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 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; 2 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: : "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.] On Ruskin's ideas with regard 5 [Elements of Drawing, §§ 258-259 (Vol. XV. pp. 226-228).] to-day, no time. The sum of answer is-Nothing can be done, but what I am trying to form this St. George's Company to do. 21.1 I am sorry to omit the "thoughts' to which my second correspondent refers, in the opening of this following letter, but she gave me no permission to publish them: "These thoughts made me settle in Leeds (being free from family obligations) in order to see for myself what I could do for these towns, and what their state really was. The Borough Surveyor of Leeds (who had been six months only in office, and was perhaps new to commercial life) said to me, 'There is nothing in Leeds but jobbery and trickery.' Almsgiving (for the law of supply and demand cannot do it), in the shape of decent houses, was the first thing to be done, I found. "The late Canon Kingsley, in his tract on the 'Application of Associative Principles and Methods to Agriculture' (1851), confounds justice and almsgiving together. They are surely distinct,* but you cannot give alms till you have paid just debts. "You say nothing in Fors of the custom which rules that rich capitalists and landowners shall leave each of, say five or six daughters (I am eldest of six), a fortune large enough to enable her to live in idleness, and more or less luxury, for life. This custom is, I believe, at the root of much extortion and avarice on the part of fathers, and leads to marriages for money on the part of younger men. I deny the claim of women to political power; but I think, with Lord Salisbury, that every girl (no matter what her rank) has a moral right to be educated for self-maintenance, and proper rational feminine self-reliance, and not mainly for society, or, in other words, for marriage. "Believing § that, in the abstract, men are morally, mentally, and physically superior to women, I yet believe that the perfect relative independence and indifferent dignity of mental attitude which rightly trained and educated women should possess before matrimony (an attitude which is, to say the least, now often wanting) is essential to the proper influence women should exercise over men. It is essential to the vantage-ground on which unmarried women should stand, and from which they should draw men up to their standard, not bend themselves down to men's. "An article (one of a series on 'French Home Life') in Blackwood, some years ago, says (nearly in these words)-'Supply will follow demand; if men prefer a virtuous type of womanhood, good and well; if otherwise, young ladies and their mothers will recognize the demand and will meet it'!!! That an old-established magazine, much read by the aristocracy, should give utterance to a sentiment like this (whether or not it be true) strikes me as a sign of the times, as bad as most you have quoted in Fors. [Assuredly.] "Apart from the élite of the women of the genuine aristocracy, who, with long inherited noble instincts of all kinds, are always charming, and full of noble influence over those who come within its sphere, there is the vast mass of * Very surely. + Because I entirely ignore rich capitalists and landowners-or look on them only as the claws of my Dragon. + Every unmarried woman should have enough left her by her father to keep herself, and a pet dog-but not, also, an idle man. § On what grounds? I don't understand a word of this paragraph; least of all why either men or women should be considered "in the abstract"; and, in the concrete, I can't make out why men are the higher, at the beginning of the sentence, and women at the end of it. 1 [ 21 was omitted after the first edition.] 2 [See Blackwood's Magazine, vols. 110 and 111, 1871-1872.] English middle-class women who make up the nation, women whose inherited instincts are perhaps ignoble, or at best indefinite. The right education of these is surely an important point in social reform, and yet is still a practically unsolved problem. I have done parish work for thirteen years and more, and know the existing relations between rich and poor experimentally. The root of the matter seems to be this. Modern Christianity professes and attempts to practise the moral code of the New Testament *-mercy, while ignoring, or trampling under foot, the moral code of the Old-justice, which must come. It is thus that so much Christianity, in all sects, is (unconsciously often) sham Christianity. I agree with what you say of the clergy in many things; they do not know if Christianity in our days means peace, or the sword. Saying to their rich parishioners Thou art the man' would often be an ending to the peace and comfort of their own lives: subscriptions would be stopped, on which they rely for almsgiving, and by means of which almsgiving they try to draw the poor to church, and so to heaven. "Again, who in this day has quite clean hands with regard to money? I know a clergyman who worked for many years in a parish, and improved the morality of the people by his work. Among other things, he caused (by persuasion, and substitution of a reading-room) a public-house to be shut up the squire cooperating with him. This self-same squire wants to sell the property; is told it will sell better with a public-house. He rebuilds one in the village before he sells it! "Broadly speaking, the creed of young men of the richer classes is selfindulgence, that of young women, self-sacrifice (shown in mistaken ways, no doubt). To thinking and well-disposed women of all classes, church or chapel going is a necessity. The life of most of them is only made endurable by the hope of another world than this. "For the last six years I have been wandering about more or less, investigating, and experiencing personally, to some extent, and at the cost of much suffering, the various forms of distress in the various classes. I look back on my years of parish work as on one long monotonous day-so hopeless is such work, unless regarded, from the ecclesiastical point of view, as a self-preparation for Heaven. Seeing, as I did, and do, how entirely preventible half of the misery is, which is coolly accepted by religious and charitable people as the ordained Will of God, I stopped short (among other reasons), and gave my mind and my time to investigate and analyse the causes of the miseries, and how far it was practicable to cut at the roots of them-not snip off the blossoms, merely. Will you bear with a word as to the position of women? I agree with you: it is a futile discussion, that of equality or inequality. But as unhappily I have had to think, see, and judge for myself, in a way that, in a right order of things, ought not to be required of a woman, I wish to disclaim all sympathy with the women of the women's rights party. They are well-intentioned, but mistaken. It is dread of being identified with their views that prevents the best and most influential women of the aristocracy from doing what they might do. I trust you will secure the co-operation of such women for your St. George's Company." I wish I could! It will be a curious point in the story of the founding of the St. George's Company that, at any rate during five years, only one woman of the upper classes gave me any help.1 I hope, however, that the fact (perhaps less universally true than formerly) that "to thoughtful and well-disposed women of all classes, My dear lady, it attempts nothing of the sort. It supposes the New Testament to be an announcement of universal pardon and speedy promotion to rascals. [That is, Mrs. Talbot: see above, § 19 (p. 395).] church-going is a necessity," may be accounted for otherwise than by the misery of their earthly lives. 22. For the sake of my female, and theological, readers, I print the next following letter: "THE PARSONAGE, WERRINGTON, PETERBOROUGH, July 7, 1875. "MY DEAR SIR,-In your comment on a former letter of mine you acknowledged (a) that the Gospel which I endeavour to preach-Be persuaded by the Lord Jesus Christ; let His life rule your lives-is externally true and salutary,1 but, because I have joined with you in condemning a doctrine opposed to this, you have rather hastily assumed (b) that I have eagerly repudiated the doctrine of the Eleventh Article of the Church of England,' to which Article I have given, and not withdrawn, my public assent. You have of course taken for granted (c) that the Eleventh Article teaches the 'pleasant and supremely false gospel-Let His life be instead of your lives; you may be saved by faith without righteousness. But does it? The Article says: "We are accounted righteous before God, only for the merit of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, by Faith, and not for our own works or deservings: Wherefore, that we are justified by Faith only is a most wholesome doctrine, and very full of comfort, as more largely is expressed in the Homily of Justification.' "This teaches, in simple English enough, that there is but one righteousness in God's sight-the righteousness of Christ, and that this righteousness becomes ours by faith so that faith alone sets us right with God. "Before the court of public opinion (d) men may be accounted righteous for 'works and deservings' of their own, like those which were so eminently satisfactory to the Pharisee who went up to the Temple to pray; but before God, whose judgments are true, the only merit for which any man is accounted righteous is the merit of Jesus Christ. The Publican went down to his house justified' because of that faith in God which led him to hunger and thirst after a righteousness higher than his own, and in due time to be filled with it. "A man is justified by faith only' because by faith only he accepts the righteousness of Christ, not instead of, but for (e), his own. He is therefore accounted righteous before God because, in His sight, who sees the end from the beginning, he is righteous. "But, while the righteousness is verily his own, he confesses that, in the deepest sense, it is not his own, for the source and efficient cause of it is Christ— the merit is His. "From all this it will appear that what I repudiate is not the Eleventh Article, but the externally false and damnatory doctrine which has seemed to you to be set forth therein. "I cannot think that the Article was intended to teach that a man can be accounted righteous before God without righteousness-that faith will serve as a substitute for it, since I read in the Homily in which the doctrine of the Article is 'more largely expressed' such words as the following: "This true Christian faith neither any devil hath, nor yet any man who, in the outward profession of his mouth, and his outward receiving of the Sacraments, in coming to the Church, and in all other outward appearances, seemeth to be a Christian man, and yet in his living and deeds sheweth the contrary.' "JOHN RUSKIN, ESQ." "I am, my dear Sir, Very faithfully yours, 1 [See Letter 51, § 20 (p. 287).] |