23. (a) My correspondent cannot quit himself of the idea that I am his antagonist. If he preaches what is true, I say so-if what is false, I say so. I congratulate him in the one case, and am sorry for him in the other; but have nothing to "acknowledge" in either case. (b) and (c) "You have rather hastily assumed." "You have of course taken for granted." Compare Mr. Headlam's "I fancy that, on consideration, you would like to withdraw," Letter 54, § 26 [p. 358]. These clerical gentlemen, who habitually and necessarily write without consideration, and as habitually and necessarily "take for granted" the entire grounds of their profession, are quaintly unable to enter into the mind of a man who for twenty years has not written a word without testing it syllable by syllable; nor taken for granted one principle or fact, in art, science, or history,— having somewhat wide work in all three. In the present case, I am very sorry to have to tell my correspondent that the last thing I should "take for granted" would be the completeness and accuracy of his own account of himself. What his words actually mean, my twenty years' study of English enables me to tell him with authority;--but what he means by them he only knows! (d) Who is talking of public opinion? Does my correspondent suppose that in any even among the rudest or most ignorant debates on this subject, "righteousness" was ever supposed to mean worldly credit? The question is, was, and will be-simply how men escape being damned-if they do. (e) It is no part of my duty in Fors to occupy myself in exposing the verbal, or probing the mental, sophistries by which the aerial ingenuity of divines may guide itself in gossamer over the inconveniently furrowed ground of religious dogma. There are briefly two, and two only, forms of possible Christian, Pagan, or any other gospel, or "good message": one, that men are saved by themselves doing what is right; and the other that they are saved by believing that somebody else did right instead of them. The first of these Gospels is eternally true, and holy; the other eternally false, damnable, and damning. Which of them Mr. Lyttel preaches, matters. much to himself and his parishioners; but, to the world, considerably less than he seems to suppose. That the Eleventh Article of the Church of England teaches the second, "in very simple English," is as certain as Johnson's dictionary can make it: and that it (the said sweet message) is currently preached with unction, and received with gladness, over the whole of England, and of Protestant France, Switzerland, and Italy, by the most active and influential members of the Protestant Church, I take upon me to assert, on the grounds of an experience gained (while Mr. Lyttel was, by his own account, "occupied from day to day in stuffy rooms among ignorant and immoral people") by the carefullest study of the best Protestant divines, and the hearing of sermons by the most eloquent pastors, in every important city of evangelical Europe. Finally, I must beg Mr. Lyttel to observe that I only printed his first letter because it expressed some degree of doubt, and discomfort, which I hoped to relieve. His succeeding letters show him, on the contrary, to be supremely confident and comfortable;-in which enviable state I must here take leave of him. For my challenge (as yet unanswered) was to his Bishop, and not to the clergy of the diocese; nor, if it had been, has Mr. Lyttel offered any evidence that he is their accredited champion. 24. I think I do Mr. Lyttel more justice by printing his kind and graceful last words on my impatient comments, than I should by disarranging my types and altering my letter; which, indeed, I have no time to do. "MY DEAR SIR,-It is both my fault and misfortune that you have taken parts of my letters 'clean from the purpose of the words themselves'; and I write at once in hope that you may be able to erase two unserviceable paragraphs, which my want of simple English, or some other misdirection, has produced. "1. If you will allow me to substitute the word 'said' for 'acknowledged' in my letter, it will save paragraph (a). "2. Then I should like to assure you that the feeling which called forth my first letter also produced the rest, and no one who knows me well would think of attributing to me 'supreme confidence and comfort.' Moreover, I have throughout spoken for myself alone, and have not for one moment pretended to be the 'accredited champion' of any one. So that if you can spare the latter part of paragraph (e), beginning with 'Finally,' I think neither you nor I would lose anything by the omission. "Other parts of your comment I am sorry for, but I have not the same reason to object to them as I have to those I have specified. "I am most faithfully yours, "EDWARD Z. LYTTEL." 25. Some slips of newspaper have been forwarded to me, containing an abstract of a sermon by the Bishop of Manchester,1 in which some reference was made to Fors: but of course I cannot take any notice of expressions thus accidentally conveyed to me, and probably reported with inaccuracy. The postscript to the following interesting letter of Mr. Sillar's may perhaps receive from the Bishop of Manchester more honourable attention: "KINGSWOOD LODGE, LEE GREEN, S. E., "13th January, 1875. "MY DEAR MR. RUSKIN,-I have great sympathy with your lady correspondent,2 and, for the life of me, I cannot tell what you would have me to do. I am not a landed proprietor, nor a country gentleman, though I am the son of one, a retired physician, and brought up in the blessed green fields, and among streams that were as clear as crystal, and full of trout; but coal-pits appeared on the horizon, and gradually drove us out. I well remember the first vile red shaft that appeared within about a mile of our windows, and how the beastly smoke reconciled my mother to leave one of the loveliest country seats in Lancashire, which she had adorned with roses and laurels, I was going to say with her own hands, and I am not sure that it would be wrong to say so, for she saw every one (and the grounds were seven or eight acres in extent) planted with her own eyes, and superintended the doing of it. 66 Living there in the country, and under a tutor, my education has not been that of an ordinary country gentleman; I early learned to work with my hands as well as with my head, and though I must confess that personally I never had much taste for gardening, I had plenty of work to do in the open air. You tell me our education has to begin-yours as well as mine; and expect me to say that I cannot make a brick or a tile, or build a rude dwelling. Singularly enough, I helped to do so when a boy, and it will be long before any of us forget the miniature cottage we built, and thatched, complete, with window, door, and fireplace, and with a 1 3 [Compare, above, p. 243. The sermon here referred to does not appear among the Bishop's published sermons.] 2 [See Letter 49, § 17 (p. 249).] [See Letter 47, § 15 (p. 199).] cellar moreover, with wine of our own making, and beer of our own brewing made from treacle; for we did everything ourselves, even to grooming our own ponies. "In later life, my lot was cast in Liverpool, and after six or seven years spent in China, where I have seen the horrors of war, and where a cannon shot came through our roof, as we sat at tiffin, I found myself in London. "My old business of a merchant I cannot carry on; though I have capital sufficient for fair trade, I cannot carry it on in the face of the fierce competition by unprincipled men on borrowed money: 'Where man competes with man like foe with foe, my business as a banker and bullion broker is sealed to me as iniquitous. "At present, therefore, I am free to act; I fret because I am in a state of inactivity. I feel that I have health and strength, and that in a thousand ways I could be useful, but wherever I turn I am stopped. I am a good rough joiner; I can do small work in iron and brass; and I am a good practical chemist: my laboratory was recommended as an example of how a laboratory should be kept, by the editor of the Chemical News and an F.R.S. "Now allow me to ask you seriously, would you have me to go out alone into the wilderness, and live like a Robinson Crusoe till I see an opening? The point is, the opening might come directly, or it might not come for years, and meantime I am standing in the market-place, such as it is (why is there not a real one?). It is this uncertainty that distresses me, for I must work for my living, and my substance is gradually melting away. "Believe me, my dear Mr. Ruskin, ever yours affectionately, "ROB. G. SILLAR. "P.S.-I am glad to see you have challenged Dr. Fraser. I had a correspondence with him some years ago. I saw in one of Carlyle's works, that I might do some good, if I had two fingers and a pen; so, after getting no answer from my own clergyman, and the secretary of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, relative to the leaving out of a verse in the fifteenth Psalm in our collection, I appealed to the bishop. He was very polite, and corresponded with me till he felt it dangerous to go on, and then informed me that he really had no time to examine into the lawfulness of interest. * "I confess I don't like an officer who has no time to read and examine his standing orders, but who yet retains the command of the regiment; so as you told me in Sheepfolds that in our army the King was beside every one of us to appeal to in case of doubt, I ended by telling his lordship, as he had no time to hear me, I must leave it in other hands, videat Altissimus, and our correspondence closed." * I am reprinting this pamphlet word for word as it was first issued from the press. Mr. Allen will have it ready for distribution by the first of September.1 [The reprint was issued in October 1875. The reference in Mr. Sillar's letter is to 30 of Sheepfolds (Vol. XII. p. 550).] XXVIII. 2 c [I am honoured in the charge given me, without dissent, by the present_members of the St. George's Company, to convey their thanks to MR. SAMUEL PLIMsoll, in the terms stated at the close of my last letter.] 2 LETTER 57 MICHAL'S SCORN1 1. I HAVE received, from the author, M. Emile de Laveleye, his pamphlet, -"Protestantism and Catholicism in their bearing upon the Liberty and Prosperity of Nations, with an introductory Letter by Mr. Gladstone." I do not know why M. de Laveleye sent me this pamphlet. I thank him for the courtesy; but he has evidently read none of my books, or must have been aware that he could not have written anything more contrary to the positions which I am politically maintaining. On the other hand, I have read none of his books, and I gather from passages in his pamphlet that there may be much in them to which I should be able to express entire adhesion. But of the pamphlet in question, and its preface, he will, I trust, pardon my speaking in the same frank terms which I should have used had it accidentally come under my notice, instead of by the author's gift. The pamphlet is especially displeasing to me, because it speaks of "Liberty" under the common assumption of its desirableness; whereas my own teaching has been, and is, that Liberty, whether in the body, soul, or political estate of men, is only another word for Death, and the final issue of Death, putrefaction: 1 [The title refers to 2 Samuel vi. 16: "And Michal, Saul's daughter, looked through a window, and saw King David leaping and dancing before the Lord; and she despised him in her heart." "Music and Dancing" (see below, § 6) was a discarded title for this letter.] 2 [Emile-Louis-Victor, Baron de Laveleye (1822-1892); Belgian economist and publicist; Professor of Political Economy at Liège.] |