and family prevent her from doing it; secondly, that she has done it already; thirdly, that she will do it when I do it myself. It is only to the third of these pleas that I at present reply.

1

She tells me, first, that I have not joined the St. George's Company because I have no home. It is too true. But that is because my father, and mother, and nurse, are dead; because the woman I hoped would have been my wife is dying; and because the place where I would fain have stayed to remember all of them, was rendered physically uninhabitable to me by the violence of my neighbours; —that is to say, by their destroying the fields I needed to think in, and the light I needed to work by. Nevertheless, I have, under these conditions, done the best thing possible to me-bought a piece of land on which I could live in peace; and on that land, wild when I bought it, have already made, not only one garden, but two, to match against my correspondent's; nor that without help from children who, though not mine, have been cared for as if they were.

3

14. Secondly; my correspondent tells me that my duty is to stay at home, instead of dating from places which are a dream of delight to her, and which, therefore, she concludes, must be a reality of delight to me.

66

She will know better after reading this extract from my last year's diary (worth copying, at any rate, for other persons interested in republican Italy *). Florence, 20th September, 1874.-Tour virtually ended for this year. I leave Florence to-day, thankfully, it being now a place of torment day and night for all loving, decent, or industrious people; for every face one meets is full of hatred and cruelty; and the corner of every house is foul; and no

1 [See above, p. 220.]

2 [Compare Vol. X. p. 459.]

3 [For the Brantwood gardens, see Vol. XXV. pp. xxxvii., xxxviii. The children were those of Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Severn.]

[For other notes on the discomforts of Italy, made by Ruskin in 1874, see Vol. XXIII. pp. xxxviii., 413.]

thoughts can be thought in it, peacefully, in street, or cloister, or house, any more. And the last verses I read, of my morning's readings, are Esdras II., xv. 16, 17: For there shall be sedition among men, and invading one another; they shall not regard their kings nor princes, and the course of their actions shall stand in their power. A man shall desire to go into a city, and shall not be able."

What is said here of Florence is now equally true of every great city of France or Italy; and my correspondent will be perhaps contented with me when she knows that only last Sunday I was debating with a very dear friend whether I might now be justified in indulging my indolence and cowardice by staying at home among my plants and minerals, and forsaking the study of Italian art for ever. My friend would fain have it so; and my correspondent shall tell me her opinion, after she knows-and I will see that she has an opportunity of knowing-what work I have done in Florence, and propose to do, if I can be brave enough.1

1

15. Thirdly; my correspondent doubts the sincerity of my abuse of railroads because she suspects I use them. I do so constantly, my dear lady; few men more. I use everything that comes within reach of me. If the devil were standing at my side at this moment, I should endeavour to make some use of him as a local black. The wisdom of life is in preventing all the evil we can; and using what is inevitable, to the best purpose. I use my sicknesses, for the work I despise in health; my enemies, for study of the philosophy of benediction and malediction; and railroads, for whatever I find of help in them-looking always hopefully forward to the day when their embankments will be ploughed down again, like the camps of Rome, into our English fields. But I am perfectly ready even to construct a railroad, when I think one necessary; and in the opening [The reference is to Mornings in Florence, published at intervals between 1875 and 1877: see Vol. XXIII. p. 285.]

chapter of Munera Pulveris1 my correspondent will find many proper uses for steam-machinery specified. What is required of the members of St. George's Company is, not that they should never travel by railroads, nor that they should abjure machinery; but that they should never travel unnecessarily, or in wanton haste; and that they should never do with a machine what can be done with hands and arms, while hands and arms are idle.

16. Lastly, my correspondent feels it unjust to be required to make clothes, while she is occupied in the rearing of those who will require them.

Admitting (though the admission is one for which I do not say that I am prepared) that it is the patriotic duty of every married couple to have as large a family as possible, it is not from the happy Penelopes of such households that I ask-or should think of asking-the labour of the loom. I simply require that when women belong to the St. George's Company they should do a certain portion of useful work with their hands, if otherwise their said fair hands would be idle; and if on those terms I find sufficient clothing cannot be produced, I will use factories for them, -only moved by water, not steam.

My answer, as thus given, is, it seems to me, sufficient; and I can farther add to its force by assuring my correspondent that I shall never ask any member of St. George's Company to do more, in relation to his fortune and condition, than I have already done myself. Nevertheless, it will be found by any reader who will take the trouble of reference, that in recent letters I have again and again intimated the probable necessity, before the movement could be fairly set on foot, of more energetic action and example, towards which both my thoughts and circumstances seem gradually leading me; and, in that case, I shall trustfully look to the friends who accuse me of cowardice in doing too little, for defence against the, I believe, too probable imputations impending from others, of folly in doing too much.

1 [See Munera Pulveris, § 17 (Vol. XVII. p. 156).]

NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE

17. (I.) I HOPE my kind correspondent will pardon my publication of the following letter, which gives account of an exemplary life, and puts questions which many desire to have answered.

"MY DEAR MR. RUSKIN,-I do not know if you have forgotten me, for it is a long time since I wrote to you; but you wrote so kindly to me before, that I venture to bring myself before you again, more especially as you write to me (among others) every month, and I want to answer something in these letters.

"I do answer your letters (somewhat combatively) every month in my mind, but all these months I have been waiting for an hour of sufficient strength and leisure, and have found it now for the first time. A family of eleven children, through a year of much illness, and the birth of another child in May, have not left me much strength for pleasure, such as this is.

"Now a little while ago, you asked reproachfully of Englishwomen in general, why none of them had joined St. George's Company. I can only answer for myself, and I have these reasons.

"First. Being situated as I am, and as doubtless many others are more or less, I cannot join it. In my actions I am subject first to my husband, and then to my family. Any one who is entirely free cannot judge how impossible it is to make inelastic and remote rules apply to all the ever-varying and incalculable changes and accidents and personalities of life. They are a disturbing element to us visionaries, which I have been forced to acknowledge and submit to, but which you have not. Having so many to consider and consult, it is all I can do to get through the day's work; I am obliged to take things as I find them, and to do the best I can, in haste; and I might constantly be breaking rules, and not able to help it, and indeed I should not have time to think about it. I do not want to be hampered more than I am. I am not straitened for money; but most people with families are so more or less, and this is another element of difficulty.

"Secondly. Although I do not want to be further bound by rules, I believe that as regards principles I am a member of St. George's Company already; and I do not like to make any further profession which would seem to imply a renunciation of the former errors of my way, and the beginning of a new life. I have never been conscious of any other motives or course of life than those which you advocate; and my children and all around me do not know me in any other light; and I find a gradual and unconscious conformation to them growing up round me, though I have no sort of teaching faculty. I cannot tell how much of them I owe to you, for some of your writings which fell in my way when I was very young made a deep impression on me, and I grew up imbued with their spirit; but certainly I cannot now profess it for the first time.

"Thirdly (and this is wherein I fear to offend you), I will join_St. George's Company whenever you join it yourself. Please pardon me for saying that I appear to be more a member of it than you are. My life is strictly bound and ruled, and within those lines I live. Above all things, you urge our duties to the land, the common earth of our country. It seems to me that the first duty any one

1 [See Letter 45, § 19 (p. 165).]

owes to his country is to live in it. I go further, and maintain that every one is bound to have a home, and live in that. You speak of the duty of acquiring, if possible, and cultivating, the smallest piece of ground. But (forgive the question) where is your house and your garden? I know you have got places, but you do not stay there. Almost every month you date from some new place, a dream of delight to me; and all the time I am stopping at home, labouring to improve the place I live at, to keep the lives entrusted to me, and to bring forth other lives in the agony and peril of my own. And when I read your reproaches, and see where they date from, I feel as a soldier freezing in the trenches before Sebastopol might feel at receiving orders from a General who was dining at his club in London. If you would come and see me in May, I could show you as pretty a little garden of the spade as any you ever saw, made on the site of an old rubbish heap, where seven tiny pair of hands and feet have worked like fairies. Have you got a better one to show me? For the rest of my garden I cannot boast; because out-of-door work or pleasure is entirely forbidden me by the state of my health.

"Again, I agree with you in your dislike of railroads, but I suspect you use them, and sometimes go on them. I never do. I obey these laws and others, with whatever inconvenience or privation they may involve; but you do not; and that makes me revolt when you scold us.

"Again, I cannot, as you suggest, grow, spin, and weave the linen for myself and family. I have enough to do to get the clothes made. If you would establish factories where we could get pure woven cotton, linen, and woollen, I would gladly buy them there; and that would be a fair division of labour. It is not fair that the more one does, the more should be required of one.

"You see you are like a clergyman in the pulpit in your books: you can scold the congregation, and they cannot answer; behold the congregation begins to reply; and I only hope you will forgive me.1 "Believe me,

2

"Yours very truly."

18. (II.) It chances, I see, while I print my challenge to the Bishop of my University, that its neighbouring clergymen are busy in expressing to him their thanks and compliments. The following address is worth preserving. I take it from the Morning Post of December 16, and beneath it have placed an article from the Telegraph of the following day, describing the results of clerical and episcopal teaching of an orthodox nature in Liverpool, as distinguished from "Doctor" Colenso's teaching in Africa.

"THE INHIBITION OF BISHOP COLENSO.-The clergy of the rural deanery of Witney, Oxford, numbering thirty-four, together with the rural dean (the Rev. F. M. Cunningham), have subscribed their names to the following circular, which has been forwarded to the Bishop of Oxford :-To the Right Rev. Father in God, John Fielder, by Divine permission Lord Bishop of Oxford.-We, the undersigned clergy of the rural deanery of Witney, in your Lordship's diocese, beg respectfully to offer to your Lordship our cordial sympathy under the painful circumstances in which you have been placed by the invitation to the Right Rev. Dr. Colenso to

1 [For the author's reply, see above, §§ 13-16.]

2 See above, § 12.]

3 ["Doctor" and not "Bishop" because Colenso's enemies chose to regard him as canonically deposed. In his "teaching in Africa," Ruskin refers to his work among the Zulus, by whom he was styled "Sobantu" (the father of the people).]