The Works of John Ruskin

LETTERS

TO THE WORKMEN AND LABOURERS

OF GREAT BRITAIN.

JOHN RUSKIN, LL.D.,

HONORARY STUDENT OF CHRIST CHURCH, AND HONORARY FELLOW OF CORPUS CHRISTI COLLEGE, OXFORD.

CONTENTS OF VOL. IV

(1874)

LETTER 37 (January)

THE CITY WHICH IS OUR OWN

Lines from the Testament of Jean de Meung, on the law
of perfect charity, translated. 1. A little girl with dilapidated
shoes, outside the University Galleries at Oxford, as the author
went in to lecture on mediæval Florentine art. Art in Oxford
now, not at Florence then, the primary business. 2. Intensely

practical character of the author's mind; it leaves him alone in
life and thought. How he settled the question of Free-will
at the age of ten. 3. His friends out of sympathy with him;
he can find no comfort in the Cours de Philosophie Positive.
4. The objection of theoretical reformers to practical reform; for
instance, a speech by John Bright on Adulteration. 5. Comments
thereon. 6. Plan of St. George's Company-land to be bought,
and cultivated with their own hands by cheerful and honest
tenants accustomed to obey orders. 7. Training schools to be
established, and household libraries to be supplied. A newspaper
confined to facts. 8. The habit of obedience and the under-
standing of the nature of honour to be required from both chil-
dren and parents. Conditions of tenancy. 9. No machines moved
by artificial power to be used. Tenants to make everything they
can themselves. 10. Author knows some of the laws of nature
respecting conduct, and will endeavour to get them obeyed. He
takes action, only because there is no one else to do so, and no
one (save Carlyle) to advise. 11. The laws to be obeyed by
tenants will be those of Florence in the fourteenth century.
Quotation from Plato's Republic.

NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE.-12. Author's reasons for raising the
price, and withdrawing the frontispieces, of Fors.
13. Author's pre-
liminary remarks on the three following newspaper cuttings. 14. The
Pall Mall Gazette on Government offices withdrawing their subscriptions
from the Hakluyt Society. 15. The Daily Telegraph on the cost of war.
16. The Spectator on the massacre of Tientsin.

LETTER 38 (February)

"CHILDREN, HAVE YE HERE ANY MEAT?"

1. "The laws of Florence in the fourteenth century, for us in
the nineteenth"! Unchangeableness of good laws. 2. Florentine

PAGE

. 13

. 30

law forbidding middlemen in the fish trade. No legislation possible for liars and traitors; only gravitation down to the pit. 3, 4. The fish trade in England: letter from a correspondent describing how the big fish-dealers keep up prices; letter on trawling in Loch Fyne. 5, 6. How the author would regulate the sale of fish, if he could replace his Grace the Costermonger. 7. Costermongering to be done by gentlemen; true mongers of sweet fish, and false fishers for rotten souls. 8, 9. Better work for clergy and lawyers. 10, 11. Principles of the distribution of food and regulation of prices. Price of all other articles to be founded on that of food. (Anecdote of Raeburn and Lord Eldin: a dinner of herrings and potatoes.) 12. Margate, Past and Present; "living in style" according to ideas of the modern British public. 18. Expostulation with the author as to the price of Fors. 14, 15. His reply: (i.) The book is only written for those who can reach it. Cheap literature valueless to those who cannot understand it. (ii.) The book is worth tenpence a letter. Florentine law fixing the price of eels to be applied to books. 16. Letter from the author to a provincial editor declining to send a copy of Fors.

NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE.-17. Letter to a girl on Dress. 18, 19. Letters from a correspondent describing his farms in Upper Wharfdale ("a piece of St. George's England, still mercifully left"), and St. Bernard's Monastery in Charnwood Forest.

LETTER 39 (March)

THE CART GOES BETTER, So.

1. The author's walk from Hengler's Circus to Drury Lane Theatre; the London cabman and his hypothenuse of cross streets. 2. In St. George's Schools science to be learnt by applied methods. 3, 4. Musings in London. Street names. General shops. The cheerful pantomime and the woeful outside world: which the reality, and which the pantomime? 5. Churchgoing; the author left "alone with the cat, in the world of sin." 6. From "Jack in the Box" at Drury Lane to the Underground Railway of the real world. 7. Two entertainments, Church and Circus. Cinderella on the stage, and off. 8. Love as the lightener of burdens: prefatory remarks on Gotthelf's story of Hansli. 9. The Story of the Broom-maker continued from Letter 34. 10. Hansli's wife no expensive luxury.

THE SCOTTISH FIRESIDE.

LETTER 40 (April)

1. Passage from Marmontel's "The Misanthrope Corrected": illustrative of loyalty and affection in the French heart before

PAGE

the Revolution.

2. Contrasted with the results of Machine-

labour (letter from a working woman). 3, 4. Pictures of hand-

industry (letters describing spinning in Cumberland and Coburg).

5. These charming scenes (as in the pantomime) contrasted with

the outside world: e.g., the famine in India (letter from a corre-

spondent). 6. Sacred domestic life in Germany (as shown in the

letter from Coburg) an inheritance from Frederick William I.

7. Irreconcilable difference between the French and German

natures. Contrary results of the German conquest of France,
and the French conquest of England. 8. French and German
influences on Great Britain. 9. Evangelicals and "chopped-up
Bible. 10. Texts and contexts. "The Lord do that which
seemeth Him good": spoken by Joab, the son of Zeruiah, who
had treacherously murdered his cousin Amasa. Sunday observ-
ance: Jewish Sabbath, or Christian day of keeping Resurrection?
In either case no Sabbath keeping will atone for making the six
days unholy. 11. Housing of the poor in Edinburgh.

NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE.-12. Reference to Carpaccio's "Vision
of St. Ursula." 13. Letter from the Standard on the destruction of
young fry in the Thames. 14. A defence of Pope against Elwin's edition
of his Works. 15. Letter on rabies in dogs.

PAGE

LETTER 41 (May)

BERNARD THE HAPPY

(Paris.) 1. Gentleness and Justice, the needful virtue of men.

Gentleness, the habit or state of Love. 2. The three great

Loves that rule the souls of men, and their relative corruptions.

3. The nobler passions seem ludicrous to the modern churl :

"the effeminate sentimentality of Ruskin." 4. The reverence

for womanhood, consummated in the worship of the Madonna:

its influence on life and art. Modern desecration of Notre

Dame. 5. Modern celebration of the Mois de Marie: spring sale

of the Anglo-Russian Fur Company and its "apotheosis.' 6. The