"No muzzling, murder, or incarceration tyrannically inflicted on this muchenduring, much-insulted slave by his master, will ever extirpate rabies. No abuse of the wondrous creature beneficently bestowed by the Omniscient and Almighty on ungrateful man, to be the friend of the poor and the guardian of the rich, will ever extirpate rabies. Mercy and justice would help us much more.

"In many lands the disease is utterly unknown,-in the land of Egypt, for example, where dogs swarm in all the towns and villages. Yet the follower of Mohammed, more humane than the follower of Christ,-to our shame be it spoken, -neither imprisons, muzzles, nor murders them. England, it is believed, never passed such an Act of Parliament as this before the present century. There is, certainly, in the laws of Canute a punishment awarded to the man whose dog went mad, and by his negligence wandered up and down the country. A far more sensible measure than our own. Canute punished the man, not the dog. Also, in Edward the Third's reign, all owners of fighting dogs whose dogs were found wandering about the streets of London were fined. Very different species of legislation from the brainless or brutal Dog's Act of 1871, passed by a number of men, not one of whom it is probable either knew or cared to know anything of the nature of the creature they legislated about; not even that he perspires, not by means of his skin, but performs this vital function by means of his tongue, and that to muzzle him is tantamount to coating the skin of a man all over with paint or gutta-percha. Such selfishness and cruelty in this age appears to give evidence towards proof of the assertion made by our greatest writer on Art,-that we are now getting cruel in our avarice,'-'our hearts, of iron and clay, have hurled the Bible in the face of our God, and fallen down to grovel before Mammon.'-If not, how is it that we can so abuse one of the Supreme's most choicest works,— -a creature sent to be man's friend, and whose devotion so often 'puts to shame all human attachments'?

"We are reaping what we have sown: Rabies certainly seems on the increase in this district, in whose neighbourhood, it is stated, muzzling was first practised. It may spread more widely if we force a crop. The best way to check it, is to do our duty to the noble creature the Almighty has entrusted to us, and treat him with the humanity and affection he so eminently deserves. To deprive him of liberty and exercise; to chain him like a felon; to debar him from access to his natural medicine; to prevent him from following the overpowering instincts of his being and the laws of Nature, is conduct revolting to reason and religion.

The disease of Rabies comes on by degrees, not suddenly. Its symptoms can easily be read. Were knowledge more diffused, people would know the approach of the malady, and take timely precautions. To do as we now do,-namely, drive the unhappy creatures insane, into an agonizing sickness by sheer ignorance or inhumanity, and then, because one is ill, tie up the mouths of the healthy, and unnaturally restrain all the rest, is it not the conduct of idiots rather than of reasonable beings?

"Why all this hubbub about a disease which causes less loss of life than almost any other complaint known, and whose fatal effects can, in almost every case, be surely and certainly prevented by a surgeon? If our lawgivers and lawmakers (who, by the way, although the House of Commons is crowded with lawyers, do not in these times draw Acts of Parliament so that they can be comprehended, without the heavy cost of going to a superior court), wish to save human life, let them educate the hearts as well as heads of Englishmen, and give more attention to boiler and colliery explosions, railway smashes, and rotten ships; to the overcrowding and misery of the poor; to the adulteration of food and medicines. Also, to dirt, municipal stupidity, and neglect; by which one city alone, Manchester, loses annually above three thousand lives.

1

"I am, your humble servant,

"BETH-GELERT."

[The reference seems to be to Aratra Pentelici, § 52 (Vol. XX. p. 234), from memory of which the writer of the Letter appears to quote.]

LETTER 41

BERNARD THE HAPPY1

PARIS, 1st April, 1874.

1. I FIND there are still primroses in Kent, and that it is possible still to see blue sky in London in the early morning. It was entirely pure as I drove down past my old Denmark Hill gate, bound for Cannon Street Station, on Monday morning last; gate, closed now on me for evermore, that used to open gladly enough when I came back to it from work in Italy. Now, father and mother and nurse all dead, and the roses of the spring, prime or late -what are they to me?

2

But I want to know, rather, what are they to you? What have you, workers in England, to do with April, or May, or June either; your mill-wheels go no faster for the sunshine, do they? and you can't get more smoke up the chimneys because more sap goes up the trunks. Do you so much as know or care who May was, or her son, Shepherd of the heathen souls, so despised of you Christians ? 5 Nevertheless, I have a word or two to say to you in the light of the hawthorn blossom, only you must read some rougher ones first. I have printed the June Fors together with this, because I want you to read the

1 [See below, § 8.]

2 [For Ruskin's abandonment of his house at Denmark Hill (shortly after his mother's death), see Vol. XXII. p. xxv. He afterwards stayed, when in London, at Herne Hill in the house of his cousin, from which he would drive past Denmark Hill into London.]

3 [For the death of his nurse, see Letter 28, §§ 15, 16 (Vol. XXVII. pp. 517-518).] [For Maia, mother of Hermes, see Queen of the Air, § 26 (Vol. XIX. p. 321).] [Compare what Ruskin says about the respect due to any creed in which great men have placed faith: Ethics of the Dust, § 118 (Vol. XVIII. p. 356); and see above, p. 19.]

6 [Letter 42.]

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,1 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;2 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. 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.]

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

4 [1 John ii. 16.]

but it is not popible for any the crisis and