LETTER 72

THE FATHERLAND1

VENICE, 9th November, 1876, 7 morning.

1. I HAVE set my writing-table close to the pillars of the great window of the Ca' Ferro, which I drew, in 1841, carefully, with those of the next palace, Ca' Contarini Fasan. Samuel Prout was so pleased with the sketch that he borrowed it, and made the upright drawing from it of the palace with the rich balconies, which now represents his work very widely as a chromo-lithotint.*

Between the shafts of the pillars, the morning sky is seen pure and pale, relieving the grey dome of the church of the Salute; but beside that vault, and like it, vast thunderclouds heap themselves above the horizon, catching the light of dawn upon them where they rise, far westward, over the dark roof of the ruined Badia; 2-but all so massive, that half-an-hour ago, in the dawn, I scarcely knew the Salute dome and towers from theirs; while the sea-gulls, rising and falling hither and thither in clusters above the green water beyond my balcony, tell me that the south wind is wild on Adria.

"Dux inquieti turbidus Adriæ."-The Sea has her Lord, and the sea-birds are prescient of the storm; but my own England, ruler of the waves in her own proud thoughts, can she rule the tumult of her people or, pilotless, even so

My original sketch is now in the Schools of Oxford.*

[See below, § 11.]

2 The Abbazia di S. Gregorio.]

3 [Horace, Odes, III. iii. 5.]

[Reference Series, No. 65: see Vol. XXI. p. 31. The drawing is reproduced

in Vol. III., Plate 2 (p. 212).]

much as discern the thunderclouds heaped over her Galilean lake of life?1

2. Here is a little grey cockle-shell, lying beside me,2 which I gathered, the other evening, out of the dust of the Island of St. Helena; and a brightly-spotted snail-shell, from the thistly sands of Lido; and I want to set myself to draw these, and describe them, in peace.

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Yes," all my friends say, "that is my business; why can't I mind it, and be happy?"3

Well, good friends, I would fain please you, and myself with you; and live here in my Venetian palace, luxurious; scrutinant of dome, cloud, and cockle-shell. I could even sell my books for not inconsiderable sums of money if I chose to bribe the reviewers, pay half of all I got to the booksellers, stick bills on the lamp-posts, and say nothing but what would please the Bishop of Peterborough.*

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I could say a great deal that would please him, and yet be very good and useful; I should like much again to be on terms with my old publisher, and hear him telling me nice stories over our walnuts, this Christmas, after dividing his year's spoil with me in Christmas charity. And little enough mind have I for any work, in this seventy-seventh year that's coming of our glorious century, wider than I could find in the compass of my cockle-shell.

3. But alas! my prudent friends, little enough of all that I have a mind to may be permitted me. For this green tide that eddies by my threshold is full of floating corpses, and I must leave my dinner to bury them, since I cannot save; and put my cockle-shell in cap, and take

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1 [For the reference here to Milton, see Sesame and Lilies, § 20 (Vol. XVIII. p. 69).] 2 [Ruskin's diary shows that on November 16 he "stayed in all day resting and painting cockle-shell successfully."]

3 [For Ruskin's "tragic power in not being able to dissociate his thoughts from misery or destruction around him, see his Preface of 1883 to Modern Painters, vol. ii. (Vol. IV. p. 9). For the island of St. Helena, see Vol. X. p. 423 n., and Vol. XXIV. p. xliii.]

[Who had been reported as advising "strict neutrality" on questions of Political Economy: see the next page, and below, p. 770.]

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[See the Introduction to Vol. XXVII. (p. lxxxiv.).]

[Compare Time and Tide, § 112 (Vol. XVII. p. 411).]

my staff in hand, to seek an unencumbered shore. This green sea-tide!-yes, and if you knew it, your black and sulphurous tides also-Yarrow, and Teviot, and Clyde, and the stream, for ever now drumly and dark as it rolls on its way, at the ford of Melrose.1

Yes, and the fair lakes and running waters in your English park pleasure-grounds,―nay, also the great and wide sea, that gnaws your cliffs,-yes, and Death, and Hell also, more cruel than cliff or sea; and a more neutral episcopal person than even my Lord of Peterborough* stands, levelbarred balance in hand,-waiting (how long?) till the Sea shall give up the dead which are in it, and Death, and Hell, give up the dead which are in them.2

4. Have you ever thought of, desired to know, the real meaning of that sign, seen with the human eyes of his soul by the disciple whom the Lord loved? Yes, of course you have! and what a grand and noble verse you always thought it! "And the Sea" Softly, good friend,-I know you can say it off glibly and pompously enough, as you have heard it read a thousand times; but is it, then, merely a piece of pomp? mere drumming and trumpeting, to tell you what might have been said in three wordsthat all the dead rose again, whether they had been bedridden, or drowned, or slain? If it means no more than that, is it not, to speak frankly, bombast, and even bad and half unintelligible bombast ?—for what does "Death” mean, as distinguished from the Sea, the American lakes? or Hell as distinguished from Death,-a family vault instead of a grave?

But suppose it is not bombast, and does mean something that it would be well you should think of,-have you yet understood it,―much less, thought of it? Read the whole

* See third Article of Correspondence [p. 770].

[For the fouling of Teviot, see Ariadne Florentina, § 242 (Vol. XXII. p. 473); of Clyde, Letter 16 (Vol. XXVII. p. 288); and of the Tweed, at Melrose, Letter 33, (ibid., p. 622).]

2 [Revelation xx. 13.]

passage from the beginning: "I saw the Dead, small and great, stand before God. And the Books were opened;"1__ and so to the end.

"Stand" in renewed perfectness of body and soul-each redeemed from its own manner of Death.

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For have not they each their own manner? As the seed by the drought, or the thorn, so the soul by the soul's hunger, and the soul's pang;-athirst in the springless sand; choked in the return wave of Edom; grasped by the chasm of the earth: some, yet calling "out of the depths"; but some-"Thou didst blow with Thy wind and the sea covered them; they sank as lead in the mighty waters." But now the natural grave, in which the gentle saints resigned their perfect body to the dust, and perfect spirit to Him who gave it ;-and now the wide sea of the world, that drifted with its weeds so many breasts that heaved but with the heaving deep; -and now the Death that overtook the lingering step, and closed the lustful eyes ; --and now the Hell, that hid with its shade, and scourged with its agony, the fierce and foul spirits that had forced its gates in flesh: *—all these the Loved Apostle saw compelled to restore their ruin; and all these, their prey, stand once again, renewed, as their Maker made them, before their Maker. "And the Sea gave up the Dead which were in it, and Death, and Hell, the dead which were in them." "

Not bombast, good reader, in any wise; nor a merely soothing melody of charming English, to be mouthed for a "second lesson."

But is it worse than bombast, then? Is it, perchance,

pure Lie?

5. Carpaccio, at all events, thought not; and this, as I

*Conf. Inferno, xxx. 123.

1 [Revelation xx. 12.]

2 Psalms cxxx. 1.]

3 Exodus xv. 10.]

Ecclesiastes xii. 7.]

Tennyson, In Memoriam, xi.]
Revelation xx. 13.]

have told you,' is the first practical opinion of his I want you to be well informed of.

Since that last Fors was written, one of my friends found for me the most beautiful of all the symbols in the picture of the Dream;2-one of those which leap to the eyes when they are understood, yet which, in the sweet enigma, I had deliberately twice painted, without understanding.3

At the head of the princess's bed is embroidered her shield (of which elsewhere);-but on a dark blue-green space in the cornice above it is another very little and bright shield, it seemed,-but with no bearing. I painted 1 [See above, p. 732.]

matters :

[The following letter to Mr. James Reddie Anderson bears upon these "VENICE, 3rd January, 1877. "MY DEAREST JAMIE,-I should have written to you on the first day of the year, had I not been passing, since Christmas day, through a course of teaching, which began with a gift from St. Ursula of a sprig of vervain, and a pot of pinks, with her love,' and went on unceasingly through the Christmas week and New Year's day, closing and leaving me again in this material world-yesterday morning. The principal piece of it was through your discovery of the Porphyrio, and I am certain now that what you and Mr. Caird have done is the most important contribution to historical theology that could possibly have been made in these days, and I look with quite intense and securely trustful interest to the results of your collected evidence.

"Infidel that you were! You will end by living a Vita Nuova, and giving it to many and many a soul besides.

"I have been to look at St. Jerome, but it was too dark for the astronomy.

"The last (probable) additions to our picture reading of the Dream are that the deep crimson rods of the flower-pot are the four nails and lance point of her Lord, and that the singularly open book in her bookcase is the Book of her Life, the black clasp-arrow-head again--marking the place where, in sacred pause, 'Quel giorno non piu leggemmo avanti.' Both these symbols are Mr. Bunney's finding (except the Dante finish, which is my little contribution-but owing to your hint about Dante). "Ever your affectionate,

"J. R.

For the "gift from St. Ursula," see in the next volume, p. 30. For the "discovery of the Porphyrio," ("the bird of chastity with the bent spray of vervain in its beak"), see St. Mark's Rest, § 28 (Vol. XXIV. p. 230). The "contribution to historical theology" is doubtless the interpretation of "St. Jerome in his Study," given in St. Mark's Rest, Vol. XXIV. pp. 353-356. For the quotation from Dante, see Inferno, v. 138 (quoted also above, p. 354).]

3 [See Letter 20, §§ 14, 15 (Vol. XXVII. p. 342).]

4 Ruskin did not, however, return to the subject. By "elsewhere" he probably meant his intended, but unwritten, "Separate Guide to the Works of Carpaccio in Venice" (see Vol. XXIV. p. 179 n.).]