FORS CLAVIGERA.

FORS CLAVIGERA.LETTER LXIV.I will begin my letter to-day with our Bible lesson, out of which other necessary lessons will spring. We must take the remaining three sons of Ham together, in relation to each other and to Israel.Mizraim, the Egyptian; Phut, the Ethiopian; Sidon, the Sidonian: or, in breadth of meaning the three African powers,—A, of the watered plain, B, of the desert, and C, of the sea; the latter throning itself on the opposite rocks of Tyre, and returning to culminate in Carthage.A. Egypt is essentially the Hamite slavishstrengthof body and intellect.B. Ethiopia, the Hamite slavishafflictionof body and intellect; condemnation of the darkened race that can no more change its skin than the leopard its spots; yet capable, in its desolation of nobleness. Read the “What doth hinder me to be baptized?—If thou believest with all thine heart thou mayest” of the[110]Acts; and after that the description in the ‘Daily Telegraph’ (first Monday of March), of the Nubian king, with his sword and his Bible at his right hand, and the tame lioness with her cubs, for his playmates, at his left.C. Tyre is the Hamite slavishpleasureof sensual and idolatrous art, clothing her nakedness with sea purple. She is lady of all beautiful carnal pride, and of the commerce that feeds it,—her power over the Israelite being to beguile, or help for pay, as Hiram.But Ethiopia and Tyre are always connected with each other: Tyre, the queen of commerce; Ethiopia, her gold-bringing slave; the redemption of these being Christ’s utmost victory. “They of Tyre, with the Morians—there, eventhere, was He born.” “Then shall princes come out of Egypt, and Ethiopia stretch forth her hands unto God.” “He shall let go my captives, not for price; and thelabourof Egypt, andmerchandiseof Ethiopia, shall come over unto thee, and shall be thine.”1Learn now after the fifteenth, also the sixteenth verse of Genesis x., and read the fifteenth chapter with extreme care. If you have a good memory, learn it by heart from beginning to end; it is one of the most sublime and pregnant passages in the entirecompassof ancient literature.[111]Then understand generally that the spiritual meaning of Egyptian slavery islabour without hope, but having all the reward, and all the safety, of labour absolute. Its beginning is to discipline and adorn the body,—its end is to embalm the body; its religion is first to restrain, then to judge, “whatsoever things are done in the body, whether they be good or evil.” Therefore, whatever may be well done by measure and weight,—what force may be in geometry, mechanism, and agriculture, bodily exercise, and dress; reverent esteem of earthly birds, and beasts, and vegetables; reverent preparation of pottage, good with flesh;—these shall Egypt teach and practise, to her much comfort and power. “And when Jacob heard that there was corn in Egypt, he called his sons.”And now remember the scene at the threshing floor of Atad (Gen. 50th, 10 and 11).“A grievous mourning.” They embalmed Jacob. They put him in a coffin. They dutifully bore him home, for his son’s sake. Whatsoever may well be done of earthly deed, they do by him and his race. And the end of it all, forthem, is a grievous mourning.Then, for corollary, remember,—all fear of death, and embalming of death, and contemplating of death, and mourning for death, is the pure bondage of Egypt.And whatsoever is formal, literal, miserable, material, in the deeds of human life, is the preparatory bondage of Egypt; of which, nevertheless, some formalism, some[112]literalism, some misery, and some flesh-pot comfort, will always be needful for the education of such beasts as we are. So that, though, when Israel was a child, God loved him, and called his son out of Egypt, He preparatorily sent himintoEgypt. And the first deliverer of Israel had to know the wisdom of Egypt before the wisdom of Arabia; and for the last deliverer of Israel, the dawn of infant thought, and the first vision of the earth He came to save, was under the palms of Nile.Now, therefore, also for all of us, Christians in our nascent state of muddy childhood, when Professor Huxley is asking ironically, ‘Has a frog a soul?’ and scientifically directing young ladies to cut out frogs’ stomachs to see if they can find it,—whatsoever, I say, in our necessary education among that scientific slime of Nile, is formal, literal, miserable, andmaterial, is necessarily Egyptian.As, for instance, brickmaking, scripture, flogging, and cooking,—upon which four heads of necessary art I take leave to descant a little.And first of brickmaking. Every following day the beautiful arrangements of modern political economists, obeying the law of covetousness instead of the law of God, send me more letters from gentlemen and ladies asking me ‘how they are to live’?Well, my refined friends, you will find it needful to live, if it be with success, according to God’s Law; and to love that law, and make it your meditation all[113]the day. And the first uttered article in it is, “In the sweat of thy face thou shalt eat bread.”“But you don’t really expect us to work with our hands, and make ourselves hot?”Why, who, in the name of Him who made you, are you then, that you shouldn’t? Have you got past the flaming sword, back into Eden; and is your celestial opinion there that we miserable Egyptians are to work outside, here, foryourdinners, and hand them through the wall to you at a tourniquet? or, as being yet true servants of the devil, while you are blessed, dish it up to you, spiritually hot, through a trap-door?Fine anti-slavery people you are, forsooth! who think it is right not only to make slaves, butaccursedslaves, of other people, that you may slip your dainty necks out of the collar!“Ah, but we thought Christ’s yoke hadnocollar!”It is time to know better. There may come a day, indeed, when there shall be no more curse;—in the meantime, you must be humble and honest enough to take your share of it.So whatcanyou do, that’s useful? Not to ask too much at first; and, since we are now coming to particulars, addressing myself first to gentlemen,—Do you think you can make a brick, or a tile?You rather think not? Well, if you are healthy, and fit for work, and can do nothing better,—go and learn.[114]You would rather not? Very possibly: but you can’t have your dinner unless you do. And why would you so much rather not?“So ungentlemanly!”No; to beg your dinner, or steal it, is ungentlemanly. But there is nothing ungentlemanly, that I know of, in beating clay, and putting it in a mould.“But my wife wouldn’t like it!”Well, that’s a strong reason: you shouldn’t vex your wife, if you can help it; but why will she be vexed? If she is a nice English girl, she has pretty surely been repeating to herself, with great unction, for some years back, that highly popular verse,—“The trivial round, the common task,Will give us all we ought to ask,—Room to deny ourselves; a roadTo bring us daily nearer God.”And this, which I recommend, is not a trivial round, but an important square, of human business; and will certainly supply any quantity of room to deny yourselves in; and will bring you quite as near God as, for instance, writing lawyers’ letters to make appointments, and charging five shillings each for them. The only difference will be that, instead of getting five shillings for writing a letter, you will only get it for a day and a half’s sweat of the brow.“Oh, but my wife didn’t meanthatsort of ‘common task’ at all!”[115]No; but your wife didn’t know what she meant; neither did Mr. Keble. Women and clergymen have so long been in the habit of using pretty words without ever troubling themselves to understand them, that they now revolt from the effort, as if it were an impiety. So far as your wife had any meaning at all, it was that until she was made an angel of, and had nothing to do but be happy, and sing her flattering opinions of God for evermore,—dressing herself and her children becomingly, and leaving cards on her acquaintances, were sufficiently acceptable services to Him, for which trivial though they were, He would reward her with immediate dinner, and everlasting glory. That was your wife’s real notion of the matter, and modern Christian women’s generally, so far as they have got any notions at all under their bonnets, and the skins of the dead robins they have stuck in them,—the disgusting little savages. But that is by no means the way in which either your hands are to be delivered from making the pots, or her head from carrying them.Oh, but you will do it by deputy, and by help of capital, will you? Here is the Grand Junction Canal Brick, Tile, and Sanitary Pipe Company, Limited; Capital, £50,000, in 10,000 shares of £5 each; “formed for the purpose of purchasing and working an estate comprising fifty-eight acres of land known as the ‘Millpost Field,’ and ‘The Duddles,’ situate at Southall, in the county of Middlesex.” You will sit at home, serene[116]proprietor, not able, still less willing, to lift so much as a spadeful of Duddles yourself; but you will feed a certain number of brickmaking Ethiopian slaves thereon, as cheap as you can; and teach them to make bricks, as basely as they can; and you will put the meat out of their mouths into your own, and provide for their eternal salvation by gracious ministries from Uxbridge. A clerical friend of mine in that neighbourhood has, I hear, been greatly afflicted concerning the degenerate natures of brickmakers. Let him go and make, and burn, a pile or two with his own hands; he will thereby receive apocalyptic visions of a nature novel to his soul. And if he ever succeeds in making one good brick, (the clay must lie fallow in wind and sun two years before you touch it, my master Carlyle tells me,) he will have done a good deed for his generation which will be acknowledged in its day by the Stone of Israel, when the words of many a sermon will be counted against their utterers, every syllable as mere insolent breaking of the third commandment.In the meantime, it seems that no gracious ministries from Uxbridge, or elsewhere, can redeem this untoward generation of brickmakers. Like the navvies of Furness, (Letter XI., p. 5,) they are a fallen race, fit for nothing but to have dividends got out of them, and then be damned. My fine-lady friends resign themselves pacifically to that necessity, though greatly excited, I perceive, at present, concerning vivisection. In which[117]warmth of feeling they are perfectly right, if they would only also remember that England is spending some thirty millions of pounds a year in making machines for the vivisection, not of dogs, but men; nor is this expenditure at all for anatomical purposes; but, in the real root of it, merely to maintain the gentlemanly profession of the Army, and the ingenious profession of Engineers.Oh, but we don’t want to live by soldiering, any more than by brickmaking; behold, we are intellectual persons, and wish to live by literature.Well, it is a slavish trade,—true Hamite; nevertheless, if we will learn our elements in true Egyptian bondage, some good may come of it.For observe, my literary friends, the essential function of the slavish Egyptian, in the arts of the world, is to lose the picture in the letter; as the essential function of the Eleutherian Goth is to illuminate the letter into the picture.The Egyptian is therefore the scribe of scribes,—the supremely literary person of earth. The banks of Nile give him his rock volume: the reeds of Nile his paper roll. With cleaving chisel, and cloven reed, he writes thereon, exemplarily: the ark which his princess found among the paper reeds, is the true beginning of libraries,—Alexandrian, and all other. What you call Scripture, in special, coming out of it; the first portion written in Egyptian manner, (it is[118]said,) with the finger of God. Scribe and lawyer alike have too long forgotten the lesson,—come now and learn it again, of Theuth, with the ibis beak.2When next you are in London on a sunny morning, take leisure to walk into the old Egyptian gallery of the British Museum, after traversing which for a third of its length, you will find yourself in the midst of a group of four massy sarcophagi,—two on your left, two on your right. Assume that they are represented by the letters below, and that you are walking in the direction of the arrow, so that you have the sarcophagi A and B on your left, and the sarcophagi C and D on your right.In my new Elements of Drawing, I always letter the corners of a square all round thus, so that A C is always the diagonal, A B the upright side on the left, and A D the base.A diagram as described above.The sarcophagus A is a king’s; B, a scribe’s; C, a queen’s; and D, a priest’s.A is of a grand basaltic rock with veins full of agates, and white onyx,—the most wonderful piece of crag I know; B and C are of grey porphyry; D of red granite.The official information concerning sarcophagus A, (Nectabenes,) is to the effect that it dates from the 30th dynasty, or about 380B.C.B, (Hapimen,) of the 26th dynasty, or about 525.[119]C, (the Queen’s,) of the same dynasty and period.D, (Naskatu,) of the 27th dynasty, or about 500B.C.The three sarcophagi, then, B, C, and D, were, (we are told,) cut exactly at the time when, beyond the North Sea, Greek art, just before Marathon, was at its grandest.And if you look under the opened lid of the queen’s, you will see at the bottom of it the outline portrait, or rather symbol, of her, engraved, with the hawk for her crest, signifying what hope of immortality or power after death remained to her.But the manner of the engraving you must observe. This is all that the Egyptian Holbein could do on stone, after a thousand years at least of practised art; while the Greeks, who had little more than begun only two hundred years before, were already near to the strength of carving their Theseus, perfect for all time.This is the Hamite bondage in Art: of which the causes will teach themselves to us as we work, ourselves. Slavery is good for us in the beginning, and for writing-masters we can find no better than these Mizraimites: see what rich lines of Scripture they are, along the black edges of those tombs. To understand at all how well they are done, we must at once begin to do the like, in some sort ourselves.By the exercise given in Fors of January, if you have practised it, you have learned something of what[120]is meant by merit and demerit in a pure line, however produced. We must now consider of our tools a little.You can make a mark upon things in three ways—namely, by scratching them, painting on them with a brush, or letting liquid run on them out of a pen. Pencil or chalk marks are merely a kind of coarse painting with dry material.The primitive and simplest mark is the scratch or cut, which shall be our first mode of experiment. Take a somewhat blunt penknife, and a composition candle; and scratch or cut a fine line on it with the point of the knife, drawing the sharp edge of the knife towards you.Examine the trace produced through a magnifying glass, and you will find it is an angular ditch with a little ridge raised at its side, or sides, pressed out of it.Next, scratch the candle with the point of the knife, turning the side of the blade forwards: you will now cut a broader furrow, but the wax or composition will rise out of it before the knife in a beautiful spiral shaving, formed like the most lovely little crimped or gathered frill; which I’ve been trying to draw, but can’t; and ifyoucan, you will be far on the way to drawing spiral staircases, and many other pretty things.Nobody, so far as I have myself read, has yet clearly explained why a wood shaving, or continuously driven[121]portion of detached substance, should thus take a spiral course; nor why a substance like wax or water, capable of yielding to pressure, should rise or fall under a steady force in successive undulations. Leaving these questions for another time, observe that the first furrow, with the ridge at its side, represents the entire group of incised lines ploughed in soft grounds, the head of them all being the plough furrow itself. And the line produced by the flat side of the knife is the type of those produced by completeexcision, the true engraver’s.Next, instead of wax, take a surface of wood, and, drawing first as deep and steady a furrow in it as you can with the edge of the knife, proceed to deepen it by successive cuts.You will, of course, find that you must cut from the two sides, sloping to the middle, forming always a deeper angular ditch; but you will have difficulty in clearing all out neatly at the two ends.And if you think of it, you will perceive that the simplest conceivable excision of a clear and neat kind must be that produced by three cuts given triangularly.3For though you can’t clear out the hollow with two touches, you need not involve yourself in the complexity of four.[122]And unless you take great pains in keeping the three sides of this triangle equal, two will be longer than the third. So the type of the primitive incised mark is what grand persons call ‘cuneiform’—wedge-shaped.Elementary picture of a starfish.If you cut five such cuneiform incisions in a star group, thus, with a little circle connecting them in the middle, you will have the element of the decorative upper border both on the scribe’s coffin and the queen’s. You will also have an elementary picture of a starfish—or the portrait of the pentagonal and absorbent Adam and Eve who were your ancestors, according to Mr. Darwin.You will see, however, on the sarcophagi that the rays are not equidistant, but arranged so as to express vertical position,—of that afterwards; to-day observe only the manner of their cutting; and then on a flat surface of porphyry,—do the like yourself.You don’t know what porphyry is—nor where to get it? Write to Mr. Tennant, 149, Strand, and he will send you a little bit as cheap as he can. Then you must get a little vice to fix it, and a sharp-pointed little chisel, and a well-poised little hammer; and, when you have cut your asterisk, you will know more about Egypt than nine hundred and ninety-nine people out of a thousand,—Oxford scholars and all. Awaiting the result[123]of your experiment, I proceed to the other instrument of writing, the reed, or pen.Coloured manuscript text.Of which the essential power is that it can make a narrow stroke sideways, and a broad one when you press it open.Now our own current writing, I told you, is to be equal in thickness of line. You will find that method the quickest and servicablest. But in quite beautiful writing, the power of the pen is to be exhibited with decision; and of its purest and delicatest exertion, you will see the result on the opposite page; facsimile by Mr. Burgess, coloured afterwards by hand, from a piece of Lombardic writing, of about the eleventh century,—(I shall not say where the original is, because I don’t want it to be fingered)—which the scribe has entirely delighted in doing, and of which every line and touch is perfect in its kind. Copy it, with what precision you can, (and mind how you put in the little blue dash to thicken the s of Fides,) for in its perfect uprightness, exquisite use of the diamond-shaped touches obtained by mere pressure on the point, and reserved administration of colour, it is a model not to be surpassed; standing precisely half-way between old Latin letters and mediæval Gothic. The legend of it is—“Fides catholica edita ab AthanasioAlexandrie sedis episcopo.”Towards the better understanding of which Catholic[124]faith, another step may be made, if you will, by sending to Mr. Ward for the Etruscan Leucothea,4with Dionysus on her knees, which also stands just half-way in imagination, though only a quarter of the way in time, between the Egyptian Madonna, (Isis with Horus,) of fifteen hundred years before Christ, and the Florentine Madonna by Lippi, fifteen hundred years after Christ. Lippi, being true-bred Etruscan, simply raises the old sculpture into pure and sacred life, retaining all its forms, even to the spiral of the throne ornament, and the transgression of the figures on the bordering frame, acknowledging, in this subjection to the thoughts and laws of his ancestors, a nobler Catholic Faith than Athanasius wrote: faith, namely, in that one Lord by whose breath, from the beginning of creation, the children of men are born; and into whose hands, dying, they give up their spirit.This photograph of Etruscan art is therefore to be the second of our possessions, and means of study; affording us at once elements of art-practice in many directions, according to our strength; and as we began with drawing the beads of cap, and spiral of chair, in the Lippi, rather than the Madonna, so here it will be well to be sure we can draw the throne, before we try the Leucothea. Outline it first by the eye, then trace the original, to correct your drawing; and by the time[125]next Fors comes out, I hope your power of drawing a fine curve, like that of the back of this throne, will be materially increased; by that time also I shall have got spirals to compare with these Etruscan ones, drawn from shells only an hour or two old, sent me by my good friend Mr. Sillar, (who taught me the wrongness of the infinite spiral of money interest,) by which I am at present utterly puzzled, finding our conclusions in last Fors on this point of zoology quite wrong; and that the little snails have no less twisted houses than the large. But neither for drawing nor architecture is there to-day more time, but only to correct and clarify my accounts, which I have counted a little too far on my power of keeping perspicuous without trouble; and have thereby caused my subscribers and myself a good deal more than was needful.Henceforward I must ask their permission, unless I receive definite instruction to the contrary, to give names in full, as the subscriptions come in, and give up our occult notation.I am not quite so well pleased with my good friend Mr. Girdlestone’s pamphlet on luxury as I was with that on classification of society, though I am heartily glad to be enabled by him to distribute it to my readers, for its gentle statements may be more convincing than my impatient ones. But I must protest somewhat against their mildness. It is not now merely dangerous, but criminal, to teach the lie that the poor[126]live by the luxury of the rich. Able men—even Pope himself—have been betrayed into thinking so in old times, (blaming the luxury, however, no less,) but the assertion is now made by no intelligent person, unless with the deliberate purpose of disguising abuses on which all the selfish interests of society depend.I have to acknowledge a quite magnificent gift of Japanese inlaid work to our Sheffield Museum, from my kind friend Mr. Henry Willett, of Arnold House, Brighton. A series of some fifty pieces was offered by him for our selection: but I have only accepted a tithe of them, thinking that the fewer examples of each school we possess, the better we shall learn from them. Three out of the five pieces I have accepted are of quite unsurpassable beauty, and the two others of extreme interest. They are sent to the Curator at Sheffield.[127]1Psalm lxviii. 31; lxxxiii. 7 and 8; lxxxvii. 4; Isaiah xlv. 14. I am not sure of my interpretation of the 87th Psalm; but, as far as any significance exists in it to our present knowledge, it can only be of the power of the Nativity of Christ to save Rahab the harlot, Philistia the giant, Tyre the trader, and Ethiopia the slave.↑2Letter XVII., p. 6.↑3You may indeed dip softly into the ground and rise gradually out of it; but this will give you not a clear, but an infinitely graduated excision, exquisite in drawing, but not good for writing.↑4I take the title of this relief from Mr. Parker’s catalogue, not being certain of the subject myself, and rather conceiving it to be Latona with Apollo.↑

FORS CLAVIGERA.LETTER LXIV.

I will begin my letter to-day with our Bible lesson, out of which other necessary lessons will spring. We must take the remaining three sons of Ham together, in relation to each other and to Israel.Mizraim, the Egyptian; Phut, the Ethiopian; Sidon, the Sidonian: or, in breadth of meaning the three African powers,—A, of the watered plain, B, of the desert, and C, of the sea; the latter throning itself on the opposite rocks of Tyre, and returning to culminate in Carthage.A. Egypt is essentially the Hamite slavishstrengthof body and intellect.B. Ethiopia, the Hamite slavishafflictionof body and intellect; condemnation of the darkened race that can no more change its skin than the leopard its spots; yet capable, in its desolation of nobleness. Read the “What doth hinder me to be baptized?—If thou believest with all thine heart thou mayest” of the[110]Acts; and after that the description in the ‘Daily Telegraph’ (first Monday of March), of the Nubian king, with his sword and his Bible at his right hand, and the tame lioness with her cubs, for his playmates, at his left.C. Tyre is the Hamite slavishpleasureof sensual and idolatrous art, clothing her nakedness with sea purple. She is lady of all beautiful carnal pride, and of the commerce that feeds it,—her power over the Israelite being to beguile, or help for pay, as Hiram.But Ethiopia and Tyre are always connected with each other: Tyre, the queen of commerce; Ethiopia, her gold-bringing slave; the redemption of these being Christ’s utmost victory. “They of Tyre, with the Morians—there, eventhere, was He born.” “Then shall princes come out of Egypt, and Ethiopia stretch forth her hands unto God.” “He shall let go my captives, not for price; and thelabourof Egypt, andmerchandiseof Ethiopia, shall come over unto thee, and shall be thine.”1Learn now after the fifteenth, also the sixteenth verse of Genesis x., and read the fifteenth chapter with extreme care. If you have a good memory, learn it by heart from beginning to end; it is one of the most sublime and pregnant passages in the entirecompassof ancient literature.[111]Then understand generally that the spiritual meaning of Egyptian slavery islabour without hope, but having all the reward, and all the safety, of labour absolute. Its beginning is to discipline and adorn the body,—its end is to embalm the body; its religion is first to restrain, then to judge, “whatsoever things are done in the body, whether they be good or evil.” Therefore, whatever may be well done by measure and weight,—what force may be in geometry, mechanism, and agriculture, bodily exercise, and dress; reverent esteem of earthly birds, and beasts, and vegetables; reverent preparation of pottage, good with flesh;—these shall Egypt teach and practise, to her much comfort and power. “And when Jacob heard that there was corn in Egypt, he called his sons.”And now remember the scene at the threshing floor of Atad (Gen. 50th, 10 and 11).“A grievous mourning.” They embalmed Jacob. They put him in a coffin. They dutifully bore him home, for his son’s sake. Whatsoever may well be done of earthly deed, they do by him and his race. And the end of it all, forthem, is a grievous mourning.Then, for corollary, remember,—all fear of death, and embalming of death, and contemplating of death, and mourning for death, is the pure bondage of Egypt.And whatsoever is formal, literal, miserable, material, in the deeds of human life, is the preparatory bondage of Egypt; of which, nevertheless, some formalism, some[112]literalism, some misery, and some flesh-pot comfort, will always be needful for the education of such beasts as we are. So that, though, when Israel was a child, God loved him, and called his son out of Egypt, He preparatorily sent himintoEgypt. And the first deliverer of Israel had to know the wisdom of Egypt before the wisdom of Arabia; and for the last deliverer of Israel, the dawn of infant thought, and the first vision of the earth He came to save, was under the palms of Nile.Now, therefore, also for all of us, Christians in our nascent state of muddy childhood, when Professor Huxley is asking ironically, ‘Has a frog a soul?’ and scientifically directing young ladies to cut out frogs’ stomachs to see if they can find it,—whatsoever, I say, in our necessary education among that scientific slime of Nile, is formal, literal, miserable, andmaterial, is necessarily Egyptian.As, for instance, brickmaking, scripture, flogging, and cooking,—upon which four heads of necessary art I take leave to descant a little.And first of brickmaking. Every following day the beautiful arrangements of modern political economists, obeying the law of covetousness instead of the law of God, send me more letters from gentlemen and ladies asking me ‘how they are to live’?Well, my refined friends, you will find it needful to live, if it be with success, according to God’s Law; and to love that law, and make it your meditation all[113]the day. And the first uttered article in it is, “In the sweat of thy face thou shalt eat bread.”“But you don’t really expect us to work with our hands, and make ourselves hot?”Why, who, in the name of Him who made you, are you then, that you shouldn’t? Have you got past the flaming sword, back into Eden; and is your celestial opinion there that we miserable Egyptians are to work outside, here, foryourdinners, and hand them through the wall to you at a tourniquet? or, as being yet true servants of the devil, while you are blessed, dish it up to you, spiritually hot, through a trap-door?Fine anti-slavery people you are, forsooth! who think it is right not only to make slaves, butaccursedslaves, of other people, that you may slip your dainty necks out of the collar!“Ah, but we thought Christ’s yoke hadnocollar!”It is time to know better. There may come a day, indeed, when there shall be no more curse;—in the meantime, you must be humble and honest enough to take your share of it.So whatcanyou do, that’s useful? Not to ask too much at first; and, since we are now coming to particulars, addressing myself first to gentlemen,—Do you think you can make a brick, or a tile?You rather think not? Well, if you are healthy, and fit for work, and can do nothing better,—go and learn.[114]You would rather not? Very possibly: but you can’t have your dinner unless you do. And why would you so much rather not?“So ungentlemanly!”No; to beg your dinner, or steal it, is ungentlemanly. But there is nothing ungentlemanly, that I know of, in beating clay, and putting it in a mould.“But my wife wouldn’t like it!”Well, that’s a strong reason: you shouldn’t vex your wife, if you can help it; but why will she be vexed? If she is a nice English girl, she has pretty surely been repeating to herself, with great unction, for some years back, that highly popular verse,—“The trivial round, the common task,Will give us all we ought to ask,—Room to deny ourselves; a roadTo bring us daily nearer God.”And this, which I recommend, is not a trivial round, but an important square, of human business; and will certainly supply any quantity of room to deny yourselves in; and will bring you quite as near God as, for instance, writing lawyers’ letters to make appointments, and charging five shillings each for them. The only difference will be that, instead of getting five shillings for writing a letter, you will only get it for a day and a half’s sweat of the brow.“Oh, but my wife didn’t meanthatsort of ‘common task’ at all!”[115]No; but your wife didn’t know what she meant; neither did Mr. Keble. Women and clergymen have so long been in the habit of using pretty words without ever troubling themselves to understand them, that they now revolt from the effort, as if it were an impiety. So far as your wife had any meaning at all, it was that until she was made an angel of, and had nothing to do but be happy, and sing her flattering opinions of God for evermore,—dressing herself and her children becomingly, and leaving cards on her acquaintances, were sufficiently acceptable services to Him, for which trivial though they were, He would reward her with immediate dinner, and everlasting glory. That was your wife’s real notion of the matter, and modern Christian women’s generally, so far as they have got any notions at all under their bonnets, and the skins of the dead robins they have stuck in them,—the disgusting little savages. But that is by no means the way in which either your hands are to be delivered from making the pots, or her head from carrying them.Oh, but you will do it by deputy, and by help of capital, will you? Here is the Grand Junction Canal Brick, Tile, and Sanitary Pipe Company, Limited; Capital, £50,000, in 10,000 shares of £5 each; “formed for the purpose of purchasing and working an estate comprising fifty-eight acres of land known as the ‘Millpost Field,’ and ‘The Duddles,’ situate at Southall, in the county of Middlesex.” You will sit at home, serene[116]proprietor, not able, still less willing, to lift so much as a spadeful of Duddles yourself; but you will feed a certain number of brickmaking Ethiopian slaves thereon, as cheap as you can; and teach them to make bricks, as basely as they can; and you will put the meat out of their mouths into your own, and provide for their eternal salvation by gracious ministries from Uxbridge. A clerical friend of mine in that neighbourhood has, I hear, been greatly afflicted concerning the degenerate natures of brickmakers. Let him go and make, and burn, a pile or two with his own hands; he will thereby receive apocalyptic visions of a nature novel to his soul. And if he ever succeeds in making one good brick, (the clay must lie fallow in wind and sun two years before you touch it, my master Carlyle tells me,) he will have done a good deed for his generation which will be acknowledged in its day by the Stone of Israel, when the words of many a sermon will be counted against their utterers, every syllable as mere insolent breaking of the third commandment.In the meantime, it seems that no gracious ministries from Uxbridge, or elsewhere, can redeem this untoward generation of brickmakers. Like the navvies of Furness, (Letter XI., p. 5,) they are a fallen race, fit for nothing but to have dividends got out of them, and then be damned. My fine-lady friends resign themselves pacifically to that necessity, though greatly excited, I perceive, at present, concerning vivisection. In which[117]warmth of feeling they are perfectly right, if they would only also remember that England is spending some thirty millions of pounds a year in making machines for the vivisection, not of dogs, but men; nor is this expenditure at all for anatomical purposes; but, in the real root of it, merely to maintain the gentlemanly profession of the Army, and the ingenious profession of Engineers.Oh, but we don’t want to live by soldiering, any more than by brickmaking; behold, we are intellectual persons, and wish to live by literature.Well, it is a slavish trade,—true Hamite; nevertheless, if we will learn our elements in true Egyptian bondage, some good may come of it.For observe, my literary friends, the essential function of the slavish Egyptian, in the arts of the world, is to lose the picture in the letter; as the essential function of the Eleutherian Goth is to illuminate the letter into the picture.The Egyptian is therefore the scribe of scribes,—the supremely literary person of earth. The banks of Nile give him his rock volume: the reeds of Nile his paper roll. With cleaving chisel, and cloven reed, he writes thereon, exemplarily: the ark which his princess found among the paper reeds, is the true beginning of libraries,—Alexandrian, and all other. What you call Scripture, in special, coming out of it; the first portion written in Egyptian manner, (it is[118]said,) with the finger of God. Scribe and lawyer alike have too long forgotten the lesson,—come now and learn it again, of Theuth, with the ibis beak.2When next you are in London on a sunny morning, take leisure to walk into the old Egyptian gallery of the British Museum, after traversing which for a third of its length, you will find yourself in the midst of a group of four massy sarcophagi,—two on your left, two on your right. Assume that they are represented by the letters below, and that you are walking in the direction of the arrow, so that you have the sarcophagi A and B on your left, and the sarcophagi C and D on your right.In my new Elements of Drawing, I always letter the corners of a square all round thus, so that A C is always the diagonal, A B the upright side on the left, and A D the base.A diagram as described above.The sarcophagus A is a king’s; B, a scribe’s; C, a queen’s; and D, a priest’s.A is of a grand basaltic rock with veins full of agates, and white onyx,—the most wonderful piece of crag I know; B and C are of grey porphyry; D of red granite.The official information concerning sarcophagus A, (Nectabenes,) is to the effect that it dates from the 30th dynasty, or about 380B.C.B, (Hapimen,) of the 26th dynasty, or about 525.[119]C, (the Queen’s,) of the same dynasty and period.D, (Naskatu,) of the 27th dynasty, or about 500B.C.The three sarcophagi, then, B, C, and D, were, (we are told,) cut exactly at the time when, beyond the North Sea, Greek art, just before Marathon, was at its grandest.And if you look under the opened lid of the queen’s, you will see at the bottom of it the outline portrait, or rather symbol, of her, engraved, with the hawk for her crest, signifying what hope of immortality or power after death remained to her.But the manner of the engraving you must observe. This is all that the Egyptian Holbein could do on stone, after a thousand years at least of practised art; while the Greeks, who had little more than begun only two hundred years before, were already near to the strength of carving their Theseus, perfect for all time.This is the Hamite bondage in Art: of which the causes will teach themselves to us as we work, ourselves. Slavery is good for us in the beginning, and for writing-masters we can find no better than these Mizraimites: see what rich lines of Scripture they are, along the black edges of those tombs. To understand at all how well they are done, we must at once begin to do the like, in some sort ourselves.By the exercise given in Fors of January, if you have practised it, you have learned something of what[120]is meant by merit and demerit in a pure line, however produced. We must now consider of our tools a little.You can make a mark upon things in three ways—namely, by scratching them, painting on them with a brush, or letting liquid run on them out of a pen. Pencil or chalk marks are merely a kind of coarse painting with dry material.The primitive and simplest mark is the scratch or cut, which shall be our first mode of experiment. Take a somewhat blunt penknife, and a composition candle; and scratch or cut a fine line on it with the point of the knife, drawing the sharp edge of the knife towards you.Examine the trace produced through a magnifying glass, and you will find it is an angular ditch with a little ridge raised at its side, or sides, pressed out of it.Next, scratch the candle with the point of the knife, turning the side of the blade forwards: you will now cut a broader furrow, but the wax or composition will rise out of it before the knife in a beautiful spiral shaving, formed like the most lovely little crimped or gathered frill; which I’ve been trying to draw, but can’t; and ifyoucan, you will be far on the way to drawing spiral staircases, and many other pretty things.Nobody, so far as I have myself read, has yet clearly explained why a wood shaving, or continuously driven[121]portion of detached substance, should thus take a spiral course; nor why a substance like wax or water, capable of yielding to pressure, should rise or fall under a steady force in successive undulations. Leaving these questions for another time, observe that the first furrow, with the ridge at its side, represents the entire group of incised lines ploughed in soft grounds, the head of them all being the plough furrow itself. And the line produced by the flat side of the knife is the type of those produced by completeexcision, the true engraver’s.Next, instead of wax, take a surface of wood, and, drawing first as deep and steady a furrow in it as you can with the edge of the knife, proceed to deepen it by successive cuts.You will, of course, find that you must cut from the two sides, sloping to the middle, forming always a deeper angular ditch; but you will have difficulty in clearing all out neatly at the two ends.And if you think of it, you will perceive that the simplest conceivable excision of a clear and neat kind must be that produced by three cuts given triangularly.3For though you can’t clear out the hollow with two touches, you need not involve yourself in the complexity of four.[122]And unless you take great pains in keeping the three sides of this triangle equal, two will be longer than the third. So the type of the primitive incised mark is what grand persons call ‘cuneiform’—wedge-shaped.Elementary picture of a starfish.If you cut five such cuneiform incisions in a star group, thus, with a little circle connecting them in the middle, you will have the element of the decorative upper border both on the scribe’s coffin and the queen’s. You will also have an elementary picture of a starfish—or the portrait of the pentagonal and absorbent Adam and Eve who were your ancestors, according to Mr. Darwin.You will see, however, on the sarcophagi that the rays are not equidistant, but arranged so as to express vertical position,—of that afterwards; to-day observe only the manner of their cutting; and then on a flat surface of porphyry,—do the like yourself.You don’t know what porphyry is—nor where to get it? Write to Mr. Tennant, 149, Strand, and he will send you a little bit as cheap as he can. Then you must get a little vice to fix it, and a sharp-pointed little chisel, and a well-poised little hammer; and, when you have cut your asterisk, you will know more about Egypt than nine hundred and ninety-nine people out of a thousand,—Oxford scholars and all. Awaiting the result[123]of your experiment, I proceed to the other instrument of writing, the reed, or pen.Coloured manuscript text.Of which the essential power is that it can make a narrow stroke sideways, and a broad one when you press it open.Now our own current writing, I told you, is to be equal in thickness of line. You will find that method the quickest and servicablest. But in quite beautiful writing, the power of the pen is to be exhibited with decision; and of its purest and delicatest exertion, you will see the result on the opposite page; facsimile by Mr. Burgess, coloured afterwards by hand, from a piece of Lombardic writing, of about the eleventh century,—(I shall not say where the original is, because I don’t want it to be fingered)—which the scribe has entirely delighted in doing, and of which every line and touch is perfect in its kind. Copy it, with what precision you can, (and mind how you put in the little blue dash to thicken the s of Fides,) for in its perfect uprightness, exquisite use of the diamond-shaped touches obtained by mere pressure on the point, and reserved administration of colour, it is a model not to be surpassed; standing precisely half-way between old Latin letters and mediæval Gothic. The legend of it is—“Fides catholica edita ab AthanasioAlexandrie sedis episcopo.”Towards the better understanding of which Catholic[124]faith, another step may be made, if you will, by sending to Mr. Ward for the Etruscan Leucothea,4with Dionysus on her knees, which also stands just half-way in imagination, though only a quarter of the way in time, between the Egyptian Madonna, (Isis with Horus,) of fifteen hundred years before Christ, and the Florentine Madonna by Lippi, fifteen hundred years after Christ. Lippi, being true-bred Etruscan, simply raises the old sculpture into pure and sacred life, retaining all its forms, even to the spiral of the throne ornament, and the transgression of the figures on the bordering frame, acknowledging, in this subjection to the thoughts and laws of his ancestors, a nobler Catholic Faith than Athanasius wrote: faith, namely, in that one Lord by whose breath, from the beginning of creation, the children of men are born; and into whose hands, dying, they give up their spirit.This photograph of Etruscan art is therefore to be the second of our possessions, and means of study; affording us at once elements of art-practice in many directions, according to our strength; and as we began with drawing the beads of cap, and spiral of chair, in the Lippi, rather than the Madonna, so here it will be well to be sure we can draw the throne, before we try the Leucothea. Outline it first by the eye, then trace the original, to correct your drawing; and by the time[125]next Fors comes out, I hope your power of drawing a fine curve, like that of the back of this throne, will be materially increased; by that time also I shall have got spirals to compare with these Etruscan ones, drawn from shells only an hour or two old, sent me by my good friend Mr. Sillar, (who taught me the wrongness of the infinite spiral of money interest,) by which I am at present utterly puzzled, finding our conclusions in last Fors on this point of zoology quite wrong; and that the little snails have no less twisted houses than the large. But neither for drawing nor architecture is there to-day more time, but only to correct and clarify my accounts, which I have counted a little too far on my power of keeping perspicuous without trouble; and have thereby caused my subscribers and myself a good deal more than was needful.Henceforward I must ask their permission, unless I receive definite instruction to the contrary, to give names in full, as the subscriptions come in, and give up our occult notation.I am not quite so well pleased with my good friend Mr. Girdlestone’s pamphlet on luxury as I was with that on classification of society, though I am heartily glad to be enabled by him to distribute it to my readers, for its gentle statements may be more convincing than my impatient ones. But I must protest somewhat against their mildness. It is not now merely dangerous, but criminal, to teach the lie that the poor[126]live by the luxury of the rich. Able men—even Pope himself—have been betrayed into thinking so in old times, (blaming the luxury, however, no less,) but the assertion is now made by no intelligent person, unless with the deliberate purpose of disguising abuses on which all the selfish interests of society depend.I have to acknowledge a quite magnificent gift of Japanese inlaid work to our Sheffield Museum, from my kind friend Mr. Henry Willett, of Arnold House, Brighton. A series of some fifty pieces was offered by him for our selection: but I have only accepted a tithe of them, thinking that the fewer examples of each school we possess, the better we shall learn from them. Three out of the five pieces I have accepted are of quite unsurpassable beauty, and the two others of extreme interest. They are sent to the Curator at Sheffield.[127]

I will begin my letter to-day with our Bible lesson, out of which other necessary lessons will spring. We must take the remaining three sons of Ham together, in relation to each other and to Israel.

Mizraim, the Egyptian; Phut, the Ethiopian; Sidon, the Sidonian: or, in breadth of meaning the three African powers,—A, of the watered plain, B, of the desert, and C, of the sea; the latter throning itself on the opposite rocks of Tyre, and returning to culminate in Carthage.

A. Egypt is essentially the Hamite slavishstrengthof body and intellect.

B. Ethiopia, the Hamite slavishafflictionof body and intellect; condemnation of the darkened race that can no more change its skin than the leopard its spots; yet capable, in its desolation of nobleness. Read the “What doth hinder me to be baptized?—If thou believest with all thine heart thou mayest” of the[110]Acts; and after that the description in the ‘Daily Telegraph’ (first Monday of March), of the Nubian king, with his sword and his Bible at his right hand, and the tame lioness with her cubs, for his playmates, at his left.

C. Tyre is the Hamite slavishpleasureof sensual and idolatrous art, clothing her nakedness with sea purple. She is lady of all beautiful carnal pride, and of the commerce that feeds it,—her power over the Israelite being to beguile, or help for pay, as Hiram.

But Ethiopia and Tyre are always connected with each other: Tyre, the queen of commerce; Ethiopia, her gold-bringing slave; the redemption of these being Christ’s utmost victory. “They of Tyre, with the Morians—there, eventhere, was He born.” “Then shall princes come out of Egypt, and Ethiopia stretch forth her hands unto God.” “He shall let go my captives, not for price; and thelabourof Egypt, andmerchandiseof Ethiopia, shall come over unto thee, and shall be thine.”1

Learn now after the fifteenth, also the sixteenth verse of Genesis x., and read the fifteenth chapter with extreme care. If you have a good memory, learn it by heart from beginning to end; it is one of the most sublime and pregnant passages in the entirecompassof ancient literature.[111]

Then understand generally that the spiritual meaning of Egyptian slavery islabour without hope, but having all the reward, and all the safety, of labour absolute. Its beginning is to discipline and adorn the body,—its end is to embalm the body; its religion is first to restrain, then to judge, “whatsoever things are done in the body, whether they be good or evil.” Therefore, whatever may be well done by measure and weight,—what force may be in geometry, mechanism, and agriculture, bodily exercise, and dress; reverent esteem of earthly birds, and beasts, and vegetables; reverent preparation of pottage, good with flesh;—these shall Egypt teach and practise, to her much comfort and power. “And when Jacob heard that there was corn in Egypt, he called his sons.”

And now remember the scene at the threshing floor of Atad (Gen. 50th, 10 and 11).

“A grievous mourning.” They embalmed Jacob. They put him in a coffin. They dutifully bore him home, for his son’s sake. Whatsoever may well be done of earthly deed, they do by him and his race. And the end of it all, forthem, is a grievous mourning.

Then, for corollary, remember,—all fear of death, and embalming of death, and contemplating of death, and mourning for death, is the pure bondage of Egypt.

And whatsoever is formal, literal, miserable, material, in the deeds of human life, is the preparatory bondage of Egypt; of which, nevertheless, some formalism, some[112]literalism, some misery, and some flesh-pot comfort, will always be needful for the education of such beasts as we are. So that, though, when Israel was a child, God loved him, and called his son out of Egypt, He preparatorily sent himintoEgypt. And the first deliverer of Israel had to know the wisdom of Egypt before the wisdom of Arabia; and for the last deliverer of Israel, the dawn of infant thought, and the first vision of the earth He came to save, was under the palms of Nile.

Now, therefore, also for all of us, Christians in our nascent state of muddy childhood, when Professor Huxley is asking ironically, ‘Has a frog a soul?’ and scientifically directing young ladies to cut out frogs’ stomachs to see if they can find it,—whatsoever, I say, in our necessary education among that scientific slime of Nile, is formal, literal, miserable, andmaterial, is necessarily Egyptian.

As, for instance, brickmaking, scripture, flogging, and cooking,—upon which four heads of necessary art I take leave to descant a little.

And first of brickmaking. Every following day the beautiful arrangements of modern political economists, obeying the law of covetousness instead of the law of God, send me more letters from gentlemen and ladies asking me ‘how they are to live’?

Well, my refined friends, you will find it needful to live, if it be with success, according to God’s Law; and to love that law, and make it your meditation all[113]the day. And the first uttered article in it is, “In the sweat of thy face thou shalt eat bread.”

“But you don’t really expect us to work with our hands, and make ourselves hot?”

Why, who, in the name of Him who made you, are you then, that you shouldn’t? Have you got past the flaming sword, back into Eden; and is your celestial opinion there that we miserable Egyptians are to work outside, here, foryourdinners, and hand them through the wall to you at a tourniquet? or, as being yet true servants of the devil, while you are blessed, dish it up to you, spiritually hot, through a trap-door?

Fine anti-slavery people you are, forsooth! who think it is right not only to make slaves, butaccursedslaves, of other people, that you may slip your dainty necks out of the collar!

“Ah, but we thought Christ’s yoke hadnocollar!”

It is time to know better. There may come a day, indeed, when there shall be no more curse;—in the meantime, you must be humble and honest enough to take your share of it.

So whatcanyou do, that’s useful? Not to ask too much at first; and, since we are now coming to particulars, addressing myself first to gentlemen,—Do you think you can make a brick, or a tile?

You rather think not? Well, if you are healthy, and fit for work, and can do nothing better,—go and learn.[114]

You would rather not? Very possibly: but you can’t have your dinner unless you do. And why would you so much rather not?

“So ungentlemanly!”

No; to beg your dinner, or steal it, is ungentlemanly. But there is nothing ungentlemanly, that I know of, in beating clay, and putting it in a mould.

“But my wife wouldn’t like it!”

Well, that’s a strong reason: you shouldn’t vex your wife, if you can help it; but why will she be vexed? If she is a nice English girl, she has pretty surely been repeating to herself, with great unction, for some years back, that highly popular verse,—

“The trivial round, the common task,Will give us all we ought to ask,—Room to deny ourselves; a roadTo bring us daily nearer God.”

“The trivial round, the common task,

Will give us all we ought to ask,—

Room to deny ourselves; a road

To bring us daily nearer God.”

And this, which I recommend, is not a trivial round, but an important square, of human business; and will certainly supply any quantity of room to deny yourselves in; and will bring you quite as near God as, for instance, writing lawyers’ letters to make appointments, and charging five shillings each for them. The only difference will be that, instead of getting five shillings for writing a letter, you will only get it for a day and a half’s sweat of the brow.

“Oh, but my wife didn’t meanthatsort of ‘common task’ at all!”[115]

No; but your wife didn’t know what she meant; neither did Mr. Keble. Women and clergymen have so long been in the habit of using pretty words without ever troubling themselves to understand them, that they now revolt from the effort, as if it were an impiety. So far as your wife had any meaning at all, it was that until she was made an angel of, and had nothing to do but be happy, and sing her flattering opinions of God for evermore,—dressing herself and her children becomingly, and leaving cards on her acquaintances, were sufficiently acceptable services to Him, for which trivial though they were, He would reward her with immediate dinner, and everlasting glory. That was your wife’s real notion of the matter, and modern Christian women’s generally, so far as they have got any notions at all under their bonnets, and the skins of the dead robins they have stuck in them,—the disgusting little savages. But that is by no means the way in which either your hands are to be delivered from making the pots, or her head from carrying them.

Oh, but you will do it by deputy, and by help of capital, will you? Here is the Grand Junction Canal Brick, Tile, and Sanitary Pipe Company, Limited; Capital, £50,000, in 10,000 shares of £5 each; “formed for the purpose of purchasing and working an estate comprising fifty-eight acres of land known as the ‘Millpost Field,’ and ‘The Duddles,’ situate at Southall, in the county of Middlesex.” You will sit at home, serene[116]proprietor, not able, still less willing, to lift so much as a spadeful of Duddles yourself; but you will feed a certain number of brickmaking Ethiopian slaves thereon, as cheap as you can; and teach them to make bricks, as basely as they can; and you will put the meat out of their mouths into your own, and provide for their eternal salvation by gracious ministries from Uxbridge. A clerical friend of mine in that neighbourhood has, I hear, been greatly afflicted concerning the degenerate natures of brickmakers. Let him go and make, and burn, a pile or two with his own hands; he will thereby receive apocalyptic visions of a nature novel to his soul. And if he ever succeeds in making one good brick, (the clay must lie fallow in wind and sun two years before you touch it, my master Carlyle tells me,) he will have done a good deed for his generation which will be acknowledged in its day by the Stone of Israel, when the words of many a sermon will be counted against their utterers, every syllable as mere insolent breaking of the third commandment.

In the meantime, it seems that no gracious ministries from Uxbridge, or elsewhere, can redeem this untoward generation of brickmakers. Like the navvies of Furness, (Letter XI., p. 5,) they are a fallen race, fit for nothing but to have dividends got out of them, and then be damned. My fine-lady friends resign themselves pacifically to that necessity, though greatly excited, I perceive, at present, concerning vivisection. In which[117]warmth of feeling they are perfectly right, if they would only also remember that England is spending some thirty millions of pounds a year in making machines for the vivisection, not of dogs, but men; nor is this expenditure at all for anatomical purposes; but, in the real root of it, merely to maintain the gentlemanly profession of the Army, and the ingenious profession of Engineers.

Oh, but we don’t want to live by soldiering, any more than by brickmaking; behold, we are intellectual persons, and wish to live by literature.

Well, it is a slavish trade,—true Hamite; nevertheless, if we will learn our elements in true Egyptian bondage, some good may come of it.

For observe, my literary friends, the essential function of the slavish Egyptian, in the arts of the world, is to lose the picture in the letter; as the essential function of the Eleutherian Goth is to illuminate the letter into the picture.

The Egyptian is therefore the scribe of scribes,—the supremely literary person of earth. The banks of Nile give him his rock volume: the reeds of Nile his paper roll. With cleaving chisel, and cloven reed, he writes thereon, exemplarily: the ark which his princess found among the paper reeds, is the true beginning of libraries,—Alexandrian, and all other. What you call Scripture, in special, coming out of it; the first portion written in Egyptian manner, (it is[118]said,) with the finger of God. Scribe and lawyer alike have too long forgotten the lesson,—come now and learn it again, of Theuth, with the ibis beak.2

When next you are in London on a sunny morning, take leisure to walk into the old Egyptian gallery of the British Museum, after traversing which for a third of its length, you will find yourself in the midst of a group of four massy sarcophagi,—two on your left, two on your right. Assume that they are represented by the letters below, and that you are walking in the direction of the arrow, so that you have the sarcophagi A and B on your left, and the sarcophagi C and D on your right.

In my new Elements of Drawing, I always letter the corners of a square all round thus, so that A C is always the diagonal, A B the upright side on the left, and A D the base.

A diagram as described above.

The sarcophagus A is a king’s; B, a scribe’s; C, a queen’s; and D, a priest’s.

A is of a grand basaltic rock with veins full of agates, and white onyx,—the most wonderful piece of crag I know; B and C are of grey porphyry; D of red granite.

The official information concerning sarcophagus A, (Nectabenes,) is to the effect that it dates from the 30th dynasty, or about 380B.C.

B, (Hapimen,) of the 26th dynasty, or about 525.[119]

C, (the Queen’s,) of the same dynasty and period.

D, (Naskatu,) of the 27th dynasty, or about 500B.C.

The three sarcophagi, then, B, C, and D, were, (we are told,) cut exactly at the time when, beyond the North Sea, Greek art, just before Marathon, was at its grandest.

And if you look under the opened lid of the queen’s, you will see at the bottom of it the outline portrait, or rather symbol, of her, engraved, with the hawk for her crest, signifying what hope of immortality or power after death remained to her.

But the manner of the engraving you must observe. This is all that the Egyptian Holbein could do on stone, after a thousand years at least of practised art; while the Greeks, who had little more than begun only two hundred years before, were already near to the strength of carving their Theseus, perfect for all time.

This is the Hamite bondage in Art: of which the causes will teach themselves to us as we work, ourselves. Slavery is good for us in the beginning, and for writing-masters we can find no better than these Mizraimites: see what rich lines of Scripture they are, along the black edges of those tombs. To understand at all how well they are done, we must at once begin to do the like, in some sort ourselves.

By the exercise given in Fors of January, if you have practised it, you have learned something of what[120]is meant by merit and demerit in a pure line, however produced. We must now consider of our tools a little.

You can make a mark upon things in three ways—namely, by scratching them, painting on them with a brush, or letting liquid run on them out of a pen. Pencil or chalk marks are merely a kind of coarse painting with dry material.

The primitive and simplest mark is the scratch or cut, which shall be our first mode of experiment. Take a somewhat blunt penknife, and a composition candle; and scratch or cut a fine line on it with the point of the knife, drawing the sharp edge of the knife towards you.

Examine the trace produced through a magnifying glass, and you will find it is an angular ditch with a little ridge raised at its side, or sides, pressed out of it.

Next, scratch the candle with the point of the knife, turning the side of the blade forwards: you will now cut a broader furrow, but the wax or composition will rise out of it before the knife in a beautiful spiral shaving, formed like the most lovely little crimped or gathered frill; which I’ve been trying to draw, but can’t; and ifyoucan, you will be far on the way to drawing spiral staircases, and many other pretty things.

Nobody, so far as I have myself read, has yet clearly explained why a wood shaving, or continuously driven[121]portion of detached substance, should thus take a spiral course; nor why a substance like wax or water, capable of yielding to pressure, should rise or fall under a steady force in successive undulations. Leaving these questions for another time, observe that the first furrow, with the ridge at its side, represents the entire group of incised lines ploughed in soft grounds, the head of them all being the plough furrow itself. And the line produced by the flat side of the knife is the type of those produced by completeexcision, the true engraver’s.

Next, instead of wax, take a surface of wood, and, drawing first as deep and steady a furrow in it as you can with the edge of the knife, proceed to deepen it by successive cuts.

You will, of course, find that you must cut from the two sides, sloping to the middle, forming always a deeper angular ditch; but you will have difficulty in clearing all out neatly at the two ends.

And if you think of it, you will perceive that the simplest conceivable excision of a clear and neat kind must be that produced by three cuts given triangularly.3For though you can’t clear out the hollow with two touches, you need not involve yourself in the complexity of four.[122]

And unless you take great pains in keeping the three sides of this triangle equal, two will be longer than the third. So the type of the primitive incised mark is what grand persons call ‘cuneiform’—wedge-shaped.

Elementary picture of a starfish.

If you cut five such cuneiform incisions in a star group, thus, with a little circle connecting them in the middle, you will have the element of the decorative upper border both on the scribe’s coffin and the queen’s. You will also have an elementary picture of a starfish—or the portrait of the pentagonal and absorbent Adam and Eve who were your ancestors, according to Mr. Darwin.

You will see, however, on the sarcophagi that the rays are not equidistant, but arranged so as to express vertical position,—of that afterwards; to-day observe only the manner of their cutting; and then on a flat surface of porphyry,—do the like yourself.

You don’t know what porphyry is—nor where to get it? Write to Mr. Tennant, 149, Strand, and he will send you a little bit as cheap as he can. Then you must get a little vice to fix it, and a sharp-pointed little chisel, and a well-poised little hammer; and, when you have cut your asterisk, you will know more about Egypt than nine hundred and ninety-nine people out of a thousand,—Oxford scholars and all. Awaiting the result[123]of your experiment, I proceed to the other instrument of writing, the reed, or pen.

Coloured manuscript text.

Of which the essential power is that it can make a narrow stroke sideways, and a broad one when you press it open.

Now our own current writing, I told you, is to be equal in thickness of line. You will find that method the quickest and servicablest. But in quite beautiful writing, the power of the pen is to be exhibited with decision; and of its purest and delicatest exertion, you will see the result on the opposite page; facsimile by Mr. Burgess, coloured afterwards by hand, from a piece of Lombardic writing, of about the eleventh century,—(I shall not say where the original is, because I don’t want it to be fingered)—which the scribe has entirely delighted in doing, and of which every line and touch is perfect in its kind. Copy it, with what precision you can, (and mind how you put in the little blue dash to thicken the s of Fides,) for in its perfect uprightness, exquisite use of the diamond-shaped touches obtained by mere pressure on the point, and reserved administration of colour, it is a model not to be surpassed; standing precisely half-way between old Latin letters and mediæval Gothic. The legend of it is—

“Fides catholica edita ab AthanasioAlexandrie sedis episcopo.”

“Fides catholica edita ab Athanasio

Alexandrie sedis episcopo.”

Towards the better understanding of which Catholic[124]faith, another step may be made, if you will, by sending to Mr. Ward for the Etruscan Leucothea,4with Dionysus on her knees, which also stands just half-way in imagination, though only a quarter of the way in time, between the Egyptian Madonna, (Isis with Horus,) of fifteen hundred years before Christ, and the Florentine Madonna by Lippi, fifteen hundred years after Christ. Lippi, being true-bred Etruscan, simply raises the old sculpture into pure and sacred life, retaining all its forms, even to the spiral of the throne ornament, and the transgression of the figures on the bordering frame, acknowledging, in this subjection to the thoughts and laws of his ancestors, a nobler Catholic Faith than Athanasius wrote: faith, namely, in that one Lord by whose breath, from the beginning of creation, the children of men are born; and into whose hands, dying, they give up their spirit.

This photograph of Etruscan art is therefore to be the second of our possessions, and means of study; affording us at once elements of art-practice in many directions, according to our strength; and as we began with drawing the beads of cap, and spiral of chair, in the Lippi, rather than the Madonna, so here it will be well to be sure we can draw the throne, before we try the Leucothea. Outline it first by the eye, then trace the original, to correct your drawing; and by the time[125]next Fors comes out, I hope your power of drawing a fine curve, like that of the back of this throne, will be materially increased; by that time also I shall have got spirals to compare with these Etruscan ones, drawn from shells only an hour or two old, sent me by my good friend Mr. Sillar, (who taught me the wrongness of the infinite spiral of money interest,) by which I am at present utterly puzzled, finding our conclusions in last Fors on this point of zoology quite wrong; and that the little snails have no less twisted houses than the large. But neither for drawing nor architecture is there to-day more time, but only to correct and clarify my accounts, which I have counted a little too far on my power of keeping perspicuous without trouble; and have thereby caused my subscribers and myself a good deal more than was needful.

Henceforward I must ask their permission, unless I receive definite instruction to the contrary, to give names in full, as the subscriptions come in, and give up our occult notation.

I am not quite so well pleased with my good friend Mr. Girdlestone’s pamphlet on luxury as I was with that on classification of society, though I am heartily glad to be enabled by him to distribute it to my readers, for its gentle statements may be more convincing than my impatient ones. But I must protest somewhat against their mildness. It is not now merely dangerous, but criminal, to teach the lie that the poor[126]live by the luxury of the rich. Able men—even Pope himself—have been betrayed into thinking so in old times, (blaming the luxury, however, no less,) but the assertion is now made by no intelligent person, unless with the deliberate purpose of disguising abuses on which all the selfish interests of society depend.

I have to acknowledge a quite magnificent gift of Japanese inlaid work to our Sheffield Museum, from my kind friend Mr. Henry Willett, of Arnold House, Brighton. A series of some fifty pieces was offered by him for our selection: but I have only accepted a tithe of them, thinking that the fewer examples of each school we possess, the better we shall learn from them. Three out of the five pieces I have accepted are of quite unsurpassable beauty, and the two others of extreme interest. They are sent to the Curator at Sheffield.[127]

1Psalm lxviii. 31; lxxxiii. 7 and 8; lxxxvii. 4; Isaiah xlv. 14. I am not sure of my interpretation of the 87th Psalm; but, as far as any significance exists in it to our present knowledge, it can only be of the power of the Nativity of Christ to save Rahab the harlot, Philistia the giant, Tyre the trader, and Ethiopia the slave.↑2Letter XVII., p. 6.↑3You may indeed dip softly into the ground and rise gradually out of it; but this will give you not a clear, but an infinitely graduated excision, exquisite in drawing, but not good for writing.↑4I take the title of this relief from Mr. Parker’s catalogue, not being certain of the subject myself, and rather conceiving it to be Latona with Apollo.↑

2Letter XVII., p. 6.↑

3You may indeed dip softly into the ground and rise gradually out of it; but this will give you not a clear, but an infinitely graduated excision, exquisite in drawing, but not good for writing.↑

4I take the title of this relief from Mr. Parker’s catalogue, not being certain of the subject myself, and rather conceiving it to be Latona with Apollo.↑

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