for Fors Clavigera and his other writings, Mr. Lyttel hints that surely the clergy should be paid for their teachings too, being quite equally worthy of their hire.

"Our ex-townsman has so effectually disposed of the Professor's charges, that there is no need to endeavour to answer them further. We have only noticed them so far in order to show our readers the extent to which hatred of the Church becomes a craze with some persons, otherwise estimable no doubt, whose judgment is for the time swept away by passion. That there is no pleasing such persons is the more apparent from Mr. Ruskin's curious comments upon the well-known story of the Rev. Septimus Hansard, the rector of Bethnal Green, who has caught the small-pox, the typhus fever, and the scarlet fever, on three several occasions* in the discharge of his pastoral duties among the sick poor. When he fell down in his pulpit with the small-pox, he at once said he would go to an hospital, but refused to enter the cab which his friends called, lest he should infect it; and, a hearse happening to pass, he went in it—a fine instance of courage and self-devotion. Mr. Hansard's stipend is five hundred a year, out of which he has to pay two curates. And what has Mr. Ruskin to say to this? Surely this must command his fullest sympathy, admiration, and approval? Far from it. His snarling comment is as follows:-"I am very sure that while he was saving one poor soul in Bethnal he was leaving ten rich souls to be damned at Tyburn, each of which would damn a thousand or two more by their example or neglect.' This peculiar mode of argument has the merit of being available under all circumstances; for, of course, if Mr. Hansard's parish had happened to be Tyburn instead of Bethnal, Mr. Ruskin would have been equally ready with the glib remark that while the rector was saving one rich soul to Tyburn, he was leaving ten poor souls to destruction in Bethnal. Are we to understand that Mr. Ruskin thinks Mr. Hansard ought to be able to be in two places at once, or are we to shrug our shoulders and say that some persons are hard to please? The heroism of self-sacrifice Mr. Ruskin considers to be a waste and a mistake. Mr. Hansard's life has all, says the Professor, 'been but one fit of scarlet fever-and all aglow in vain.' That nobleminded men should devote themselves to the noblest work of the Church for the love of Christ, and of those for whom He died, is apparently beyond Mr. Ruskin's conception. Love of sensation, he says, is the cause of it all. Sensation must be got out of death, or darkness, or frightfulness. . . . And the culmination of the black business is that the visible misery drags and beguiles to its help all the enthusiastic simplicity of the religious young, and the honest strength of the really noble type of English clergymen, and swallows them, as Charybdis would life-boats. Courageous and impulsive men, with just sense enough to make them soundly practical, and therefore complacent, in immediate business, but not enough to enable them to see what the whole business comes to when done, are sure to throw themselves desperately into the dirty work, and die like lively moths in candle-grease.' We have read philosophy something like the above extract elsewhere before, and we think the philosopher's name was Harold Skimpole. What the gospel is with which Mr. Ruskin proposes to supplant Christianity and to regenerate the world, we do not know. A gospel of this tone, however, published in tenpenny instalments, is not likely ever to reach the hands of the workmen and labourers of Great Britain, much less their hearts."

With this interesting ebullition, shall we call it, of Holy Water, or beautiful explosion,-perhaps, more accurately,-of Holy Steam, in one of our great manufacturing centres, a very furnace, it would appear, of

* Birmingham accepts, with the child-like confidence due by one able Editor to another, the report of Brighton. But all Mr. Hansard's friends are furious with me for "spreading it"; and I beg at once, on their authority, to contradict it in all essential particulars; and to apologize to Mr. Hansard for ever having suspected him of such things.

1 [See above, p. 292.]

heart-felt zeal for the Church, I wish I could at once compare a description of the effects of similar zeal for the Chapel, given me in a letter just received from Wakefield, for which I sincerely thank my correspondent, and will assume, unless I hear further from him, his permission to print a great part of said letter in next Fors.1

28. My more practical readers may perhaps be growing desperate, at the continued non-announcement of advance in my main scheme. But the transference to the St. George's Company of the few acres of land hitherto offered us, cannot be effected without the establishment of the society on a legal basis, which I find the most practised counsel slow in reducing to terms such as the design could be carried out upon. The form proposed shall, however, without fail, be submitted to the existing members of the Company in my next letter.2

1 [See Letters 55, § 9, and 57, § 10 (pp. 380, 409).]

2 [See Letter 55, 7 (p. 376).]

LETTER 55

THE WOODS OF MURI1

1. No more letters, at present, reaching me, from clergymen, I use the breathing-time permitted me, to express more clearly the meaning of my charge,-left in its brevity obscure,―that, as a body, they "teach a false gospel for hire." 2

It is obscure, because associating two charges quite distinct. The first, that, whether for hire or not, they preach a false gospel. The second, that, whether they preach truth or falsehood, they preach as hirelings.

It will be observed that the three clergymen who have successively corresponded with me-Mr. Tipple, Mr. Lyttel, and Mr. Headlam 3-have every one, for their own part, eagerly repudiated the doctrine of the Eleventh Article of the Church of England. Nevertheless, the substance of that article assuredly defines the method of salvation commonly announced at this day from British pulpits; and the effect of this supremely pleasant and supremely false gospel, on the British mind, may be best illustrated by the reply, made only the other day, by a dishonest, but sincerely religious, commercial gentleman, to an acquaintance of mine, who had expressed surprise that he should come to church after doing the things he was well known to do: "Ah, my friend, my standard is just the publican's.""

1 [See below, § 5.]

2 [See Letter 49, § 20 (p. 252).]

3 [See Notes and Correspondence, Letters 51, 52, 53, 54 (pp. 287, 311, 335, 358).

The Article is quoted below, Letter 56, § 22 (p. 398).]

6 [See Luke xviii. 13.]

In the second place, while it is unquestionably true that many clergymen are doing what Mr. Headlam complacently points out their ability to do,--sacrificing, to wit, themselves, their souls, and bodies (not that I clearly understand what a clergyman means by sacrificing his soul), without any thought of temporal reward; this preaching of Christ has, nevertheless, become an acknowledged Profession, and means of livelihood for gentlemen: and the Simony of to-day differs only from that of apostolic times, in that, while the elder Simon thought the gift of the Holy Ghost worth a considerable offer in ready money,' the modern Simon would on the whole refuse to accept the same gift of the Third Person of the Trinity, without a nice little attached income, a pretty church, with a steeple restored by Mr. Scott, and an eligible neighbourhood.3

2. These are the two main branches of the charge I meant to gather into my short sentence; and to these I now further add, that in defence of this Profession, with its pride, privilege, and more or less roseate repose of domestic felicity,* extremely beautiful and enviable in country parishes, the clergy, as a body, have, with what energy and power was in them, repelled the advance both of science and scholarship, so far as either interfered with what they had been accustomed to teach; and connived at every abuse in public and private conduct, with which they felt it would be considered uncivil, and feared it might ultimately prove unsafe, to interfere.

And that, therefore, seeing that they were put in charge to preach the Gospel of Christ, and have preached a false gospel instead of it; and seeing that they were put in charge to enforce the Law of Christ, and have permitted license instead of it, they are answerable, as no other men

1 [Acts viii. 18, 19.]

[For Gilbert Scott, see Vol. XXVII. pp. 190, 290.]

3 [For other references to Simony, see Letters to Faunthorpe, vol. ii. pp. 48–51 (reprinted in a later volume).]

[For a passage in illustration of this phrase, see Letter 57, §§ 11, 12 (pp. 414-416).]

are answerable, for the existing "state of things" in this British nation,—a state now recorded in its courts of justice as productive of crimes respecting which the Birmingham Defender of the Faith himself declares that "in the records of no age or nation will any tales be found surpassing these in savagery of mind and body, and in foulness of heart and soul." 2

3. Answerable, as no other men are, I repeat; and entirely disdain my correspondent Mr. Headlam's attempt to involve me, or any other layman, in his responsibility. He has taken on himself the office of teacher. Mine is a painter's; and I am plagued to death by having to teach instead of him, and his brethren,-silent, they, for fear of their congregations! Which of them, from least to greatest, dares, for instance, so much as to tell the truth to women about their dress? Which of them has forbidden his feminine audience to wear fine bonnets in church? Do they think the dainty garlands are wreathed round the studiously dressed hair, because a woman "should have power on her head because of the angels"?3 Which of them understands that text?-which of them enforces it? Dares the boldest ritualist order his women-congregation to come all with white napkins over their heads, rich and poor alike, and have done with their bonnets? What! "You cannot order"? You could say you wouldn't preach if you saw one bonnet in the church, couldn't you? "But everybody would say you were mad." Of course they would-and that the devil was in you. "If they have called the Master of the house Beelzebub, how much more them of His household?" but now that "all men speak well of you," think you the Son of Man will speak the same?

And you, and especially your wives (as is likely !) are very angry with me, I hear, on all hands;-and think me