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"An apple," say the interpreters.

Not so. It was some one else than Charity who gave the first bride that gift. It is a heart.1

Hope only points upwards; and while Charity has the golden nimbus round her head circular (infinite), like that of Christ and the eternal angels, she has her glory set within the lines that limit the cell of the bee,-hexagonal.

And the bride has hers, also, so restricted: nor though she and her bridesmaids are sisters, are they dressed alike; but one in red; and one in green; and one, robe, flesh and spirit, a statue of Snow,

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Do you know now, any of you, ladies mine, what Giotto's lilies mean between the roses? or how they may also grow among the Sesame of knightly spears? 3

19. Not one of you, maid or mother, though I have besought you these four years (except only one or two of my personal friends), has joined St. George's Company. You probably think St. George may advise some different arrangements in Hanover Square? It is possible; for his own knight's cloak is white, and he may wish you to bear such celestial appearance constantly. You talk often of bearing Christ's cross; do you never think of putting on Christ's robes,-those that He wore on Tabor? nor know

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1 [Compare Mornings in Florence, § 94 (Vol. XXIII. p. 388).]

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[Dante, Purgatorio, xxix. 126: Snow new-fallen seem'd the third" (Cary).] [Compare the Introduction to Sesame and Lilies, Vol. XVIII. pp. lvii.-lviii. Ruskin in his copy here refers, for "the corn," or sesame, "of knightly spears," to the passage above (p. 157), and writes this couplet:

"As the west wind breaks through the sharp corn-ears,

Did my dark horse bear through the bended spears."

The lines are his own: see A Scythian Banquet Song, xix. (Vol. II. pp. 65-66).] 4 [The author received a challenge to this statement, and replied: see Letter 49,

§§ 13-16 (pp. 245-248). See also Letter 77, § 11 (Vol. XXIX. p. 119).]

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5 [Matthew xvi. 24. Compare Ariadne Florentina, § 29 (Vol. XXII. p. 317).]

[Ruskin, it will be seen, here accepts the tradition which connects Mount Tabor with the Transfiguration. More probably, however, that event occurred on Mount Hermon. This is the view which Ruskin himself urges in Modern Painters: see Vol. VI. p. 464, and compare Stanley's Sinai and Palestine, pp. 351, 399 (1873 edition).]

what lamps they were which the wise virgins trimmed for the marriage feast? You think, perhaps, you can go in to that feast in gowns made half of silk, and half of cotton, spun in your Lancashire cotton-mills; and that the Americans have struck oil enough—(lately, I observe also, native gas2),—to supply any number of belated virgins?

It is not by any means so, fair ladies. It is only your newly adopted Father who tells you so. Suppose, learning what it is to be generous, you recover your descent from God, and then weave your household dresses white with your own fingers? For as no fuller on earth can white them,3 but the light of a living faith,-so no demon under the earth can darken them like the shadow of a dead one.* And your modern English "faith without works" is dead; 5 and would to God she were buried too, for the stench of her goes up to His throne from a thousand fields of blood. Weave, I say,-you have trusted far too much lately to the washing, your household raiment white; go out in the morning to Ruth's field, to sow as well as to glean; sing your Te Deum, at evening, thankfully, as God's daughters, -and there shall be no night there,' for your light shall so shine before men that they may see your good works, and glorify-not Baal the railroad accident-but

"L'Amor che muove il Sole, e l'altre stelle.” 10

1 [Matthew xxv. 4.]

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2 [Especially, at the time of Ruskin's writing, at Pittsburg, whose manufacturers thus for many years subsequently enjoyed a smokeless and extraordinarily cheap fuel.]

[Mark ix. 3.]

[Ruskin in his copy specially marks this sentence on faith, and italicises on and under.]

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[Compare James ii. 17.]

Ruth ii. 2.]

7 [Revelation xxi. 25.]

Matthew v. 16.]

See above, § 3.

10 [Dante, Paradiso, last line.]

NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE

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20. I HAVE had by me for some time a small pamphlet, "The Agricultural Labourer, by a Farmer's Son," kindly sent me by the author. The matter of it is excellent as far as it reaches; but the writer speaks as if the existing arrangements between landlord, farmer, and labourer must last for ever. If he will look at the article on "Peasant Farming in the Spectator of July 4th of this year, he may see grounds for a better hope. That article is a review of Mr. W. Thornton's Plea for Peasant Proprietors; and the following paragraph from it may interest, and perhaps surprise, other readers besides my correspondent. Its first sentence considerably surprises me, to begin with; so I have italicized it :

"This country is only just beginning to be seriously roused to the fact that it has an agricultural question at all; and some of those most directly interested therein are, in their pain and surprise at the discovery, hurrying so fast the wrong way, that it will probably take a long time to bring them round again to sensible thoughts, after most of the rest of the community are ready with an answer.

"The primary object of this book is to combat the pernicious error of a large school of English economists with reference to the hurtful character of small farms and small landed properties. . . . One would think that the evidence daily before a rural economist, in the marvellous extra production of a market garden, or even a peasant's allotment, over an ordinary farm, might suffice to raise doubts whether vast fields tilled by steam, weeded by patent grubbers, and left otherwise to produce in rather a happy-go-lucky fashion, were likely to be the most advanced and profitable of all cultivated lands. On this single point of production, Mr. Thornton conclusively proves the small farmer to have the advantage.

"The extreme yields of the very highest English farming are even exceeded in Guernsey, and in that respect the evidence of the greater productiveness of small farming over large is overwhelming. The Channel Islands not only feed their own population, but are large exporters of provisions as well.

"Small farms being thus found to be more advantageous, it is but an easy step to peasant proprietors."

Stop a moment, Mr. Spectator. The step is easy, indeed;—so is a step into a well, or out of a window. There is no question whatever, in any country, or at any time, respecting the expediency of small farming; but whether the small farmer should be the proprietor of his land, is a very awkward question indeed in some countries. Are you aware, Mr. Spectator,

*Macintosh, 24, Paternoster Row.

[William Thomas Thornton, C.B. (1813-1880); secretary for public works to the India Office; a disciple and friend of J. S. Mill; author of Over-Population and its Remedies (1845), advocating sub-division of land; his Plea for Peasant Proprietors was first published in 1848.]

that your 66 easy step," taken in two lines and a breath, means what I, with all my Utopian zeal,1 have been fourteen years writing on Political Economy, without venturing to hint at, except under my breath;-some considerable modification, namely, in the position of the existing British landlord?—nothing less, indeed, if your "step" were to be completely taken, than the reduction of him to a "small peasant proprietor"? And unless he can show some reason against it, the "easy step" will most assuredly be taken with him.

Yet I have assumed, in this Fors, that it is not to be taken. That under certain modifications of his system of Rent, he may still remain lord of his land,-may, and ought, provided always he knows what it is to be lord of anything. Of which I hope to reason farther in the Fors for November of this year.2

1 [This is a reference to another remark in the Spectator: see Letter 46, § 17 (p. 185).] [See Letter 47, § 13 (p. 197).]

LETTER 46

THE SACRISTAN1

FLORENCE, 28th August, 1874.

1. I INTENDED this letter to have been published on my mother's birthday, the second of next month. Fors, however, has entirely declared herself against that arrangement, having given me a most unexpected piece of work here, in drawing the Emperor, King, and Baron, who, throned by Simone Memmi2 beneath the Duomo of Florence, beside a Pope, Cardinal, and Bishop, represented, to the Florentine mind of the fourteenth century, the sacred powers of the State in their fixed relation to those of the Church. The Pope lifts his right hand to bless, and holds the crosier in his left; having no powers but of benediction and protection. The Emperor holds his sword upright in his right hand, and a skull in his left, having alone the power of death. Both have triple crowns; but the Emperor alone has a nimbus. The King has the diadem of fleur-de-lys, and the ball and globe; the Cardinal, a book. The Baron has his warrior's sword; the Bishop, a pastoral staff. And the whole scene is very beautifully expressive of what have been by learned authors supposed the Republican or Liberal opinions of Florence, in her day of pride.

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2. The picture (fresco), in which this scene occurs, is the most complete piece of theological and political teaching given to us by the elder arts of Italy; and this particular portion of it is of especial interest to me, not only

1 [See below, § 7. "The Sacristan's Cell" (see § 7) and "The Six Days" (see $9) were rejected titles for this letter.]

2 [More correctly, Simone Martini: see Vol. XXIII. p. 455.]

[Ruskin here notes, “Needs correction": see the full account of the fresco by Mr. R. Caird in Vol. XXIII., where it is explained (p. 439) that the skull is "the diabolical invention of the restorer-originally it was merely a globe."]

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