June one first, only the substance of it is not good for the May-time; but read it, and when you get to near the end, where it speaks of the distinctions between the sins of the hot heart and the cold,' come back to this, for I want you to think, in the flush of May, what strength is in the flush of the heart also. You will find that in all my late books (during the last ten years) I have summed the needful virtue of men under the terms of gentleness and justice; gentleness being the virtue which distinguishes gentlemen from churls, and justice that which distinguishes honest men from rogues. Now gentleness may be defined as the Habit or State of Love; the Red Carita of Giotto (see account of her in Letter Seventh3); and ungentleness or clownishness, the opposite State or Habit of Lust.

2

2. Now there are three great loves that rule the souls of men the love of what is lovely in creatures, and of what is lovely in things, and what is lovely in report. And these three loves have each their relative corruption, a lust the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life.1

And, as I have just said, a gentleman is distinguished from a churl by the purity of sentiment he can reach in all these three passions: by his imaginative love, as opposed to lust; his imaginative possession of wealth as opposed to avarice; his imaginative desire of honour as opposed to pride.

3. And it is quite possible for the simplest workman or labourer for whom I write to understand what the feelings of a gentleman are, and share them, if he will; but the crisis and horror of this present time are that its desire of money, and the fulness of luxury dishonestly attainable by common persons, are gradually making churls of all men; and the nobler passions are not merely disbelieved, but even the conception of them seems ludicrous to the 1 [Letter 42, § 11, p. 100.]

[For the references, see Letter 23, § 15 (Vol. XXVII. p. 409).] 3 [Letter 7, § 17 (Vol. XXVII. p. 130).]

4 [1 John ii. 16.]

impotent churl mind; so that, to take only so poor an instance of them as my own life-because I have passed it in almsgiving, not in fortune-hunting; because I have laboured always for the honour of others, not my own, and have chosen rather to make men look to Turner and Luini, than to form or exhibit the skill of my own hand; because I have lowered my rents, and assured the comfortable lives of my poor tenants, instead of taking from them all I could force for the roofs they needed;1 because I love a wood walk better than a London street, and would rather watch a seagull fly, than shoot it, and rather hear a thrush sing, than eat it; finally, because I never disobeyed my mother, because I have honoured all women with solemn worship, and have been kind even to the unthankful and the evil; therefore the hacks of English art and literature wag their heads at me, and the poor wretch who pawns the dirty linen of his soul daily for a bottle of sour wine and a cigar, talks of the "effeminate sentimentality of Ruskin.”

2

4. Now of these despised sentiments, which in all ages have distinguished the gentleman from the churl, the first is that reverence for womanhood which, even through all the cruelties of the Middle Ages, developed itself with increasing power until the thirteenth century, and became consummated in the imagination of the Madonna, which ruled over all the highest arts and purest thoughts of that age.

To the common Protestant mind the dignities ascribed

1 [For Ruskin's pioneer work in this matter, under Miss Octavia Hill's management, see Letter 10, § 15 (Vol. XXVII. p. 175).]

2 [Luke vi. 35.]

3 [The facsimile of the original MS. of § 3 (here reproduced) was given in John Ruskin: a Biographical Outline, by W. G. Collingwood, 1889. For Ruskin's refutation of the charge of "sentimentality," see Time and Tide, § 164 (Vol. XVII. p. 451); Queen of the Air, § 111 (Vol. XIX. p. 396); and below, Letter 42, § 14 (p. 102), where Ruskin attributes the remark to the Saturday Review, though on p. 87, in a reference to the present passage, he seems to attribute it to the Pall Mall Gazette. It has not been found in the Saturday, and in Time and Tide, Ruskin cites it from the Pall Mall Gazette, where the expression does occur (April 23, 1867), without the word "effeminate" (see Vol. XVII. p. 451 n.). Ruskin's memory of the periodical is probably at fault, but he may have been thinking of the abusive reception of Unto this Last by the Saturday Review, and of the epithets then applied to him see Vol. XVII. p. xxviii.]

XXVIII.

F

to the Madonna have been always a violent offence; they are one of the parts of the Catholic faith which are openest to reasonable dispute, and least comprehensible by the average realistic and materialist temper of the Reformation. But after the most careful examination, neither as adversary nor as friend, of the influences of Catholicism for good and evil, I am persuaded that the worship of the Madonna has been one of its noblest and most vital graces, and has never been otherwise than productive of true holiness of life and purity of character. I do not enter into any question as to the truth or fallacy of the idea; I no more wish to defend the historical or theological position of the Madonna than that of St. Michael or St. Christopher; but I am certain that to the habit of reverent belief in, and contemplation of, the character ascribed to the heavenly hierarchies, we must ascribe the highest results yet achieved in human nature, and that it is neither Madonna-worship nor saint-worship, but the evangelical self-worship and hellworship-gloating, with an imagination as unfounded as it is foul, over the torments of the damned, instead of the glories of the blest,-which have in reality degraded the languid powers of Christianity to their present state of shame and reproach. There has probably not been an innocent cottage home throughout the length and breadth of Europe during the whole period of vital Christianity, in which the imagined presence of the Madonna has not given sanctity to the humblest duties, and comfort to the sorest trials of the lives of women; and every brightest and loftiest achievement of the arts and strength of manhood has been the fulfilment of the assured prophecy of the poor Israelite maiden, "He that is mighty hath magnified me, and Holy is His name."1 What we are about to substitute for such magnifying in our modern wisdom, let the reader judge from two slight things that chanced to be noticed by me in my walk round Paris. I generally go first to Our Lady's Church, for though the towers