CHAPTER III

"One of my poor 'Companions of St. George' who has sent me, not a widow's but a parlour-maid's (an old schoolmistress) 'all her living,' and whom I found last night, dying, slowly and quietly, in a damp room, just the size of your study (which her landlord won't mend the roof of), by the light of a single tallow candle,—dying, I say,slowlyof consumption, not yet near the end, but contemplating it with sorrow, mixed partly with fear lest she should not have done all she could for her children! The sight of this and my own shameful comforts, three wax candles and blazing fire and dry roof, and Susie and Joanie for friends! Oh me, Susie, whatisto become of me in the next world, who have in this life all my good things!"

After carrying on "Fors" for some time his attention was drawn by Mr. W.C. Sillar to the question of "Usury." At first he had seen no crying sin in Interest. He had held that the "rights of capital" were visionary, and that the tools should belong to him that can handle them, in a perfect state of society; but he thought that the existing system was no worse in this respect than in others, and his expectation of reform in the plan of investment went hand-in-hand with his hope of a good time coming in everything else. So he quietly accepted his rents, as he accepted his Professorship, for example, thinking it his business to be a good landlord and spend his money generously, just as he thought it his business to retain the existing South Kensington drawing school, and the Oxford system of education—not at all his ideal—and to make the best use of them.

A lady who was his pupil in drawing, and a believer in his ideals of philanthropy, Miss Octavia Hill, undertook to help him in 1864 in efforts to reclaim part—though a very small part—of the lower-classdwellings of London. Half a dozen houses in Marylebone left by Ruskin's father, to which he added three more in Paradise Place, as it was euphemistically named, were the subjects of their experiment. They were ridiculed at first; but by the noblest endeavour they succeeded, and set an example which has been followed in many of our towns with great results. They showed what a wise and kind landlord could do by caring for tenants, by giving them habitable dwellings, recreation ground and fixity of tenure, and requiring in return a reasonable and moderate rent. He got five per cent. for his capital, instead of twelve or more, which such property generally returns, or at that time returned.

But when he began to write against rent and interest there were plenty of critics ready to cite this and other investments as a damning inconsistency. He was not the man to offer explanations at any time. It was no defence to say that he took less and did more than other landlords. And so he was glad to part with the whole to Miss Hill; nor did he care to spend upon himself the £3,500, which I believe was the price. It went right and left in gifts; till one day he cheerfully remarked:

"It's a' gane awa'Like snaw aff a wa'."

"Is there really nothing to show for it?" he was asked. "Nothing," he said, "except this new silk umbrella."

He had talked so much of the possibility of carrying on honest and honourable retail trade, that he felt bound to exemplify his principles. He took a house No. 19, Paddington Street, with a corner shop, near his Marylebone property, and set himself up in business as a teaman. Mr. Arthur Severn painted the sign, in neat blue letters; the window was decked with fine old china, bought from a Cavaliere near Siena, whose unique collection had been introduced to notice by Professor Norton; and Miss HarrieTovey, an old servant of Denmark Hill, was established there, like Miss Mattie in "Cranford," or rather like one of the salaried officials of "Time and Tide," to dispense the unadulterated leaf to all comers. No advertisements, no self-recommendation, no catchpenny tricks of trade were allowed; and yet the business went on, and, I am assured, prospered with legitimate profits. At first, various kinds of the best tea only were sold; but it seemed to the tenant of the shop that coffee and sugar ought to be included in the list. This was not at all in Ruskin's programme, and there were great debates at home about it. At last he gave way, on the understanding that the shop was to be responsible for the proper roasting of the coffee according to the best recipe. After some time Miss Tovey died. And when, in the autumn of 1876, Miss Octavia Hill proposed to take the house and business over and work it with the rest of the Marylebone property, the offer was thankfully accepted.

Another of his principles was cleanliness; "the speedy abolition of all abolishable filth is the first process of education." He undertook to keep certain streets, not crossings only, cleaner than the public seemed to care for, between the British Museum and St. Giles'. He took the broom himself, for a start, put on his gardener, Downes, as foreman of the job, and engaged a small staff of helpers. The work began, as he promised, in a humorous letter to thePall Matt Gazetteupon New Year's Day, 1872, and he kept his three sweepers at work for eight hours daily "to show a bit of our London streets kept as clean as the deck of a ship of the line."

There were some difficulties, too. One of the staff was an extremely handsome and lively shoeblack, picked up in St. Giles'. It turned out that he was not unknown to the world: he had sat to artists—to Mr. Edward Clifford, to Mr. Severn; and went by the name of "Cheeky." Every now and then Ruskin "and party" drove round to inspect the works.Downes could not be everywhere at once: and Cheeky used to be caught at pitch and toss or marbles in unswept Museum Street. Ruskin rarely, if ever, dismissed a servant; but street sweeping was not good enough for Cheeky, and so he enlisted. The army was not good enough, and so he deserted; and was last seen disappearing into the darkness, after calling a cab for his old friends one night at the Albert Hall.

One more escapade of this most unpractical man, as they called him. Since his fortune was rapidly melting away, he had to look to his works as an ultimate resource: they eventually became his only means of livelihood. One might suppose that he would be anxious to put his publishing business on the most secure and satisfactory footing; to facilitate sale, and to ensure profit. But he had views. He objected to advertising; though he thought that in his St. George's Scheme he would have a yearly Book Gazette drawn up by responsible authorities, indicating the best works. He distrusted the system ofunacknowledgedprofits and percentages, though he fully agreed that the retailer should be paid for his work, and wished, in an ideal state, to see the shopkeeper a salaried official. He disliked the bad print and paper of the cheap literature of that day, and knew that people valued more highly what they did not get so easily. He had changed his mind with regard to one or two things—religion and glaciers chiefly—about which he had written at length in earlier works.

So he withdrew his most popular books—"Modern Painters" and the rest—from circulation, though he was persuaded by the publisher to reprint "Modern Painters" and "Stones of Venice" once more—"positively for the last time," as they said the plates would give no more good impressions. He had his later writings printed in a rather expensive style; at first through Smith & Elder, after two years by Messrs. Watson & Hazell (later Hazell, Watson & Viney, Ltd.), and the method of publication is illustrated in the history of "Sesame and Lilies," the firstvolume of these "collected works." It was issued by Smith & Elder, May, 1871, at 7s., to the trade only, leaving the retailer to fix the price to the public. In September, 1872, the work was also supplied by Mr. George Allen, and the price raised to 9s.6d., (carriage paid) to trade and public alike, with the idea that an extra shilling, or nearly ten per cent., might be added by the bookseller for his trouble in ordering the work. If he did not add the commission, that was his own affair; though with postage of order and payment, when only one or two copies at a time were asked for, this did not leave much margin. So it was doubled, by the simple expedient of doubling the price!—or, to be accurate, raising it to 18s. (carriage paid) for 20s. over the counter. It was freely prophesied by business men that this would not do: however, at the end of fifteen years thesixth editionof this work in this form was being sold, in spite of the fact that, five years before, a smaller reprint of the same book had been brought out at 5s., and was then in its fourth edition of 3,000 copies each.

Compared with the enormous sale of sensational novels and school books, this is no great matter; but for a didactic work, offered to the public without advertisement, and in the face of the almost universal opposition of the book-selling trade, it means not only that, as an author, Ruskin had made a secure reputation, but also that he deserved the curious tribute once paid him by the journal of a big modern shop (Compton House, Liverpool) as a "great tradesman."

Early in 1872, after bringing out "Munera Pulveris," the essays he had written ten years before forFraseron economy; after getting those street-sweepers to work near the British Museum where he was making studies of animals and Greek sculpture; and after once more addressing the Woolwich cadets, this time25on the Bird of Calm (the mythology of the Halcyon), Professor Ruskin went to Oxford to give a course of ten lectures26on the Relation of Natural Science to Art, afterwards published under the title of "The Eagle's Nest." He wrote to Professor Norton:

"I am, as usual, unusually busy. When I get fairly into my lecture work at Oxford I always find the lecture would come better some other way, just before it is given, and so work from hand to mouth. I am always unhappy, and see no good in saying so. But I am settling to my work here—recklessly—to do my best with it: feeling quite sure that it is talking at hazard for what chance good may come. But I attend regularly in the schools as mere drawing-master, and the men begin to come in one by one, about fifteen or twenty already; several worth having as pupils in any way, being of temper to make good growth of."

Why was he always unhappy? It was not that Mr. W.B. Scott criticised "Ruskin's influence" in that March; or that by Easter he had to say farewell to his old home on Denmark Hill, and settle "for good" at Brantwood. Nor that he could go abroad again for a long summer in Italy with Mr. and Mrs. Severn and the Hilliards and Mr. Albert Goodwin. They started about the middle of April, and on the journey out he wrote, beside his "Fors"which always went on, a preface to the Rev. R. St. John Tyrwhitt's "Christian Art and Symbolism." He drew the Apse at Pisa, half-amused and half-worried by the little ragamuffin who varied the tedium of watching his work by doing horizontal-bar tricks on the railings of the Cathedral green. Then to Lucca, where, to show his friends something of Italian landscape, he took them for rambles through the olive farms and chestnut woods, among which Miss Hilliard lost her jewelled cross. Greatly to Ruskin's delight, as a firm believer in Italian peasant-virtue, it was found and returned without hint of reward.

At Rome they visited old Mr. Severn, and then went homeward by way of Verona, where Ruskin wrote an account of the Cavalli monuments for the Arundel society, and Venice, where he returned to the study of Carpaccio. At Rome he had been once more to the Sistine, and found that on earlier visits the ceiling and the Last Judgment had taken his attention too exclusively. Now that he could look away from Michelangelo he become conscious of the claims of Botticelli's frescoes, which represent, in the Florentine school, somewhat the same kind of interest that he had found in Carpaccio. He became enamoured of Botticelli's Zipporah, and resolved to study the master more closely. On reaching home he had to prepare "The Eagle's Nest" for publication; in the preface he gave special importance to Botticelli, and amplified it in lectures on early engraving, that Autumn;27in which I remember his quoting with appreciation the passage on the Venus Anadyomene from Pater's "Studies in the Renaissance" just published.

This sudden enthusiasm about an unknown painter amused the Oxford public: and it became a standingjoke among the profane to ask who was Ruskin's last great man. It was in answer to that, and in expression of a truer understanding than most Oxford pupils attained, that Bourdillon of Worcester wrote on "the Ethereal Ruskin,"—that was Carlyle's name for him:—

"To us this star or that seems bright,And oft some headlong meteor's flightHolds for awhile our raptured sight."But he discerns each noble star;The least is only the most far,Whose worlds, may be, the mightiest are."

"To us this star or that seems bright,And oft some headlong meteor's flightHolds for awhile our raptured sight.

"But he discerns each noble star;The least is only the most far,Whose worlds, may be, the mightiest are."

The critical value of this course however, to a student of art-history, is impaired by his using as illustrations of Botticelli, and of the manner of engraving which he took for standard, certain plates which were erroneously attributed to the artist. "It is strange," he wrote in despair to Professor Norton, "that I hardly ever get anything stated without some grave mistake, however true in my main discourse." But in this case a fate stronger than he had taken him unawares. The circumstances do not extenuate the error of the Professor, but they explain the difficulties under which his work was done. The cloud that rested on his own life was the result of a strange and wholly unexpected tragedy in another's.

It was an open secret—his attachment to a lady, who had been his pupil, and was now generally understood to be hisfiancée. She was far younger than he; but at fifty-three he was not an old man; and the friends who fully knew and understood the affair favoured his intentions and joined in the hope, and in auguries for the happiness for which he had been so long waiting. But now that it came to the point the lady finally decided that it was impossible. He was not at one with her in religious matters. He could speak lightly of her evangelical creed—it seemed he scoffed in "Fors" at her faith. She could not be unequally yoked with an unbeliever. To her, thealternative was plain; the choice was terrible: yet, having once seen her path, she turned resolutely away.28

Meanwhile, in the bitterest despair he sought refuge as he had done before, in his work. He accepted the lesson, though he, too, could not recant; still he tried to correct his apparent levity in the renewed seriousness and more earnest tone of "Fors," speaking more plainly and more simply, but without concession. He wrote on the next Christmas Eve to an Aberdeen Bible-class teacher:

"If you care to give your class a word directly from me, say to them that they will find it well, throughout life, never to trouble themselves about what they oughtnotto do, but about what theyoughtto do. The condemnation given from the Judgment Throne—most solemnly described—is all for theundonesand not for thedones. People are perpetually afraid of doing wrong; but unless they are doing its reverse energetically, they do it all day long, and the degree does not matter. Make your young hearers resolve to be honest in their work in this life. Heaven will take care of them for the other."

That was all he could say: he did notknowthere was another life: hehopedthere was: and yet, if he were not a saint or a Christian, was there any man in the world who was nearer to the kingdom of Heaven than this stubborn heretic?

His heretical attitude was singular. He was just as far removed from adopting the easy antagonism of science to religion as from siding with religion against science. In a paper singularly interesting—andin his biography important—on the "Nature and Authority of Miracle," read to the Metaphysical Society (February 11, 1873), he tried to clear up his position and to state a qualified belief in the supernatural.

With that year expired the term for which he had been elected to the Slade Professorship, and in January 1873 he was re-elected. In his first three years he had given five courses of lectures designed to introduce an encyclopædic review and reconstruction of all he had to say upon art. Beginning with general principles, he had proceeded to their application in history, by tracing certain phases of Greek sculpture, and by contrasting the Greek and the Gothic spirit as shown in the treatment of landscape, from which he went on to the study of early engraving. The application of his principles to theory was made in the course on Science and Art ("The Eagle's Nest"). Now, on his re-election, he proceeded to take up these two sides of his subject, and to illustrate this view of the right way to apply science to art, by a course on Birds, in Nature, Art and Mythology, and next year by a study of Alpine forms. The historical side was continued with lectures on Niccola Pisano and early Tuscan sculpture, and in 1874 with an important, though unpublished, course on Florentine Art.

It is to this cycle of lectures that we must look for that matured Ruskinian theory of art which his early works do not reach; and which his writings between 1860 and 1870 do not touch. Though the Oxford lectures are only a fragment of what he ought to have done, they should be sufficient to a careful reader; though their expression is sometimes obscured by diffuse treatment, they contain the root of the matter, thought out for fifteen years since the close of the more brilliant, but less profound, period of "Modern Painters."

The course on Birds29was given in the drawingschool at the University Galleries. The room was not large enough for the numbers that crowded to hear Professor Ruskin, and each of these lectures, like the previous and the following courses, had to be repeated to a second audience. Great pains had been given to their preparation—much greater than the easy utterance and free treatment of his theme led his hearers to believe. For these lectures and their sequel, published as "Love's Meinie," he collected an enormous number of skins—to compare the plumage and wings of different species; for his work was with theoutsideaspect and structure of birds, not with their anatomy. He had models made, as large as swords, of the different quill-feathers, to experiment on their action and resistance to the air. He got a valuable series of drawings by H.S. Marks, R.A., and made many careful and beautiful studies himself of feathers and of birds at the Zoological Gardens, and the British Museum; and after all, he had to conclude his work saying, "It has been throughout my trust that if death should write on these, 'What this man began to build, he was not able to finish,' God may also write on them, not in anger, but in aid, 'A stronger than he cometh.'"

Two of the lectures on birds were repeated at Eton30before the boys' Literary and Scientific Society and their friends; and between this and 1880 Ruskin often went to address the same audience, with the same interest in young people that had taken him in earlier years to Woolwich.

After a long vacation at Brantwood, the first spent there, he went up to give his course on Early Tuscan Art ("Val d'Arno")31. The lectures were printed separately and sold at the conclusion and the first numbers were sent to Carlyle, whose unabated interest in his friend's work was shown in his letter of Oct. 31st: "Perge, perge;—and, as the Irish say, 'morepower to your elbow!' I have yet read this 'Val d'Arno' only once. Froude snatched it away from me yesterday; and it has then to go to my brother at Dumfries. After that I shall have it back...."

During that summer and autumn Ruskin suffered from nights of sleeplessness or unnaturally vivid dreams and days of unrest and feverish energy, alternating with intense fatigue. The eighteen lectures in less than six weeks, a "combination of prophecy and play-acting," as Carlyle had called it in his own case, and the unfortunate discussion with an old-fashioned economist who undertook to demolish Ruskinism without understanding it, added to the causes of which we are already aware, brought him to New Year, 1874, in "failing strength, care, and hope." He sought quiet at the seaside, but found modern hotel-life intolerable; he went back to town and tried the pantomimes for distraction,—saw Kate Vaughan in Cinderella, and Violet Cameron in Jack in the Box, over and over again, and found himself:

"Now hopelessly a man of the world!—of that woeful outside one, I mean. It is now Sunday; half-past eleven in the morning. Everybody else is gone to church—and I am left alone with the cat, in the world of sin."

Thinking himself better, he went to Oxford, and announced a course on Alpine form; but after a week was obliged to retreat and go home to Coniston, still hoping to return and give his lectures. But it was no use. The gloom without deepened the gloom within; and he took the wisest course in trying Italy, alone this time with his old servant Crawley.

The greater part of 1874 was spent abroad—first travelling through Savoy and by the Riviera to Assisi, where he wrote to Miss S. Beever:

"The Sacristan gives me my coffee for lunch in his own little cell, looking out on the olive woods; then he tells me stories of conversions and miracles, and then perhaps we go into the sacristy and have a reverent little poke-out of relics. Fancy a great carved cupboard in a vaultedchamber full of most precious things (the box which the Holy Virgin's veil used to be kept in, to begin with), and leave to rummage in it at will! Things that are only shown twice in the year or so, with fumigation! all the congregation on their knees—and the sacristan and I having a great heap of them on the table at once, like a dinner service. I really looked with great respect on St. Francis's old camel-hair dress."

Thence he went to visit Colonel and Mrs. Yule at Palermo, deeply interested in Scylla and Charybdis, Etna and the metopes of Selinus. His interest in Greek art had been shown, not only in a course of lectures, but in active support to archæological explorations. He said once, "I believe heartily in diggings, of all sorts." Meeting General L.P. di Cesnola and hearing of the wealth of ancient remains in Cyprus then newly discovered, Mr. Ruskin placed £1,000 at his disposal. General di Cesnola was able, in April, 1875, to announce that in spite of the confiscation of half the treasure-trove by the local Government, he had shipped a cargo of antiquities, including many vases, terra-cottas, and fragments of sculpture. Whence, precisely, these relics came is now doubtful.

The landscape of Theocritus and the remains of ancient glories roused him to energetic sketching—a sign of returning strength, which continued when he reached Rome, and enabled him to make a very fine copy of Botticelli's Zipporah, and other details of the Sistine frescoes.

Late in October he reached England, just able to give the promised Lectures on Alpine forms,32—I remember his curious attempt to illustrate the névé-masses by pouring flour on a model;—and a second course on the Æsthetic and Mathematic schools of Florence;33and a lecture on Botticelli at Eton, of which the Literary and Scientific Society's minute-book contains the following report:

"On Saturday, Dec. 12th (1874), Professor Ruskin lectured before acrowded, influential and excited audience, which comprised our noble Society and a hundred and thirty gentlemen and ladies, who eagerly accepted an invitation to hear Professor Ruskin 'talk' to us on Botticelli. It is utterly impossible for the unfortunate secretary of the Society to transmit to writing even an abstract of this address; and it is some apology for him when beauty of expression, sweetness of voice, and elegance in imagery defy the utmost efforts of the pen."

Just before leaving for Italy he had been told that the Royal Institute of British Architects intended to present him with their Gold Medal in acknowledgment of his services to the cause of architecture; and during his journey official announcement of the award reached him. He dictated from Assisi (June 12, 1874) a letter to Sir Gilbert Scott, explaining why he declined the honour intended him. He said in effect that if it had been offered at a time when he had been writing on architecture it would have been welcome; but it was not so now that he felt all his efforts to have been in vain and the profession as a body engaged in work—such as the "restoration" of ancient buildings—with which he had no sympathy. It had been represented to him that his refusal to accept a Royal Medal would be a reflection upon the Royal donor. To which he replied:

"Having entirely loyal feelings towards the Queen, I will trust to her Majesty's true interpretation of my conduct; but if formal justification of it be necessary for the public, would plead that if a Peerage or Knighthood may without disloyalty be refused, surely much more the minor grace proceeding from the monarch may be without impropriety declined by any of her Majesty's subjects who wish to serve her without reward, under the exigency of peculiar circumstances."

It was only the term before that Prince Leopold had been at Oxford, a constant attendant on Ruskin's lectures, and a visitor to his drawing school. The gentle prince, with his instinct for philanthropy, was not to be deterred by the utterances of "Fors" from respecting the genius of the Professor; and theProfessor, with his old-world, cavalier loyalty, readily returned the esteem and affection of his new pupil. A sincere friendship was formed, lasting until the Prince's death.

In June, 1875, Princess Alice and her husband, with Prince Arthur and Prince Leopold, were at Oxford. Ruskin had just made arrangements completing his gifts to the University galleries and schools. The Royal party showed great interest in the Professor and his work. The Princess, the Grand Duke of Hesse, and Prince Leopold acted as witnesses to the deed of gift, and Prince Arthur and Prince Leopold accepted the trusteeship.

With all the Slade Professor's generosity, the Ruskin drawing school, founded in these fine galleries to which he had so largely contributed, in a palatial hall handsomely furnished, and hung with Tintoret and Luini, Burne-Jones and Rossetti, and other rare masters, ancient and modern; with the most interesting examples to copy—at the most convenient of desks, we may add—yet in spite of it all, the drawing school was not a popular institution. When the Professor was personally teaching, he got some fifteen or twenty—if not to attend, at any rate to join. But whenever the chief attraction could not be counted on, the attendance sank to an average of two or three. The cause was simple. An undergraduate is supposed to spend his morning in lectures, his afternoon in taking exercise, and his evening in college. There is simply no time in his scheme for going to a drawing school. If it were recognised as part of the curriculum, if it counted in any way along with other studies, or contributed to a "school" akin to that of music, practical art might become teachable at Oxford; and Professor Ruskin's gifts and endowments—to say nothing of his hopes and plans—would not be wholly in vain.

As he could not make the undergraduates draw, he made them dig. He had noticed a very bad bit of road on the Hinksey side, and heard that it wasnobody's business to mend it: meanwhile the farmers' carts and casual pedestrians were bemired. He sent for his gardener Downes, who had been foreman of the street-sweepers; laid in a stock of picks and shovels; took lessons in stone-breaking himself, and called on his friends to spend their recreation times in doing something useful.

Many of the disciples met at the weekly open breakfasts at the Professor's rooms in Corpus; and he was glad of a talk to them on other things beside drawing and digging. Some were attracted chiefly by the celebrity of the man, or by the curiosity of his humorous discourse; but there were a few who partly grasped one side or other of his mission and character. The most brilliant undergraduate of the time, seen at this breakfast table, but not one of the diggers, was W.H. Mallock, afterwards widely known as the author of "Is Life Worth Living?" He was the only man. Professor Ruskin said, who really understood him—referring to "The New Republic." But while Mallock saw the reactionary and pessimistic side of his Oxford teacher, there was a progressist and optimistic side which does not appear in his "Mr. Herbert." That was discovered by another man whose career, short as it was, proved even more influential. Arnold Toynbee was one of the Professor's warmest admirers and ablest pupils: and in his philanthropic work the teaching of "Unto this Last" and "Fors" was illustrated—not exclusively—but truly. "No true disciple of mine will ever be a Ruskinian" (to quote "St. Mark's Rest"); "he will follow, not me, but the instincts of his own soul, and the guidance of its Creator."

Like all energetic men, Ruskin was fond of setting other people to work. One of his plans was to form a little library of standard books ("Bibliotheca Pastorum") suitable for the kind of people who, he hoped, would join or work under his St. George's Company. The first book he chose was the "Economist" of Xenophon, which he asked two of his youngfriends to translate. To them and their work he would give his afternoons in the rooms at Corpus, with curious patience in the midst of pre-occupying labour and severest trial; for just then he was lecturing at the London Institution on the Alps34—reading a paper to the Metaphysical Society35—writing the Academy Notes of 1875, and "Proserpina," etc.—as well as his regular work at "Fors," and the St. George's Company was then taking definite form;—and all the while the lady of his love was dying under the most tragic circumstances, and he forbidden to approach her.

At the end of May she died. On the 1st of June the Royal party honoured the Slade Professor with their visit—little knowing how valueless to him such honours had become. He went north36and met his translators at Brantwood to finish the Xenophon,—and to help dig his harbour and cut coppice in his wood. He prepared a preface; but the next term was one of greater pressure, with the twelve lectures on Sir Joshua Reynolds to deliver. He wrote, after Christmas:

"Now that I have got my head fairly into this Xenophon business, it has expanded into a new light altogether; and I think it would be absurd in me to slur over the life in one paragraph. A hundred things have come into my head as I arrange the dates, and I think I can make a much better thing of it—with a couple of days' work. My head would not work in town—merely turned from side to side—never nodded (except sleepily). I send you the proofs just to show you I'm at work. I'm going to translate all the story of Delphic answer before Anabasis: and his speech after the sleepless night."

Delphic answers—for he was then again broughtinto contact with "spiritualism"; and sleepless nights—for the excitement of overwork was telling upon him—were becoming too frequent in his own experience; and yet the lectures on Reynolds went off with success.37The magic of his oratory transmuted the scribbled jottings of his MS. into a magnificent flow of rolling paragraph and rounded argument that thrilled a captious audience with unwonted emotion, and almost persuaded many a hearer to accept the gospel of "the Ethereal Ruskin." In spite of a sense of antagonism to his surroundings, he did useful work which none other could do in the University. That this was acknowledged was proved by his re-election, early in 1876: but his third term of three years was a time of weakened health. Repeated absence from his post and inability to fulfil his duties made it obviously his wisest course, at the end of that term, to resign the Slade Professorship.

NOTES:

January 13, 1872.

Feb. 8, 10, 15, 17, 22, 24. 29; March 2, 7, and 9.

"Ariadne Florentina," delivered on Nov. 2, 9, 16, 23, 30, and Dec. 7, and repeated on the following Thursdays. Ruskin's first mention of Botticelli was in the course on Landscape, Lent Term, 1871.

In former editions the following sentence was added: "Three years after, as she lay dying, he begged to see her once more. She sent to ask whether he could yet say that he loved God better than he loved her; and when he said 'No,' her door was closed upon him for ever." The statement was suggested by information from Ruskin in later days. I must, however, have misrepresented the facts, as the lady's mother has left it in writing that no such incident occurred.

March 15, May 2 and 9; repeated March 19, May 5, and 12, 1873.

May 10 and 17.

On Mondays and Thursdays, Oct. 21, 23, 27, 30, Nov. 3, 6, 10, 13, 17, 20; repeated on the Wednesdays and Fridays following.

Oct. 27, 30; Nov. 3 and 6, 1874.

Nov. 10, 13, 17, 20, 24, 27; Dec. 1 and 4, 1874.

"The Simple Dynamic Conditions of Glacial Action among the Alps," March 11, 1875.

"Social Policy based on Natural Selection," May 11.

"On a posting tour through Yorkshire". He made three such tours in 1875—southward in January, northward in June and July, and southward in September: and another northward in April and May, 1876.

Nov. 2, 4, 6, 9, 11, 13, 16, 18, 20, 23, 25, and 27; 1875.

In the book his Bertha of Canterbury was reading at twilight on the Eve of St. Mark, Keats might have been describing "Fors." Among its pages, fascinating with their golden broideries of romance and wit, perplexing with mystic vials of wrath as well as all the Seven Lamps and Shekinah of old and new Covenants commingled, there was gradually unfolded the plan of "St. George's Work."

The scheme was not easy to apprehend; it was essentially different from anything then known, though superficially like several bankrupt Utopias.Ruskin did not want to found a phalanstery, or to imitate Robert Owen or the Shakers. That would have been practicable—and useless.

He wanted much more. He aimed at the gradual introduction of higher aims into ordinary life: it giving true refinement to the lower classes, true simplicity to the upper. He proposed that idle hands should reclaim waste lands; that healthy work and country homes should be offered to townsfolk who would "come out of the gutter." He asked land-owners and employers to furnish opportunities for such reforms;—which would involve no elaborate organization nor unelastic rules;—simply the one thing needful, the refusal of Commercialism.

As before, he scorned the idea that real good could be done by political agitation. Any government would work, he said, if it were an efficient government. No government was efficient unless it saw that every one had the necessaries of life, for body and soul; and that every one earned them by some work or other. Capital—that is, the means and material of labour, should therefore be in the hands of the Government, not in the hands of individuals: this reform would result easily and necessarily from the forbidding of loans on interest. Personal property would still be in private hands; but as it could not be invested and turned into capital, it would necessarily be restricted to its actual use, and great accumulation would be valueless.

This is, of course, a very sketchy statement of the ground-work of "Fors," but to most readers nowadays as comprehensible as, at the time of its publication, it was incomprehensible. For when, long after "Fors" had been written, Ruskin found other writers advocating the same principles and calling themselves Socialists, he said that he too was a Socialist.

But the Socialists of various sects have complicated, and sometimes confused, their simple fundamental principles with various ways and means; to which he could not agree. He had his own ways and means.He had his private ideals of life, which he expounded, along with his main doctrine. He thought, justifiably, that theory was useless without practical example; and so he founded St. George's Company (in 1877 called St. George's Guild) as his illustration.

The Guild grew out of his call, in 1871, for adherents: and by 1875 began to take definite form. Its objects were to set the example of a common capital as opposed to a National debt, and of co-operative labour as opposed to competitive struggle for life. Each member was required to do some work for his living—without too strict limits as to the kind—and to practice certain precepts of religion and morality, broad enough for general acceptance. He was also required to obey the authority of the Guild, and to contribute a tithe of his income to a common fund, for various objects. These objects were—first: to buy land for the agricultural members to cultivate, paying their rent, not to the other members, but to the company; not refusing machinery, but preferring manual labour. Next, to buy mills and factories, to be likewise owned by the Guild and worked by members—using water power in preference to steam (steam at first not forbidden)—and making the lives of the people employed as well spent as might be, with a fair wage, healthy work, and so forth. The loss on starting was to be made up from the Guild store, but it was anticipated that the honesty of the goods turned out would ultimately make such enterprises pay, even in a commercial world. Then, for the people employed and their families, there would be places of recreation and instruction, supplied by the Guild, and intended to give the agricultural labourer or mill-hand, trained from infancy in Guild schools, some insight into Literature, Science and Art—and tastes which his easy position would leave him free to cultivate.

So far the plan was simple. It was not acolony—but merely the working of existing industries in a certain way. Anticipating further development of the scheme, Ruskin looked forward to a guild coinage,as pretty as the Florentines had; a costume as becoming as the Swiss: and other Platonically devised details, which were not the essentials of the proposal, and never came into operation. But some of his plans were actually realised.

The chief objects of "St. George" come under three heads, as we have just noticed: agricultural, industrial, and educational. The actual schools would not be needed until the farms and mills had been so far established as to secure a permanent attendance. But meanwhile provision was being made for them, both in literature and in art. The "Bibliotheca Pastorum," was to be a comprehensive little library—far less than the 100 books of thePall Mall Gazette—and yet bringing before the St. George's workman standard and serious writing of all times. It was to include, in separate volumes, the Books of Moses and the Psalms of David and the Revelation of St. John. Of Greek, the Economist of Xenophon, and Hesiod, which Ruskin undertook to translate into prose. Of Latin the first two Georgics and sixth Æneid of Virgil, in Gawain Douglas' translation. Dante; Chaucer, excluding the "Canterbury Tales"—but including the "Romance of the Rose"; Gotthelf's "Ulric the Farmer," from the French version which Ruskin had loved ever since his father used to read it him on their first tours in Switzerland; and an early English history by an Oxford friend. Later were published Sir Philip Sidney's psalter, and Ruskin's own biography of Sir Herbert Edwardes, under the title of "A Knight's Faith."

These books were for the home library; reference works were bought to be deposited in central libraries, along with objects of art and science. It was not intended to keep the Guild property centralised; but rather to spread it, as its other work was spread, broad-cast. A number of books and other objects were bought with the Guild money, and lent or given to various schools and colleges and institutions where work akin to the objects of the Guild was being done.But for the time Ruskin fixed upon Sheffield as the place of his first Guild Museum—being the home of the typical English industry—central to all parts of England, near beautiful hill-country, and yet not far from a number of manufacturing towns in which, if St. George's work went on, supporters and recruits might be found.

The people of Sheffield were already, in 1875, building a museum of their own, and naturally thought that the two might be conveniently worked together. But that was not at all what Ruskin wished. Not only was his museum to be primarily the storehouse of the Guild, rather than one among many means of popular education; but the objects which he intended to place there were not such as the public expected to see. He had no interest in a vast accumulation of articles of all kinds. He wanted to provide for his friends' common treasury a few definitely valuable and interesting examples—interesting to the sort of people that he hoped would join the Guild or be bred up in it; and valuable according to his own standard and experience.

In September 1875, Ruskin stayed a couple of days at Sheffield to inspect a cottage at Walkley, in the outskirts of the town, and to make arrangements for founding the museum—humbly to begin with, but hoping for speedy increase. He engaged as curator, at a salary of £40 a year and free lodging on the premises, his former pupil at the Working Men's College, Henry Swan, who had done occasional work for him in drawing and engraving. Swan was a Quaker, and a remarkable man in his way; enthusiastic in his new vocation, and interested in the social questions which were being discussed in "Fors." Under his care the Museum remained at Walkley, accumulating material in the tiny and hardly accessible cottage—being so to speak in embryo, until the way should be clear for its removal or enlargement, which took place in 1890.

When Ruskin came back on his posting tour ofApril 1876, he stayed again at Sheffield, to meet a few friends of Swan's—Secularists, Unitarians, and Quakers, who professed Communism. They had an interview (reported in the SheffieldDaily Telegraph, April 28th, 1876), which brought out rather curiously the points of difference between their opinions and his. They refused to join the Guild because they would not promise obedience, and help in its objects. Ruskin, however, was willing to advance theirs. A few weeks afterwards he invited them to choose a piece of ground for their Communist experiment. They chose a farm of over thirteen acres at Abbeydale, which the Guild bought in 1877 at a cost of £2,287 16s.6d. for their use—the communists agreeing to pay the money back in instalments, without interest, by the end of seven years: when the farm should be their own.

When it was actually in their hands they found that they knew nothing of farming—and besides, were making money at trades they did not really care to abandon. They engaged a man to work the farm for them: and then another. They were told that the land they had chosen was—for farming purposes—worthless. Their capital ran short; and they tried to make money by keeping a tea-garden. The original proposer of the scheme wrote to Ruskin, who sent £100:—the others returned the money. Ruskin declined to take it back, and began to perceive that the Communists were trifling. They had made no attempt to found the sort of community they had talked about; neither their plans nor his were being carried out. So when the original proposer and a friend of his named Riley approached Ruskin again, they found little difficulty in persuading him to try them as managers. The rest, finding themselves turned out by Riley, vainly demanded "explanations" from Ruskin, who then was drifting into his first attack of brain fever. So they declined further connection with the farm; the Guild accepted their resignation, and undertook for the time nothingmore than to get the land into good condition again.

This was not the only land held by the St. George's Guild. It acquired the acre of ground on which the Sheffield Museum stood, and a cottage with a couple of acres near Scarborough. Two acres of rock and moor at Barmouth had been given by Mrs. Talbot in 1872; and in 1877 Mr. George Baker, then Mayor of Birmingham, gave twenty acres of woodland at Bewdley in Worcestershire, to which at one time Mr. Ruskin thought of moving the museum, before the present building was found for it by the Sheffield Corporation at Meersbrook Park. On the resignation of the original Trustees, in 1877, Mr. Q. Talbot and Mr. Baker were offered the trust: and on the death of Mr. Talbot the trust was accepted by Mr. John Henry Chamberlain. After he died it was taken by Mr. George Thomson of Huddersfield, whose woollen mills, transformed into a co-operative concern, though not directly in connection with the Guild, have given a widely known example of the working of principles advocated in "Fors."

In the middle of 1876, Egbert Rydings, the auditor of the accounts which, in accordance with his principles of "glass pockets," Ruskin published in "Fors," proposed to start a homespun woollen industry at Laxey, in the Isle of Man, where the old women who formerly spun with the wheel had been driven by failure of custom to work in the mines. The Guild built him a water mill, and in a few years the demand for a pure, rough, durable cloth, created by this and kindred attempts, justified the enterprise. Ruskin set the example, and had his own grey clothes made of Laxey stuffs—whose chief drawback was that they never wore out. A little later a similar work was done, with even greater success, by Mr. Albert Fleming, another member of the Guild; who introduced old-fashioned spinning and hand-loom weaving at Langdale.

The story of Ruskin's posting tour was told manyyears afterwards, at the opening of the new Sheffield museum, by Mr. Arthur Severn, a famousraconteur, whose description of the adventures of their cruise upon wheels includes so bright a picture of Ruskin, that I must use his words as they were reported on the occasion in the magazineIgdrasil:

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