I have been greakf amaged by the discovery to an of W Gladsto real character, I saw it minflect and camertines logy themselves open thon whd misinterpretation being unbelievable unlif one Low him I must need all the attack on kin in For Lend in the member with it, and I will recast it at once and doit is me anymal the body, spirit, and political estate being alike healthy only by their bonds and laws; and by Liberty being instantly disengaged into mephitic vapour. 2. But the matter of this pamphlet, no less than the assumption it is based on, is hateful to me; reviving, as it does, the miserable question of the schism between Catholic and Protestant, which is entirely ridiculous and immaterial; and taking no note whatever of the true and eternal schism, cloven by the very sword of Michael, between him that serveth God, and him that serveth Him not. (The passage now and henceforward omitted in this place,' contained an attack on Mr. Gladstone written under a complete misconception of his character. See, for explanation of it, the beginning of the third letter in the second series of Fors. The blank space is left partly in order not to confuse the Index references, partly in due memorial of rash judgment.) 3. The fact being that I am, at this central time of my life's work, at pause because I cannot set down any 1 [The passage, included in eds. 1 and 2, was as follows: "In furtherance of which contempt of the only vital question in religious matters, I find, in the preface to this pamphlet, the man, who was so long a favourite Prime Minister of England, speaking of the 'indifferentism, scepticism, materialism, and pantheism, which for the moment are so fashionable' only as 'negative systems.' He himself being, in fact, nothing else than a negative system, hundred-tongued to his own confusion; the fashionable' hairdresser, as it were, and Minister of extreme unction in the manner of pomade, to the scald and moribund English pates that still wear their religion decoratively, as a bob-wig with a pigtail (carefully also anointing and powdering the remains of its native growth on the heads of their flunkies), and from under such contracted and loose-sitting substitute for the Cavalier locks of their forefathers, look upon the round heads of the European cropped populace, only as 'for the moment so fashionable,'-little thinking in what prison discipline the Newgate cut has its origin with the most of them, or in what hardship of war, and pressure of helmet on weary brows, for others. The fact being. The quotations from Mr. Gladstone are from pp. 7, 8 of the pamphlet (published in 1875). The facsimile here given is of Ruskin's letter to Mr. Allen (January 18, 1878), instructing him to cancel the attack upon Mr. Gladstone.] 2 [Letter 87, § 4 (Vol. XXIX. p. 364). See also Letters to M. G. and H. G., by John Ruskin, privately printed 1903, and reprinted in a later volume of this edition.] form of religious creed so simple, but that the requirement of its faithful signature by persons desiring to become Companions of St. George, would exclude some of the noblest champions of justice and charity now labouring for men; while, on the other hand, I cannot set down the first principles of children's noble education without finding myself in collision with an almost resistless infidel mob, which is incapable of conceiving-how much less of obeying the first laws of human decency, order, and honour. So that indeed I am fain to ask, with my Leeds correspondent, in last Fors (§ 20), what is to be done for young folks to whom "music has little attraction, except in the form of dance, and pictures are nothing"? 1 4. With her pardon, pictures are much to this class of young people. The woodcuts of halfpenny novels representing scenes of fashionable life, those representing men murdering their wives, in the Police News,—and, finally, those which are to be bought only in the back-shop,have enormous educational influence on the young British public: which its clergymen, alike ignorant of human nature and human art, think to counteract-by decorating their own churches, forsooth,—and by coloured prints of the story of Joseph; while the lower tribes of them-Moodys and Sankeys-think to turn modern musical taste to account by fitting negro melodies to hymns." And yet, my correspondent may be thankful that some remnant of delight is still taken in dance-music. It is the last protest of the human spirit, in the poor fallen creatures, against the reign of the absolute Devil, Pandemonium with Mammon on the throne, instead of Lucifer,—the Son of the Earth, Lord of Hell, instead of the Son of the Morning. Let her stand in the midst of the main railroad station at Birmingham; and think-what music, or dancing, or 1 [Eds. 1 and 2 here added: "(I know not whether, in Mr. Gladstone's estimate, fashionably or vulgarly)."] 2 [Messrs. Moody and Sankey, American evangelists, were at this time at the height of their vogue: see Moody and Sankey: their Lives and Labours, together with a History of the Present Great Religious Movement (Ward, Lock, & Tyler, 1875).] other entertainment fit for prodigal sons could be possible in that pious and little prodigal locality.* Let her read the account of our modern pastoral music, at § 11 of my fifth letter,-of modern Venetian "Barcarolle," § 12 of Letter 19, and § 12 of Letter 20,-and of our modern Campanile, and Muezzin call to prayer, at page 412 of this Fors. 5. "Work is prayer "-thinks your Wakefield Mahometan; his vociferous minaret, in the name, and by the name, of the Devil, shall summon English votaries to such worship for five miles round; that is to say, over one hundred square miles of English land, the Pandemoniacal voice of the Archangel-trumpet thus arouses men out of their sleep; and Wakefield becomes Wakeful-field, over that blessed space of acreage. Yes; my correspondent may be thankful that still some feeble lust for dancing on the green,-still some dim acknowledgment, by besotted and stupefied brains, of the laws of tune and time known to their fathers and mothersremains possible to the poor wretches discharged by the excursion trains for a gasp of breath, and a gleam of light, amidst what is left to them, and us, of English earth and heaven. Waltzing, drunk, in the country roads by our villages; yet innocently drunk, and sleepy at sunset; not like their born masters and teachers, dancing, wilfully, the cancan of hell, with harlots, at seven in the morning.† 6. Music and dancing! They are quite the two primal instruments of education. Make them licentious; let Mr. John Stuart Mill have the dis-ordering of them, so that -(see 18 of Letter 122) "no one shall be guided, or governed, or directed in the way they should go,"-and they sink to lower and lower depth-till the dance becomes * Compare my Birmingham correspondent's opinion of David's "twangling on the harp," Letter 6, § 6 [Vol. XXVII. p. 104]. † Sesame and Lilies, § 36 n. [Vol. XVIII. p. 93]. 1 [For these passages, see Vol. XXVII. pp. 89, 329, 341.] Death's; and the music-a shriek of death by strychnine. But let Miriam and David, and the Virgins of Israel,' have the ordering of them, and the music becomes at last the Eternal choir; and the Dance, the Karol-dance of Christmas, evermore.* Virgins of Israel, or of England, richly clad by your kings, and "rejoicing in the dance," how is it you do not divide this sacred,-if sacred,-joy of yours with the poor If it can ever be said of you, as birds of God,3 "Oh beauteous birds, methinks ye measure Your movements to some heavenly tune," can you not show wherein the heavenliness of it consists, to-suppose your Sunday-school classes? At present, you keep the dancing to yourselves, and graciously teach them the catechism. Suppose you were to try for a little while learning the catechism yourselves; and teaching them-to dance? 7. Howbeit, in St. George's schools, this, the most "decorous," rightly taught, of all exercises, shall not fail of its due discipline to any class whatsoever :-reading, writing, and accounts may all be spared where pupils show no turn to any of those scholarships, but music and dancing, never.† Generally, however, it will be the best singers and dancers who ask for teaching also in literature and art; for all, * Compare Letter 24, § 21 [Vol. XXVII. p. 433]; and Dante, Paradiso, xxiv. 16: : "Cosi, quelle carole differente Mente danzando, della sua ricchezza Mi si facean stimar, veloci e lente."5 † Compare Letter 8, § 10; and Letter 9, § 12 [Vol. XXVII. p. 143, 157.] 1 [See Exodus xv. 20; 2 Samuel vi. 14; Jeremiah xxxi. 13.] 2 Jeremiah xxxi. 13.] "Dante's simple and most exquisite synonym for angel" (Purgatorio, ii. 38): see Giotto and his Works in Padua, Vol. XXIV. p. 72.] coxas 4 [Coleridge, Lewti, or the Circassian Love-Chaunt; quoted again in Letter 91, 4 (Vol. XXIX. p. 442); and in The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century, 77 n. (where Ruskin erroneously cites the lines as Wordsworth's).] 5 ["E'en thus their carols weaving variously, They, by the measure paced, or swift, or slow, Made me to rate the riches of their joy" (Cary's translation). |