But the time is come at least to bid her be free, if she has_Arrows of the Chace, vol. 2/2 being a collection of scattered letters published chiefly in the daily newspapers 1840-1880

THE COMPLETE WORKS

JOHN RUSKIN

VOLUME XXIII

ARROWS OF THE CHACE

VOLUMES I-II

ARROWS OF THE CHACE

BEING

A COLLECTION OF

SCATTERED LETTERS

PUBLISHED CHIEFLY IN THE DAILY NEWSPAPERS

1840-1880

VOLUME II.

LETTERS ON POLITICS, ECONOMY, AND

MISCELLANEOUS MATTERS

"I NEVER WROTE A LETTER IN MY LIFE WHICH ALL THE WORLD ARE NOT WELCOME

TO READ IF THEY WILL."

_Fors Clavigera_, Letter 59, 1875.

CONTENTS OF VOLUME II.

PAGE

CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF THE LETTERS CONTAINED IN VOL. II. x

LETTERS ON POLITICS AND WAR:

The Italian Question. 1859.

Three letters: June 6 3

June 15 8

August 1 13

The Foreign Policy of England. 1863 15

The Position of Denmark. 1864 17

The Jamaica Insurrection. 1865 20

The Franco-Prussian War. 1870.

Two letters: October 6 22

October 7 25

Modern Warfare. 1876 29

LETTERS ON POLITICAL ECONOMY:

The Depreciation of Gold. 1863 37

The Law of Supply and Demand. 1864.

Three letters: October 26 39

October 29 40

November 2 43

Mr. Ruskin and Professor Hodgson. 1873.

Two letters: November 8 44

November 15 46

Strikes _v._ Arbitration. 1865 48

Work and Wages. 1865.

Five letters: April 20 50

April 22 52

April 29 54

May 4 59

May 20 62

The Standard of Wages. 1867 65

How the Rich spend their Money. 1873.

Three letters: January 23 66

January 28 67

January 30 68

Commercial Morality. 1875 70

The Definition of Wealth. 1875 71

The Principles of Property. 1877 71

On Co-operation. 1879-80.

Two letters: August, 1879 73

April 12, 1880 73

MISCELLANEOUS LETTERS:

I. THE MANAGEMENT OF RAILWAYS.

Is England Big Enough? 1868 79

The Ownership of Railways. 1868 81

Railway Economy. 1868 83

Our Railway System. 1865 88

Railway Safety. 1870 89

II. SERVANTS AND HOUSES.

Domestic Servants--Mastership. 1865 93

Domestic Servants--Experience. 1865 95

Domestic Servants--Sonship and Slavery. 1865 96

Modern Houses. 1865 104

III. ROMAN INUNDATIONS.

A King's First Duty. 1871 111

A Nation's Defences. 1871 113

The Waters of Comfort. 1871 115

The Streams of Italy. 1871 116

The Streets of London. 1871 119

IV. EDUCATION FOR RICH AND POOR.

True Education. 1868 123

The Value of Lectures. 1874 124

The Cradle of Art. 1876 125

St. George's Museum. 1875 126

The Morality of Field Sports. 1870 127

Drunkenness and Crime. 1871 129

Madness and Crime. 1872 130

Employment for the Destitute Poor and Criminal Classes. 1868 131

Notes on the General Principles of Employment for the

Destitute and Criminal Classes (a Pamphlet). 1868 132

Blindness and Sight. 1879 139

The Eagle's Nest. 1879 140

Politics in Youth. 1879 141

"Act, Act in the Living Present." 1873 141

"Laborare est Orare." 1874 142

A Pagan Message. 1878 143

The Foundations of Chivalry. 1877-8.

Five letters: February 8, 1877 143

February 10, 1877 145

February 11, 1877 146

February 12, 1877 147

July 3, 1878 148

V. WOMEN: THEIR WORK AND THEIR DRESS

Woman's Work. 1873 153

Female Franchise. 1870 154

Proverbs on Right Dress. 1862 154

Sad-colored Costumes. 1870 156

Oak Silkworms. 1862 158

VI. LITERARY CRITICISM.

The Publication of Books. 1875 163

A Mistaken Review. 1875 165

The Position of Critics. 1875 167

Coventry Patmore's "Faithful for Ever." 1860 168

"The Queen of the Air." 1871 171

The Animals of Scripture: a Review. 1856 172

"Limner" and Illumination. 1854 174

Notes on a Word in Shakespeare. 1878.

Two letters: September 176

September 29 177

"The Merchant of Venice." 1880 179

Recitations. 1880 186

APPENDIX.

Letter to W. C. Bennett, LL.D. 1852 183

Letter to Thomas Guthrie, D.D. 1853 184

The Sale of Mr. Windus' Pictures. 1859 185

At the Play. 1867 185

An Object of Charity. 1868 186

Excuses from Correspondence. 1868 186

Letter to the Author of a Review. 1872 187

An Oxford Protest. 1874 188

Mr. Ruskin and Mr. Lowe. 1877 189

The Bibliography of Ruskin. 1878.

Two letters: September 30 190

October 23 190

The Society of the Rose. 1879 191

* * * * *

Letter to W. H. Harrison. 1865 192

Dramatic Reform. 1880. (Two letters) 193

The Lord Rectorship of Glasgow University. 1880. (Five

letters) 195

EPILOGUE 201

CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF THE LETTERS CONTAINED IN BOTH VOLUMES 204

INDEX 213

NOTE TO THE SECOND VOLUME.

_The letters relating to Mr. Ruskin's candidature for the Lord

Rectorship of Glasgow University were published when this volume was

almost out of the printer's hands. They have however been included,

by Mr. Ruskin's wish, and will be found at the end of this volume,

where a letter to the late Mr. W. H. Harrison, which has just been

brought to my notice, and two very recent letters on Dramatic Reform,

have, at the cost of some delay, been also added._--[ED.]

_November_ 15, 1880.

CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF THE LETTERS CONTAINED IN THE SECOND VOLUME.

NOTE.--_In the second and third columns the bracketed words and

figures are more or less certainly conjectured; whilst those

unbracketed give the actual_ _dating of the letters._

| | | | |

| | |1871 | |

| | | | |

| |?] 1853 |D.D.," (1875) | |

| | | | |

| | |23, 1865 | |

| | | | |

ILLUMINATION |Hill |3, 1854] |Dec. 9, 1854 | |

| | | | |

| | |20, 1855 | |

| | | | |

| | | | |

| |1859 |July 20, 1859 | |

| | | | |

| |[1859] | | |

| | | | |

" " |Schaffhausen|August 1, |" Aug. 6, 1859 | 13|

| |1859 | | |

| | | | |

"FAITHFUL FOR EVER" | |21, 1860] |Oct. 27, 1860 | |

| | | | |

| | |1863 | |

| | | | |

| |20th [1862]|Oct. 24, 1862 | |

| | | | |

GOLD | |[1863] |Oct. 8, 1863 | |

| | | | |

| | |1863 | |

| | | | |

| | |1864 | |

| | | | |

| | |28, 1864 | |

| | | | |

" " " |Denmark Hill|October 29 |" " Oct. 31, 1864| 40|

| |[1864] | | |

| | | | |

" " " |Denmark Hill|November 2 |" " Nov. 3, 1864 | 43|

| |[1864] | | |

| | | | |

| |1865 |18, 1865 | |

| | | | |

| |April 20 |1865 | |

| |[1865] | | |

| | | | |

| |April 22, |1865 | |

| |1865 | | |

| | | | |

" " |[Denmark |Saturday, |" " May 2, 1865 | 54|

|Hill] |29th | | |

| | | | |

" " |Denmark Hill|May 4 |" " May 9, 1865 | 59|

| |[1865] | | |

| | | | |

" " |[Denmark |May 20, |" " May 22, 1865 | 62|

|Hill] |1865 | | |

| | | | |

| | | | |

| |6 [1865] |1865 | |

| | | | |

SLAVERY | |16, 1865] |18, 1865 | |

| | | | |

| |[1865] |1865 | |

| | | | |

| |[1865] |1865 | |

| | | | |

INSURRECTION | |19 [1865] |1865 | |

| | | | |

| |28, 1867 |Gazette_, March | |

| | |1, 1867 | |

| | | | |

WAGES | |1867 | | |

| | | | |

| | | | |

| | | | |

| |1868 |1868 | |

| | | | |

| | |31, 1868 | |

| | | | |

RAILWAYS | |[1868] |1868 | |

| | | | |

| |[1868] |1868 | |

| | | | |

DESTITUTE POOR, ETC.|Hill, S.E. |24 [1868] |1868 | |

| | | | |

ETC. | | |circulation, 1868| |

| | | | |

| | | | |

| |1870 |of publication | |

| | | | |

WAR |Hill, S.E. |[1870] |Telegraph_, Oct. | |

| | |7, 1870 | |

| | | | |

" " " |[Denmark |October 7 |" " Oct. 8, 1870 | 25|

|Hill, S.E.] |[1870] | | |

| | | | |

| |1870 |1870 | |

| | | | |

| |29, 1870 |Telegraph_, Nov. | |

| | |30, 1870 | |

| | | | |

|Hill] |[1871] |1871 | |

| | | | |

| |19, 1871 |Gazette_, Jan. | |

| | |19, 1871 | |

| | | | |

| | |4, 1871 | |

| | | | |

| |[1871] | | |

| | | | |

(EXTRACT) | |19, 1871] | | _n._|

| | | | |

AIR" |Hill] |1871 |May 23, 1871 | |

| | | | |

| | |11, 1871 | |

| | | | |

| | |28, 1871 | |

| | | | |

| |[1872] | | |

| | | | |

| |[1872] |Nov. 9, 1872 | |

| | | | |

| | |1873 | |

| | | | |

| | |24, 1873 | |

| | | | |

" " " |[Brantwood, |January 28 |" " Jan. 29, 1873| 67|

|Coniston] |[1873] | | |

| | | | |

" " " |Brantwood, |King |" " Jan. 31, 1873| 68|

| |the | | |

| |1873 | | |

| | | | |

WOMAN'S WORK |[ ] |[May, 1873]|_L'Espérance | 153|

| | |1873 | |

| | | | |

| | | | |

| |15, 1873 |1873 | |

| | | | |

| |1873 |Address, etc., | |

| | |1874 | |

| | | | |

| | |1874 | |

| | | | |

| |29, 1874 |Oct. 29, 1874 | |

| | | | |

| |[1875] |Gazette_, | |

| | | | |

CRITICS | |[1875] |1875 | |

| | | | |

| |1875] |of publication | |

| | | | |

| | | | |

| | | | |

| |1875 |13, 1875 | |

| | | | |

| |1876 |unknown | |

| | | | |

| | |1876 | |

| | | | |

| | | | |

| |10th [1877]|edition), 1877 | |

| | | | |

" " " |Venice |11th |" " " " 1877 | 146|

| |[1877] | | |

| | | | |

" " " |Venice |12th |" " " " 1877 | 147|

| |'77] | | |

| | | | |

| | | | |

| |1877 | | |

| | | | |

|E. |1877 |1878 | |

| | | | |

| |1878] |February 12, 1878| _n._|

| | | | |

| | | | |

| | |1878-9 | |

| | | | |

" " " |Edinburgh |29th |" " " " | 177|

| |1878 | | |

| | | | |

| | | | |

" " " |Brantwood, |October |" " " " | 190|

|Coniston |23, 1878 | | |

| | | | |

| | | | |

| | | | |

|Coniston |17th, 1879 | | |

| | | | |

| | |20, 1879 | |

| | | | |

| |19th, 1879 |Magazine_, Nov., | |

| | |1879 | |

| | | | |

| |1880 | | |

| | | | |

| |1880 |Webling | |

| | | | |

| | |1880 | |

| | | | |

| | |1880 | |

| | | | |

| | |1880 | |

| | | | |

" " " |[Brantwood] |10th June, |" " Oct. 7, 1880 | 195|

| |1880 | | |

| | | | |

" " " |[Brantwood] |24th June, |" " Oct. 7, 1880 | 196|

| |1880 | | |

| | | | |

" " " |Brantwood, |[July, |" " Oct. 12, 1880| 196|

|Coniston |1880] | | |

| | | | |

| |1880 |Dramatic | |

| | |1880 | |

| | | | |

| |1880 |1880 | |

| | | | |

| |12th, 1880 |Dramatic | |

| | |1880 | |

LETTERS ON POLITICS AND WAR.

THE ITALIAN QUESTION. 1859.

(Three letters: June 6, June 15, and August 1.)

THE FOREIGN POLICY OF ENGLAND. 1863.

THE POSITION OF DENMARK. 1864.

THE JAMAICA INSURRECTION. 1865.

THE FRANCO-PRUSSIAN WAR. 1870.

(Two letters: October 6 and 7.)

MODERN WARFARE. 1876.

ARROWS OF THE CHACE.

LETTERS ON POLITICS AND WAR.

[From "The Scotsman," July 20, 1859.]

_THE ITALIAN QUESTION._[1]

BERLIN, _June_ 6, 1859.

I have been thinking of sending a few lines about what I have seen of

Austrians and Italians; but every time I took my pen and turned from my

own work about clouds and leafage to think for a few minutes concerning

political clouds and thickets, I sank into a state of amazement which

reduced me to helpless silence. I will try and send you an incoherent

line to-day; for the smallest endeavor at coherence will bring me into

that atmosphere of astonishment again, in which I find no expression.

You northern Protestant people are always overrating the value of

Protestantism as such. Your poetical clergymen make sentimental tours

in the Vaudois country, as if there were no worthy people in the Alps

but the Vaudois. Did the enlightened Edinburgh evangelicals never take

any interest in the freedom of the Swiss, nor hear of such people

as Winkelried or Tell? Not but that there is some chance of Tell

disappearing one of these days under acutest historical investigation.

Still, he, or somebody else, verily got Switzerland rid of much evil,

and made it capable of much good; and if you examine the influence of

the battles of Morgarten and Sempach on European history, you will find

they were good and true pieces of God's work.[2] Do people suppose

they were done by Protestants? Switzerland owes all that she is--all

that she is ever likely to be--to her stout and stern Roman Catholics,

faithful to their faith to this day--they, and the Tyrolese, about the

truest Roman Catholics in Christendom and certainly among its worthiest

people, though they laid your Zuingli and a good deal of ranting

Protestantism which Zuingli in vain tried to make either rational or

charitable, dead together on the green meadows of Cappel, and though

the Tyrolese marksmen at this moment are following up their rifle

practice to good purpose, and with good will, with your Vaudois hearts

for targets.

The amazement atmosphere keeps floating with its edges about me,

though I write on as fast as I can in hopes of keeping out of it. You

Scotch, and we English!! to keep up the miserable hypocrisy of calling

ourselves Protestants! And here have been two of the most powerful

protests (sealed with quite as much blood as is usually needed for such

documents) that ever were made against the Papacy--one in 1848,[3]

and one now--twenty thousand men or thereabouts lying, at this time

being, in the form of torn flesh and shattered bones, among the rice

marshes of the Novarrese, and not one jot of our precious Protestant

blood gone to the signature. Not so much as one noble flush of it,

that I can see, on our clay cheeks, besmirched, as they are, with

sweat and smoke; but all for gold, and out of chimneys. Of sweat for

bread that perishes not, or of the old Sinai smoke for honor of God's

law, and revelation thereof--no drop nor shadow. Not so much as a

coroner's inquest on those dead bodies in the rice fields--dead men

who must have been murdered by somebody. If a drunken man falls in a

ditch, you will have your Dogberry and Verges talk over him by way

of doing justice; but your twenty thousand--not drunken, but honest,

respectable, well-meaning, and serviceable men--are made rice manure

of, and you think it is all right. We Protestants indeed! The Italians

are Protestants, and in a measure the French--nay, even the Austrians

(at all events those conical-hatted mountaineers), according to their

understanding of the matter. What we are, Moloch or Mammon, or the

Protestant devil make up of both, perhaps knows.

Do not think I dislike the Austrians. I have great respect and

affection for them, and I have seen more of them in familiar

intercourse than most Englishmen. One of my best friends in Venice

in the winter of 1849-50 was the Artillery officer who had directed

the fire on the side of Mestre in 1848. I have never known a nobler

person. Brave, kind, and gay--as gentle as a lamb, as playful as a

kitten--knightly in courtesy and in all tones of thought--ready at any

instant to lay down his life for his country or his Emperor. He was

by no means a rare instance either of gentleness or of virtue among

the men whom the Liberal portion of our English press represent as

only tyrants and barbarians. Radetzky himself was one of the kindest

of men--his habitual expression was one of overflowing _bonhommie_,

or of fatherly regard for the welfare of all around him. All who knew

him loved him. In little things his kindness was almost ludicrous. I

saw him at Verona run out of his own supper-room and return with a

plate of soup in his hand, the waiters (his youngest aides-de-camp) not

serving his lady guests fast enough to please him; yet they were nimble

enough, as I knew in a race with two of them among the fire-flies

by the Mincio, only the evening before. For a long time I regarded

the Austrians as the only protection of Italy from utter dissolution

(such as that which, I see to-day, it is reported that the Tuscan army

has fallen into, left for five weeks to itself), and I should have

looked upon them as such still, if the Sardinian Government had not

shown itself fit to take their place. And the moment that any Italian

Government was able to take their place, the Austrians necessarily

became an obstacle to Italian progress, for all their virtues are

incomprehensible to the Italians, and useless to them. Unselfish

individually, the Austrians are nationally entirely selfish, and in

this consists, so far as it is truly alleged against them, their

barbarism. These men of whom I have been speaking would have given, any

of them, life and fortune unhesitatingly, at their Emperor's bidding,

but their magnanimity was precisely that of the Highlander or the

Indian, incognizant of any principle of action but that of devotion to

his chief or nation. All abstract grounds of conscience, all universal

and human hopes, were inconceivable by them. Such men are at present

capable of no feeling towards Italy but scorn; their power was like

a bituminous cerecloth wrapping her corpse--it saved her from the

rottenness of revolution; but it must be unwound, if the time has come

for her resurrection.

I do not know if that time has come, or can come. Italy's true

oppression is all her own. Spain is oppressed by the Spaniard, not by

the Austrian. Greece needs but to be saved from the Greeks. No French

Emperor, however mighty his arm or sound his faith, can give Italy

freedom.

"A gift of that which is not to be given

By all the associate powers of earth and heaven."

But the time is come at least to bid her be free, if she has the power

of freedom. It is not England, certainly, who should forbid her. I

believe that is what it will come to, however--not so much because we

are afraid of Napoleon, as because we are jealous of him. But of him

and us I have something more to say than there is time for to-night.

These good, stupid, affectionate, faithful Germans, too (grand fellows

under arms; I never imagined so magnificent a soldiery as 15,000 of

them which I made a shift to see, through sand clouds, march past the

Prince Frederick William[4] on Saturday morning last). But to hear them

fretting and foaming at the French getting into Milan!--they having

absolutely no other idea on all this complicated business than that

French are fighting Germans! Wrong or right, why or wherefore, matters

not a jot to them. French are fighting Germans--somehow, somewhere,

for some reason--and beer and Vaterland are in peril, and the English

in fault, as we are assuredly, but not on that side, for I believe

it to be quite true which a French friend, high in position, says in

a letter this morning--"If the English had not sympathized with the

Austrians there would have been no war." By way of keeping up the

character of incoherence to which I have vowed myself, I may tell you

that before that French letter came, I received another from a very

sagacious Scotch friend (belonging, as I suppose most Scotch people do,

to the class of persons who call themselves "religious"), containing

this marvellous enunciation of moral principle, to be acted upon in

difficult circumstances, "Mind your own business." It is a serviceable

principle enough for men of the world, but a surprising one in the

mouth of a person who professes to be a Bible obeyer. For, as far as

I remember the tone of that obsolete book, "our own" is precisely the

last business which it ever tells us to mind. It tells us often to mind

God's business, often to mind other people's business; our own, in any

eager or earnest way, not at all. "What thy hand findeth to do." Yes;

but in God's fields, not ours. One can imagine the wiser fishermen

of the Galilean lake objecting to Peter and Andrew that they were

not minding their business, much more the commercial friends of Levi

speaking with gentle pity of him about the receipt of Custom. "A bad

man of business always--see what has come of it--quite mad at last."

And my astonishing friend went on to say that this was to be our

principle of action "where the path was not quite clear"--as if any

path ever _was_ clear till you got to the end of it, or saw it a long

way off; as if all human possibility of path was not among clouds and

brambles--often cold, always thorny--misty with roses occasionally, or

dim with dew, often also with shadow of Death--misty, more particularly

in England just now, with shadow of that commercially and otherwise

valuable smoke before spoken of.

However, if the path is not to be seen, it may be felt, or at least

tumbled off, without any particular difficulty. This latter course of

proceeding is our probablest, of course.--But I can't write any more

to-night. I am, etc.,

J. RUSKIN.

_Note_ to p. 6.--The lines quoted are from Wordsworth's "Poems

dedicated to National Independence and Liberty," Part II.,

Sonnet i. The second line should read, "By all the blended

powers of earth and heaven."

FOOTNOTES:

[1] This and the two following letters deal, it will be seen, with "the

Italian question" in 1859, when the peace of Europe was disturbed by

the combined action of France and Sardinia against Austria in the cause

of Italian independence. Of these three letters the first was written

two days after the defeat of the Austrians at Magenta, followed by the

entrance into Milan of the French, and the second a few days before the

similar victory of the French and Sardinian armies at Solferino.

[2] Few readers need be reminded of the position of Tell in the list of

Swiss patriots (_pace_ the "acutest historical investigation," which

puts him in the list of mythical personages) in the early part of the

fourteenth century; of Arnold von Winkelried who met the heroic death,

by which he secured his country's freedom, at Sempach in 1386; or of

Ulrich Zuingli, the Swiss Protestant leader of his time, who fell at

Cappel, in the war of the Reformed against the Romish cantons, in 1531.

At the battle of Morgarten, in 1315, twenty thousand Austrians were

defeated by no more than thirteen hundred Swiss, with such valor that

the name of the victors' canton was thereupon extended to the whole

country, thenceforth called Switzerland.

It may be further noted that Arnold of Sempach is, with Leonidas,

Curtius, and Sir Richard Grenville, named amongst the types of "the

divinest of sacrifices, that of the patriot for his country," in Mr.

Ruskin's Preface, "Bibliotheca Pastorum," Vol. i. p. xxxiii.

[3] The year of the Lombard insurrection, when Radetzky, the Austrian

field-marshal, defeated the insurgents at Custozza near Verona.

Radetzky died in 1858.

[4] The Prince Frederick William, now Emperor of Germany (having

succeeded his brother Frederick William IV. in January, 1861), was at

the date of this letter Regent of Prussia, and Commander-in-chief of

the Prussian forces.

[From the "Scotsman," July 23, 1859.]

_THE ITALIAN QUESTION._

BERLIN, _June_ 15.

You would have had this second letter sooner, had I not lost myself,

after despatching the first, in farther consideration of the theory

of Non-Intervention, or minding one's own business. What, in logical

terms, _is_ the theory? If one sees a costermonger wringing his

donkey's tail, is it proper to "intervene"? and if one sees an Emperor

or a System wringing a nation's neck, is it improper to intervene? Or

is the Intervention allowable only in the case of hides, not of souls?

for even so, I think you might find among modern Italians many quite as

deserving of intervention as the donkey. Or is interference allowable

when one person does one wrong to another person, but not when two

persons do two wrongs to two, or three to three, or a multitude to

a multitude; and is there any algebraic work on these square and

cube roots of morality wherein I may find how many coadjutors or

commissions any given crooked requires to make it straight? Or is it a

geographical question; and may one advisably interfere at Berwick but

not at Haddington? Or is there any graduated scale of intervention,

practicable according to the longitude? I see my way less clearly,

because the illustrations of the theory of Non-intervention are

as obscure as its statement. The French are at present happy and

prosperous; content with their ruler and themselves; their trade

increasing, and their science and art advancing; their feelings towards

other nations becoming every day more just. Under which circumstances

we English non-interventionalists consider it our duty to use every

means in our power of making the ruler suspected by the nation, and the

nation unmanageable by the ruler. We call both all manner of names;

exhaust every term of impertinence and every method of disturbance; and

do our best, in indirect and underhand ways, to bring about revolution,

assassination, or any other close of the existing system likely to be

satisfactory to Royals[5] in general. This is your non-intervention

when a nation is prosperous.

On the other hand, the Italian nation is unhappy and unprosperous;

its trade annihilated, its arts and sciences retrograde, its nerve

and moral sense prostrated together; it is capable only of calling to

you for help, and you will not help it. The man you have been calling

names, with his unruly colonels, undertakes to help it, and Christian

England, with secret hope that, in order to satisfy her spite against

the unruly colonels, the French army may be beaten, and the Papacy

fully established over the whole of Italy--Christian England, I say,

with this spiteful jealousy for one of her motives, and a dim, stupid,

short-sighted, sluggish horror of interruption of business for the

other, takes, declaratively and ostensibly, this highly Christian

position. "Let who will prosper or perish, die or live--let what will

be declared or believed--let whatsoever iniquity be done, whatsoever

tyranny be triumphant, how many soever of faithful or fiery soldiery

be laid in new embankments of dead bodies along those old embankments

of Mincio and Brenta; yet will we English drive our looms, cast up our

accounts, and bet on the Derby, in peace and gladness; our business

is only therewith; for us there is no book of fate, only ledgers and

betting-books; for us there is no call to meddle in far-away business.

See ye to it. We wash our hands of it in that sea-foam of ours; surely

the English Channel is better than Abana and Pharpar, or than the

silver basin which Pilate made use of, and our soap is of the best

almond-cake."

I hear the Derby was great this year.[6] I wonder, sometimes, whether

anybody has ever calculated, in England, how much taxation the nation

pays annually for the maintenance of that great national institution.

Observe--what I say of the spirit in which the English bear themselves

at present, is founded on what I myself have seen and heard, not on

what I read in journals. I read them little at home--here I hardly see

them. I have no doubt that in the Liberal papers one might find much

mouthing about liberty, as in the Conservative much about order, it

being neither liberty nor order which is wanted, but Justice. You may

have Freedom of all Abomination, and Order of all Iniquity--if you

look for Forms instead of Facts. Look for the facts first--the doing

of justice howsoever and by whatsoever forms or informalities. And the

forms will come--shapely enough, and sightly enough, afterwards. Yet,

perhaps, not till long afterwards. Earnest as I am for the freedom

of Italy, no one can hope less from it, for many a year to come.

Even those Vaudois, whom you Presbyterians admire so much, have made

as yet no great show of fruit out of their religious freedom. I went

up from Turin to Torre di Lucerna to look at them last year. I have

seldom slept in a dirtier inn, seldom seen peasants' cottages so ill

built, and never yet in my life saw anywhere paths so full of nettles.

The faces of the people are interesting, and their voices sweet,

except in howlings on Sunday evening, which they performed to a very

disquieting extent in the street till about half-past ten, waking me

afterwards between twelve and one with another "catch," and a dance

through the village of the liveliest character. Protestantism is apt

sometimes to take a gayer character abroad than with us. Geneva has

an especially disreputable look on Sunday evenings, and at Hanover I

see the shops are as wide open on Sunday as Saturday; here, however,

in Berlin, they shut up as close as you do at Edinburgh. I think

the thing that annoyed me most at La Tour, however, was the intense

sectarianism of the Protestant dogs. I can make friends generally,

fast enough, with any canine or feline creature; but I could make

nothing of those evangelical brutes, and there was as much snarling and

yelping that afternoon before I got past the farmhouses to the open

hill-side, as in any of your Free Church discussions. It contrasted

very painfully with the behavior of such Roman Catholic dogs as I

happen to know--St. Bernard's and others--who make it their business

to entertain strangers. But the hill-side was worth reaching--for

though that Lucerna valley is one of the least interesting I ever saw

in the Alps, there is a craggy ridge on the north of it which commands

a notable view. In about an hour and a half's walking you may get up

to the top of a green, saddle-shaped hill, which separates the Lucerna

valley from that of Angrogna; if then, turning to the left (westward),

you take the steepest way you can find up the hill, another couple of

hours will bring you to a cone of stones which the shepherds have built

on the ridge, and there you may see all the historical sites of the

valley of Angrogna as in a map--and as much of Monte Viso and Piedmont

as clouds will let you. I wish I could draw you a map of Piedmont

as I saw it that afternoon. The air was half full of white cumulus

clouds, lying nearly level about fifteen hundred feet under the ridge;

and through every gap of them a piece of Piedmont with a city or two.

Turin, twenty-eight miles away as the bird flies, shows through one

cloud-opening like a handful of golden sand in a pool of blue sea.

I've no time to write any more to-day, for I've been to Charlottenburg,

out of love for Queen Louise.[7] I can't see a good painting of her

anywhere, and they show her tomb by blue light, like the nun scene in

_Robert le Diable_. A German woman's face, if beautiful at all, is

exquisitely beautiful; but it depends mainly on the thoughtfulness of

the eyes, and the bright hair. It rarely depends much upon the nose,

which has perhaps a tendency to be--if anything--a little too broadish

and flattish--perhaps one might even say in some cases, knobbish. (The

Hartz mountains, I see, looking at them from Brunswick, have similar

tendencies, less excusably and more decidedly.) So when the eyes are

closed--and for the soft hair one has only furrowed marble--and the

nose to its natural disadvantages adds that of being seen under blue

light, the general effect is disappointing.

Frederick the Great's celebrated statue is at the least ten yards too

high[8] from the ground to be of any use; one sees nothing but the

edges of the cloak he never wore, the soles of his boots, and, in a

redundant manner, his horse's tail. Under which vertically is his

Apotheosis. In which process he sits upon the back of an eagle, and

waves a palm, with appearance of satisfaction to himself, and it is to

be hoped no danger of any damage to three stars in the neighborhood.

Kiss's Amazon makes a good grotesque for the side of the Museum steps;

it was seen to disadvantage in London. The interior of the gallery is

very beautiful in many ways; and Holbein's portrait of George Gyzen is

worth coming all the way from England to see only ten minutes. I never

saw so noble a piece of work of its kind in my life.

Believe me, etc.,

J. RUSKIN.

FOOTNOTES:

[5] A misprint for "Rogues." See next letter, p. 13.

[6] "Magnificent weather and excellent sport made the great people's

meeting pass off with great _éclat_." ("Annual Register" for 1859, p.

73.) The race was won by Sir J. Hawley's Musjid.

[7] The mother of the present Emperor, whose treatment by Napoleon

I., and whose own admirable qualities, have won for her the tender

and affectionate memory of her people. She died in 1810. Her tomb at

Charlottenburg is the work of the German sculptor, Christian Rauch.

[8] The full height of this statue (also the work of Rauch) is,

inclusive of the pedestal, somewhat over forty-two feet from the

ground. One of the bas-relief tablets which flank the pedestal

represents the Apotheosis of the monarch. The visitor to Berlin may

recall August Kiss's bronze group, representing the combat of an

Amazon with a tiger, on the right side of the Old Museum steps; and

Holbein's portrait of George Gyzen, a merchant of London, is No. 586 in

the picture galleries of the Museum. It is described by Mr. Ruskin in

his article on "Sir Joshua and Holbein" in the _Cornhill Magazine_ of

March, 1860, and also in Wornum's "Life and Works of Holbein," p. 260

(London, 1867).

[From "The Scotsman," August 6, 1859.]

_THE ITALIAN QUESTION._

SCHAFFHAUSEN, _August_ 1, 1859.

_Letter to the Editor_ (_of "The Scotsman"_).

SIR: I have just received the number of the _Scotsman_ containing my

second letter from Berlin, in which there is rather an awkward misprint

of "royals" for "rogues," which must have puzzled some of your readers,

no less than the general tone of the letter, written as it was for

publication at another time, and as one of a series begun in another

journal. I am obliged by the admission of the letter into your columns;

and I should have been glad to continue in those columns the series I

intended, had not the refusal of this letter by the _Witness_[9] shown

me the liability to misapprehension under which I should be writing.

I had thought that, seeing for these twenty years I have been more or

less conversant with Italy and the Italians, a few familiar letters

written to a personal friend, at such times as I could win from my

own work, might not have been uninteresting to Scottish readers, even

though my opinions might occasionally differ sharply from theirs, or

be expressed in such rough way as strong opinions must be, when one

has no time to polish them into more pleasing presentability. The

refusal of the letter by the _Witness_ showed me that this was not

so; and as I have no leisure to take up the subject methodically, I

must leave what I have written in its present imperfect form. It is

indeed not mainly a question of time, which I would spend gladly,

though to handle the subject of the present state of Italy with any

completeness would involve a total abandonment of other work for some

weeks. But I feel too deeply in this matter to allow myself to think of

it continuously. To me, the state of the modern political mind, which

hangs the slaughter of twenty thousand men, and the destinies of twenty

myriads of human souls, on the trick that transforms a Ministry, or the

chances of an enlarged or diminished interest in trade, is something

so horrible that I find no utterance wherewith to characterize it--nor

any courage wherewith to face the continued thought of it, unless I

had clear expectation of doing good by the effort--expectation which

the mere existence of the fact forbids. I leave therefore the words I

have written to such work as they may; hoping, indeed, nothing from

any words; thankful, if a few people here and there understand and

sympathize in the feelings with which they were written; and thankful,

if none so sympathize, that I am able at least to claim some share in

the sadness, though not in the triumph, of the words of Farinata--

"Fu' io sol colà, dove sofferto

Fu per ciascun di torre via Fiorenza,

Colui che la difese a viso aperto."[10]

I am, etc., J. RUSKIN.

FOOTNOTES:

[9] After a careful and repeated search in the columns of the

_Witness_, I am still unable to certainly explain these allusions. It

seems, however, that the two preceding letters had been sent to the

_Witness_, which printed the first and refused to print the second.

The _Scotsman_ printed both under the titles of "Mr. Ruskin on the

Italian Question," and "Mr. Ruskin on Foreign Politics," whilst it

distinguished this third letter by the additional heading of "Letter

to the Editor." It may be conjectured, therefore, that the first two

letters were reprinted by the _Scotsman_ from another paper, and that,

in receiving the number of the _Scotsman_ containing the second, Mr.

Ruskin did not know that it had reprinted the first also. As to the

"series begun in another journal," it is, I think, clear that it had

not been long continued, as the letter dated "June 15," sent to and

refused by it, is spoken of as "the second letter," so that that dated

"June 6" must have been the first, as this was unquestionably the last

of the series.

[10]

"But singly there I stood, when, by consent

Of all, Florence had to the ground been razed,

The one who openly forbade the deed."

CARY'S DANTE--"L'Inferno," x. II. 90-93.

Farinata degli Uberti was a noble Florentine, and the leader of the

Ghibelline faction, when they obtained a signal victory over the

Guelfi at Montaperto, near the river Arbia. Machiavelli calls him "a

man of exalted soul, and great military talents" (Hist. of Florence,

Bk. ii). Subsequently, when it was proposed that, in order to maintain

the ascendency of the Ghibelline faction in Tuscany, Florence should

be destroyed, Farinata alone of all the Council opposed the measure,

declaring that he had endured every hardship with no other view than

that of being able to pass his days in his own country. (See Cary's

notes to Canto x.)

[From "The Liverpool Albion," November 2, 1863.]

_THE FOREIGN POLICY OF ENGLAND._[11]

ZURICH, _Oct. 25th_, 1863.

SIR: I beg to acknowledge your favor of the 20th of October. My health

does not now admit of my taking part frequently in public business;

yet I should have held it a duty to accept the invitation of the

directors of the Liverpool Institute, but that, for the time being, my

temper is at fault, as well as my health; and I am wholly unable to

go on with any of my proper work, owing to the horror and shame with

which I regard the political position taken, or rather sunk into, by

England in her foreign relations--especially in the affairs of Italy

and Poland.[12] What these matters have to do with Art may not at

first be clear, but I can perhaps make it so by a short similitude.

Suppose I had been engaged by an English gentleman to give lectures on

Art to his son. Matters at first go smoothly, and I am diligent in my

definitions of line and color, until, one Sunday morning at breakfast

time, a ticket-of-leave man takes a fancy to murder a girl in the road

leading round the lawn, before the house-windows. My patron, hearing

the screams, puts down his paper, adjusts his spectacles, slowly

apprehends what is going on, and rings the bells for his smallest

footman. "John, take my card and compliments to that gentleman outside

the hedge, and tell him that his proceedings are abnormal, and, I may

add, to me personally--offensive. Had that road passed through my

property, I should have felt it my duty to interfere." John takes the

card, and returns with it; the ticket-of-leave man finishes his work at

his leisure; but, the screams ceasing as he fills the girl's mouth with

clay, the English gentleman returns to his muffins, and congratulates

himself on having "kept out of that mess." Presently afterwards he

sends for me to know if I shall be ready to lecture on Monday. I am

somewhat nervous, and answer--I fear rudely--"Sir, your son is a good

lad; I hope he will grow to be a man--but, for the present, I cannot

teach him anything. I should like, indeed, to teach _you_ something,

but have no words for the lesson." Which indeed I have not. If I say

any words on such matters, people ask me, "Would I have the country

go to war? do I know how dreadful a thing war is?" Yes, truly, I know

it. I like war as ill as most people--so ill, that I would not spend

twenty millions a year in making machines for it, neither my holidays

and pocket money in playing at it; yet I would have the country go to

war, with haste, in a good quarrel; and, which is perhaps eccentric in

me, rather in another's quarrel than in her own. We say of ourselves

complacently that we will not go to war for an idea; but the phrase

interpreted means only, that we will go to war for a bale of goods,

but not for justice nor for mercy; and I would ask you to favor me so

far as to read this letter to the students at your meeting, and say

to them that I heartily wish them well; but for the present I am too

sad to be of any service to them; that our wars in China and Japan[13]

are not likely to furnish good subjects for historical pictures; that

"ideas" happen, unfortunately, to be, in Art, the principal things; and

that a country which will not fight for its ideas is not likely to have

anything worth painting.

I have the honor to be, Sir, your faithful servant,

J. RUSKIN.

The Secretary of the Liverpool Institute.

FOOTNOTES:

[11] This letter was written in answer to a request that Mr. Ruskin

would come and preside at the distribution of prizes among the students

in the Science and Art Department of the Liverpool Institute, on

Saturday, Oct. 31, 1863. It was subsequently read on the occasion of

distribution, in accordance with the wish expressed towards the end of

the letter.

[12] See the preceding and the following letter. This one was, it will

be seen, written in the year of the last great struggle of Poland

against Russia.

[13] A The expedition of the English and French against China was begun

in the August of 1860; the war in Japan in the summer of 1863.

[From "The Morning Post," July 7, 1864.]

_THE POSITION OF DENMARK._

_To the Editor of_ "_The Morning Post_."

Arrows of the Chace, vol. 2/2 being a collection of scattered letters published chiefly in the daily newspapers 1840-1880 · 第 1 / 18 段