and of course descend to his successor :-Aikton, Armathwaite, Bootle, Bolton, Bowness, Brigham, Buttermere, Cockermouth, Cleator, Corney, Distington, Embleton, Gosforth, Hensingham, Haile, Kirkandrews-upon-Eden, Kirkbride, Lorton, Loweswater, Morseby, Mosser, St. Bees, Threlkeld, Whicham, Whitbeck; St. James, Christ Church, St. Nicholas, and Holy Trinity, Whitehaven; Askham, Bampton, Barton, Kirkby Stephen, Lowther, Patterdale, Clifton, Ravenstondale, Shap, Startforth (Yorkshire), Bampton Kirk, Orton, St. John's-in-the-Vale, and Crosthwaite.

"The late Lord Lonsdale never took a prominent public part in political life, although he had a seat in the House of Commons for twenty-five years; but he had won much personal popularity as a country gentleman. In agriculture he was naturally interested, the rental of his landed estates in Cumberland alone being over £40,000 a year, and in Westmoreland nearly as much more; but it was that department concerning the breeding of horses to which he turned most attention. In the development of this taste he became an active member of the Turf. His horse King Lud' won the Cesarewitch Stakes in 1873, and it was its noble owner's ambition to win the Cumberland Plate with it the following year. An unfortunate accident, however, lost him the race, and as in the previous year the breakdown of 'The Preacher' had also proved a disappointment, he did not try again. But horse-racing was not the only kind of sport with which the late Earl was closely connected. In the hunting-field he was a popular M.F.H., but only the other day it was announced that failing health had compelled him to say that he could not after next season hunt the Cottesmore hounds, of which he has held the mastership for six years.

"The remains of the deceased peer were removed to Lowther Castle on Tuesday evening, and several members of the Town and Harbour Board accompanied them from Whitehaven Castle to the railway station. The hearse was followed by two mourning coaches, containing the Viscount Lowther and Colonel Williams; Mr. R. A. Robinson, Mr. Mawson, and Mr. Borthwick. After these followed servants in the employ of the late lord, the trustees, and other inhabitants.

"The funeral will probably take place to-morrow or on Monday, at the family mausoleum at Lowther.

"The flags on the public buildings of Whitehaven and Carlisle have since Tuesday been displayed half-mast high."

The Sportsman contains the following memoir of the late Lord Lonsdale as a patron of the Turf:

"When he succeeded his uncle to the title of Earl of Lonsdale, in 1872, he relinquished his parliamentary duties. It was then that the observance of a very ancient custom devolved upon him-that of giving a cup to be raced for on Burgh Marsh, the contest to be confined to horses bred in the barony. The only occasions of race meetings being held on the Marsh, or foreshores of the Solway, are when there is a new Lord-Lieutenant of Cumberland; and from having assisted at the meeting-the management of which was entrusted to Mr. Lawley-I can well remember with what zeal his lordship entered into the rural sports, and the graceful speech he made when he presented the cup to Major Browne, who won with "The Crow,' a son of 'Grand Secret,' that had been travelling the county. It was the especial delight of Lord Lonsdale that the winner was ridden by Jem Snowden— a native of Carlisle; and he presented the jockey with a handsome whip, and complimented the Cumberland horseman on his riding. There were not less than sixty thousand people present, and within almost a stone's-throw of the Grand Stand was the monument put up to mark the spot where died King Edward, who was on his way to Scotland when death overtook him. Lord Lonsdale acted as steward of Carlisle Races for years, and he took a great deal of interest in the meeting, as he also did in the local gathering on Harras Moor, close to Whitehaven.'

18. (IV.) I am very grateful for the following piece of letter (as for all other kindness from the Companion to whom I owe it); and really I think it is "enough to make one give up wearing Valenciennes." 1

"August 9th, 1876.

"MY DEAR MASTER,-I have tried in vain to resist those words in the August Fors, some one tell me,' but at last resolve to say my say, trusting to your indulgence if it is in vain.

"Some years ago, a friend of mine visiting Brussels went over the Royal Lace Manufactory, and seeing a woman busily at work on a very fine, and, according to the then fashion, large, collar, went up to her, and inquired how long she had been over this one piece. The woman answered, four years; and handed the work for my friend to examine more closely, but without changing her position, or lifting her eyes from the spot on which they were fixed; and on being asked the reason of this, said it would take too long time to have again to fix her eyes, so she kept them to the one spot through all the working hours. This is quite true. But the women were working in a large, light room-I doubt the correctness of the dark cellar, and do not see the reason for it-but all who have ever done any fine work can understand the loss of time in moving the eyes. But, after all, is lace-making worse for women than the ceaseless treadle movement of the sewingmachine? Lace-making hurts eyes only; the machine injures the whole woman -so I am told."

19. (V.) A letter from a Methodist minister, though written on the 14th, only reaches me here at Venice on the 28th. It will appear in next Fors.3 The gist of it is contradiction of Mr. Sillar's statement that the Wesleyans altered John Wesley's rules. "The alterations, whether good or bad" (says my new correspondent), "were made by himself." I am not surprised to hear this; for had Wesley been a wise Christian, there would no more, now, have been Wesleyan than Apollosian ministers.

1 [See Letter 68, § 27 (p. 685).]

4

Ibid.]

[See Letter 71, § 18 (p. 750).]

[See 1 Corinthians i. 12. Compare the next Letter, § 18 (p. 750).]

LETTER 71

THE FEUDAL RANKS 1

2

VENICE, 4th October, 1876. 1. I AM able at last to give you some of the long-promised opinions of Carpaccio on practical subjects; not that, except ironically, I ever call them "opinions." There are certain men who know the truths necessary to human life; they do not "opine" them; and nobody's "opinions," on any subject, are of any consequence opposed to them.' Hesiod is one of these, Plato another, Dante another, Carpaccio is another. He speaks little, and among the inspired painters may be thought of as one of the lesser prophets; but his brief book is of extreme value.

I have been happy enough to get two of my faithful scholars to work upon it for me; and they have deciphered it nearly all-much more, at all events, than I can tell you either in this Fors, or in several to come.

2. His message is written in the Venetian manner, painting the myths of the saints, in his own way.

If you will look into the introduction to the Queen of the Air, you will find it explained that a great myth can only be written in the central time of a nation's power. This prophecy of Carpaccio's may be thought of by you as the sweetest, because the truest, of all that Venice was born to utter the painted syllabling of it is nearly the last work and word of hers in true life. She speaks it, and virtually, thereafter, dies, or begins to die.

It is written in a series of some eighteen to twenty

1 [See below, § 9. "The Feudal System," and "St. Ursula" were rejected titles for this Letter.]

2 [See Letters 18, § 13 (Vol. XXVII. p. 314), and 70, § 12 (above, p. 726).] 3 [Compare Letter 6, §§ 2, 3 (Vol. XXVII. p. 99).]

[Lecture I., §§ 7 seq. (Vol. XIX. p. 301).]

pictures, chiefly representing the stories of St. Ursula, St. George, and St. Jerome.1

The first, in thoughtful order, of these, the dream of St. Ursula, has been already partly described in Fors (Letter 20, § 142). The authorities of the Venetian Academy have been kind enough to take the picture down and give it me to myself, in a quiet room, where I am making studies, which I hope will be of use in Oxford, and elsewhere.

4

3. But there is this to be noted before we begin; that of these three saints, whose stories Carpaccio tells, one is a quite real one, on whose penman's work we depend for our daily Bible-bread. Another, St. George, is a very dimly real one,-very disputable by American faith, and we owe to him, only in England, certain sentiments;-the Order of the Garter, and sundry signboards of the George and Dragon. Venice supposed herself to owe more to him; but he is nevertheless, in her mind also, a very ghostly saint,—armour and all, too light to sink a gondola.5

Of the third, St. Ursula, by no industry of my good scholars, and none has been refused, can I find the slightest material trace. Under scholarly investigation, she vanishes utterly into the stars and the æther, and literally, as you will hear, and see, into moonshine, and the modern German meaning of everything, the Dawn.* Not a relic, not a

* The primary form in which the legend shows itself is a Nature myth, in which Ursula is the Bud of flowers, enclosed in its rough or hairy calyx, and her husband, Ether-the air of spring. She opens into lovely life with "eleven " thousand other flowers-their fading is their sudden martyrdom. And-says your modern philosopher-"That's all"!

1 [For an account of these pictures, and Ruskin's work upon them, see the Introduction to Vol. XXIV. pp. 1v.-lvii.]

2 [Vol. XXVII. p. 343. For the subsequent re-hanging of the St. Ursula pictures, see Vol. XXIV. p. liv.]

3 [For St. Jerome's translation of the Bible (the Vulgate), see Bible of Amiens, ch. iii. § 40.]

[See Letter 26, § 5 (Vol. XXVII. p. 475); Emerson on St. George.]

[The reference is apparently to the legend of the great storm in 1341, when St. George (with St. Mark and St. Nicholas) entered a boat and exorcised the demons who were bent on destroying Venice.]

6

[See, for instance, Lecture XI. ( Myths of the Dawn") in Max Müller's Lectures on the Science of Language.]

word remains of her, as what Mr. John Stuart Mill calls "a utility embodied in a material object."1

The whole of her utility is Immaterial-to us in England, immaterial, of late years, in every conceivable sense. But the strange thing is that Carpaccio paints, of the substantial and indisputable saint, only three small pictures; of the disputable saint, three more important ones; but of the entirely aerial saint, a splendid series, the chief labour of his life.

The chief labour;-and chief rest, or play, it seems also: questionable in the extreme as to the temper of Faith in which it is done.

4. We will suppose, however, at first, for your better satisfaction, that in composing the pictures he no more believed there ever had been a Princess Ursula than Shakespeare, when he wrote Midsummer Night's Dream, believed there had been a Queen Hippolyta: and that Carpaccio had just as much faith in angels as Shakespeare in fairies -and no more. Both these artists, nevertheless, set themselves to paint, the one fairies, the other angels and saints, for popular entertainment (say your modern sages), or popular-instruction, it may yet appear. But take it your own way; and let it be for popular amusement. This play, this picture which I am copying for you, were, both of them we will say, toys, for the English and Venetian people.

5. Well, the next question is, whether the English and Venetians, when they could be amused with these toys, were more foolish than now, when they can only be amused with steam merry-go-rounds.

Below St. George's land at Barmouth, large numbers of the English populace now go to bathe. Of the Venetians, beyond St. George's island, many go now to bathe on the sands of Lido. But nobody thinks of playing a play about queens and fairies, to the bathers on the Welsh beach. The modern intellectual teacher erects swings upon