Carlo Dolci-or the more skilful masters of the Dutch school-Cuyp, Teniers, Hobbima, Wouvermans; but never at any second-rate or doubtful examples.

I wonder how many of the lower middle class are now capable of going through a nobleman's house, with judgment of this kind; and yet with entirely unenvious and reverent delight in the splendour of the abode of the supreme and beneficent being who allows them thus to enter his paradise!

14. If there were no nobleman's house to be seen, there was certainly, in the course of the day's journey, some ruined castle or abbey; some celebrated village church, or stately cathedral. We had always unstinted time for these; and if I was at disadvantage because neither my father nor mother could tell me enough history to make the buildings authoritatively interesting, I had at least leisure and liberty to animate them with romance in my own fashion.

I am speaking, however, now, of matters relating to a more advanced age than that to which I have yet brought myself:-age in which all these sights were only a pleasant amazement to me, and panoramic apocalypse of a lovely world.

Up to that age, at least, I cannot but hope that my readers will agree with me in thinking the tenour of my life happy, and the modes of my education, on the whole, salutary.

15. Admitting them to have been so, I would now question farther; and, I imagine, such question cannot but occur to my readers' mind, also,-how far education, and felicities, of the same kind, may be attainable for young people in general.

Let us consider, then, how many conditions must meet; and how much labour must have been gone through, both by servile and noble persons, before this little jaunty figure, seated on its box of clothes, can trot through its peaceful day of mental development.

(I.) A certain number of labourers in Spain, living

on dry bread and onions, must have pruned and trodden grapes;-cask-makers, cellarmen, and other functionaries attending on them.

(II.) Rough sailors must have brought the wine into the London Docks.

(III.) My father and his clerks must have done a great deal of arithmetical and epistolary work, before my father could have profit enough from the wine to pay for our horses, and our dinner.

(IV.) The tailor must have given his life to the dull business of making clothes-the wheelwright and carriagemaker to their woodwork-the smith to his buckles and springs-the postillion to his riding-the horse-breeder and breaker to the cattle in his field and stable,-before I could make progress in this pleasant manner, even for a single stage.

(V.) Sundry English Kings and Barons must have passed their lives in military exercises, and gone to their deaths in military practices, to provide me with my forenoons' entertainments in ruined castles; or founded the great families whose servants were to be my hosts.

(VI.) Vandyck and Velasquez, and many a painter before them, must have spent their lives in learning and practising their laborious businesses.

(VII.) Various monks and abbots must have passed their lives in pain, with fasting and prayer; and a large company of stonemasons occupied themselves in their continual service, in order to provide me, in defect of castles and noblemen's seats, with amusement in the way of abbeys and cathedrals.

16. How far, then, it remains to be asked, supposing my education in any wise exemplary, can all these advantages be supplied by the modern school board, to every little boy born in the prosperous England of this day? And much more in that glorious England of the future; in which there will be no abbeys (all having been shaken down, as my own sweet Furness is fast being, by the

luggage trains1); no castles, except such as may have been spared to be turned into gaols, like that of "time-honoured Lancaster," also in my own neighbourhood; no parks, because Lord Derby's patent steam agriculture will have cut down all the trees; no lords, nor dukes, because modern civilization won't be Lorded over, nor Led anywhere; no gentlemen's seats, except in the Kirkby Lonsdale style; and no roads anywhere, except trams and rails?

3

17. Before, however, entering into debate as to the methods of education to be adopted in these coming times, let me examine a little, in next letter, with help from my readers of aristocratic tendencies, what the real product of this olden method of education was intended to be; and whether it was worth the cost.

For the impression on the aristocratic mind of the day was always (especially supposing I had been a squire's or a lord's son, instead of a merchant's) that such little jaunty figure, trotting in its easy chariot, was, as it were, a living diamond, without which the watch of the world could not possibly go; or even, that the diminutive darling was a kind of Almighty Providence in its first breeches, by whose tiny hands and infant fiat the blessings of food and raiment were continually provided for God's Spanish labourers in His literal vineyard; for God's English sailors, seeing His wonders in the deep; for God's tailors' men, sitting in attitude of Chinese Josh for ever; for the divinely appointed wheelwrights, carpenters, horses and riders, hostlers and Gaius-mine-hosts, necessary to my triumphal progress; and for my nurse behind in the dickey. And it never once entered the head of any aristocratic person,-nor would ever

[For other references to Furness Abbey (not far from Ruskin's home in the Lakes), see Letter 11, § 3 (Vol. XXVII. p. 182); Vol. XXV. p. 130; and General Index.]

7

2 [King Richard II., Act i. sc. 1. The title to this Letter.]

[See Letter 10, § 1 (Vol. XXVII. p. 166).]

See Letter 52, § 8 (p. 300).]

5 See below, pp. 404 seq.]

[Psalms cvii. 24.]

Romans xvi. 23.]

have entered mine, I suppose, unless I had "the most analytical mind in Europe,"1-that in verity it was not I who fed my nurse, but my nurse me; and that a great part of the world had been literally put behind me as a dickey, and all the aforesaid inhabitants of it, somehow, appointed to be nothing but my nurses; the beautiful product intended, by papa and mamma, being-a Bishop,2 who should graciously overlook these tribes of inferior beings, and instruct their ignorance in the way of their souls' salvation.

18. As the master of the St. George's Company, I request their permission to convey their thanks to Mr. Plimsoll, for his Christian, knightly, and valiant stand, made against the recreant English Commons, on Thursday, 22nd July, 1875.3

1 [See Letter 54, § 14 (p. 350).]

2 [See Letter 52, § 2 (pp. 296-297).]

3 On that day Mr. Disraeli, in making a statement on the course of public business, announced that the Merchant Shipping Bill would not be proceeded with. Mr. Plimsoll rose and "earnestly entreated the right hon. gentleman at the head of her Majesty's Government not to consign some thousands of living human beings to undeserved and miserable death." He went on to discuss the Bill in detail, whereupon he was called to order by the Speaker. He refused to resume his seat, and went on to denounce as "villains", certain shipowners in the House. He declined to withdraw the expression, and Mr. Disraeli moved and carried a motion that Mr. Plimsoll be reprimanded by Mr. Speaker for his violent and disorderly conduct. For a later allusion to Mr. Plimsoll's protest, see Letter 82, § 4 (Vol. XXIX. p. 224).]

NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE

2

19. I HAVE thankfully received this month, from the first donor of land1 to the St. George's Company, Mrs. Talbot, £11, Os. 4d., rent of cottages on said land, at Barmouth, North Wales; and I have become responsible, as the Master of the Company, for rent or purchase of a room at Sheffield, in which I propose to place some books and minerals, as the germ of a museum arranged first for workers in iron,3 and extended into illustration of the natural history of the neighbourhood of Sheffield, and more especially of the geology and flora of Derbyshire.1

20. The following letter respecting the neighbouring town of Leeds will be found interesting in connection with this first opening of St. George's work :

66 LEEDS, June 21st, 1875.

"DEAR SIR,-Being more or less intimately mixed up with the young of the working classes, in night schools and similar works, I am anxious to know what I can do to counteract two or three growths, which seem likely to be productive of very disastrous results, in the young men from seventeen to twenty-five, who are many of them earning from 20s. to 35s. per week, the almost morbid craving for drink, and the excitement which is to be found in modern French dramas of very questionable morality, concert halls and singing rooms, where appeal is principally made to their animal passions and lusts-whose chief notion of enjoyment seems to be in getting drunk. Then the young men of similar ages, and earning from 14s. to 20s., who are in a chronic state of unrest, ever eager for novelty and sensationalism, though not quite so much given to drink as the men, yet treading a similar course. They have no pleasure in going to the country, to see flowers, birds, and fish, or to the seaside to see the sea; if there be no fireworks, no prize band, no dancing on the green, or something of the sort, they will not attempt to go. Now, where is all this to end? Nature has no charms for them; music little attraction, except in the form of dance; pictures nothing: what remains? And yet something should, and must be done, and that speedily,-otherwise what will become of the poor things?

"Then, in your Elements of Drawing, you lay down certain books to be studied, etc."

"Now, suppose a woman or man has been brought up to have a kind of contempt for Grimm's Goblins, Arabian Nights, etc., as childish and frivolous,-and on account of the Calvinistic tendency of relatives, has been precluded from reading books,-how should a healthy tendency be brought about? For the mind is not a blank, to receive impressions like a child, but has all sorts of preconceived notions and prejudices in the way,-Shakespeare looked upon as immoral, or childish, and the rest treated in an equally cavalier manner by people who probably never looked inside the books."

I should like to answer the above letter at some length; but have,

1 [But see below, p. 607.]

2 [See above, p. 268.]

3 See below, p. 448.]

[This purpose, however, was not carried out.

to Local Museums, see Vol. XVI. p. 144 and n.]

5

On Ruskin's ideas with regard

[Elements of Drawing, §§ 258-259 (Vol. XV. pp. 226-228).]