race always distinguished enough to make their following superb,-ought, it seems to me, to cause the verse to glow on your (lately, I observe, more artistic) tombstones, like the letters on Belshazzar's wall; and with the more lurid and alarming light, that this "following" of the works is distinctly connected, in the parallel passage of Timothy, with "judgment" upon the works; and that the kinds of them which can securely front such judgment, are there said to be, in some cases, "manifest beforehand," and, in no case, ultimately obscure." 7. "It seems to me," I say, as if such questions should occur to the squire during sickness, or funeral pomp. But the seeming is far from the fact. For I suppose the last idea which is likely ever to enter the mind of a representative squire, in any vivid or tenable manner, would be that anything he had ever done, or said, was liable to a judgment from superior powers; or that any other law than his own will, or the fashion of his society, stronger than his will, existed in relation to the management of his estate. Whereas, according to any rational interpretation of our Church's doctrine, as by law established; if there be one person in the world rather than another to whom it makes a serious difference whether he dies in the Lord or out of Him: and if there be one rather than another who will have strict scrutiny made into his use of every instant of his time, every syllable of his speech, and every action of his hand and foot,-on peril of having hand and foot bound, and tongue scorched, in Tophet,3-that responsible person is the British Squire. Very strange, the unconsciousness of this, in his own mind, and in the minds of all belonging to him. Even the greatest painter of him-the Reynolds who has filled England with the ghosts of her noble squires and dames,1though he ends his last lecture in the Academy with "the 1 [Daniel v. 5.] [1 Timothy v. 24-25.] [See Isaiah xxx. 33, and Jeremiah vii. 31.] name of Michael Angelo," never for an instant thought of following out the purposes of Michael Angelo,' and painting a Last Judgment upon Squires, with the scene of it laid in Leicestershire. Appealing lords and ladies on either hand;-" Behold, Lord, here is Thy land; which I haveas far as my distressed circumstances would permit-laid up in a napkin. Perhaps there may be a cottage or so less upon it than when I came into the estate, a tree cut down here and there imprudently;-but the grouse and foxes are undiminished. Behold, there Thou hast that is Thine."2 And what capacities of dramatic effect in the cases of less prudent owners,-those who had said in their hearts, "My Lord delayeth His coming."3 Michael Angelo's St. Bartholomew, exhibiting his own skin flayed off him, awakes but a minor interest in that classic picture. How many an English squire might not we, with more pictorial advantage, see represented as adorned with the flayed skins of other people? Micah the Morasthite, throned above them on the rocks of the mountain of the Lord, while his Master now takes up His parable, "Hear, I pray you, ye heads of Jacob, and ye princes of the house of Israel; Is it not for you to know judgment, who also eat the flesh of my people, and flay their skin from off them, and they break their bones, and chop them in pieces as for the pot? 995 8. And how of the appeals on the other side? "Lord, Thou gavest me one land; behold, I have gained beside it ten lands more."6 You think that an exceptionally economical landlord might indeed be able to say so much for himself; and that the increasing of their estates has at least 1 [Compare the Notes on the Discourses of Sir Joshua Reynolds: Vol. XXII. p. 500.] 2 [Compare Matthew xxv. 25, and Luke xix. 20.] See the title to this letter.] [The figure of St. Bartholomew holding forth with one hand his skin hanging over his arm, and grasping his knife in the other, is among the saints and martyrs who surround Christ and His Mother in the fresco of the Last Judgment in the Sistine Chapel.] 5 [Micah iii. 1 and 3.] It will be noticed that Ruskin combines the two versions of the parablethe language being here founded on that in Matthew, while the gain of ten from one is only in Luke (xix. 16): in Matthew the recipient of the single talent gains nothing; in Luke all ten servants receive equally one talent.] been held a desirable thing by all of them, however Fortune, and the sweet thyme-scented Turf of England, might thwart their best intentions. Indeed it is well to have coveted much more to have gained-increase of estate, in a certain manner. But neither the Morasthite nor his Master has any word of praise for you in appropriating surreptitiously portions, say, of Hampstead Heath, or Hayes Common, or even any bit of gipsy-pot-boiling land at the roadside. Far the contrary: In that day of successful appropriation, there is one that shall take up a parable against you, and say, "We be utterly spoiled. He hath changed the portion of my people; turning away, he hath divided our fields. Therefore thou shalt have none that shall cast a cord by lot in the congregation of the Lord." In modern words, you shall have quite unexpected difficulties in getting your legal documents drawn up to your satisfaction; and truly, as you have divided the fields of the poor, the poor, in their time, shall divide yours. Nevertheless, in their deepest sense, those triumphant words, "Behold, I have gained beside it ten lands more, must be on the lips of every landlord who honourably enters into his rest; whereas there will soon be considerable difficulty, as I think you are beginning to perceive, not only in gaining more, but even in keeping what you have got. 2 9. For the gipsy hunt is up also, as well as Harry our King's; and the hue and cry loud against your land and you; your tenure of it is in dispute before a multiplying mob, deaf and blind as you,-frantic for the spoiling of you. 1 [Micah ii. 4, 5.] The reference is to an old ballad, attributed to one Gray, who "did grow unto good estimation with King Henry and afterwards with the Duke of Somerset, Protector, for making certaine merry ballades, whereof one chiefly was 'The Hunt is Up'" (The Ballad Literature and Popular Music of the Olden Times, by W. Chappell, vol. i. p. 60). The lines are: “The hunt is up, the hunt is up, And it is well nigh day, And Harry our king is gone hunting To bring his deer to bay." In "the hue and cry" Ruskin was probably thinking of 1 Henry IV., Act ii. sc. 4, 556.] The British Constitution is breaking fast. It never was, in its best days, entirely what its stout owner flattered himself. Neither British Constitution, nor British law, though it blanch every acre with an acre of parchment, sealed with as many seals as the meadow had buttercups, can keep your landlordships safe, henceforward, for an hour. You will have to fight for them as your fathers did, if you mean to keep them. That is your only sound and divine right to them; and of late you seem doubtful of appeal to it. You think political economy and peace societies will contrive some arithmetical evangel of possession. You will not find it so. If a man is not ready to fight for his land, and for his wife, no legal forms can secure them to him. They can affirm his possession; but neither grant, sanction, nor protect it.' To his own love, to his own resolution, the lordship is granted; and to those only. 10. That is the first "labour" of landlords, then. Fierce exercise of body and mind, in so much pugnacity as shall supersede all office of legal documents. Whatever labour you mean to put on your land, your first entirely Divine labour is to keep hold of it. And are you ready for that toil to-day? It will soon be called for. Sooner or later, within the next few years, you will find yourselves in Parliament in front of a majority resolved on the establishment of a Republic, and the division of lands. Vainly the landed millowners will shriek for the "operation of natural laws of political economy." The vast natural law of carnivorous rapine which they have declared their Baal-God, in so many words, will be in equitable operation then; and not, as they fondly hoped to keep it, all on their own side. Vain, then, your arithmetical or sophistical defence. You may pathetically plead to the people's majority, that the divided lands will not give much more than the length and breadth of his grave to each mob-proprietor. They will answer, "We will have what we can get ;-at all events, you shall keep [Compare Letter 73, § 5 (Vol. XXIX. p. 16).] 2 [See Letter 42, § 14 (p. 102).] it no longer." And what will you do? Send for the Life Guards and clear the House, and then, with all the respectable members of society as special constables, guard the streets? That answered well against the Chartist meeting on Kennington Common in 1848. Yes; but in 18801 it will not be a Chartist meeting at Kennington, but a magnaand-maxima-Chartist Ecclesia at Westminster, that you must deal with. You will find a difference, and to purpose. Are you prepared to clear the streets with the Woolwich infant,-thinking that out of the mouth of that suckling, God would perfect your praise, and ordain your strength? Be it so; but every grocer's and chandler's shop in the thoroughfares of London is a magazine of petroleum and percussion powder; and there are those who will use both, among the Republicans. And you will see your father the Devil's will done on earth, as it is in hell. 3 I call him your father, for you have denied your mortal fathers, and the Heavenly One. You have declared, in act and thought, the ways and laws of your sires-obsolete, and of your God-ridiculous; above all, the habits of obedience, and the elements of justice. You were made lords over God's heritage. You thought to make it your own heritage; to be lords of your own land, not of God's land. And to this issue of ownership you are come. 11. And what a heritage it was, you had the lordship over! A land of fruitful vales and pastoral mountains; and a heaven of pleasant sunshine and kindly rain; and times of sweet prolonged summer, and cheerful transient winter; and a race of pure heart, iron sinew, splendid fame, and constant faith. All this was yours! the earth with its fair fruits and innocent creatures; the firmament with its eternal lights and dutiful seasons; - the men, souls and bodies, your fathers' true servants for a thousand years, their lives, and [See General Statement explaining the Nature and Purposes of St. George's Guild, § 1 n. (Vol. XXX.), where, writing in 1882, Ruskin says that "the history of the Parliament of 1881 has too clearly interpreted these words": see on this subject the Introduction to Vol. XVII. pp. cviii.-cix.] 2 [See above, p. 95 n.] 3 [Psalms viii. 2; Matthew xxi. 16.] |