Bellinzona, during a drought as harmful as the storms of ten years
later. The Ticino sank into a green rivulet; and not having seen the
right way to deal with the matter, I had many a talk with the parroco
of a little church whose tower I was drawing, as to the possibility of
setting his peasants to work to repair the embankment while the river
was low. But the good old priest said, sorrowfully, the peasants were
too jealous of each other, that no one would build anything or protect
his own ground for fear his work might also benefit his neighbors.
But the people of Bellinzona are Swiss, not Italians. I believe the
Roman and Sienese races, in different ways, possess qualities of
strength and gentleness far more precious than the sunshine and rain
upon their mountains, and, hitherto, as cruelly lost. It is in them
that all the real power of Italy still lives; it is only by them, and
by what care, and providence, and accordant good-will ever be found in
them, that the work is to be done, not by money; though, if money were
all that is needed, do we in England owe so little to Italy of delight
that we cannot so much as lend her spades and pick-axes at her need?
Would she trust us? Would her government let us send over some engineer
officers and a few sappers and miners, and bear, for a time, with an
English instead of a French "occupation" of her barrenest hills?
But she does not need us. Good engineers she has, and has had many
since Leonardo designed the canals of Lombardy. Agriculturists she has
had, I think, among her gentlemen a little before there were gentlemen
farmers in England; something she has told us of agriculture, also,
pleasantly by the reeds of Mincio and among the apple-blossoms wet with
Arno. Her streams have learned obedience before now: Fonte Branda and
the Fountain of Joy flow at Sienna still; the rivulets that make green
the slopes of Casentino may yet satisfy true men's thirst. "Where is
the money to come from?" Let Italy keep her souls pure, and she will
not need to alloy her florins. The only question for her is whether
still the mossy rock and the "rivus aquæ" are "in rotis" or rather the
racecourse and the boulevard--the curses of England and of France.
At all events, if any one of the Princes of Rome will lead, help enough
will follow to set the work on foot, and show the peasants, in some
narrow district, what can be done. Take any arid piece of Apennine
towards the sources of the Tiber; let the drainage be carried along the
hill-sides away from the existing water-courses; let cisterns, as of
old in Palestine, and larger reservoirs, such as we now can build, be
established at every point convenient for arrest of the streams; let
channels of regulated flow be established from these over the tracts
that are driest in summer; let ramparts be carried, not along the
river banks, but round the heads of the ravines, throwing the water
aside into lateral canals; then terrace and support the looser soil
on all the steeper slopes; and the entire mountain side may be made
one garden of orange and vine and olive beneath; and a wide blossoming
orchard above; and a green highest pasture for cattle, and flowers for
bees--up to the edge of the snows of spring.
I am, Sir, your faithful servant,
JOHN RUSKIN.
OXFORD, _Feb._ 3.
FOOTNOTES:
[109] See the date of the letter on a landslip near Giagnano (vol. i.
p. 302).
[From "The Pall Mall Gazette," December 28, 1871.]
_THE STREETS OF LONDON._
_To the Editor of "The Pall Mall Gazette."_
SIR: I have been every day on the point of writing to you since your
notice, on the 18th,[110] of the dirty state of the London streets, to
ask whether any of your readers would care to know how such matters
are managed in my neighborhood. I was obliged, a few years ago, for
the benefit of my health, to take a small house in one of the country
towns of Utopia; and though I was at first disappointed in the climate,
which indeed is no better than our own (except that there is no foul
marsh air), I found my cheerfulness and ability for work greatly
increased by the mere power of getting exercise pleasantly close to my
door, even in the worst of the winter, when, though I have a little
garden at the back of my house, I dislike going into it, because the
things look all so dead; and find my walk on the whole pleasanter in
the streets, these being always perfectly clean, and the wood-carving
of the houses prettier than much of our indoor furniture. But it was
about the streets I wanted to tell you. The Utopians have the oddest
way of carrying out things, when once they begin, as far as they can
go; and it occurred to them one dirty December long since, when they,
like us, had only crossing-sweepers, that they might just as well sweep
the whole of the street as the crossings of it, so that they might
cross anywhere. Of course that meant more work for the sweepers; but
the Utopians have always hands enough for whatever work is to be done
in the open air;--they appointed a due number of brooms-men to every
quarter of the town; and since then, at any time of the year, it is in
our little town as in great Rotterdam when Doctor Brown saw it on his
journey from Norwich to Colen in 1668, "the women go about in white
slippers," which is pretty to see.[111] Now, Sir, it would, of course,
be more difficult to manage anything like this in London, because, for
one thing, in our town we have a rivulet running down every street that
slopes to the river; and besides, because you have coal-dust and smoke
and what not to deal with; and the habit of spitting, which is worst
of all--in Utopia, a man would as soon vomit as spit in the street (or
anywhere else, indeed, if he could help it). But still it is certain we
can at least anywhere do as much for the whole street, as we have done
for the crossing; and to show that we can, I mean, on 1st January next,
to take three street-sweepers into constant service; they will be the
first workpeople I employ with the interest of the St. George's fund,
of which I shall get my first dividend this January; and, whenever I
can get leave from the police and inhabitants, I will keep my three
sweepers steadily at work for eight hours a day; and I hope soon to
show you a bit of our London streets kept as clean as the deck of a
ship of the line.[112]
I am, Sir, your faithful servant,
JOHN RUSKIN.
_December_ 27, 1871.
FOOTNOTES:
[110] Quite unimportant. It simply complained of the condition of the
streets.
[111] Dr. Edward Browne, the son of the author of the "Religio Medici,"
Sir Thomas Browne. Writing to his father from Rotterdam, in 1668, he
says: "The cleanenesse and neatnesse of this towne is so new unto mee,
that it affoordeth great satisfaction, most persons going about the
streets in white slippers."--"Life and Works of Sir Thomas Browne."
Pickering, 1836. Vol. i. p. 154.
[112] Mr. Ruskin was as good as his word, and his sweepers were at work
in the following January.
MISCELLANEOUS LETTERS.
IV.
EDUCATION FOR RICH AND POOR.
TRUE EDUCATION. 1868.
THE VALUE OF LECTURES. 1874.
THE CRADLE OF ART! 1876.
ST. GEORGE'S MUSEUM. 1875.
THE MORALITY OF FIELD SPORTS. 1870.
DRUNKENNESS AND CRIME. 1871.
MADNESS AND CRIME. 1872.
EMPLOYMENT FOR THE DESTITUTE POOR AND CRIMINAL CLASSES. 1868.
NOTES ON THE GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF EMPLOYMENT FOR THE DESTITUTE
AND CRIMINAL CLASSES (a pamphlet). 1868.
BLINDNESS AND SIGHT. 1879.
THE EAGLE'S NEST. 1879.
POLITICS IN YOUTH. 1879.
"ACT, ACT IN THE LIVING PRESENT." 1873.
"LABORARE EST ORARE." 1874.
A PAGAN MESSAGE. 1878.
THE FOUNDATIONS OF CHIVALRY.
(Five letters: February 8, 10, 11, and 12, 1877, and July 3, 1878.)
IV.
EDUCATION FOR RICH AND POOR.
[From "The Pall Mall Gazette," January 31, 1868.]
_TRUE EDUCATION._[113]
_To the Editor of "The Pall Mall Gazette."_
SIR: The letter you published yesterday from a parish schoolboy of
"Sixty Years Since" at Weary-faulds (confirmed as it would be doubtless
in all practical respects by testimony of English boys educated at
Waverley Honour) has my hearty sympathy; but I am wearier than any
tenant of Weary-faulds of seeing this subject of education always
treated as if "education" only meant teaching children to write or to
cipher or to repeat catechism. You know, Sir, as you have shown by
your comments on the Bishop of Oxford's last speech on this subject,
and you could not at present use your influence more beneficially than
by farther showing that the real education-the education which alone
should be compulsory--means nothing of the kind. It means teaching
children to be clean, active, honest, and useful. All these characters
can be taught, and cannot be acquired by sickly and ill-dispositioned
children without being taught; but they can be untaught to any extent,
by evil habit and example at home. Public schools, in which the aim
was to form character faithfully, would return to them in due time to
their parents, worth more than their "weight in gold." That is the
real answer to the objections founded on economical difficulties. Will
you not make some effort, Sir, to get your readers to feel this? I am
myself quite sick of saying it over and over again in vain.
I am, Sir, your faithful servant,
J. RUSKIN.
DENMARK HILL, _Jan._ 31, 1868.
FOOTNOTES:
[113] The _Pall Mall Gazette_ of January 27 contained a leader on
"Compulsory Education," and that of January 29 one upon a speech
of the Bishop of Oxford on the same subject, made at a meeting in
connection with the National Society, held at Tunbridge Wells on
the preceding day. In the _Gazette_ of January 30 appeared a letter
referring to these articles, headed "Sixty Years Ago," and signed
"One who has walked four miles to the Parish School." It described
the writer's early home, situate in some lowland parish north of the
Tweed, and divided into five or six estates, such as "Whinny-hills"
and "Weary-faulds," the lairds of which were shortly called "Whinny"
or "Weary" after their properties. In this primitive village, where
supervision, much less compulsion, in education was never heard of,
"no child grew up without learning to read," and the morals of the
parish were on the whole good; the children quarrelled, but did not
steal.--The reader will remember that the second title of "Waverley" is
"'Tis Sixty Years Since."
[From "The Glasgow Herald," June 5, 1874. Also reprinted in "The Times"
of June 6, 1874.]
_THE VALUE OF LECTURES._[114]
ROME, _26th May_, 1874.
MY DEAR SIR: I have your obliging letter, but am compelled by increase
of work to cease lecturing except at Oxford--and practically there
also--for, indeed, I find the desire of audiences to be _audiences
only_ becoming an entirely pestilent character of the age. Everybody
wants to _hear_--nobody to read--nobody to think; to be excited for
an hour--and, if possible, amused; to get the knowledge it has cost a
man half his life to gather, first sweetened up to make it palatable,
and then kneaded into the smallest possible pills--and to swallow it
homœopathically and be wise--this is the passionate desire and hope of
the multitude of the day.
It is not to be done. A living comment quietly given to a class
on a book they are earnestly reading--this kind of lecture is
eternally necessary and wholesome; your modern fire-working,
smooth-downy-curry-and-strawberry-ice-and-milk-punch-altogether lecture
is an entirely pestilent and abominable vanity; and the miserable death
of poor Dickens, when he might have been writing blessed books till he
was eighty, but for the pestiferous demand of the mob, is a very solemn
warning to us all, if we would take it.[115]
God willing, I will go on writing, and as well as I can. There are
three volumes published of my Oxford lectures,[116] in which every
sentence is set down as carefully as may be. If people want to learn
from me, let them read them or my monthly letter _Fors Clavigera_. If
they don't care for these, I don't care to talk to them.
Truly yours,
J. RUSKIN.
FOOTNOTES:
[114] This letter was written to Mr. Chapman, of the Glasgow Athenæum
Lecture Committee, in reply to a request that Mr. Ruskin would
lecture at their meetings during the winter. Writing from Oxford four
years later, in answer to a similar request, Mr. Ruskin wrote as
follows: "Nothing can advance art in any district of this accursed
machine-and-devil driven England until she changes her mind in many
things, and my time for talking is past.--Ever faithfully yours, J.
Ruskin. I lecture here, but only on the art of the past." (Extract
given in the _Times_, Feb. 12, 1878.)
[115] The evil result on Dickens' health of his last series of readings
at St. James's Hall, in the early part of 1870, scarcely four months
before his death, is thus noted by Mr. Forster: "Little remains to be
told that has not in it almost unmixed sorrow and pain. Hardly a day
passed, while the readings went on or after they closed, unvisited
by some effect or other of the disastrous excitement consequent on
them."--"Life of Charles Dickens," vol. iii. p. 493.
[116] "Aratra Pentalici." "The Eagle's Nest"; and either "Val d'Arno"
(Orpington, 1874) or "Lectures on Art" (Clarendon Press, 1870).
[Date and place of publication unknown.]
_THE CRADLE OF ART!_[117]
_18th Feb._ 1876.
MY DEAR SIR: I lose a frightful quantity of time because people won't
read what I ask them to read, nor believe anything of what I tell
them, and yet ask me to talk whenever they think they can take a
shilling or two at the door by me. I have written fifty times, if once,
that you can't have art where you have smoke; you may have it in hell,
perhaps, for the Devil is too clever not to consume his own smoke, if
he wants to. But you will never have it in Sheffield. You may learn
something about nature, shrivelled, and stones, and iron; and what
little you can see of that sort, I'm going to try and show you. But
pictures, never.
Ever faithfully yours,
JOHN RUSKIN.
If for no other reason, no artist worth sixpence in a day would live in
Sheffield, nor would any one who cared for pictures--for a million a
year.
FOOTNOTES:
[117] This letter was in answer to a request of the Sheffield Society
of Artists similar to that replied to in the preceding letter.
[From "The Sheffield Daily Telegraph," September 7, 1875.]
_ST. GEORGE'S MUSEUM._[118]
BRANTWOOD, CONISTON, LANCASHIRE.
MY DEAR SIR: I am obliged by your note, but the work of the St.
George's Company is necessarily distinct from all other. My "museum"
may be perhaps nothing but a two-windowed garret. But it will have
in it nothing but what deserves respect in art or admiration in
nature. A great museum in the present state of the public mind is
simply an exhibition of the possible modes of doing wrong in art, and
an accumulation of uselessly multiplied ugliness in misunderstood
nature. Our own museum at Oxford is full of distorted skulls, and
your Sheffield ironwork department will necessarily contain the most
barbarous abortions that human rudeness has ever produced with human
fingers. The capitals of the iron shafts in any railway station, for
instance, are things to make a man wish--for shame of his species--that
he had been born a dog or a bee.
Ever faithfully yours,
J. RUSKIN.
P.S.--I have no doubt the geological department will be well done,
and my poor little cabinets will enable your men to use it to better
advantage, but would be entirely lost if united with it.
FOOTNOTES:
[118] This letter was written in answer to one addressed to Mr. Ruskin
by Mr. W. Bragge, F.R.G.S., who, having read in "Fors Clavigera" of Mr.
Ruskin's intention to found the St. George's Museum at Sheffield, wrote
to inform him that another museum, in which his might be incorporated,
was already in course of building. It was read by Mr. Bragge at a
dinner which followed the opening of Western Park to the public on
September 6, 1875.
[From "The Daily Telegraph," January 15, 1870.]
_THE MORALITY OF FIELD SPORTS._
_To the Editor of "The Daily Telegraph."_
SIR: As, thirty years ago,[119] I publicly expressed a strong opinion
on the subject of field sports, and as with more accurate knowledge I
hold the same opinion still, and more strongly--will you permit me to
place the controversy between your correspondents[120] in which I have
no time to take part, on somewhat clearer grounds.
Reprobation of fox-hunting on the ground of cruelty to the fox is
entirely futile. More pain is caused to the draught-horses of London
in an hour by avariciously overloading them, than to all the foxes in
England by the hunts of the year: and the rending of body and heart in
human death, caused by neglect, in our country cottages, in any one
winter, could not be equalled by the death-pangs of any quantity of
foxes.
The real evils of fox-hunting are that it wastes the time, misapplies
the energy, exhausts the wealth, narrows the capacity, debases the
taste, and abates the honor of the upper classes of this country;
and instead of keeping, as your correspondent "Forester" supposes,
"thousands from the workhouse," it sends thousands of the poor, both
there, and into the grave.
The athletic training given by fox-hunting is excellent; and such
training is vitally necessary to the upper classes. But it ought always
to be in real service to their country; in personal agricultural labor
at the head of their tenantry; and in extending English life and
dominion in waste regions, against the adverse powers of nature. Let
them become Captains of Emigration;--hunt down the foxes that spoil the
Vineyard of the World; and keep their eyes on the leading hound, in
Packs of Men.
I am, Sir, your faithful servant,
J. RUSKIN.[121]
DENMARK HILL, _Jan._ 14.
FOOTNOTES:
[119] In various parts of "Modern Painters." See vol. v. p. 264. "I
wish, however, the reader distinctly to understand that the expressions
of reprobation of field-sports which he will find scattered through
these volumes ... refer only to the chase and the turf; that is to say,
to hunting, shooting, and horse-racing, but not to athletic exercises.
I have just as deep a respect for boxing, wrestling, cricketing,
and rowing, as contempt of all the various modes of wasting wealth,
time, land, and energy of soul, which have been invented by the pride
and selfishness of men, in order to enable them to be healthy in
uselessness, and get quit of the burdens of their own lives, without
condescending to make themselves serviceable to others."
[120] The correspondence originated as follows: In the _Fortnightly
Review_ of October, 1869, appeared an article against fox-hunting
by Mr. E. A. Freeman, entitled, "The Morality of Field Sports," to
which Mr. Anthony Trollope replied by one entitled "The Morality of
Hunting," in the _Fortnightly_ of the following December. Mr. Freeman
then rejoined by two letters of considerable length, addressed to
the editor of the _Daily Telegraph_ (December 18 and 29), in whose
columns some discussion of the matter had already been carried on,
whilst one of its leaders had strongly supported Mr. Freeman's views.
Other correspondence on the subject was still appearing in the _Daily
Telegraph_ from day to day at the time Mr. Ruskin wrote the present
letter.
[121] At the annual meeting of the Society for the Prevention of
Cruelty to Animals, Mr. Ruskin is reported (_Daily News_, July 11,
1877) to have said that "as he was somewhat concerned in the studies
of the scientific world, it might be thought that he sympathized in
the resistance offered, not without some ground of reason, to some of
the more enthusiastic and, he feared in some respects, exaggerated
and sentimental actions of the society. He pleaded in the name of
poor animals that none of them should act too much on the feeling of
pity, or without making a thoroughly judicial inquiry. In looking at
the report, he found part of the society's admirable evidence mixed
up with sentimental tales of fiction and other means of exciting mere
emotion, which had caused them to lose power with those who had the
greatest influence in the prevention of the abuses which the society
desired to check. The true justice of their cause lay in the relations
which men had had with animals from the time when both were made. They
had endeavored to prevent cruelty to animals; they had not enough
endeavored to promote affection for animals. He thought they had had
too much to do in the police courts, and not enough in the field
and the cottage garden. As one who was especially interested in the
education of the poor, he believed that he could not educate them on
animals, but that he could educate them by animals. He trusted to the
pets of children for their education just as much as to their tutors.
He rejoiced in the separate organization of the Ladies' Committee,
and looked to it to give full extent and power to action which
would supersede all their expensive and painful disputable duties.
Without perfect sympathy with the animals around them, no gentleman's
education, no Christian education, could be of any possible use. In
concluding, he pleaded for an expansion of the protection extended by
the society to wild birds."
[From "The Daily Telegraph," December 11, 1871.]
_DRUNKENNESS AND CRIME._
_To the Editor of "The Daily Telegraph."_
SIR: I am greatly surprised by the slightness of your article to-day on
the statistics of drunkenness and the relative statistics of crime.[122]
The tables you have given, if given only in that form by Professor
Leone Levi, are anything but "instructive." Liquor is not, for such
purpose, to be measured only by the gallon, but by the gallon with
accompanying statement of strength.
Crime is not for such purpose to be measured by the number of
criminals, but by the number, with accompanying statement of the crime
committed. Drunkenness very slightly encourages theft, very largely
encourages murder, and universally encourages idleness, which is not a
crime apparent in a tabular form. But, whatever results might, even by
such more accurate statement, be attainable, are not material to the
question at issue. Drunkenness is not the _cause_ of crime in any case.
It _is_ itself crime in every case. A gentleman will not knock out his
wife's brains when he is drunk; but it is nevertheless his duty to
remain sober.
Much more is it his duty to teach his peasantry to remain sober, and to
furnish them with sojourn more pleasant than the pothouse, and means
of amusement less circumscribed than the pot. And the encouragement of
drunkenness, for the sake of the profit on sale of drink, is certainly
one of the most criminal methods of assassination for money hitherto
adopted by the bravos of an age or country.
I am, Sir, your faithful servant,
JOHN RUSKIN.
DENMARK HILL, _Dec._ 9.
FOOTNOTES:
[122] A short leader to which special reference is unnecessary.
[From "The Pall Mall Gazette," November 4, 1872. (Also reprinted in
"Fors Clavigera," Letter 48, p. 286, vol. iv., 1874),]
_MADNESS AND CRIME._
_To the Editor of "The Pall Mall Gazette."_
SIR: Towards the close of the excellent article on the Taylor trial
in your issue for October 31[123] you say that people never will be,
nor ought to be, persuaded, "to treat criminals simply as vermin which
they destroy, and not as men who are to be punished." Certainly not,
Sir! Who ever talked, or thought, of regarding criminals "simply" as
anything (or innocent people either, if there be any)? But regarding
criminals complexly and accurately, they are partly men, partly vermin;
what is human in them you must punish--what is vermicular, abolish.
Anything between--if you can find it--I wish you joy of, and hope
you may be able to preserve it to society. Insane persons, horses,
dogs, or cats become vermin when they become dangerous. I am sorry for
darling Fido, but there is no question about what is to be done with
him.
Yet, I assure you, Sir, insanity is a tender point with me. One of my
best friends has just gone mad; and all the rest say I am mad myself.
But if ever I murder anybody--and, indeed, there are numbers of people
I should like to murder--I won't say that I ought to be hanged; for I
think nobody but a bishop or a bank-director can ever be rogue enough
to deserve hanging; but I particularly, and with all that is left me of
what I imagine to be sound mind, request that I may be immediately shot.