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ones), and so give the servants no reason to turn up their noses at them.* I may have twenty such good reasons for fixing the price of your fish; but not one of them will be his Grace the Costermonger's. All that I want you to see is, not only the possibility of regulating prices, but the fact that they are now regulated, and regulated by rascals, while all the world is bleating out its folly about Supply and Demand.

“Still, even in your way, you would be breaking the laws of Florence, anyhow, and buying to sell again?" Pardon me: I should no more buy your fish than a butcher's boy buys his master's mutton. I should simply carry your fish for you where I knew it was wanted; being as utterly your servant in the matter as if I were one of your own lads sent dripping up to the town with basket on back. And I should be paid, as your servant, so much wages (not commission, observe); making bargains far away for you, and many another Saunders Mucklebackit, just as your wife makes them, up the hill at Monkbarns; and no more buying the fish, to sell again, than she.1

7. "Well, but where could we get anybody to do this?" Have you no sons then?-or, among them, none whom you can take from the mercy of the sea, and teach to serve you mercifully on the land?

It is not that way, however, that the thing will be done. It must be done for you by gentlemen. They may stagger on perhaps a year or two more in their vain ways; but the day must come when your poor little honest puppy, whom his people have been wanting to dress up in a surplice, and call, "The to be Feared," that he might have pay enough, by tithe or tax, to marry a pretty girl, and live in a parsonage,2-some poor little honest wretch of a

* In my aunt's younger days, at Perth, the servants used regularly to make bargain that they should not be forced to dine on salmon more than so many times a week.

1 [The Antiquary, ch. xi.]

2 [Compare Letter 40, § 14 (below, p. 76).]

puppy, I say, will eventually get it into his glossy head that he would be incomparably more reverend to mortals, and acceptable to St. Peter and all Saints, as a true monger of sweet fish, than a false fisher for rotten souls; and that his wife would be incomparably more "lady-like" -not to say Madonna-like-marching beside him in purple stockings and sabots-or even frankly barefoot—with her creel full of caller herring on her back, than in administering any quantity of Ecclesiastical scholarship to her Sunday-schools.1

8. "How dreadful-how atrocious!"-thinks the tender clerical lover. "My wife walk with a fish-basket on her back!" 2

Yes, you young scamp, yours. You were going to lie to the Holy Ghost, then, were you, only that she might wear satin slippers and be called a "lady"? Suppose, instead of fish, I were to ask her and you to carry coals. Have you ever read your Bible carefully enough to wonder where Christ got them from, to make His fire (when He was so particular about St. Peter's dinner, and St. John's3)? Or if I asked you to be hewers of wood, and drawers of water;-would that also seem intolerable to you? My poor clerical friends, God was never more in the burning bush of Sinai than He would be in every crackling faggot (cut with your own hands) that you warmed a poor hearth with nor did that woman of Samaria ever give Him to drink more surely than you may, from every stream and well in this your land, that you can keep pure.

9. 20th Dec.-To hew wood-to draw water;-you think these base businesses, do you? and that you are noble, as well as sanctified, in binding faggot-burdens on poor men's backs, which you will not touch with your own fingers; *—

1 [For other new duties for the clergy, see Time and Tide, § 106 (Vol. XVII. p. 404).]

2 [Compare Letter 93, § 9 (Vol. XXIX. p. 475).]

[John xxi. 9. The other Bible references in § 8 are Joshua ix. 21; Exodus iii. 2, xix. 18; and John iv. 7.]

4 [See Matthew xxiii. 4.]

and in preaching the efficacy of baptism inside the church,1 by yonder stream (under the first bridge of the Seven Bridges Road here at Oxford), while the sweet waters of it are choked with dust and dung, within ten fathoms from your font;-and in giving benediction with two fingers and your thumb, of a superfine quality, to the Marquis of B. ?2 Honester benediction, and more efficacious, can be had cheaper, gentlemen, in the existing market. Under my

own system of regulating prices, I gave an Irishwoman twopence yesterday for two oranges, of which fruit-under pressure of competition-she was ready to supply me with three for a penny. "The Lord Almighty take you to eternal glory!" said she.

You lawyers, also,-distributors, by your own account, of the quite supreme blessing of Justice, you are not so busily eloquent in her cause but that some of your sweet voices might be spared to Billingsgate, though the river air might take the curl out of your wigs, and so diminish that æsthetic claim, which, as aforesaid, you still hold on existence. But you will bring yourselves to an end soon, -wigs and all,-unless you think better of it.

10. I will dismiss at once, in this letter, the question of regulation of prices, and return to it no more, except in setting down detailed law.

Any rational group of persons, large or small, living in war or peace, will have its commissariat;-its officers for provision of food. Famine in a fleet, or an army, may sometimes be inevitable; but in the event of national famine, the officers of the commissariat should be starved the first. God has given to man corn, wine, cheese, and honey, all preservable for a number of years;-filled His seas with inexhaustible salt, and incalculable fish; filled the woods with beasts, the winds with birds, and the fields with fruit. Under these circumstances, the stupid human brute stands

[The new church of St. Frideswide, opened in 1872.] 2 [See Letter 18, § 1 (Vol. XXVII. p. 304).]

[See Letter 1, § 6 (Vol. XXVII. p. 17).Ĵ

talking metaphysics, and expects to be fed by the law of Supply and Demand. I do not say that I shall always succeed in regulating prices, or quantities, absolutely to my mind; but in the event of any scarcity of provision, rich tables shall be served like the poorest, and we will see.

11. The price of every other article will be founded on the price of food. The price of what it takes a day to produce, will be a day's maintenance; of what it takes a week to produce, a week's maintenance,--such maintenance being calculated according to the requirements of the occupation, and always with a proportional surplus for saving.

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"How am I to know exactly what a day's maintenance is?" I don't want to know exactly. I don't know exactly how much dinner I ought to eat; but, on the whole, I eat enough, and not too much. And I shall not know exactly" how much a painter ought to have for a picture. It may be a pound or two under the mark-a pound or two over. On the average it will be right, that is to say, his decent keep during the number of days' work that are properly accounted for in the production.

"How am I to hinder people from giving more if they like?"

* As for instance, and in farther illustration of the use of herrings, here is some account of the maintenance of young painters and lawyers in Edinburgh, sixty years since, sent me by the Third Fors; and good Dr. Brown, in an admirable sketch of the life of an admirable Scottish artist, says: "Raeburn (Sir Henry) was left an orphan at six, and was educated in Heriot's Hospital. At fifteen he was apprenticed to a goldsmith; but after his time was out, set himself entirely to portrait painting. About this time he became acquainted with the famous cynic, lawyer, and wit, John Clerk, afterwards Lord Eldin, then a young advocate. Both were poor.

Young Clerk asked Raeburn to dine at his lodgings. Coming in, he found the landlady laying the cloth, and setting down two dishes, one containing three herrings, and the other three potatoes. 'Is this a'?' said John. 'Ay, it's a'.' 'A'! didna I tell ye, woman, that a gentleman is to dine wi' me, and that ye were to get six herrin' and six potatoes?'

"2

[Hitherto misprinted "Eldon." John Clerk (1757-1832), Lord Eldin, was a Lord of Session (1823-1828).]

[Compressed from p. 2 of Dr. John Brown's notice of the artist prefixed to Portraits by Sir Henry Raeburn, Photographed by Thomas Annan, with Bibliographical Sketches, Edinburgh: Andrew Elliot. There is no date on the title-page, but Dr. Brown's essay is dated December 6, 1873.]

People whom I catch doing as they like will generally have to leave the estate.

"But how is it to be decided to which of two purchasers, each willing to give its price, and more, anything is to belong?"

In various ways, according to the nature of the thing sold, and circumstances of sale. Sometimes by priority; sometimes by privilege; sometimes by lot; and sometimes by auction, at which whatever excess of price, above its recorded value, the article brings, shall go to the national treasury. So that nobody will ever buy anything to make a profit on it.

12. 11th January, 1874.-Thinking I should be the better of a look at the sea, I have come down to an old watering-place,' where one used to be able to get into a decent little inn, and possess one's self of a parlour with a bow window looking out on the beach, a pretty carpet, and a print or two of revenue cutters, and the Battle of the Nile. One could have a chop and some good cheese for dinner; fresh cream and cresses for breakfast, and a plate of shrimps.

I find myself in the Umfraville Hotel, a quarter of a mile long by a furlong deep; in a ghastly room, five-andtwenty feet square, and eighteen high,-that is to say, just four times as big as I want, and which I can no more light with my candles in the evening than I could the Peak cavern.2 A gas apparatus in the middle of it serves me to knock my head against, but I take good care not to light it, or I should soon be stopped from my evening's work by a headache, and be unfit for my morning's business besides. The carpet is threadbare, and has the look of having been spat upon all over. There is only one window, of four huge panes of glass, through which one commands a view of a plaster balcony, some ornamental iron railings, an esplanade,—and,-well, I suppose,-in the

1 [Margate.]

[Familiar to Ruskin from his boyhood: see Vol. I. p. 412 and Præterita, i. § 83.]

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