I have mislaid, just when I wanted it, a valuable letter, which gave
me the first name of Abbotsford accurately,--Clarty Hole being only
a corruption of it, and the real name bearing no such sense. I shall
come upon it some time or other: meantime, my Scottish readers must
not suppose I mean that the treatment of rivers is worse in North than
in South Britain,--only they have prettier streams in Scotland to
float their paraffin, or other beautiful productions of modern art,
or nature, on the top of. We had one or two clear streams in Surrey,
indeed; but as I was investigating the source of one of them, only the
other day, I found a police office had been built over it, and that the
authorities had paid five hundred pounds to construct a cesspool, with
a huge iron cylinder conducting to it, through the spring. Excavating,
I found the fountain running abundantly, round the pipe.
The following paragraph, and the two subjoined letters, appeared in
the same impression of the 'Daily Telegraph,' on the 12th January,
1871. I wish to preserve them in Fors; and I print them in this number,
because the succession of the first four names in the statement of
the journal, associated with that of the first magistrate of the
City of London, in connection with the business in hand that day,
is to me the most pleasant piece of reading--and I think must be to
all of us among the most significant--that has lately met our eyes
in a public print; and it means such new solemn league and covenant
as Scott had been fain to see. My letter about the Italian streams
may well follow what I have said of Scottish ones.
The French Appeal to England.
"We are happy to announce farther contributions to the fund which is
being raised in response to the appeal of the Bishop of Versailles and
the clergy of the Seine-et-Oise department; and also to state that,
in addition to those influential persons whom we named yesterday
as being ready to serve on a committee, two other gentlemen of high
official and social position have consented to join the body. The list
at present is as follows: The Lord Bishop of London; Dr. Manning,
Roman Catholic Archbishop of Westminster; the Rev. Dr. Brock, the
Baptist minister; Mr. Alfred de Rothschild; and the Lord Mayor,
who has courteously placed the Mansion House at the service of the
committee. Besides these names, the members of the 'Paris Food Fund,'
as will be seen from the subjoined letter, propose to join the more
comprehensive organization."
To the Editor of the Daily Telegraph.
"Sir,--Acting on your suggestion that the 'Paris Food Fund,'
which I yesterday described to you, might be advantageously united
with that which has been suggested by the Bishop of Versailles,
I beg to say that Archbishop Manning, Professor Huxley, Sir John
Lubbock, and Mr. Ruskin will, with myself, have great pleasure in
forming part of such a public committee as you have advised, and
in placing the subscriptions already sent to us at its disposal.
"I am, sir, your obedient servant,
"James T. Knowles."
"Jan. 11."
Daily Telegraph, Jan. 12, 1871.
Roman Inundations.
To the Editor of the Daily Telegraph.
"Sir,--May I ask you to add to your article on the inundation of
the Tiber some momentary invitation to your readers to think with
Horace rather than to smile with him?
"In the briefest and proudest words he wrote of himself, he thought
of his native land chiefly as divided into the two districts of
violent and scanty waters:
Dicar, qua violens obstrepit Aufidus,
Et qua, pauper aquæ, Daunus agrestium
Regnavit populorum.
"Now the anger and power of that tauriformis Aufidus is precisely
because regna Dauni præfluit--because it flows past the poor
kingdoms which it should enrich. Stay it there, and it is treasure
instead of ruin. And so also with Tiber and Eridanus. They are
so much gold, at their sources,--they are so much death, if they
once break down unbridled into the plains.
"At the end of your report of the events of the inundation, it
is said that the King of Italy expressed 'an earnest desire to
do something, as far as science and industry could effect it,
to prevent or mitigate inundations for the future.'
"Now, science and industry can do, not 'something,' but everything;
and not merely to mitigate inundations--and, deadliest of
inundations, because perpetual--maremmas; but to change them into
national banks instead of debts.
"The first thing the King of any country has to do is to manage
the streams of it.
"If he can manage the streams, he can also the people; for the
people also form alternately torrent and maremma, in pestilential
fury or pestilential idleness. They also will change into living
streams of men, if their Kings literally 'lead them forth beside
the waters of comfort.' Half the money lost by this inundation
of Tiber, spent rightly on the hill-sides last summer, would have
changed every wave of it into so much fruit and foliage in spring,
where now they will be only burning rock. And the men who have
been killed within the last two months, and whose work, and the
money spent in doing it, have filled Europe with misery which
fifty years will not efface, had they been set at the same cost
to do good instead of evil, and to save life instead of destroy
it, might, by this 10th of January, 1871, have embanked every
dangerous stream at the roots of the Rhine, the Rhone, and the Po,
and left to Germany, to France, and to Italy an inheritance of
blessing for centuries to come--they and their families living
all the while in brightest happiness and peace. And now! Let the
Red Prince look to it; red inundation bears also its fruit in time.
"I am, sir, your obedient servant,
"John Ruskin."
"Jan. 10."
Daily Telegraph, Jan. 12, 1871.