]than five per cent. on the money actually out during the very first week, while the rate gradually rises as the weekly payments come,—slowly at first, but at the last more and more rapidly, till, during the last month, the money-lender is obtaining two hundred per cent. for the amount (now, however, very small) still unpaid.]“ ‘Well, it grew and grew. Hundreds and hundreds I paid and received every week, (and we found that among the poorest little shops it worked the best for us). At last it took such hold of me that I became a regular bloodsucker—a bloodsucker of poor folk, and nothing else. I was always reckoning up, night and day, how to get more and more, till I got so thin and ill I had to go to the doctor. It was old Dr. Sike, and he said, “Young man, you must give up your present way of work and life, or I can do nothing for you. You’ll get worse and worse.”“ ‘So I thought and thought, and at last I made up my mind to give it all up, though I was then getting rich. But there was no blessing on what I’d got, and I lost it every farthing, and had to begin again as poor as I was when I first left the workhouse to learn a trade. And now, I’ve prospered and prospered in my little way till I’ve no cause to worry anyways about money, and I’ve a few men at work with me in my shop.“ ‘Still, for all that, I don’t see why I shouldn’t have interest on the little capital I’ve saved uphonestly; or how am I to live in my old age?’“Another workman suggested, ‘Wouldn’t he be able to live on his capital?’ ‘Aye, but I want to leave that to somebody else,’ was the answer. [Yes, good friend, and the same excuse might be made for any form of theft.—J. R.]“I will merely add, that if there were enforced and public account of the amount of monies advanced on loan, and if the true conditions and workings of those loans could be shown, there would be revealed such an amount of cruel stress upon the foolish, weak, and poor of the small tradesmen (a class far more[365]numerous than are needed) as would render it very intelligible why so many faces are seamed with lines of suffering and anxiety. I think it possible that the fungus growth and increasing mischief of these loan establishments may reach such a pitch as to necessitate legislative interference, as has been the case with gambling. But there will never fail modes of evading the law, and the sufficient cure will be found only when men shall consider it a dishonour to have it imputed to them thatanyportion of their income is derived from usury.”The Union Bank of London (Chancery Lane Branch) in Account with the St. George’s Fund.1876.Dr.£s.d.Aug.16.To Balance.9434Oct.12.” Draft at Bridgwater (per Mr. Ruskin)500024.” (J. P. Stilwell)2500£16934Cr.£s.d.Oct.12.By Postage of Pass Book00325.Balance16931£16934II. Affairs of the Master.£s.d.£s.d.Sept.15.Balancea12210820.Kate1000026.—— at Venice, Antoniob5000Oct.1.Secretary25003.Downs50005.Giftc200010.Loan20000”Jackson5000———49500Oct.15.Balance£72608aBy report from Bank; but the ‘repayments’ named in it should not have been added to the cash account, being on separate account with the Company. I will make all clear in December.↑bFor Signora Caldara (Venetian botany).↑cNominally loan, to poor relation, but I do not suppose he will ever be able to pay me. The following £200 I do not doubt receiving again.↑[366]III. I print the following letter with little comment, because I have no wish to discuss the question of the uses of Dissent with a Dissenting Minister; nor do I choose at present to enter on the subject at all. St. George, taking cognizance only of the postscript, thanks the Dissenting Minister for his sympathy; but encourages his own servant to persist in believing that the “more excellent way” (of Charity), which St. Paul showed, in the 13th of Corinthians, is quite as truly followed in devoting the funds at his said servant’s disposal to the relief of the poor, as in the maintenance of Ruskinian Preachers for the dissemination of Ruskinian opinions, in a Ruskinian Society, with the especial object of saving Mr. Ruskin’s and the Society’s souls.“September 14th, 1876.“Dear Mr. Ruskin,—Mr. Sillar’s ‘valuable letter’ in last month’s Fors, (a) would have been more valuable if he had understood what he was writing about. Mr. Tyerman (in his ‘Life and Times of Wesley,’ p. 431,) gives the trifling differences between the present Rules of the Methodist Societies and the first edition issued in 1743. Instead of ‘interested personshaving altered old John Wesley’s rules’ (he was forty years old when he drew them up) ‘to suitmodern ideas’—the alterations, whether good or bad, were made by himself.“The first contributions in the ‘Classes’ were made for the express purpose of discharging a debt on a preaching house. Then they were devoted ‘to the relief of the poor,’ there being at the time no preachers dependent on the Society for support.After1743, when circuits had been formed and preachers stationed in certain localities, their maintenance gradually became the principal charge upon the Society’s funds. (See Smith’s ‘History of Methodism,’ vol. i., p. 669.) In 1771 Wesley says expressly that the contributions are applied ‘towards the expenses of the Society.’ (b) (‘Journal,’ vol. iii., p. 205.) Certainly Methodism, thus supported, has done far more to benefit the[367]poor and raise them, than any amount of mere almsgiving could have done. Methodist preachers have at least one sign of being in the apostolical succession. They can say, with Paul, ‘as poor, yet making many rich.’ (c)“ ‘Going to law’ was altered by Mr. Wesley to ‘brother going to law with brother,’ in order, no doubt, to bring the rule into verbal agreement with 1 Cor. vi. 6. (d)“ ‘Usury’ was defined by Mr. Wesley to be ‘unlawful interest,’ (e) in accordance with the ordinary notions of his day. He was greatly in advance of his age, yet he could scarcely have been expected to anticipate the definition of Usury given, as far as I know, (f) for the first time in Fors for August, 1876. I don’t see why we Methodists should be charged with breaking the laws of Moses, David, and Christ (Fors, p. 253), if we consider ‘old John Wesley’s’ definition to be as good as the ‘modern idea.’“Of course St. George, for whom I have the greatest respect and admiration, will correct Mr. Sillar’s mistake.“I am, Sir,“Another Reader of Fors(which I wish you would sell a little cheaper), and“A Methodist Preacher.“P.S.—Why should you not copy old John Wesley, and establish your St. George’s Company on a legal basis? In 1784 he drew up a Deed of Declaration, which was duly enrolled in Chancery. It stated the purposes for which his Society was formed, and the mode in which it was to be governed. A Deed of Trust was afterwards drawn up foroneof our chapels, reciting at length this Deed of Declaration, and all the purposes for which the property was to be used. All our other property is settled on the same trusts. A single line in each subsequent chapel deed—stating that all the trusts are to be the same as those of the ‘Model Deed,’ as we call the first one—obviates[368]the necessity and expense ofrepeatinga very long legal document.“Success to St. George,—yet there is, I think, ‘a more excellent way.’ ”a.Mr. Sillar’s letter did not appear in last month’s Fors. A small portion of it appeared, in which I regret that Mr. Sillar so far misunderstood John Wesley as to imagine him incapable of altering his own rules so as to make them useless.b.I wish the Wesleyans were the only Society whose contributions are applied to no better purpose.c.I envy my correspondent’s complacency in his own and his Society’s munificence, too sorrowfully to endeavour to dispel it.d.The ‘verbal’ agreement is indeed secured by the alteration. But as St. Paul, by a ‘brother,’ meant any Christian, I shall be glad to learn from my correspondent whether the Wesleyans understand their rule in that significance.e.Many thanks to Mr. Wesley. Doubtless his disciples know what rate of interest is lawful, and what not; and also by what law it was made so; and always pause with pious accuracy at the decimal point whereat the excellence of an investment begins to make it criminal. St. George will be grateful to their representative for information on these—not unimportant—particulars.f.How far thatis, my correspondent’s duly dissenting scorn of the wisdom of the Greeks, and legality of the Jews, has doubtless prevented his thinking it necessary to discover. I must not waste the time of other readers in assisting his elementary investigations; but have merely to point out to him that definitions either of theft, adultery, usury, or murder, have only becomenecessaryin modern times; and that Methodists,[369]and any other persons, are charged by me with breaking the law of Moses, David, and Christ, in so far only as they do accept Mr. John Wesley’s, or any other person’s, definition instead oftheirutterly unquestionable meaning. (Would T. S., of North Tyne, reprint his letters for me from the Sunderland paper, to be sent out with December Fors?)IV. I reprint the following paragraph chiefly as an example of our ineffable British absurdity. It is perfectly right to compel fathers to send their children to school; but, once sent, it is the schoolmaster’s business to keep hold of them. In St. George’s schools, it would have been the little runaway gentleman who would have got sent to prison; and kept,sotto piombi, on bread and water, until he could be trusted with more liberty. The fate of the father, under the present application of British law, leaves the problem, it seems to me, still insoluble but in that manner. But I should like to know more of the previous history of parent and child.“The story of George Widowson, aged fifty-seven, told at the inquest held on his remains at Mile End Old Town on Wednesday, is worth recording. Widowson was, as appears by the evidence of his daughter, a sober, hard-working man until he was sent to prison for three days in last December in default of paying a fine for not sending his son, a boy eleven years of age, to school. The deceased, as several witnesses deposed, constantly endeavoured to make the child go to school, and had frequently taken him there himself; but it was all in vain. Young Widowson when taken to school invariably ran away, the result being that his father was driven to distraction. His imprisonment in December had preyed on his mind, and he took to drinking. He frequently threatened to destroy himself rather than be imprisoned again. Hearing that another summons was about to be issued against him, he broke up his home, and on[370]the night of the 30th ultimo solved the educational problem by throwing himself into the Regent’s Canal. Fear of being again sent to prison by the School Board was, his daughter believed, the cause of his committing this act. The jury returned a verdict in accordance of this opinion; and although George Widowson was wrong to escape from the clutches of the friends of humanity by putting an end to his life, those who blame him should remember that imprisonment to abonâ fideworking man of irreproachable character, is simply torture. He loses all that in his own eyes makes life worth preservation.”—Pall Mall Gazette, July 7th, 1876.V. The next extract contains some wholesome comments on our more advanced system of modern education.“Indian Civil Service.—At a meeting of the Indian section of the Society of Arts, under the presidency of Mr. Andrew Cassels, a paper on ‘Competition and its Effects upon Education’ was read by Dr. George Birdwood. In the course of his remarks, he commented at length upon the India Office despatch of Feb. 24, regarding ‘the selection and training of candidates for the Indian Civil Service,’ and feared that it would but serve to confirm and aggravate and rapidly extend the very worst evil of the old system of competition—namely, the degeneration of secondary education throughout England.… The despatch tended to make over all the secondary schooling of the country to the crammers, or to reduce it to the crammers’ system. They were making the entrance examinations year by year more and more difficult—as their first object must necessarily now be, not the moral and intellectual discipline of the boyhood of England, but to show an ever-growing percentage of success at the various competitive examinations always going on for public services. ‘The devil take the hindermost’[371]was fast becoming the ideal of education, even in the public schools. If they seriously took to cramming little fellows from twelve to fourteen for entrance into public schools, the rising generation would be used up before it reached manhood. A well-known physician, of great experience, told him that the competition for all sorts of scholarships and appointments was showing its evil fruits in the increase of insanity, epilepsy, and other nervous diseases amongst young people of the age from seventeen to nineteen, and especially amongst pupil-teachers; and if admission into the public schools of England was for the future to be regulated by competition, St. Vitus’s dance would soon take the place of gout, as the fashionable disease of the upper classes. This was the inevitable result of the ill-digested and ill-regulated system of competition for the public services, and especially the Indian Civil Service, which had prevailed; and he feared that the recent despatch would only be to hasten the threatened revolution in their national secondary schools, and the last state of cramming under the despatch would be worse than the first.… The best of examiners was the examiner of his own pupils; for no man could measure real knowledge like the teacher. What should be aimed at was regular moderate study and sound and continuous discipline to start the growing man in life in the healthiest bodily and moral condition possible. He objected to children striving for prizes, whether in games or in studies. The fewer prizes won at school, the more would probably be won in life. Let their only anxiety be to educate their children well, and suffer no temptation to betray them into cramming, and the whole world was open to them.”—Daily Telegraph.VI. The development of ‘humanity’ in America is so brilliantly illustrated in the following paragraphs, that I have thought them worth preserving:—[372]From ‘The American Socialist, devoted to the Enlargement and Perfection of Home.’“THE FUTURE OF SOCIETY.“An American, visiting Europe, notices how completely there the various functions of the social body are performed. He finds a servant, an officer, a skilled workman, at every place. From the position of the stone-breaker on the highway, up to that of the highest Government official, every post is filled; every personal want of the traveller or the citizen is attended to. Policemen guard him in the streets, lackeys watch for his bidding at the hotels, railroad officials with almost superfluous care forward him on his way. As compared with American railroad management, the great English roads probably have fouremployésto our one. This plentitude of service results from three things—viz., density of population, which gives an abundant working class; cheapness of labour; and the aristocratic formation of society that tends to fix persons in the caste to which they were born. The effect is to produce a smoothness in the social movement—an absence of jar and friction, and a release in many cases from anxious, personal outlook, that are very agreeable. The difference between English and American life in respect to the supply of service is like that between riding on a highly-finished macadamized way, where every rut is filled and every stone is removed, and picking one’s way over our common country roads.“Another thing that the traveller observes in Europe is the abundance everywhere of works of art. One’s sense of beauty is continually gratified; now with a finished landscape, now with a noble building, now with statues, monuments, and paintings. This immense accumulation of art springs in part of course from the age of the nations where it is found; but it is also due in a very great degree to the employment given to artists by[373]persons of wealth and leisure. Painting, sculpture, and architecture have always had constant, and sometimes munificent, patrons in the nobility and the Established Church.“Observing these things abroad, the American asks himself whether the institutions of this country are likely to produce in time any similar result here. Shall we have the finished organization, the mutual service, and the wealth of art that characterize European society? Before answering this, let us first ask ourselves whether it is desirable that we should have them in the same manner that they exist abroad? Certainly not. No American would be willing to pay the price which England pays for her system of service. The most painful thing which one sees abroad is the utter absence of ambition in the class of household servants. Men who in this country would be looking to a seat in the legislature,9and who would qualify themselves for it, there dawdle away life in the livery of some noble, in smiling, aimless, do-nothing content, and beget children to follow in their steps. On seeing these servile figures, the American thanks heaven that the ocean rolls between his country and such a system. Rather rudeness, discomfort, self-service, and poverty, with freedom and the fire of aspiration, than luxury purchased by the enervation of man!“Still, cannot we have the good without the bad? Cannot we match Europe in culture and polish without sacrificing for it our manhood? And if so, what are the influences in this country that are working in that direction? In answering this question, we have to say frankly that we see nothing in democracy alone that promises to produce the result under consideration. In a country where every one is taught to disdain a situation[374]of dependence, where the hostler and the chambermaid see the way opened for them to stand even with the best in the land, if they will but exercise their privilege of ‘getting on,’ there will be no permanent or perfect service. And so long as every man’s possessions are divided and scattered at his death, there will be no class having the secured leisure and the inducement to form galleries of art. Why should John Smith take pains to decorate his house with works of art, when he knows that within a year after his death it will be administered upon by the Probate Court, and sold with its furniture for the benefit of his ten children?” (Well put,—republican sage.)“In a word, looking at the æsthetic side of things, our American system must be confessed to be not yet quite perfect.” (You don’t say so!) “Invaluable as it is for schooling men to independence and aspiration, it requires, to complete its usefulness, another element. The Republic has a sequel. That completing element, that sequel, is Communism. Communism supplies exactly the conditions that are wanting in the social life of America, and which it must have if it would compete with foreign lands in the development of those things which give ease and grace to existence.“For instance, in respect to service: Communism, by extinguishing caste and honouring labour, makes every man at once a servant and lord. It fills up, by its capacity of minute organization, all the social functions as completely as the European system does; while, unlike that, it provides for each individual sufficient leisure, and frequent and improving changes of occupation. The person who serves in the kitchen this hour may be experimenting with a microscope or giving lessons on the piano the next. Applying its combined ingenuity to social needs, Communism will find means to consign all repulsive and injurious labour to machinery. It is continually interested to promote labour-saving improvements. The service that is performed[375]by brothers and equals from motives of love will be more perfect than that of hired lackeys, while the constantly varying round of occupation granted to all will form the most perfect school for breadth of culture and true politeness. Thus Communism achieves through friendship and freedom that which the Old World secures only through a system little better than slavery.“In the interest of art and the cultivation of the beautiful, Communism again supplies the place of a hereditary aristocracy and a wealthy church. A Community family, unlike the ephemeral households of ordinary society, is a permanent thing. Its edifice is not liable to be sold at the end of every generation, but like a cathedral descends by unbroken inheritance. Whatever is committed to it remains, and is the care of the society from century to century. With a home thus established, all the members of a Community are at once interested to gather about it objects of art. It becomes a picture-gallery and a museum, by the natural accretion of time, and by the zeal of persons who know that every embellishment added to their home will not only be a pleasure to them personally, but will remain to associate them with the pleasure of future beholders in all time to come.“Thus in Communism we have the conditions that are necessary to carry this country to the summit of artistic and social culture. By this route, we may at one bound outstrip the laboured attainments of the aristocracies of the Old World. The New York Central Park shows what can be achieved by combination on the democratic plan, for a public pleasure-ground. No other park is equal to it. Let this principle of combination be extended to the formation of homes as well as to municipal affairs, and we shall simply dot this country over with establishments10as much[376]better than those of the nobles of England as they are better than those of a day-labourer. We say better, for they will make art and luxury minister to universal education, and they will replace menial service with downright brotherhood. Such must be the future of American society.”“To the Editor of the ‘American Socialist.’“In your first issue you raise the question, ‘How large ought a Home to be?’ This is a question of great interest to all; and I trust the accumulated answers you will receive will aid in its solution.“I have lived in homes varying in numbers from one (the bachelor’s home) to several hundred; and my experience and observation lead me to regard one hundred and twenty-five as about the right number to form a complete home. I would not have less than seventy-five nor more than one hundred and fifty. In my opinion a Home should minister to all the needs of its members, spiritual, intellectual, social, and physical. This ordinary monogamic homes cannot do; hence resort is had to churches, colleges, club-rooms, theatres, etc.; and in sparsely settled regions of country, people are put to great inconvenience and compelled to go great distances to supply cravings as imperative as the hunger for bread. This view alone would not limit the number of persons constituting a Home; but I take the ground that in a perfect Home there will be a perfect blending of all interests and perfect vibration in unison of all hearts; and of course thorough mutual acquaintance. My experience and observation convince me that it is exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, to secure these results in a family of over one hundred and fifty members.“In simply a monetary view it is undoubtedly best to have large Homes of a thousand or more; but money should not have great weight in comparison with a man’s spiritual, intellectual, and social needs.—D. E. S.”[377]1The primary form in which the legend shows itself is a Nature myth, in which Ursula is the Bud of flowers, enclosed in its rough or hairy calyx, and her husband, Æther—the air of spring. She opens into lovely life with ‘eleven’ thousand other flowers—their fading is their sudden martyrdom. And—says your modern philosopher—‘That’s all’!↑2Correspondence, Article VI.↑3Compare the last page of Fors, October 1875.↑4I. Servant. II. Master. III. Lord. IV. Duke.↑5I want to write a long note on Byzantine empire,—Commanders of the Faithful,—Grand Turks,—and the “Eastern question.” But can’t: and perhaps the reader will be thankful.↑6This Life of St. Ursula has been gathered from some of the stories concerning her which were current through Italy in the time of Carpaccio. The northern form of the legend, localized at Cologne, is neither so lovely nor so ancient.↑7Molto incarnalmente.↑8I could not see this symbol at the height at which the picture hung from the ground, when I described it in 1872. The folds of the drapery in thehandare all but invisible, even when the picture is seen close; and so neutral in their gray-green colour that they pass imperceptibly into violet, as the faint green of evening sky fades into its purple. But the folds are continued under the wrist in the alternate waves which the reader may see on the Etruscan tomb in the first room of the British Museum, with a sculpturesque severity which I could not then understand, and could only account for by supposing that Carpaccio had meant the Princess to “dream out the angel’s dress so particularly”! I mistook the fillet of victory also for a scroll; and could not make out the flowers in the window. They are pinks, the favourite ones in Italian windows to this day, and having a particular relation to St. Ursula in the way they rend their calyx; and I believe also in their peculiar relation to the grasses, (of which more in ‘Proserpina’). St. Ursula is not meant, herself, to recognize the angel. He enters under the door over which she has put her little statue of Venus; and through that door the room is filled with light, so that it will not seem to her strange[359]that his own form, as he enters, should be in shade: and she cannot see his dark wings. On the tassel of her pillow, (Etrurian also,) is written “Infantia”; and above her head, the carving of the bed ends in a spiral flame, typical of the finally ascending Spirit. She lies on her bier, in the last picture but one, exactly as here on her bed; only the coverlid is there changed from scarlet to pale violet. See notes on the meaning of these colours in third ‘Deucalion.’↑9May St. George be informed of how many members the American Legislature is finally to be composed; and over whom it is to exercise the proud function of legislation, which is to be the reward of heroic and rightly-minded flunkeys?↑10As a painter, no less than a philanthropist, I am curious to see the effect of scenery, in these ‘polite’ terms of description, “dotted over with establishments.”↑

FORS CLAVIGERA.LETTER LXXI.

Venice,4th October, 1876.I am able at last to give you some of the long-promised opinions of Carpaccio on practical subjects; not that, except ironically, I ever call them ‘opinions.’ There are certain men whoknowthe truths necessary to human life; they do not ‘opine’ them; and nobody’s ‘opinions,’ on any subject, are of any consequence opposed to them. Hesiod is one of these, Plato another, Dante another, Carpaccio is another. He speaks little, and among the inspired painters may be thought of as one of the lesser prophets; but his brief book is of extreme value.I have been happy enough to get two of my faithful scholars to work upon it for me; and they have deciphered it nearly all—much more, at all events, than I can tell you either in this Fors, or in several to come.[340]His message is written in the Venetian manner, by painting the myths of the saints, in his own way.If you will look into the introduction to the ‘Queen of the Air,’ you will find it explained that a great mythcanonly be written in the central time of a nation’s power. This prophecy of Carpaccio’s may be thought of by you as the sweetest,becausethe truest, of all that Venice was born to utter: the painted syllabling of it is nearly the last work and word of her’s in true life. She speaks it, and virtually, thereafter, dies, or begins to die.It is written in a series of some eighteen to twenty pictures, chiefly representing the stories of St. Ursula, St. George, and St. Jerome.The first, in thoughtful order, of these, the dream of St. Ursula, has been already partly described in Fors; (August, 1872, p. 14). The authorities of the Venetian Academy have been kind enough to take the picture down and give it me to myself, in a quiet room, where I am making studies, which I hope will be of use in Oxford, and elsewhere.But there is this to be noted before we begin; that of these three saints, whose stories Carpaccio tells, one is a quite real one, on whose penman’s work we depend for our daily Bible-bread. Another, St. George, is a very dimly real one,—very disputable by American faith, and we owe to him, only in England, certain sentiments;—the Order of the Garter, and sundry sign-boards[341]of the George and Dragon. Venice supposed herself to owe more to him; but he is nevertheless, in her mind also, a very ghostly saint,—armour and all too light to sink a gondola.Of the third, St. Ursula, by no industry of my good scholars, and none has been refused, can I find the slightest material trace. Under scholarly investigation, she vanishes utterly into the stars and the æther,—and literally, as you will hear, and see, into moonshine, and the modern German meaning of everything,—the Dawn.1Not a relic, not a word remains of her, as what Mr. John Stuart Mill calls “a utility embodied in a material object.”The whole of her utility is Immaterial—to us in England, immaterial, of late years, in every conceivable sense. But the strange thing is that Carpaccio paints, of the substantial and indisputable saint, only three small pictures; of the disputable saint, three more important ones; but of the entirely ærial saint, a splendid series, the chief labour of his life.The chief labour;—and chief rest, or play, it seems also: questionable in the extreme as to the temper of Faith in which it is done.We will suppose, however, at first, for your better[342]satisfaction, that in composing the pictures he no more believed there ever had been a Princess Ursula than Shakspeare, when he wrote Midsummer Night’s Dream, believed there had been a Queen Hippolyta: and that Carpaccio had just as much faith in angels as Shakspeare in fairies—and no more. Both these artists, nevertheless, set themselves to paint, the one fairies, the other angels and saints, for popular—entertainment, (say your modern sages,) or popular—instruction, it may yet appear. But take it your own way; and let it be for popular amusement. This play, this picture which I am copying for you, were, both of them we will say, toys, for the English and Venetian people.Well, the next question is, whether the English and Venetians, when theycouldbe amused with these toys, were more foolish than now, when they can only be amused with steam merry-go-rounds.Below St. George’s land at Barmouth, large numbers of the English populace now go to bathe. Of the Venetians, beyond St. George’s island, many go now to bathe on the sands of Lido. But nobody thinks of playing a play about queens and fairies, to the bathers on the Welsh beach. The modern intellectual teacher erects swings upon the beach. There the suspended population oscillate between sea and sky, and are amused. Similarly in Venice, no decorative painter at Lido thinks of painting pictures of St. Nicholas of the Lido, to amuse the modern Venetian. The white-necktied orchestra[343]plays them a ‘pot-pourri,’ and their steamer squeaks to them, and they are amused.And so sufficiently amused, that I, hearing with sudden surprise and delight the voice of native Venetian Punch last night, from an English ship, and instantly inquiring, with impatience, why I had not had the happiness of meeting him before, found that he was obliged to take refuge as a runaway, or exile, under the British Flag, being forbidden in his own Venice, for evermore—such the fiat of liberty towards the first Apostolic Vicar thereof.I am willing, however, for my own part, to take Carpaccio a step farther down in the moral scale still. Suppose that he painted this picture, not even to amuse his public—but to amuse himself!To a great extent Iknowthat this is true. I know,—(you needn’t ask how, because you can’t be shown how,—but Idoknow, trust me,) that he painted this picture greatly to amuse himself, and had extreme delight in the doing of it; and if he did not actually believe that the princess and angels ever were, at least he heartily wished there had been such persons, and could be.Now this is the first step to real faith. There may never have been saints: there may be no angels,—there may be no God. Professors Huxley and Tyndall are of opinion that there is no God: they have never found one in a bottle. Well: possibly there isn’t;[344]but, my good Sheffield friends, do you wish there was? or are you of the French Republican opinion—“If there were a God, we should have to shoot him” as the first great step towards the “abolition of caste” proposed by our American friends?2You will say, perhaps,—It is not a proper intellectual state to approach such a question in, to wish anything about it. No, assuredly not,—and I have told you so myself, many a time. But it is an entirely proper state to fit you for being approached by the Spirits that you wish for, if there are such. And if there are not, it can do you no harm.Nor, so long as you distinctly understand it to be a wish, will it warp your intellect. “Oh, if I had but Aladdin’s lamp, or Prince Houssain’s carpet!” thinks the rightly-minded child, reading its ‘Arabian Nights.’ But he does not take to rubbing his mother’s lamps, nor to squatting on scraps of carpet, hopefully.Well—concerning these Arabian nights of Venice and the Catholic Church. Carpaccio thinks,—“Oh, if there had but been such a Princess as this—if there could but be! At least I can paint one, and delight myself in the image of her!”Now, can you follow him so far as this? Do you really wish there were such a Princess? Do you so much as want any kind of Princess? Or are your aims fixed on the attainment of a world so constituted[345]that there shall be no Princesses in it any more,—but only Helps in the kitchen, who shall “come upstairs to play the piano,” according to the more detailed views of the American Socialist, displayed in our correspondence.I believe you can scarcely so much as propose this question to yourselves, not knowing clearly what a Princess is. For a Princess is truly one of the members of that Feudal System which, I hear on all hands, is finally ended. If it be so, it is needful that I should explain to you specifically what the Feudal System was, before you can wish for a Princess, or any other part of it, back again.The Feudal System begins in the existence of a Master, or Mister; and a Mistress,—or, as you call her, Missis,—who have deputed authority over a piece of land, hereditarily theirs; and absolute authority in their own house, or home, standing on such land: authority essentially dual, and not by any means admitting two masters, or two missises, still less our American friend’s calculated desirable quantity of 150, mixed. And the office of a Master implies the office of Servants; and of a Mistress, the office of Maids. These are the first Four Chemical Elements of the Feudal System.The next members of it in order of rank are the Master of the Masters, and Mistress of the Mistresses; of whom they hold their land in fee, and who are recognized still, in a sort, as landlord and landlady, though for the most part now degenerate into mere[346]tax-gatherers; but, in their true office, the administrators of law concerning land, and magistrates, and hearers of appeal between household and household:3their duty involving perfect acquaintance and friendship with all the households under their rule; and their dominion, therefore, not by any possibility extending over very large space of territory,—what is commonly called in England an ‘estate’ being usually of approximately convenient space.The next members of the Feudal System in order of rank, are the Lord of the Landlords, and Lady of the Landladies; commonly called their Duke, Doge, or leader, and Duchess or Dogaressa: the authority of this fourth member of the Feudal System being to enforce law and hear appeal between Lord and Lord; and to consult with them respecting the harmonious government of their, estates over such extent of land as may from some speciality of character be managed by common law referring to some united interest,—as, for instance, Cumberland, by a law having reference to pastoral life, Cornwall by laws involving the inspection of mines of tin, and the like,—these provinces, or shires, having each naturally a capital city, cathedral, town hall, and municipality of merchants.As examples of which Fourth Order4in the Feudal System, the Dukes and Dukedoms of York, Lancaster,[347]Venice, Milan, Florence, Orleans, and Burgundy, may be remembered by you as having taken very practical part in the government, or, it may be, misgovernment, of the former world.Then the persons of the Fifth Order, in the Feudal System, are the Duke of the Dukes, and Duchess of the Duchesses, commonly called the King and Queen, having authority and magistracy over the Dukes of the provinces, to the extent in which such provinces may be harmoniously joined in a country or kingdom, separated from other portions of the world by interests, manners, and dialect.Then the Sixth Order in the Feudal System, much, of late years, misunderstood, and even forgotten, is that of the Commander or Imperator of the Kings; having the same authority and office of hearing appeal among the Kings of kingdoms, as they among the Dukes of provinces.The systems of all human civilized governments resolve themselves finally into the balance of the Semitic and lapetic powers under the anointed Cyrus of the East and Karl of the West.5The practical power of the office has been necessarily lost since the Reformation; and in recent debates in an English Parliament on this subject, it appeared that[348]neither the Prime Minister of England, nor any of her Parliamentary representatives, had the slightest notion of the meaning of the word.The reason that the power of the office has been lost since the Reformation, is that all these temporal offices are only perfected, in the Feudal System, by their relative spiritual offices. Now, though the Squire and the Rector still in England occupy their proper symmetrical position, the equally balanced authority of the Duke and Bishop has been greatly confused: that of the King and Cardinal was so even during the fully animated action of both; and all conception of that of the Emperor and Pope is of course dead in Protestant minds.But there was yet, in the Feudal System, one Seventh and Final Authority, of which the imagination is like to be also lost to Protestant minds. That of the King of Kings, and Ruler of Empires; in whose ordinances and everlasting laws, and in ‘feudom’ or faith and covenant with whom, as the Giver of Land and Bread, all these subordinate powers lived, and moved, and had their being.And truly if, since we cannot find this King of Kings in the most carefully digested residuum, we are sure that we cannot find Him anywhere; and if, since by no fineness of stopper we can secure His essence in a bottle, we are sure that we cannot stay Him anywhere, truly what I hear on all hands is correct; and the Feudal[349]System, with all consequences and members thereof, is verily at an end.In the meantime, however, you can now clearly understand the significance, in that system, of the word Princess, meaning a King’s daughter, bred in such ways and knowledges as may fit her for dominion over nations. And thus you can enjoy, if otherwise in a humour for its enjoyment, the story of the Princess Ursula, here following,—though for the present you may be somewhat at a loss to discern the practical bearings of it; which, however, if you will note that the chief work of the Princess is to convert the savage minds of the ‘English,’ or people of Over-sea, from the worship of their god ‘Malcometto,’ to the ‘rule of St. John the Baptist,’—you may guess to be in some close connection with the proposed ‘practice’ of St. George’s Company; not less, indeed, than the functions of Carpaccio’s other two chiefly worshipped saints.The legends of St. Ursula, which were followed by him, have been collated here at Venice, and reduced to this pleasant harmony, in true help to me, by my good scholar James Reddie Anderson. For whose spirit thus active with us, no less than for the spirit, at rest, of the monk who preserved the story for us, I am myself well inclined to say another Pater and Ave.[350]THE STORY OF ST. URSULA.6There was once a just and most Christian King of Britain, called Maurus. To him and to his wife Daria was born a little girl, the fairest creature that this earth ever saw. She came into the world wrapped in a hairy mantle, and all men wondered greatly what this might mean. Then the King gathered together his wise men to inquire of them. But they could not make known the thing to him, for only God in Heaven knew how the rough robe signified that she should follow holiness and purity all her days, and the wisdom of St. John the Baptist. And because of the mantle, they called her ‘Ursula,’ ‘Little Bear.’Now Ursula grew day by day in grace and loveliness, and in such wisdom that all men marvelled. Yet should they not have marvelled, since with God all things are possible. And when she was fifteen years old she was a light of all wisdom, and a glass of all beauty, and a fountain of scripture and of sweet ways. Lovelier woman there was not alive. Her speech was so full of all delight that it seemed as though an angel of Paradise had taken human flesh. And in all the kingdom no weighty thing was done without counsel of Ursula.So her fame was carried through the earth, and a King[351]of England, a heathen of over-seas, hearing, was taken with the love of her. And he set all his heart on having her for wife to his son Æther, and for daughter in his home. So he sent a mighty and honourable embassy, of earls and marquesses, with goodly company of knights, and ladies, and philosophers; bidding them, with all courtesy and discretion, pray King Maurus to give Ursula in marriage to Æther. “But,” he said, “if Maurus will not hear your gentle words, open to him all my heart, and tell him that I will ravage his land with fire, and slay his people, and make himself die a cruel death, and will, after, lead Ursula away with me. Give him but three days to answer, for I am wasted with desire to finish the matter, and hold Ursula in my ward.”But when the ambassadors came to King Maurus, he would not have his daughter wed a heathen; so, since prayers and gifts did not move him, they spoke out all the threats. Now the land of Britain was little, and its soldiers few, while the heathen was a mighty King and a conqueror; so Maurus, and his Queen, and his councillors, and all the people, were in sore distress.But on the evening of the second day, Ursula went into her chamber, and shut close the doors; and before the image of the Father, who is very pitiful, prayed all night with tears, telling how she had vowed in her heart to live a holy maiden all her days, having Christ alone for spouse. But, if His will were that she should wed the son of the heathen King, she prayed that wisdom[352]might be given her, to turn the hearts of all that people who knew not faith nor holiness; and power to comfort her father and mother, and all the people of her fatherland.And when the clear light of dawn was in the air, she fell asleep. And the Angel of the Lord appeared to her in a dream, saying, “Ursula, your prayer is heard. At the sunrising you shall go boldly before the ambassadors of the King of Over-sea, for the God of Heaven shall give you wisdom, and teach your tongue what it should speak.” When it was day, Ursula rose to bless and glorify the name of God. She put on for covering and for beauty an enwrought mantle like the starry sky, and was crowned with a coronet of gems. Then, straightway passing to her father’s chamber, she told him what grace had been done to her that night, and all that now was in her heart to answer to the ambassadors of Over-sea. So, though long he would not, she persuaded her father.Then Maurus, and his lords and councillors, and the ambassadors of the heathen King, were gathered in the Hall of Council. And when Ursula entered the place where these lords were, one said to the other, “Who is this that comes from Paradise?” For she moved in all noble gentleness, with eyes inclined to earth, learned, and frank, and fair, delightful above all women upon earth. Behind her came a hundred maidens, clothed in white silk, fair and lovely. They shone[353]brightly as the stars, but Ursula shone as the moon and the evening star.Now this was the answer Ursula made, which the King caused to be written, and sealed with the royal seal, and gave to the ambassadors of the King of Over-sea.“I will take,” she said, “for spouse, Æther, the son of my lord the King of Over-sea. But I ask of my lord three graces, and with heart and soul7pray of him to grant them.“The first grace I ask is this, that he, and the Queen, and their son, my spouse, be baptized in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.“The second grace is that three years may be given me, before the bridal, in which to go to and fro upon the sea, that I may visit the bodies of the Saints in Rome, and the blessed places of the Holy Land.“And for the last grace, I ask that he choose ten fair maidens of his kingdom, and with each of these a thousand more, all of gentle blood, who shall come to me here, in Britain, and go with me in gladness upon the sea, following this my holy pilgrimage.”Then spake one of the nobles of the land to Maurus, saying, “My lord the King, this your daughter is the Dove of Peace come from Paradise, the same that in the days of the Flood brought to the Ark of Noah the olive-branch of good news.” And at the answer, were the ambassadors so full of joy that they wellnigh could[354]not speak, and with praise and triumph they went their way, and told their master all the sweet answer of Ursula.Then my lord the King said, “Praised and blessed be the name of our God Malcometto, who has given my soul for comfort that which it desired. Truly there is not a franker lady under the wheel of the sun; and by the body of my mother I swear there is nothing she can ask that I will not freely give. First of the maidens she desires shall be my daughter Florence.” Then all his lords rose, man by man, and gladly named, each, his child.So the will of Ursula was done; and that King, and all his folk, were baptized into the Holy Faith. And Æther, with the English maidens, in number above ten thousand, came to the land of Britain.Then Ursula chose her own four sisters, Habila, and Julia, and Victoria, and Aurea, and a thousand daughters of her people, with certain holy bishops, and great lords, and grave councillors, and an abbot of the order of St. Benedict, men full of all wisdom, and friends of God.So all that company set sail in eleven ships, and passing this way and that upon the sea, rejoiced in it, and in this their maiden pilgrimage. And those who dwelt by the shores of the sea came forth in multitudes to gaze upon them as they passed, and to each man it appeared a delightful vision. For the ships sailed in fair order, side by side, with sound of sweet psalms and[355]murmur of the waters. And the maidens were clad, some in scarlet and some in pure samite, some in rich silk of Damascus, some in cloth of gold, and some in the purple robe that is woven in Judea. Some wore crowns, others garlands of flowers. Upon the shoulder of each was the visible cross, in the hands of each a pilgrim’s staff, by their sides were pilgrims’ scrips, and each ship’s company sailed under the gonfalon of the Holy Cross. Ursula in the midst was like a ray of sunlight, and the Angel of the Lord was ever with them for guide.So in the holy time of Lent they came to Rome. And when my Lord the Pope came forth, under the Castle of St. Angelo, with great state, to greet them, seeing their blessed assembly, he put off the mantle of Peter, and with many bishops, priests, and brothers, and certain cardinals, set himself to go with them on their blessed pilgrimage.At length they came to the land of Slavonia, whose ruler was friend and liegeman to the Soldan of Babylon. Then the Lord of the Saracens sent straightway to the Soldan, telling what a mighty company had come to his land, and how they were Christian folk. And the Soldan gathered all his men of war, and with great rage the host of the heathen made against the company of Ursula.And when they were nigh, the Soldan cried and said, “What folk are ye?” And Ursula spake in answer,[356]“We are Christian folk: our feet are turned to the blessed tomb of our Lord Jesus Christ, for the saving of our souls, and that we may win grace to pass into eternal life, in the blessed Paradise.” And the Soldan answered, “Either deny your God, or I will slay you all with the sword. So shall ye die a dolorous death, and see your land no more.” And Ursula answered, “Even so we desire to be sure witnesses for the name of God, declaring and preaching the glory of His name; because He has made heaven and earth and the sea by His Word; and afterward all living things; and afterward has willed, Himself, to die, for our salvation and glory. And who follows Him shall go to rejoice inHisFatherland and in His Kingdom.”Then she turned to her people: “My sisters and my brothers, in this place God has given us great grace. Embrace and make it sure, for our death in this place will be life perpetual, and joy, and sweetness never-ending. And there, above, we shall be with the Majesty and the angels of Paradise.” Then she called her spouse to comfort and teach him. And he answered her with these words, “To me it appears three thousand years that death is a-coming, so much have I already tasted of the sweetness of Paradise.”Then the Soldan gave commandment that they should all be slain with the sword. And so was it done.Yet when he saw Ursula standing, in the midst of all that slaughter, like the fairest stalk of corn in harvest,[357]and how she was exceeding lovely, beyond the tongues of this earth to tell, he would have saved her alive, and taken her for wife. But when she would not, and rebuked him, he was moved with anger. Now there was a bow in his hand, and he set an arrow on the string, and drew it with all his strength, and it pierced the heart of the glorious maiden. So she went to God.And one maiden only, whose name was Corbula, through fear hid herself in the ship. But God, who had chosen all that company, gave her heart, and with the dawn of the next day she came forth willingly, and received the martyr’s crown.Thus all were slain, and all are gone to Paradise, and sing the glad and sweet songs of Paradise.Whosoever reads this holy history, let him not think it a great thing to say an Our Father, and a Hail Mary, for the soul of him who has written it.Thus far the old myth. You shall hear now in what manner such a myth is re-written by a great man, born in the days of a nation’s strength.Carpaccio begins his story with what the myth calls a dream. But he wishes to tell you that it was no dream,—but a vision;—that a real angel came, and was seen by Ursula’s soul, when her mortal eyes were closed.“The Angel of the Lord,” says the legend. What!—thinks Carpaccio;—to this little maid of fifteen, the[358]angel that came to Moses and Joshua? Not so, but her own guardian angel.Guardian, and to tell her that God will guide her heart to-morrow, and put His own answer on her lips, concerning her marriage. Shall not such angel be crowned with light, and strew her chamber with lilies?There is no glory round his head; there is no gold on his robes; they are of subdued purple and gray. His wings are colourless—his face calm, but sorrowful,—wholly in shade. In his right hand he bears the martyr’s palm; in his left, the fillet borne by the Greek angels of victory, and, together with it, gathers up, knotted in his hand, the folds of shroud8with which the Etrurians veil the tomb.[359]He comes to her, “in the clear light of morning;” the Angel of Death.You see it is written in the legend that she had shut close the doors of her chamber.They have opened as the angel enters,—not one only, but all in the room,—all in the house. He enters by one at the foot of her bed; but beyond it is another—open into the passage; out of that another into some luminous hall or street. All the window-shutters are wide open; they are made dark that you may notice them,—nay, all the press doors are open! No treasure bars shall hold, wherethisangel enters.Carpaccio has been intent to mark that he comes in the light of dawn. The blue-green sky glows between the dark leaves of the olive and dianthus in the open window. But its light is low compared to that which entersbehindthe angel, falling full on Ursula’s face, in divine rest.In the last picture but one, of this story, he has painted her lying in the rest which the angel came to bring; and in the last, is her rising in the eternal Morning.For this is the first lesson which Carpaccio wrote[360]in his Venetian words for the creatures of this restless world,—that Death is better thantheirlife; and that not bridegroom rejoices over bride as they rejoice who marry not, nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God, in Heaven.[361]NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE.I. Affairs of the Company.Venice, October 20th.—I have sent for press, to-day, the fourth number of ‘Deucalion,’ in which will be found a statement of the system on which I begin the arrangement of the Sheffield Museum.There are no new subscriptions to announce. Another donation, of fifty pounds, by Mrs. Talbot, makes me sadly ashamed of the apathy of all my older friends. I believe, in a little while now, it will be well for me to throw them all aside, and refuse to know any one but my own Companions, and the workmen who are willing to listen to me. I have spoken enough to the upper classes, and they mock me;—in the seventh year of Fors I will speak more clearly than hitherto,—but not tothem.Meantime, my Sheffield friends must not think I am neglecting them, because I am at work here in Venice, instead of among them. They will know in a little while the use of my work here. The following portions of letter from the Curator of our Museum, with the piece of biography in it, which I venture to print, in haste, assuming permission, will be of good service to good workers everywhere.“H. Swan to J. Ruskin.“Walkley, Sheffield,October 18, 1876.“Dear Master,—The interest in the Museum seems still increasing. Yesterday (Sunday), in addition to our usual allotment of casual calls at the Museum, we had a visit from a party of working men; two or three of them from Barnsley, but the most Sheffielders, among which last were several of those who came[362]to meet thee on the last occasion. Their object was a double one; first, to see what progress we were making with the Museum; and, secondly, to discuss the subject of Usury, the unlawfulness of which, in its ordinary aspects, being (unlike the land question) a perfectly new notion to all except one or two. The objection generally takes this shape: ‘If I have worked hard to earn twenty pounds, and it is an advantage to another to have the use of that twenty pounds, why should he get that advantage without paying me for it?’ To which my reply has been, There may, or may not, be reasons why the lender should be placed in a better position for using his powers of body or mind; but the special question for you, with your twenty pounds, now is, not what right has he to use the money without payment—(he has every right, if you give him leave; and none, if you don’t;)—the questionyouhave to propose to yourself is this, ‘Why should I, as a man and a Christian, after having been paid for what I have earned, expect or desire to make an agreement by which I may get, from the labour of others, money I have not earned?’ Suppose, too, bail for a hundred pounds to be required for a prisoner in whose innocence you believed, would you say ‘I will be bail for the hundred pounds, but I shall expect five pounds from him for the advantage he will thereby get?’ No; the just man would weigh well whether it be right or no to undertake the bail; but, having determined, he would shrink from receiving the unearned money, as I believe the first unwarped instinct of a good man does still in the case of a loan.“Although, as I have said, all question as to the right of what is called a moderate rate of interest was new to most of our visitors, yet I found a greater degree of openness to the truth than might have been expected. One of the most interesting parts of the discussion was the relation by one of the party of his own experiences, in years past, as a money-lender. ‘In the place where I used to work at that time,’ said he, ‘there was a very many of[363]a good sort of fellows who were not so careful of their money as I was, and they used often to run out of cash before the time came for them to take more. Well, knowing I was one that always had a bit by me, they used to come to me to borrow a bit to carry them through to pay-day. When they paid me, some would ask if I wanted aught for the use of it. But I only lent to pleasure them, and I always said, No, I wanted nought. One day, however, Jack —— came to me, and said, “Now, my lad, dost want to get more brass for thyself, and lay by money? because I can put thee in the way of doing it.” I said that was a great object for me. “Well,” said he, “thou must do as I tell thee. I know thou’rt often lending thy brass to them as want a lift. Now thou must make them pay for using thy money, and if thou works as I tell thee, it’ll grow and grow. And by-and-by they’ll be paying and paying for the use of their own money over and over again.” Well, I thought it would be a good thing for me to have the bits of cash come in and in, to help along with what I earned myself. So I told each of the men, as they came, that I couldn’t go on lending for nothing, and they must pay me a bit more when they got their pay. And so they did. After a time, Jack —— came again, and said, “Well, how’rt getting on?” So I told him what I was doing, and that seemed all right. After a time, he came again, and said, “Now thou finds what I said was right. The men can spare thee a bit for thy money, and it makes things a deal more comfortable for thyself. Now I can show thee how a hundred of thy money shall bring another hundred in.” “Nay,” said I, “thou canst not do that. That can’t be done.” “Nay, but it can,” said Jack. And he told me how to manage; and that when I hadn’t the cash, he would find it, and we’d halve the profits. [Say a man wants to borrow twenty pounds, and is to pay back at three shillings a week. The interest is first deducted for the whole time, so that if he agrees to pay only five per cent. he will receive but nineteen pounds; then the interest is more[364]than five per cent. on the money actually out during the very first week, while the rate gradually rises as the weekly payments come,—slowly at first, but at the last more and more rapidly, till, during the last month, the money-lender is obtaining two hundred per cent. for the amount (now, however, very small) still unpaid.]“ ‘Well, it grew and grew. Hundreds and hundreds I paid and received every week, (and we found that among the poorest little shops it worked the best for us). At last it took such hold of me that I became a regular bloodsucker—a bloodsucker of poor folk, and nothing else. I was always reckoning up, night and day, how to get more and more, till I got so thin and ill I had to go to the doctor. It was old Dr. Sike, and he said, “Young man, you must give up your present way of work and life, or I can do nothing for you. You’ll get worse and worse.”“ ‘So I thought and thought, and at last I made up my mind to give it all up, though I was then getting rich. But there was no blessing on what I’d got, and I lost it every farthing, and had to begin again as poor as I was when I first left the workhouse to learn a trade. And now, I’ve prospered and prospered in my little way till I’ve no cause to worry anyways about money, and I’ve a few men at work with me in my shop.“ ‘Still, for all that, I don’t see why I shouldn’t have interest on the little capital I’ve saved uphonestly; or how am I to live in my old age?’“Another workman suggested, ‘Wouldn’t he be able to live on his capital?’ ‘Aye, but I want to leave that to somebody else,’ was the answer. [Yes, good friend, and the same excuse might be made for any form of theft.—J. R.]“I will merely add, that if there were enforced and public account of the amount of monies advanced on loan, and if the true conditions and workings of those loans could be shown, there would be revealed such an amount of cruel stress upon the foolish, weak, and poor of the small tradesmen (a class far more[365]numerous than are needed) as would render it very intelligible why so many faces are seamed with lines of suffering and anxiety. I think it possible that the fungus growth and increasing mischief of these loan establishments may reach such a pitch as to necessitate legislative interference, as has been the case with gambling. But there will never fail modes of evading the law, and the sufficient cure will be found only when men shall consider it a dishonour to have it imputed to them thatanyportion of their income is derived from usury.”The Union Bank of London (Chancery Lane Branch) in Account with the St. George’s Fund.1876.Dr.£s.d.Aug.16.To Balance.9434Oct.12.” Draft at Bridgwater (per Mr. Ruskin)500024.” (J. P. Stilwell)2500£16934Cr.£s.d.Oct.12.By Postage of Pass Book00325.Balance16931£16934II. Affairs of the Master.£s.d.£s.d.Sept.15.Balancea12210820.Kate1000026.—— at Venice, Antoniob5000Oct.1.Secretary25003.Downs50005.Giftc200010.Loan20000”Jackson5000———49500Oct.15.Balance£72608aBy report from Bank; but the ‘repayments’ named in it should not have been added to the cash account, being on separate account with the Company. I will make all clear in December.↑bFor Signora Caldara (Venetian botany).↑cNominally loan, to poor relation, but I do not suppose he will ever be able to pay me. The following £200 I do not doubt receiving again.↑[366]III. I print the following letter with little comment, because I have no wish to discuss the question of the uses of Dissent with a Dissenting Minister; nor do I choose at present to enter on the subject at all. St. George, taking cognizance only of the postscript, thanks the Dissenting Minister for his sympathy; but encourages his own servant to persist in believing that the “more excellent way” (of Charity), which St. Paul showed, in the 13th of Corinthians, is quite as truly followed in devoting the funds at his said servant’s disposal to the relief of the poor, as in the maintenance of Ruskinian Preachers for the dissemination of Ruskinian opinions, in a Ruskinian Society, with the especial object of saving Mr. Ruskin’s and the Society’s souls.“September 14th, 1876.“Dear Mr. Ruskin,—Mr. Sillar’s ‘valuable letter’ in last month’s Fors, (a) would have been more valuable if he had understood what he was writing about. Mr. Tyerman (in his ‘Life and Times of Wesley,’ p. 431,) gives the trifling differences between the present Rules of the Methodist Societies and the first edition issued in 1743. Instead of ‘interested personshaving altered old John Wesley’s rules’ (he was forty years old when he drew them up) ‘to suitmodern ideas’—the alterations, whether good or bad, were made by himself.“The first contributions in the ‘Classes’ were made for the express purpose of discharging a debt on a preaching house. Then they were devoted ‘to the relief of the poor,’ there being at the time no preachers dependent on the Society for support.After1743, when circuits had been formed and preachers stationed in certain localities, their maintenance gradually became the principal charge upon the Society’s funds. (See Smith’s ‘History of Methodism,’ vol. i., p. 669.) In 1771 Wesley says expressly that the contributions are applied ‘towards the expenses of the Society.’ (b) (‘Journal,’ vol. iii., p. 205.) Certainly Methodism, thus supported, has done far more to benefit the[367]poor and raise them, than any amount of mere almsgiving could have done. Methodist preachers have at least one sign of being in the apostolical succession. They can say, with Paul, ‘as poor, yet making many rich.’ (c)“ ‘Going to law’ was altered by Mr. Wesley to ‘brother going to law with brother,’ in order, no doubt, to bring the rule into verbal agreement with 1 Cor. vi. 6. (d)“ ‘Usury’ was defined by Mr. Wesley to be ‘unlawful interest,’ (e) in accordance with the ordinary notions of his day. He was greatly in advance of his age, yet he could scarcely have been expected to anticipate the definition of Usury given, as far as I know, (f) for the first time in Fors for August, 1876. I don’t see why we Methodists should be charged with breaking the laws of Moses, David, and Christ (Fors, p. 253), if we consider ‘old John Wesley’s’ definition to be as good as the ‘modern idea.’“Of course St. George, for whom I have the greatest respect and admiration, will correct Mr. Sillar’s mistake.“I am, Sir,“Another Reader of Fors(which I wish you would sell a little cheaper), and“A Methodist Preacher.“P.S.—Why should you not copy old John Wesley, and establish your St. George’s Company on a legal basis? In 1784 he drew up a Deed of Declaration, which was duly enrolled in Chancery. It stated the purposes for which his Society was formed, and the mode in which it was to be governed. A Deed of Trust was afterwards drawn up foroneof our chapels, reciting at length this Deed of Declaration, and all the purposes for which the property was to be used. All our other property is settled on the same trusts. A single line in each subsequent chapel deed—stating that all the trusts are to be the same as those of the ‘Model Deed,’ as we call the first one—obviates[368]the necessity and expense ofrepeatinga very long legal document.“Success to St. George,—yet there is, I think, ‘a more excellent way.’ ”a.Mr. Sillar’s letter did not appear in last month’s Fors. A small portion of it appeared, in which I regret that Mr. Sillar so far misunderstood John Wesley as to imagine him incapable of altering his own rules so as to make them useless.b.I wish the Wesleyans were the only Society whose contributions are applied to no better purpose.c.I envy my correspondent’s complacency in his own and his Society’s munificence, too sorrowfully to endeavour to dispel it.d.The ‘verbal’ agreement is indeed secured by the alteration. But as St. Paul, by a ‘brother,’ meant any Christian, I shall be glad to learn from my correspondent whether the Wesleyans understand their rule in that significance.e.Many thanks to Mr. Wesley. Doubtless his disciples know what rate of interest is lawful, and what not; and also by what law it was made so; and always pause with pious accuracy at the decimal point whereat the excellence of an investment begins to make it criminal. St. George will be grateful to their representative for information on these—not unimportant—particulars.f.How far thatis, my correspondent’s duly dissenting scorn of the wisdom of the Greeks, and legality of the Jews, has doubtless prevented his thinking it necessary to discover. I must not waste the time of other readers in assisting his elementary investigations; but have merely to point out to him that definitions either of theft, adultery, usury, or murder, have only becomenecessaryin modern times; and that Methodists,[369]and any other persons, are charged by me with breaking the law of Moses, David, and Christ, in so far only as they do accept Mr. John Wesley’s, or any other person’s, definition instead oftheirutterly unquestionable meaning. (Would T. S., of North Tyne, reprint his letters for me from the Sunderland paper, to be sent out with December Fors?)IV. I reprint the following paragraph chiefly as an example of our ineffable British absurdity. It is perfectly right to compel fathers to send their children to school; but, once sent, it is the schoolmaster’s business to keep hold of them. In St. George’s schools, it would have been the little runaway gentleman who would have got sent to prison; and kept,sotto piombi, on bread and water, until he could be trusted with more liberty. The fate of the father, under the present application of British law, leaves the problem, it seems to me, still insoluble but in that manner. But I should like to know more of the previous history of parent and child.“The story of George Widowson, aged fifty-seven, told at the inquest held on his remains at Mile End Old Town on Wednesday, is worth recording. Widowson was, as appears by the evidence of his daughter, a sober, hard-working man until he was sent to prison for three days in last December in default of paying a fine for not sending his son, a boy eleven years of age, to school. The deceased, as several witnesses deposed, constantly endeavoured to make the child go to school, and had frequently taken him there himself; but it was all in vain. Young Widowson when taken to school invariably ran away, the result being that his father was driven to distraction. His imprisonment in December had preyed on his mind, and he took to drinking. He frequently threatened to destroy himself rather than be imprisoned again. Hearing that another summons was about to be issued against him, he broke up his home, and on[370]the night of the 30th ultimo solved the educational problem by throwing himself into the Regent’s Canal. Fear of being again sent to prison by the School Board was, his daughter believed, the cause of his committing this act. The jury returned a verdict in accordance of this opinion; and although George Widowson was wrong to escape from the clutches of the friends of humanity by putting an end to his life, those who blame him should remember that imprisonment to abonâ fideworking man of irreproachable character, is simply torture. He loses all that in his own eyes makes life worth preservation.”—Pall Mall Gazette, July 7th, 1876.V. The next extract contains some wholesome comments on our more advanced system of modern education.“Indian Civil Service.—At a meeting of the Indian section of the Society of Arts, under the presidency of Mr. Andrew Cassels, a paper on ‘Competition and its Effects upon Education’ was read by Dr. George Birdwood. In the course of his remarks, he commented at length upon the India Office despatch of Feb. 24, regarding ‘the selection and training of candidates for the Indian Civil Service,’ and feared that it would but serve to confirm and aggravate and rapidly extend the very worst evil of the old system of competition—namely, the degeneration of secondary education throughout England.… The despatch tended to make over all the secondary schooling of the country to the crammers, or to reduce it to the crammers’ system. They were making the entrance examinations year by year more and more difficult—as their first object must necessarily now be, not the moral and intellectual discipline of the boyhood of England, but to show an ever-growing percentage of success at the various competitive examinations always going on for public services. ‘The devil take the hindermost’[371]was fast becoming the ideal of education, even in the public schools. If they seriously took to cramming little fellows from twelve to fourteen for entrance into public schools, the rising generation would be used up before it reached manhood. A well-known physician, of great experience, told him that the competition for all sorts of scholarships and appointments was showing its evil fruits in the increase of insanity, epilepsy, and other nervous diseases amongst young people of the age from seventeen to nineteen, and especially amongst pupil-teachers; and if admission into the public schools of England was for the future to be regulated by competition, St. Vitus’s dance would soon take the place of gout, as the fashionable disease of the upper classes. This was the inevitable result of the ill-digested and ill-regulated system of competition for the public services, and especially the Indian Civil Service, which had prevailed; and he feared that the recent despatch would only be to hasten the threatened revolution in their national secondary schools, and the last state of cramming under the despatch would be worse than the first.… The best of examiners was the examiner of his own pupils; for no man could measure real knowledge like the teacher. What should be aimed at was regular moderate study and sound and continuous discipline to start the growing man in life in the healthiest bodily and moral condition possible. He objected to children striving for prizes, whether in games or in studies. The fewer prizes won at school, the more would probably be won in life. Let their only anxiety be to educate their children well, and suffer no temptation to betray them into cramming, and the whole world was open to them.”—Daily Telegraph.VI. The development of ‘humanity’ in America is so brilliantly illustrated in the following paragraphs, that I have thought them worth preserving:—[372]From ‘The American Socialist, devoted to the Enlargement and Perfection of Home.’“THE FUTURE OF SOCIETY.“An American, visiting Europe, notices how completely there the various functions of the social body are performed. He finds a servant, an officer, a skilled workman, at every place. From the position of the stone-breaker on the highway, up to that of the highest Government official, every post is filled; every personal want of the traveller or the citizen is attended to. Policemen guard him in the streets, lackeys watch for his bidding at the hotels, railroad officials with almost superfluous care forward him on his way. As compared with American railroad management, the great English roads probably have fouremployésto our one. This plentitude of service results from three things—viz., density of population, which gives an abundant working class; cheapness of labour; and the aristocratic formation of society that tends to fix persons in the caste to which they were born. The effect is to produce a smoothness in the social movement—an absence of jar and friction, and a release in many cases from anxious, personal outlook, that are very agreeable. The difference between English and American life in respect to the supply of service is like that between riding on a highly-finished macadamized way, where every rut is filled and every stone is removed, and picking one’s way over our common country roads.“Another thing that the traveller observes in Europe is the abundance everywhere of works of art. One’s sense of beauty is continually gratified; now with a finished landscape, now with a noble building, now with statues, monuments, and paintings. This immense accumulation of art springs in part of course from the age of the nations where it is found; but it is also due in a very great degree to the employment given to artists by[373]persons of wealth and leisure. Painting, sculpture, and architecture have always had constant, and sometimes munificent, patrons in the nobility and the Established Church.“Observing these things abroad, the American asks himself whether the institutions of this country are likely to produce in time any similar result here. Shall we have the finished organization, the mutual service, and the wealth of art that characterize European society? Before answering this, let us first ask ourselves whether it is desirable that we should have them in the same manner that they exist abroad? Certainly not. No American would be willing to pay the price which England pays for her system of service. The most painful thing which one sees abroad is the utter absence of ambition in the class of household servants. Men who in this country would be looking to a seat in the legislature,9and who would qualify themselves for it, there dawdle away life in the livery of some noble, in smiling, aimless, do-nothing content, and beget children to follow in their steps. On seeing these servile figures, the American thanks heaven that the ocean rolls between his country and such a system. Rather rudeness, discomfort, self-service, and poverty, with freedom and the fire of aspiration, than luxury purchased by the enervation of man!“Still, cannot we have the good without the bad? Cannot we match Europe in culture and polish without sacrificing for it our manhood? And if so, what are the influences in this country that are working in that direction? In answering this question, we have to say frankly that we see nothing in democracy alone that promises to produce the result under consideration. In a country where every one is taught to disdain a situation[374]of dependence, where the hostler and the chambermaid see the way opened for them to stand even with the best in the land, if they will but exercise their privilege of ‘getting on,’ there will be no permanent or perfect service. And so long as every man’s possessions are divided and scattered at his death, there will be no class having the secured leisure and the inducement to form galleries of art. Why should John Smith take pains to decorate his house with works of art, when he knows that within a year after his death it will be administered upon by the Probate Court, and sold with its furniture for the benefit of his ten children?” (Well put,—republican sage.)“In a word, looking at the æsthetic side of things, our American system must be confessed to be not yet quite perfect.” (You don’t say so!) “Invaluable as it is for schooling men to independence and aspiration, it requires, to complete its usefulness, another element. The Republic has a sequel. That completing element, that sequel, is Communism. Communism supplies exactly the conditions that are wanting in the social life of America, and which it must have if it would compete with foreign lands in the development of those things which give ease and grace to existence.“For instance, in respect to service: Communism, by extinguishing caste and honouring labour, makes every man at once a servant and lord. It fills up, by its capacity of minute organization, all the social functions as completely as the European system does; while, unlike that, it provides for each individual sufficient leisure, and frequent and improving changes of occupation. The person who serves in the kitchen this hour may be experimenting with a microscope or giving lessons on the piano the next. Applying its combined ingenuity to social needs, Communism will find means to consign all repulsive and injurious labour to machinery. It is continually interested to promote labour-saving improvements. The service that is performed[375]by brothers and equals from motives of love will be more perfect than that of hired lackeys, while the constantly varying round of occupation granted to all will form the most perfect school for breadth of culture and true politeness. Thus Communism achieves through friendship and freedom that which the Old World secures only through a system little better than slavery.“In the interest of art and the cultivation of the beautiful, Communism again supplies the place of a hereditary aristocracy and a wealthy church. A Community family, unlike the ephemeral households of ordinary society, is a permanent thing. Its edifice is not liable to be sold at the end of every generation, but like a cathedral descends by unbroken inheritance. Whatever is committed to it remains, and is the care of the society from century to century. With a home thus established, all the members of a Community are at once interested to gather about it objects of art. It becomes a picture-gallery and a museum, by the natural accretion of time, and by the zeal of persons who know that every embellishment added to their home will not only be a pleasure to them personally, but will remain to associate them with the pleasure of future beholders in all time to come.“Thus in Communism we have the conditions that are necessary to carry this country to the summit of artistic and social culture. By this route, we may at one bound outstrip the laboured attainments of the aristocracies of the Old World. The New York Central Park shows what can be achieved by combination on the democratic plan, for a public pleasure-ground. No other park is equal to it. Let this principle of combination be extended to the formation of homes as well as to municipal affairs, and we shall simply dot this country over with establishments10as much[376]better than those of the nobles of England as they are better than those of a day-labourer. We say better, for they will make art and luxury minister to universal education, and they will replace menial service with downright brotherhood. Such must be the future of American society.”“To the Editor of the ‘American Socialist.’“In your first issue you raise the question, ‘How large ought a Home to be?’ This is a question of great interest to all; and I trust the accumulated answers you will receive will aid in its solution.“I have lived in homes varying in numbers from one (the bachelor’s home) to several hundred; and my experience and observation lead me to regard one hundred and twenty-five as about the right number to form a complete home. I would not have less than seventy-five nor more than one hundred and fifty. In my opinion a Home should minister to all the needs of its members, spiritual, intellectual, social, and physical. This ordinary monogamic homes cannot do; hence resort is had to churches, colleges, club-rooms, theatres, etc.; and in sparsely settled regions of country, people are put to great inconvenience and compelled to go great distances to supply cravings as imperative as the hunger for bread. This view alone would not limit the number of persons constituting a Home; but I take the ground that in a perfect Home there will be a perfect blending of all interests and perfect vibration in unison of all hearts; and of course thorough mutual acquaintance. My experience and observation convince me that it is exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, to secure these results in a family of over one hundred and fifty members.“In simply a monetary view it is undoubtedly best to have large Homes of a thousand or more; but money should not have great weight in comparison with a man’s spiritual, intellectual, and social needs.—D. E. S.”[377]

Venice,4th October, 1876.

I am able at last to give you some of the long-promised opinions of Carpaccio on practical subjects; not that, except ironically, I ever call them ‘opinions.’ There are certain men whoknowthe truths necessary to human life; they do not ‘opine’ them; and nobody’s ‘opinions,’ on any subject, are of any consequence opposed to them. Hesiod is one of these, Plato another, Dante another, Carpaccio is another. He speaks little, and among the inspired painters may be thought of as one of the lesser prophets; but his brief book is of extreme value.

I have been happy enough to get two of my faithful scholars to work upon it for me; and they have deciphered it nearly all—much more, at all events, than I can tell you either in this Fors, or in several to come.[340]

His message is written in the Venetian manner, by painting the myths of the saints, in his own way.

If you will look into the introduction to the ‘Queen of the Air,’ you will find it explained that a great mythcanonly be written in the central time of a nation’s power. This prophecy of Carpaccio’s may be thought of by you as the sweetest,becausethe truest, of all that Venice was born to utter: the painted syllabling of it is nearly the last work and word of her’s in true life. She speaks it, and virtually, thereafter, dies, or begins to die.

It is written in a series of some eighteen to twenty pictures, chiefly representing the stories of St. Ursula, St. George, and St. Jerome.

The first, in thoughtful order, of these, the dream of St. Ursula, has been already partly described in Fors; (August, 1872, p. 14). The authorities of the Venetian Academy have been kind enough to take the picture down and give it me to myself, in a quiet room, where I am making studies, which I hope will be of use in Oxford, and elsewhere.

But there is this to be noted before we begin; that of these three saints, whose stories Carpaccio tells, one is a quite real one, on whose penman’s work we depend for our daily Bible-bread. Another, St. George, is a very dimly real one,—very disputable by American faith, and we owe to him, only in England, certain sentiments;—the Order of the Garter, and sundry sign-boards[341]of the George and Dragon. Venice supposed herself to owe more to him; but he is nevertheless, in her mind also, a very ghostly saint,—armour and all too light to sink a gondola.

Of the third, St. Ursula, by no industry of my good scholars, and none has been refused, can I find the slightest material trace. Under scholarly investigation, she vanishes utterly into the stars and the æther,—and literally, as you will hear, and see, into moonshine, and the modern German meaning of everything,—the Dawn.1Not a relic, not a word remains of her, as what Mr. John Stuart Mill calls “a utility embodied in a material object.”

The whole of her utility is Immaterial—to us in England, immaterial, of late years, in every conceivable sense. But the strange thing is that Carpaccio paints, of the substantial and indisputable saint, only three small pictures; of the disputable saint, three more important ones; but of the entirely ærial saint, a splendid series, the chief labour of his life.

The chief labour;—and chief rest, or play, it seems also: questionable in the extreme as to the temper of Faith in which it is done.

We will suppose, however, at first, for your better[342]satisfaction, that in composing the pictures he no more believed there ever had been a Princess Ursula than Shakspeare, when he wrote Midsummer Night’s Dream, believed there had been a Queen Hippolyta: and that Carpaccio had just as much faith in angels as Shakspeare in fairies—and no more. Both these artists, nevertheless, set themselves to paint, the one fairies, the other angels and saints, for popular—entertainment, (say your modern sages,) or popular—instruction, it may yet appear. But take it your own way; and let it be for popular amusement. This play, this picture which I am copying for you, were, both of them we will say, toys, for the English and Venetian people.

Well, the next question is, whether the English and Venetians, when theycouldbe amused with these toys, were more foolish than now, when they can only be amused with steam merry-go-rounds.

Below St. George’s land at Barmouth, large numbers of the English populace now go to bathe. Of the Venetians, beyond St. George’s island, many go now to bathe on the sands of Lido. But nobody thinks of playing a play about queens and fairies, to the bathers on the Welsh beach. The modern intellectual teacher erects swings upon the beach. There the suspended population oscillate between sea and sky, and are amused. Similarly in Venice, no decorative painter at Lido thinks of painting pictures of St. Nicholas of the Lido, to amuse the modern Venetian. The white-necktied orchestra[343]plays them a ‘pot-pourri,’ and their steamer squeaks to them, and they are amused.

And so sufficiently amused, that I, hearing with sudden surprise and delight the voice of native Venetian Punch last night, from an English ship, and instantly inquiring, with impatience, why I had not had the happiness of meeting him before, found that he was obliged to take refuge as a runaway, or exile, under the British Flag, being forbidden in his own Venice, for evermore—such the fiat of liberty towards the first Apostolic Vicar thereof.

I am willing, however, for my own part, to take Carpaccio a step farther down in the moral scale still. Suppose that he painted this picture, not even to amuse his public—but to amuse himself!

To a great extent Iknowthat this is true. I know,—(you needn’t ask how, because you can’t be shown how,—but Idoknow, trust me,) that he painted this picture greatly to amuse himself, and had extreme delight in the doing of it; and if he did not actually believe that the princess and angels ever were, at least he heartily wished there had been such persons, and could be.

Now this is the first step to real faith. There may never have been saints: there may be no angels,—there may be no God. Professors Huxley and Tyndall are of opinion that there is no God: they have never found one in a bottle. Well: possibly there isn’t;[344]but, my good Sheffield friends, do you wish there was? or are you of the French Republican opinion—“If there were a God, we should have to shoot him” as the first great step towards the “abolition of caste” proposed by our American friends?2

You will say, perhaps,—It is not a proper intellectual state to approach such a question in, to wish anything about it. No, assuredly not,—and I have told you so myself, many a time. But it is an entirely proper state to fit you for being approached by the Spirits that you wish for, if there are such. And if there are not, it can do you no harm.

Nor, so long as you distinctly understand it to be a wish, will it warp your intellect. “Oh, if I had but Aladdin’s lamp, or Prince Houssain’s carpet!” thinks the rightly-minded child, reading its ‘Arabian Nights.’ But he does not take to rubbing his mother’s lamps, nor to squatting on scraps of carpet, hopefully.

Well—concerning these Arabian nights of Venice and the Catholic Church. Carpaccio thinks,—“Oh, if there had but been such a Princess as this—if there could but be! At least I can paint one, and delight myself in the image of her!”

Now, can you follow him so far as this? Do you really wish there were such a Princess? Do you so much as want any kind of Princess? Or are your aims fixed on the attainment of a world so constituted[345]that there shall be no Princesses in it any more,—but only Helps in the kitchen, who shall “come upstairs to play the piano,” according to the more detailed views of the American Socialist, displayed in our correspondence.

I believe you can scarcely so much as propose this question to yourselves, not knowing clearly what a Princess is. For a Princess is truly one of the members of that Feudal System which, I hear on all hands, is finally ended. If it be so, it is needful that I should explain to you specifically what the Feudal System was, before you can wish for a Princess, or any other part of it, back again.

The Feudal System begins in the existence of a Master, or Mister; and a Mistress,—or, as you call her, Missis,—who have deputed authority over a piece of land, hereditarily theirs; and absolute authority in their own house, or home, standing on such land: authority essentially dual, and not by any means admitting two masters, or two missises, still less our American friend’s calculated desirable quantity of 150, mixed. And the office of a Master implies the office of Servants; and of a Mistress, the office of Maids. These are the first Four Chemical Elements of the Feudal System.

The next members of it in order of rank are the Master of the Masters, and Mistress of the Mistresses; of whom they hold their land in fee, and who are recognized still, in a sort, as landlord and landlady, though for the most part now degenerate into mere[346]tax-gatherers; but, in their true office, the administrators of law concerning land, and magistrates, and hearers of appeal between household and household:3their duty involving perfect acquaintance and friendship with all the households under their rule; and their dominion, therefore, not by any possibility extending over very large space of territory,—what is commonly called in England an ‘estate’ being usually of approximately convenient space.

The next members of the Feudal System in order of rank, are the Lord of the Landlords, and Lady of the Landladies; commonly called their Duke, Doge, or leader, and Duchess or Dogaressa: the authority of this fourth member of the Feudal System being to enforce law and hear appeal between Lord and Lord; and to consult with them respecting the harmonious government of their, estates over such extent of land as may from some speciality of character be managed by common law referring to some united interest,—as, for instance, Cumberland, by a law having reference to pastoral life, Cornwall by laws involving the inspection of mines of tin, and the like,—these provinces, or shires, having each naturally a capital city, cathedral, town hall, and municipality of merchants.

As examples of which Fourth Order4in the Feudal System, the Dukes and Dukedoms of York, Lancaster,[347]Venice, Milan, Florence, Orleans, and Burgundy, may be remembered by you as having taken very practical part in the government, or, it may be, misgovernment, of the former world.

Then the persons of the Fifth Order, in the Feudal System, are the Duke of the Dukes, and Duchess of the Duchesses, commonly called the King and Queen, having authority and magistracy over the Dukes of the provinces, to the extent in which such provinces may be harmoniously joined in a country or kingdom, separated from other portions of the world by interests, manners, and dialect.

Then the Sixth Order in the Feudal System, much, of late years, misunderstood, and even forgotten, is that of the Commander or Imperator of the Kings; having the same authority and office of hearing appeal among the Kings of kingdoms, as they among the Dukes of provinces.

The systems of all human civilized governments resolve themselves finally into the balance of the Semitic and lapetic powers under the anointed Cyrus of the East and Karl of the West.5

The practical power of the office has been necessarily lost since the Reformation; and in recent debates in an English Parliament on this subject, it appeared that[348]neither the Prime Minister of England, nor any of her Parliamentary representatives, had the slightest notion of the meaning of the word.

The reason that the power of the office has been lost since the Reformation, is that all these temporal offices are only perfected, in the Feudal System, by their relative spiritual offices. Now, though the Squire and the Rector still in England occupy their proper symmetrical position, the equally balanced authority of the Duke and Bishop has been greatly confused: that of the King and Cardinal was so even during the fully animated action of both; and all conception of that of the Emperor and Pope is of course dead in Protestant minds.

But there was yet, in the Feudal System, one Seventh and Final Authority, of which the imagination is like to be also lost to Protestant minds. That of the King of Kings, and Ruler of Empires; in whose ordinances and everlasting laws, and in ‘feudom’ or faith and covenant with whom, as the Giver of Land and Bread, all these subordinate powers lived, and moved, and had their being.

And truly if, since we cannot find this King of Kings in the most carefully digested residuum, we are sure that we cannot find Him anywhere; and if, since by no fineness of stopper we can secure His essence in a bottle, we are sure that we cannot stay Him anywhere, truly what I hear on all hands is correct; and the Feudal[349]System, with all consequences and members thereof, is verily at an end.

In the meantime, however, you can now clearly understand the significance, in that system, of the word Princess, meaning a King’s daughter, bred in such ways and knowledges as may fit her for dominion over nations. And thus you can enjoy, if otherwise in a humour for its enjoyment, the story of the Princess Ursula, here following,—though for the present you may be somewhat at a loss to discern the practical bearings of it; which, however, if you will note that the chief work of the Princess is to convert the savage minds of the ‘English,’ or people of Over-sea, from the worship of their god ‘Malcometto,’ to the ‘rule of St. John the Baptist,’—you may guess to be in some close connection with the proposed ‘practice’ of St. George’s Company; not less, indeed, than the functions of Carpaccio’s other two chiefly worshipped saints.

The legends of St. Ursula, which were followed by him, have been collated here at Venice, and reduced to this pleasant harmony, in true help to me, by my good scholar James Reddie Anderson. For whose spirit thus active with us, no less than for the spirit, at rest, of the monk who preserved the story for us, I am myself well inclined to say another Pater and Ave.[350]

THE STORY OF ST. URSULA.6

There was once a just and most Christian King of Britain, called Maurus. To him and to his wife Daria was born a little girl, the fairest creature that this earth ever saw. She came into the world wrapped in a hairy mantle, and all men wondered greatly what this might mean. Then the King gathered together his wise men to inquire of them. But they could not make known the thing to him, for only God in Heaven knew how the rough robe signified that she should follow holiness and purity all her days, and the wisdom of St. John the Baptist. And because of the mantle, they called her ‘Ursula,’ ‘Little Bear.’

Now Ursula grew day by day in grace and loveliness, and in such wisdom that all men marvelled. Yet should they not have marvelled, since with God all things are possible. And when she was fifteen years old she was a light of all wisdom, and a glass of all beauty, and a fountain of scripture and of sweet ways. Lovelier woman there was not alive. Her speech was so full of all delight that it seemed as though an angel of Paradise had taken human flesh. And in all the kingdom no weighty thing was done without counsel of Ursula.

So her fame was carried through the earth, and a King[351]of England, a heathen of over-seas, hearing, was taken with the love of her. And he set all his heart on having her for wife to his son Æther, and for daughter in his home. So he sent a mighty and honourable embassy, of earls and marquesses, with goodly company of knights, and ladies, and philosophers; bidding them, with all courtesy and discretion, pray King Maurus to give Ursula in marriage to Æther. “But,” he said, “if Maurus will not hear your gentle words, open to him all my heart, and tell him that I will ravage his land with fire, and slay his people, and make himself die a cruel death, and will, after, lead Ursula away with me. Give him but three days to answer, for I am wasted with desire to finish the matter, and hold Ursula in my ward.”

But when the ambassadors came to King Maurus, he would not have his daughter wed a heathen; so, since prayers and gifts did not move him, they spoke out all the threats. Now the land of Britain was little, and its soldiers few, while the heathen was a mighty King and a conqueror; so Maurus, and his Queen, and his councillors, and all the people, were in sore distress.

But on the evening of the second day, Ursula went into her chamber, and shut close the doors; and before the image of the Father, who is very pitiful, prayed all night with tears, telling how she had vowed in her heart to live a holy maiden all her days, having Christ alone for spouse. But, if His will were that she should wed the son of the heathen King, she prayed that wisdom[352]might be given her, to turn the hearts of all that people who knew not faith nor holiness; and power to comfort her father and mother, and all the people of her fatherland.

And when the clear light of dawn was in the air, she fell asleep. And the Angel of the Lord appeared to her in a dream, saying, “Ursula, your prayer is heard. At the sunrising you shall go boldly before the ambassadors of the King of Over-sea, for the God of Heaven shall give you wisdom, and teach your tongue what it should speak.” When it was day, Ursula rose to bless and glorify the name of God. She put on for covering and for beauty an enwrought mantle like the starry sky, and was crowned with a coronet of gems. Then, straightway passing to her father’s chamber, she told him what grace had been done to her that night, and all that now was in her heart to answer to the ambassadors of Over-sea. So, though long he would not, she persuaded her father.

Then Maurus, and his lords and councillors, and the ambassadors of the heathen King, were gathered in the Hall of Council. And when Ursula entered the place where these lords were, one said to the other, “Who is this that comes from Paradise?” For she moved in all noble gentleness, with eyes inclined to earth, learned, and frank, and fair, delightful above all women upon earth. Behind her came a hundred maidens, clothed in white silk, fair and lovely. They shone[353]brightly as the stars, but Ursula shone as the moon and the evening star.

Now this was the answer Ursula made, which the King caused to be written, and sealed with the royal seal, and gave to the ambassadors of the King of Over-sea.

“I will take,” she said, “for spouse, Æther, the son of my lord the King of Over-sea. But I ask of my lord three graces, and with heart and soul7pray of him to grant them.

“The first grace I ask is this, that he, and the Queen, and their son, my spouse, be baptized in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

“The second grace is that three years may be given me, before the bridal, in which to go to and fro upon the sea, that I may visit the bodies of the Saints in Rome, and the blessed places of the Holy Land.

“And for the last grace, I ask that he choose ten fair maidens of his kingdom, and with each of these a thousand more, all of gentle blood, who shall come to me here, in Britain, and go with me in gladness upon the sea, following this my holy pilgrimage.”

Then spake one of the nobles of the land to Maurus, saying, “My lord the King, this your daughter is the Dove of Peace come from Paradise, the same that in the days of the Flood brought to the Ark of Noah the olive-branch of good news.” And at the answer, were the ambassadors so full of joy that they wellnigh could[354]not speak, and with praise and triumph they went their way, and told their master all the sweet answer of Ursula.

Then my lord the King said, “Praised and blessed be the name of our God Malcometto, who has given my soul for comfort that which it desired. Truly there is not a franker lady under the wheel of the sun; and by the body of my mother I swear there is nothing she can ask that I will not freely give. First of the maidens she desires shall be my daughter Florence.” Then all his lords rose, man by man, and gladly named, each, his child.

So the will of Ursula was done; and that King, and all his folk, were baptized into the Holy Faith. And Æther, with the English maidens, in number above ten thousand, came to the land of Britain.

Then Ursula chose her own four sisters, Habila, and Julia, and Victoria, and Aurea, and a thousand daughters of her people, with certain holy bishops, and great lords, and grave councillors, and an abbot of the order of St. Benedict, men full of all wisdom, and friends of God.

So all that company set sail in eleven ships, and passing this way and that upon the sea, rejoiced in it, and in this their maiden pilgrimage. And those who dwelt by the shores of the sea came forth in multitudes to gaze upon them as they passed, and to each man it appeared a delightful vision. For the ships sailed in fair order, side by side, with sound of sweet psalms and[355]murmur of the waters. And the maidens were clad, some in scarlet and some in pure samite, some in rich silk of Damascus, some in cloth of gold, and some in the purple robe that is woven in Judea. Some wore crowns, others garlands of flowers. Upon the shoulder of each was the visible cross, in the hands of each a pilgrim’s staff, by their sides were pilgrims’ scrips, and each ship’s company sailed under the gonfalon of the Holy Cross. Ursula in the midst was like a ray of sunlight, and the Angel of the Lord was ever with them for guide.

So in the holy time of Lent they came to Rome. And when my Lord the Pope came forth, under the Castle of St. Angelo, with great state, to greet them, seeing their blessed assembly, he put off the mantle of Peter, and with many bishops, priests, and brothers, and certain cardinals, set himself to go with them on their blessed pilgrimage.

At length they came to the land of Slavonia, whose ruler was friend and liegeman to the Soldan of Babylon. Then the Lord of the Saracens sent straightway to the Soldan, telling what a mighty company had come to his land, and how they were Christian folk. And the Soldan gathered all his men of war, and with great rage the host of the heathen made against the company of Ursula.

And when they were nigh, the Soldan cried and said, “What folk are ye?” And Ursula spake in answer,[356]“We are Christian folk: our feet are turned to the blessed tomb of our Lord Jesus Christ, for the saving of our souls, and that we may win grace to pass into eternal life, in the blessed Paradise.” And the Soldan answered, “Either deny your God, or I will slay you all with the sword. So shall ye die a dolorous death, and see your land no more.” And Ursula answered, “Even so we desire to be sure witnesses for the name of God, declaring and preaching the glory of His name; because He has made heaven and earth and the sea by His Word; and afterward all living things; and afterward has willed, Himself, to die, for our salvation and glory. And who follows Him shall go to rejoice inHisFatherland and in His Kingdom.”

Then she turned to her people: “My sisters and my brothers, in this place God has given us great grace. Embrace and make it sure, for our death in this place will be life perpetual, and joy, and sweetness never-ending. And there, above, we shall be with the Majesty and the angels of Paradise.” Then she called her spouse to comfort and teach him. And he answered her with these words, “To me it appears three thousand years that death is a-coming, so much have I already tasted of the sweetness of Paradise.”

Then the Soldan gave commandment that they should all be slain with the sword. And so was it done.

Yet when he saw Ursula standing, in the midst of all that slaughter, like the fairest stalk of corn in harvest,[357]and how she was exceeding lovely, beyond the tongues of this earth to tell, he would have saved her alive, and taken her for wife. But when she would not, and rebuked him, he was moved with anger. Now there was a bow in his hand, and he set an arrow on the string, and drew it with all his strength, and it pierced the heart of the glorious maiden. So she went to God.

And one maiden only, whose name was Corbula, through fear hid herself in the ship. But God, who had chosen all that company, gave her heart, and with the dawn of the next day she came forth willingly, and received the martyr’s crown.

Thus all were slain, and all are gone to Paradise, and sing the glad and sweet songs of Paradise.

Whosoever reads this holy history, let him not think it a great thing to say an Our Father, and a Hail Mary, for the soul of him who has written it.

Thus far the old myth. You shall hear now in what manner such a myth is re-written by a great man, born in the days of a nation’s strength.

Carpaccio begins his story with what the myth calls a dream. But he wishes to tell you that it was no dream,—but a vision;—that a real angel came, and was seen by Ursula’s soul, when her mortal eyes were closed.

“The Angel of the Lord,” says the legend. What!—thinks Carpaccio;—to this little maid of fifteen, the[358]angel that came to Moses and Joshua? Not so, but her own guardian angel.

Guardian, and to tell her that God will guide her heart to-morrow, and put His own answer on her lips, concerning her marriage. Shall not such angel be crowned with light, and strew her chamber with lilies?

There is no glory round his head; there is no gold on his robes; they are of subdued purple and gray. His wings are colourless—his face calm, but sorrowful,—wholly in shade. In his right hand he bears the martyr’s palm; in his left, the fillet borne by the Greek angels of victory, and, together with it, gathers up, knotted in his hand, the folds of shroud8with which the Etrurians veil the tomb.[359]

He comes to her, “in the clear light of morning;” the Angel of Death.

You see it is written in the legend that she had shut close the doors of her chamber.

They have opened as the angel enters,—not one only, but all in the room,—all in the house. He enters by one at the foot of her bed; but beyond it is another—open into the passage; out of that another into some luminous hall or street. All the window-shutters are wide open; they are made dark that you may notice them,—nay, all the press doors are open! No treasure bars shall hold, wherethisangel enters.

Carpaccio has been intent to mark that he comes in the light of dawn. The blue-green sky glows between the dark leaves of the olive and dianthus in the open window. But its light is low compared to that which entersbehindthe angel, falling full on Ursula’s face, in divine rest.

In the last picture but one, of this story, he has painted her lying in the rest which the angel came to bring; and in the last, is her rising in the eternal Morning.

For this is the first lesson which Carpaccio wrote[360]in his Venetian words for the creatures of this restless world,—that Death is better thantheirlife; and that not bridegroom rejoices over bride as they rejoice who marry not, nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God, in Heaven.[361]

NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE.I. Affairs of the Company.Venice, October 20th.—I have sent for press, to-day, the fourth number of ‘Deucalion,’ in which will be found a statement of the system on which I begin the arrangement of the Sheffield Museum.There are no new subscriptions to announce. Another donation, of fifty pounds, by Mrs. Talbot, makes me sadly ashamed of the apathy of all my older friends. I believe, in a little while now, it will be well for me to throw them all aside, and refuse to know any one but my own Companions, and the workmen who are willing to listen to me. I have spoken enough to the upper classes, and they mock me;—in the seventh year of Fors I will speak more clearly than hitherto,—but not tothem.Meantime, my Sheffield friends must not think I am neglecting them, because I am at work here in Venice, instead of among them. They will know in a little while the use of my work here. The following portions of letter from the Curator of our Museum, with the piece of biography in it, which I venture to print, in haste, assuming permission, will be of good service to good workers everywhere.“H. Swan to J. Ruskin.“Walkley, Sheffield,October 18, 1876.“Dear Master,—The interest in the Museum seems still increasing. Yesterday (Sunday), in addition to our usual allotment of casual calls at the Museum, we had a visit from a party of working men; two or three of them from Barnsley, but the most Sheffielders, among which last were several of those who came[362]to meet thee on the last occasion. Their object was a double one; first, to see what progress we were making with the Museum; and, secondly, to discuss the subject of Usury, the unlawfulness of which, in its ordinary aspects, being (unlike the land question) a perfectly new notion to all except one or two. The objection generally takes this shape: ‘If I have worked hard to earn twenty pounds, and it is an advantage to another to have the use of that twenty pounds, why should he get that advantage without paying me for it?’ To which my reply has been, There may, or may not, be reasons why the lender should be placed in a better position for using his powers of body or mind; but the special question for you, with your twenty pounds, now is, not what right has he to use the money without payment—(he has every right, if you give him leave; and none, if you don’t;)—the questionyouhave to propose to yourself is this, ‘Why should I, as a man and a Christian, after having been paid for what I have earned, expect or desire to make an agreement by which I may get, from the labour of others, money I have not earned?’ Suppose, too, bail for a hundred pounds to be required for a prisoner in whose innocence you believed, would you say ‘I will be bail for the hundred pounds, but I shall expect five pounds from him for the advantage he will thereby get?’ No; the just man would weigh well whether it be right or no to undertake the bail; but, having determined, he would shrink from receiving the unearned money, as I believe the first unwarped instinct of a good man does still in the case of a loan.“Although, as I have said, all question as to the right of what is called a moderate rate of interest was new to most of our visitors, yet I found a greater degree of openness to the truth than might have been expected. One of the most interesting parts of the discussion was the relation by one of the party of his own experiences, in years past, as a money-lender. ‘In the place where I used to work at that time,’ said he, ‘there was a very many of[363]a good sort of fellows who were not so careful of their money as I was, and they used often to run out of cash before the time came for them to take more. Well, knowing I was one that always had a bit by me, they used to come to me to borrow a bit to carry them through to pay-day. When they paid me, some would ask if I wanted aught for the use of it. But I only lent to pleasure them, and I always said, No, I wanted nought. One day, however, Jack —— came to me, and said, “Now, my lad, dost want to get more brass for thyself, and lay by money? because I can put thee in the way of doing it.” I said that was a great object for me. “Well,” said he, “thou must do as I tell thee. I know thou’rt often lending thy brass to them as want a lift. Now thou must make them pay for using thy money, and if thou works as I tell thee, it’ll grow and grow. And by-and-by they’ll be paying and paying for the use of their own money over and over again.” Well, I thought it would be a good thing for me to have the bits of cash come in and in, to help along with what I earned myself. So I told each of the men, as they came, that I couldn’t go on lending for nothing, and they must pay me a bit more when they got their pay. And so they did. After a time, Jack —— came again, and said, “Well, how’rt getting on?” So I told him what I was doing, and that seemed all right. After a time, he came again, and said, “Now thou finds what I said was right. The men can spare thee a bit for thy money, and it makes things a deal more comfortable for thyself. Now I can show thee how a hundred of thy money shall bring another hundred in.” “Nay,” said I, “thou canst not do that. That can’t be done.” “Nay, but it can,” said Jack. And he told me how to manage; and that when I hadn’t the cash, he would find it, and we’d halve the profits. [Say a man wants to borrow twenty pounds, and is to pay back at three shillings a week. The interest is first deducted for the whole time, so that if he agrees to pay only five per cent. he will receive but nineteen pounds; then the interest is more[364]than five per cent. on the money actually out during the very first week, while the rate gradually rises as the weekly payments come,—slowly at first, but at the last more and more rapidly, till, during the last month, the money-lender is obtaining two hundred per cent. for the amount (now, however, very small) still unpaid.]“ ‘Well, it grew and grew. Hundreds and hundreds I paid and received every week, (and we found that among the poorest little shops it worked the best for us). At last it took such hold of me that I became a regular bloodsucker—a bloodsucker of poor folk, and nothing else. I was always reckoning up, night and day, how to get more and more, till I got so thin and ill I had to go to the doctor. It was old Dr. Sike, and he said, “Young man, you must give up your present way of work and life, or I can do nothing for you. You’ll get worse and worse.”“ ‘So I thought and thought, and at last I made up my mind to give it all up, though I was then getting rich. But there was no blessing on what I’d got, and I lost it every farthing, and had to begin again as poor as I was when I first left the workhouse to learn a trade. And now, I’ve prospered and prospered in my little way till I’ve no cause to worry anyways about money, and I’ve a few men at work with me in my shop.“ ‘Still, for all that, I don’t see why I shouldn’t have interest on the little capital I’ve saved uphonestly; or how am I to live in my old age?’“Another workman suggested, ‘Wouldn’t he be able to live on his capital?’ ‘Aye, but I want to leave that to somebody else,’ was the answer. [Yes, good friend, and the same excuse might be made for any form of theft.—J. R.]“I will merely add, that if there were enforced and public account of the amount of monies advanced on loan, and if the true conditions and workings of those loans could be shown, there would be revealed such an amount of cruel stress upon the foolish, weak, and poor of the small tradesmen (a class far more[365]numerous than are needed) as would render it very intelligible why so many faces are seamed with lines of suffering and anxiety. I think it possible that the fungus growth and increasing mischief of these loan establishments may reach such a pitch as to necessitate legislative interference, as has been the case with gambling. But there will never fail modes of evading the law, and the sufficient cure will be found only when men shall consider it a dishonour to have it imputed to them thatanyportion of their income is derived from usury.”The Union Bank of London (Chancery Lane Branch) in Account with the St. George’s Fund.1876.Dr.£s.d.Aug.16.To Balance.9434Oct.12.” Draft at Bridgwater (per Mr. Ruskin)500024.” (J. P. Stilwell)2500£16934Cr.£s.d.Oct.12.By Postage of Pass Book00325.Balance16931£16934II. Affairs of the Master.£s.d.£s.d.Sept.15.Balancea12210820.Kate1000026.—— at Venice, Antoniob5000Oct.1.Secretary25003.Downs50005.Giftc200010.Loan20000”Jackson5000———49500Oct.15.Balance£72608aBy report from Bank; but the ‘repayments’ named in it should not have been added to the cash account, being on separate account with the Company. I will make all clear in December.↑bFor Signora Caldara (Venetian botany).↑cNominally loan, to poor relation, but I do not suppose he will ever be able to pay me. The following £200 I do not doubt receiving again.↑[366]III. I print the following letter with little comment, because I have no wish to discuss the question of the uses of Dissent with a Dissenting Minister; nor do I choose at present to enter on the subject at all. St. George, taking cognizance only of the postscript, thanks the Dissenting Minister for his sympathy; but encourages his own servant to persist in believing that the “more excellent way” (of Charity), which St. Paul showed, in the 13th of Corinthians, is quite as truly followed in devoting the funds at his said servant’s disposal to the relief of the poor, as in the maintenance of Ruskinian Preachers for the dissemination of Ruskinian opinions, in a Ruskinian Society, with the especial object of saving Mr. Ruskin’s and the Society’s souls.“September 14th, 1876.“Dear Mr. Ruskin,—Mr. Sillar’s ‘valuable letter’ in last month’s Fors, (a) would have been more valuable if he had understood what he was writing about. Mr. Tyerman (in his ‘Life and Times of Wesley,’ p. 431,) gives the trifling differences between the present Rules of the Methodist Societies and the first edition issued in 1743. Instead of ‘interested personshaving altered old John Wesley’s rules’ (he was forty years old when he drew them up) ‘to suitmodern ideas’—the alterations, whether good or bad, were made by himself.“The first contributions in the ‘Classes’ were made for the express purpose of discharging a debt on a preaching house. Then they were devoted ‘to the relief of the poor,’ there being at the time no preachers dependent on the Society for support.After1743, when circuits had been formed and preachers stationed in certain localities, their maintenance gradually became the principal charge upon the Society’s funds. (See Smith’s ‘History of Methodism,’ vol. i., p. 669.) In 1771 Wesley says expressly that the contributions are applied ‘towards the expenses of the Society.’ (b) (‘Journal,’ vol. iii., p. 205.) Certainly Methodism, thus supported, has done far more to benefit the[367]poor and raise them, than any amount of mere almsgiving could have done. Methodist preachers have at least one sign of being in the apostolical succession. They can say, with Paul, ‘as poor, yet making many rich.’ (c)“ ‘Going to law’ was altered by Mr. Wesley to ‘brother going to law with brother,’ in order, no doubt, to bring the rule into verbal agreement with 1 Cor. vi. 6. (d)“ ‘Usury’ was defined by Mr. Wesley to be ‘unlawful interest,’ (e) in accordance with the ordinary notions of his day. He was greatly in advance of his age, yet he could scarcely have been expected to anticipate the definition of Usury given, as far as I know, (f) for the first time in Fors for August, 1876. I don’t see why we Methodists should be charged with breaking the laws of Moses, David, and Christ (Fors, p. 253), if we consider ‘old John Wesley’s’ definition to be as good as the ‘modern idea.’“Of course St. George, for whom I have the greatest respect and admiration, will correct Mr. Sillar’s mistake.“I am, Sir,“Another Reader of Fors(which I wish you would sell a little cheaper), and“A Methodist Preacher.“P.S.—Why should you not copy old John Wesley, and establish your St. George’s Company on a legal basis? In 1784 he drew up a Deed of Declaration, which was duly enrolled in Chancery. It stated the purposes for which his Society was formed, and the mode in which it was to be governed. A Deed of Trust was afterwards drawn up foroneof our chapels, reciting at length this Deed of Declaration, and all the purposes for which the property was to be used. All our other property is settled on the same trusts. A single line in each subsequent chapel deed—stating that all the trusts are to be the same as those of the ‘Model Deed,’ as we call the first one—obviates[368]the necessity and expense ofrepeatinga very long legal document.“Success to St. George,—yet there is, I think, ‘a more excellent way.’ ”a.Mr. Sillar’s letter did not appear in last month’s Fors. A small portion of it appeared, in which I regret that Mr. Sillar so far misunderstood John Wesley as to imagine him incapable of altering his own rules so as to make them useless.b.I wish the Wesleyans were the only Society whose contributions are applied to no better purpose.c.I envy my correspondent’s complacency in his own and his Society’s munificence, too sorrowfully to endeavour to dispel it.d.The ‘verbal’ agreement is indeed secured by the alteration. But as St. Paul, by a ‘brother,’ meant any Christian, I shall be glad to learn from my correspondent whether the Wesleyans understand their rule in that significance.e.Many thanks to Mr. Wesley. Doubtless his disciples know what rate of interest is lawful, and what not; and also by what law it was made so; and always pause with pious accuracy at the decimal point whereat the excellence of an investment begins to make it criminal. St. George will be grateful to their representative for information on these—not unimportant—particulars.f.How far thatis, my correspondent’s duly dissenting scorn of the wisdom of the Greeks, and legality of the Jews, has doubtless prevented his thinking it necessary to discover. I must not waste the time of other readers in assisting his elementary investigations; but have merely to point out to him that definitions either of theft, adultery, usury, or murder, have only becomenecessaryin modern times; and that Methodists,[369]and any other persons, are charged by me with breaking the law of Moses, David, and Christ, in so far only as they do accept Mr. John Wesley’s, or any other person’s, definition instead oftheirutterly unquestionable meaning. (Would T. S., of North Tyne, reprint his letters for me from the Sunderland paper, to be sent out with December Fors?)IV. I reprint the following paragraph chiefly as an example of our ineffable British absurdity. It is perfectly right to compel fathers to send their children to school; but, once sent, it is the schoolmaster’s business to keep hold of them. In St. George’s schools, it would have been the little runaway gentleman who would have got sent to prison; and kept,sotto piombi, on bread and water, until he could be trusted with more liberty. The fate of the father, under the present application of British law, leaves the problem, it seems to me, still insoluble but in that manner. But I should like to know more of the previous history of parent and child.“The story of George Widowson, aged fifty-seven, told at the inquest held on his remains at Mile End Old Town on Wednesday, is worth recording. Widowson was, as appears by the evidence of his daughter, a sober, hard-working man until he was sent to prison for three days in last December in default of paying a fine for not sending his son, a boy eleven years of age, to school. The deceased, as several witnesses deposed, constantly endeavoured to make the child go to school, and had frequently taken him there himself; but it was all in vain. Young Widowson when taken to school invariably ran away, the result being that his father was driven to distraction. His imprisonment in December had preyed on his mind, and he took to drinking. He frequently threatened to destroy himself rather than be imprisoned again. Hearing that another summons was about to be issued against him, he broke up his home, and on[370]the night of the 30th ultimo solved the educational problem by throwing himself into the Regent’s Canal. Fear of being again sent to prison by the School Board was, his daughter believed, the cause of his committing this act. The jury returned a verdict in accordance of this opinion; and although George Widowson was wrong to escape from the clutches of the friends of humanity by putting an end to his life, those who blame him should remember that imprisonment to abonâ fideworking man of irreproachable character, is simply torture. He loses all that in his own eyes makes life worth preservation.”—Pall Mall Gazette, July 7th, 1876.V. The next extract contains some wholesome comments on our more advanced system of modern education.“Indian Civil Service.—At a meeting of the Indian section of the Society of Arts, under the presidency of Mr. Andrew Cassels, a paper on ‘Competition and its Effects upon Education’ was read by Dr. George Birdwood. In the course of his remarks, he commented at length upon the India Office despatch of Feb. 24, regarding ‘the selection and training of candidates for the Indian Civil Service,’ and feared that it would but serve to confirm and aggravate and rapidly extend the very worst evil of the old system of competition—namely, the degeneration of secondary education throughout England.… The despatch tended to make over all the secondary schooling of the country to the crammers, or to reduce it to the crammers’ system. They were making the entrance examinations year by year more and more difficult—as their first object must necessarily now be, not the moral and intellectual discipline of the boyhood of England, but to show an ever-growing percentage of success at the various competitive examinations always going on for public services. ‘The devil take the hindermost’[371]was fast becoming the ideal of education, even in the public schools. If they seriously took to cramming little fellows from twelve to fourteen for entrance into public schools, the rising generation would be used up before it reached manhood. A well-known physician, of great experience, told him that the competition for all sorts of scholarships and appointments was showing its evil fruits in the increase of insanity, epilepsy, and other nervous diseases amongst young people of the age from seventeen to nineteen, and especially amongst pupil-teachers; and if admission into the public schools of England was for the future to be regulated by competition, St. Vitus’s dance would soon take the place of gout, as the fashionable disease of the upper classes. This was the inevitable result of the ill-digested and ill-regulated system of competition for the public services, and especially the Indian Civil Service, which had prevailed; and he feared that the recent despatch would only be to hasten the threatened revolution in their national secondary schools, and the last state of cramming under the despatch would be worse than the first.… The best of examiners was the examiner of his own pupils; for no man could measure real knowledge like the teacher. What should be aimed at was regular moderate study and sound and continuous discipline to start the growing man in life in the healthiest bodily and moral condition possible. He objected to children striving for prizes, whether in games or in studies. The fewer prizes won at school, the more would probably be won in life. Let their only anxiety be to educate their children well, and suffer no temptation to betray them into cramming, and the whole world was open to them.”—Daily Telegraph.VI. The development of ‘humanity’ in America is so brilliantly illustrated in the following paragraphs, that I have thought them worth preserving:—[372]From ‘The American Socialist, devoted to the Enlargement and Perfection of Home.’“THE FUTURE OF SOCIETY.“An American, visiting Europe, notices how completely there the various functions of the social body are performed. He finds a servant, an officer, a skilled workman, at every place. From the position of the stone-breaker on the highway, up to that of the highest Government official, every post is filled; every personal want of the traveller or the citizen is attended to. Policemen guard him in the streets, lackeys watch for his bidding at the hotels, railroad officials with almost superfluous care forward him on his way. As compared with American railroad management, the great English roads probably have fouremployésto our one. This plentitude of service results from three things—viz., density of population, which gives an abundant working class; cheapness of labour; and the aristocratic formation of society that tends to fix persons in the caste to which they were born. The effect is to produce a smoothness in the social movement—an absence of jar and friction, and a release in many cases from anxious, personal outlook, that are very agreeable. The difference between English and American life in respect to the supply of service is like that between riding on a highly-finished macadamized way, where every rut is filled and every stone is removed, and picking one’s way over our common country roads.“Another thing that the traveller observes in Europe is the abundance everywhere of works of art. One’s sense of beauty is continually gratified; now with a finished landscape, now with a noble building, now with statues, monuments, and paintings. This immense accumulation of art springs in part of course from the age of the nations where it is found; but it is also due in a very great degree to the employment given to artists by[373]persons of wealth and leisure. Painting, sculpture, and architecture have always had constant, and sometimes munificent, patrons in the nobility and the Established Church.“Observing these things abroad, the American asks himself whether the institutions of this country are likely to produce in time any similar result here. Shall we have the finished organization, the mutual service, and the wealth of art that characterize European society? Before answering this, let us first ask ourselves whether it is desirable that we should have them in the same manner that they exist abroad? Certainly not. No American would be willing to pay the price which England pays for her system of service. The most painful thing which one sees abroad is the utter absence of ambition in the class of household servants. Men who in this country would be looking to a seat in the legislature,9and who would qualify themselves for it, there dawdle away life in the livery of some noble, in smiling, aimless, do-nothing content, and beget children to follow in their steps. On seeing these servile figures, the American thanks heaven that the ocean rolls between his country and such a system. Rather rudeness, discomfort, self-service, and poverty, with freedom and the fire of aspiration, than luxury purchased by the enervation of man!“Still, cannot we have the good without the bad? Cannot we match Europe in culture and polish without sacrificing for it our manhood? And if so, what are the influences in this country that are working in that direction? In answering this question, we have to say frankly that we see nothing in democracy alone that promises to produce the result under consideration. In a country where every one is taught to disdain a situation[374]of dependence, where the hostler and the chambermaid see the way opened for them to stand even with the best in the land, if they will but exercise their privilege of ‘getting on,’ there will be no permanent or perfect service. And so long as every man’s possessions are divided and scattered at his death, there will be no class having the secured leisure and the inducement to form galleries of art. Why should John Smith take pains to decorate his house with works of art, when he knows that within a year after his death it will be administered upon by the Probate Court, and sold with its furniture for the benefit of his ten children?” (Well put,—republican sage.)“In a word, looking at the æsthetic side of things, our American system must be confessed to be not yet quite perfect.” (You don’t say so!) “Invaluable as it is for schooling men to independence and aspiration, it requires, to complete its usefulness, another element. The Republic has a sequel. That completing element, that sequel, is Communism. Communism supplies exactly the conditions that are wanting in the social life of America, and which it must have if it would compete with foreign lands in the development of those things which give ease and grace to existence.“For instance, in respect to service: Communism, by extinguishing caste and honouring labour, makes every man at once a servant and lord. It fills up, by its capacity of minute organization, all the social functions as completely as the European system does; while, unlike that, it provides for each individual sufficient leisure, and frequent and improving changes of occupation. The person who serves in the kitchen this hour may be experimenting with a microscope or giving lessons on the piano the next. Applying its combined ingenuity to social needs, Communism will find means to consign all repulsive and injurious labour to machinery. It is continually interested to promote labour-saving improvements. The service that is performed[375]by brothers and equals from motives of love will be more perfect than that of hired lackeys, while the constantly varying round of occupation granted to all will form the most perfect school for breadth of culture and true politeness. Thus Communism achieves through friendship and freedom that which the Old World secures only through a system little better than slavery.“In the interest of art and the cultivation of the beautiful, Communism again supplies the place of a hereditary aristocracy and a wealthy church. A Community family, unlike the ephemeral households of ordinary society, is a permanent thing. Its edifice is not liable to be sold at the end of every generation, but like a cathedral descends by unbroken inheritance. Whatever is committed to it remains, and is the care of the society from century to century. With a home thus established, all the members of a Community are at once interested to gather about it objects of art. It becomes a picture-gallery and a museum, by the natural accretion of time, and by the zeal of persons who know that every embellishment added to their home will not only be a pleasure to them personally, but will remain to associate them with the pleasure of future beholders in all time to come.“Thus in Communism we have the conditions that are necessary to carry this country to the summit of artistic and social culture. By this route, we may at one bound outstrip the laboured attainments of the aristocracies of the Old World. The New York Central Park shows what can be achieved by combination on the democratic plan, for a public pleasure-ground. No other park is equal to it. Let this principle of combination be extended to the formation of homes as well as to municipal affairs, and we shall simply dot this country over with establishments10as much[376]better than those of the nobles of England as they are better than those of a day-labourer. We say better, for they will make art and luxury minister to universal education, and they will replace menial service with downright brotherhood. Such must be the future of American society.”“To the Editor of the ‘American Socialist.’“In your first issue you raise the question, ‘How large ought a Home to be?’ This is a question of great interest to all; and I trust the accumulated answers you will receive will aid in its solution.“I have lived in homes varying in numbers from one (the bachelor’s home) to several hundred; and my experience and observation lead me to regard one hundred and twenty-five as about the right number to form a complete home. I would not have less than seventy-five nor more than one hundred and fifty. In my opinion a Home should minister to all the needs of its members, spiritual, intellectual, social, and physical. This ordinary monogamic homes cannot do; hence resort is had to churches, colleges, club-rooms, theatres, etc.; and in sparsely settled regions of country, people are put to great inconvenience and compelled to go great distances to supply cravings as imperative as the hunger for bread. This view alone would not limit the number of persons constituting a Home; but I take the ground that in a perfect Home there will be a perfect blending of all interests and perfect vibration in unison of all hearts; and of course thorough mutual acquaintance. My experience and observation convince me that it is exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, to secure these results in a family of over one hundred and fifty members.“In simply a monetary view it is undoubtedly best to have large Homes of a thousand or more; but money should not have great weight in comparison with a man’s spiritual, intellectual, and social needs.—D. E. S.”[377]

NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE.

I. Affairs of the Company.Venice, October 20th.—I have sent for press, to-day, the fourth number of ‘Deucalion,’ in which will be found a statement of the system on which I begin the arrangement of the Sheffield Museum.There are no new subscriptions to announce. Another donation, of fifty pounds, by Mrs. Talbot, makes me sadly ashamed of the apathy of all my older friends. I believe, in a little while now, it will be well for me to throw them all aside, and refuse to know any one but my own Companions, and the workmen who are willing to listen to me. I have spoken enough to the upper classes, and they mock me;—in the seventh year of Fors I will speak more clearly than hitherto,—but not tothem.Meantime, my Sheffield friends must not think I am neglecting them, because I am at work here in Venice, instead of among them. They will know in a little while the use of my work here. The following portions of letter from the Curator of our Museum, with the piece of biography in it, which I venture to print, in haste, assuming permission, will be of good service to good workers everywhere.“H. Swan to J. Ruskin.“Walkley, Sheffield,October 18, 1876.“Dear Master,—The interest in the Museum seems still increasing. Yesterday (Sunday), in addition to our usual allotment of casual calls at the Museum, we had a visit from a party of working men; two or three of them from Barnsley, but the most Sheffielders, among which last were several of those who came[362]to meet thee on the last occasion. Their object was a double one; first, to see what progress we were making with the Museum; and, secondly, to discuss the subject of Usury, the unlawfulness of which, in its ordinary aspects, being (unlike the land question) a perfectly new notion to all except one or two. The objection generally takes this shape: ‘If I have worked hard to earn twenty pounds, and it is an advantage to another to have the use of that twenty pounds, why should he get that advantage without paying me for it?’ To which my reply has been, There may, or may not, be reasons why the lender should be placed in a better position for using his powers of body or mind; but the special question for you, with your twenty pounds, now is, not what right has he to use the money without payment—(he has every right, if you give him leave; and none, if you don’t;)—the questionyouhave to propose to yourself is this, ‘Why should I, as a man and a Christian, after having been paid for what I have earned, expect or desire to make an agreement by which I may get, from the labour of others, money I have not earned?’ Suppose, too, bail for a hundred pounds to be required for a prisoner in whose innocence you believed, would you say ‘I will be bail for the hundred pounds, but I shall expect five pounds from him for the advantage he will thereby get?’ No; the just man would weigh well whether it be right or no to undertake the bail; but, having determined, he would shrink from receiving the unearned money, as I believe the first unwarped instinct of a good man does still in the case of a loan.“Although, as I have said, all question as to the right of what is called a moderate rate of interest was new to most of our visitors, yet I found a greater degree of openness to the truth than might have been expected. One of the most interesting parts of the discussion was the relation by one of the party of his own experiences, in years past, as a money-lender. ‘In the place where I used to work at that time,’ said he, ‘there was a very many of[363]a good sort of fellows who were not so careful of their money as I was, and they used often to run out of cash before the time came for them to take more. Well, knowing I was one that always had a bit by me, they used to come to me to borrow a bit to carry them through to pay-day. When they paid me, some would ask if I wanted aught for the use of it. But I only lent to pleasure them, and I always said, No, I wanted nought. One day, however, Jack —— came to me, and said, “Now, my lad, dost want to get more brass for thyself, and lay by money? because I can put thee in the way of doing it.” I said that was a great object for me. “Well,” said he, “thou must do as I tell thee. I know thou’rt often lending thy brass to them as want a lift. Now thou must make them pay for using thy money, and if thou works as I tell thee, it’ll grow and grow. And by-and-by they’ll be paying and paying for the use of their own money over and over again.” Well, I thought it would be a good thing for me to have the bits of cash come in and in, to help along with what I earned myself. So I told each of the men, as they came, that I couldn’t go on lending for nothing, and they must pay me a bit more when they got their pay. And so they did. After a time, Jack —— came again, and said, “Well, how’rt getting on?” So I told him what I was doing, and that seemed all right. After a time, he came again, and said, “Now thou finds what I said was right. The men can spare thee a bit for thy money, and it makes things a deal more comfortable for thyself. Now I can show thee how a hundred of thy money shall bring another hundred in.” “Nay,” said I, “thou canst not do that. That can’t be done.” “Nay, but it can,” said Jack. And he told me how to manage; and that when I hadn’t the cash, he would find it, and we’d halve the profits. [Say a man wants to borrow twenty pounds, and is to pay back at three shillings a week. The interest is first deducted for the whole time, so that if he agrees to pay only five per cent. he will receive but nineteen pounds; then the interest is more[364]than five per cent. on the money actually out during the very first week, while the rate gradually rises as the weekly payments come,—slowly at first, but at the last more and more rapidly, till, during the last month, the money-lender is obtaining two hundred per cent. for the amount (now, however, very small) still unpaid.]“ ‘Well, it grew and grew. Hundreds and hundreds I paid and received every week, (and we found that among the poorest little shops it worked the best for us). At last it took such hold of me that I became a regular bloodsucker—a bloodsucker of poor folk, and nothing else. I was always reckoning up, night and day, how to get more and more, till I got so thin and ill I had to go to the doctor. It was old Dr. Sike, and he said, “Young man, you must give up your present way of work and life, or I can do nothing for you. You’ll get worse and worse.”“ ‘So I thought and thought, and at last I made up my mind to give it all up, though I was then getting rich. But there was no blessing on what I’d got, and I lost it every farthing, and had to begin again as poor as I was when I first left the workhouse to learn a trade. And now, I’ve prospered and prospered in my little way till I’ve no cause to worry anyways about money, and I’ve a few men at work with me in my shop.“ ‘Still, for all that, I don’t see why I shouldn’t have interest on the little capital I’ve saved uphonestly; or how am I to live in my old age?’“Another workman suggested, ‘Wouldn’t he be able to live on his capital?’ ‘Aye, but I want to leave that to somebody else,’ was the answer. [Yes, good friend, and the same excuse might be made for any form of theft.—J. R.]“I will merely add, that if there were enforced and public account of the amount of monies advanced on loan, and if the true conditions and workings of those loans could be shown, there would be revealed such an amount of cruel stress upon the foolish, weak, and poor of the small tradesmen (a class far more[365]numerous than are needed) as would render it very intelligible why so many faces are seamed with lines of suffering and anxiety. I think it possible that the fungus growth and increasing mischief of these loan establishments may reach such a pitch as to necessitate legislative interference, as has been the case with gambling. But there will never fail modes of evading the law, and the sufficient cure will be found only when men shall consider it a dishonour to have it imputed to them thatanyportion of their income is derived from usury.”The Union Bank of London (Chancery Lane Branch) in Account with the St. George’s Fund.1876.Dr.£s.d.Aug.16.To Balance.9434Oct.12.” Draft at Bridgwater (per Mr. Ruskin)500024.” (J. P. Stilwell)2500£16934Cr.£s.d.Oct.12.By Postage of Pass Book00325.Balance16931£16934II. Affairs of the Master.£s.d.£s.d.Sept.15.Balancea12210820.Kate1000026.—— at Venice, Antoniob5000Oct.1.Secretary25003.Downs50005.Giftc200010.Loan20000”Jackson5000———49500Oct.15.Balance£72608aBy report from Bank; but the ‘repayments’ named in it should not have been added to the cash account, being on separate account with the Company. I will make all clear in December.↑bFor Signora Caldara (Venetian botany).↑cNominally loan, to poor relation, but I do not suppose he will ever be able to pay me. The following £200 I do not doubt receiving again.↑[366]III. I print the following letter with little comment, because I have no wish to discuss the question of the uses of Dissent with a Dissenting Minister; nor do I choose at present to enter on the subject at all. St. George, taking cognizance only of the postscript, thanks the Dissenting Minister for his sympathy; but encourages his own servant to persist in believing that the “more excellent way” (of Charity), which St. Paul showed, in the 13th of Corinthians, is quite as truly followed in devoting the funds at his said servant’s disposal to the relief of the poor, as in the maintenance of Ruskinian Preachers for the dissemination of Ruskinian opinions, in a Ruskinian Society, with the especial object of saving Mr. Ruskin’s and the Society’s souls.“September 14th, 1876.“Dear Mr. Ruskin,—Mr. Sillar’s ‘valuable letter’ in last month’s Fors, (a) would have been more valuable if he had understood what he was writing about. Mr. Tyerman (in his ‘Life and Times of Wesley,’ p. 431,) gives the trifling differences between the present Rules of the Methodist Societies and the first edition issued in 1743. Instead of ‘interested personshaving altered old John Wesley’s rules’ (he was forty years old when he drew them up) ‘to suitmodern ideas’—the alterations, whether good or bad, were made by himself.“The first contributions in the ‘Classes’ were made for the express purpose of discharging a debt on a preaching house. Then they were devoted ‘to the relief of the poor,’ there being at the time no preachers dependent on the Society for support.After1743, when circuits had been formed and preachers stationed in certain localities, their maintenance gradually became the principal charge upon the Society’s funds. (See Smith’s ‘History of Methodism,’ vol. i., p. 669.) In 1771 Wesley says expressly that the contributions are applied ‘towards the expenses of the Society.’ (b) (‘Journal,’ vol. iii., p. 205.) Certainly Methodism, thus supported, has done far more to benefit the[367]poor and raise them, than any amount of mere almsgiving could have done. Methodist preachers have at least one sign of being in the apostolical succession. They can say, with Paul, ‘as poor, yet making many rich.’ (c)“ ‘Going to law’ was altered by Mr. Wesley to ‘brother going to law with brother,’ in order, no doubt, to bring the rule into verbal agreement with 1 Cor. vi. 6. (d)“ ‘Usury’ was defined by Mr. Wesley to be ‘unlawful interest,’ (e) in accordance with the ordinary notions of his day. He was greatly in advance of his age, yet he could scarcely have been expected to anticipate the definition of Usury given, as far as I know, (f) for the first time in Fors for August, 1876. I don’t see why we Methodists should be charged with breaking the laws of Moses, David, and Christ (Fors, p. 253), if we consider ‘old John Wesley’s’ definition to be as good as the ‘modern idea.’“Of course St. George, for whom I have the greatest respect and admiration, will correct Mr. Sillar’s mistake.“I am, Sir,“Another Reader of Fors(which I wish you would sell a little cheaper), and“A Methodist Preacher.“P.S.—Why should you not copy old John Wesley, and establish your St. George’s Company on a legal basis? In 1784 he drew up a Deed of Declaration, which was duly enrolled in Chancery. It stated the purposes for which his Society was formed, and the mode in which it was to be governed. A Deed of Trust was afterwards drawn up foroneof our chapels, reciting at length this Deed of Declaration, and all the purposes for which the property was to be used. All our other property is settled on the same trusts. A single line in each subsequent chapel deed—stating that all the trusts are to be the same as those of the ‘Model Deed,’ as we call the first one—obviates[368]the necessity and expense ofrepeatinga very long legal document.“Success to St. George,—yet there is, I think, ‘a more excellent way.’ ”a.Mr. Sillar’s letter did not appear in last month’s Fors. A small portion of it appeared, in which I regret that Mr. Sillar so far misunderstood John Wesley as to imagine him incapable of altering his own rules so as to make them useless.b.I wish the Wesleyans were the only Society whose contributions are applied to no better purpose.c.I envy my correspondent’s complacency in his own and his Society’s munificence, too sorrowfully to endeavour to dispel it.d.The ‘verbal’ agreement is indeed secured by the alteration. But as St. Paul, by a ‘brother,’ meant any Christian, I shall be glad to learn from my correspondent whether the Wesleyans understand their rule in that significance.e.Many thanks to Mr. Wesley. Doubtless his disciples know what rate of interest is lawful, and what not; and also by what law it was made so; and always pause with pious accuracy at the decimal point whereat the excellence of an investment begins to make it criminal. St. George will be grateful to their representative for information on these—not unimportant—particulars.f.How far thatis, my correspondent’s duly dissenting scorn of the wisdom of the Greeks, and legality of the Jews, has doubtless prevented his thinking it necessary to discover. I must not waste the time of other readers in assisting his elementary investigations; but have merely to point out to him that definitions either of theft, adultery, usury, or murder, have only becomenecessaryin modern times; and that Methodists,[369]and any other persons, are charged by me with breaking the law of Moses, David, and Christ, in so far only as they do accept Mr. John Wesley’s, or any other person’s, definition instead oftheirutterly unquestionable meaning. (Would T. S., of North Tyne, reprint his letters for me from the Sunderland paper, to be sent out with December Fors?)IV. I reprint the following paragraph chiefly as an example of our ineffable British absurdity. It is perfectly right to compel fathers to send their children to school; but, once sent, it is the schoolmaster’s business to keep hold of them. In St. George’s schools, it would have been the little runaway gentleman who would have got sent to prison; and kept,sotto piombi, on bread and water, until he could be trusted with more liberty. The fate of the father, under the present application of British law, leaves the problem, it seems to me, still insoluble but in that manner. But I should like to know more of the previous history of parent and child.“The story of George Widowson, aged fifty-seven, told at the inquest held on his remains at Mile End Old Town on Wednesday, is worth recording. Widowson was, as appears by the evidence of his daughter, a sober, hard-working man until he was sent to prison for three days in last December in default of paying a fine for not sending his son, a boy eleven years of age, to school. The deceased, as several witnesses deposed, constantly endeavoured to make the child go to school, and had frequently taken him there himself; but it was all in vain. Young Widowson when taken to school invariably ran away, the result being that his father was driven to distraction. His imprisonment in December had preyed on his mind, and he took to drinking. He frequently threatened to destroy himself rather than be imprisoned again. Hearing that another summons was about to be issued against him, he broke up his home, and on[370]the night of the 30th ultimo solved the educational problem by throwing himself into the Regent’s Canal. Fear of being again sent to prison by the School Board was, his daughter believed, the cause of his committing this act. The jury returned a verdict in accordance of this opinion; and although George Widowson was wrong to escape from the clutches of the friends of humanity by putting an end to his life, those who blame him should remember that imprisonment to abonâ fideworking man of irreproachable character, is simply torture. He loses all that in his own eyes makes life worth preservation.”—Pall Mall Gazette, July 7th, 1876.V. The next extract contains some wholesome comments on our more advanced system of modern education.“Indian Civil Service.—At a meeting of the Indian section of the Society of Arts, under the presidency of Mr. Andrew Cassels, a paper on ‘Competition and its Effects upon Education’ was read by Dr. George Birdwood. In the course of his remarks, he commented at length upon the India Office despatch of Feb. 24, regarding ‘the selection and training of candidates for the Indian Civil Service,’ and feared that it would but serve to confirm and aggravate and rapidly extend the very worst evil of the old system of competition—namely, the degeneration of secondary education throughout England.… The despatch tended to make over all the secondary schooling of the country to the crammers, or to reduce it to the crammers’ system. They were making the entrance examinations year by year more and more difficult—as their first object must necessarily now be, not the moral and intellectual discipline of the boyhood of England, but to show an ever-growing percentage of success at the various competitive examinations always going on for public services. ‘The devil take the hindermost’[371]was fast becoming the ideal of education, even in the public schools. If they seriously took to cramming little fellows from twelve to fourteen for entrance into public schools, the rising generation would be used up before it reached manhood. A well-known physician, of great experience, told him that the competition for all sorts of scholarships and appointments was showing its evil fruits in the increase of insanity, epilepsy, and other nervous diseases amongst young people of the age from seventeen to nineteen, and especially amongst pupil-teachers; and if admission into the public schools of England was for the future to be regulated by competition, St. Vitus’s dance would soon take the place of gout, as the fashionable disease of the upper classes. This was the inevitable result of the ill-digested and ill-regulated system of competition for the public services, and especially the Indian Civil Service, which had prevailed; and he feared that the recent despatch would only be to hasten the threatened revolution in their national secondary schools, and the last state of cramming under the despatch would be worse than the first.… The best of examiners was the examiner of his own pupils; for no man could measure real knowledge like the teacher. What should be aimed at was regular moderate study and sound and continuous discipline to start the growing man in life in the healthiest bodily and moral condition possible. He objected to children striving for prizes, whether in games or in studies. The fewer prizes won at school, the more would probably be won in life. Let their only anxiety be to educate their children well, and suffer no temptation to betray them into cramming, and the whole world was open to them.”—Daily Telegraph.VI. The development of ‘humanity’ in America is so brilliantly illustrated in the following paragraphs, that I have thought them worth preserving:—[372]From ‘The American Socialist, devoted to the Enlargement and Perfection of Home.’“THE FUTURE OF SOCIETY.“An American, visiting Europe, notices how completely there the various functions of the social body are performed. He finds a servant, an officer, a skilled workman, at every place. From the position of the stone-breaker on the highway, up to that of the highest Government official, every post is filled; every personal want of the traveller or the citizen is attended to. Policemen guard him in the streets, lackeys watch for his bidding at the hotels, railroad officials with almost superfluous care forward him on his way. As compared with American railroad management, the great English roads probably have fouremployésto our one. This plentitude of service results from three things—viz., density of population, which gives an abundant working class; cheapness of labour; and the aristocratic formation of society that tends to fix persons in the caste to which they were born. The effect is to produce a smoothness in the social movement—an absence of jar and friction, and a release in many cases from anxious, personal outlook, that are very agreeable. The difference between English and American life in respect to the supply of service is like that between riding on a highly-finished macadamized way, where every rut is filled and every stone is removed, and picking one’s way over our common country roads.“Another thing that the traveller observes in Europe is the abundance everywhere of works of art. One’s sense of beauty is continually gratified; now with a finished landscape, now with a noble building, now with statues, monuments, and paintings. This immense accumulation of art springs in part of course from the age of the nations where it is found; but it is also due in a very great degree to the employment given to artists by[373]persons of wealth and leisure. Painting, sculpture, and architecture have always had constant, and sometimes munificent, patrons in the nobility and the Established Church.“Observing these things abroad, the American asks himself whether the institutions of this country are likely to produce in time any similar result here. Shall we have the finished organization, the mutual service, and the wealth of art that characterize European society? Before answering this, let us first ask ourselves whether it is desirable that we should have them in the same manner that they exist abroad? Certainly not. No American would be willing to pay the price which England pays for her system of service. The most painful thing which one sees abroad is the utter absence of ambition in the class of household servants. Men who in this country would be looking to a seat in the legislature,9and who would qualify themselves for it, there dawdle away life in the livery of some noble, in smiling, aimless, do-nothing content, and beget children to follow in their steps. On seeing these servile figures, the American thanks heaven that the ocean rolls between his country and such a system. Rather rudeness, discomfort, self-service, and poverty, with freedom and the fire of aspiration, than luxury purchased by the enervation of man!“Still, cannot we have the good without the bad? Cannot we match Europe in culture and polish without sacrificing for it our manhood? And if so, what are the influences in this country that are working in that direction? In answering this question, we have to say frankly that we see nothing in democracy alone that promises to produce the result under consideration. In a country where every one is taught to disdain a situation[374]of dependence, where the hostler and the chambermaid see the way opened for them to stand even with the best in the land, if they will but exercise their privilege of ‘getting on,’ there will be no permanent or perfect service. And so long as every man’s possessions are divided and scattered at his death, there will be no class having the secured leisure and the inducement to form galleries of art. Why should John Smith take pains to decorate his house with works of art, when he knows that within a year after his death it will be administered upon by the Probate Court, and sold with its furniture for the benefit of his ten children?” (Well put,—republican sage.)“In a word, looking at the æsthetic side of things, our American system must be confessed to be not yet quite perfect.” (You don’t say so!) “Invaluable as it is for schooling men to independence and aspiration, it requires, to complete its usefulness, another element. The Republic has a sequel. That completing element, that sequel, is Communism. Communism supplies exactly the conditions that are wanting in the social life of America, and which it must have if it would compete with foreign lands in the development of those things which give ease and grace to existence.“For instance, in respect to service: Communism, by extinguishing caste and honouring labour, makes every man at once a servant and lord. It fills up, by its capacity of minute organization, all the social functions as completely as the European system does; while, unlike that, it provides for each individual sufficient leisure, and frequent and improving changes of occupation. The person who serves in the kitchen this hour may be experimenting with a microscope or giving lessons on the piano the next. Applying its combined ingenuity to social needs, Communism will find means to consign all repulsive and injurious labour to machinery. It is continually interested to promote labour-saving improvements. The service that is performed[375]by brothers and equals from motives of love will be more perfect than that of hired lackeys, while the constantly varying round of occupation granted to all will form the most perfect school for breadth of culture and true politeness. Thus Communism achieves through friendship and freedom that which the Old World secures only through a system little better than slavery.“In the interest of art and the cultivation of the beautiful, Communism again supplies the place of a hereditary aristocracy and a wealthy church. A Community family, unlike the ephemeral households of ordinary society, is a permanent thing. Its edifice is not liable to be sold at the end of every generation, but like a cathedral descends by unbroken inheritance. Whatever is committed to it remains, and is the care of the society from century to century. With a home thus established, all the members of a Community are at once interested to gather about it objects of art. It becomes a picture-gallery and a museum, by the natural accretion of time, and by the zeal of persons who know that every embellishment added to their home will not only be a pleasure to them personally, but will remain to associate them with the pleasure of future beholders in all time to come.“Thus in Communism we have the conditions that are necessary to carry this country to the summit of artistic and social culture. By this route, we may at one bound outstrip the laboured attainments of the aristocracies of the Old World. The New York Central Park shows what can be achieved by combination on the democratic plan, for a public pleasure-ground. No other park is equal to it. Let this principle of combination be extended to the formation of homes as well as to municipal affairs, and we shall simply dot this country over with establishments10as much[376]better than those of the nobles of England as they are better than those of a day-labourer. We say better, for they will make art and luxury minister to universal education, and they will replace menial service with downright brotherhood. Such must be the future of American society.”“To the Editor of the ‘American Socialist.’“In your first issue you raise the question, ‘How large ought a Home to be?’ This is a question of great interest to all; and I trust the accumulated answers you will receive will aid in its solution.“I have lived in homes varying in numbers from one (the bachelor’s home) to several hundred; and my experience and observation lead me to regard one hundred and twenty-five as about the right number to form a complete home. I would not have less than seventy-five nor more than one hundred and fifty. In my opinion a Home should minister to all the needs of its members, spiritual, intellectual, social, and physical. This ordinary monogamic homes cannot do; hence resort is had to churches, colleges, club-rooms, theatres, etc.; and in sparsely settled regions of country, people are put to great inconvenience and compelled to go great distances to supply cravings as imperative as the hunger for bread. This view alone would not limit the number of persons constituting a Home; but I take the ground that in a perfect Home there will be a perfect blending of all interests and perfect vibration in unison of all hearts; and of course thorough mutual acquaintance. My experience and observation convince me that it is exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, to secure these results in a family of over one hundred and fifty members.“In simply a monetary view it is undoubtedly best to have large Homes of a thousand or more; but money should not have great weight in comparison with a man’s spiritual, intellectual, and social needs.—D. E. S.”[377]

I. Affairs of the Company.

Venice, October 20th.—I have sent for press, to-day, the fourth number of ‘Deucalion,’ in which will be found a statement of the system on which I begin the arrangement of the Sheffield Museum.

There are no new subscriptions to announce. Another donation, of fifty pounds, by Mrs. Talbot, makes me sadly ashamed of the apathy of all my older friends. I believe, in a little while now, it will be well for me to throw them all aside, and refuse to know any one but my own Companions, and the workmen who are willing to listen to me. I have spoken enough to the upper classes, and they mock me;—in the seventh year of Fors I will speak more clearly than hitherto,—but not tothem.

Meantime, my Sheffield friends must not think I am neglecting them, because I am at work here in Venice, instead of among them. They will know in a little while the use of my work here. The following portions of letter from the Curator of our Museum, with the piece of biography in it, which I venture to print, in haste, assuming permission, will be of good service to good workers everywhere.

“H. Swan to J. Ruskin.

“Walkley, Sheffield,October 18, 1876.

“Dear Master,—The interest in the Museum seems still increasing. Yesterday (Sunday), in addition to our usual allotment of casual calls at the Museum, we had a visit from a party of working men; two or three of them from Barnsley, but the most Sheffielders, among which last were several of those who came[362]to meet thee on the last occasion. Their object was a double one; first, to see what progress we were making with the Museum; and, secondly, to discuss the subject of Usury, the unlawfulness of which, in its ordinary aspects, being (unlike the land question) a perfectly new notion to all except one or two. The objection generally takes this shape: ‘If I have worked hard to earn twenty pounds, and it is an advantage to another to have the use of that twenty pounds, why should he get that advantage without paying me for it?’ To which my reply has been, There may, or may not, be reasons why the lender should be placed in a better position for using his powers of body or mind; but the special question for you, with your twenty pounds, now is, not what right has he to use the money without payment—(he has every right, if you give him leave; and none, if you don’t;)—the questionyouhave to propose to yourself is this, ‘Why should I, as a man and a Christian, after having been paid for what I have earned, expect or desire to make an agreement by which I may get, from the labour of others, money I have not earned?’ Suppose, too, bail for a hundred pounds to be required for a prisoner in whose innocence you believed, would you say ‘I will be bail for the hundred pounds, but I shall expect five pounds from him for the advantage he will thereby get?’ No; the just man would weigh well whether it be right or no to undertake the bail; but, having determined, he would shrink from receiving the unearned money, as I believe the first unwarped instinct of a good man does still in the case of a loan.

“Although, as I have said, all question as to the right of what is called a moderate rate of interest was new to most of our visitors, yet I found a greater degree of openness to the truth than might have been expected. One of the most interesting parts of the discussion was the relation by one of the party of his own experiences, in years past, as a money-lender. ‘In the place where I used to work at that time,’ said he, ‘there was a very many of[363]a good sort of fellows who were not so careful of their money as I was, and they used often to run out of cash before the time came for them to take more. Well, knowing I was one that always had a bit by me, they used to come to me to borrow a bit to carry them through to pay-day. When they paid me, some would ask if I wanted aught for the use of it. But I only lent to pleasure them, and I always said, No, I wanted nought. One day, however, Jack —— came to me, and said, “Now, my lad, dost want to get more brass for thyself, and lay by money? because I can put thee in the way of doing it.” I said that was a great object for me. “Well,” said he, “thou must do as I tell thee. I know thou’rt often lending thy brass to them as want a lift. Now thou must make them pay for using thy money, and if thou works as I tell thee, it’ll grow and grow. And by-and-by they’ll be paying and paying for the use of their own money over and over again.” Well, I thought it would be a good thing for me to have the bits of cash come in and in, to help along with what I earned myself. So I told each of the men, as they came, that I couldn’t go on lending for nothing, and they must pay me a bit more when they got their pay. And so they did. After a time, Jack —— came again, and said, “Well, how’rt getting on?” So I told him what I was doing, and that seemed all right. After a time, he came again, and said, “Now thou finds what I said was right. The men can spare thee a bit for thy money, and it makes things a deal more comfortable for thyself. Now I can show thee how a hundred of thy money shall bring another hundred in.” “Nay,” said I, “thou canst not do that. That can’t be done.” “Nay, but it can,” said Jack. And he told me how to manage; and that when I hadn’t the cash, he would find it, and we’d halve the profits. [Say a man wants to borrow twenty pounds, and is to pay back at three shillings a week. The interest is first deducted for the whole time, so that if he agrees to pay only five per cent. he will receive but nineteen pounds; then the interest is more[364]than five per cent. on the money actually out during the very first week, while the rate gradually rises as the weekly payments come,—slowly at first, but at the last more and more rapidly, till, during the last month, the money-lender is obtaining two hundred per cent. for the amount (now, however, very small) still unpaid.]

“ ‘Well, it grew and grew. Hundreds and hundreds I paid and received every week, (and we found that among the poorest little shops it worked the best for us). At last it took such hold of me that I became a regular bloodsucker—a bloodsucker of poor folk, and nothing else. I was always reckoning up, night and day, how to get more and more, till I got so thin and ill I had to go to the doctor. It was old Dr. Sike, and he said, “Young man, you must give up your present way of work and life, or I can do nothing for you. You’ll get worse and worse.”

“ ‘So I thought and thought, and at last I made up my mind to give it all up, though I was then getting rich. But there was no blessing on what I’d got, and I lost it every farthing, and had to begin again as poor as I was when I first left the workhouse to learn a trade. And now, I’ve prospered and prospered in my little way till I’ve no cause to worry anyways about money, and I’ve a few men at work with me in my shop.

“ ‘Still, for all that, I don’t see why I shouldn’t have interest on the little capital I’ve saved uphonestly; or how am I to live in my old age?’

“Another workman suggested, ‘Wouldn’t he be able to live on his capital?’ ‘Aye, but I want to leave that to somebody else,’ was the answer. [Yes, good friend, and the same excuse might be made for any form of theft.—J. R.]

“I will merely add, that if there were enforced and public account of the amount of monies advanced on loan, and if the true conditions and workings of those loans could be shown, there would be revealed such an amount of cruel stress upon the foolish, weak, and poor of the small tradesmen (a class far more[365]numerous than are needed) as would render it very intelligible why so many faces are seamed with lines of suffering and anxiety. I think it possible that the fungus growth and increasing mischief of these loan establishments may reach such a pitch as to necessitate legislative interference, as has been the case with gambling. But there will never fail modes of evading the law, and the sufficient cure will be found only when men shall consider it a dishonour to have it imputed to them thatanyportion of their income is derived from usury.”

The Union Bank of London (Chancery Lane Branch) in Account with the St. George’s Fund.1876.Dr.£s.d.Aug.16.To Balance.9434Oct.12.” Draft at Bridgwater (per Mr. Ruskin)500024.” (J. P. Stilwell)2500£16934Cr.£s.d.Oct.12.By Postage of Pass Book00325.Balance16931£16934

II. Affairs of the Master.

£s.d.£s.d.Sept.15.Balancea12210820.Kate1000026.—— at Venice, Antoniob5000Oct.1.Secretary25003.Downs50005.Giftc200010.Loan20000”Jackson5000———49500Oct.15.Balance£72608aBy report from Bank; but the ‘repayments’ named in it should not have been added to the cash account, being on separate account with the Company. I will make all clear in December.↑bFor Signora Caldara (Venetian botany).↑cNominally loan, to poor relation, but I do not suppose he will ever be able to pay me. The following £200 I do not doubt receiving again.↑

aBy report from Bank; but the ‘repayments’ named in it should not have been added to the cash account, being on separate account with the Company. I will make all clear in December.↑bFor Signora Caldara (Venetian botany).↑cNominally loan, to poor relation, but I do not suppose he will ever be able to pay me. The following £200 I do not doubt receiving again.↑

aBy report from Bank; but the ‘repayments’ named in it should not have been added to the cash account, being on separate account with the Company. I will make all clear in December.↑

aBy report from Bank; but the ‘repayments’ named in it should not have been added to the cash account, being on separate account with the Company. I will make all clear in December.↑

bFor Signora Caldara (Venetian botany).↑

bFor Signora Caldara (Venetian botany).↑

cNominally loan, to poor relation, but I do not suppose he will ever be able to pay me. The following £200 I do not doubt receiving again.↑

cNominally loan, to poor relation, but I do not suppose he will ever be able to pay me. The following £200 I do not doubt receiving again.↑

[366]

III. I print the following letter with little comment, because I have no wish to discuss the question of the uses of Dissent with a Dissenting Minister; nor do I choose at present to enter on the subject at all. St. George, taking cognizance only of the postscript, thanks the Dissenting Minister for his sympathy; but encourages his own servant to persist in believing that the “more excellent way” (of Charity), which St. Paul showed, in the 13th of Corinthians, is quite as truly followed in devoting the funds at his said servant’s disposal to the relief of the poor, as in the maintenance of Ruskinian Preachers for the dissemination of Ruskinian opinions, in a Ruskinian Society, with the especial object of saving Mr. Ruskin’s and the Society’s souls.

“September 14th, 1876.“Dear Mr. Ruskin,—Mr. Sillar’s ‘valuable letter’ in last month’s Fors, (a) would have been more valuable if he had understood what he was writing about. Mr. Tyerman (in his ‘Life and Times of Wesley,’ p. 431,) gives the trifling differences between the present Rules of the Methodist Societies and the first edition issued in 1743. Instead of ‘interested personshaving altered old John Wesley’s rules’ (he was forty years old when he drew them up) ‘to suitmodern ideas’—the alterations, whether good or bad, were made by himself.“The first contributions in the ‘Classes’ were made for the express purpose of discharging a debt on a preaching house. Then they were devoted ‘to the relief of the poor,’ there being at the time no preachers dependent on the Society for support.After1743, when circuits had been formed and preachers stationed in certain localities, their maintenance gradually became the principal charge upon the Society’s funds. (See Smith’s ‘History of Methodism,’ vol. i., p. 669.) In 1771 Wesley says expressly that the contributions are applied ‘towards the expenses of the Society.’ (b) (‘Journal,’ vol. iii., p. 205.) Certainly Methodism, thus supported, has done far more to benefit the[367]poor and raise them, than any amount of mere almsgiving could have done. Methodist preachers have at least one sign of being in the apostolical succession. They can say, with Paul, ‘as poor, yet making many rich.’ (c)“ ‘Going to law’ was altered by Mr. Wesley to ‘brother going to law with brother,’ in order, no doubt, to bring the rule into verbal agreement with 1 Cor. vi. 6. (d)“ ‘Usury’ was defined by Mr. Wesley to be ‘unlawful interest,’ (e) in accordance with the ordinary notions of his day. He was greatly in advance of his age, yet he could scarcely have been expected to anticipate the definition of Usury given, as far as I know, (f) for the first time in Fors for August, 1876. I don’t see why we Methodists should be charged with breaking the laws of Moses, David, and Christ (Fors, p. 253), if we consider ‘old John Wesley’s’ definition to be as good as the ‘modern idea.’“Of course St. George, for whom I have the greatest respect and admiration, will correct Mr. Sillar’s mistake.“I am, Sir,“Another Reader of Fors(which I wish you would sell a little cheaper), and“A Methodist Preacher.“P.S.—Why should you not copy old John Wesley, and establish your St. George’s Company on a legal basis? In 1784 he drew up a Deed of Declaration, which was duly enrolled in Chancery. It stated the purposes for which his Society was formed, and the mode in which it was to be governed. A Deed of Trust was afterwards drawn up foroneof our chapels, reciting at length this Deed of Declaration, and all the purposes for which the property was to be used. All our other property is settled on the same trusts. A single line in each subsequent chapel deed—stating that all the trusts are to be the same as those of the ‘Model Deed,’ as we call the first one—obviates[368]the necessity and expense ofrepeatinga very long legal document.“Success to St. George,—yet there is, I think, ‘a more excellent way.’ ”

“September 14th, 1876.

“Dear Mr. Ruskin,—Mr. Sillar’s ‘valuable letter’ in last month’s Fors, (a) would have been more valuable if he had understood what he was writing about. Mr. Tyerman (in his ‘Life and Times of Wesley,’ p. 431,) gives the trifling differences between the present Rules of the Methodist Societies and the first edition issued in 1743. Instead of ‘interested personshaving altered old John Wesley’s rules’ (he was forty years old when he drew them up) ‘to suitmodern ideas’—the alterations, whether good or bad, were made by himself.

“The first contributions in the ‘Classes’ were made for the express purpose of discharging a debt on a preaching house. Then they were devoted ‘to the relief of the poor,’ there being at the time no preachers dependent on the Society for support.After1743, when circuits had been formed and preachers stationed in certain localities, their maintenance gradually became the principal charge upon the Society’s funds. (See Smith’s ‘History of Methodism,’ vol. i., p. 669.) In 1771 Wesley says expressly that the contributions are applied ‘towards the expenses of the Society.’ (b) (‘Journal,’ vol. iii., p. 205.) Certainly Methodism, thus supported, has done far more to benefit the[367]poor and raise them, than any amount of mere almsgiving could have done. Methodist preachers have at least one sign of being in the apostolical succession. They can say, with Paul, ‘as poor, yet making many rich.’ (c)

“ ‘Going to law’ was altered by Mr. Wesley to ‘brother going to law with brother,’ in order, no doubt, to bring the rule into verbal agreement with 1 Cor. vi. 6. (d)

“ ‘Usury’ was defined by Mr. Wesley to be ‘unlawful interest,’ (e) in accordance with the ordinary notions of his day. He was greatly in advance of his age, yet he could scarcely have been expected to anticipate the definition of Usury given, as far as I know, (f) for the first time in Fors for August, 1876. I don’t see why we Methodists should be charged with breaking the laws of Moses, David, and Christ (Fors, p. 253), if we consider ‘old John Wesley’s’ definition to be as good as the ‘modern idea.’

“Of course St. George, for whom I have the greatest respect and admiration, will correct Mr. Sillar’s mistake.

“I am, Sir,

“Another Reader of Fors(which I wish you would sell a little cheaper), and

“A Methodist Preacher.

“P.S.—Why should you not copy old John Wesley, and establish your St. George’s Company on a legal basis? In 1784 he drew up a Deed of Declaration, which was duly enrolled in Chancery. It stated the purposes for which his Society was formed, and the mode in which it was to be governed. A Deed of Trust was afterwards drawn up foroneof our chapels, reciting at length this Deed of Declaration, and all the purposes for which the property was to be used. All our other property is settled on the same trusts. A single line in each subsequent chapel deed—stating that all the trusts are to be the same as those of the ‘Model Deed,’ as we call the first one—obviates[368]the necessity and expense ofrepeatinga very long legal document.

“Success to St. George,—yet there is, I think, ‘a more excellent way.’ ”

a.Mr. Sillar’s letter did not appear in last month’s Fors. A small portion of it appeared, in which I regret that Mr. Sillar so far misunderstood John Wesley as to imagine him incapable of altering his own rules so as to make them useless.

b.I wish the Wesleyans were the only Society whose contributions are applied to no better purpose.

c.I envy my correspondent’s complacency in his own and his Society’s munificence, too sorrowfully to endeavour to dispel it.

d.The ‘verbal’ agreement is indeed secured by the alteration. But as St. Paul, by a ‘brother,’ meant any Christian, I shall be glad to learn from my correspondent whether the Wesleyans understand their rule in that significance.

e.Many thanks to Mr. Wesley. Doubtless his disciples know what rate of interest is lawful, and what not; and also by what law it was made so; and always pause with pious accuracy at the decimal point whereat the excellence of an investment begins to make it criminal. St. George will be grateful to their representative for information on these—not unimportant—particulars.

f.How far thatis, my correspondent’s duly dissenting scorn of the wisdom of the Greeks, and legality of the Jews, has doubtless prevented his thinking it necessary to discover. I must not waste the time of other readers in assisting his elementary investigations; but have merely to point out to him that definitions either of theft, adultery, usury, or murder, have only becomenecessaryin modern times; and that Methodists,[369]and any other persons, are charged by me with breaking the law of Moses, David, and Christ, in so far only as they do accept Mr. John Wesley’s, or any other person’s, definition instead oftheirutterly unquestionable meaning. (Would T. S., of North Tyne, reprint his letters for me from the Sunderland paper, to be sent out with December Fors?)

IV. I reprint the following paragraph chiefly as an example of our ineffable British absurdity. It is perfectly right to compel fathers to send their children to school; but, once sent, it is the schoolmaster’s business to keep hold of them. In St. George’s schools, it would have been the little runaway gentleman who would have got sent to prison; and kept,sotto piombi, on bread and water, until he could be trusted with more liberty. The fate of the father, under the present application of British law, leaves the problem, it seems to me, still insoluble but in that manner. But I should like to know more of the previous history of parent and child.

“The story of George Widowson, aged fifty-seven, told at the inquest held on his remains at Mile End Old Town on Wednesday, is worth recording. Widowson was, as appears by the evidence of his daughter, a sober, hard-working man until he was sent to prison for three days in last December in default of paying a fine for not sending his son, a boy eleven years of age, to school. The deceased, as several witnesses deposed, constantly endeavoured to make the child go to school, and had frequently taken him there himself; but it was all in vain. Young Widowson when taken to school invariably ran away, the result being that his father was driven to distraction. His imprisonment in December had preyed on his mind, and he took to drinking. He frequently threatened to destroy himself rather than be imprisoned again. Hearing that another summons was about to be issued against him, he broke up his home, and on[370]the night of the 30th ultimo solved the educational problem by throwing himself into the Regent’s Canal. Fear of being again sent to prison by the School Board was, his daughter believed, the cause of his committing this act. The jury returned a verdict in accordance of this opinion; and although George Widowson was wrong to escape from the clutches of the friends of humanity by putting an end to his life, those who blame him should remember that imprisonment to abonâ fideworking man of irreproachable character, is simply torture. He loses all that in his own eyes makes life worth preservation.”—Pall Mall Gazette, July 7th, 1876.

“The story of George Widowson, aged fifty-seven, told at the inquest held on his remains at Mile End Old Town on Wednesday, is worth recording. Widowson was, as appears by the evidence of his daughter, a sober, hard-working man until he was sent to prison for three days in last December in default of paying a fine for not sending his son, a boy eleven years of age, to school. The deceased, as several witnesses deposed, constantly endeavoured to make the child go to school, and had frequently taken him there himself; but it was all in vain. Young Widowson when taken to school invariably ran away, the result being that his father was driven to distraction. His imprisonment in December had preyed on his mind, and he took to drinking. He frequently threatened to destroy himself rather than be imprisoned again. Hearing that another summons was about to be issued against him, he broke up his home, and on[370]the night of the 30th ultimo solved the educational problem by throwing himself into the Regent’s Canal. Fear of being again sent to prison by the School Board was, his daughter believed, the cause of his committing this act. The jury returned a verdict in accordance of this opinion; and although George Widowson was wrong to escape from the clutches of the friends of humanity by putting an end to his life, those who blame him should remember that imprisonment to abonâ fideworking man of irreproachable character, is simply torture. He loses all that in his own eyes makes life worth preservation.”—Pall Mall Gazette, July 7th, 1876.

V. The next extract contains some wholesome comments on our more advanced system of modern education.

“Indian Civil Service.—At a meeting of the Indian section of the Society of Arts, under the presidency of Mr. Andrew Cassels, a paper on ‘Competition and its Effects upon Education’ was read by Dr. George Birdwood. In the course of his remarks, he commented at length upon the India Office despatch of Feb. 24, regarding ‘the selection and training of candidates for the Indian Civil Service,’ and feared that it would but serve to confirm and aggravate and rapidly extend the very worst evil of the old system of competition—namely, the degeneration of secondary education throughout England.… The despatch tended to make over all the secondary schooling of the country to the crammers, or to reduce it to the crammers’ system. They were making the entrance examinations year by year more and more difficult—as their first object must necessarily now be, not the moral and intellectual discipline of the boyhood of England, but to show an ever-growing percentage of success at the various competitive examinations always going on for public services. ‘The devil take the hindermost’[371]was fast becoming the ideal of education, even in the public schools. If they seriously took to cramming little fellows from twelve to fourteen for entrance into public schools, the rising generation would be used up before it reached manhood. A well-known physician, of great experience, told him that the competition for all sorts of scholarships and appointments was showing its evil fruits in the increase of insanity, epilepsy, and other nervous diseases amongst young people of the age from seventeen to nineteen, and especially amongst pupil-teachers; and if admission into the public schools of England was for the future to be regulated by competition, St. Vitus’s dance would soon take the place of gout, as the fashionable disease of the upper classes. This was the inevitable result of the ill-digested and ill-regulated system of competition for the public services, and especially the Indian Civil Service, which had prevailed; and he feared that the recent despatch would only be to hasten the threatened revolution in their national secondary schools, and the last state of cramming under the despatch would be worse than the first.… The best of examiners was the examiner of his own pupils; for no man could measure real knowledge like the teacher. What should be aimed at was regular moderate study and sound and continuous discipline to start the growing man in life in the healthiest bodily and moral condition possible. He objected to children striving for prizes, whether in games or in studies. The fewer prizes won at school, the more would probably be won in life. Let their only anxiety be to educate their children well, and suffer no temptation to betray them into cramming, and the whole world was open to them.”—Daily Telegraph.

“Indian Civil Service.—At a meeting of the Indian section of the Society of Arts, under the presidency of Mr. Andrew Cassels, a paper on ‘Competition and its Effects upon Education’ was read by Dr. George Birdwood. In the course of his remarks, he commented at length upon the India Office despatch of Feb. 24, regarding ‘the selection and training of candidates for the Indian Civil Service,’ and feared that it would but serve to confirm and aggravate and rapidly extend the very worst evil of the old system of competition—namely, the degeneration of secondary education throughout England.… The despatch tended to make over all the secondary schooling of the country to the crammers, or to reduce it to the crammers’ system. They were making the entrance examinations year by year more and more difficult—as their first object must necessarily now be, not the moral and intellectual discipline of the boyhood of England, but to show an ever-growing percentage of success at the various competitive examinations always going on for public services. ‘The devil take the hindermost’[371]was fast becoming the ideal of education, even in the public schools. If they seriously took to cramming little fellows from twelve to fourteen for entrance into public schools, the rising generation would be used up before it reached manhood. A well-known physician, of great experience, told him that the competition for all sorts of scholarships and appointments was showing its evil fruits in the increase of insanity, epilepsy, and other nervous diseases amongst young people of the age from seventeen to nineteen, and especially amongst pupil-teachers; and if admission into the public schools of England was for the future to be regulated by competition, St. Vitus’s dance would soon take the place of gout, as the fashionable disease of the upper classes. This was the inevitable result of the ill-digested and ill-regulated system of competition for the public services, and especially the Indian Civil Service, which had prevailed; and he feared that the recent despatch would only be to hasten the threatened revolution in their national secondary schools, and the last state of cramming under the despatch would be worse than the first.… The best of examiners was the examiner of his own pupils; for no man could measure real knowledge like the teacher. What should be aimed at was regular moderate study and sound and continuous discipline to start the growing man in life in the healthiest bodily and moral condition possible. He objected to children striving for prizes, whether in games or in studies. The fewer prizes won at school, the more would probably be won in life. Let their only anxiety be to educate their children well, and suffer no temptation to betray them into cramming, and the whole world was open to them.”—Daily Telegraph.

VI. The development of ‘humanity’ in America is so brilliantly illustrated in the following paragraphs, that I have thought them worth preserving:—[372]

From ‘The American Socialist, devoted to the Enlargement and Perfection of Home.’

“THE FUTURE OF SOCIETY.

“An American, visiting Europe, notices how completely there the various functions of the social body are performed. He finds a servant, an officer, a skilled workman, at every place. From the position of the stone-breaker on the highway, up to that of the highest Government official, every post is filled; every personal want of the traveller or the citizen is attended to. Policemen guard him in the streets, lackeys watch for his bidding at the hotels, railroad officials with almost superfluous care forward him on his way. As compared with American railroad management, the great English roads probably have fouremployésto our one. This plentitude of service results from three things—viz., density of population, which gives an abundant working class; cheapness of labour; and the aristocratic formation of society that tends to fix persons in the caste to which they were born. The effect is to produce a smoothness in the social movement—an absence of jar and friction, and a release in many cases from anxious, personal outlook, that are very agreeable. The difference between English and American life in respect to the supply of service is like that between riding on a highly-finished macadamized way, where every rut is filled and every stone is removed, and picking one’s way over our common country roads.

“Another thing that the traveller observes in Europe is the abundance everywhere of works of art. One’s sense of beauty is continually gratified; now with a finished landscape, now with a noble building, now with statues, monuments, and paintings. This immense accumulation of art springs in part of course from the age of the nations where it is found; but it is also due in a very great degree to the employment given to artists by[373]persons of wealth and leisure. Painting, sculpture, and architecture have always had constant, and sometimes munificent, patrons in the nobility and the Established Church.

“Observing these things abroad, the American asks himself whether the institutions of this country are likely to produce in time any similar result here. Shall we have the finished organization, the mutual service, and the wealth of art that characterize European society? Before answering this, let us first ask ourselves whether it is desirable that we should have them in the same manner that they exist abroad? Certainly not. No American would be willing to pay the price which England pays for her system of service. The most painful thing which one sees abroad is the utter absence of ambition in the class of household servants. Men who in this country would be looking to a seat in the legislature,9and who would qualify themselves for it, there dawdle away life in the livery of some noble, in smiling, aimless, do-nothing content, and beget children to follow in their steps. On seeing these servile figures, the American thanks heaven that the ocean rolls between his country and such a system. Rather rudeness, discomfort, self-service, and poverty, with freedom and the fire of aspiration, than luxury purchased by the enervation of man!

“Still, cannot we have the good without the bad? Cannot we match Europe in culture and polish without sacrificing for it our manhood? And if so, what are the influences in this country that are working in that direction? In answering this question, we have to say frankly that we see nothing in democracy alone that promises to produce the result under consideration. In a country where every one is taught to disdain a situation[374]of dependence, where the hostler and the chambermaid see the way opened for them to stand even with the best in the land, if they will but exercise their privilege of ‘getting on,’ there will be no permanent or perfect service. And so long as every man’s possessions are divided and scattered at his death, there will be no class having the secured leisure and the inducement to form galleries of art. Why should John Smith take pains to decorate his house with works of art, when he knows that within a year after his death it will be administered upon by the Probate Court, and sold with its furniture for the benefit of his ten children?” (Well put,—republican sage.)

“In a word, looking at the æsthetic side of things, our American system must be confessed to be not yet quite perfect.” (You don’t say so!) “Invaluable as it is for schooling men to independence and aspiration, it requires, to complete its usefulness, another element. The Republic has a sequel. That completing element, that sequel, is Communism. Communism supplies exactly the conditions that are wanting in the social life of America, and which it must have if it would compete with foreign lands in the development of those things which give ease and grace to existence.

“For instance, in respect to service: Communism, by extinguishing caste and honouring labour, makes every man at once a servant and lord. It fills up, by its capacity of minute organization, all the social functions as completely as the European system does; while, unlike that, it provides for each individual sufficient leisure, and frequent and improving changes of occupation. The person who serves in the kitchen this hour may be experimenting with a microscope or giving lessons on the piano the next. Applying its combined ingenuity to social needs, Communism will find means to consign all repulsive and injurious labour to machinery. It is continually interested to promote labour-saving improvements. The service that is performed[375]by brothers and equals from motives of love will be more perfect than that of hired lackeys, while the constantly varying round of occupation granted to all will form the most perfect school for breadth of culture and true politeness. Thus Communism achieves through friendship and freedom that which the Old World secures only through a system little better than slavery.

“In the interest of art and the cultivation of the beautiful, Communism again supplies the place of a hereditary aristocracy and a wealthy church. A Community family, unlike the ephemeral households of ordinary society, is a permanent thing. Its edifice is not liable to be sold at the end of every generation, but like a cathedral descends by unbroken inheritance. Whatever is committed to it remains, and is the care of the society from century to century. With a home thus established, all the members of a Community are at once interested to gather about it objects of art. It becomes a picture-gallery and a museum, by the natural accretion of time, and by the zeal of persons who know that every embellishment added to their home will not only be a pleasure to them personally, but will remain to associate them with the pleasure of future beholders in all time to come.

“Thus in Communism we have the conditions that are necessary to carry this country to the summit of artistic and social culture. By this route, we may at one bound outstrip the laboured attainments of the aristocracies of the Old World. The New York Central Park shows what can be achieved by combination on the democratic plan, for a public pleasure-ground. No other park is equal to it. Let this principle of combination be extended to the formation of homes as well as to municipal affairs, and we shall simply dot this country over with establishments10as much[376]better than those of the nobles of England as they are better than those of a day-labourer. We say better, for they will make art and luxury minister to universal education, and they will replace menial service with downright brotherhood. Such must be the future of American society.”

“To the Editor of the ‘American Socialist.’

“In your first issue you raise the question, ‘How large ought a Home to be?’ This is a question of great interest to all; and I trust the accumulated answers you will receive will aid in its solution.

“I have lived in homes varying in numbers from one (the bachelor’s home) to several hundred; and my experience and observation lead me to regard one hundred and twenty-five as about the right number to form a complete home. I would not have less than seventy-five nor more than one hundred and fifty. In my opinion a Home should minister to all the needs of its members, spiritual, intellectual, social, and physical. This ordinary monogamic homes cannot do; hence resort is had to churches, colleges, club-rooms, theatres, etc.; and in sparsely settled regions of country, people are put to great inconvenience and compelled to go great distances to supply cravings as imperative as the hunger for bread. This view alone would not limit the number of persons constituting a Home; but I take the ground that in a perfect Home there will be a perfect blending of all interests and perfect vibration in unison of all hearts; and of course thorough mutual acquaintance. My experience and observation convince me that it is exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, to secure these results in a family of over one hundred and fifty members.

“In simply a monetary view it is undoubtedly best to have large Homes of a thousand or more; but money should not have great weight in comparison with a man’s spiritual, intellectual, and social needs.—D. E. S.”[377]

1The primary form in which the legend shows itself is a Nature myth, in which Ursula is the Bud of flowers, enclosed in its rough or hairy calyx, and her husband, Æther—the air of spring. She opens into lovely life with ‘eleven’ thousand other flowers—their fading is their sudden martyrdom. And—says your modern philosopher—‘That’s all’!↑2Correspondence, Article VI.↑3Compare the last page of Fors, October 1875.↑4I. Servant. II. Master. III. Lord. IV. Duke.↑5I want to write a long note on Byzantine empire,—Commanders of the Faithful,—Grand Turks,—and the “Eastern question.” But can’t: and perhaps the reader will be thankful.↑6This Life of St. Ursula has been gathered from some of the stories concerning her which were current through Italy in the time of Carpaccio. The northern form of the legend, localized at Cologne, is neither so lovely nor so ancient.↑7Molto incarnalmente.↑8I could not see this symbol at the height at which the picture hung from the ground, when I described it in 1872. The folds of the drapery in thehandare all but invisible, even when the picture is seen close; and so neutral in their gray-green colour that they pass imperceptibly into violet, as the faint green of evening sky fades into its purple. But the folds are continued under the wrist in the alternate waves which the reader may see on the Etruscan tomb in the first room of the British Museum, with a sculpturesque severity which I could not then understand, and could only account for by supposing that Carpaccio had meant the Princess to “dream out the angel’s dress so particularly”! I mistook the fillet of victory also for a scroll; and could not make out the flowers in the window. They are pinks, the favourite ones in Italian windows to this day, and having a particular relation to St. Ursula in the way they rend their calyx; and I believe also in their peculiar relation to the grasses, (of which more in ‘Proserpina’). St. Ursula is not meant, herself, to recognize the angel. He enters under the door over which she has put her little statue of Venus; and through that door the room is filled with light, so that it will not seem to her strange[359]that his own form, as he enters, should be in shade: and she cannot see his dark wings. On the tassel of her pillow, (Etrurian also,) is written “Infantia”; and above her head, the carving of the bed ends in a spiral flame, typical of the finally ascending Spirit. She lies on her bier, in the last picture but one, exactly as here on her bed; only the coverlid is there changed from scarlet to pale violet. See notes on the meaning of these colours in third ‘Deucalion.’↑9May St. George be informed of how many members the American Legislature is finally to be composed; and over whom it is to exercise the proud function of legislation, which is to be the reward of heroic and rightly-minded flunkeys?↑10As a painter, no less than a philanthropist, I am curious to see the effect of scenery, in these ‘polite’ terms of description, “dotted over with establishments.”↑

1The primary form in which the legend shows itself is a Nature myth, in which Ursula is the Bud of flowers, enclosed in its rough or hairy calyx, and her husband, Æther—the air of spring. She opens into lovely life with ‘eleven’ thousand other flowers—their fading is their sudden martyrdom. And—says your modern philosopher—‘That’s all’!↑2Correspondence, Article VI.↑3Compare the last page of Fors, October 1875.↑4I. Servant. II. Master. III. Lord. IV. Duke.↑5I want to write a long note on Byzantine empire,—Commanders of the Faithful,—Grand Turks,—and the “Eastern question.” But can’t: and perhaps the reader will be thankful.↑6This Life of St. Ursula has been gathered from some of the stories concerning her which were current through Italy in the time of Carpaccio. The northern form of the legend, localized at Cologne, is neither so lovely nor so ancient.↑7Molto incarnalmente.↑8I could not see this symbol at the height at which the picture hung from the ground, when I described it in 1872. The folds of the drapery in thehandare all but invisible, even when the picture is seen close; and so neutral in their gray-green colour that they pass imperceptibly into violet, as the faint green of evening sky fades into its purple. But the folds are continued under the wrist in the alternate waves which the reader may see on the Etruscan tomb in the first room of the British Museum, with a sculpturesque severity which I could not then understand, and could only account for by supposing that Carpaccio had meant the Princess to “dream out the angel’s dress so particularly”! I mistook the fillet of victory also for a scroll; and could not make out the flowers in the window. They are pinks, the favourite ones in Italian windows to this day, and having a particular relation to St. Ursula in the way they rend their calyx; and I believe also in their peculiar relation to the grasses, (of which more in ‘Proserpina’). St. Ursula is not meant, herself, to recognize the angel. He enters under the door over which she has put her little statue of Venus; and through that door the room is filled with light, so that it will not seem to her strange[359]that his own form, as he enters, should be in shade: and she cannot see his dark wings. On the tassel of her pillow, (Etrurian also,) is written “Infantia”; and above her head, the carving of the bed ends in a spiral flame, typical of the finally ascending Spirit. She lies on her bier, in the last picture but one, exactly as here on her bed; only the coverlid is there changed from scarlet to pale violet. See notes on the meaning of these colours in third ‘Deucalion.’↑9May St. George be informed of how many members the American Legislature is finally to be composed; and over whom it is to exercise the proud function of legislation, which is to be the reward of heroic and rightly-minded flunkeys?↑10As a painter, no less than a philanthropist, I am curious to see the effect of scenery, in these ‘polite’ terms of description, “dotted over with establishments.”↑

1The primary form in which the legend shows itself is a Nature myth, in which Ursula is the Bud of flowers, enclosed in its rough or hairy calyx, and her husband, Æther—the air of spring. She opens into lovely life with ‘eleven’ thousand other flowers—their fading is their sudden martyrdom. And—says your modern philosopher—‘That’s all’!↑

1The primary form in which the legend shows itself is a Nature myth, in which Ursula is the Bud of flowers, enclosed in its rough or hairy calyx, and her husband, Æther—the air of spring. She opens into lovely life with ‘eleven’ thousand other flowers—their fading is their sudden martyrdom. And—says your modern philosopher—‘That’s all’!↑

2Correspondence, Article VI.↑

2Correspondence, Article VI.↑

3Compare the last page of Fors, October 1875.↑

3Compare the last page of Fors, October 1875.↑

4I. Servant. II. Master. III. Lord. IV. Duke.↑

4I. Servant. II. Master. III. Lord. IV. Duke.↑

5I want to write a long note on Byzantine empire,—Commanders of the Faithful,—Grand Turks,—and the “Eastern question.” But can’t: and perhaps the reader will be thankful.↑

5I want to write a long note on Byzantine empire,—Commanders of the Faithful,—Grand Turks,—and the “Eastern question.” But can’t: and perhaps the reader will be thankful.↑

6This Life of St. Ursula has been gathered from some of the stories concerning her which were current through Italy in the time of Carpaccio. The northern form of the legend, localized at Cologne, is neither so lovely nor so ancient.↑

6This Life of St. Ursula has been gathered from some of the stories concerning her which were current through Italy in the time of Carpaccio. The northern form of the legend, localized at Cologne, is neither so lovely nor so ancient.↑

7Molto incarnalmente.↑

7Molto incarnalmente.↑

8I could not see this symbol at the height at which the picture hung from the ground, when I described it in 1872. The folds of the drapery in thehandare all but invisible, even when the picture is seen close; and so neutral in their gray-green colour that they pass imperceptibly into violet, as the faint green of evening sky fades into its purple. But the folds are continued under the wrist in the alternate waves which the reader may see on the Etruscan tomb in the first room of the British Museum, with a sculpturesque severity which I could not then understand, and could only account for by supposing that Carpaccio had meant the Princess to “dream out the angel’s dress so particularly”! I mistook the fillet of victory also for a scroll; and could not make out the flowers in the window. They are pinks, the favourite ones in Italian windows to this day, and having a particular relation to St. Ursula in the way they rend their calyx; and I believe also in their peculiar relation to the grasses, (of which more in ‘Proserpina’). St. Ursula is not meant, herself, to recognize the angel. He enters under the door over which she has put her little statue of Venus; and through that door the room is filled with light, so that it will not seem to her strange[359]that his own form, as he enters, should be in shade: and she cannot see his dark wings. On the tassel of her pillow, (Etrurian also,) is written “Infantia”; and above her head, the carving of the bed ends in a spiral flame, typical of the finally ascending Spirit. She lies on her bier, in the last picture but one, exactly as here on her bed; only the coverlid is there changed from scarlet to pale violet. See notes on the meaning of these colours in third ‘Deucalion.’↑

8I could not see this symbol at the height at which the picture hung from the ground, when I described it in 1872. The folds of the drapery in thehandare all but invisible, even when the picture is seen close; and so neutral in their gray-green colour that they pass imperceptibly into violet, as the faint green of evening sky fades into its purple. But the folds are continued under the wrist in the alternate waves which the reader may see on the Etruscan tomb in the first room of the British Museum, with a sculpturesque severity which I could not then understand, and could only account for by supposing that Carpaccio had meant the Princess to “dream out the angel’s dress so particularly”! I mistook the fillet of victory also for a scroll; and could not make out the flowers in the window. They are pinks, the favourite ones in Italian windows to this day, and having a particular relation to St. Ursula in the way they rend their calyx; and I believe also in their peculiar relation to the grasses, (of which more in ‘Proserpina’). St. Ursula is not meant, herself, to recognize the angel. He enters under the door over which she has put her little statue of Venus; and through that door the room is filled with light, so that it will not seem to her strange[359]that his own form, as he enters, should be in shade: and she cannot see his dark wings. On the tassel of her pillow, (Etrurian also,) is written “Infantia”; and above her head, the carving of the bed ends in a spiral flame, typical of the finally ascending Spirit. She lies on her bier, in the last picture but one, exactly as here on her bed; only the coverlid is there changed from scarlet to pale violet. See notes on the meaning of these colours in third ‘Deucalion.’↑

9May St. George be informed of how many members the American Legislature is finally to be composed; and over whom it is to exercise the proud function of legislation, which is to be the reward of heroic and rightly-minded flunkeys?↑

9May St. George be informed of how many members the American Legislature is finally to be composed; and over whom it is to exercise the proud function of legislation, which is to be the reward of heroic and rightly-minded flunkeys?↑

10As a painter, no less than a philanthropist, I am curious to see the effect of scenery, in these ‘polite’ terms of description, “dotted over with establishments.”↑

10As a painter, no less than a philanthropist, I am curious to see the effect of scenery, in these ‘polite’ terms of description, “dotted over with establishments.”↑

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