PRE-RAPHAELITISM.

BY THE AUTHOR

"MODERN PAINTERS."

NEW YORK:
JOHN WILEY & SON, PUBLISHERS,
2 CLINTON HALL, ASTOR PLACE.

'"• 1 8 6 9 .

TO

FRANCIS HAWKSWORTH FAWKES, ESQ.,
OF FARNLEY,

WHICH OWE THEIR PRESENT FORM TO ADVANTAGES GRANTED
BY HIS KINDNESS,

ARE AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED,
BY HIS OBLIGED FRIEND,

JOHN RUSKIN.

PREFACE.

EIGHT years ago, in the close of the first volume of
"Modern Painters," I ventured to give the following
advice to the young artists of England:—
" They should go to nature in all singleness of heart, and
walk with her laboriously and trustingly, having no other
thought but how best to penetrate her meaning; rejecting nothing, selecting nothing, and scorning nothing."
Advice which, whether bad or good, involved infinite
labor and humiliation in the following i t ; and was therefore, for the most part, rejected.
It has, however, at last been carried out, to the very
letter, by a group of men who, for their reward, have been
assailed with the most scurrilous abuse which I ever recollect seeing issue from the public press. I have, therefore,
thought it due to them to contradict the directly false
statements which have been made respecting their works;
and to point out the kind of merit which, however deficient
in some respects, those works possess beyond the possibility
of dispute.
Denmark Hill,
Aug. 1851.

PRE-RAPHAELITISM

I T may be proved, with much certainty, that God intends no
man to live in this world without working: but it seems to
me no less evident that He intends every man to be happy in
his work. I t is written, " in the sweat of thy brow," but it
was never written, " in the breaking of thine heart," thou
sbalt eat bread ; and I find that, as on the one hand, infinite
misery is caused by idle people, who both fail in doing what
was appointed for them to do, and set in motion various
springs of mischief in matters in which they should have had
no concern, so on the other hand, no small misery is caused
by over-worked and unhappy people, in the dark views which
they necessarily take up themselves, and force upon others, of
work itself. W e r e it not so, I believe the fact of their being
unhappy is in itself a violation of divine law, and a sign of
some kind of folly or sin in their way of life. ISTow in order
that people may be happy in their work, these three things
are n e e d e d : They must be fit for i t : They must not do too
much of i t : and they must have a sense of success in it—not
a doubtful sense, such as needs some testimony of other people
for its confirmation, but a sure sense, or rather knowledge,
that so much work has been done well, and fruitfully done,
whatever the world may say or think about it. So that in
order that a man may be happy, it is necessary that he should
not only be capable of his work, but a good judge of his
work.

8

PRE-E API! AELITISM.

The first thing then that he ,has to do, if unhappily his
parents or masters have not done it for him, is to find out
what he is fit for. In which inquiry a man may be very safely
guided by his likings, if he be not also guided by his pride.
Peoj)le usually reason in some such fashion as this : " I don't
seem quite fit for a head-manager in the firm of
& Co.,
therefore, in all probability, I am fit to be Chancellor of t h e
Exchequer." Whereas, they ought rather to reason thus : " I
don't seem quite fit to be head-manager in the firm of
& Co., but I dare say I might do something in a small greengrocery business ; I used to be a good judge of p e a s e ; " that
is to say, always trying lower instead of trying higher, until
they find b o t t o m : once well set on the ground, a man may
build up by degrees, safely, instead of disturbing every one
in his neighborhood by perpetual catastrophes.
But this
kind of humility is rendered especially difficult in these days,
by the contumely thrown on men in humble employments.
The very removal of the massy bars which once separated one
class of society from another, has rendered it tenfold more
shameful in foolish people's, i. e. in most people's eyes, to remain in the lower grades of it, than ever it was before. W h e n
a man born of an artisan was looked upon as an entirely different species of animal from a man born of a noble, it made
him no more uncomfortable or ashamed to remain that different species of animal, than it makes a horse ashamed to remain a horse, and not to become a giraffe. B u t now that a
man may make money, and rise in the world, and associate
himself, unreproached, with people once far above him, not
only is the natural discontentedness of humanity developed to
an unheard-of extent, whatever a man's position, but it becomes a veritable shame to him to remain in the state he was
born in, and everybody thinks it his duty to t r y to be a
" gentleman." Persons who have any influence in the management of public institutions for charitable education know how

PRE-EAPHAELITISM.

9

common this feeling has become. Hardly a day passes but
they receive letters from mothers who want all their six or
eight sons to go to college, and make the grand tour in the
long vacation, and who think there is something wrong in the
foundations of society, because this is not possible. Out of
every ten letters of this kind, nine will allege, as the reason
of the writers' importunity, their desire to keep their families
in such and such a " station of life." There is no real desire
for the safety, the discipline, or the moral good of the children,
only a panic horror of the inexpressibly pitiable calamity of
their living a ledge or two lower on the molehill of the world
—a calamity to be averted at any cost whatever, of struggle,
anxiety, and shortening of life itself. I do not believe that
any greater good could be achieved for the country, than the
change in public feeling on this head, which might be brought
about by a few benevolent men, undeniably in the class of
" gentlemen," who would, on principle, enter into some of our
commonest trades, and make them honorable ; showing that
it was possible for a man to retain his dignity, and remain, in
the best sense, a gentleman, though part of his time was every
day occupied in manual labor, or even in serving customers
over a counter. I do not in the least see why courtesy, and
gravity, and sympathy with the feelings of others, and courage,
and truth, and piety, and what else goes to make up a gentleman's character, should not be found behind a counter as well
as elsewhere, if they were demanded, or even hoped for,
there.
Let us suppose, then, that the man's way of life and manner
of work have been discreetly chosen ; then the next thing to
be required is, that he do not over-work himself therein. I
am not going to say anything here about the various errors in
our systems of society and commerce, which appear (I am not
sure if they ever do more than appear) to force us to overwork ourselves merely that we may live; nor about the still
1*

10

PRE-RAPHAELITISM.

more fruitful cause of unhealthy toil—the incapability, in
many men, of being content with the little that is indeed
necessary to their happiness. I have only a word or two to
Bay about one special cause of over-work—the ambitious desire
of doing great or clever things, and the hope of accomplishing
Jiem by immense efforts: hope as vain as it is pernicious; not
only making men over-work themselves, but rendering all the
work they do unwholesome to them. I say it is a vain hope,
and let the reader be assured of this (it is a truth all-important to the best interests of humanity). No great intellectual
thing was ever done by great effort; & great thing can only be
done by a great man, and he does it without effort. Nothing
is, at present, less understood by us than this—nothing is more
necessary to be understood. Let me try to say it as clearly,
and explain it as fully as I may.
I have said no great intellectual thing : for I do not mean
the assertion to extend to things moral. On the contrary, it
seems to me that just because we are intended, as long as we
live, to be in a state of intense moral effort, we are not intended to be in intense physical or intellectual effort. Our
full energies are to be given to the soul's work—to the great
fight with the Dragon—the taking the kingdom of heaven by
force. But the body's work and head's work are to be done
quietly, and comparatively without effort. Neither limbs nor
brain are ever to be strained to their utmost; that is not the
way in which the greatest quantity of work is to be got out
of t h e m : they are never to be worked furiously, but with
tranquillity and constancy. W e are to follow the plough
from sunrise to sunset, but not to pull in race-boats at the
twilight: we shall get no fruit of that kind of work, only
disease of the heart.
How many pangs would be spared to thousands, if this great
truth and law were but once sincerely, humbly understood,—
that if a great thing can be done at all, it can be done easily:

PRE-RAPHAELTTISM.

11

that, when it is needed to be done, there is perhaps only one
man in the world who can do i t ; but he can do it without any
trouble—without more trouble, that is, than it costs small
people to do small things ; nay, perhaps, with less. And yet
what truth lies more openly on the surface of all human phenomena ? Is not the evidence of Ease on the very front of all
the greatest works in existence ? Do they not say plainly to
us, not, " there has been a great effort here," but, " there has
been a great power here " ? I t is not the weariness of mortality,
but the strength of divinity, which we have to recognise in
all mighty things ; and that is just what we now never recognise, but think that we are to do great things, by help of iron
bars and perspiration :—alas ! we shall do nothing that way
but lose some pounds of our own weight.
Yet, let me not be misunderstood, nor this great truth be
supposed anywise resolvable into the favorite dogma of young
men, that they need not work if they have genius. The fact
is, that a man of genius is always far more ready to work
than other people, and gets so much more good from the work
that he does, and is often so little conscious of the inherent
divinity in himself, that he is very apt to ascribe all his capacity to his work, and to tell those who ask how he came to be
what he is : " If I am anything, which I much doubt, I made
myself so merely by labor."
This was Newton's way of
talking, and I suppose it would be the general tone of men
whose genius had been devoted to the physical sciences.
Genius in the Arts must commonly be more self-conscious, but
in whatever field," it will always be distinguished by its perpetual, steady, well-directed, happy, and faithful labor in
accumulating and disciplining its powers, as well as by its
gigantic, incommunicable facility in exercising them. Therefore, literally, it is no man's business whether he has genius or
n o t : work he must, whatever he is, but quietly and steadily;
and the natural and unforced results of such work will be al-

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PKE-RAPHAELITISM.

ways the things that God meant him to do, and will be his
best. N o agonies nor hear t-r en dings will enable him to do
any better. If he be a great man, they will be great things ;
if a small man, small things ; but always, if thus peacefully
done, good and r i g h t ; always, if restlessly and ambitiously
done, false, hollow, and despicable.
Then the third thing needed was, I said, that a man should
be a good judge of his w o r k ; and this chiefly that he may
not be dependent upon popular opinion for the manner of
doing it, but also that he may have the just encouragement
of the sense of progress, and an honest consciousness of victory : how else can he become
" That awful independent on to-morrow,
Whose yesterdays look backwards with a smile."

I am persuaded that the real nourishment and help of such a
feeling as this is nearly unknown to half the workmen of the
present day. For whatever appearance of self-complacency
there may be in their outward bearing, it is visible enough,
by their feverish jealousy of each other, how little confidence
they have in the sterling value of their several doings. Conceit may puff a man up, but never prop him up ; and there
is too visible distress and hopelessness in men's aspects to admit of the supposition that they have any stable support of
faith in themselves.
I have stated these principles generally, because there is no
branch of labor to which they do not apply : But there is one
in which our ignorance or forgetfulness of them has caused an
incalculable amount of suffering : and I would endeavor now
to reconsider them with especial reference to it,—the branch
of the Arts.
In general, the men who are employed in the Arts have
freely chosen their profession, and suppose themselves to have
special faculty for i t ; yet, as a body, they are not happy men,

PRE-BAPHAELITTSM.

13

For which this seems to me the reason, that they are expected,
and themselves expect, to make their bread by being clever—
not by steady or quiet work ; and are, therefore, for the most
part, trying to be clever, and so living in an utterly false state*
of mind and action.
This is the case, to the same extent, in no other profession
or employment. A lawyer may indeed suspect that, unless
he has more wit than those around him, he is not likely to
advance in his profession ; but he will not be always thinking
how he is to display his wit. H e will generally understand,
early in his career, that wit must be left to take care of itself,
and that it is hard knowledge of law and vigorous examination
and collation of the facts of every case entrusted to him, which
his clients will mainly demand : this it is which he has to be
paid for ; and this is healthy and measurable labor, payable
by the hour. If he happen to have keen natural perception
and quick wit, these will come into play in their due time and
place, but he will not think of them as his chief power ; and
if he have them not, he may still hope that industry and conscientiousness may enable him to rise in his profession without
them. Again in the case of clergymen : that they are sorely
tempted to display their eloquence or wit, none who know
their own hearts will deny, but then they know this to be a
temptation : they never would suppose that cleverness was all
that was to be expected from them, or would sit down deliberately to write a clever sermon : even the dullest or vainest
of them would throw some veil over their vanity, and pretend
to some profitableness of purpose in what they did. They
would not openly ask of their hearers—Did you think my
sermon ingenious, or my language poetical ? They would
early understand that they were not paid for being ingenious,
nor called to be so, but to preach truth ; that if they happened
to possess wit, eloquence, or originality, these would appear
and be of service in due time, but were not to be continually

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PRE-RAPHAELITISM.

sought after or exhibited : and if it should happen that they
had them not, they might still be serviceable pastors without
them.
N o t so with the unhappy artist. N o one expects any honest
or useful work of h i m ; but every one expects him to be
ingenious. Originality, dexterity, invention, imagination, <»very
thing is asked of him except what alone is to be had for asking
•—honesty and sound work, and the due discharge of his
function as a painter. W h a t function ? asks the reader in
some surprise. He may well ask ; for I suppose few painters
have any idea what their function is, or even that they have
any at all.
And yet surely it is not so difficult to discover. The faculties, which when a man finds in himself, he resolves to be a
painter, are, I suppose, intenseness of observation and facility
of imitation. The man is created an observer and an imitator ;
and his function is to convey knowledge to his fellow-men, of
such things as cannot be taught otherwise than ocularly. For
a long time this function remained a religious one : it was
to impress upon the popular mind the reality of the objects of
rMth, and the truth of the histories of Scripture, by giving
visible form to both. That function has now passed away, and
none has as yet taken its place. The painter has no profession,
no purpose. He is an idler on the earth, chasing the shadows
of his own fancies.
But he was never meant to be this. The sudden and universal Naturalism, or inclination to copy ordinary natural
objects, which manifested itself among the painters of Europe,
it the moment when the invention of printing superseded
their legendary labors, was no false instinct.
It was misunderstood and misapplied, but it came at the right time, and
has maintained itself through all kinds of abuse; presenting
in the recent schools of landscape, perhaps only the first fruits
of its powder. That instinct was urging every painter in

PRE-RAPHAELITISM.

15

Europe at the same moment to his true duty—the
faithful
representation of all objects of historical interest, or of natiir
ral beauty existent at the period ; representations such as might
at once aid the advance of the sciences, and keep faithful record of everymonument of past ages which was likely to be
swept away in the approaching eras of revolutionary change.
The instinct came, as I said, exactly at the right moment;
and let the reader consider what amount and kind of general
knowledge might by this time have been possessed by the
nations of Europe, had their painters understood and obeyed
it. Suppose that, after disciplining themselves so as to be
able to draw, with unerring precision, each the particular kind
of subject in which he most delighted, they had separated into
two great armies of historians and naturalists;—that the first
had painted with absolute faithfulness every edifice, every
city, every battle-field, every scene of the slightest historical
interest, precisely and completely rendering their aspect at
the time; and that their companions, according to their several powers, had painted with like fidelity the plants and
animals, the natural scenery, and the atmospheric phenomena
of every country on the earth—suppose that a faithful and
complete record were now in our museums of every building
destroyed by war, or time, or innovation, during these last
200 years—suppose that each recess of every mountain chain
of Europe had been penetrated, and its rocks drawn with such
accuracy that the geologist's diagram was no longer necessary—suppose that every tree of the forest had been drawn
in its noblest as]3ect, every beast of the field in its savage
life—that all these gatherings were already in our national
galleries, and that the painters of the present day were laboring, happily and earnestly, to multiply them, and put such
means of knowledge more and more within reach of the common people—would not that be a more honorable life fot
them, than gaining precarious bread by " b r i g h t effects?'

13

PRE-RAPHAELITLnr.

They t7i:nk not, perhaps. They think it easy, and therefore
contemptible, to be truthful; they have been taught so all
their lives. But it is not so, whoever taught it them. It is
most difficult, and worthy of the greatest men's greatest effort,
to render, as it should be rendered, the simplest of the natural
features of the earth; but also be it remembered, no man is
confined to the simplest; each may look out work for himself
where he chooses, and it will be strange if he cannot find
something hard enough for him. The excuse is, however, one
of the lips only; for every painter knows that when he draws
back from the attempt to render nature as she is, it is oftener
in cowardice than in disdain.
I must leave the reader to pursue this subject for himself;
I have not space to suggest to him the tenth part of the
advantages which would follow, both to the painter from such
an understanding of his mission, and to the whole people, in
the results of his labor. Consider how the man himself
would be elevated: how content he would become, how
earnest, how full of all accurate and noble knowledge, how
free from envy—knowing creation to be infinite, feeling at
once the value of what he did, and yet the nothingness. Consider the advantage to the people; the immeasurably larger
interest given to art itself; the easy, pleasurable, and perfect
knowledge conveyed by it, in every subject; the far greater
number of men who might be healthily and profitably occupied with it as a means of livelihood; the useful direction
of myriads of inferior talents, now left fading away in misery.
Conceive all this, and then look around at our exhibitions,
and behold the " cattle pieces," and " sea pieces," and " fruit
pieces," and " family p i e c e s ; " the eternal brown cows in
ditches, and white sails in squalls, and sliced lemons in saucers,
and foolish faces in simpers;—and try to feel what we are,
and what we might have been.
Take a single instance in one branch of archaeology.

Let

PRE-RAPHAELITISM.

17

those who are interested in the history of religion considei
what a treasure we should now have possessed, if, instead
of painting pots, and vegetables, and drunken peasantry, the
most accurate painters of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries had been set to copy, line for line, the religious and
domestic sculpture on the German, Flemish, and French
cathedrals and castles; and if every building destroyed in the
French or in any other subsequent revolution, had thus been
drawn in all its parts with the same precision with which
Gerard Douw or Mieris paint basreliefs of Cupids. Consider,
even now, what incalculable treasure is still left in ancient
basreliefs, full of every kind of legendary interest, of subtle
expression, of priceless evidence as to the character, feelings,
habits, histories, of past generations, in neglected and shattered
churches and domestic buildings, rapidly disappearing over
the whole of Euroj)e—treasure which, once lost, the labor
of all men living cannot bring back again; and then look at
the myriads of men, with skill enough, if they had but the
commonest schooling, to record all this faithfully, who are
making their bread by drawing dances of naked women from
academy models, or idealities of chivalry fitted out with
W a r d o u r Street armor, or eternal scenes from Gil Bias, Don
Quixote, and the Vicar of Wakefield, or mountain sceneries
with young idiots of Londoners wearing Highland bonnets
and brandishing rifles in the foregrounds. Do but think
of these things in the breadth of their inexpressible imbecility,
and then go and stand before that broken basrelief in the
southern gate of Lincoln Cathedral, and see if there is no fibre
of the heart in you that will break too.
But is there to be no place left, it will be indignantly asked,
for imagination and invention, for poetical power, or love
of ideal beauty ? Y e s ; the highest, the noblest place—that
which these only can attain when they are all used in the
cause, and with the aid of truth. Wherever imagination and

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PRE-RAPHAELITISM.

sentiment are, they will either show themselves without foro
ing, or, if capable of artificial development, the kind of training which such a school of art would give them would be the
"best they could receive. The infinite absurdity and failure
of our present training consists mainly in this, that we do not
rank imagination and invention high enough, and suppose that
they can be taught. Throughout every sentence that I ever
have written, the reader will find the same rank attributed to
these powers,—the rank of a purely divine gift, not to be
attained, increased, or in any wise modified by teaching, only in
various ways capable of being concealed or quenched. Understand this thoroughly; know once for all, that a poet on canvas
is exactly the same species of creature as a poet in song, and
nearly every error in our methods of teaching will be done
away with. F o r who among us now thinks of bringing men
up to be poets ?—of producing poets by any kind of general
recipe or method of cultivation ? Suppose even that we see
in youth that which we hope may, in its development, become
a power of this kind, should we instantly, supposing that we
wanted to make a j>oet of him, and nothing else, forbid him
all quiet, steady, rational labor ? Should we force him to
perpetual spinning of new crudities out of his boyish brain,
and set before him, as the only objects of his study, the laws
of versification which criticism has supposed itself to discover
in the works of previous writers ? Whatever gifts the boy
had, would much be likely to come of them so treated?
unless, indeed, they were so great as to break through all
such snares of falsehood and vanity, and build their own foundation in spite of us ; whereas if, as in cases numbering millions
against units, the natural gifts were too weak to do this, could
any thing come of such training but utter inanity and spuriousness of the whole man ? But if we had sense, should we
not rather restrain and bridle the first flame of invention in
early youth, heaping material on it as one would on the first

PEE-EAPHAELITISM.

19

sparks and tongues of a fire which we desired to feed into
greatness ? Should we not educate the whole intellect into
general strength, and all the affections into warmth and
honesty, and look to heaven for the rest ? This, I say, we
should have sense enough to do, in order to produce a poet
in words : but, it being required to produce a poet on canvas,
what is our way of setting to work? W e begin, in all probability, by telling the youth of fifteen or sixteen, that Nature
is full of faults, and that he is to improve h e r ; but that
Raphael is perfection, and that the more he copies Raphael
the b e t t e r ; that after much copying of Raphael, he is to try
what he can do himself in a Raphaelesque, but yet original,
manner: that is to say, he is to try to do something very
clever, all out of his own head, but yet this clever something
is to be properly subjected to Raphaelesque rules, is to have
a principal light occupying one-seventh of its space, and a
principal shadow occupying one-third of the same; that no
two people's heads in the picture are to be turned the same
way, and that all the personages represented are to possess
ideal beauty of the highest order, which ideal beauty consists
partly in a Greek outline of nose, partly in proportions ex
pressible in decimal fractions between the lips and chin; but
partly also in that degree of improvement which the youth
of sixteen is to bestow upon God's work in general. This I
say is the kind of teaching which through various channels,
Royal Academy lecturings, press criticisms, public enthusiasm,
and not least by solid weight of gold, we give to our young
men. And we wonder we have no painters!
Rut we do worse than this. Within the last few years some
sense of the real tendency of such teaching has appeared in
some of our younger painters. It only could appear in the
younger ones, our older men having become familiarised with
the false system, or else having passed through it and forgotten
it, not well knowing the degree of harm they had sustained,

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PEE-EAPHAELITISM.

This sense appeared, among our youths,—increased,—matured
into resolute action. 3STecessarily, to exist at all, it needed the
support both of strong instincts and of considerable self
confidence, otherwise it must at once have been borne down
by the weight of general authority and received canon law.
Strong instincts are apt to make men strange, and r u d e ; selfconfidence, however well founded, to give much of what they
do or say the appearance of impertinence. Look at the selfconfidence of Wordsworth, stiffening every other sentence of
his prefaces into defiance; there is no more of it than was
needed to enable him to do his work, yet it is not a little ungraceful here and there. Suj3pose this stubbornness and selftrust in a youth, laboring in an art of which the executive
part is confessedly to be best learnt from masters, and we
shall hardly wonder that much of his work has a certain
awkwardness and stiffness in it, or that he should be regarded
with disfavor by many, even the most temperate, of the
judges trained in the system he was breaking through, and
with utter contempt and reprobation by the envious and the
dull. Consider, farther, that the particular system to be overthrown was, in the present case, one of which the main characteristic was the pursuit of beauty at the expense of manliness and t r u t h ; and it will seem likely, d priori, that the
men intended successfully to resist the influence of such a
system should be endowed with little natural sense of beauty,
and thus rendered dead to the temptation it presented. Summing up these conditions, there is surely little cause for surprise
that pictures painted, in a temper of resistance, by exceedingly young men, of stubborn instincts and positive self-trust,
and with little natural perception of beauty, should not be
calculated, at the first glance, to win us from works enriched
by plagiarism, polished by convention, invested with all the
attractiveness of artificial grace, and recommended to our
respect by established authority.

PRE-RAPHAELITISM.

21

W e should, however, on the other hand, have anticipated,
that in proportion to the strength of character required for
the effort, and to the absence of distracting sentiments, whether
respect for precedent, or affection for ideal beauty, would be
the energy exhibited in the pursuit of the special objects which
the youths proposed to themselves, and their success in attaining them.
All this has actually been the case, but in a degree which it
would have been impossible to anticipate. That two youths,
of the respective ages of eighteen and twenty, should have
conceived for themselves a totally independent and sincere
method of study, and enthusiastically persevered in it against
every kind of dissuasion and opposition, is strange enough;
that in the third or fourth year of their efforts they should
have produced works in many parts not inferior to the best
of Albert Durer, this is perhaps not less strange. But the
loudness and universality of the howl which the common
critics of the press have raised against them, the utter absence of all generous help or encouragement from those who
can both measure their toil and appreciate their success, and
the shrill, shallow laughter of those who can do neither the
one nor the other,—these are strangest of all—unimaginable
unless they had been experienced.
And as if these were not enough, private malice is at work
against them, in its own small, slimy way. The very day after
I had written my second letter to the Times in the defence of
the Pre-Raphaelites, I received an anonymous letter respecting
one of them, from some person apparently hardly capable of
spelling, and about as vile a specimen of petty malignity as
ever blotted pa23er. I think it well that the public should
know this, and so get some insight into the sources of the
spirit which is at work against these men—how first roused it
is difficult to say, for one would hardly have thought that
mere eccentricity in young artists could have excited an hos-

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P E E - E API! AELITISM.

tility so determined and so cruel;—hostility which hesitated
at no assertion, however impudent. That of the " absence of
perspective " was one of the most curious pieces of the hue
and cry which began with the Times, and died away in feeble
maundering in the A r t Union; I contradicted it in the
Times—I here contradict it directly for the second time.
There was not a single error in perspective in three out of the
four pictures in question. But if otherwise, would it have
been any thing remarkable in them ? I doubt, if with the
exception of the pictures of David Roberts, there were one
architectural drawing in perspective on the walls of the
Academy ; I never met but with two men in my life who knew
enough of perspective to draw a Gothic arch in a retiring
plane, so that its lateral dimensions and curvatures might be
calculated to scale from the drawing. Our architects certainly
do not, and it was but the other day that, talking to one of
the most distinguished among them, the author of several
most valuable works, I found he actually did not know how to
draw a circle in perspective. And in this state of general
science our writers for the press take it upon them to tell us,
that the forest trees in Mr. Hunt's Sylvia, and the bunches
of lilies in Mr. Collins's Convent Thoughts, are out of perspective.*
It might not, I think, in such circumstances, have been un* It was not a little curious; that in the very number of the Art Union
which repeated this direct falsehood about the Pre-Raphaelite rejection of
" linear perspective" (by-the-bye, the next time J. B. takes upon him to
speak of any one connected with the Universities, he may as well first
ascertain the difference between a Graduate and an Under-Graduate), the
second plate given should have been of a picture of Bonington's,—a professional landscape painter, observe,—for the want of aerial perspective in which
the Art Union itself was obliged to apologise, and in which the artist has
committed nearly as many blunders in linear perspective as there are lines m
the picture.

PRE-EAPHAELITISM.

23

graceful or unwise in the Academicians themselves to have
defended their young pupils, at least by the contradiction of
statements directly false respecting them, * and the direction
of the mind and sight of the public to such real merit as they
possess. If Sir Charles Eastlake, Mulready, Edwin and
Charles Landseer, Cope, and Dyce would each of them simply
* These false statements may be reduced to three principal heads, and
directly contradicted in succession.
The first, the current fallacy of society as well as of the press, was, that
the Pre-Raphaelites imitated the errors of early painters.
A falsehood of this kind could not have obtained credence any where but
in England, few English people, comparatively, having ever seen a picture
of early Italian Masters. If they had, they would have known that the PreRaphaelite pictures are just as superior to the early Italian in skill of manipulation, power of drawing, and knowledge of effect, as inferior to them in
grace of design; and that in a word, there is not a shadow of resemblance
between the two styles. The Pre-Raphaelites imitate no pictures: they paint
from nature only. But they have opposed themselves as a body, to that kind
of teaching above described, which only began after Raphael's time: and
they have opposed themselves as sternly to the entire feeling of the Renaissance schools; a feeling compounded of indolence, infidelity, sensuality, and
shallow pride. Therefore they have called themselves Pre-Raphaelite. If
they adhere to their principles, and paint nature as it is around them, with
the help of modern science, with the earnestness of the men of the thirteenth
and fourteenth centuries, they will, as I said, found a new and noble school
in England
If their sympathies with the early artists, lead them into
medievalism or Romanism, they will of course come to nothing. But I believe
there is no danger of this, at least for the strongest among them. There may
be some weak ones, whom the Tractarian heresies may touch; but if so, they
will drop off like decayed branches from a strong stem. I hope all things
from the school.
The second falsehood was, that the Pre-Raphaelites did not draw well.
This was asserted, and could have been asserted only by persons who had
never looked at the pictures.
The third falsehood was, that they had no system of light and shade. To
which it may be simply replied that their system of light and shade is exactly
the same as the Sun's; which is, I believe, likely to outlast that of the Renaissance, however brilliant.

24

PRE-RAPHAELITISM.

state their own private opinion respecting their paintings, sign
it, and publish it, I believe the act would be of more service
to English art than any thing the Academy has done since it
was founded. But as I cannot hope for this, I can only ask
the public to give their pictures careful examination, and look
at them at once with the indulgence and the respect which T
have endeavored to show they deserve.
Yet let me not be misunderstood. I have adduced them
only as examples of the kind of study which I would desire
to see substituted for thai of our modern schools, and of
singular success in certain characters, finish of detail, and brilliancy of color. W h a t faculties, higher than imitative, may
be in these men, I do not yet venture to say; but I do say,
that if they exist, such faculties will manifest themselves in
due time all the more forcibly because they have received
training so severe.
For it is always to be remembered that no one mind is like
another, either in its powers or perceptions; and while the
main principles of training must be the same for all, the result
in each will be as various as the kinds of truth which each will
apprehend therefore, also, the modes of effort, even in men
whose inner principles and final aims are exactly the same.
Suppose, for instance, two men, equally honest, equally industrious, equally impressed with a humble desire to render some
part of what they saw in nature faithfully; and, otherwise,
trained in convictions such as I have above endeavored to
induce. But one of them is quiet in temperament, has a feeble
memory, no invention, and excessively keen sight. The other
is impatient in temperament, has a memory which nothing
escapes, an invention which never rests, and is comparatively
near-sighted.
Set them both free in the same field in a mountain valley.
One sees everything, small and large, with almost the same
clearness; mountains and grasshoppers alike ; the leaves on

PRE-EAPHAELITISM

25

the branches, the veins in the pebbles, the bubbles in the
stream: but he can remember nothing, and invent nothing.
Patiently he sets himself to his mighty t a s k ; abandoning at
once all thoughts of seizing transient effects, or giving general
impressions of that which his eyes present to him in microscopical dissection, he chooses some small portion out of the
infinite scene, and calculates with courage the number of
wreeks which must elapse before he can do justice to the
intensity of his perceptions, or the fulness of matter in his
subject.
Meantime, the other has been watching the change of the
clouds, and the march of the light along the mountain sides;
he beholds the entire scene in broad, soft masses of true gradation, and the very feebleness of his sight is in some sort an
advantage to him, in making him more sensible of the aerial
mystery of distance, and hiding from him the multitudes of
circumstances which it would have been impossible for him
to represent. But there is not one change in the casting of
the jagged shadows along the hollows of the hills, but it is
fixed on his mind for ever; not a flake of spray has broken
from the sea of cloud about their bases, but he has watched
it as it melts away, and could recall it to its lost place in
heaven by the slightest effort of his thoughts. Not only so,
but thousands and thousands of such images, of older scenes,
remain congregated in his mind, each mingling in new associations with those now visibly passing before him, and these
again confused with other images of his own ceaseless, sleepless imagination, flashing by in sudden troops. Fancy how
his paper will be covered with stray symbols and blots, and
undecipherable short-hand:—as for his sitting down to " draw
from Nature," there was not one of the things which he wished
to represent that stayed for so much as iive seconds together:
but none of them escaped, for all t h a t : they are sealed up in
that strange storehouse of his; he may take one of them out,

2

26

PKE-EAPIIAELITISM.

perhaps, this day twenty years, and paint it in his dark room,
far away. Now, observe, you may tell both of these men,
when they are young, that they are to be honest, that they
have an important function, and that they are not to care
what Raphael did. This you may wholesomely impress on
them both. But fancy the exquisite absurdity of expecting
either of them to possess any o^ the qualities of the other.
I have supposed the feebleness of sight in the last, and of
invention in the first painter, that the contrast between them
might be more striking; but, with very slight modification,
both the characters are real. Grant to the first considerable
inventive power, with exquisite sense of color; and give to
the second, in addition to all his other faculties, the eye of an
eagle; and the first is John Everett Millais, the second
Joseph Mallard William Turner.
They are among the few men who have defied all false
teaching, and have, therefore, in great measure, done justice
to the gifts with which they were intrusted. They stand at
opposite poles, marking culminating points of art in both
directions; between them, or in various relations to them, we
may class five or six more living artists who, in like manner,
have done justice to their powers. I trust that I may be
pardoned for naming them, in order that the reader may
know how the strong innate genius in each has been invariably accompanied with the same humility, earnestness, and
industry in study.
It is hardly necessary to point out the earnestness or humility in the "works of William H u n t ; but it may be so to suggest the high value they possess as records of English rural
life, and still life. W h o is there who for a moment could
contend with him in the unaffected, yet humorous truth with
which he has painted our peasant children ? W h o is there
who does not sympathize with him in the simple love with
which he dwells on the brightness and bloom of our summer

PEE-RAPHAELITISM.

21

fruit and flowers ? And yet there is something to be regretted
concerning h i m : why should he be allowed continually to
paint the same bunches of hot-house grapes, and supply to
the W a t e r Color Society a succession of pineapples with the
regularity of a Covent Garden fruiterer ? He has of late
discovered that primrose banks are lovely; but there are
other things grow wild besides primroses: what undreamt-of
loveliness might he not bring back to us, if he would lose
himself for a summer in Highland foregrounds; if he would
paint the heather as it grows, and the foxglove and the harebell as they nestle in the clefts of the rocks, and the mosses
and bright lichens of the rocks themselves. And then, cross
to the Jura, and bring back a piece of J u r a pasture in spring;
with the gentians in their earliest blue, and a soldanelle
beside the fading snow ! And return again, and paint a gray
wall of alpine crag, with budding roses crowning it like a
wreath of rubies. That is what he was meant to do in this
world; not to paint bouquets in china vases.
I have in various other places expressed my sincere respect
for the works of Samuel P r o u t : his shortness of sight has
necessarily prevented their possessing delicacy of finish or
fulness of minor detail; but I think that those of no other
living artist furnish an example so striking of innate and
special instinct, sent to do a particular work at the exact and
only period when it was possible. A t the instant when peace
had been established all over Europe, but when neither
national character nor national architecture had as yet been
seriously changed by promiscuous intercourse or modern
"improvement;" when, however, nearly every ancient and
beautiful building had been long left in a state of comparative neglect, so that its aspect of partial ruinousness, and of
separation from recent active life, gave to every edifice a
peculiar interest—half sorrowful, half sublime ;—at that moment Prout was trained among the rough rocks and simple

28

PRE-EAPHAELITISM.

cottages of Cornwall, until his eye was accustomed to follow
with delight the rents and breaks, and irregularities which,
to another man, would have been offensive ; and then, gifted
with infinite readiness in composition, but also with infinite
affection for the kind of subjects he had to portray, he was
sent to preserve, in an almost innumerable series of drawings,
every one made on the spot, the aspect borne, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, by cities which, in a few years
more, re-kindled wars, or unexpected prosperities, were to
ravage, or renovate, into nothingness.
I t seems strange to pass from Prout to John Lewis; but
there is this fellowship between them, that both seem to have
been intended to appreciate the characters of foreign countries more than of their own—nay, to have been born in England chiefly that the excitement of strangeness might enhance
to them the interest of the scenes they had to represent. I
believe John Lewis to have done more entire justice to all
his powers (and they are magnificent ones) than any other
man amongst us. His mission was evidently to portray the
comparatively animal life of the southern and eastern families
of mankind. For this he was prepared in a somewhat singular way—by being led to study, and endowed with altogether
peculiar apprehension of, the most sublime characters of animals themselves. Rubens, Rembrandt, Snyders, Tintoret,
and Titian, have all, in various ways, drawn wild beasts magnificently ; but they have in some sort humanized or demonized them, making them either ravenous fiends or educated
beasts, that would draw cars, and had respect for hermits.
The sullen isolation of the brutal nature; the dignity and
quietness of the mighty limbs ; the shaggy mountainous
power, mingled with grace, as of a flowing stream; the
stealthy restraint of strength and wrath in every soundless
motion of the gigantic frame ; all this seems never to have
been seen, much less drawn, until Lewis drew and himself

PRE-KAPHAELITISM.

29

engraved a series of animal subjects, now many years ago.
Since then, he has devoted himself to the portraiture of those
European and Asiatic races, among whom the refinements of
civilization exist without its laws or its energies, and in whom
the fierceness, indolence, and subtlety of animal nature are
associated with brilliant imagination and strong affections.
To this task he has brought not only intense perception of
the kind of character, but powers of artistical composition
like those of the great Venetians, displaying, at the same
time, a refinement of drawing almost miraculous, and appreciable only, as the minutiae of nature itself are appreciable,
by the help of the microscope. The value, therefore, of his
works, as records of the aspect of the scenery and inhabitants
of the south of Spain and of the East, in the earlier part of
the nineteenth century, is quite above all estimate.
I hardly know how to speak of Mulready: in delicacy and
completion of drawing, and splendor of color, he takes place
beside John Lewis and the pre-Raphaelites; but he has,
throughout his career, displayed no definiteness in choice of
subject. He must be named among the painters who have
studied with industry, and have made themselves great by
doing s o ; but having obtained a consummate method of
execution, he has thrown it away on subjects either altogether uninteresting, or above his powers, or unfit for pictorial representation. " The Cherry Woman," exhibited in
1850, may be named as an example of the first k i n d ; the
" Burchell and Sophia'' of the second (the character of Sir
William Thornhill being utterly missed) ; the " Seven Ages"
of the t h i r d ; for this subject cannot be painted. In the
written passage, the thoughts are progressive and connected;
in the picture they must be co-existent, and yet separate;
nor can all the characters of the ages be rendered in painting
at all. One may represent the soldier at the cannon's mouth,
but one cannot paint the " bubble reputation" which he

30

PRE-RAPHAELITISM.

seeks. Mulready, therefore, while he has always produced
exquisite pieces of painting, has failed in doing anything
which can be of true or extensive use. H e has, indeed,
understood how to discipline his genius, but never how to
direct it.
Edwin Landseer is the last painter but one whom I shall
n a m e : I need not point out to any one acquainted with his
earlier works, the labor, or watchfulness of nature which
they involve, nor need I do more than allude to the peculiar
faculties of his mind. I t will at once be granted that the
highest merits of his pictures are throughout found in those
parts of them which are least like what had before been
accomplished; and that it was not by the study of RajDhael
that he attained his eminent success, but by a healthy love of
Scotch terriers.
None of these painters, however, it will be answered, afford
examples of the rise of the highest imaginative power out of
close study of matters of fact. Be it remembered, however,
that the imaginative power, in its magnificence, is not to be
found every day. Lewis has it in no mean degree; but we
cannot hope to find it at its highest more than once in an age.
W e have had it once, and must be content.
Towards the close of the last century, among the various
drawings executed, according to the quiet manner of the
time, in greyish blue, with brown foregrounds, some began
to be noticed as exhibiting rather more than ordinary diligence and delicacy, signed W . Turner.* There was nothing,
however, in them at all indicative of genius, or even of more
than ordinary talent, unless in some of the subjects a large
perception of space, and excessive clearness and decision in
the arrangement of masses. Gradually and cautiously the
blues became mingled with delicate green, and then with
* He did not use his full signature, J . M . W , until about the year 1800.

PRE-E APH AELTTISM.

31

gold; the browns in the foreground became first more positive, and then were slightly mingled with other local colors;
while the touch, which had at first been heavy and broken,
like that of the ordinary drawing masters of the time, grew
more and more refined and expressive, until it lost itself in a
method of execution often too delicate for the eye to follow,
rendering, with a precision before unexampled, both the
texture and the form of every object. The style may be
considered as perfectly formed about the year 1800, and it
remained unchanged for twenty years.
During that period the painter had attempted, and with
more or less success had rendered, every order of landscape
subject, but always on the same principle, subduing the colors
of nature into a harmony of which the key-notes are greyish
green and b r o w n ; pure blues and delicate golden yellows
being admitted in small quantity, as the lowest and highest
limits of shade and light: and bright local colors in extremely
small quantity in figures or other minor accessaries.
Pictures executed on such a system are not, properly
speaking, works in color at all; they are studies of light and
shade, in which both the shade and the distance are rendered
in the general hue which best expresses their attributes of
coolness and transparency; and the lights and the foreground
are executed in that wdiich best expresses their warmth and
solidity. This advantage may just as well be taken as not,
in studies of light and shadow to be executed with the hand;
but the use of two, three, or four colors, always in the same
relations and places, does not in the least constitute the work
a study of color, any more than the brown engravings of the
Liber Studiorum ; nor would the idea of color be in general
more present to the artist's mind, when he was at work on
one of these drawings, than when he was using pure brown
in the mezzotint engraving. But the idea of space, warmth,
and freshness being not successfully expressible in a single

32

PRE-R APH A ELITISM,

tint, and perfectly expressible by the admission of three or
four, he allows himself this advantage when it is possible,
without in the least embarrassing himself with the actual
color of the objects to be represented. A stone in the foreground might in nature have been cold grey, but it will be
drawn nevertheless of a rich brown, because it is in the foreground ; a hill in the distance might in nature be purple with
heath, or golden with furze; but it will be drawn nevertheless
of a cool grey, because it is in the distance.
This at least was the general theory,—carried out with
great severity in many, both of the drawings and pictures
executed by him during the period: in others more or less
modified by the cautious introduction of color, as the j>ainter
felt his liberty increasing; for the system wras evidently never
considered as final, or as anything more than a means of progress : the conventional, easily manageable color, was visibly
adopted, only that his mind might be at perfect liberty to
address itself to the acquirement of the first and most necessary knowledge in all art—that of form. But as form, in
landscape, implies vast bulk and space, the use of the tints
which enabled him best to express them, w7as actually auxiliary to the mere drawing; and, therefore, not only permissible, but even necessary, while more brilliant or varied tints
were never indulged in, except when they might be introduced
without the slightest danger of diverting his mind for an
instant from his principal object. And, therefore, it will be
generally found in the works of this period, that exactly in
proportion to the importance and general toil of the composition, is the severity of the tint; and that the play of color
begins to show itself first in slight and small drawings, where
he felt that he could easily secure all that he wanted in form.
Thus the " Crossing the Brook," and such other elaborate
and large compositions, are actually painted in nothing but
grey, brown, and blue, with a point or two of severe lo'al

PRE-RAPHAELITISM.

83

color in the figures; but in the minor drawings, tender passages of complicated color occur not ^infrequently in easy
places; and even before the year 1800 he begins to introduce
it with evident joyfulness and longing in his rude and simple
studies, just as a child, if it could be supposed to govern itself
by a fully developed intellect, would cautiously, but with infinite pleasure, add now and then a tiny dish of fruit or other
dangerous luxury to the simple order of its daily fare. Thus,
in the foregrounds of his most severe drawings, we not unfrequently find him indulging in the luxury of a peacock; and it
is impossible to express the joyfulness with which he seems
to design its graceful form, and deepen with soft pencilling
the bloom of its blue, after he has worked through the stern
detail of his almost colorless drawing. A rainbow is another
of his most frequently permitted indulgences; and we find
him very early allowing the edges of his evening clouds to be
touched with soft rose-color or gold; while, whenever the
hues of nature in anywise fall into his system, and can be
caught without a dangerous departure from it, he instantly
throws his whole soul into the faithful rendering of them.
Thus the usual brown tones of his foreground become warmed
into sudden vigor, and are varied and enhanced with indescribable delight, when he finds himself by the shore of a
moorland stream, where they truly express the stain of its
golden rocks, and the darkness of its clear, Cairngorm-like
pools, and the usual serenity of his aerial blue is enriched into
the softness and depth of the sapphire, when it can deepen
the distant slumber of some Highland lake, or temper the
gloomy shadows of the evening upon its hills.
The system of his color being thus simplified, he could
address all the strength of his mind to the accumulation
of facts of form; his choice of subject, and his methods
of treatment, are therefore as various as his color is simple;
and it is not a little difficult to give the reader who is unac-

2*

34

PPvE-EAPHAELITISM.

quaintc d with his works, an idea either of their infinitude
of aims, 311 the one hand, or of the kind of feeling which pervades them all, on the other. ISTo subject was too low or too
high for h i m ; we find him one day hard at work on a cock
and hen, with their family of chickens in a farm-yard; and
bringing all the refinement of his execution into play to
express the texture of the plumage; next day he is drawing
the Dragon of Colchis. One hour he is much interested in
a gust of wind blowing away an old woman's cap; the next
he is painting the fifth plague of Egypt, Every landscape
painter before him had acquired distinction by confining his
efforts to one class of subject. Hobbima painted oaks ;
Ruysdael, waterfalls and copses; Cuyp, river or meadow
scenes in quiet afternoons; Salvator and Poussin, such kind
of mountain scenery as people could conceive, who lived in
towns in the seventeenth century. But I am well persuaded
that if all the works of Turner, up to the year 1820, were
divided into classes (as he has himself divided them in the
Liber Studio rum), no preponderance could be assigned to one
class over another. There is architecture, including a large
number of formal " gentlemen's seats," I suppose drawings
commissioned by the owners; then lowland pastoral scenery of
every kind, including nearly all farming operations,—ploughing, harrowing, hedging and ditching, felling trees, sheepwashing, and I know not what else; then all kinds of town
life—court-yards of inns, starting of mail coaches, interiors
of shops, house-buildings, fairs, elections, &c.; then all kinds
of inner domestic life—interiors of rooms, studies of costumes,
of still life, and heraldry, including multitudes of symbolical
vignettes; then marine scenery of every kind, full of local
incident; every kind of boat and method of fishing for particular fish, being specifically drawn, round the whole coast
of England ;—pilchard fishing at St. Ives, whiting fishing at
Margate, herring at Loch F y n e ; and all kinds of shipping,

PKE-RAPHAELITISM.

35

including studies of every se]3arate part of the vessels, and
many marine battle-pieces, two in particular of Trafalgar,
both of high importance,—one of the Victory after the battle,
now in Greenwich Hospital; another of the Death of Kelson,
in his own gallery; then all kinds of mountain scenery, some
idealised into compositions, others of definite localities;
together with classical compositions, Romes and Carthagea
and such others, by the myriad, with mythological, historical,
or allegorical figures,—nymphs, monsters, and spectres ;
heroes and divinities.*
W h a t general feeling, it may be asked incredulously, can
possibly pervade all this ? This, the greatest of all feelings—•
an utter forgetfulness of self. Throughout the whole period
with which we are at present concerned, Turner appears as a
man of sympathy absolutely infinite—a sympathy so all-embracing, that I know nothing but that of Shakspeare comparable with it. A soldier's wife resting by the roadside is
not beneath i t ; Rizpah the daughter of Aiah, watching the
dead bodies of her sons, not above it. Nothing can possibly
be so mean as that it will not interest his whole mind, and
carry away his whole heart; nothing so great or solemn but
that he can raise himself into harmony with i t ; and it is impossible to prophesy of him at any moment, whether, the
next, he will be in laughter or in tears.
This is the root of the man's greatness; and it follows as a
matter of course that this sympathy must give him a subtle
power of expression, even of the characters of mere material
things, such as no other painter ever possessed. The man
who can best feel the difference between rudeness and tenderness in humanity, perceives also more difference between the
branches of an oak and a willow than any one else would;
* I shall give a catalogue raisonnee of all this in the third volume
of " Modern Painters "

36

PRE-KAPITAELITISM.

and, therefore, necessarily the most striking character of the
drawings themselves is the speciality of whatever they represent—the thorough stiffness of what is stiff, and grace of what
is graceful, and vastness of what is vast; but through and beyond all this, the condition of the mind of the painter himself is
easily enough discoverable by comparison of a large number
of the drawings. It is singularly serene and peaceful: in
itself quite passionless, though entering with ease into the
external passion which it contemplates. By the eifort of its
will it sympathises with tumult or distress, even in their
extremes, but there is no tumult, no sorrow in itself, only a
chastened and exquisitely peaceful cheerfulness, deeply meditative ; touched without loss of its own perfect balance, by
sadness on the one side, and stooping to playfulness upon the
other. I shall never cease to regret the destruction, by fire,
now several years ago, of a drawing which always seemed to
me to be the perfect image of the painter's mind at this
period,—the drawing of Brignal Church near Rokeby,
of which a feeble idea may still be gathered from the engraving (in the Yorkshire series). The spectator stands on the
" Brignal banks," looking down into the glen at twilight; the
sky is still full of soft rays, though the sun is gone; and the
Greta glances brightly in the valley, singing its even-song ;
two white clouds, following each other, move without wind
through the hollows of the ravine, and others lie couched on
the far away moorlands; every leaf of the woods is still in the
delicate air; a boy's kite, incapable of rising, has become
entangled in their branches, he is climbing to recover i t ;
and just behind it in the picture, almost indicated by it, the
lowly church is seen in its secluded field between the rocks
and the stream; and around it the low churchyard wall, and
the few white stones which mark the resting places of those
who can climb the rooks no more, nor hear the river sing
as it passes,

PRE-RAPHAELITISM.

37

There are many other existing drawings which indicate the
same character of mind, though I think none so touching or
so beautiful; yet they are not, as I said above, more numerous
than those which express his sympathy with sublimer or more
active scenes; but they are almost always marked by a tenderness of execution, and have a look of being beloved in
every part of them, which shows them to be the truest expression of his own feelings.
One other characteristic of his mind at this period remains
to be noticed— its reverence for talent in others. N o t the
reverence which acts upon the practices of men as if they
were the laws of nature, but that which is ready to appreciate
the power, and receive the assistance, of every mind which
has been previously employed in the same direction, so far as
its teaching seems to be consistent with the great text-book
of nature itself. Turner thus studied almost every preceding
landscape painter, chiefly Claude, Poussin, Yandevelde,
Loutherbourg, and Wilson. It was probably by the Sir
George Beaumonts and other feeble conventionalists of the
period, that he was persuaded to devote his attention to the
works of these m e n ; and his having done so will be thought,
a few scores of years hence, evidence of perhaps the greatest
modesty ever shown by a man of original power. Modesty
at once admirable and unfortunate, for the study of the works
of Yandevelde and Claude was productive of unmixed mischief to him; he spoiled many of his marine pictures, as for
instance Lord EUesmere's, by imitation of the former; and
from the latter learned a false ideal, which confirmed by the
notions of Greek art prevalent in London in the beginning of
this century, has manifested itself in many vulgarities in his
composition pictures, vulgarities which may perhaps be best
expressed by the general term " Twickenham Classicism," as
consisting principally in conceptions of ancient or of rural life
such as have influenced the erection of most of our suburban

38

PEE-RAPHAELITISM.

villas. From Mcolo Poussin and Loutherbourg he seems to
have derived advantage ; perhaps also from Wilson ; and much
in his subsequent travels from far higher men, especially Tintoret and Paul Veronese. I have myself heard him speaking
with singular delight of the putting in of the beech leaves in
the upper right-hand corner of Titian's Peter Martyr.
I
cannot in any of his works trace the slightest influence of
Salvator; and I am not surprised at it, for though Salvator
wras a man of far higher powers than either Vandevelde or
Claude, he was a wilful and gross caricaturist. Turner would
condescend to be helped by feeble men, but could not be corrupted by false men. Besides, he had never himself seen
classical life, and Claude was represented to him as competent
authority for it. But he had seen mountains and torrents,
and knew therefore that Salvator could not paint them.
One of the most characteristic drawings of this period
fortunately bears a date, 1818, and brings us within two years
of another dated drawing, no less characteristic of what I shall
henceforward call Turner's Second period. I t is in the possession of Mr. Hawkesworth Fawkes of Farnley, one of
Turner's earliest and truest friends; and bears the inscription,
unusually conspicuous, heaving itself up and down over the
eminences of the foreground,—"PASSAGE OF MONT CENIS.

J.

M. W . TURNER, January 15th, 1820."
The scene is on the summit of the pass close to the hospice,
or what seems to have been a hospice at that time,—I do not
remember such at present,—a small square-built house, built
as if partly for a fortress, with a detached flight of stone steps
in front of it, and a kind of drawbridge to the door. This
building, about 400 or 500 yards off, is seen in a dim, ashy
grey against the light, which by help of a violent blast of
mountain wind has broken through the depth of clouds which
hangs upon the crags. There is no sky, properly so called,
nothing but this roof of drifting cloud; but neither is there

PRE-RAPHAELITISM.

39

any weight of darkness—the high air is too thin for it,—all
savage, howling, and luminous with cold, the massy bases of
the granite hills jutting out here and there grimly through
the snow wreaths. There is a desolate-looking refuge on the
left, with its number 16, marked on it in long ghastly figures,
and the wind is drifting the snow off the roof and through its
window in a frantic whirl; the near ground is all wan with
half-thawed, half-trampled snow; a diligence in front, whose
horses, unable to face the wind, have turned right round with
fright, its passengers struggling to escape, jammed in the
window; a little farther on is another carriage off the road,
some figures pushing at its wheels, and its driver at the horses'
heads, pulling and lashing with all his strength, his lifted arm
stretched out against the light of the distance, though too
far off for the whip to be seen.
~Now I am perfectly certain that any one thoroughly accustomed to the earlier works of the painter, and shown this
picture for the first time, would be struck by two altogether
new characters in it.
The first; a seeming enjoyment of the excitement of the
scene, totally different from the contemplative philosophy with
which it would formerly have been regarded. Every incident
of motion and of energy is seized upon with indescribable
delight, and every line of the composition animated with a
force and fury which are now no longer the mere expression
of a contemplated external truth, but have origin in some inherent feeling in the painter's mind.
The second, that although the subject is one in itself almost
incapable of color, and although, in order to increase the
wildness of the impression, all brilliant local color has been
refused even where it might easily have been introduced, as
in the figures; yet in the low minor key which has been
chosen, the melodies of color have been elaborated to the
utmost possible pitch, so as to become a leading, instead of a

40

PRE-EAPIIAELITISM.

subordinate, element in the composition ; the subdued warm
hues of the granite promontories, the dull stone color of the
walls of the buildings, clearly opposed, even in shade, to the
grey of the snow wreaths heaped against them, and the faint
greens and ghastly blues of the glacier ice, being all expressed
with delicacies of transition utterly unexampled in any previous
drawings.
These, accordingly, are the chief characteristics of the works
of Turner's second period, as distinguished from the first,—a
new energy inherent in the mind of the painter, diminishing
the repose and exalting the force and fire of his conceptions,
and the presence of Color, as at least an essential, and often a
principal, element of design.
N o t that it is impossible, or even unusual, to find drawings
of serene subject, and perfectly quiet feeling, among the compositions of this period; but the repose is in them, just as the
energy and tumult were in the earlier period, an external
quality, which the painter images by an effort of the will: it
is no longer a character inherent in himself. The " Ulleswater,''
in the England series, is one of those which are in most perfect peace : in the " Cowes," the silence is only broken by the
dash of the boat's oars, and in the " Alnwick'' by a stag
drinking; but in at least nine drawings out of ten, either sky,
"water, or figures are in rapid motion, and the grandest drawings are almost always those which have even violent action
in one or other, or in all: e. g. high force of Tees, Coventry,
Llanthony, Salisbury, Llanberis, and such others.
The color is, however, a more absolute distinction ; and we
must return to Mr. Fawkes's collection in order to see how
the change in it was effected. That such a change would take
place at one time or other was of course to be securely anticipated, the conventional system of the first period being, as
above stated, merely a means of Study. But the immediate
ca/ise was the journey of the year 1820. As might be guessed

PRE-RAPHAELITISM.

41

from the legend on the drawing above described, " Passage
of Mont Cenis, January 15th, 1820," that drawing represents
what happened on the day in question to the painter himself.
H e passed the Alps then in the winter of 1820 ; and either in
the previous or subsequent summer, but on the same journey,
he made a series of sketches on the Rhine, in body color, now
in Mr. Fawkes's collection. Every one of those sketches is
the almost instantaneous record of an effect of color or atmosphere, taken strictly from nature, the drawing and the details
of every subject being comparatively subordinate, and the
color nearly as principal as the light and shade had been before,—certainly the leading feature, though the light and
shade are always exquisitely harmonized with it. And naturally, as the color becomes the leading object, those times of
day are chosen in which it is most lovely ; and whereas before,
at least five out of six of Turner's drawings represented ordinary daylight, we now find his attention directed constantly
to the evening: and, for the first time, we have those rosy
lights upon the hills, those gorgeous falls of sun through flaming heavens, those solemn twilights, with the blue moon rising
as the western sky grows dim, which have ever since been
the themes of his mightiest thoughts.
I have no doubt, that the immediate reason of this change
was the impression made upon him by the colors of the continental skies. When he first travelled on the Continent
(1800), he was comparatively a young student; not yet able
to draw form as he wanted, he was forced to give all his
thoughts and strength to this primary object. But now he
was free to receive other impressions; the time was come for
perfecting his art, and the first sunset which he saw on the
Rhine taught him that all previous landscape art was vain
and valueless, that in comparison with natural color, the
things that had been called paintings were mere ink and
charcoal, and that all precedent and all authority must be

42

PRE-RAPHAELITISM.

cast away at once, and trodden under foot. He cast them
away: the memories of Yandevelde and Claude were at once
weeded out of the great mind they had encumbered; they
and all the rubbish of the schools together with them; the
waves of the Rhine swept them away for ever; and a new
dawn rose over the rocks of the Siebengebirge.
There was another motive at work, which rendered the
change still more complete. His fellow artists were already
conscious enough of his superior power in drawing, and their
best hope was, that he might not be able to color. They had
begun to express this hope loudly enough for it to reach his
ears. The engraver of one of his most important marine
pictures told me, not long ago, that one day about the period
in question, Turner came into his room to examine the
progress of the plate, not having seen his own picture for
several months. It was one of his dark early pictures, but in
the foreground was a little piece of luxury, a pearly fish
wrought into hues like those of an opal. He stood before the
picture for some moments; then laughed, and pointed joyously
to the fish;—"They say that Turner can't color !" and turned
away.
Under the force of these various impulses the change was
total. Every subject thenceforth was primarily conceived in
color / and no engraving ever gave the slightest idea of any
drawing of this period.
The artists who had any perception of the truth were in
despair ; the Beaumontites, classicalists, and " owl species '' in
general, in as much indignation as their dulness was capable
of. They had deliberately closed their eyes to all nature, and
had gone on inquiring, " Where do you put your brown
t r e e . ' " A vast revelation was made to them at once, enough
to have dazzled any one; but to them, light unendurable as
incomprehensible. They " did to the moon complain," in one
vociferous, unanimous, continuous " T u whoo." Shrieking

PRE-RAPHAELITTSM.

43

rose from all dark places at the same instant, just the same
kind of shrieking that is now raised against the Pre-Raphaelites.
Those glorious old Arabian Nights, how true they are ! Mocking and whispering, and abuse loud and low by turns, from
all the black stones beside the road, when one living soul is
toiling up the hill to get the golden water. Mocking and
whispering, that he may look back, and become a black stone
like themselves.
Turner looked not back, but he went on m such a temper
as a strong man must be in, when he is forced to walk with
his fingers in his ears. He retired into himself; he could look
no longer for help, or counse], or sympathy from any one; and
the spirit of defiance in which he was forced to labor led him
sometimes into violences, from which the slightest expression
of sympathy would have saved him. The new energy that
was upon him, and the utter isolation into which he was
driven, were both alike dangerous, and many drawings of the
time show the evil effects of both ; some of them being hasty ?
wild, or experimental, and others little more than magnificent
expressions of defiance of public opinion.
But all have this noble virtue—they are in everything his
o w n : there are no more reminiscences of dead masters, no
more trials of skill in the manner of Claude or Poussin; every
faculty of his soul is fixed up>on nature only, as he saw her, or
as he remembered her.
I have spoken above of his gigantic memory: it is especially
necessary to notice this, in order that we may understand the
kind of grasp which a man of real imagination takes of all
things that are once brought within his reach—grasp thenceforth not to be relaxed for ever.
On looking over any catalogues of his works, or of particular
series of them, we shall notice the recurrence of the same subject two, three, or even many times. In any other artist this
would be nothing remarkable. Probably most modern land-

44

PRE-RAPHAELITISM.

scape painters multiply a favorite subject twenty, thirty, or
sixty fold, putting the shadows and the clouds in different
places, and "inventing," as they are pleased to call it, a new
" effect" every time. But if we examine the successions of
Turner's subjects, we shall find them either the records of a
succession of impressions actually perceived by him at some
favorite locality, or else repetitions of one impression received
in early youth, and again and again realised as his increasing
powers enabled him to do better justice to it. In either case
we shall find them records of seen facts ; never compositions
in his room to fill up a favorite outline.
For instance, every traveller, at least every traveller of
thirty years' standing, must love Calais, the place where he
first felt himself in a strange world. Turner evidently loved
it excessively. I have never catalogued his studies of Calais,
but I remember, at this moment, five: there is first the " Pas
de Calais," a very large oil painting, which is what he saw in
broad daylight as he crossed over, when he got near the
French side. It is a careful study of French fishing boats
running for the shore before the wind, with the picturesque
old city in the distance. Then there is the " Calais Harbor "
in the Liber Studiorum: that is what he saw just as he was
going into the harbor,—a heavy brig warping out, and very
likely to get in his way, or run against the pier, and bad
weather coming on. Then there is the " Calais Pier," a large
painting, engraved some years ago by Mr. Lupton :* that is
what he saw when he had landed, and ran back directly to the
pier to see what had become of the brig. The weather had
got still worse, the fishwomen were being blown about in a
distressful manner on the pier head, and some more fishing
boats were running in with all sjjeed. Then there is the
" Fortrouge," Calais : that is what he saw after he had been
* The plate was, however, never published.

PRE-RAPIIAELITISM.

45

home to Dessein's, and dined, and went out again in the evening
to walk on the sands, the tide being down. He had never seen
such a waste of sands before, and it made an impression on him.
The shrimp girls were all scattered over them too, and moved
about in white spots on the wild shore; and the storm had
lulled a little, and there was a sunset—such a sunset,—and the
bars of Fortrouge seen against it, skeleton-wise. He did not
paint that directly ; thought over it,—painted it a long while
afterwards.
Then there is the vignette in the illustrations to Scott
That is what he saw as he was going home, meditatively; and
the revolving lighthouse came blazing out upon him suddenly,
and disturbed him. He did not like that so much; made a
vignette of it, however, when he was asked to do a bit of
Calais, twenty or thirty years afterwards, having already done
all the rest.
Turner never told me all this, but any one may see it if he
will compare the pictures. They might, possibly, not be
impressions of a single day, but of two days or three; though
in all human probability they were seen just as I have stated
them;* but they are records of successive impressions, as
plainly written as ever traveller's diary. All of them pure
veracities. Therefore immortal.
I could multiply these series almost indefinitely from the
rest of his works. W h a t is curious, some of them have a kind
of private mark running through all the subjects. Thus I
know three drawings of Scarborough, and all of them have a
starfish in the foreground: I do not remember any others of
his marine subjects which have a starfish.
The other kind of repetition—the recurrence to one early
impression—is however still more remarkable. In the colleo
* And the more probably because Turner was never fond of staying long
at any place, and was least of all likely to make a pause of two or three days
at the beginning of his journey.

46

PRE-RAPHAELITISM.

tion of F . H. Bale, Esq., there is a small drawing of Llanthony
Abbey. It is in his boyish manner, its date probably about
1795; evidently a sketch from nature, finished at home. Ithad been a showery d a y ; the hills were partially concealed
by the rain, and gleams of sunshine breaking out at intervals.
A man was fishing in the mountain stream. The young
Turner sought a place of some shelter under the bushes;
made his sketch, took great pains when he got home to
imitate the rain, as he best could; added his child's luxury of
a rainbow; put in the very bush under which he had taken
shelter, and the fisherman, a somewhat ill-jointed and longlegged fisherman, in the courtly short breeches which were the
fashion of the time.
Some thirty years afterwards, with all his powers in their
strongest training, and after the total change in his feelings
and principles which I have endeavored to describe, he undertook the series of " England and Wales," and in that series
introduced the subject of Llanthony Abbey. And behold, he
went back to his boy's sketch, and boy's thought. He kept
the very bushes in their places, but brought the fisherman to
the other side of the river, and put him, in somewhat less
courtly dress, under their shelter, instead of himself. And
then he set all his gained strength and new knowledge at
work on the well-remembered shower of rain, that had fallen
thirty years before, to do it better. The resultant drawing*
is one of the very noblest of his second period.
Another of the drawings of the England series, Ulleswater,
is the repetition of one in Mr. Fawkes's collection, which, by
the method of its execution, I should conjecture to have been
executed about the year 1808, or 1810: at all events, it is a
very quiet drawing of the first period. The lake is quite
calm; the western hills in grey shadow, the eastern massed in
* Vide Modern Painters, Part II. Sect. III. Chap. IV. § 14.

PRE-EAPHAELITISM.

47

light. Helvellyn rising like a mist between them, all being
mirrored in the calm water. Some thin and slightly evanescent
cows are standing in the shallow water in front; a boat floats
motionless about a hundred yards from the shore: the foreground is of broken rocks, with lovely pieces of copse on the
right and left.
This was evidently Turner's record of a quiet evening by
the shore of Ulleswater, but it was a feeble one. He could
not at that time render the sunset colors : he went back to it
therefore in the England series, and painted it again with his
new power. The same hills are there, the same shadows, the
same cows,—they had stood in his mind, on the same spot, for
twenty years,—the same boat, the same rocks, only the copse
is cut away—it interfered with the masses of his color: some
figures are introduced bathing, and what was grey, and feeble
gold in the first drawing, becomes purple, and burning rosecolor in the last.
But perhaps one of the most curious examples is in the
series of subjects from Winchelsea.
That in the Liber
Studiorum, "Winchelsea, Sussex," bears date 1812, and its
figures consist of a soldier speaking to a woman, who is resting
on the bank beside the road. There is another small subject,
with Winchelsea in the distance, of which the engraving bears
date 1817. It has two women with bundles, and two soldiers
toiling along the embankment in the plain, and a baggage
waggon in the distance. Neither of these seems to have
satisfied him, and at last he did another for the England series,
of which the engraving bears date 1830. There is now a
regiment on the march; the baggage waggon is there, having
got no farther on in the thirteen years, but one of the women
is tired, and has fainted on the b a n k ; another is supporting
her against her bundle, and giving her drink ; a third sympathetic woman is added, and the two soldiers have stopped,
and one is drinking from his canteen

48

PKE-RAPHAELITISM.

Nor is it merely of entire scenes, or of particular incidents^
that Turner's memory is thus tenacious. The slightest passages of color or arrangement that have pleased him—the
fork of a bough, the casting of a shadow, the fracture of a
stone—will be taken up again and again, and strangely
worked into new relations with other thoughts. There is a
single sketch from nature in one of the portfolios at Farnley,
of a common wood-walk on the estate, which has furnished
passages to no fewer than three of the most elaborate compositions in the Liber Studiorum.
I am thus tedious in dwelling on Turner's powers of memory, because I wish it to be thoroughly seen how all his
greatness, all his infinite luxuriance of invention, depends
on his taking possession of everything that he sees,—on his
grasping all, and losing hold of nothing,—on his forgetting
himself, and forgetting nothing else. I wish it to be understood how every great man paints what he sees or did see,
his greatness being indeed little else than his intense sense of
fact. And thus Pre-Raphaelitism and Raphaelitism, and
Turnerism, are all one and the same, so far as education can
influence them. They are different in their choice, different
in their faculties, but all the same in this, that Raphael himself,
so far as he was great, and all who preceded or followed him
who ever were great, became so by painting the truths around
them as they appeared to each man's own mind, not as he
had been taught to see them, except by the God who made
both him and them.
There is, however, one more characteristic of Turner's
second period, on which I have still to dwell, especially with
reference to what has been above advanced resjDecting the
fallacy of overtoil; namely, the magnificent ease with which
all is done when it is successfully done. For there are one
or two drawings of this time which are not done easily.
Turner had in these set himself to do a fine thing to exhibit

PRE-EAPHAELITISM.

49

his powers; in the common phrase, to excel himself; so sure
as he does this, the work is a failure. The worst drawings
that have ever come from his hands are some of this second
period, on which he has spent much time and laborious
thought; drawings filled with incident from one side to the
other, with skies stippled into morbid blue, and warm lights
set against them in violent contrast; one of Bamborough
Castle, a large water-color, may be named as an example.
But the truly noble works are those in which, without effort,
he has expressed his thoughts as they came, and forgotten
himself; and in these the outpouring of invention is not less
miraculous than the swiftness and obedience of the mighty
hand that expresses it. Any one who examines the drawings
may see the evidence of this facility, in the strange freshness
and sharpness of every touch of color; but when the multitude of delicate touches, with which all the aerial tones are
worked, is taken into consideration, it would still appear
impossible that the drawing could have been completed with
ease, unless we had direct evidence in the matter: fortunately,
it is not wanting. There is a drawing in Mr. Fawkes's collection of a man-of-war taking in stores: it is of the usual
size of those of the England series, about sixteen inches by
eleven: it does not appear one of the most highly finished,
but is still farther removed from slightness. The hull of a
first-rate occupies nearly one-half of the picture on the right,
her bows towards the spectator, seen in sharp perspective
from stem to stern, with all her portholes, guns, anchors, and
lower rigging elaborately detailed ; there are two other ships
of the line in the middle distance, drawn with equal precision;
a noble breezy sea dancing against their broad bows, full of
delicate drawing in its waves; a store-ship beneath the hull
of the larger vessel, and several other boats, and a complicated cloudy sky. It might appear no small exertion of mind
to draw the detail of all this shipping down to the smallest
3

50

PEE-KAPHAELITISM.

ropes, from memory, in the drawing-room of a mansion in the
middle of Yorkshire, even if considerable time had been
given for the effort. But Mr. Fawkes sat beside the painter
from the first stroke to the last. Turner took a piece of blank
paper one morning after breakfast, outlined his ships, finished
the drawing in three hours, and went out to shoot.
Let this single fact be quietly meditated upon by our ordinary painters, and they will see the truth of what was above
asserted,—that if a great tiling can be done at all, it can be
done easily; and let them not torment themselves with
twisting of compositions this way and that, and repeating,
and experimenting, and scene-shifting. If a man can compose
at all, he can compose at once, or rather he must compose in
spite of himself. And this is the reason of that silence which.
I have kept in most of my works, on the subject of Composition. Man} r critics, especially the architects, have found
fault with me for not "teaching people how to arrange
masses;" for not " attributing sufficient importance to composition." Alas! I attribute far more importance to it than
they do;—so much importance, that I should just as soon
think of sitting down to teach a man how to write a Divina
Commedia, or King Lear, as how to " compose," in the true
sense, a single building or picture. The marvellous stupidity
of this age of lecturers is, that they do not see that what they
call "principles of composition," are mere principles of
common sense in everything, as well as in pictures and buildings ;—A picture is to have a principal light ? Y e s ; and so
a dinner is to have a principal dish, and an oration a principal
point, and an air of music a principal note, and every man a
principal object. A picture is to have harmony of relation
among its parts ? Yes ; and so is a speech well uttered, and
an action well ordered, and a company well chosen, and a
ragout well mixed. Composition ! As if a man were not
composing every moment of his life, well or ill, and would

PRE-EAPHAELITISM.

51

not do it instinctively in his picture as well as elsewhere, if he
could. Composition of this lower or common kind is of
exactly the same importance in a picture that it is in any
thing else,—no more. It is well that a man should say what
he has to say in good order and sequence, but the main thing
is to say it truly. And yet we go on preaching to our pupils
as if to have a principal light was every thing, and so cover
our academy walls with Shacabac feasts, wherein the courses
are indeed well ordered, but the dishes empty.
It is not, however, only in invention that men overwork
themselves, but in execution also; and here I have a word to
say to the Pre-Raphaelites specially. They are working too
hard. There is evidence in failing portions of their pictures,
showing that they have wrought so long upon them that their
very sight has failed for weariness, and that the hand refused
any more to obey the heart. And, besides this, there are
certain qualities of drawing which they miss from overcarefulness. For, let them be assured, there is a great truth
lurking in that common desire of men to see things done in
what they call a "masterly," or " b o l d , " or "broad," manner:
a truth oppressed and abused, like almost every other in this
world, but an eternal one nevertheless; and whatever mischief may have followed from men's looking for nothing else
but this facility of execution, and supposing that a picture
was assuredly all right if only it were done with broad dashes
of the brush, still the truth remains the same :—that because
it is not intended that men shall torment or weary themselves
with any earthly labor, it is appointed that the noblest results
should only be attainable by a certain ease and decision of
manipulation. I only wish people understood this much of
sculpture, as well as of painting, and could see that the finely
finished statue is, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, a fir
more vulgar work than that which shows rough signs of the
right hand laid to the workman's hammer : but at all events,

52

PRE-RAPHAELITISM.

in painting it is felt by all men, and justly felt. The freedom
of the hnes of nature can only be represented by a similar
freedom in the hand that follows them ; there are curves in
the flow of the hair, and in the form of the features, and in
the muscular outline of the body, which can in no wise be
caught but by a sympathetic freedom in the stroke of the
pencil. I do not care what example is taken, be it the most
subtle and careful work of Leonardo himself, there will be
found a play and power and ease in the outlines, which no
slow effort could ever imitate. And if the Pre-Raphaelite3
do not understand how this kind of power, in its highest
perfection, may be united with the most severe rendering of
all other orders of truth, and especially of those with which
they themselves have most sympathy, let them look at the
drawings of John Lewis.
These then are the principal lessons which we have to learn
from Turner, in his second or central period of labor. There
is one more, however, to be received; and that is a warning ;
for towards the close of it, what with doing small conventional
vignettes for publishers, making showy drawings from sketches
taken by other £>eople of places he had never seen, and touching up the bad engravings from his works submitted to him
almost every day,—engravings utterly destitute of animation,
and which had to be raised into a specious brilliancy by
scratching them over with white, spotty, lights, he gradually
got inured to many conventionalities, and even falsities; and
having trusted for ten or twelve years almost entirely to his
memory and invention, living I believe mostly in London, and
receiving a new sensation only from the burning of the
Houses of Parliament, he painted many pictures between
1830 and 1840 altogether unworthy of him. But he was not
thus to close his career.
In the summer either of 1840 or 1841, he undertook another
journey into Switzerland. It was then at least forty years

PRE-R APH AELITISM.

53

since he had first seen the Alps ; (the source of the Arveron,
in Mr. Fawkes's collection, which could not have been painted
till he had seen the thing itself, bears date 1800,) and the
direction of his journey in 1840 marks his fond memory of
that earliest one; for, if we look over the Swiss studies and
drawings executed in his first period, we shall be struck with
his fondness for the pass of the St. Gothard; the most elaborate
drawing in the Farnley collection is one of the Lake of Lucerne
from Fluelen; and, counting the Liber Studiorum subjects,
there are, to my knowledge, six compositions taken at the
same period from the pass of St. Gothard, and, probably,
several others are in existence. The valleys of Sallenche, and
Chamouni, and Lake of Geneva, are the only other Swiss scenes
which seem to have made very profound impressions on him.
H e returned in 1841 to Lucerne; walked up Mont Pilate
on foot, crossed the St. Gothard, and returned by Lausanne
and Geneva. H e made a large number of colored sketches on
this journey, and realised several of them on his return. The
drawings thus produced are different from all that had preceded them, and are the first which belong definitely to what
I shall henceforth call his Third period.
The perfect repose of his youth had returned to his mind,
while the faculties of imagination and execution appeared in
renewed strength; all conventionality being done away with
by the force of the impression which he had received from the
Alps, after his long separation from them. The drawings are
marked by a peculiar largeness and simplicity of t h o u g h t :
most of them by deep serenity, passing into melancholy; all
by a richness of color, such as he had never before conceived.
They, and the works done in following years, bear the
same relation to those of the rest of his life that the colors of
sunset do to those of the d a y ; and will be recognised, in a
few years more, as the noblest landscapes ever yet conceived
by human intellect.

54

PEE-RAPIIAELITISM.

Such has been the career of the greatest painter of this
century. Many a century may pass away before there rises
such another; but what greatness any among us may be capable of, will, at least, be best attained by following in his p a t h ;
by beginning in all quietness and hopefulness to use whatever
powers we may possess to represent the things around us as
as we see and feel t h e m ; trusting to the close of life to give
the perfect crown to the course of its labors, and knowing
assuredly that the determination of the degree in which
watchfulness is to be exalted into invention, rests with a
higher will than our own. And, if not greatness, at least a
certain good, is thus to be achieved; for though I have above
spoken of the mission of the more humble artist, as if it were
merely to be subservient to that of the antiquarian or the man
of science, there is an ulterior aspect in which it is not subservient, but superior. Every archaeologist, every natural
philosopher, knows that there is a peculiar rigidity of mind
brought on by long devotion to logical and analytical inquiries.
W e a k men, giving themselves to such studies, are utterly
hardened by them, and become incapable of understanding
anything nobler, or even of feeling the value of the results to
which they lead. But even the best men are in a sort injured
by them, and pay a definite price, as in most other matters, for
definite advantages. They gain a peculiar strength, but lose
in tenderness, elasticity, and impressibility. The man who
has gone, hammer in hand, over the surface of a romantic
country, feels no longer, in the mountain ranges he has so
laboriously explored, the sublimity or mystery with which
they were veiled when he first beheld them, and with which
they are adorned in the mind of the passing traveller. In his
more informed conception, they arrange themselves like a dissected model: where another man would be awe-struck by
the magnificence of the precipice, he sees nothing but the
emergence of a fossiliferous rock, familiarised already to his

PRE-RAPHAELITISM.

55

imagination as extending in a shallow stratum, o\ er a perhaps
uninteresting district; where the unlearned spectator would
be touched with strong emotion by the aspect of the snowy
summits which rise in the distance, he sees only the culminating points of a metamorphic formation, with an uncomfortable
web of fan-like fissures radiating, in his imagination, through
their centres.* That in the grasp he has obtained of the inner
relations of all these things to the universe, and to man, that
in the views which have been opened to him of natural
energies such as no human mind would have ventured to conceive, and of past states of being, each in some new way bearing witness to the unity of purpose and everlastingly consistent
providence of the Maker of all things, he has received reward
well worthy the sacrifice, I would not for an instant deny; but
the sense of the loss is not less painful to him if his mind be
rightly constituted; and it would be with infinite gratitude
that he would regard the man, who, retaining in his delineation
of natural scenery a fidelity to the facts of science so rigid as
to make his work at once acceptable and credible to the most
sternly critical intellect, should yet invest its features again
with the sweet veil of their daily aspect; should make them
dazzling with the splendor of wandering light, and involve
them in the unsearchableness of stormy obscurity; should
restore to the divided anatomy its visible vitality of o]3eration,
* This state of mind appears to have been the only one which Wordsworth
had been able to discern in men of science; and in disdain of which, he wrote
that short-sighted passage in the Excursion, Book III. 1. 165—190., which is,
I think, the only one in the whole range of his works which his true friends
would have desired to see blotted out. What else has been found fault with
as feeble or superfluous, is not so in the intense distinctive relief which it
gives to his character. But these lines are written in mere ignorance of the
matter they treat; in mere want of sympathy with the men they describe;
for, observe, though the passage is put into the mouth of the Solitary, it is
fully confirmed, and even rendered more scornful, by the speech which
follows

56

PRE-RAPHAELITISM,

clothe naked crags with soft forests, enrich the mountain ruins
with bright pastures, and lead the thoughts from the monotonous recurrence of the phenomena of the physical world, tc
the sweet interests and sorrows of human life and death.

M E BNB,

NOTES
ON THE

CONSTRUCTION OE SHEEPEOLDS.

BT

JOHN BUSKIN, M.A.,
#TJTHCB OF " T H E SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE," AO.

NEW YOKE:
JOHN WILEY & SON, PUBLISHERS,
2 CLINTON HALL, ASTOE PLACE.

1868.

ADVERTISEMENT.
persons will probably find fault with me for publishing opinions which are not new ; but I shall bear this blame
contentedly, believing that opinions on this subject could
hardly be just if they were not 1800 years old. Others
will blame me for making proposals which are altogether
new; to whom I would answer, that things in these days
seem not so far right but that they may be mended. And
others will simply call the opinions false and the proposals
foolish—to whose good will, if they take it in hand to
contradict me, I must leave what I have written—having
no purpose of being drawn, at present, into religious controversy. If, however, any should admit the truth, but
regret the tone of what I have said, I can only pray them
to consider how much less harm is done in the world by
ungraceful boldness, than by untimely Fear.
MANY

Denmark Hill,
Fob. 1851.

NOTES ON

THE CONSTRUCTION OF SHEEPFOLDS.

T H E following remarks were intended to form part of the
appendix to an essay on Architecture: But it seemed to me,
when I had put them into order, that they might be useful to
persons who would not care to possess the work to which I
proposed to attach them; I publish them, therefore, in a separate form; but I have not time to give them more consistency
than they would have had in the subordinate position originally intended for them. I do not profess to teach Divinity;
and I pray the reader to understand this, and to pardon the
slightness and insufficiency of notes set down with no more
intention of connected treatment of their subject than might
regulate an accidental conversation, Some of them are simply
copied from my private diary; others are detached statements
of facts, which seem to me significative or valuable, without
comment; all are written in haste, and in the intervals of occupation with an entirely different subject. It may be asked of
me, whether I hold it right to speak thus hastily and insufficiently respecting the matter in question ? Yes. I hold it
right to speak hastily: not to think hastily. I have not thought
hastily of these things; and, besides, the haste of speech is confessed, that the reader may think of me only as talking to him,
and saying, as shortly and simply as I can, things which, if he

6

NOTES ON THE

esteem them foolish or idle, he is welcome to cast aside; but
which, in very truth, I cannot help saying at this time.
The passages in the essay which required notes, described
the repression of the political power of the Venetian Clergy
by the Venetian Senate ; and it became necessary for me—in
supporting an assertion made in the course of the inquiry, that
the idea of separation of Church and State was both vain and
impious—to limit the sense in which it seemed to me that the
word " C h u r c h " should be understood, and to note one 01
two consequences which would result from the acceptance of
such limitation. This I may as well do in a separate paper,
readable by any person interested in the subject; for it is high
time that some definition of the word should be agreed upon.
I do not mean a definition involving the doctrine of this or
that division of Christians, but limiting, in a manner understood by all of them, the sense in which the word should thenceforward be used. There is grievous inconvenience in the
present state of things. For instance, in a sermon lately published at Oxford, by an anti Tractarian divine, I find this
sentence,—"It is clearly within the province of the State to
establish a national church, or external institution of certain
forms of worship;"
Now suppose one were to take this interpretation of the word "Church" given by an Oxford divine,
and substitute it for the simple word in some Bible Texts, as
for instance, " Unto the angel of the external institution oi
certain forms of worship of Ephesus, write," &c. Or, " Salute
the brethren which are in Laodicea, and Nymphas, and the
external institution of certain forms of worship which is in his
house,"—what awkward results we should have, here and
there! N o w I do not say it is possible for men to agree with
each other in their religious opinions, but it is certainly possible for them to agree with each other upon their religious
expressions/
and when a word occurs in the Bible a hundred
and fourteen times, it is surely not asking too much of con*

CONSTRUCTION OF SHEEPF0LD3.

1

tending divines to let it stand in the sense in which it there
occurs; and when they wrant an expression of something for
which it does not stand in the Bible, to use some other word.
There is no compromise of religious opinion in this: it is simply
proper respect for the Queen's English.
The word occurs in the New Testament, as I said, one hundred and fourteen times.* In every one of those occurrences,
it bears one and the same grand sense: that of a congregation
or assembly of men. But it bears this sense under four different modifications, giving four separate meanings to the word.
These are—
I. The entire Multitude of the Elect; otherwise called the
Body of Christ; and sometimes the Bride, the Lamb's Wife;
including the Faithful in all ages; Adam, and the children of
Adam yet unborn.
In this sense it is used in Ephesians v. 25, 27, 32; Colossians
i. 18, and several other passages.
II. The entire multitude of professing believers in Christ,
existing on earth at a given moment; including false brethren,
wolves in sheep's clothing, goats, and tares, as well as sheep
and wheat, and other forms of bad fish with good in the
net.
In this sense it is used in 1 Cor. x. 32; xv. 9 ; Galatians L
13, 1 Tim. iii. 5, <fcc.
III. The multitude of professed believers, living in a certain
city, place, or house. This is the most frequent sense in which
the word occurs, as in Acts vii. 3 8 ; xiii. 1; 1 Cor. i. 2; xvi. 19,
&G.

IV. Any assembly of men: as in Acts xix. 32, 41.
That in a hundred and twelve out of the hundred and four
teen texts, the word bears some one of these four meanings, is
* I may, perhaps, have missed count of one or two occurrences of tho
word; but not, I think, in any important passages.

8

NOTES ON THE

indisputable.* But there are two texts in which, if the word
had alone occurred, its meaning might have been doubtful.
These are Matt. xvi. 18, and xviii. 17.
The absurdity of founding any doctrine upon the inexpressibly minute possibility that in these two texts, the word might
have been used with a different meaning from that which it
bore in all the others, coupled with the assumption that the
meaning was this or that, is self-evident: it is not so much a
religious error as a philological solecism; unparalleled, so far
as I know, in any other science but that of divinity*
N o r is it ever, I think, committed with open front by Protestants. N o English divine, asked in a straightforward manner
for a Scriptural definition of " the Church," would, I suppose,
be bold enough to answer " the Clergy." N o r is there any
harm in the common use of the word, so only that it be distinctly understood to be not the Scriptural one; and therefore
to be unfit for substitution in a Scriptural text. There is no
harm in a man's talking of his son's " going into the Church ":
meaning that he is going to take orders; but there is much
harm in his supposing this a Scriptural use of the word, and
therefore, that when Christ said, " Tell it to the Church," He
might possibly have meant, " Tell it to the Clergy."
It is time to put an end to the chance of such misunderstanding. Let it but be declared plainly by all men, when they
begin to state their opinions on matters ecclesiastical, that
they will use the word " Church " in one sense or the other;—
That they will accept the sense in which it is used by the
Apostles, or that they deny this sense, and propose a new
definition of their own. W e shall then know what we are
* The expression "House of God," in Tim. iii. 15, is shown to be used of
the congregation by 1 Cor. iii. 16, 17.
I have not noticed the word nvpiaKh (outa), from which the German "Kirche,"
the English "Church," and the Scotch "Kirk," are derived, as it is not used
with that signification in the New Testament.

CONSTRUCTION OF SHEEPFOLDS.

9

about with them—we may perhaps grant them their new use
of the term, and argue with them on that understanding; so
only that they will not pretend to make use of Scriptural
authority, while they refuse to employ Scriptural language.
This, however, it is not my purpose to do at present. I desire only to address those who are willing to accept the Apostolic sense of the word Church, and with them, I would
endeavor shortly to ascertain what consequences must follow
from an acceptance of that Apostolic sense, and what must be
our first and most necessary conclusions from the common
language of Scripture * respecting these following points:—
1.
2.
3.
4.

The
The
The
The

distinctive characters of the Church.
Authority of the Church.
Authority of the Clergy over the Church.
connection of the Church with the State.

These are four separate subjects of question; but we shall
not have to put these questions in succession with each of the
four Scriptural meanings of the word Church, for evidently its
second and third meaning may be considered together, as
merely expressing the general or particular conditions of the
Visible Church, and the fourth signification is entirely independent of all questions of a religious kind. So that we shall
only put the above inquiries successively respecting the Invisible and Visible Church; and as the two last,—of authority of
Clergy, and connection with State—can evidently only have
reference to the Visible Church, we shall have, in all, these six
questions to consider.
* Any reference, except to Scripture, in notes of this kind would of course
be useless: the argument from, or with, the Fathers, is not to be compressed
into fifty pages. I have something to say about Hooker; but I reserve that
for another time, not wishing to say it hastily, or to leave it without support.

I*

10

NOTES OX THE

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.

The
The
The
The
The
The

distinctive characters of the Invisible Church.
distinctive characters of the Visible Church.
Authority of the Invisible Church.
Authority of the Visible Church.
Authority of Clergy over the Visible Church.
Connection of the Visible Church with the State.

1. W h a t are the distinctive characters of the Invisible
Church ; that is to say, W h a t is it which makes a person a
member of this Church, and how is he to be known for such ?
Wide question—if we had to take cognizance of all that has
been written respecting it, remarkable as it has been always for
quantity rather than carefulness, and full of confusion between
Visible and Invisible: even the article of the Church of England being ambiguous in its first clause: "The Visible Church
is a congregation of Faithful men." As if ever it had been
possible, except for God, to see F a i t h ! or to know a Faithful
man by sight. And there is little else written on this question, without some such quick confusion of the Visible and
Invisible Church;—needless and unaccountable confusion.
For evidently, the Church which is composed of Faithful men,
is the one true, indivisible, and indiscernible Church, built on
the foundation of Apostles and Prophets, Jesus Christ himself
being the chief corner-stone. It includes all who have ever
fallen asleep in Christ, and all yet unborn, who are to be
saved in H i m ; its Body is as yet imperfect; it will not be
perfected till the last saved human spirit is gathered to its
God.
A man becomes a member of this Church onjy by believing
in Christ with all his heart; nor is he positively recognizable
for a member of it, when he has become so, by any one but
God, not even by himself. IsTevertheless, there are certain
signs by which Christ's sheep may be guessed at. Not by
their being in any definite Fold—for many are lost sheep at

CONSTRUCTION OF SHEEPFOLDS.

11

times: but by their sheep-like behavior; and a great many
are indeed sheep which, on the far mountain side, in their
peacefulness, we take for stones. To themselves, the best
proof of their being Christ's sheep is to find themselves on
Christ's shoulders; and, between them, there are certain sympathies (expressed in the Apostles' Creed by the term " communion of Saints"), by which they may in a sort recognise
each other, and so become verily visible to each other for
mutual comfort.
2. The Limits of the Visible Church, or of the Church in
the Second Scriptural Sense, are not so easy to define; they
are awkward questions, these, of stake-nets. It has been
ingeniously and plausibly endeavored to make Baptism a
sign of admission into the Visible Church, but absurdly enough;
for we know that half the baptized people in the world are
very visible rogues, believing neither in God nor devil; and it
is flat blasphemy to call these Visible Christians ; we also
know that the Holy Ghost wTas sometimes given before Baptism,* and it would be absurdity to call a man on whom the
Holy Ghost had fallen, an Invisible Christian. The only
rational distinction is that which practically, though not professedly, we always assume. If we hear a man profess himself a believer in God and in Christ, and detect him in no
glaring and wilful violation of God's law, we speak of him
as a Christian; and on the other hand, if we hear him or see
him denying Christ, either in his words or conduct, we tacitly
assume him not to be a Christian. A mawkish charity prevents us from outspeaking in this matter, and from earnestly
endeavoring to discern who are Christians and who are n o t ;
and this I holdf to be one of the chief sins of the Church in
* Acts x. 44.
f Let not the reader be displeased with me for these short and apparently
insolent statements of opinion. I am not writing insolently, but as shortly and
clearly as I can; and when I seriously believe a thing, I say so in a few

12

NOTES ON THE

the present d a y ; for thus wicked men are put to no shame *
and better men are encouraged in their failings, or caused to
hesitate in their virtues, by the example of those whom, in
false charity, they choose to call Christians. Now, it being
granted that it is impossible to know, determinedly, who are
Christians indeed, that is no reason for utter negligence in
separating the nominal, apparent, or possible Christian from
the professed Pagan or enemy of God. W e spend much
time in arguing about efficacy of sacraments and such other
mysteries; but we do not act upon the very certain tests
which are clear and visible. W e know that Christ's people
are not thieves—not liars—not busybodies—not dishonest—
not avaricious—not wasteful—not cruel. Let us then get
ourselves well clear of thieves—liars—wasteful people—avaricious people—cheating people—people who do not pay their
debts. Let us assure them that they, at least, do not belong
to the Visible Church; and having thus got that Church
into decent shape and cohesion, it will be time to think of
drawing the stake-nets closer.
I hold it for a law, palpable to common sense, and which
words, leaving the reader to determine what my belief is worth. But I do
not choose to temper down every expression of personal opinion into courteous generalities, and so lose space, and time, and intelligibility at once. We
are utterly oppressed in these days by our courtesies, and considerations, and
compliances, and proprieties. Forgive me them, this once, or rather let us
all forgive them to each other, and learn to speak plainly first, and, if it may
be, gracefully afterwards; and not only to speak, but to stand by what we
have spoken. One of my Oxford friends heard, the other day, that I was
employed on these notes, and forthwith wrote to me, in a panic, not to put
my name to them, for fear I should "compromise myself." I think we are
most of us compromised to some extent already, when England has sent
a Roman Catholic minister to the second city in Italy, and remains herself
for a week without any government, because her chief men cannot agree
upon the position which a Popish cardinal is to have leave to occ ipy hi
London.

CONSTKUCTION OF SHEEPFOLDS.

13

nothing but the cowardice and faithlessness of the Church
prevents it from putting in practice, that the conviction of
any dishonorable conduct or wilful crime, of any fraud, falsehood, cruelty, or violence, should be ground for the excommunication of any man :—for his publicly declared separation
from the acknowledged body of the Visible Church: and
that he should not be received again therein without public
confession of his crime and declaration of his repentance. If
this were vigorously enforced, we should soon have greater
purity of life in the world, and fewer discussions about high
and low churches. But before we can obtain any idea of the
manner in which such law could be enforced, we have to consider the second question, respecting the Authority of the
Church. Now Authority is twofold: to declare doctrine
and to enforce discipline; and we have to inquire, therefore,
in each kind,—
3. W h a t is the authority of the Invisible Church ? Evidently,
in matters of doctrine, all members of the Invisible Church
must have been, and must ever be, at the time of their deaths,
right in the points essential to Salvation. But, (A.) we cannot
tell who are members of the Invisible Church.
(B.) W e cannot collect evidence from deathbeds in a clearly
stated form.
(C.) W e can collect evidence, in any form, only from some
one or two out of every sealed thousand of the Invisible Church.
Elijah thought he was alone in Israel; and yet there were
seven thousand invisible ones around him. Grant that we had
Elijah's intelligence; and w^e could only calculate on collecting
the T oV-th part of the evidence or opinions of the part of the
Invisible Church living on earth at a given moment: that is
to say, the seven-millionth or trillionth of its collective evidence,
It is very clear, therefore, we cannot hope to get rid of the
contradictory opinions, and keep the consistent ones, by a
general equation. But, it has been said there are no contra-

11

NOTES ON THE

dictory opinions; the Church is infallible. There was some
talk about the infallibility of the Church, if I recollect right,
in that letter of Mr. Bennett's to the Bishop of London. If
any Church be infallible, it is assuredly the Invisible Church,
or Body of Christ; and infallible in the main sense it must of
course be by its definition. An Elect person must be saved,
and therefore cannot eventually be deceived on essential points:
so that Christ says of the deception of such, " If it were
possible^ implying it to be impossible. Therefore, as we
said, if one could get rid of the variable opinions of the members
of the Invisible Church, the constant opinions would assuredly
be authoritative: but for the three reasons above stated, we
cannot get at their constant opinions: and as for the feelings
and thoughts which they daily experience or express, the
question of Infallibility—which is practical only in this bearing
—is soon settled. Observe St. Paul, and the rest of the
Apostles, write nearly all their epistles to the Invisible
Church:—Those epistles are headed,—Romans, a T o the
beloved of God, called to- be saints;" 1 Corinthians, " To
them that are sanctified in Christ J e s u s ; " 2 Corinthians, " To
the saints in all Achaia;" Ephesians, a T o the saints which are
at Ephesus, and to the faithful in Christ Jesus ;'' Philippians,
" T o all the saints which are at Philippi;" Colossians, " T o
the saints and faithful brethren which are at Colosse;" 1 and
2 Thessalonians, " To the Church of the Thessalonians, which
is in God the Father, and the Lord J e s u s ; " 1 and 2 Timothy,
" To his own son in the faith ;" Titus, to the same; 1 Peter,
" To the Strangers, Elect according to the foreknowledge of
God ;" 2 Peter, " To them that have obtained like precious
faith with u s ; " 2 John, " T o the Elect lady;" Jude, " T o
them that are sanctified by God the Father, and preserved in
Jesus Christ and called."
There are thus fifteen epistles, expressly directed to the
members of the Invisible Church. Philemon and Hebrews,

CONSTRUCTION OF SIIEEPFOLDS.

15

and 1 and 3 John, are evidently also so written, though not
so expressly inscribed. That of James, and that to the Galatians, are as evidently to the Visible Church: the one being
general, and the other to persons " removed from Him that
caller] them." Missing out, therefore, these two epistles, but
including Christ's words to His disciples, we find in the Scriptural addresses to members of the Invisible Church, fourteen,
if not more, direct injunctions " n o t to be deceived."* So
much for the " Infallibility of the Church."
Now, one could put up with Puseyism more patiently, if its
fallacies arose merely from peculiar temperaments yielding to
peculiar temptations. But its bold refusals to read plain
English; its elaborate adjustments of tight bandages over its
own eyes, as wholesome preparation for a wralk among traps
and pitfalls ; its daring trustfulness in its own clairvoyance all
the time, and declarations that every pit it falls into is a
seventh heaven; and that it is pleasant and profitable to break
its legs;—with all this it is difficult to have patience. One
thinks of the highwayman with his eyes shut, in the Arabian
N i g h t s ; and wonders whether any kind of scourging would
prevail upon the Anglican highwayman to open " first one and
then the other."
4. So much, then, I repeat for the infallibility of the invisible
Church, and for its consequent authority. Now, if we want to
ascertain whaj infallibility and authority there is in the Visible
Church, we have to alloy the small wisdom and the light weight
of Invisible Christians, with large per-centage of the false wisdom and contrary weight of Undetected Anti-Christians.
Which alloy makes up the current coin of opinions in the
Visible Church, having such value as we may choose—its
nature being properly assayed—to attach to it.
* Matt. xxiv. 4; Mark xiii 5 ; Luke xxi. 8; 1 Cor. iii 18, vi. 9, xv 33 ;
Eph. iv. 14, v. 6; Col. ii. 8; 2 Thess. ii. 3 ; Heb. iii. 13; 1 John i. 8, iii 1;
2 John 1, 8.

16

NOTES ON THE

There is, therefore, in matters of doctrine, no such thing as
the Authority of the Church. W e might as well talk of the
authority of the morning cloud. There may be light in it,
but the light is not of i t ; and it diminishes the light that it
g e t s ; and lets less of it through than it receives, Christ being
its sun. Or, we might as well talk of the authority of a flock
of sheep—for the Church is a body to be taught and fed, not
to teach and feed: and of all sheep that are fed on the earth,
Christ's Sheep are the most simple (the children of this generation are wiser) : always losing themselves; doing little else
in this world but lose themselves ;—never finding themselves ;
always found by Some One else; getting perpetually into
sloughs, and snows, and bramble thickets, like to die there,
but for their Shepherd, who is for ever finding them and
bearing them back, with torn fleeces and eyes full of fear.
This, then, being the ISFo-Authority of the Church in matter
of Doctrine, what Authority has it in matters of Discipline?
Much, every way. The sheep have natural and wholesome
power (however far scattered they may be from their proper
fold) of getting together in orderly knots; following each
other on trodden sheepwalks, and holding their heads all one
way when they see strange dogs coming; as well as of casting
out of their company any whom they see reason to suspect of
not being right sheep, and being among them for no good.
All which things must be done as the time and place require,
and by common consent. A path may be good at one time
of day which is bad at another, or after a change of wind; and
a position may be very good for sudden defence, which would
be very stiff and awkward for feeding in. And common consent must often be of such and such a company on this or that
hillside, in this or that particular danger,—not of all the sheep
in the world : and the consent may either be literally common
and expressed in assembly, or it may be to appoint officers
over the rest, with such and such trusts of the common

CONSTRUCTION OF SHEEPFOLDS.

17

authority, to be used for the common advantage. Conviction
of crimes, and excommunication, for instance, could neither be
effected except before, or by means of, officers of some
appointed authority.
5. This, then, brings us to our fifth question. W h a t is the
Authority of the Clergy over the Church ?
The first clause of the question must evidently be,—Who
are the Clergy? and it is not easy to answer this without
begging the rest of the question.
For instance, I think I can hear certain people answering,
That the Clergy are folk of three kinds,—Bishops, who overlook the Church; Priests, who sacrifice for the Church;
Deacons, who minister to the Church: thus assuming in their
answer, that the Church is to be sacrificed/or, and that people
cannot overlook and minister to her at the same time ; which
is going much too fast. I think, however, if we define the
Clergy to be the "Spiritual Officers of the Church,"—meaning,
by Officers, merely People in office,—we shall have a title safe
enough and general enough to begin with, and corresponding
too, pretty well, with St. Paul's general expression tf£o(<r<raf/,s'voi,
in P o m . xii. 8, and 1 Thess. v. 13.
Now, respecting these Spiritual Officers, or office-bearers, we
have to inquire, first, W h a t their Office or Authority is, or
should b e ; secondly, W h o gave, or should give, them that
Authority ? That is to say, first, W h a t is, or should be the
nature of their office; and secondly, W h a t the extent or force
of their authority in it ? for this last depends mainly on its
derivation.
First, then, W h a t should be the offices, and of what kind
should be the authority of the Clergy ?
I have hitherto referred to the Bible for an answer to every
question. I do so again ; and behold, the Bible gives me no
answer. I defy you to answer me from the Bible. You can
only guess, and dimly conjecture, what the offices of the

18

NOTES ON THE

Clergy were in the first century. You cannot show me a single command as to what they shall be. Strange, t h i s ; the
Bible give no answer to so apparently important a question!
God surely would not have left His word without an answer
to anything His children ought to ask. Surely it must be a
ridiculous question—a question we ought never to have put,
or thought of putting. Let us think of it again a little. To
be sure,—it is a ridiculous question, and we should be
ashamed of ourselves for having put it:—-What should be the
offices of the Clergy ? That is to say, What are the possible
spiritual necessities which at any time may arise in the Church,
and by what means and men are they to be supplied;—evidently an infinite question. Different kinds of necessities
must be met by different authorities, constituted as the necessities arise. Robinson Crusoe, in his island, wants no Bishop,
and makes a thunderstorm do for an Evangelist. The University of Oxford would be ill off without its Bishop; but
wants an Evangelist besides; and that forthwith.
The
authority which the Vaudois shepherds need, is of Barnabas,
the son of Consolation; the authority which the City of London needs, is of James, the son of Thunder. Let us then alter
the form of our question, and put it to the Bible thus ; W h a t
are the necessities most likely to arise in the Church; and
may they be best met by different men, or in great part by
the same men acting in different capacities? and are the
names attached to their offices of any consequence ? Ah, the
Bible answers now, and that loudly. The Church is built on
the Foundation of the Apostles and Prophets, Jesus Christ
himself being the corner-stone. W e l l ; W e cannot have two
foundations, so we can have no more Apostles or P r o p h e t s :
—then, as for the other needs of the Church in its edifying
upon this foundation, there are all manner of thiugs to be
done daily;—rebukes to be given ; comfort to be brought;
Scripture to be explained; warning to be enforced ; threaten-

CONSTRUCTION OF SHEEPFOLDS.

19

ings to be executed; charities to be administered; and the
men who do these things are called, and call themselves, with
absolute indifference, Deacons, Bishops, Elders, Evangelists,
according to what they are doing at the time of speaking.
St. Paul almost always calls himself a deacon, St. Peter calls
himself an elder, 1 Pet. v. 1, and Timothy, generally understood to be addressed as a bishop, is called a deacon in 1 Tim.
iv. 6—forbidden to rebuke an elder, in v. 1, and exhorted to
do the work of an evangelist, in 2 Tim. iv. 5. But there is
one thing which, as officers, or as separate from the rest of the
flock, they never call themselves,—which it would have been
impossible, as so separate, they ever should have called themselves ; that is—Priests.
I t would have been just as possible for the Clergy of the
early Church to call themselves Levites, as to call themselves
(ex officio) Priests. The whale function of Priesthood was,
on Christmas morning, at once and for ever gathered into His
Person who was born at Bethlehem; and thenceforward, all
who are united with Him, and who with Him make sacrifice
of themselves; that is to say, all members of the Invisible
Church, become at the instant of their conversion, Priests; and
are so called in 1 Pet. ii. 5, and Rev. i. 6, and xx. 6, where,
observe, there is no possibility of limiting the expression to
the Clergy; the conditions of Priesthood being simply having
been loved by Christ, and washed in His blood. The blasphemous claim on the part of the Clergy of being more Priests
than the godly laity—that is to say, of having a higher Holiness than the Holiness of being one with Christ,—is altogether a Pomanist heresy, dragging after it, or having its
origin in, the other heresies respecting the sacrificial power
of the Church officer, and his repeating the oblation of Christ,
and so having power to absolve from sin:—with all the other
endless and miserable falsehoods of the Papal hierarcy ; falsehoods for which, that there might be no shadow of excuse, it

20

NOTES ON THE

has been ordained by the Holy Spirit that no Christian minister shall once call himself a Priest from one end of the New
Testament to the other, except together with his flock; and
so far from the idea of any peculiar sanctiflcation, belonging
to the Clergy, ever entering the Apostles' minds, we actually
find St. Paul defending himself against the possible imputation
of inferiority: " If any man trust to himself that he is Christ's,
let him of himself think this again, that, as he is Christ's, even
so are we Christ's" (2 Cor. x. 1), As for the unhappy retention of the term Priest in our English Prayer-book, so long as
it was understood to mean nothing but an upper order of
Church officer, licensed to tell the congregation from the reading-desk, what (for the rest) they might, one would think,
have known without being told,—that " God pardoneth all
them that truly repent,"—there was little harm in i t ; but,
now that this order of Clergy begins to presume upon a title
which, if it mean anything at all, is simply short for Presbyter,
and has no more to do with the word Hiereus than with the
word Levite, it is time that some order should be taken both
with the book and the Clergy. For instance, in that dangerous compound of halting poetry with hollow Divinity, called
the Lyra Apostolica, we find much versification on the sin of
Korah and his company: with suggested parallel between the
Christian and Levitical Churches, and threatening that there
are " J u d g m e n t Fires, for high-voiced Korahs in their day."
There are indeed such fires. But when Moses said, " a Prophet shall the Lord raise up unto you, like unto me," did he
mean the writer who signs y in the Lyra Apostolica ? The
office of the Lawgiver and Priest is now for ever gathered
into One Mediator between God and m a n ; and THEY are
guilty of the sin of Korah who blasphemously would associate
themselves in his Mediatorship.
41

As for the passages in the " Ordering of Priests" and
Visitation of the Sick" respecting Absolution, they are evi-

CONSTRUCTION OF SHEEPFOLDS.

21

dently pure Romanism, and might as well not be there, for
any practical effect which they have on the consciences of the
L a i t y ; and had much better not be there, as regards their
effect on the minds of the Clergy. It is indeed true that
Christ promised absolving power to His Apostles: He also
promised to those who believed, that they should take up serpents, and if they drank any deadly thing, it should not hurt
them. His words were fulfilled literally; but those who
would extend their force to beyond the Apostolic times, must
extend both promises, or neither.
Although, however, the Protestant laity do not often admit
the absolving power of their clergy, they are but too apt to
yield, in some sort, to the impression of their greater sanctifi cation ; and from this instantly results the unhappy consequence
that the sacred character of the Layman himself is forgotten,
and his own Ministerial duty is neglected. Men not in office
in the Church suppose themselves, on that ground, in a sort
unholy; and that, therefore, they may sin with more excuse,
and be idle or impious with less danger, than the Clergy:
especially they consider themselves relieved from all ministerial function, and as permitted to devote their whole time
and energy to the business of this world. ISTo mistake can
possibly be greater. Every member of the Church is equally
bound to the service of the Head of the Church; and that
service is pre-eminently the saving of souls. There is not a
moment of a man's active life in which he may not be indirectly preaching; and throughout a great part of his life he
ought to be directly preaching, and teaching both strangers and
friends; his children, his servants, and all who in any way are
put under him, being given to him as especial objects of his
ministration.
So that the only difference between a Church
officer and a lay member, is either a wider degree of authority
given to the former, as apj)arently a wiser and better man, or
a special appointment to some office more easily discharged

22

NOTES ON THE

by one person than by many: as, for instance, the serving of
tables by the deacons; the authority or appointment being, in
either case, commonly signified by a marked separation from
the rest of the Church, and the privilege or power* of being
maintained by the rest of the Church, without being forced to
labor with his hands or encumber himself with any temporal
concerns.
]STow, putting out of question the serving of tables, and
other such duties, respecting which there is no debate, we
shall find the offices of the Clergy, whatever names we may
choose to give to those who discharge them, falling mainly
into two great heads:—Teaching ; including doctrine, warning, and comfort: Discipline ; including reproof and direct
administration of punishment. Either of which functions
would naturally become vested in single persons, to the
exclusion of others, as a mere matter of convenience:
whether those persons were wiser and better than others
or not: and respecting each of which, and the authority
required for its fitting discharge, a short inquiry must be
separately made.
I. Teaching.—It appears natural and wise that certain men
should be set apart from the rest of the Church that they
may make Theology the study of their lives: and that they
should be thereto instructed specially in the Hebrew and
Greek tongues; and have entire leisure granted them for the
study of the Scriptures, and for obtaining general knowledge
of the grounds of Faith, and best modes of its defence
against all heretics: and it seems evidently right also, that
with this Scholastic duty should be joined the Pastoral duty
of constant visitation and exhortation to the people ; for,
clearly, the Bible, and the truths of Divinity in general, can
only be understood rightly in their practical application • and
* ii-ovTta, in 1 Cor. ix. 12.

2 Thess. iii. 9.

CONSTRUCTION OF SHEEPFOLDS.

23

clearly, also, a man spending his time constantly in spiritual
ministrations, must be better able, on any given occasion, to
deal powerfully with the human heart than one unpractised
in such matters. The unity of Knowledge and Love, both
devoted altogether to the service of Christ and his Church,
marks the true Christian Minister; who I believe, whenever
he has existed, has never failed to receive due and fitting
reverence from all men,—of whatever character or opinion;
and I believe that if all those who profess to be such, were such
indeed, there would never be question of their authority more.
But, whatever influence they may have over the Church,
their authority never supersedes that of either the intellect or
the conscience of the simplest of its lay members. They can
assist those members in the search for truth, or comfort their
over-worn and doubtful minds; they can even assure them
that they are in the way of truth, or that pardon is within
their reach: but they can neither manifest the truth, nor
grant the pardon. Truth is to be discovered, and Pardon to
be won for every man by himself. This is evident from
innumerable texts of Scripture, but chiefly from those which
exhort every man to seek after Truth, and which connect
knowing with doing. W e are to seek after knowledge as
silver, and search for her as for hid treasures; therefore, from
every man she must be naturally hid, and the discovery of
her is to be the reward only of personal search. The kingdom
of God is as treasure hid in a field ; and of those who profess
to help us to seek for it, we are not to put confidence in those
who say,—Here is the treasure, we have found it, and have it,
and will give you some of i t ; but to those who say,—We
think that is a good place to dig, and you will dig most easily
in such and such a way.
Farther, it has been promised that if such earnest search
be made, Truth shall be discovered: as much truth, that is,
as is necessary for the person seeking. These, therefore, I

24

NOTES ON" THE

hold, for two fundamental principles of religion,—that, without
seeking, truth cannot be known at all; and that, by seeking,
it may be discovered by the simplest. I say, without seeking
it cannot be known at all. It can neither be declared from
pulpits, nor set down in Articles, nor in any wise " prepared
and sold " in packages, ready for use. Truth must be ground
for every man by himself out of its husk, with such help as
he can get, indeed, but not without stern labor of his own.
In what science is knowledge to be had cheap ? or truth to
be told over a velvet cushion, in half an hour's talk every
seventh day ? Can you learn chemistry so ?—zoology ?—•
anatomy ? and do you expect to penetrate the secret of all
secrets, and to know that whose price is above rubies; and
of which the depth saith,—It is not in me, in so easy fashion ?
There are doubts in this matter which evil spirits darken with
their wings, and that is true of all such doubts which we
were told long ago—they can " be ended by action alone."*
As surely as we live, this truth of truths can only so be
discerned : to those who act on what they know, more shall
be revealed; and thus, if any man will do His will, he shall
know the doctrine whether it be of God. Any man:—not
the man who has most means of knowing, who has the
subtlest brains, or sits under the most orthodox preacher, or
has his library fullest of most orthodox books—but the man
who strives to know, who takes God at His word, and sets
* (Carlyle, Past and Present, Chap, xi) Can anything be more striking
than the repeated warnings of St. Paul against strife of words; and his
distinct setting forth of Action as the only true means of attaining knowledge
of the truth, and the only sign of men's possessing the true faith. Compare
1 Timothy vi. 4, 20, (the latter verse especially, in connection with the
previous three,) and 2 Timothy ii. 14, 19, 22, 23, tracing the connection here
also; add Titus i. 10, 14, 16, noting "in works they deny him," and Titus iii.
8, 9, " affirm constantly that they be careful to maintain good works; but
avoid foolish questions;" and finally, 1 Timothy i. 4—1: a passage which
seems to have been especially written for these times.

CONSTRUCTION OF SHEEPFOLDS.

25

himself to dig up the heavenly mystery, roots and all, before
sunset, and the night come, when no man can work. Beside
such a man, God stands in more and more visible presence as
he toils, and teaches him that which no preacher can teach—
no earthly authority gainsay. By such a man, the preacher
must himself be judged.
Doubt you this ? There is nothing more certain nor clear
throughout the Bible: the Apostles themselves appeal constantly to their flocks, and actually claim judgment from
them, as deserving it, and having a right to it, rather than
discouraging it. But, first notice the way in which the
discovery of truth is spoken of in the Old Testament: " Evil
men understand not j u d g m e n t ; but they that seek the Lord
understand all things," Proverbs xxviii. 5. God overthroweth,
not merely the transgressor or the wicked, but even " the
words of the transgressor," Proverbs xxii. 12, and " the
counsel of the wicked," J o b v. 13, xxi. 16; observe again, in
Proverbs xxiv. 4, " My son, eat thou honey, because it is
good—so shall the knowledge of wisdom be unto thy soul,
when thou hast found it, there shall be a reward;" and again,
" W h a t man is he that feareth the Lord ? him shall he teach
in the way that he shall choose;" so Job xxxii. 8, and
multitudes of places m o r e ; and then, with all these places,
which express the definite and personal operation of the Spirit
of God on every one of His people, compare the place in
Isaiah, which speaks of the contrary of this human teaching:
a passage which seems as if it had been written for this very
day and hour. "Because their fear towards me is taught by
the precept of men ; therefore, behold the wisdom of their
wise men shall perish, and the understanding of their prudent
men shall be hid." (xxix. 13, 14.) Then take the New
Testament, and observe how St. Paul himself speaks of the
Romans, even as hardly needing his epistle, but able to admonish one another ; " Nevertheless, brethren, I have written
2

26

NOTES ON THE

the more boldly unto you in some so?% as putting you in
mind?'' (xv. 15.) Any one, we should have thought, might
have done as much as this, and yet St. Paul increases the
modesty of it as he goes o n ; for he claims the right of doing
as much as this, only u because of the grace given to me of
God, that I should be the minister of Jesus Christ to the
Gentiles." Then compare 2 Cor. v. 11, where he appeals to
the consciences of the people for the manifestation of his
having done his d u t y ; and observe in verse 21 of that, and 1
of the next chapter, the " pray " and " beseech," not " command ;" and again, in chapter vi. verse 4, " approving ourselves
as the ministers of God." But the most remarkable passage
of all is 2 Cor. iii. 1, whence it appears that the churches
were actually in the habit of giving letters of recommendation
to their ministers; and St. Paul dispenses with such letters,
not by virtue of his Apostolic authority, but because the
power of his preaching was enough manifested in the Corinthians themselves. And these passages are all the more
forcible, because if in any of them St. Paul had claimed
absolute authority over the Church as a teacher, it was no
more than we should have expected him to claim, nor could
his doing so have in anywise justified a successor in the same
claim. But now that he has not claimed it—who, following
him, shall dare to claim it ? And the consideration of the
necessity of joining expressions of the most exemplary humility, which were to be the example of succeeding ministers,
with such assertion of Divine authority as should secure
acceptance for the epistle itself in the sacred canon, sufficiently
accounts for the apparent inconsistencies which occur in 2
Thess. iii. 14, and other such texts.
So much, then, for the authority of the Clergy in matters
of Doctrine. Next, what is their authority in matters of Discipline. It must evidently be very great, even if it were
derived from the people alone, and merely vested in the eleri«

CONSTRUCTION OF SHEEPFOLDS.

27

cal officers as the executors of their ecclesiastical judgments,
and general overseers of all the Church. But granting, as we
must presently, the minister to hold office directly from God,
his authority of discipline becomes very great indeed; how
great, it seems to me most difficult to determine, because I do
not understand what St. Paul means by " delivering a man
to Satan for the destruction of the flesh." Leaving this question, however, as much too hard for casual examination, it
seems indisputable that the authority of the Ministers or
court of Ministers should extend to the pronouncing a man
Excommunicate for certain crimes against the Church, as well
as for all crimes punishable by ordinary law. There ought, I
think, to be an ecclesiastical code of laws ; and a man ought to
have jury trial, according to this code, before an ecclesiastical
j u d g e ; in which, if he were found guilty, as of lying, or dishonesty, or cruelty, much more of any actually committed
violent crime, he should be pronounced Excommunicate;
refused the Sacrament; and have his name written in some
public place as an excommunicate person until he had publicly
confessed his sin and besought pardon of God for it. The jury
should always be of the laity, and no penalty should be enforced
in an ecclesiastical court except this of excommunication.
This proposal may sound strange to many persons; but
assuredly this, if not much more than this, is commanded in
Scripture, first in the (much abused) text, " Tell it unto the
Church;" and most clearly in 1 Cor. v. 11—13 ; 2 Thess. hi.
6 and 14; 1 Tim. v. 8 and 20; and Titus hi. 10; from which
passages we also know the two proper degrees of the penalty.
For Christ says, Let him who refuses to hear the Church, u b e
unto thee as an heathen man and a publican." But Christ
ministered to the heathen, and sat at meat with the publican;
only always with declared or implied expression of their
inferiority; here, therefore, is one degree of excommunication
for persons who "offend" their brethren; committing some

28

NOTES ON THE

minor fault against t h e m ; and who, having been pronounced
in error by the body of the Church, refuse to confess their
fault or repair i t ; who are then to be no longer considered
members of the Church ; and their recovery to the body of it
is to be sought exactly as it would be in the case of a heathen.
But covetous persons, railers, extortioners, idolaters, and
those guilty of other gross crimes, are to be entirely cut off
from the company of the believers; and we are not so much
as to eat with them. This last penalty, however, would
require to be strictly guarded, that it might not be abused in
the infliction of it, as it has been by the Romanists. W e are
not, indeed, to eat with them, but we may exercise all
Christian charity towards them, and give them to eat, if we
see them in hunger, as we ought to all our enemies; only we
are to consider them distinctly as our enemies: that is to say,
enemies of our Master Christ; and servants of Satan.
As for the rank or name of the officers in whom the authorities, either of teaching or discipline, are to be vested, they are
left undetermined by Scripture. I have heard it said by men
who know their Bible far better than I, that careful examination
may detect evidence of the existence of three orders of Clergy
in the Church. This may b e ; but one thing is very clear,
without any laborious examination, that " bishop" and " elder"
sometimes mean the same thing, as, indisputably, in Titus i.
5 and 7, and 1 Pet. v. 1 and 2, and that the office of the
bishop or overseer was one of considerably less importance
than it is with us. This is palpably evident from 1 Timothy
iii., for what divine among us, writing of episcopal proprieties,
would think of saying that bishops " must not be given to
wine," must be " no strikers," and must not be a novices ?"
W e are not in the habit of making bishops of novices in these
days ; and it would be much better that, like the early Church,
we sometimes ran the risk of doing so; for the fact is we have
not bishops enough—by some hundreds. The idea of ov u*

CONSTRUCTION OF SHEEPFOLDS.

29

seership has been practically lost sight of, its fulfilment having
gradually become physically impossible, for want of more
bishops. The duty of a bishop is, without doubt, to be accessible to the humblest clergymen of his diocese, and to desire
very earnestly that all of them should be in the habit of
referring to him in all cases of difficulty; if they do not do
this of their own accord, it is evidently his duty to visit them;
live with them sometimes, and join in their ministrations to
their flocks, so as to know exactly the capacities, and habits
of life of each ; and if any of them complained of this or that
difficulty with their congregations, the bishop should be ready
to go down to help them, preach for them, write general
epistles to their people, and so on: besides this, he should of
course be watchful of their errors—ready to hear complaints
from their congregations of inefficiency or aught else; besides
having general superintendence of all the charitable institutions
and schools in his diocese, and good knowledge of whatever
was going on in theological matters, both all over the kingdom
and on the continent. This is the work of a right overseer ;
and I leave the reader to calculate how many additional
bishops—and those hard-working men, too—we should need
to have it done even decently. Then our present bishops
might all become archbishops with advantage, and have
general authority over the rest.*
* I leave, iu the main text, the abstract question of the fitness of Episcopacy tmapproached, not feeling any call to speak of it at length at present;
all that I feel necessary to be said is, that bishops being granted, it is clear
that we have too few to do their work. But the argument from the practice
of the Primitive Church appears to me to be of erroneous weight,—nor have
I ever heard any rational plea alleged against Episcopacy, except that, like
other things, it is capable of abuse, and had sometimes been abused; and as,
altogether clearly and indisputably, there is described in the Bible an episcopal office, distinct from the merely ministerial one; and, apparently, also an
Episcopal officer attached to each church, and distinguished in the Revelations
as an Angel, I hold the resistance of the Scotch Presbyterian Church to Episcopacy to be unscriptural, futile, and schismatic.

30

NOTES ON THE

As to the mode in which the officers of the Church should
be elected or appointed, I do not feel it my business to
say anything at present, nor much respecting the extent of
their authority, either over each other or over the congregation, this being a most difficult question, the right solution of
which evidently lies between two most dangerous e x t r e m e s insubordination and radicalism on one hand, and ecclesiastical
tyranny and heresy on the other: of the two, insubordination
is far the least to be dreaded—for this reason, that nearly all
real Christians are more on the watch against their pride than
their indolence, and would sooner obey their clergyman, if
possible, than contend with him; while the very pride they
suppose conquered often returns masked, and causes them to
make a merit of their humility and their abstract obedience,
however unreasonable: but they cannot so easily persuade
themselves there is a merit in abstract ^ o b e d i e n c e .
Ecclesiastical tyranny has, for the most part, founded itself
on the idea of Vicarianism, one of the most pestilent of the
Romanist theories, and most plainly denounced in Scripture.
Of this I have a word or two to say to the modern " Viearian."
All powers that be are unquestionably ordained of God; so
that they that resist the Power, resist the ordinance of God.
Therefore, say some in these offices, W e , being ordained of
God, and having our credentials, and being in the English
Bible called ambassadors for God, do, in a sort, represent God.
W e are Vicars of Christ, and stand on earth in place of
Christ. I have heard this said by Protestant clergymen.
Now the word ambassador has a peculiar ambiguity about
it, owing to its use in modern political affairs ; and these
clergymen assume that the word, as used by St. Paul, means
an Ambassador Plenipotentiary; representative of his King,
and capable of acting for his King. W h a t right have they
to assume that St. Paul meant this ? St. Paul never uses the
word ambassador at all. He says simply, " W e are in embas-

CONSTRUCTION OF SHEEPFOLDS.

31

sage from Christ; and Christ beseeches you through us."
Most true. And let it further be granted, that every word
that the clergyman speaks is literally dictated to him by
Christ; that he can make no mistake in delivering his message ; and that, therefore, it is indeed Christ himself who
speaks to us the word of life through the messenger's lips.
Does, therefore, the messenger represent Christ ? Does the
channel which conveys the waters of the Fountain represent
the Fountain itself? Suppose, when we went to draw water
at a cistern, that all at once the Leaden Spout should become
animated, and open its mouth and say to us, See, I am Vicarious for the Fountain. Whatever respect you show to the
Fountain, show some part of it to me. Should we not answer
the Spout, and say, Spout, you were set there for our service,
and may be taken away and thrown aside* if anything goes
wrong with you. But the Fountain will flow for ever.
Observe, I do not deny a most solemn authority vested in
every Christian messenger from God to men. I am prepared
to grant this to the uttermost; and all that George Herbert
says, in the end of the Church-porch, I would enforce, at
another time than this, to the uttermost. But the Authority
is simply that of a King's messenger y not of a King's Representative.
There is a wide difference; all the difference
between humble service and blasphemous usurpation.
Well, the congregation might ask, grant him a King's
messenger in cases of doctrine,—in cases of discipline,
an officer bearing the King's commission. H o w far are
we to obey him ? How far is it lawful to dispute his commands ?
For, in granting, above, that the Messenger always gave
his message faithfully, I granted too much to my adversaries,
in order that their argument might have all the weight it
possibly could. The Messengers rarely deliver their message
* " B y just judgment be deposed," Art. 26.

32

NOTES ON THE

faithfully; and sometimes have declared, as from the King,
messages of their own invention. How far are we, knowing
them for King's messengers, to believe or obey them ?
Suppose for instance, in our English army, on the eve of
some great battle, one of the colonels were to give this order
to his regiment. " My men, tie your belts over your eyes,
throw down your muskets, and follow me as steadily as you
can, through this marsh, into the middle of the enemy's line,"
(this being precisely the order issued by our Puseyite Church
officers.) It might be questioned, in the real battle, whether
it would be better that a regiment should show an example
of insubordination, or be cut to pieces. But happily in the
Church, there is no such difficulty; for the King is always
with his a r m y : Not only with his army, but at the right
hand of every soldier of it. Therefore, if any of their colonels
give them a strange command, all they have to do is to ask
the K i n g ; and never yet any Christian asked guidance of his
King, in any difficulty whatsoever, without mental reservation
or secret resolution, but he had it forthwith. W e conclude
then, finally, that the authority of the Clergy is, in matters
of discipline, large (being executive, first, of the written laws
of God, and secondly, of those determined and agreed upon
by the body of the Church), in matters of doctrine, dependent on their recommending themselves to every man's conscience, both as messengers of God, and as themselves men
of God, perfect, and instructed to good works.*
* The difference between the authority of doctrine and discipline is beautifully marked in 2 Timothy ii. 25, and Titus ii. 12—15.

In the first passage,

the servant of God, teaching divine doctrine, must not strive, but must " in
meekness instruct those that oppose themselves;" in the second passage,
teaching us " that denying ungodliness and worldly lusts he is to live soberly,
righteously, and godly in this present world," the minister is to speak, exhort,
and rebuke with ALL AUTHORITY—both functions being expressed as united
in 2 Timothy iv. 3.

CONSTRUCTION OF SHEEPFOLDS.

33

6. The last subject which we had to investigate was, it will
be remembered, what is usually called the connection of
" Church and State." But, by our definition of the term
Church, throughout the whole of Christendom, the Church
(or society of professing Christians) is the State, and our
subject is therefore, properly speaking, the connection of the
lay and clerical officers of the Church; that is to say, the
degrees in which the civil and ecclesiastical governments
ought to interfere with or influence each other.
I t would of course be vain to attempt a formal inquiry
into this intricate subject;—I have only a few detached points
to notice respecting it.
There are three degrees or kinds of civil government.
The first and lowest, executive merely; the government in
this sense being simply the National Hand, and composed of
individuals who administer the laws of the nation, and execute
its established purposes.
The second kind of government is deliberative; but in its
deliberation, representative only of the thoughts and will of
the people or nation, and liable to be deposed the instant it
ceases to express those thoughts and that will. This, whatever
its form, whether centred in a king or in any number of men,
is properly to be called Democratic. The third and highest
kind of government is deliberative, not as representative of
the people, but as chosen to take separate counsel for them,
and having power committed to it, to enforce upon them
whatever resolution it may adopt, whether consistent with
their will or not. This government is properly to be called
Monarchical, whatever its form.
I see that politicians and writers of history continually run
into hopeless error, because they confuse the Form of a
government with its Nature. A government may be nominally vested in an individual; and yet if that individual be in
such fear of those beneath him, that he does nothing but
2*

34

NOTES ON THE

what he supposes will be agreeable to them, the Go-\ eminent
is Democratic; on the other hand, the Government may be
vested in a deliberative assembly of a thousand men, all
having equal authority, and all chosen from the lowest ranks
of the people; and yet if that assembly act independently of
the will of the people, and have no fear of them, and enforce
its determinations upon them, the government is Monarchical;
that is to say, the Assembly, acting as One, has power over
the Many, while in the case of the weak king, the Many have
power over the One.
A Monarchical Government, acting for its own interests,
instead of the people's, is a tyranny. I said the Executive
Government was the hand of the nation ;—the Republican
Government is in like manner its tongue. The Monarchical
Government is its head.
All true and right Government is Monarchical, and of the
head. W h a t is its best form, is a totally different question ;
but unless it act for the people, and not as representative of
the people, it is no government at all; and one of the grossest
blockheadisms of the English in the present day, is their idea
of sending men to Parliament to " represent their opinions."
Whereas their only true business is to find out the wisest
men among them, and send them to Parliament to represent
their own opinions, and act upon them. Of all puppet-shows
in the Satanic Carnival of the earth, the most contemptible
puppet-show is a Parliament with a mob pulling the strings.
!STow, of these three states of government, it is clear that
the merely executive can have no proper influence over ecclesiastical affairs. But of the other two, the first, being the
voice of the people, or voice of the Church, must have such
influence over the Clergy as is properly vested in the body
of the Church. The second, which stands in the same relation to the people as a father does to his family, will have such
farther influence over ecclesiastical matters, as a father has

35

CONSTRUCTION OF SIIEEPFOLDS.

over the consciences of his adult children.

No

absolute

authoiity, therefore, to enforce their attendance at any particular place of worship, or subscription to any particular
Creed.

But indisputable authority to procure for them such

religious instruction as he deems fittest,* and to recommend
it to them by every means in his power; he not only has
authority, but is under obligation to do this, as well as to
establish such disciplines and forms of worship in his house as
he deems most convenient for his family: W i t h which they
are indeed at liberty to refuse compliance, if such disciplines
appear to them clearly opposed to the law of G o d ; but not
* Observe, this and the following conclusions depend entirely on the supposition that the Government is part of the Body of the Church, and that
some pains have been taken to compose it of religious and wise men. If we
choose, knowingly and deliberately, to compose our Parliament, in great part,
of infidels and Papists, gamblers and debtors, we may well regret its power
over the Clerical officer; but that we should, at any time, so compose our
Parliament, is a sign that the Clergy themselves have failed in their duty, and
the Church in its watchfulness;—thus the evil accumulates in re-action.
Whatever I say of the responsibility or authority of Government, is therefore
to be understood only as sequent on what I have said previously of the
necessity of closely circumscribing the Church, and then composing the Civil
Government out of the circumscribed Body. Thus, all Papists would at once
be rendered incapable of share in it, being subjected to the second or most
severe degree of excommunication—first, as idolaters, by 1 Cor. v. 10; then,
as covetous and extortioners, (selling absolution.) by the same text; and,
finally, as heretics and maintainers of falsehoods, by Titus iii. 10, and 1 Tim.
iv. 1.
I do not write this hastily, nor without earnest consideration both of the
difficulty and the consequences of such Church Discipline. But either the
Bible is a superannuated book, and is only to be read as a record of past
days; or the.se things follow from it, clearly and inevitably. That we live in
days when the Bible has become impracticable, is (if it be so) the very thing
I desire to be considered. I am not setting down these plans or schemes as
at present possible. I do not know how far they are possible ; but it seema
to me that God has plainly commanded them, and that, therefore, their impracticability is a thing to be meditated on.

36

NOTES ON" THE

without most solemn conviction of their being so, nor without
deep sorrow to be compelled to such a course.
But it may be said, the Government of a people never does
stand to them in the relation of a father to his family. If it do
not, it is no Government. However grossly it may fail in its
duty, and however little it may be fitted for its place, if it be
a Government at all, it has paternal office and relation to the
people. I find it written on the one hand,—•" Honor thy
F a t h e r ; " on the other,—" Honor the K i n g ; " on the one hand,
— " W h o s o smiteth his Father, shall be put to death;"* on
the other,—"They that resist shall receive to themselves
damnation." "Well, but, it may be farther argued, the Clergy
are in a still more solemn sense the Fathers of the People, and
the People are the beloved Sons; why should not, therefore,
the Clergy have the power to govern the civil officers ?
For two very clear reasons.
In all human institutions certain evils are granted, as of
necessity; and, in organizing such institutions, we must allow
for the consequences of such evils, and make arrangements
such as may best keep them in check. ISTow, in both the
civil and ecclesiastical governments there will of necessity be
a certain number of bad men. The wicked civilian has comparatively little interest in overthrowing ecclesiastical authority ; it is often a useful help to him, and presents in itself
little which seems covetable. But the wicked ecclesiastical
officer has much interest in overthrowing the civilian, and
getting the political power into his own hands. As far as
wicked men are concerned, therefore, it is better that the
State should have power over the Clergy, than the Clergy
over the State.
Secondly, supposing both the Civil and Ecclesiastical officer
to be Christians; there is no fear that the civil officer should
* Exod. xxi, 15.

CONSTRUCTION OF SHEEPFOLDS.

37

under-rate the dignity or shorten the serviceablenesB of the
minister; but there is considerable danger that the religious
enthusiasm of the minister might diminish the serviceableness
of the civilian. (The History of Religious Enthusiasm should
be written by some one who had a life to give to its investigation ; it is one of the most melancholy pages in human
records, and one the most necessary to be studied.) Therefore, so far as good men are concerned, it is better the State
should have power over the Clergy, than the Clergy over the
State.
This we might, it seems to me, conclude by unassisted reason. But surely the whole question is, without any need of
human reason, decided by the history of Israel. If ever a
body of Clergy should have received independent authority,
the Levitical Priesthood should; for they were indeed a
Priesthood, and more holy than the rest of the nation. But
Aaron is always subject to Moses. All solemn revelation is
made to Moses, the civil magistrate, and he actually commands Aaron as to the fulfilment of his priestly office, and
that in a necessity of life and death: " Go and make an atonement for the people." IsTor is anything more remarkable
throughout the whole of the Jewish history than the perfect
subjection of the Priestly to the Kingly Authority. Thus
Solomon thrusts out Abiathar from being priest, 1 Kings ii.
27 ; and Jehoahaz administers the funds of the Lord's House,
2 Kings xii. 4, though that money was actually the Atonement Money, the Ransom for Souls (Exod. xxx. 12).
W e have, however, also the beautiful instance of Samuel
uniting in himself the offices of Priest, Prophet, and J u d g e ;
nor do I insist on any special manner of subjection of Clergy
to civil officers, or vice versa; but only on the necessity of
their perfect unity and influence upon each other in every
Christian Kingdom. Those who endeavor to effect the utter
separation of ecclesiastical and civil officers, are striving, on

88

NOTES ON THE

the one hand, to expose the Clergy to the most grievous and
most subtle of temptations from their own spiritual enthusiasm
and spiritual pride; on the other, to deprive the civil officer
of all sense of religious responsibility, and to introduce the
fearful, godless, conscienceless, and soulless policy of the Radical and the (so called) Socialist. Whereas, the ideal of all
government is the perfect unity of the two bodies of officers,
each supporting and correcting the other; the Clergy having
due weight in all the national councils; the civil officers having a solemn reverence for God in all their acts; the Clergy
hallowing all worldly policy by their influence; and the magistracy repressing all religious enthusiasm by their practical
wisdom. To separate the two is to endeavor to separate the
daily life of the nation from God, and to map out the dominion of the soul into two provinces—one of Atheism, the other
of Enthusiasm. These, then, were the reasons which caused
me to speak of the idea of separation of Church and State as
F a t u i t y ; for what Fatuity can be so great as the not having
God in our thoughts; and, in any act or office of life, saying
in our hearts, " There is no God."
Much more I would fain say of these things, but not n o w :
this only, I must emphatically assert, in conclusion:—That
the schism between the so called Evangelical and High Church
parties in Britain, is enough to shake many men's faith in the
truth or existence of Religion at all. I t seems to me one of
the most disgraceful scenes in Ecclesiastical history, that Protestantism should be paralyzed at its very heart by jealousies,
based on little else than mere difference between high and
low breeding. For the essential differences, in the religious
opinions of the two parties, are sufficiently marked in two men
whom we may take as the highest representatives of each—
George Herbert and John Milton; and I do not think there
•would have been much difficulty in atoning those two, if one
could have got them together. But the real difficulty, nowa«

CONSTRUCTION OF SHEEPFOLDS.

39

days, lies in the sin and folly of both parties: in the superciliousness of the one, and the rudeness of the other. Evidently,
however, the sin lies most at the High Church door, for the
Evangelicals are much more ready to act with Churchmen
than they with the Evangelicals; and I believe that this state
of things cannot continue much longer; and that if the Church
of England does not forthwith unite with herself the entire
Evangelical body, both of England and Scotland, and take her
stand with them against the Papacy, her hour has struck.
She cannot any longer serve two masters; nor make curtsies
alternately to Christ and anti-Christ. That she has done this
is visible enough by the state of Europe at this instant.
Three centuries since Luther—three hundred years of Protestant knowledge—and the Papacy not yet overthrown!
Christ-s truth still restrained, in narrow dawn, to the white
cliffs of England and white crests of the Alps;—the morning
star paused in its course in heaven;—the sun and moon stayed,
with Satan for their Joshua.
But how to unite the two great sects of paralyzed Protestants ? By keeping simply to Scripture. The members of the
Scottish Church have not a shadow of excuse for refusing
Episcopacy; it has indeed been abused among t h e m ; grievously abused; but it is in the Bible; and that is all they have
a right to ask.
They have also no shadow of excuse for refusing to employ
a written form of prayer. It may not be to their taste—it
may not be the way in which they like to p r a y ; but it is no
question, at present, of likes or dislikes, but of duties; and
the acceptance of such a form on their part would go half
way to reconcile them with their brethren. Let them allege
such objections as they can reasonably advance against the
English form, and let these be carefully and humbly weighed
by the pastors of both churches: some of them ought to be
at once forestalled. For the English Church, on the other

40

NOTES OX THE

hand, must cut the term Priest entirely out of her Prayerbook, and substitute for it that of Minister or Elder; the
passages respecting absolution must be thrown out also, except the doubtful one in the Morning Service, in which there
is no h a r m ; and then there would be only the Baptismal
question left, which is one of words rather than of things,
and might easily be settled in Synod, turning the refractory
Clergy out of their offices, to go to Rome if they chose.
Then, when the Articles of Faith and form of worship had
been agreed upon between the English and Scottish Churches,
the written forms and articles should be carefully translated
into the European languages, and offered to the acceptance
of the Protestant churches on the Continent, with earnest
entreaty that they would receive them, and due entertainment
of all such objections as they could reasonably allege; and
thus the whole body of Protestants, united in one great Fold,
would indeed go in and out, and find pasture; and the work
appointed for them would be done quickly, and Antichrist
overthrown.
Impossible: a thousand times impossible !—I hear it exclaimed against me. ISTo-—not impossible. Christ does not
order impossibilities, and H e has ordered us to be at peace,
one with another. Nay, it is answered—He came not to send
peace, but a sword. Yes, verily: to send a sword upon earth,
but not within His Church; for to His Church He said,
" My Peace I leave with you."

THE END.

KING OF THE GOLDEN RIVER.

THE

KING

GOLDEN E I Y E E
Black Brothers
a legend of stiria

BY JOHN RUSKIN, M.A.

NEW YORK:
JOHN WILEY & SON, PUBLISHERS,
2 CLINTON HALL, ASTOR PLACE.

1869.

ADYERTISEMENT.

THE Publisher thinks it due to the Author of this Fairy Tale, to state
the circumstances under which it appears.
THE KING OF THE GOLDEN EIVER was written in 1841, at the request

of a very young lady, and solely for her amusement, without any idea
of publication. I t has since remained in the possession of a friend, to
whose suggestion, and the passive assent of the Author, the Publisher
is indebted for the opportunity of printing it,

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.
HOW

THE AGRICULTURAL

SYSTEM

OF

THE

BLACK

BROTHERS

WAS

INTERFERED WITH BY SOUTH-WEST WIND, ESQUIRE

9

CHAPTER II.
OF THE PROCEEDINGS OF THE THREE BROTHERS AFTER THE VISIT OF
SOUTH-WEST

WIND,

ESQUIRE J AND HOW LITTLE GLUCK

INTERVIEW WITH THE KING OF THE GOLDEN RIVER

HAD

»

AN

„

. 1 9

CHAPTER IH.
HOW MR. HANS SET OFF ON AN EXPEDITION TO THE GOLDEN RIVER, AND
HOW HE PROSPERED THEREIN

.

.

•

•

•

•

•

26

CHAPTER IV.
HOW MR. SCHWARTZ SET OFF ON AN EXPEDITION TO THE GOLDEN RIVER,
AND HOW HE PROSPERED THEREIN

32

CHAPTER V.
HOW LITTLE GLUCK SET OFF ON AN EXPEDITION TO THE GOLDEN RIVER,
AND HOW
INTEREST

HE
.

PROSPERED
s

.

THEREIN;
»

.

WITH
.

8

OTHER MATTERS
.

.

8

OF
.

35

THE MM OF THE GOLDEN RIYER,
OR

THE

BLACK

BEOTHEES.

CHAPTER I.
HOW THE AGRICULTURAL

SYSTEM

OE THE BLACK

BROTHERS

WAS INTERFERED WITH BY SOUTH-WEST WIND, ESQUIRE.

I N a secluded and mountainous part of Stiria, there was, in
old time, a valley of the most surprising and luxuriant fertility.
It was surrounded, on all sides, by steep and rocky mountains,
rising into peaks, which were always covered with snow, and
from which a number of torrents descended in constant cataracts. One of these fell westward, over the face of a crag so
high, that, when the sun had set to everything else, and all
below was darkness, his beams still shone full upon this waterfall, so that it looked like a shower of gold. Jt was, therefore,
called by the people of the neighborhood the Golden River.
I t was strange that none of these streams fell into the valley
itself. They all descended on the other side of the mountains,
and wound away through broad plains and by populous cities.
But the clouds were drawn so constantly to the snowy hills,
and rested so softly in the circular hollow, that, in time of
drought and heat, when all the country round was burnt up,
there was still rain in the little valley; and its crops were so
heavy, and its hay so high, and its apples so red, and its grapes
1*

]0

THE KING OF THE GOLDEN" KIVE&,

so blue, and its wine so rich, and its honey so sweet, that it
was a marvel to every one who beheld it, and was commonly
called the Treasure Valley.
The whole of this little valley belonged to three brothers,
called Schwartz, Hans, and Gluck. Schwartz and Hans, the
two elder brothers, were very ugly men, with overhanging
eyebrows and small, dull eyes, which were always half shut,
so that you couldn't see into them, and always fancied they
saw very far into you. They lived by farming the Treasure
Valley, and very good farmers they were. They killed everything that did not pay for its eating. They shot the blackbirds, because they pecked the fruit; and killed the hedgehogs, lest they should suck the cows; they poisoned the
crickets for eating the crumbs in the kitchen; and smothered
the cicadas, which used to sing all summer in the lime trees.
They worked their servants without any wages, till they
would not work any more, and then quarrelled with them,
and turned them out of doors without paying them. It would
have been very odd, if, with such a farm, and such a system
of farming, they hadn't got very rich; and very rich they did
get. They generally contrived to keep their corn by them
till it was very dear, and then sell it for twice its value;
they had heaps of gold lying about on their floors, yet it was
never known that they had given so much as a penny or a
crust in charity; they never went to mass; grumbled perpetually at paying tithes; and were, in a word, of so cruel
and grinding a temper, as to receive from all those with
whom they had any dealings, the nickname of the "Bbwk
Brothers,"
The youngest brother, Gluck, was as completely opposed,
in both appearance and character, to his seniors as could possibly be imagined or desired. He was not above twelve years
old, fair, blue-eyed, and kind in temper to every living thing.
He did not, of course, agree particularly well with his 'brothers,

OP, THE BLACK BROTHERS.

11

or rather, they did not agree with him.
H e was usually
appointed to the honorable office of turnspit, when there was
anything to roast, which was not often ; for, to do the brothers
justice, they were hardly less sparing upon themselves than
upon other people. A t other times he used to clean the shoes,
floors, and sometimes the plates, occasionally getting what
was left on them, by way of encouragement, and a wholesome
quantity of dry blows, by way of education.
Things went on in this manner for a long time. A t last
came a very wet summer, and everything went wrong in the
country round. The hay had hardly been got in, when the
haystacks were floated bodily down to the sea by an inundation ; the vines were cut to pieces with the hail; the corn was
all killed by a black blight; only in the Treasure Valley, as
usual, all was safe. As it had rain when there was rain nowhere else, so it had sun when there was sun nowhere else.
Everybody came to buy corn at the farm, and went away
pouring maledictions on the Black Brothers. They asked
what they liked, and got it, except from the poor people, who
could only beg, and several of whom were starved at their
very door, without the slightest regard or notice.
It was drawing towards winter, and very cold weather,
when one day the two elder brothers had gone out, with their
usual warning to little Gluck, who was left to mind the roast,
that he was to let nobody in, and give nothing out. Gluck
sat down quite close to the fire, for it was raining very hard,
and the kitchen walls were by no means dry or comfortable
. looking. He turned and turned, and the roast got nice and
brown. " W h a t a pity," thought Gluck, " my brothers never
ask anybody to dinner. I'm sure, when they've got such a
nice piece of mutton as this, and nobody else has got so much
as a piece of dry bread, it would do their hearts good to have
somebody to eat it with them."
Just as he spoke, there came a double knock at the house

12

THE KING OF THE GOLDEN RIVER,

door, yet heavy and dull, as though the knocker had been tied
up,—more like a puff than a knock.
" It must be the wind," said Gluck; " nobody else would
venture to knock double knocks at our door."
N o ; it wasn't the wind; there it came again very hard,
and what was particularly astounding, the knocker seemed to
be in a hurry, and not to be in the least afraid of the consequences. Gluck went to the window, opened it, and put his
head out to see who it was.
It was the most extraordinary looking little gentleman he
had ever seen in his life. He had a very large nose, slightly
brass-colored; his cheeks were very round, and very red, and
might have warranted a supposition that he had been blowing
a refractory fire for the last eight-and-forty hours; his eyes
twinkled merrily through long silky eyelashes, his moustaches
curled twice round like a corkscrew on each side of his mouth,
and his hair, of a curious mixed pepper-and-salt color,
descended far over his shoulders. H e wras about four feet
six in height, and wore a conical pointed cap of nearly the
same altitude, decorated with a black feather some three feet
long. His doublet was prolonged behind into something
resembling a violent exaggeration of what is now termed a
" swallow-tail," but was much obscured by the swelling folds
of an enormous black, glossy-looking cloak, which must have
been very much too long in calm weather, as the wind,
whistling round the old house, carried it clear out from the
wearer's shoulders to about four times his own length.
Gluck was so perfectly paralysed by the singular appearance of his visitor, that he remained fixed without uttering a
word, until the old gentleman, having performed another, and
a more energetic concerto on the knocker, turned round to
look after his fly-away cloak. In so doing he caught sight of
Gluck's little yellow head jammed in the window, with its
mouth and eyes very wide open indeed.

OR THE BLACK BROTHERS.

13

" Hollo !" said the little gentleman, " that's not the way tc
answer the door; I'm wet, let me in."
To do the little gentleman justice, he was wet. His feather
hung clown between his legs like a beaten puppy's tail, dripping like an umbrella; and from the ends of his moustaches
the water was running into his waistcoat pockets, and out
again like a mill-stream.
" I beg pardon, sir," said Gluck, " I'm very sorry, but I
really can't."
" Can't what ?" said the old gentleman.
" I can't let you in, sir,—I can't indeed; my brothers would
beat me to death, sir, if I thought of such a thing. W h a t do
you want, sir ?"
" W a n t ??' said the old gentleman petulantly, " I want fire
and shelter; and there's your great fire there blazing, crackling, and dancing on the walls, with nobody to feel it. Let
me in, I say; I only want to warm myself."
Gluck had had his head, by this time, so long out of the
window, that he began to feel it was^ really unpleasantly cold,
and when he turned, and saw the beautiful fire rustling and
roaring, and throwing long bright tongues up the chimney,
as if it were licking its chops at the savory smell of the leg
of mutton, his heart melted within him that it should be burning away for nothing. " H e does look very wet," said little
Gluck; "I'll just let him in for a quarter of an hour." Round
he went to the door, and opened i t ; and as the little gentleman walked in, there came a gust of wind through the house,
that made the old chimneys totter.
" That's a good boy," said the little gentleman. " IsTever
mind your brothers. I'll talk to them."
" P r a y , sir, don't do any such thing," said Gluck. " I can't
let you stay till they come; they'd be the death of me."
" Dear me," said the old gentleman, " I'm very sorry to
hear that. How long may I stay ?"

14

THE KING OP THE GOLDEN RIVER,

" Only till the mutton's done, sir," replied Gluck, " and it's
very brown."
Then the old gentleman^ walked into the kitchen, and sat
himself down on the hob, with the top of his cap accommodated up the chimney, for it was a great deal too high for
the roof.
"You'll soon dry there, sir," said Gluck, and sat down
again to turn the mutton. But the old gentleman did not
dry there, but went on drip, drip, dripping among the cinders,
and the fire fizzed, and sputtered, and began to look very
black, and uncomfortable: never was such a cloak; every
fold in it ran like a gutter.
" I beg pardon, sir," said Gluck at length, after watching
the water spreading in long quicksilver-like streams over
the floor for a quarter of an hour; " m a y n ' t I take your
cloak ?"
" No, thank you," said the old gentleman.
" Your cap, sir ?"
" I'm all right, thank you,'' said the old gentleman rather
gruffly.
" But,—sir,—I'm very sorry," said Gluck, hesitatingly ;
" but—really, sir,—you're putting the fire out."
" It '11 take longer to do the mutton then," replied his visitor drily.
Gluck was very much puzzled by the behavior of his guest;
it was such a strange mixture of coolness and humility. H e
turned away at the string meditatively for another five
minutes.
" That mutton looks very nice," said the old gentleman at
length. " Can't you give me a little bit ?"
" Impossible, sir," said Gluck.
" I'm very hungry," continued the old gentleman ; " I've
had nothing to eat yesterday, nor to-day. They surely
couldn't miss a bit from the knuckle!"

OR THE BLACK BROTHERS.

15

He spoke in so very melancholy a tone, that it quite melted
Gluck's heart. " T h e y promised me one slice to-day, sir,"
said h e ; " I can give you that, but not a bit more."
" That's a good boy," said the old gentleman again.
Then Gluck warmed a plate, and sharpened a knife. " I
don't care if I do get beaten for it," thought he. Just as he
had cut a large slice out of the mutton, there came a tremendous rap at the door. The old gentleman jumped off the hob,
as if it had suddenly become inconveniently warm. Gluck
fitted the slice into the mutton again, with desperate efforts
at exactitude, and ran to open the door.
" "What did you keep us waiting in the rain for ?" said
Schwartz, as he walked in, throwing his umbrella in Gluck's
face. " A y ! what for, indeed, you little vagabond ?" said
Hans, administering an educational box on the ear, as he followed his brother into the kitchen.
" Bless my soul!" said Schwartz when he opened the door.
" Amen," said the little gentleman, who had taken his cap
off, and was standing in the middle of the kitchen, bowing
with the utmost possible velocity.
" W h o ' s t h a t ? " said Schwartz, catching up a rolling-pin,
and turning to Gluck with a fierce frown.
" I don't know, indeed, brother," said Gluck in great
terror.
" How did he get in ?" roared Schwartz.
" My dear brother," said Gluck, deprecatingly, " he was
so very w e t ! "
The rolling-pin was descending on Gluck's h e a d ; but, at
the instant, the old gentleman interposed his conical cap,
on which it crashed with a shock that shook the water out of
it all over the room. W h a t was very odd, the rolling-pin no
sooner touched the cap, than it flew out of Schwartz's hand,
spinning like a straw in a high wind, and fell into the corner
at the further end of the room.

16

THE KING OF THE GOLDEN RIVER,

" W h o are you, sir ?" demanded Schwartz, turning upon
him.
" W h a t ' s your business ?" snarled Hans.
" I'm a poor old man, sir," the little gentleman began very
modestly, " and I saw your fire through the window, and
begged shelter for a quarter of an hour."
" H a v e the goodness to walk out again, then,55 said
Schwartz. " We've quite enough water in our kitchen, without making it a drying-house."
" It is a cold day to turn an old man out in, sir; look at my
gray hairs." They hung down to his shoulders, as I told you
before.
" Ay !" said Hans, " t h e r e are enough of them to keep you
warm. W a l k ! "
" I'm very, very hungry, sir; couldn't you spare me a bit
of bread before I go ?"
" Bread, indeed!" said Schwartz; " do you suppose we've
nothing to do with our bread, but to give it to such red-nosed
fellows as you ?"
" W h y don't you sell your feather?" said Hans, sneeringly.
" Out with you."
" A little bit," said the old gentleman.
" Be off!" said Schwartz.
" P r a y , gentlemen."
" Off, and be hanged!" cried Hans, seizing him by the collar. But he had no sooner touched the old gentleman's collar,
than away he went after the rolling-pin, spinning round and
round, till he fell into the corner on the top of it. Then
Schwartz was very angry, and ran at the old gentleman to
turn him o u t ; but he also had hardly touched him, when
away he went after Hans and the rolling-pin, and hit his head
against the wall as he tumbled into the corner. And so there
they lay, all three,
Then the old gentleman spun himself round with velocity

OR THE BLACK BROTHERS.

17

in the opposite direction; continued to spin until his long
cloak was all wound neatly about him; clapped his cap on his
head, very much on one side, (for it could not stand upright
without going through the ceiling,) gave an additional twist
to his corkscrew moustaches, and replied with perfect coolness : " Gentlemen, I wish you a very good morning. A t
twelve o'clock to-night, I'll call again; after such a refusal of
hospitality as I have just experienced, you will not be surprised if that visit is the last I ever pay you."
" If ever I catch you here again," muttered Schwartz, coming, half frightened, out of the corner—but, before he could
finish his sentence, the old gentleman had shut the house door
behind him with a great b a n g ; and there drove past the window, at the same instant, a wreath of ragged cloud, that
whirled and rolled away down the valley in all manner of
shapes ; turning over and over in the air; and melting away
at last in a gush of rain.
" A very pretty business, indeed, Mr. Gluck!" said
Schwartz. " D i s h the mutton, sir. If ever I catch you at
such a trick again—bless me, why the mutton's been cut!"
" Y o u promised me one slice, brother, you know," said
Gluck.
" Oh ! and you were cutting it hot, I suppose, and going to
catch all the gravy. It '11 be long before I promise you such
a thing again. Leave the room, sir; and have the kindness
to wait in the coal-cellar till I call you."
Gluck left the room melancholy enough. The brothers ate
as much mutton as they could, locked the rest in the cupboard, and proceeded to get very drunk after dinner.
Such a night as it was ! Howling wind, and rushing rain,
without intermission. The brothers had just sense enough
left to put up all the shutters, and double bar the door, before
they went to bed. They usually slept in the same room. As
the clock struck twelve, they were both awakened by a tre2

18

THE KING OF THE GOLDEN KIVEK,

mendous crash. Their door burst open with a violence that
shook the house from top to bottom.
" What's that ?" cried Schwartz, starting up in his bed.
" Only I," said the little gentleman.
The two brothers sat up on their bolster, and stared into
the darkness. The room was full of water, and by a misty
moonbeam, which found its way through a hole in the shutter,
they could see, in the midst of it, an enormous foam globe,
spinning round, and bobbing up and down like a cork, on
which, as on a most luxurious cushion, reclined the little old
gentleman, cap and all. There was plenty of room for it now,
for the roof was off.
" Sorry to incommode you," said their visitor, ironically.
" I'm afraid your beds are dampish ; perhaps you had better
go to your brother's room; I've left the ceiling on there."
They required no second admonition, but rushed into
Gluck's room, wet through, and in an agony of terror.
"You'll find my card on the kitchen table," the old gentleman called after them. "Remember the last visit."
" P r a y Heaven it may !" said Schwartz, shuddering. And
the foam globe disappeared.
Dawn came at last, and the two brothers looked out of
Gluck's little window in the morning. The Treasure Yalley
was one mass of ruin and desolation. The inundation had
swept away trees, crops, and cattle, and left, in their stead, a
waste of red sand, and gray mud. The two brothers crept,
shivering and horror-struck, into the kitchen. The water had
gutted the whole first floor: corn,money, almost every movable thing had been swept away, and there was left only a
small white card on the kitchen table. On it, in large, breezy,
long-legged letters, were engraved the words:—

SOOT M S I jJUHS

limiVL

19

OR THE BLACK BROTHERS.

C H A P T E R IL
OF THE PROCEEDINGS OF THE THREE
VISIT

BROTHERS AFTER T H E

OF SOUTH-WEST W I N D , E S Q U I R E ;

AND HOW

LITTLE

GLUCK HAD AN INTERVIEW W I T H THE K I N G OF THE GOLDEN
RIVER.

SouTH-West Wind, Esquire, was as good as his word. After
the momentous visit above related, he entered the Treasure
Valley no m o r e ; and, what was worse, he had so much influence with his relations, the W e s t Winds in general, and used
it so effectually, that they all adopted a similar line of conduct.
So no rain fell in the valley from one year's end to another.
Though everything remained green and flourishing in the
plains below, the inheritance of the Three Brothers was a
desert. W h a t had once been the richest soil in the kingdom,
became a shifting heap of red sand ; and the brothers, unable
longer to contend with the adverse sides, abandoned their
valueless patrimony in despair, to seek some means of gaining
a livelihood among the cities and people of the plains. All
their money was gone, and they had nothing left but some
curious old-fashioned pieces of gold plate, the last remnants
of their ill-gotten wealth.
" Suppose we turn goldsmiths ?" said Schwartz to Hans, as
they entered the large city. " It is a good knave's trade; we
can put a great deal of copper into the gold, without any
one's finding it out."
The thought was agreed to be a very good one; they hired
a furnace, and turned goldsmiths. But two slight circum-

20

THE KING OF THE GOLDEN RIVER,

stances affected their t r a d e : the first, that people did not
approve of the coppered gold; the second, that the two elder
brothers, whenever they had sold anything, used to leave
little Gluck to mind the furnace, and go and drink out the
money in the ale-house next door. So they melted all their
gold, without making money enough to buy more, and were
at last reduced to one large drinking-mug, which an uncle of
his had given to little Gluck, and which he was very fond of,
and would not have parted with for the world; though he
never drank anything out of it but milk and water. The mug
was a very odd mug to look at. The handle was formed of
two wreaths of flowing golden hair, so finely spun that it
looked more like silk than metal, and these wreaths descended
into, and mixed with, a bearct and whiskers, of the same
exquisite workmanship, which surrounded and decorated a
very fierce little face, of the reddest gold imaginable, right in
the front of the mug, with a pair of eyes in it which seemed
to command its whole circumference. It was impossible to
drink oat of the mug without being subjected to an intense
gaze out of the side of these eyes; and Schwartz positively
averred, that once, after emptying it full of Rhenish seventeen
times, he had seen them wink! When it came to the mug's
turn to be made into spoons, it half broke poor little Gluck's
h e a r t ; but the brothers only laughed at him, tossed the mug
into the melting-pot, and staggered out to the ale-house ; leaving him, as usual, to pour the gold into bars, when it was all
ready.
W h e n they were gone, Gluck took a farewell look at his
old friend in the melting-pot. The flowing hair was all gone;
nothing remained but the red nose, and the sparkling eyes,
which looked more malicious than ever. " And no wonder,"
thought Gluck, " after being treated in that way." He sauntered disconsolately to the window, and sat himself down to
catch th)3 fresh evening air, and escape the hot breath of the

OR THE BLACK BROTHERS.

21

furnace. Now this window commanded a direct view of the
range of mountains, which, as I told you before, overhung the
Treasure Yalley, and more especially of the peak from which
fell the Golden River. It was just at the close of the day,
and, when Gluck sat down at the window, he saw the rocks
of the mountain tops, all crimson, and purple with the sunset;
and there were bright tongues of fiery cloud burning and
quivering about t h e m ; and the river, brighter than all, fell, in
a waving column of pure gold, from precipice to precipice,
with the double arch of a broad purple rainbow stretched
across it, flushing and fading alternately in the wreaths of
spray.
" A h ! " said Gluck aloud, after he had looked at it for a
little while, " if that river were really all gold, what a nice
thing it would be."
" N o it wouldn't, Gluck," said a clear metallic voice, close
at his ear.
"Bless me, what's t h a t ? " exclaimed Gluck, jumping up.
There was nobody there. H e looked round the room, and
under the table, and a great many times behind him, but
there was certainly nobody there, and he sat down again at
the window. This time he didn't speak, but he couldn't help
thinking again that it would be very convenient if the river
were really all gold.
" N o t at all, my boy," said the same voice, louder than
before.
" Bless m e ! " said Gluck again, " what is t h a t ? " Pie looked
again into all the corners and cupboards, and then began
turning round and round, as fast as he could, in the middle
of the room, thinking there was somebody behind him, when
the same voice struck again on his ear. It was singing now
very merrily " Lala-lira-la;" no words, only a soft running
effervescent melody, something like that of a kettle on the
boil. Gluck looked out of the window. No, it was certainly

22

THE KING OF THE GOLDEN RIVER,

in the house. U p stairs, and down stairs. ISTo, it was certainly in that very room, coming in quicker time, and clearer
notes, every moment. " Lala-lira-la." All at once it struck
Gluck, that it sounded louder near the furnace. He ran to
the opening, and looked i n ; yes, he saw right, it seemed to
be coming, not only out of the furnace, but out of the pot.
H e uncovered it, and ran back in a great fright, for the pot
wras certainly singing! H e stood in the farthest corner of the
room, with his hands up, and his mouth open, for a minute or
two, when the singing stopped, and the voice became clear,
and pronunciative.
" Hollo!" said the voice.
Gluck made no answer.
" H o l l o ! Gluck, my boy," said the pot again.
Gluck summoned all his energies, walked straight up to the
crucible, drew it out of the furnace, and looked in. The gold
was all melted, and its surface as smooth and polished as a
river; but instead of reflecting little Gluck's head, as he
looked in, he saw meeting his glance, from beneath the gold,
the red nose and the sharp eyes of his old friend of the mug,
a thousand times redder and sharper than ever he had seen
them in his life.
"Come, Gluck, my boy," said the voice out of the pot
again, " I'm all right; pour me out."
But Gluck was too much astonished to do anything of the
kind.
" Pour me out, I say," said the voice rather gruffly.
Still Gluck couldn't move.
" Will you pour me out ?" said the voice, passionately,
" I'm too hot."
By a violent effort, Gluck recovered the use of his limbs,
took hold of the crucible, and sloped it, so as to pour out the
gold. But instead of a liquid stream, there came out, first, a
pair of pretty little yellow legs, then some coat tails, then a

OR THE BLACK BROTHERS,

23

pair of arms stuck akimbo, and, finally, the well-known head
of his friend the m u g ; all which articles, uniting as they rolled
out, stood up energetically on the floor, in the shape of a little
golden dwarf, about a foot and a half high.
" T h a t ' s right!" said the dwarf, stretching out first his legs,
and then his arms, and then shaking his head up and down,
and as far round as it would go, for five minutes, without
stopping; apparently with the view of ascertaining if he were
quite correctly put together, while Gluck stood contemplating
him in speechless amazement. He was dressed in a slashed
doublet of spun gold, so fine in its texture, that the prismatic
colors gleamed over it, as if on a surface of mother-of-pearl;
and, over this brilliant doublet, his hair and beard fell full halfway to the ground, in waving curls, so exquisitely delicate,
that Gluck could hardly tell where they ended; they seemed
to melt into air. The features of the face, however, were b y
no means finished with the same delicacy; they were rather
coarse, slightly inclining to coppery in complexion, and indicative, in expression, of a very pertinacious and intractable
disposition in their small proprietor. W h e n the dwarf had
finished his self-examination, he turned his small sharp eyes
full on Gluck, and stared at him deliberately for a minute
or two. " N o , it wouldn't, Gluck, my boy," said the little
man.
This was certainly rather an abrupt and unconnected mode
of commencing conversation. It might indeed be supposed
to refer to the course of Gluck's thoughts, which had first
produced the dwarf's observations out of the p o t ; but whatever it referred to, Gluck had no inclination to dispute the
dictum.
" Wouldn't it, sir ?" said Gluck, very mildly and submissively indeed.
" ISTo," said the dwarf, conclusively. " No, it wouldn't."
And with that, the dwarf pulled his cap hard over his brows,

24

THE KING OF THE GOLDEN RIVER,

and took two turns of three feet long, up and down the room,
lifting his legs up very high, and setting them down very
hard. This pause gave time for Gluck to collect his thoughts
a little, and, seeing no great reason to view his diminutive
visitor with dread, and feeling his curiosity overcome his
amazement, he ventured on a question of peculiar delicacy.
" P r a y , sir," said Gluck, rather hesitatingly, " w e r e you
my m u g ? "
On which the little man turned sharp round, walked straight
up to Gluck, and drew himself up to his full height. " I , " said
the little man, " am the King of the Golden River." Whereupon he turned about again, and took two more turns, some
six feet long, in order to allow time for the consternation
which this announcement produced in his auditor to evaporate. After which, he again walked up to Gluck and stood
still, as if expecting some comment on his communication.
Gluck determined to say something at all events. " I hope
your Majesty is very well," said Gluck.
" Listen!" said the little man, deigning no reply to this
polite inquiry. " I am the King of what you mortals call the
Golden River. The shape you saw me in, was owing to the
malice of a stronger king, from whose enchantments you have
this instant freed me. W h a t I have seen of you, and your
conduct to your wicked brothers, renders me willing to serve
y o u ; therefore attend to what I tell you. Whoever shall
climb to the top of that mountain from which you see the
Golden River issue, and shall cast into the stream at its source
three drops of holy water, for him, and for him only, the river
shall turn to gold. But no one failing in his first, can succeed
in a second attempt; and if any one shall cast unholy water
into the river, it will overwhelm him, and he will become a
black stone." So saying, the King of the Golden River
turned away, and deliberately walked into the centre of the
hottest flame of the furnace. His figure became red. white,

OR THE BLACK BROTHERS.

23

transparent, dazzling,—a blaze of intense light,—rose, trembled, and disappeared. The King of the Golden River had
evaporated.
" Oh!" cried poor Gluck, running to look up the chimney
after him; " Oh, dear, dear, dear me ! My mug! my mug!
my mug!"

26

THE KING OF THE GOLDEN RIVER,

C H A P T E R ITT.
HOW MR. HANS SET OEF ON AN EXPEDITION TO THE GOLDEN
RIVER, AND HOW HE PROSPERED THEREIN.

T H E King of the Golden River had hardly made the extraordinary exit related in the last chapter, before Hans and
Schwartz came roaring into the house, very savagely drunk.
The discovery of the total loss of their last piece of plate had
the effect of sobering them just enough to enable them to
stand over Gluck, beating him very steadily for a quarter of
an hour; at the expiration of which period they dropped into
a couple of chairs, and requested to know what he had got to
say for himself. Gluck told them his story, of which of course
they did not believe a word. They beat him again, till their
arms were tired, and staggered to bed. In the morning,
however, the steadiness with which he adhered to his story
obtained him some degree of credence; the immediate consequence of which was, that the two brothers, after wrangling
a long time on the knotty question, which of them should
try his fortune first, drew their swords, and began fighting.
The noise of the fray alarmed the neighbors, who, finding
they could not pacify the combatants, sent for the constable.
Hans, on hearing this, contrived to escape, and hid himself;
but Schwartz was taken before the magistrate, fined for
breaking the peace, and, having drunk out his last penny the
evening before, was thrown into prison till he should pay.
When Hans heard this, he was much delighted, and determined to set out immediately for the Golden River. How to

OR THE BLACK BROTHERS.

27

get the holy water, was the question. H e went to the priest,
but the priest could not give any holy water to so abandoned
a character. So Hans went to vespers in the evening for the
first time in his life, and, under pretence of crossing himself,
stole a cupful, and returned home in triumph.
N e x t morning he got up before the sun rose, put the holy
water into a strong flask, and two bottles of wine and some
meat in a basket, slung them over his back, took his alpine
staff in his hand, and set off for the mountains.
On his way out of the town he had to pass the prison, and
as he looked in at the windows, whom should he see but
Schwartz himself peeping out of the bars, and looking very
disconsolate.
" Good morning, brother," said Hans; " h a v e you any message for the King of the Golden River ?"
Schwartz gnashed his teeth with rage, and shook the bars
with all his strength; but Hans only laughed at him, and
advising him to make himself comfortable till he came back
again, shouldered his basket, shook the bottle of holy water
in Schwartz's face till it frothed again, and marched off in the
highest spirits in the world.
I t was, indeed, a morning that might have made any one
happy, even with no Golden River to seek for. Level lines
of dewy mist lay stretched along the valley, out of which rose
the massy mountains,—their lower cliffs in pale gray shadow,
hardly distinguishable from the floating vapor, but gradually
ascending till they caught, the sunlight, which ran in sharp
touches of ruddy color along the angular crags, and pierced,
in long level rays, through their fringes of spear-like pine.
Far above, shot up red splintered masses of castellated rock,
jagged and shivered into myriads of fantastic forms, with
here and there a streak of sunlit snow, traced clown their
chasms like a line of forked lightning; and, far beyond, and
far above all these, fainter than the morning cloud, but purer

28

THE KING OF THE GOLDEN EXVEB,

and changeless, slept, in the blue sky, the utmost peaks of the
eternal snow.
The Golden River, which sprang from one of the lower and
snowless elevations, was now nearly in shadow; all but the
uppermost jets of spray, which rose like slow smoke above the
undulating line of the cataract, and floated away in feeble
wreaths upon the morning wind.
On this object, and on this alone, Hans's eyes and thoughts
were fixed; forgetting the distance he had to traverse, he set
off at an imprudent rate of walking, which greatly exhausted
him before he had scaled the first range of the green and low
hills. He was, moreover, surprised, on surmounting them, to
find that a large glacier, of whose existence, notwithstanding
his previous knowledge of the mountains, he had been absolutely ignorant, lay between him and the source of the Golden
River. He entered on it with the boldness of a practised
mountaineer; yet he thought he had never traversed so
strange, or so dangerous a glacier in his life. The ice was
excessively slippery, and out of all its chasms came wild sounds
of gushing water; not monotonous or low, but changeful and
loud, rising occasionally into drifting passages of wild melody,
then breaking off into short melancholy tones, or sudden
shrieks, resembling those of human voices in distress or pain.
The ice was broken into thousands of confused shapes, but
none, Hans thought, like the ordinary forms of splintered ice.
There seemed a curious expression about all their outlines,—•
a perpetual resemblance to living features, distorted and
scornful.
Myriads of deceitful shadows, and lurid lights,
played and floated about and through the pale blue pinnacles,
dazzling and confusing the sight of the traveller; while his
ears grew dull and his head giddy with the constant gush and
roar of the concealed "waters. These painful circumstances
increased upon him as he advanced; the ice crashed and
yawned into fresh chasms at his feet, tottering spires nodded

OR THE BLACK BROTHERS.

29

around him, and fell thundering across his p a t h ; and though
he had repeatedly faced these dangers on the most terrific
glaciers, and in the wildest weather, it was with a new and
oppressive feeling of panic terror that he leaped the last
chasm, and flung himself, exhausted and shuddering, on the
firm turf of the mountain.
He had been compelled to abandon his basket of food,
which became a perilous incumbrance on the glacier, and had
now no means of refreshing himself but by breaking off and
eating some of the pieces of ice. This, however, relieved his
thirst; an hour's repose recruited his hardy frame, and with
the indomitable spirit of avarice, he resumed his laborious
journey.
His way now lay straight up a ridge of bare red rocks,
without a blade of grass to ease the foot, or a projecting angle
to afford an inch of shade from the south sun. It was past
noon, and the rays beat intensely upon the steep path, while
the whole atmosphere was motionless, and penetrated with
heat. Intense thirst was soon added to the bodily fatigue
with which Hans was now afflicted; glance after glance he
cast on the flask of water which hung at his belt. " Three
drops are enough,'* at last thought he ; " I may, at least, cool
my lips with it."
He opened the flask, and was raising it to his lips, when his
eye fell on an object lying on the rock beside him; he thought
il moved. It was a small dog, apparently in the* last agony
of death from thirst. Its tongue was out, its jaws dry, its
limbs extended lifelessly, and a swarm of black ants were
crawling about his lips and throat. Its eye moved to the
bottle which Hans held in his hand. He raised it, drank,
spurned the animal with his foot, and passed on. And he did
not know how it was, but he thought that a strange shadow
had suddenly come across the blue sky.
The path became steeper and more rugged every moment;

30

THE KING OF THE GOLDEN EIVER,

and the high hill air, instead of refreshing him, seemed to
throw his blood into a fever. The noise of the hill cataracts
sounded like mockery in his ears; they were all distant, and
his thirst increased every moment. Another hour passed, and
he again looked down to the flask at his side; it was half
empty, but there was much more than three drops in it. He
stopped to open it, and again, as he did so, something moved
in the path above him. It was a fair child, stretched nearly
lifeless on the rock, its breast heaving with thirst, its eyes
closed, and its lips parched and burning. Hans eyed it deliberately, drank, and passed on. And a dark gray cloud came
over the sun, and long, snake-like shadows crept up along the
mountain sides. Hans struggled on. The sun was sinking,
but its descent seemed to bring no coolness; the leaden weight
of the dead air pressed upon his brow and heart, but the goal
was near. H e saw the cataract of the Golden River springing from the hill-side, scarcely five hundred feet above him.
H e paused for a moment to breathe, and sprang on to complete his task.
A t this instant a faint cry fell on his ear. He turned, and
saw a gray-haired old man extended on the rocks. His eyes
were sunk, his features deadly pale, and gathered into an
expression of despair. " W a t e r ! " he stretched his arms to
Hans, and cried feebly, " W a t e r ! I am dying."
" I have none," replied H a n s ; " thou hast had thy share
of life." H e strode over the prostrate body, and darted on.
And a flash of blue lightning rose out of the East, shaped like
a sword; it shook thrice over the whole heaven, and left it
dark with one heavy, impenetrable shade. The sun was setting ; it plunged towards the horizon like a red-hot ball.
The roar of the Golden River rose on Hans's ear. He
stood at the brink of the chasm through which it ran. Its
waves were filled with the red glory of the sunset: they shook
their crests like tongues of fire, and flashes of bloody light

OR THE BLACK BROTHERS.

31

gleamed along their foam. Their sound came mightier and
mightier on his senses; his brain grew giddy with the prolonged thunder. Shuddering, he drew the flask from his girdle, and hurled it into the centre of the torrent. As he did
so, an icy chill shot through his limbs; he staggered, shrieked,
and fell. The waters closed over his cry. And the moaning
of the river rose wildly into the night, as it gushed over

T H E BLACK STOOT.

32

THE KING OF THE GOLDEN RIVER,

CHAPTER
HOW MB. SCHWARTZ SET OFF

IV.

ON AN

EXPEDITION TO

THE

GOLDEN RIVER, AND HOW HE PROSPERED THEREIN,,

POOR little Gluck waited very anxiously alone in the house
for Hans's return. Finding he did not come back, he was
terribly frightened, and went and told Schwartz in the prison
all that had happened. Then Schwartz was very much pleased,
and said that Hans must certainly have been turned into a
black stone, and he should have all the gold to himself. But
Gluck was very sorry, and cried all night. W h e n he got up
in the morning, there was no bread in the house, nor any
money; so Gluck went and hired himself to another goldsmith, and he worked so hard, and so neatly, and so long
every day, that he soon got money enough together to pay
his brother's fine, and he went, and gave it all to Schwartz,
and Schwartz got out of prison. Then Schwartz was quite
pleased, and said he should have some of the gold of the river.
But Gluck only begged he would go and see what had become
of Hans.
"Now when Schwartz had heard that Hans had stolen the
holy water, he thought to himself that such a proceeding
might not be considered altogether correct by the King of
the Golden River, and determined to manage matters better.
So he took some more of Gluck's money, and went to a bad
priest, who gave him some holy water very readily for it.
Then Schwartz was sure it was all quite right. So Schwartz
got up early in the morning before the sun rose, and took

OR THE BLACK BROTHERS.

33

some bread and wine, in a basket, and put his holy water in a
flask, and set off for the mountains. Like his brother he was
much surprised at the sight of the glacier, and had great difficulty in crossing it, even after leaving his basket behind him.
The clay was cloudless, but not bright: there was a heavy
purple haze hanging over the sky, and the hills looked lowering and gloomy. And as Schwartz climbed the steep rock
path, the thirst came upon him, as it had upon his brother,
until he lifted his flask to his lips to drink. Then he saw the
fair child lying near him on the rocks, and it cried to him,
and moaned for water.
" W a t e r , indeed," said Schwartz; " I haven't half enough
for myself," and passed on. And as he went he thought the
sunbeams grew more dim, and he saw a low bank of black
cloud rising out of the W e s t ; and, when he had climbed for
another hour, the thirst overcame him again, and he would
have drunk. Then he saw the old man lying before him on
the path, and heard him cry out for water. " W a t e r , indeed,"
said Schwartz, " I haven't half enough for myself," and on
he went.
Then again the light seemed to fade from before his eyes,
and he looked up, and, behold, a mist, of the color of blood,
had come over the sun ; and the bank of black cloud had
risen very high, and its edges were tossing and tumbling like
the waves of the angry sea. And they cast long shadows,
which flickered over Schwartz's path.
Then Schwartz climbed for another hour, and again his
thirst returned; and as he lifted his flask to his lips, he thought
he saw his brother Hans lying exhausted on the path before
him, and, as he gazed, the figure stretched its arms to him,
and cried for water. a Ha, ha," laughed Schwartz, " are you
there ? remember the prison bars, my boy. Water, indeed !
do you suppose I carried it all the way up here for you?"
And he strode over the figure; yet, as he passed, he thought
2*

34

THE KING 0 E THE GOLDEN BIYER,

he saw a strange expression of mockery about its lips. And,
when he had gone a few yards farther, he looked back; but
the figure was not there.
And a sudden horror came over Schwartz, he knew not
w h y ; but the thirst for gold prevailed over his fear, and he
rushed on. And the bank of black cloud rose to the zenith,
and out of it came bursts of spiry lightning, and waves of
darkness seemed to heave and float between their flashes,
over the whole heavens. And the sky where the sun was setting was all level, and like a lake of blood; and a strong wind
came out of that sky, tearing its crimson clouds into fragments, and scattering them far into the darkness. And when
Schwartz stood by the brink of the Golden River, its waves
were black like thunder clouds, but their foam was like fire;
and the roar of the waters below, and the thunder above met,
as he cast the flask into the stream. And, as he did so, the
lightning glared in his eyes, and the earth gave way beneath
him, and the waters closed over his cry. And the moaning
of the river rose wildly into the night, as it gushed over the

Two

BLACK STONES.

OR THE BLACK BROTHERS.

CHAPTER
HOW

LITTLE

GLUCK

SET

OFF

35

V.

ON AN EXPEDITION TO THE

GOLDEN RIVER, AND HOW HE PROSPERED T H E R E I N ;

WITH

OTHER MATTERS OF INTEREST.

W H E N Gluck found that Schwartz did not come back, he was
very sorry, and did not know what to do. H e had no money,
and was obliged to go and hire himself again to the goldsmith,
who worked him very hard, and gave him very little money.
So, after a month or two, Gluck grew tired, and made up his
mind to go and try his fortune with the Golden River. " The
little king looked very kind," thought he. " I don't think he
will turn me into a black stone." So he went to the priest,
and the priest gave him some holy water as soon as he asked
for it. Then Gluck took some bread in his basket, and the
bottle of water, and set off very early for the mountains.
If the glacier had occasioned a great deal of fatigue to his
brothers, it was twenty times worse for him, who was neither
so strong nor so practised on the mountains. He had several
very bad falls, lost his basket and bread, and was very much
frightened at the strange noises under the ice. He lay a long
time to rest on the grass, after he had got over, and began to
climb the hill just in the hottest part of the day. When he
had climbed for an hour, he got dreadfully thirsty, and was
going to drink like his brothers, when he saw an old man
coming down the path above him, looking very feeble, and
leaning on a staff. " My son," said the old man, " I am faint
with thirst, give me some of that water." Then Gluck looked

86

THE KING OF THE GOLDEN E I V E E ,

at him, and when he saw that he was pale and weary, he gave
him the water; " Only pray don't drink it all," said Gluck.
But the old man drank a great deal, and gave him back the
bottle two-thirds empty. Then he bade him good speed, and
Gluck went on again merrily. And the path became easier to
his feet, and two or three blades of grass appeared upon it,
and some grasshoppers began singing on the bank beside i t ;
and Gluck thought he had never heard such merry singing.
Then he went on for another hour, and the thirst increased
on him so that he thought he should be forced to drink. But,
as he raised the flask, he saw a little child lying panting by
the road-side, and it cried out piteonsly for water. Then Gluck
struggled with himself, and determined to bear the thirst a
little longer; and he put the bottle to the child's lips, and it
drank it all but a few drops. Then it smiled on him, and
got up, and ran down the hill; and Gluck looked after it, till
it became as small as a little star, and then turned, and began
climbing again. And then there were all kinds of sweet
flowers growing on the rocks, bright green moss, with pale
pink starry flowers, and soft belled gentians, more blue than
the sky at its deepest, and pure white transparent lilies. And
crimson and purple butterflies darted hither and thither, and
the sky sent down such pure light that Gluck had never felt
so happy in his life.
Yet, when he had climbed for another hour, his thirst became intolerable again; and, when he looked at his bottle, he
saw that there were only five or six drops left in it, and he
could not venture to drink. And as he was hanging the flask
to his belt again, he saw a little dog lying on the rocks, gasping for breath,—just as Hans had seen it on the day of.his
ascent. And Gluck stopped and looked at it, and then at the
Golden River, not five hundred yards above him; and he
thought of the dwarf's words, " t h a t no one could succeed,
except in his first attempt;" and he tried to pass the dog, but

OE THE BLACK BEOTHEES.

3?

it whined piteously, and Gluck stopped again. " Poor beastie,"
said Gluck, "it'll be dead when I come down again, if I don't
help it." Then he looked closer and closer at it, and its eye
turned on him so mournfully that he could not stand it.
" Confound the King and his gold too," said Gluck ; and he
opened the flask, and poured all the water into the dog's
mouth.
The dog sprang up and stood on its hind legs. Its tail disappeared, its ears became long, longer, silky, golden; its nose
became very red, its eyes became very twinkling; in three
seconds the dog was gone, and before Gluck stood his old
acquaintance, the King of the Golden Kiver.
" Thank you," said the monarch; " but don't be frightened,
it's all r i g h t ; " for Gluck showed manifest symptoms of consternation at this unlooked-for reply to his last observation.
" W h y didn't you come before," continued the dwarf, "instead
of sending me those rascally brothers of yours, for me to have
the trouble of turning into stones ? Very hard stones they
make too."
" Oh dear m e ! " said Gluck, " have you really been so
cruel ?"
" Cruel," said the dwarf, " they poured unholy water into
my stream; do you suppose I'm going to allow that ?"
" W h y , " said Gluck, " I am sure, sir,—your majesty, I
mean,—they got the water out of the church font."
" Very probably," replied the dwarf; " but," and his countenance grew stern as he spoke, " the water which has been
refused to the cry of the weary and dying, is unholy, though
it had been blessed by e\erj saint in heaven; and the water
which is found in the vessel of mercy is holy, though it had
been defiled witli corpses."
So saying, the dwarf stooped and plucked a lily that grew
at his feet. On its white leaves there hung three drops of clear
dew. And the dwarf shook them into the flask which Gluck

38

THE KING OF THE GOLDEN RIVER,

held in his hand. " Cast these into the river," he said, " and
descend on the other side of the mountains into the Treasure
Valley. And so good speed."
As he spoke, the figure of the dwarf became indistinct. The
playing colors of his robe formed themselves into a prismatic
mist of dewy light; he stood for an instant veiled with them
as with the belt of a broad rainbow. The colors grew faint,
the mist rose into the air; the monarch had evaporated.
And Gluck climbed to the brink of the Golden River, and
its waves were as clear as crystal, and as brilliant as the sun.
And when he cast the three drops of dew into the stream,
there opened where they fell, a small circular whirlpool, into
which the waters descended with a musical noise.
Gluck stood watching it for some time, very much disappointed, because not only the river was not turned into gold,
but its waters seemed much diminished in quantity. Yet he
obeyed his friend the dwarf, and descended the other side of
the mountains, towards the Treasure Valley; and, as he went,
he thought he heard the noise of water working its way under
the ground. And, when he came in sight of the Treasure
Valley, behold, a river, like the Golden River, was springing
from a new cleft of the rocks above it, and was flowing in
innumerable streams among the dry heaps of red sand.
And as Gluck gazed, fresh grass sprang beside the new
streams, and creeping plants grew, and climbed among the
moistening soil. Young flowers opened suddenly along the
river sides, as stars leap out when twilight is deepening, and
thickets of myrtle, and tendrils of vine, cast lengthening
shadows over the valley as they grew. And thus the Treasure
Valley became a garden again, and the inheritance, which had
been lost by cruelty, was regained by love.
And Gluck went, and dwelt in the valley, and the poor
were never driven from his door; so that his barns became
full of corn, and his house of treasure. And, for him, the river

OR THE BLACK BROTHERS.

39

had, according to the dwarf's promise, become a River of
Gold.
And, to this day, the inhabitants of the valley point out the
place where the three drops of holy dew were cast into the
stream, and trace the course of the Golden River under the
ground, until it emerges in the Treasure Valley. And, at the
top of the cataract of the Golden River, are still to be seen
two BLACK STONES, round which the waters howl mournfully
every day at sunset; and these stones are still called by the
people of the valley,

THE

BLACK

BROTHERS.

TOE BKT>.

fHE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART

THE

POLITICAL ECONOMY
OF

BEING THE SUBSTANCE (WITH ADDITIONS) OF TWO
LECTURES
DELIVERED AT MANCHESTER, JULY 10TH AND 13TT, 1S57.

BY

JOHN KUSKIN, M.A.,
AUTHOR OF " MODERN P A I N T E R S , " " ELEMENTS OF DRAWING, 55
" L E C T U R E S ON ARCHITECTURE AND P A I N T I N G , "
ETC. ETC.

NEW YOKK:
JOHN WILEY & SON, PUBLISHERS,
2 CLINTON HALL, ASTOR PLACE.
1868,

CONTENTS.

PAGE

LF'^TUFI L

•

•

•

•

•

1. Liscovery
2. Application

•

»

•

,

.

•

e

•

»

•

•

•

24
30

.

3. Accumulation

.
„

.

ADDENDA

50

•

I/^OTURii 11

4. Distribution

11

.
.

«

50

n

,
.

Note 1.—" Fatherly Authority " .

e

•

«

•

•

a

.

99

,

104

.

110

•

95
95

"

2.—"Right to Public Support" .

ii

3.—"Trial Schools" .

"

4.—" Public Favour " .

"

5.—" Invention of new wants " .

"

6.—" Economy of Literature "

»
»

«

t.—" Pilots of the State"

0

•

.

115

"

8.-—" SHk and Purple "

»

•

.

116

e

•

0

.

.

Ill

.

113

PREFACE.

THE greater part of the following treatise remains m the exact
form in which it was read at Manchester; but the more familiar
passages of it, which were trusted to extempore delivery, have been
since written with greater explicitness and fulness than I could
give them in speaking; and a considerable number of notes are
added, to explain the points which could not be sufficiently considered in the time I had at my disposal in the lecture-room.
Some apology may be thought due to the reader, for an endeavour to engage his attention on a subject of which no profound
study seems compatible with the work in which I am usually employed.

But profound study is not, in this case, necessary either

to writer or reader, while accurate study, up to a certain point, is
necessary for us all.

Political economy means, in plain English,

nothing more than "citizens' economy;" and its first principles
ought, therefore, to be understood by all who mean to take the
responsibility of citizens, as those of household economy by all
who take the responsibility of householders.

Nor are its first

principles in the least obscure: they are, many of them, disagreeable

Viii

PREFACE.

in their practical requirements, and people in general pretend that
they cannot understand, because they are unwilling to obey them ;
or rather, by habitual disobedience, destroy their capacity of understanding them.

But there is not one of the really great prin-

ciples of the science which is either obscure or disputable—which
might not be taught to a youth as soon as he can be trusted with
an annual allowance, or to a young lady as soon as she is of age to
be taken into counsel by the housekeeper.
I might, with more appearance of justice, be blamed for thinking it necessary to enforce what everybody is supposed to know.
But this fault will hardly be found with me, while the commercial
events recorded daily in our journals, and still more the explanations attempted to be given of them, show that a large number of
our so-called merchants are as ignorant of the nature of money as
they are reckless, unjust, and unfortunate in its employment.
The statements of economical principle given in the text, though
I know that most, if not all, of them are accepted by existing authorities on the science, are not supported by references, because I
have never read any author on political economy, except Adam
Smith, twenty years ago. "Whenever I have taken up any modern
book upon this subject, I have usually found it encumbered with
inquiries into accidental or minor commercial results, for the pursuit
of which an ordinary reader could have no leisure, and, by the
complication of which, it seemed to me, the authors themselves had
been not unfrequently prevented from seeing to the root of the
business.

PREFACE.

IX

Finally, if the reader should feel inclined to blame me for too
sanguine a statement of future possibilities in political practice, let
him consider how absurd it would have appeared in the days of
Edward I. if the present state of social economy had been then
predicted as necessary, or even described as possible.

And I be-

lieve the advance from the days of Edward I. to our own, great as
it is confessedly, consists, not so much in what we have actually
accomplished, as in what we are now enabled to conceive.

POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART.

LECTURE L
AMONG the various characteristics of the age in which we live,
as compared with other ages of this not yet very experienced
world, one of the most notable appears to me to be the just
and wholesome contempt in which we hold poverty. I repeat, the
just and wholesome contempt; though I see that some of my hearers look surprised at the expression. I assure them, I use it in
sincerity; and I should not have ventured to ask you to listen
to rne this evening, unless I had entertained a profound respect
for wealth—true wealth, that is to say; for, of course, we ought
to respect neither wealth nor anything else that is false of its
kind: and the distinction between real and false wealth is one
of the points on which I shall have a few words presently to
say to you. But true wealth I hold, as I said, in great honour;
and sympathize, for the most part, with that extraordinary feeling of the present age which publicly pays this honour to riches.
I cannot, however, help noticing how extraordinary it is, and how
this epoch of ours differs from all bygone epochs in having no
philosophical nor religious worshippers of the ragged godship of
poverty. In the classical ages, not only were there people who
vo'untarily lived in tubs, and who used gravely to maintain the
superiority of tub-life to town-life, but the Greeks and Latins

12

POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART.

[ L E C T . I.

seem to have looked on these eccentric, and I do not scruple
to say, absurd people, with as much respect as we do upon large
capitalists and landed proprietors; so that really, in those days, no
on^ could be described as purse proud, but only as empty-purse
proud. And no less distinct than the honour which those curious
Greek people pay to their conceited poor, is the disrespectful manner in which they speak of the rich; so that one cannot listen
long either to them, or to the Roman writers who imitated them,
without finding oneself entangled in all sorts of plausible absurdities ; hard upon being convinced of the uselessness of collecting
that heavy yellow substance which we call gold, and led generally
to doubt all the most established maxims of political economy. Nor
are matters much better in the middle ages. For the Greeks and
Romans contented themselves with mocking at rich people, and
constructing merry dialogues between Charon and Diogenes or
Menippus, in which the ferrymen and the cynic rejoiced together
as they saw kings and rich men coming down to the shore of
Acheron, in lamenting and lamentable crowds, casting their
crowns into the dark waters, and searching, sometimes in vain, for
the last coin out of all their treasures that could ever be of use to
them. But these Pagan views of the matter were indulgent,
compared with those which were held in the middle ages
when wealth seems to have been looked upon by the best of men
not only as contemptible, but as criminal. The purse round the
neck is, then, one of the principal signs of condemnation in the
pictured inferno; and the Spirit of Poverty is reverenced with
subjection of heart, and faithfulness of affection, like that of a
loyal knight for his lady, or a loyal subject for his queen.
And truly, it requires some boldness to quit ourselves of these
feelings, and to confess their partiality or their error, which,
nevertheless, we are certainly bound to do. For wealth is simply
one of the greatest powers which can be entrusted to human
hands: a power, not indeed to be envied, because it seldom

LECT. I.]

POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART.

13

makes us happy; but still less to be abdicated or despised;
while, in these days, and in this country, it has become a
power all the more notable, in that the possessions of a rich man
are not represented, as they used to be, by wedges of gold or
coffers of jewels, but by masses of men variously employed, over
whose bodies and minds the wealth, according to its direction,
exercises harmful or helpful influence, and becomes, in that alternative. Mammon either of Unrighteousness or of Righteousness.
Now, it seemed to me that since, in the name you have given
to this great gathering of British pictures, you recognise them as
Treasures—that is, I suppose, as part and parcel of the real wealth
of the country-—you might not be uninterested in tracing certain
commercial questions connected with this particular form of
wealth. Most persons express themselves as surprised at its
quantity; not having known before to what an extent good art
had been accumulated in England: and it will, therefore, I should
think, be held a worthy subject of consideration, what are the
political interests involved in such accumulations; what kind of
labour they represent, and how this labour may in general be
applied and economized, so as to produce the richest results.
Now, you must have patience with me, if in approaching the
specialty of this subject, I dwell a little on certain points of
general political science already known or established : for though
thus, as I believe, established, some which I shall have occasion to
rest arguments on are not yet by any means universally accepted ;
and therefore, though I will not lose time in any detailed defence
of them, it is necessary that I should distinctly tell you in what
form I receive, and wish to argue from them; and this the more,
because there may perhaps be a part of my audience who have
not interested themselves in political economy, as it bears on
ordinary fields of labour, but may yet wish to hear in what»way
its principles can be applied to Art. I shall, therefore, take leave
to trespass on your patience with a few elementary statements in

14

TCLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART.

[LECT. I.

the outset, and with the expression of some general principles,
here and there, in the course of our particular inquiry.
To begin, then, with one of these necessary truisms: all
economy, whether of states, households, or individuals, may be
defined to be the art of managing labour. The world is so regulated by the laws of Providence, that a man's labour, well applied,
is always amply sufficient to provide him during his life with all
things needful to him, and not only with those, but with many
pleasant objects of luxury; and yet farther, to procure him large
intervals of healthful rest and serviceable leisure. And a nation's
labour, well applied, is in like manner amply sufficient to provide
its whole population with good food and comfortable habitation;
and not with those only, but with good education besides, and
objects of luxury, art treasures, such as these you have around you
now. But by those same laws of Nature and Providence, if the
labour of the nation or of the individual be misapplied, and much
more if it be insufficient,—if the nation or man be indolent and
unwise,—suffering and want result, exactly in proportion to the
indolence and improvidence,—r-to the refusal of labour, or to the
misapplication of it. Wherever you see want, or misery, or degradation, in this world about you, there, be sure, either industry has
been wanting, or industry has been in error. It is not accident, it
is not Heaven-commanded calamity, it is not the original and inevitable evil of man's nature, which fill your streets with lamentation, and your graves with prey. It is only that, when there
should have been providence, there has been waste; when there
should have been labour, there has been lasciviousness; and wilfulness, when there should have been subordination.1
Now, we have warped the word " economy" in our English
language into a meaning which it has no business whatever to
beara In our use of it, it constantly signifies merely sparing or
1

Prot erbs xiii. 23, " Much food is in the tillage of the poor, but there is
that is destroyed for want of judgment."

LECT. I.J

POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART.

15

saving; economy of money means saving money—economy of
time, sparing time, and so on. But that is a wholly barbarous use
of the word—barbarous in a double sense, for it is not English,
and it is bad Greek; barbarous in a treble sense, for it is not
English, it is bad Greek, and it is worse sense. Economy no more
means saving money than it means spending money. It means,
the administration of a house; its stewardship; spending or saving
that is, whether money or time, or anything else, to the best possible advantage. In the simplest and clearest definition of it,
economy, whether public or private, means the wise management
of labour; and it means this mainly in three senses : namely, first,
applying your labour rationally; secondly, preserving its produce
carefully; lastly, distributing its produce seasonably.
I say first, applying your labour rationally ; that is, so as to obtain the most precious things you can, and the most lasting things,
by i t : not growing oats in land where you can grow wheat, nor
putting fine embroidery on a stuff that will not wear. Secondly,
preserving its produce carefully; that is to say, laying up your
wheat wisely in storehouses for the time of famine, and keeping
your embroidery watchfully from the moth ; and lastly, distributing its produce seasonably; that is to say, being able to carry your
corn at once to the place where the people are hungry, and your
embroideries to the places where they are gay; so fulfilling in all
ways the Wise Man's description, whether of the queenly housewife or queenly nation: " She riseth while it is yet night, and
giveth meat to her household, and a portion to her maidens. She
maketh herself coverings of tapestry, her clothing is silk and purple. Strength and honour are in her clothing, and she shall
rejoice in time to come."
Now, you will observe that in this description of the perfect
economist, or mistress of a household, there is a studied expression of the balanced division of her care between the two great
objects of utility and splendour; in her right hand, food and flax,

16

POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART.

[LECT. 1

for life and clothing; in her left hand, the purple and the needlework, for honour and for beauty. All perfect housewifery or
national economy is known by these two divisions; wherever
either is wanting, the economy is imperfect. If the motive of pomp
prevails, and the care of the national economist is directed only to
the accumulation of gold, and of pictures, and of silk and marble,
you know at once that the time must soon come when all these
treasures shall be scattered and blasted in national ruin. If, on
the contrary, the element of utility prevails, and the nation disdains to occupy itself in any wise with the arts of beauty or
delight, not only a certain quantity of its energy calculated for
exercise in those arts alone must be entirely wasted, which is bad
economy, but also the passions connected with the utilities of property become morbidly strong, and a mean lust of accumulation,
merely for the sake of accumulation, or even of labour, merely for
the sake of labour, will banish at least the serenity and the morality
of life, as completely, and perhaps more ignobly, than even the lavishness of pride, and the lightness of pleasure. And similarly, and
much more visibly, in private and household economy, you may
judge always of its perfectness by its fair balance between the use
and the pleasure of its possessions. You will see the wise cottager's
garden trimly divided between its well-set vegetables, and its fragrant
flowers; you will see the good housewife taking pride in her pretty
table-cloth, and her glittering shelves, no less than in her welldressed dish, and her full storeroom; the care in her countenance
will alternate with gaiety; and though you will reverence her in
her seriousness, you will know her best by her smile.
Now, as you will have anticipated, I am going to address you,
on this and our succeeding evening, chiefly on the subject of that
economy which relates rather to the garden than the farm-yard.
I shall ask you to consider with me the kind of laws by which we
shall best distribute the beds of our national garden, and raise in it
the sweetest succession of trees pleasant to the sight, and (in no

LEO?. I.]

POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART.

17

forbidden sense) to be desired to make us wise. Bat, Dtfore proceediig to open this specialty of our subject, let me pause for a few
moments to plead with you for the acceptance of that principle of
government or authority which must be at the root of all economy,
whethei for use or for pleasure. I said, a few minutes ago, that a
nation's labour, well applied, was amply sufficient to provide its
whole population with good food, comfortable clothing, and pleasant
luxury. But the good, instant, and constant application is everything. We must not, when our strong hands are thrown out of
work, loot wildly about for want of something to do with them.
If ever we feel that want, it is a sign that all our household is out
of order. Fancy a farmer's wife, to wrhom one or two of her servants should come at twelve o'clock at noon, crying that they had
got nothing to do; that they did not know what to do next: and
fancy still farther, the said farmer's wife looking hopelessly about
her rooms and yard, they being all the while considerably in disorder, not knowing where to set the spare hand-maidens to work,
and at last complaining bitterly that she had been obliged to give
them their dinner for nothing. That's the type of the kind of
political economy we practise too often in England. Would you
not at once assert of such a mistress that she knew nothing of her
duties ? and would you not be certain, if the household were
rightly managed, the mistress would be only too glad at any moment to have the help of any number of spare hands; that she
woula know in an instant what to set them to;—in an instant what
part of to-morrow's work might be most serviceably forwarded,
what part of next month's work most wisely provided for, or what
new task of some profitable kind undertaken ? and when the evening came, and she dismissed her servants to their recreation or
their rest or gathered them to the reading round the work-table,
under the 3aves in the sunset, would you not be sure to find that
none of tham had been overtasked by her, just because none had
been left idle \ that everything had been accomplished because all

J8

POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART.

[LECT. 1,

had been employed; that the kindness of the mistress had aided
her presence of mind, and the slight labour had been entrusted to
the weak, and the formidable to the strong; and that as mne had
been dishonoured by inactivity, so none had been broken by toil ?
Now, the precise counterpart of such a household "vould be
seen in a nation in which political economy was righiy understood. You complain of the difficulty of finding wort for your
men. Depend upon it the real difficulty rather is to fird men for
your work. The serious question for you is not how many you
have to feed, but how much you have to do ; it is OUT inactivity,
not our hunger, that ruins us : let us never fear that our servants
should have a good appetite—our wealth is in their strength, not
in their starvation. Look around this island of yours, and see
what you have to do in it. The sea roars against your harbourless cliffs—you have to build the breakwater, and dig the port of
refuge; the unclean pestilence ravins in your streets—you have to
bring the full stream from the hills, and to send the free winds
through the thoroughfare ; the famine blanches your lips and eats
away your flesh—you have to dig the moor and dry the marsh, to
bid the morass give forth instead of engulphing, and to wring the
honey and oil out of the rock. These things, and thousands such,
we have to do, and shall have to do constantly, on this great farm
of ours; for do not suppose that it is anything else than that.
Precisely the same laws of economy which apply to the cultivation of a farm or an estate apply to the cultivation of a province
or of an island. Whatever rebuke you would address to the improvident master of an ill-managed patrimony, precisely that rebuke we should address to ourselves, so far as we leave our population in idleness and our country in disorder. What "vould you
say to the lord of an estate who complained to you of his poverty
and disabilities, and, when you pointed out to him ttat his land
was half of it overrun with weeds, and that his fences were all in
ruin, and that his cattle-sheds were roofless, and his labourers ly«

J-^CT. I.]

POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART.

19

ing under the hedges faint for want of food, he answered to you
that it would ruin him to weed his land or to roof his sheds—•
that those were too costly operations for him to undertake, and
that he knew not how to feed his labourers nor pay them? "Would
you not instantly answer, that instead of ruining him to weed his
fields, it would save him; that his inactivity was his destruction,
and that to set his labourers to work was to feed them ? Now,
you may add acre to acre, and estate to estate, as far as you like,
but you will never reach a compass of ground which shall escape
from the authority of these simple laws. The principles which
are right in the administration of a few fields, are right also in the
administration of a great country from horizon to horizon : idleness does not cease to be ruinous because it is extensive, nor labour
to be productive because it is universal.
Nay, but you reply, there is one vast difference between the
nation's economy and the private man's : the farmer has full authority over his labourers; he can direct them to do what is
needed to be done, whether they like it or not; and he can turn
them away if they refuse to work, or impede others in their
working, or are disobedient, or quarrelsome. There is this great
difference; it is precisely this difference on which I wish to fix
your attention, for it is precisely this difference which you have to
do away with. We know the necessity of authority in farm, or
in fleet, or in army ; but we commonly refuse to admit it in the
body of the nation. Let us consider this point a little.
In the various awkward and unfortunate efforts which the
French have made at the development of a social system, they
have at least stated one true principle, that of fraternity or brotherhood. Do not be alarmed; they got all wrong in their experiments, because they quite forgot that this fact of fraternity implied
another fact quite as important—that of paternity, or fatherhood.
That is to say, if they were to regard the nation as one family,
the condition of unity in that family consisted no less in their hav-

20

POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART.

[LECT. I.

ing a head, or a father, than in their being faithful and affectionate members, or brothers. But we must not forget this, for we
have long confessed it with our lips, though we refuse to confess
it in our lives. For half an hour every Sunday we expect a
man in a black gown, supposed to be telling us truth, to address
us as brethren, though we should be shocked at the notion of any
brotherhood existing among us out of church. And we can
hardly read a few sentences on any political subject without running a chance of crossing the phrase " paternal government,"
though we should be utterly horror-struck at the idea of governments claiming anything like a father's authority over us. Now,
I believe those two formal phrases are in both instances perfectly
binding and accurate, and that the image of the farm and its servants which I have hitherto used, as expressing a wholesome
national organization, fails only of doing so, not because it is too
domestic, but because it is not domestic enough ; because the real
type of a well-organized nation must be presented, not by a farm
cultivated by servants who wrought for hire, and might be turned
away if they refused to labour, but by a farm in which the master
was a father, and in which all the servants were sons; which implied, therefore, in all its regulations, not merely the order of expediency, but the bonds of affection and responsibilities of relationship ; and in which all acts and services were not only to be sweetened by brotherly concord, but to be encfored by fatherly authority.1
Observe, I do not mean in the least that we ought to place such
an authority in the hands of any one person, or of any class, or
body of persons. But I do mean to say that as an individual who
conducts himself wisely must make laws for himself which at
some time or other may appear irksome or injurious, but which,
precisely at the time they appear most irksome, it is most necessary he should obey, so a nation which means to conduct itself
1

See note 1st, in Addenda,

LECT. I."]

POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART.

21

wisely, must establish authority over itself, vested either in kings,
councils, or laws, which it must resolve to obey, even at times
when the law or authority appears irksome to the body of the
people, or injurious to certain masses of it. And this kind of
national law has hitherto been only judicial; contented, that is,
with an endeavour to prevent and punish violence and crime; but,
as we advance in our social knowledge, we shall endeavour to
make our government paternal as well as judicial; that is, to
establish such laws and authorities as may at once direct us in our
occupations, protect us against our follies, and visit us in our distresses : a government which shall repress dishonesty, as now it
punishes theft; which shall show how the discipline of the masses
may be brought to aid the toils of peace, as discipline of the masses
has hitherto knit the sinews of battle ; a government which shall
have its soldiers of the ploughshare as well as its soldiers of the
sword, and which shall distribute more proudly its golden crosses
of industry—golden as the glow of the harvest, than now it grants
its bronze crosses of honour—bronzed with the crimson of blood.
I have not, of course, time to insist on the nature or details of
government of this kind; only I wish to plead for your several
and future consideration of this one truth, that the notion of
Discipline and Interference lies at the very root of all human progress or power; that the " Let alone" principle is, in all things
which man has to do with, the principle of death ; that it is ruin
to him, certain and total, if he lets his land alone—if he lets his
fellow-men alone—if he lets his own soul alone. That his whole
life, on the contrary, must, if it is healthy life, be continually one
of ploughing and pruning, rebuking and helping, governing and
punishing; and that therefore it is only in the concession of some
great principle of restraint and interference in national action that
he can ever hope to find the secret of protection against national
degradation. I believe that the masses have a right to claim education from their government; but only so far as they acknow-

22

POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART.

[LECT. I,

ledge the duty of yielding obedience to their government. I
believe they have a right to claim employment from their govern*
ors; but only so far as they yield to the governor the direction
and discipline of their labour; and it is only so far as they grant
to the men whom they may set over them the father's authority
to check the childishness of national fancy, and direct the waywardness of national energy, that they have a right to ask that
none of their distresses should be unrelieved, none of their weaknesses unwatched; and that no grief, nor nakedness, nor peril
should exist for them, against which the father's hand was not
outstretched, or the father's shield uplifted.1
Now, I have pressed this upon you at more length than is needful or proportioned to our present purposes of inquiry, because I
would not for the first time speak to you on this subject of political economy without clearly stating what I believe to be its
first grand principle. But its bearing on the matter in hand is
chiefly to prevent you from at once too violently dissenting
from me when what I may state to you as advisable economy
in art appears to imply too much restraint or interference with the
freedom of the patron or artist. We are a little apt, though on
1

Compare Wordsworth's Essay on the Poor-Law Amendment Bill. I
quote one important passage:—But, if it be not safe to touch the abstract
question of man's right in a social state to help himself even in the last extremity, may we not still contend for the duty of a Christian government,
standing in loco parentis towards all its subjects, to make such effectual provision that no one shall be in danger of perishing either through the neglect or
harshness of its legislation ? Or, waiving this, is it not indisputable that the
claim of the State to the allegiance, involves the protection of the subject ?
And, as all rights in one party impose a correlative duty upon another, it follows that the right of the State to require the services of its members, even
to the jeoparding of their lives in the common defence, establishes a right in
the people (not to be gainsaid by utilitarians and economists) to public support when, from any cause, they may be unable to support themselves."—'
(See note 2nd, in Addenda.)

LECT. I.]

POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART*

23

the whole a prudent nation, to act too immediately on our
impulses, even in matters merely commercial; much more in
those involving continual appeals to our fancies. How far, therefore, the proposed systems or restraints may be advisable, it is for
you to judge; only I pray you not to be offended with them
merely because they are systems and restraints. Do you at all
recollect that interesting passage of Carlyle, in which he compares, in this country and at this day, the understood and
commercial value of man and horse; and in which he wonders
that the horse, with its inferior brains and its awkward hooflness,
instead of handiness, should be always worth so many tens or
scores of pounds in the market, while the man, so far from always
commanding his price in the market, would often be thought to
confer a service on the community by simply killing himself out
of their way? Well, Carlyle does not answer his own question,
because he supposes we shall at once see the answer. The value
of the horse consists simply in the fact of your being able to put
a bridle on him. The value of the man consists precisely in the
same thing. If you can bridle him, or which is better, if he can
bridle himself he will be a valuable creature directly. Otherwise,
in a commercial point of view, his value is either nothing, or accidental only. Only, of course, the proper bridle of man is not a
leathern one; what kind of texture it is rightly made of, we find
from that command, " B e ye not as the horse or as the mule
which have no understanding, whose mouths must be held in
with bit and bridle." You are not to be without the reins,
indeed; but they are to be of another kind; " I will guide thee
with mine Eye." So the bridle of man is to be the Eye of God;
aud if he rejects that guidance, then the next best for him is the
horse's and the mule's, which have no understanding; and if
he rejects that, and takes the bit fairly in his teeth, then there
is nothing more left for him than the blood that comes out of the
city, up to the horsebridles.

24

POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART.

[LECT. I,

Quitting, however, at last these general and serious laws of
government—or rather bringing them clown to our own business
in hand—we have to consider three points of discipline in that
particular branch of human labour which is concerned, not with
procuring of food, but the expression of emotion; we have to
consider respecting art; first, how to apply our labour to it; then,
how to accumulate or preserve the results of labour; and then,
how to distribute them. But since in art the labour which we
have to employ is the labour of a particular class of men—men
who have special genius for the business, we have not only
to consider how to apply the labour, but first of all how to
produce the labourer; and thus the question in this particular case becomes fourfold: first, how to get your man of
genius; then, how to employ your man of genius; then, how
to accumulate and preserve his work in the greatest quantity;
and lastly, how to distribute his work to the best national advantage. Let us take up these questions in succession.
I. DISCOVERY.—How are we to get our men of genius: that is
to say, by what means may we produce among us, at any given
time, the greatest quantity of effective art-intellect ? A wide question, you say, involving an account of all the best means of art
education. Yes, but I do not mean to go into the consideration of
those ; I want only to state the few principles which lie at the
foundation of the matter. Of these, the first is that you have
always to find your artist, not to make him; you can't manufacture
him, any more than you can manufacture gold. You can find
him, and refine him : you dig him out as he lies nugget-fashion in
the mountain-stream; you bring him home; and you make him
into current coin, or household plate, but not one grain of him can
you originally produce. A certain quantity of art-intellect is born
annually in every nation, greater or less according to the nature
and cultivation of the nation, or race of men ; but a perfectly fixed

LECT. I.]

I. DISCOVERY.

25

quantity annually, not increasable by one grain. You may lose
it, or you may gather it; you may let it lie loose in the ravine,
and buried in the sands, or you may make kings' thrones of it, and
overlay temple gates with it, as you choose ; but the best you can
do with it is always merely sifting, melting, hammering, purifying
—never creating. And there is another thing notable about this
artistical gold; not only is it limited in quantity, but in use. You
need not make thrones or golden gates with it unless you like, but
assuredly you can't do anything else with it. You can't make
knives of it, nor armour, nor railroads. The gold won't cut you,
and it won't carry you: put it to a mechanical use, and you destroy
it at once. It is quite true that in the greatest artists, their proper
artistical faculty is united with every other; and you may make
use of the other faculties, and let the artistical one lie dormant.
For aught I know there may be two or three Leonardo da Yineis
employed at this moment in your harbours and railroads: but you
are not employing their Leonardesque or golden faculty there, you
are only oppressing and destroying it. And the artistical gift in
average men is not joined with others; your born painter, if you
don't make a painter of him, won't be a first-rate merchant, or
lawyer; at all events, whatever he turns out, his own special gift
is unemployed by you ; and in no wise helps him in that other
business. So here you have a certain quantity of a particular sort
of intelligence, produced for you annually by providential laws,
which you can only make use of by setting it to its own proper
work, and which any attempt to use otherwise involves the
dead loss of so much human energy. Well then, supposing we
wish to employ it, how is it to be best discovered and refined. It is easily enough discovered. To wish to employ
it is to discover it. All that you need is, a school of trial1 in
every important town, in which those idle farmers' lads whom
their masters never can keep out of mischief, and those stupid
1

See note 3d, in Addenda.
2

20

POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART.

|~LECT. 1

tailors' 'prentices who are always stitching the sleeves in wrong
way upwards, may have a try at this other trade; only this school
of trial must not be entirely regulated by formal laws of art
education, but must ultimately be the workshop of a good master
painter, who will try the lads with one kind of art and another,
till he finds out what they are fit for. Next, after your trial
school, you want your easy and secure employment, which is the
matter of chief importance. For, even on the present system, the
boys who have really intense art capacity, generally make painters
of themselves; but then, the best half of their early energy is
lost in the battle of life. Before a good painter can get employment, his mind has always been embittered, and his genius distorted. A common mind usually stoops, in plastic chill, to whatever is asked of it, and scrapes or daubs its way complacently into
public favour.1 But your great men quarrel with you, and you
revenge yourselves by starving them for the first half of theii
lives. Precisely in the degree in which any painter possesses
original genius, is at present the increase of moral certainty that
during his early years he will have a hard battle to fight; and
that just at the time when his conceptions ought to be full and
happy, his temper gentle, and his hopes enthusiastic—just at that
most critical period, his heart is full of anxieties and household
cares; he is chilled by disappointments, and vexed by injustice;
he becomes obstinate in his errors, no less than in his virtues,
and the arrows of his aims are blunted, as the reeds of his trust
are broken.
What we mainly want, therefore, is a means of sufficient and
unagitated employment: not holding out great prizes for which
young painters are to scramble ; but furnishing all with adequate
support, and opportunity to display such power as they possess
without rejection or mortification. I need not say that the best
2

See note 4th, in Addenda.

LECT. I.J

I. DISCOVERY.

27

field of labour of this kind would be presented by the constant
progress of public works involving various decorations; and we
will presently examine what kind of public works may thus, advantageously for the nation, be in constant progress. But a more
important matter even than this of steady employment, is the
kind of criticism with which you, the public, receive the works of
the young men submitted to you. ( You may do much harm by
indiscreet praise and by indiscreet blame; but remember, the
chief harm is always done by blame. It stands to reason that a
young man's work cannot be perfect. It must be more or less
ignorant; it must be more or less feeble; it is likely that it may
be more or less experimental, and if experimental, here and there
mistaken. If, therefore, you allow yourself to launch out into
sudden barking at the first faults you see, the probability is that
you are abusing the youth for some defect naturally and inevitably
belonging to that stage of his progress ; and that you might just
as rationally find fault with a child for not being as prudent as a
privy councillor, or with a kitten for not being as grave as a cat.
But there is one fault which you may be quite sure is unnecessary,
and therefore a real and blameable fault: that is haste, involving
negligence. "Whenever you see that a young man's work is either
bold or slovenly, then you may attack it firmly; sure of being
right. If his work is bold, it is insolent; repress his insolence :
if it is slovenly, it is indolent; repress his indolence. So long as
he works in that dashing or impetuous way, the best hope for him
is in your contempt: and it is only by the fact of his seeming not
to seek your approbation that you may conjecture he deserves it. >
But if he does deserve it, be sure that you give it him, else you
not only run a chance of driving him from the right road by want
of encouragement, but you deprive yourselves of the happiest privilege you will ever have of rewarding his labour. For it is only
the young who can receive much reward from men's praise : the
old: when they are great, get too far beyond and above you to

28

POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART.

[LPJCT. I

care what you think of them. You may urge them then with
sympathy, and surround them then with acclamation ; but they
will doubt your pleasure, and despise your praise. You might
have cheered them in their race through the asphodel meadows
of their youth ; you might have brought the proud, bright scarlet
into their faces, if you had but cried once to them " Well done,"
as they dashed up to the first goal of their early ambition. But
now, their pleasure is in memory, and their ambition is in heaven.
They can be kind to you, but you never more can be kind to
them. You may be fed with the fruit and fulness of their old
age, but you were as the nipping blight to them in their blossoming, and your praise is only as the warm winds of autumn to the
dying branches.
There is one thought still, the saddest of all, bearing on this
withholding of early help. It is possible, in some noble natures,
that the warmth and the affections of childhood may remain unchilled, though unanswered; and that the old man's heart may
still be capable of gladness, when the long-withheld sympathy is
given at last. But in these noble natures it nearly always happens, that the chief motive of earthly ambition has not been to
give delight to themselves, but to their parents. Every noble
youth looks back, as to the chiefest joy which this world's honour
ever gave him, to the moment when first he saw his father's eyes
flash with pride, and his mother turn away her head, lest ho
should take her tears for tears of sorrow. Even the lover's joy,
when some worthiness of his is acknowledged before his mistress,
is not so great as that, for it is not so pure—the desire to exalt
himself in her eyes mixes with that of giving her delight; but he
does not need to exalt himself in his parents' eyes : it is with the
pure hope of giving them pleasure that he comes to tell them
what he has done, or what has been said of him ; and therefore
he has a purer pleasure of his own. And this purest and best of
rewards you keep from him if you can: you feed him in his

LECT. I.]

I. DISCOVERY.

29

tender youth with ashes and dishonour; and theL you come to
him, obsequious, but too late, with your sharp laurel crown, the
dew all dried from off its leaves; and you thrust it into his languid
hand, and he looks at you wistfully. What shall he do with it ?
What can he do, but go and lay it on his mother's grave ?
Thus, then, you see that you have to provide for your young
men: first, the searching or discovering school; then the calm
employment; then the justice of praise : one thing more you have
to do for them in preparing them for full service—namely, to
make, in the noble sense of the word, gentlemen of them; that is
to say, to take care that their minds receive such training, that in
all they paint they shall see and feel the noblest things. I am
sorry to say, that of all parts of an artist's education this is the
most neglected among us ; and that even where the natural taste
and feeling of the youth have been pure and true, where there
was the right stuff in him to make a gentleman of, you may too
frequently discern some jarring rents in his mind, and elements of
degradation in his treatment of subject, owing to want of gentle
training, and of the liberal influence of literature. This is quite
visible in our greatest artists, even in men like Turner and Gainsborough ; while in the common grade of our second-rate painters
the evil attains a pitch which is far too sadly manifest to need my
dwelling upon it. Now, no branch of art economy is more important than that of making the intellect at your disposal pure as
well as powerful; so that it may always gather for you the sweetest and fairest things. The same quantity of labour from the same
man's hand, will, according as you have trained him, produce a
lovely and useful work, or a base and hurtful one; and depend
upon it, whatever value it may possess, by reason of the painter's
skill, its chief and final value, to any nation, depends upon its
being able to exalt and refine, as well as to please; and that the
picture which most truly deserves the name of an art-treasure, is
that which has been painted by a good man.

30

POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART.

[LECT. 1.

You cannot but see how far this would lead, if I were to
enlarge upon it. I must take it up as a separate subject some
other time: only noticing at present that no money could be
better spent by a nation than in providing a liberal and disciplined education for its painters, as they advance into the critical
period of their youth ; and that also, a large part of their power
during life depends upon the kind of subjects which you, the public, ask them for, and therefore the kind of thoughts with which
you require them to be habitually familiar. I shall have more to
say on this head when we come to consider what employment
they should have in public buildings.
There are many other points of nearly as much importance as
these, to be explained with reference to the development of
genius; but I should have to ask you to come and hear six lectures instead of two if I were to go into their detail. For instance, I have not spoken of the way in which you ought to look
for those artificers in various manual trades, who, without possessing the order of genius which you would desire to devote to
higher purposes, yet possess wit, and humour, and sense of colour,
and fancy for form—all commercially valuable as quantities of
intellect, and all more or less expressible in the lower arts of ironwork, pottery, decorative sculpture, and such like. But these
details, interesting as they are, I must commend to your own consideration, or leave for some future inquiry. I want just now
only to set the bearings of the entire subject broadly before you,
with enough of detailed illustration to make it intelligible ; and
therefore I must quit the first head of it here, and pass to the
second, namely, how best to employ the genius we discover. A
certain quantity of able hands and heads being placed at our disposal, what shall we most advisably set them upon ?
II. APPLICATION.—There are three main points the economist
has to attend to in this.

LECT. I.]

II. APPLICATION.

31

First, To set his men to various work.
Secondly, To easy work.
Thirdly, to lasting work.
I shall briefly touch on the first two, for I want to arrest your
attention on the last.
I say first, to various work. Supposing you have two men of
equal power as landscape painters—and both of them have an
hour at your disposal. You would not set them both to paint the
same piece of landscape. You would, of course, rather have two
subjects than a repetition of one.
Well, supposing them sculptors, will not the same rule hold?
You naturally conclude at once that it will; but you will have
hard work to convince your modern architects of that. They
will put twenty men to work, to carve twenty capitals; and all
shall be the same. If I could show you the architects' yards in
England just now, all open at once, perhaps you might see a
thousand clever men, all employed in carving the same design.
Of the degradation and deathfulness to the art-intellect of the
country involved in such a habit, I have more or less been led to
speak before now; but I have not hitherto marked its definite
tendency to increase the price of work, as such. When men are
employed continually in carving the same ornaments, they get
into a monotonous and methodical habit of labour—precisely correspondent to that in which they would break stones, or paint
house-walls. Of course, what they do so constantly, they do
easily; and if you excite them temporarily by an increase of
wages you may get much work done by them in a little time.
But, unless so stimulated, men condemned to a monotonous exertion, work—and always, by the laws of human nature, must
work—only at a tranquil rate, not producing by any means a
maximum result in a given time. But if you allow them to vary
their designs, and thus interest their heads and hearts in what
they are doing, you will find them become eager, first, to get their

32

POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART.

[LECT. T.

ideas expressed, and then to finish the expression of them; and
the mcral energy thus brought to bear on the matter quickens,
and therefore cheapens, the production in a most important
Aegree. Sir Thomas Deane, the architect of the new Museum at
Oxford, told me, as I passed through Oxford on my way here, that
he found that, owing to this cause alone, capitals of various design
could be executed cheaper than capitals of similar design (the
amount of hand labour in each being the same) bj about 30 pei
cent.
Well, that is the first way, then, in which you will employ your
intellect well; and the simple observance of this plain rule of political economy will effect a noble revolution in your architecture,
such as you cannot at present so much as conceive. Then the
second way in which we are to guard against waste is by setting
our men to the easiest, and therefore the quickest, work which
will answer the purpose. Marble, for instance, lasts quite as long
as granite, and is much softer to work; therefore, when you get
hold of a good sculptor, give him marble to carve—not granite.
That, you say, is obvious enough. Yes; but it is not so obvious
how much of your workmen's time you waste annually in making
them cut glass, after it has got hard, when you ought to make
them mould it while it is soft. It is not so obvious how much
expense you waste in cutting diamonds and rubies, which are the
hardest things you can find, into shapes that mean nothing, when
the same men might be cutting sandstone and freestone into
shapes that mean something. It is not so obvious how much of
the artists' time in Italy you waste, by forcing them to make
wretched little pictures for you out of crumbs of stone glued
together at enormous cost, when the tenth of the time would
make good and noble pictures for you out of water-colour. I
could go on giving you almost numberless instances of this great
commercial mistake; but I should only weary and confuse you.
I therefore commend also this head of our subject to your own

LECT. I.]

II. APPLICATION.

33

meditation, and proceed to the last I named—the last I shad task
your patience with to-night. You know we are now considering
how to apply our genius; and we were to do it as economists, in
three ways:—
To various work;
To easy work;
To lasting work.
This lasting of the work, then, is our final question.
Many of you may, perhaps, remember that Michael Angelo was
once commanded by Pietro di Medici to mould a statue out of
snow, and that he obeyed the command.* I am glad, and we
have all reason to be glad, that such a fancy ever came into the
mind of the unworthy prince, and for this cause: that Pietro di
Medici then gave, at the period of one great epoch of consummate power in the arts, the perfect, accurate, and intensest possible
type of the greatest error which nations and princes can commit,
respecting the power of genius entrusted to their guidance. You
had there, observe, the strongest genius in the most perfect obedience ; capable of iron independence, yet wholly submissive to the
patron's will; at once the most highly accomplished and the most
original, capable of doing as much as man could do, in any direction that man could ask. And its governor, and guide, and
patron sets it to build a statue in snow—to put itself into the service of annihilation—to make a cloud of itself, and pass away from
the earth.
Now this, so precisely and completely done by Pietro di Medici,
is what we are all doing, exnctly in the degree in which we direct
the genius under our patronage to work in more or less perishable materials. So far as we induce painters to work in fading
colours, or architects to build with imperfect structure, or in
any other way consult only immediate ease and cheapness in the
* See the noble passage on this tradition in " Oasa Guidi Windows,"
2

34

POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART.

[LECT. I

production of what we want, to the exclusion of provident thought
as to its permanence and serviceableness in after ages; so far we
are forcing our Michael Angelos to carve in snow. The first duty
of the economist in art is, to see that no intellect shall thus glitter
merely in the manner of hoar-frost; but that it shall be well vitrified, like a painted window, and shall be set so between shafts of
stone and bands of iron, that is shall bear the sunshine upon it,
and send the sunshine through it, from generation to generation.
] can conceive, however, some political economist to interrupt
me here, and say, " If you make your art wear too well, you will
soon have too much of it; you will throw your artists quite out of
work. Better allow for a little wholesome evanescence—beneficent destruction : let each age provide art for itself, or we shall
soon have so many good pictures that we shall not know what to
clo with them."
Remember, my dear hearers, who are thus thinking, that political economy, like every other subject, cannot be dealt with effectively if we try to solve two questions at a time instead of one. It
is one question, how to get plenty of a thing; and another,
whether plenty of it will be good for us. Consider these two
matters separately; never confuse yourself by interweaving one
with the other. It is one question, how to treat your fields so as
to get a good harvest; another, whether you wish to have a good
harvest, or would rather like to keep up the price of corn. It is
one question, how to graft your trees so as to grow most apples;
and quite another, whether having such a heap of apples in the
storeroom will not make them all rot.
Now, therefore, that we are talking only about grafting and
growing, pray do not vex yourselves with thinking what you are
to do with the pippins. It may be desirable for us to have much
art, or little—we will examine that by and by; but just now, let
us keep to the simple consideration how to get plenty of good art if
ive want it. Perhaps it might be just as well that a man of mode-

LECT. I.]

II. APPLICATION.

35

rate income should be able to possess a good picture, as that any
work of real merit should cost 500?. or 1000Z.; at all events, it
is certainly one of the branches of political economy to ascertain
how, if we like, we can get things in quantities—plenty of corn,
plenty of wine, plenty of gold, or plenty of pictures.
It has just been said, that the first great secret is to produce work
that will last. Now, the conditions of work lasting are twofold:
it must not only be in materials that will last, but it must be itself
of a quality that will last—it must be good enough to bear the test
of time. If it is not good, we shall tire of it quickly, and throw
it aside—we shall have no pleasure in the accumulation of it. So
that the first question of a good art-economist respecting any work
is, Will it lose its flavour by keeping ? It may be very amusing
now, and look much like a work of genius. But what will be its
value a hundred years hence ?
You cannot always ascertain this. You may get what you fancy
to be work of the best quality, and yet find to your astonishment
that it won't keep. But of one thing you may be sure, that art
which is produced hastily will also perish hastily; and that what
is cheapest to you now, is likely to be dearest in the end.
I am sorry to say, the great tendency of this age is to expend its
genius in perishable art of this kind, as if it were a triumph to
burn its thoughts away in bonfires. There is a vast quantity of
intellect and of labour consumed annually in our cheap illustrated
publications; you triumph in them ; and you think it so grand a
thing to get so many woodcuts for a penny. Why, woodcuts?
penny and all, are as much lost to you as if you had invested your
money in gossamer. More lost, for the gossamer could only tickle
your face, and glitter in your eyes; it could not catch your feet
and trip you up : but the bad art can, and does ; for you can't like
good woodcuts as long as you look at the bad ones. If we were
at this moment to come across a Titian woodcut, or a Durer woodcut, we should not like it—those of us at least who are accustomed

36

POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART.

[ L E C T . I.

to the cheap work of the day. We don't like, and can't like, that
long; but when we are tired of one bad cheap thing, we throw it
aside and buy another bad cheap thing ; and so keep looking at
bad things all our lives. Now, the very men who do all that quick
bad work for us are capable of doing perfect work. Only, perfect
work can't be hurried, and therefore it can't be cheap beyond a
certain point. But suppose you pay twelve times as much as you
do now, and you have one woodcut for a shilling instead of twelve;
and the one woodcut for a shilling is as good as art can be, so that
you will never tire of looking at it; and is struck on good paper
with good ink, so that you will never wear it out by handling i t ;
while you are sick of your penny each cuts by the end of the week
and have torn them mostly in half too. Isn't your shilling's worta
the best bargain ?
It is not, however, only in getting prints or woodcuts of the best
kind that you will practise economy. There is a certain quality
about an original drawing which you cannot get in a woodcut, and
the best part of the genius of any man is only expressible in original work, whether with pen and ink—pencil or colours. This is
not always the case; but in general the best men are those who
can only express themselves on paper or canvass: and you will,
therefore, in the long run, get most for your money by buying
original work; proceeding on the principle already laid down, that
the best is likely to be the cheapest in the end. Of course, original
work cannot be produced under a certain cost. If you want a
man to make you a drawing which takes him six days, you must,
at all events, keep him for six days in bread and water, fire and
lodging ; that is the lowest price at which he can do it for you, but
that is not very dear: and the best bargain which can possibly be
made honestly in art—the very ideal of a cheap purchase to the
purchaser—is the original work of a great man fed for as many
days as are necessary on bread and water, or perhaps we may say
with as many onions as will keep him in good humour. That is

LECT. I.J

II. APPLICATION.

37

the way by which you will always get most for your money; no
mechanical multiplication or ingenuity of commercial arrangements
will ever get you a better penny's worth of art than that.
Without, however, pushing our calculations quite to this prisondiscipline extreme, we may lay it down as a rule in art-economy,
that original work is, on the whole, cheapest and best worth having.
But precisely in proportion to the value of it as a production,
becomes the importance of having it executed in permanent materials. And here we come to note the second main error of the
day, that we not only ask our workmen for bad art, but we make
them put it into bad substance. "We have, for example, put a great
quantity of genius, within the last twenty years, into water-colour
drawing, and we have done this with the most reckless disregard
whether either the colours or the paper will stand. In most instances, neither will. By accident, it may happen that the colours in
a given drawing have been of good quality, and its paper uninjured
by chemical processes. But you take not the least care to ensure
these being so; I have myself seen the most destructive changes
take place in water-colour drawings within twenty years after they
were painted; and from all I can gather respecting the recklessness
of modern paper manufacture, my belief is, that though you may
still handle an Albert Durer engraving, two hundred years old,
fearlessly, not one-half of that time will have passed over your
modern water-colours, before most of them will be reduced to mere
white or brown rags; and your descendants, twitching them contemptuously into fragments between finger and thumb, will mutter
against you, half in scorn and half in anger, " Those wretched
nineteenth century people ! they kept vapouring and fuming about
the world, doing what they called business, and they couldn't make
a sheet of paper that wasn't rotten." And note that this is no
unimportant portion of your art economy at this time. Your
water-colour painters are becoming every day capable of expressing greater and better things; and their material is especially

38

POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART.

[LECT. I

adapted to the turn of your best artists' minds. The value which
you could accumulate in work of this kind would soon become a
most important item in the national art-wealth, if only you would
take the little pains necessary to secure its permanence. I am
inclined to think, myself, that water-colour ought not to be used
on paper at all, but only on vellum, and then, if properly taken
care of, the drawing would be almost imperishable. Still, paper is
a much more convenient material for rapid work; and it is an
infinite absurdity not to secure the goodness of its quality, when
we could do so without the slightest trouble. Among the many
favours which I am going to ask from our paternal government
when we get it, will be that it will supply its little boys with good
paper. You have nothing to do but to let the government establish a paper manufactory, under the superintendence of any of our
leading chemists, who should be answerable for the safety and
completeness of all the processes of the manufacture. The
government stamp on the corner of your sheet of drawing-paper,
made in the perfect way, should cost you a shilling, which would
add something to the revenue; and when you bought a watercolour drawing for fifty or a hundred guineas, you would have
merely to look in the corner for your stamp, and pay your extra
shilling for the security that your hundred guineas were given
really for a drawing, and not for a coloured rag. There need be
no monopoly or restriction in the matter; let the paper manufacturers compete with the government, and if people like to save
their shilling, and take their chance, let them; only, the artist and
purchaser might then be sure of good material, if they liked, and
now they cannot be.
I should like also to have a government colour manufactory;
though that is not so necessary, as the quality of colour is more
within the artist's power of testing, and I have no doubt that any
painter may get permanent colour from the respectable manufacturers, if he chooses. I will not attempt to follow the subject out

LECT. I.]

II. APPLICATION.

39

at all as it respects architecture, and our methods of modern
building; respecting which I have had occasion to speak before
now.
But I cannot pass without some brief notice our habit—continually, as it seems to me, gaining strength—of putting a large
quantity of thought and work, annually, into things which are
either in their nature necessarily perishable, as dress ; or else into
compliances with the fashion of the day, into things not necessarily
perishable, as plate. I am afraid almost the first idea of a young rich
couple setting up house in London, is, that they must have new
plate. Their father's plate may be very handsome, but the fashion
is changed. They will have a new service from the leading manufacturer, and the old plate, except a few apostle spoons, and a cup
which Charles the Second drank a health into their pretty ancestress, is sent to be melted down, and made up with new flourishes
and fresh lustre. Now, so long as this is the case—so long, observe, as fashion has influence on the manufacture of plate—so
long you cannot have a goldsmith's art in this country. Do you
suppose any workman worthy the name will put his brains into a
cup or an urn, which he knows is to go to the melting pot in half
a score years ? He will not; you don't ask or expect it of him.
You ask of him nothing but a little quick handicraft—a clever
twist of a handle here, and a foot there, a convolvulus from the
newest school of design, a pheasant from Landseer's game cards ;
a couple of sentimental figures for supporters, in the style of the
signs of insurance offices, then a clever touch with the burnisher,
and there's your epergne, the admiration of all the footmen at the
wedding-breakfast, and the torment of some unfortunate youth
who cannot see the pretty girl opposite to him, through its tyrannous branches.
But you don't suppose that thafs goldsmith's work? Goldsmith's work is made to last, and made with the men's whole
heart and soul in it; true goldsmith's work, when it exists, is

40

POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART.

[ L E C T . I.

generally the means of education of the greatest painters and
sculptors of the day.

Francia was a goldsmith ; Francia was not

his own name, but that of his master the jeweller; and he signed
his pictures almost always, " Francia, the goldsmith," for love of
his m a s t e r ; Ghirlandajo was a goldsmith, and was the master of
Michael Angelo ; Yerrocchio was a goldsmith, and was the master
of Leonardo da Yinci.

Ghiberti wTas a goldsmith, and beat out

the bronze gates which Michael Angelo said might serve for gates
of Paradise.*

B u t if ever you want work like theirs again, you

must keep it, though it should have the misfortune to become old
fashioned.

You must not break it up, nor melt it any more.

There is no economy in t h a t ; you could not easily waste intellect
more grievously.

Nature may melt her goldsmith's work at every

sunset if she chooses; and beat it out into chased bars ao;ain at
every sunrise ; but you must not.

T h e way to have a truly noble

service of plate, is to keep adding to it, not melting it.

A t every

marriage, and at every birth, get a new piece of gold or silver if
you will, but with noble workmanship on it, done for all time, and
put it among your treasures; that is one of the chief things wrhich
gold was made for, and made incorruptible for.

W h e n we know

a little more of political economy, we shall find that none but partially savage nations need, imperatively, gold for their currency ;2
but gold has been given us, among other things, that we might
put beautiful work into its imperishable splendour, and that the
1

Several reasons may account for the fact that g-oldsmith's work is so
wholesome for young artists; first, that it gives great firmness of hand to
deal for some time with a solid substance; again, that it induces caution and
steadiness—a boy trusted with chalk and paper suffers an immediate temptation to scrawl upon it and play with it, but he dares not scrawl on gold,
and he cannot play with it; and, lastly, that it gives great delicacy and precision of touch to work upon minute forms, and to aim at producing richness
and finish of design correspondent to the preciousness of the material.
2

See n ite in Addenda on the nature of property.

LECT. J.]

II. APPLICATION.

41

artists who have the most wilful fancies may have a material which
will drag out, and beat out, as their dreams require, and will hold
itself together with fantastic tenacity, whatever rare and delicate
service they set it upon.
So here is one branch of decorative art in which rich people
may indulge themselves unselfishly; if they ask for good art in it,
they may be sure in buying gold and silver plate that they are
enforcing useful education on young artists. But there is another
branch of decorative art in which I am sorry to say we cannot, at
least under existing circumstances, indulge ourselves, with the hope
of doing good to anybody, I mean the great and subtle art of dress.
And here I must interrupt the pursuit of our subject for a moment or two, in order to state one of the principles of political
economy, which, though it is, I believe, now sufficiently understood and asserted by the leading masters of the science, is not yet,
I grieve to say, acted upon by the plurality of those who have the
management of riches. Whenever we spend money, we of course
set people to work : that is the meaning of spending money ; we
may, indeed, lose it without employing anybody; but, whenever
we spend it, we set a number of people to work, greater or less,
of course, according to the rate of wages, but, in the long run,
proportioned to the sum we spend. Well, your shallow people,
because they see that however they spend money they are always
employing somebody, and, therefore, doing some good, think and
say to themselves, that it is all one how they spend it—that all
their apparently selfish luxury is, in reality, unselfish, and is doing
just as much good as if they gave all their money away, or perhaps more good ; and I have heard foolish people even declare it
as a principle of political economy, that whoever invented a new
want 1 conferred a good on the community. I have not words
strong enough—at least I could not, without shocking you, use
1

See note 5th in Addenda,

42

POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART.

[LECT. I.

the words which would be strong enough—to express my estimate
of the absurdity and the mischievousness of this popular fallacy.
So, putting a great restraint upon myself, and using no hard words,
I will simply try to state the nature of it, and the extent of its
influence.
Granted, that whenever we spend money for whatever purpose,
we set people to work; and passing by, for the moment, the
question whether the work we set them to is all equally healthy
and good for them, we will assume that whenever we spend a
guinea we provide an equal number of people with healthy maintenance for a given time. But, by the way in which we spend it,
we entirely direct the labour of those people during that given
time. We become their masters or mistresses, and we compel
them to produce, within a certain period, a certain article. Now,
that article may be a useful and lasting one, or it may be a useless
and perishable one—it may be one useful to the whole community,
or useful only to ourselves. And our selfishness and folly, or our
virtue and prudence, are shown, not by our spending money, but
by our spending it for the wrong or the right thing ; and we are wise
and kind, not in maintaining a certain number of people for a given
period, but only in requiring them to produce, during that period,
the kind of things which shall be useful to society, instead of those
which are only useful to ourselves.
Thus, for instance : if you are a young lady, and employ a certain number of sempstresses for a given time, in making a given
number of simple and serviceable dresses, suppose, seven; of which
you can wear one yourself for half the winter, and give six away
to poor girls who have none, you are spending your money unselfishly. But if you employ the same number of sempstresses for the
same number of days, in making four, or five, or six beautiful
flounces for your own ball-dress—flounces which will clothe no
one but yourself, and which you will yourself be unable to wear
at more than one ball—you are employing your money selfishly.

I.ECT. I.]

II. APPLICATION.

4J

You have maintained, indeed, in each case, the same number of
people; but in the one case you have directed their labour to the
service of the community; in the other case you have consumed
it wholly upon yourself. I don't say you are never to do so ; I
don't say you ought not sometimes to think of yourselves only,
and to make yourselves as pretty as you can ; only do not confuse
coquettishness with benevolence, nor cheat yourselves into thinking that all the finery you can wear is so much put into the
hungry mouths of those beneath you: it is not so ; it is what you
yourselves, whether you will or no, must sometimes instinctively
feel it to be—it is what those who stand shivering in the streets,
forming a line to watch you as you step out of your carriages,
know it to b e ; those fine dresses do not mean that so much
has been put into their mouths, but that so much has been
taken out of their mouths. The real politico-economical signification of every one of those beautiful toilettes, is just this; that
you have had a certain number of people put for a certain number
of days wholly under your authority, by the sternest of slavemasters,—hunger and cold; and you have said to them, " I will
feed you, indeed, and clothe you, and give you fuel for so many
days; but during those days you shall work for me only: your
little brothers need clothes, but you shall make none for them :
your sick friend needs clothes, but you shall make none for her :
you yourself will soon need another, and a warmer dress; but you
shall make none for yourself. You shall make nothing but lace
and roses for m e ; for this fortnight to come, you shall work at
the patterns and petals, and then I will crush and consume them
away in an hour." You will perhaps answer—" It may not be
particularly benevolent to do this, and we won't call it so ; but at
any rate we do no wrong in taking their labour when we pay
them their wages : if we pay for their work we have a right to
it." No;—a thousand times no. The labour which you have
paid for, does indeed become, by the act of purchase, your own

44

POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART.

[LECT. L

labour : you have bought the hands and the time of those workers ; they are, by right and justice, your own hands, your own
time. But, have you a right to spend your own time, to work
with your own hands, only for your own advantage ?—much
more, when, by purchase, you have invested your own person
with the strength of others; and added to your own life, a part
of the life of others ? You may, indeed, to a certain extent, use
their labour for your delight; remember, I am making no general assertions against splendour of dress, or pomp of accessaries
of life; on the contrary, there are many reasons for thinking that
we do not at present attach enough importance to beautiful dress,
as one of the means of influencing general taste and character.
But I do say, that you must weigh the value of what you ask
these workers to produce for you in its own distinct balance ; that
on its own worthiness or desirableness rests the question of your
kindness, and not merely on the fact of your having employed
people in producing it: and I say farther, that as long as there
are cold and nakedness in the land around you, so long there
can be no question at all but that splendour of dress is a crime.
In due time, when we have nothing better to set people to work
at, it may be right to let them make lace and cut jewels; but, as
long as there are any who have no blankets for their beds, and
no rags for their bodies, so long it is blanket-making and tailoring
we must set people to work at—not lace.
And it would be strange, if at any great assembly which, while
it dazzled the young and the thoughtless, beguiled the gentler
hearts that beat beneath the embroidery, with a placid sensation
of luxurious benevolence—as if by all that they wore in waywardness of beauty, comfort had been first given to the distressed, and
aid to the indigent; it would be strange, I say, if, for a moment,
the spirits of Truth and of Terror, which walk invisibly among the
masques of the earth, would lift the dimness from our erring
thoughts, and show us how—inasmuch as the sums exhausted for

LECT. I.]

POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART.

45

that magnificence would have given back the failing breath to
many an unsheltered outcast on moor and street—they who wear
it have literally entered into partnership with Death ; and dressed
themselves in his spoils. Yes, if the veil could be lifted not only
from your thoughts, but from your human sight, you would see—•
the angels do see—on those gay white dresses of yours, strange
dark spots, and crimson patterns that you knew not of—spots of
the inextinguishable red that all the seas cannot wash away ; yes,
and among the pleasant flowers that crown your fair heads, and
glow on your wreathed hair, you would see that one weed was
always twisted which no one thought of—the grass that grows on
graves.
It was not, however, this last, this clearest and most appalling view of our subject, that I intended to ask you to take this
evening; only it is impossible to set any part of the matter in its
true light, until we go to the root of it. But the point which it
is our special business to consider is, not whether costliness of
dress is contrary to charity; but whether it is not contrary to
mere worldly Avisdom: whether, even supposing we knew that
splendour of dress did not cost suffering or hunger, we might
not put the splendour better in other things than dress. And,
supposing our mode of dress were really graceful or beautiful,
this might be a very doubtful question; for I believe true
nobleness of dress to be an important means of education, as it
certainly is a necessity to any nation which wishes to possess living
art, concerned with portraiture of human nature. No good historical painting ever yet existed, or ever can exist, where the
dresses of the people of the time are not beautiful: and had it
not been for the lovely and fantastic dressing of the 13th to
the 16th centuries, neither French, nor Florentine, nor Venetian
art could have risen to anything like the rank it reached. Still,
even then, the best dressing was never the costliest; and its effect
depended much more on its beautiful and, in ear^y times,

46

POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ABT.

[ L E C T . I,

modest, arrangement, and on the simple and lovely masses of its
colour, than on gorgeousness of clasp or embroidery. Whether
we can ever return to any of those more perfect types of form
is questionable; but there can be no question, that all the
money we spend on the forms of dress at present worn, is, so
far as any good purpose is concerned, wholly lost. Mind, in
saying this, I reckon among good purposes the purpose which
young ladies are said sometimes to entertain—of being married ; but they would be married quite as soon (and probably
to wiser and better husbands) by dressing quietly as by dressing
brilliantly; and I believe it would only be needed to lay fairly
and largely before them the real good which might be effected
by the sums they spend in toilettes, to make them trust at once
only to their bright eyes and braided hair for all the mischief
they have a mind to. I w7ish we could, for once, get the
statistics of a London season. There was much complaining talk
in Parliament last week of the vast sum the nation has given for
the best Paul Yeronese in Yenice—£14,000 : I wonder what the
nation meanwhile has given for its ball-dresses! Suppose we could
see the London milliners' bills, simply for unnecessary breadths of
slip and flounces, from April to July ; I wonder whether £14,000
would cover them. But the breadths of slip and flounces are by
this time as much lost and vanished as last year's snow; only they
have done less good: but the Paul Yeronese will last for centuries,
if we take care of it; and yet we grumble at the price given for
the painting, while no one grumbles at the price of pride.
Time does not permit me to go into any farther illustration of
the various modes in which we build our statue out of snow, and
waste our labour on things that vanish. I must leave you to foi
low out the subject for yourselves, as I said I should, and proceed,
in our next lecture, to examine the two other branches of our subject, namely, how to accumulate our art, and how to distribute it.
But, in closing, as we have been much on the topic of good

LECT. I.J

II. APPLICATION.

47

government, both of ourselves and others, let me just give you
one more illustration of what it means, from that old art of which,
next evening, I shall try to convince you that the value, both
moral and mercantile, is greater than we usually suppose.
One of the frescoes by Ambrozio Lorenzetti, in the town-hall
of Siena, represents, by means of symbolical figures, the principles
of Good Civic Government and of Good Government in general.
The figure representing this noble Civic Government is enthroned,
and surrounded by figures representing the Virtues, variously supporting or administering its authority. Now, observe what work
is given to each of these virtues. Three winged ones—Faith,
Hope, and Charity—surrounded the head of the figure, not in
mere compliance with the common and heraldic laws of precedence among Virtues, such as we moderns observe habitually, but
with peculiar purpose on the part of the painter. Faith, as thus
represented, ruling the thoughts of the Good Governor, does not
mean merely religious faith, understood in those times to be necessary to all persons—governed no less than governors—but it
means the faith which enables work to be carried out steadily, in
spite of adverse appearances and expediencies; the faith in great
principles, by which a civic ruler looks past all the immediate
checks and shadows that would daunt a common man, knowing
that what is rightly done will have a right issue, and holding his
way in spite of pullings at his cloak and whisperings in his ear,
enduring, as having in him a faith which is evidence of things unseen. And Hope, in like manner, is here not the heavenward hope
which ought to animate the hearts of all men; but she attends upon
Good Government, to show that all such government is expectant as
well as conservative; that if it ceases to be hopeful of better
things, it ceases to be a wise guardian of present things: that it
ought never, as long as the world lasts, to be wholly content with
any existing state of institution or possession, but to be hopeful
still of more wisdom and power; not clutching at it restlessly or

48

POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART.

[LECT. I.

hastily, but feeling that its real life consists in steady ascent fiom
high to higher: conservative, indeed, and jealously conservative
of old things, but conservative of them as pillars not as pinnacles
—as aids, but not as Idols; and hopeful chiefly, and active, in
times of national trial or distress, according to those first and
notable words describing the queenly nation. " She riseth, while
it is yet night? And again, the winged Charity which is attendant on Good Government has, in this fresco, a peculiar office.
Can you guess what? If you consider the character of contest
which so often takes place among kings for their crowrns, and the
selfish and tyrannous means they commonly take to aggrandize or
secure their power, you will, perhaps, be surprised to hear that
the office of Charity is to crown the King. And yet, if you think
of it a little, you will see the beauty of the thought which sets her
in this function: since in the first place, all the authority of a
good governor should be desired by him only for the good of his
people, so that it is only Love that makes him accept or guard his
crown : in the second place, his chief greatness consists in the exercise of this love, and he is truly to be revered only so far as his
acts and thoughts are those of kindness; so that Love is the light
of his crown, as well as the giver of it: lastly, because his strength
depends on the affections of his people, and it is only their love
which can securely crown him, and for ever. So that Love is the
strength of his crown as well as the light of it.
Then, surrounding the King, or in various obedience to him,
appear the dependent virtues, as Fortitude, Temperance, Truth,
and other attendant spirits, of all which I cannot now give account, wishing you only to notice the one to whom are entrusted
the guidance and administration of the public revenues. Can you
guess which it is likely to be ? Charity, you would have thought,
should have something to do with the business; but not so, for
she is too hot to attend carefully to it. Prudence, perhaps, you
think of in the next place. No, she is too timid, and^ loses oppor-

LECT. I.]

II. APPLICATION.

40

tunities in making up her mind. Can it be Liberality then?
N o : Liberality is entrusted with some small sums; but she is a
bad accountant, and is allowed no important place in the exchequer. But the treasures are given in charge to a virtue of which
we hear too little in modern times, as distinct from others;
Magnanimity: largeness of heart: not softness or weakness of
heart, mind you—but capacity of heart—the great measuring
virtue, which weighs in heavenly balances all that may be given,
and all that may be gained; and sees how to do noblest things in
noblest ways: which of two goods comprehends and therefore
chooses the greatest: which of two personal sacrifices dares and
accepts the largest: which, out of the avenues of beneficence,
treads always that which opens farthest into the blue fields of
futurity: that character, in fine, which, in those words taken by
us at first for the description of a Queen among the nations, looks
less to the present power than to the distant promise; " Strength
and honour are in her clothing,—and she shall rejoice IN TIMS
TO COME."

50

POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART.

[LECT. II

LECTUKE II.
THE heads of our subject which remain for our consideration
this evening are, you will remember, the accumulation and the
distribution of works of art. Our complete inquiry fell into four
divisions—first, how to get our genius; then, how to apply our
genius; then, how to accumulate its results; and lastly, how to
distribute them. We considered, last evening, how to discover
and apply it;—Ave have to-night to examine the modes of its
preservation and distribution.
And noAv, in the outset, it will be well to face that objection
which Ave put aside a little while ago; namely, that perhaps it is
not well to have a great deal of good art; and that it should not
be made too cheap.
" Nay," I can imagine some of the more generous among you,
exclaiming, " Ave will not trouble you to disprove that objection ;
of course it is a selfish and base one: good art, as well as other
good things, ought to be made as cheap as possible, and put as far
as we can within the reach of everybody."
Pardon me, I am not prepared to admit that. I rather side
with the selfish objectors, and believe that art ought not to be
made cheap, beyond a certain point; for the amount of pleasure
that you can receive from any great work, depends wholly on the
quantity of attention and energy of mind you can bring to bear
upon it. Now, that attention and energy depend much more on
the freshness of the thing than you would at all suppose ; unless
you very carefully studied the movements of your own minds. If
you see things of the same kind and of equal value very fre-

LECT. II.]

H i . ACCUMULATION.

51

quently, your reverence for them is infallibly diminished, your
powers of attention get gradually wearied, and your interest and
enthusiasm worn out; and you cannot in that state bring to any
given work the energy necessary to enjoy it. If, indeed, the
question were only between enjoying a great many pictures each a
little, or one picture very much, the sum of enjoyment being in
each case the same, you might rationally desire to possess rather
the larger quantity, than the small; both because one work of art
always in some sort illustrates another, and because quantity
diminishes the chances of destruction. But the question is not a
merely arithmetical one of this kind. Your fragments of broken
admirations will not, when they are put together, make up one
whole admiration; two and two, in this case, do not make four,
nor anything like four. Your good picture, or book, or work of
art of any kind, is always in some degree fenced and closed about
with difficulty. You may think of it as of a kind of cocoa-nut, with
very often rather an unseemly shell, but good milk and kernel
inside. Now, if you possess twenty cocoa-nuts, and being thirsty,
go impatiently from one to the other, giving only a single scratch
with the point of your knife to the shell of each, you will get no
milk from all the twenty. But if you leave nineteen of them
alone, and give twenty cuts to the shell of one, you will get
through it, and at the milk of it. And the tendency of the
human mind is always to get tired before it has made its twenty
cuts; and to try another nut; and moreover, even if it has perseverance enough to crack its nuts, it is sure to try to eat too
many, and so choke itself. Hence, it is wisely appointed for us
that few of the things we desire can be had without considerable
labour, and at considerable intervals of time. We cannot generally get our dinner without working for it, and that gives us appetite for i t ; we cannot get our holiday without waiting for it,
and that gives us zest for it; and we ought not to get our picture
without paying for it, and that gives us a mind to look at it.

52

POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART.

[LECT. II

Nay, I will even go so far as to say, that we ought not to get
books too cheaply. No book, I believe, is ever worth half so
much to its reader as one that has been coveted for a year at a
bookstall, and bought out of saved half-pence; and perhaps a day
or two's fasting. That's the way to get at the cream of a book.
And I should say more on this matter, and protest as energetically
as I could against the plague of cheap literature, with which we
are just now afflicted, but that I fear your calling me to order, as
being unpractical, because I don't quite see my way at present to
making everybody fast for their books. But one may see that a
thing is desirable and possible, even though one may not at once
know the best way to it—and in my island of Barataria, when I
get it well into order, I assure you no book shall be sold for less
than a pound sterling; if it can be published cheaper than that,
the surplus shall all go into my treasury, and save my subjects
taxation in other directions ; only people really poor, who cannot
pay the pound, shall be supplied with the books they want for
nothing, in a certain limited quantity. I haven't made up my
mind about the number yet, and there are several other points in
the system yet unsettled; when they are all determined, if you
will allow me, I will come and give you another lecture, on the
political economy of literature.1
Meantime, returning to our immediate subject, I say to my generous hearers, who want to shower Titians and Turners upon us,
like falling leaves, " Pictures ought not to be too cheap;" but in
much stronger tone I would say to those who want to keep up the
prices of pictorial property, that pictures ought not to be too dear,
that is to say, not as dear as they are. For, as matters at present
stand, it is wholly impossible for any man in the ordinary circumstances of English life to possess himself of a piece of great art.
A modern drawing of average merit, or a first-class engraving,
1

See note 6th in Addenda.

LECT. II.]

III. ACCUMULATION,

53

may perhaps, not without some self-reproach, be purchased out of
his savings by a man of narrow income; but a satisfactory example of first-rate art—master-hands' work—is wholly out of his
reach. And we are so accustomed to look upon this as the natural course and necessity of things, that we never set ourselves in
any wise to diminish the evil; and yet it is an evil perfectly capable of diminution. It is an evil precisely similar in kind to that
which existed in the middle ages, respecting good books, and
which everybody then, I suppose, thought as natural as we do now
our small supply of good pictures. You could not then study the
wrork of a great historian, or great poet, any more than you can
now study that of a great painter, but at heavy cost. If you
wanted a book, you had to get it written out for you, or to write
it out for yourself. But printing came, and the poor man may
read his Dante and his Homer; and Dante and Homer are none
the worse for that. But it is only in literature that private persons of moderate fortune can possess and study greatness: they
can study at home no greatness in art; and the object of that
accumulation which we are at present aiming at, as our third
object in political economy, is to bring great art in some degree
within the reach of the multitude; and, both in larger and more
numerous galleries than we now possess, and by distribution,
according to his wealth and wish, in each man's home, to render
the influence of art somewhat correspondent in extent to that of
literature. Here, then, is the subtle balance which your economist
has to strike : to accumulate so much art as to be able to give the
whole nation a supply of it, according to its need, and yet to regulate its distribution so that there shall be no glut of it, nor contempt.
A difficult balance, indeed, for us to hold, if it were left merely
to our skill to poise ; but the just point between poverty and profusion has been fixed for us accurately by the wise laws of Provi
dence. If you carefully wratch for all the genius you can detect,
apply it to good service, and then reverently preserve what it pro

54

POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART.

[jLECT. II,

duces, you will never have too little art; and if, on the other
hand, you never force, an artist to work hurriedly, for duly bread,
nor imperfectly, because you would rather have showy works than
complete ones, you will never have too much. Do not force the
multiplication of art, and you will not have it too cheap; do not
wantonly destroy it, and you will not have it too dear.
" But who wantonly destroys it?" you will ask. Why, we all
do. Perhaps you thought, when I came to this part of our subject, corresponding to that set forth in our housewife's economy
by the " keeping her embroidery from the moth," that I was going
to tell you only how to take better care of pictures, how to clean
them, and varnish them, and where to put them away safely when
you went out of town. Ah, not at all. The utmost I have to ask
of you is, that you will not pull them to pieces, and trample them
under your feet. " What," you will say, " when do we do such
things % Haven't we built a perfectly beautiful gallery for all the
pictures we have to take care of V Yes, you have, for the pictures which are definitely sent to Manchester to be taken care of.
But there are quantities of pictures out of Manchester which it is
your business, and mine too, to take care of no less than of these,
and which we are at this moment employing ourselves in pulling
to pieces by deputy. I will tell you what they are, and where
they are, in a minute; only first let me state one more of those
main principles of political economy on which the matter hinges.
I must begin a little apparently wide of the mark, and ask you
to reflect if there is any way in which we waste money more in
England, than in building fine tombs ? Our respect for the dead,
when they are just dead, is something wonderful, and the way we
show it more wonderful still. We show it with black feathers and
black horses; we show it with black dresses and bright heraldries;
we show it with costly obelisks and sculptures of sorrow, wThich
spoil half of our most beautiful cathedrals. We show it with frightful gratings and vaults^ and lids of dismal stone, in the midst of the

LECT. II.]

III. ACCUMULATION.

55

quiet grass; and last, not least, we show it by permitting ourselves
to tell any number of lies we think amiable or credible, in the epitaph. This feeling is common to the poor as well as the rich;
and we all know how many a poor family will nearly ruin themselves, to testify their respect for some member of it in his coffin,
whom they never much cared for when he was out of it; and how
often it happens that a poor old woman will starve herself to death,
in order that she may be respectably buried.
Now, this being one of the most complete and special ways of
wasting money;—no money being less productive of good, or of
any percentage whatever, than that which we shake away from the
ends of undertakers' plumes—it is of course the duty of all good
economists, and kind persons, to prove and proclaim continually,
to the poor as well as the rich, that respect for the dead is not
really shown by laying great stones on them to tell us where they
are laid; but by remembering where they are laid without a stone
to help us; trusting them to the sacred grass and saddened flowers;
and still more, that respect and love are shown to them, not by
great monuments to them which we build with our hands, but by
letting the monuments stand, which they built with their own.
And this is the point now in question.
Observe, there are two great reciprocal duties concerning industry, constantly to be exchanged between the living and the dead.
We, as we live and work, are to be always thinking of those
who are to come after us; that what we do may be serviceable, as
far as we can make it so, to them, as well as to us. Then, when
we die, it is the duty of those who come after us to accept this
work of ours with thanks and remembrance, not thrusting it aside
or tearing it down the moment they think they have no use for it.
And each generation will only be happy or powerful to the pitch
that it ought to be, in fulfilling these two duties to the Past and
the Future. Its own work will never be rightly done, even for
itself—never good, or noble, or pleasurable to its own eyes—if it

56

POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART.

[LECT. II,

does not prepare it also for the eyes of generations yet to come.
And its own possessions will never be enough for it, and its own
wisdom never enough for it, unless it avails itself gratefully and
tenderly of the treasures and the wisdom bequeathed to it by its
ancestors.
For, be assured, that all the best things and treasures of this
world are not to be produced by each generation for itself; but we
are all intended, not to carve our work in snow that will melt, but
each and all of us to be continually rolling a great white gathering
snowball, higher and higher—larger and larger—along the Alps of
human power. Thus the science of nations is to be accumulative
from father to son : each learning a little more and a little more;
each receiving all that was known, and adding its own gain : the
history and poetry of nations are to be accumulative; each generation treasuring the history and the songs of its ancestors, adding
its own history and its own songs; and the art of nations is to be
accumulative, just as science and history are; the work of living
men not superseding, but building itself upon the work of the past.
Nearly every great and intellectual race of the world has produced, at every period of its career, an art with some peculiar and
precious character about it, wholly unattainable by any other race,
and at any other time; and the intention of Providence concerning that art, is evidently that it should all grow together into one
mighty temple ; the rough stones and the smooth all finding theii
place, and rising, day by day, in richer and higher pinnacles to
heaven.
Now, just fancy what a position the world, considered as one
great workroom—one great factory in the form of a globe—would
have been in by this time, if it had in the least understood this
duty, or been capable of it. Fancy what we should have had
around us now, if, instead of quarrelling and fighting over their
work, the nations had aided each other in their work, or if even
in their conquests, instead of effacing the memorials of those they

LECT. II.]

HI. ACCUMULATION.

5^

succeeded and subdued, they had guarded the spoils of their victories. Fancy what Europe would be now, if the delicate statues
and temples of the Greeks,—if the broad roads and massy walls
of the Romans,—if the noble and pathetic architecture of the
middle ages, had not been ground to dust by mere human rage.
You talk of the scythe of Time, and the tooth of Time : I tell
you, Time is scytheless and toothless; it is we who gnaw like the
worm—we who smite like the scythe. It is ourselves who abolish
—ourselves who consume : We are the mildew, and the flame, and
the soul of man is to its own work as the moth, that frets when it
cannot fly, and as the hidden flame that blasts where it cannot
illumine. All these lost treasures of human intellect have been
wholly destroyed by human industry of destruction; the marble
would have stood its two thousand years as well in the polished
statue as in the Parian cliff; but we men have ground it to powder, and mixed it with our own ashes. The walls and the ways
would have stood—it is we who have left not one stone upon another, and restored its pathlessness to the desert; the great cathedrals of old religion would have stood—it is we who have dashed
down the carved work with axes and hammers, and bid the
mountain-grass bloom upon the pavement, and the sea-wincls
chaunt in the galleries.
You will perhaps think all this was somehow necessary for the
development of the human race. I cannot stay now to dispute
that, though I would willingly; but do you think it is still necessary for that development ? Do you think that in this nineteenth
century it is still necessary for the European nations to turn all
the places where their principal art-treasures are into battlefields ? For that is what they are doing even while I speak ; the
great firm of the wrorld is managing its business at this moment,
just as it has done in past times. Imagine what would be the
thriving circumstances of a manufacturer of some delicate produce—suppose glass, or china-—in whose workshop and exhibition

58

POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART.

[ L E C T . II.

rooms all the workmen and clerks began fighting at least once a
day, first blowing off the steam, and breaking all the machinery
they could reach; and then making fortresses of all the cupboards, and attacking and defending the show-tables, the victorious party finally throwing everything they could get hold of out
of the window, by way of showing their triumph, and the poor
manufacturer picking up and putting away at last a cup here and
a handle there. A fine prosperous business that would be, would
it not ? and yet that is precisely the way the great manufacturing
firm of the world carries on its business.
It has so arranged its political squabbles for the last six or seven
hundred years, that no one of them could be fought out but in the
midst of its most precious art; and it so arranges them to this
day. For example, if I were asked to lay my finger, in a map of
the world, on the spot of the world's surface which contained at
this moment the most singular concentration of art-teaching and
art-treasure, I should lay it on the name of the town of Verona,
Other cities, indeed, contain more works of carriageable art, but
none contain so much of the glorious local art, and of the springs
and sources of art, which can by no means be made subjects of
package or porterage, nor, I grieve to say, of salvage. Verona
possesses, in the first place, not the largest, but the most perfect
and intelligible Roman amphitheatre that exists, still unbroken in
circle of step, and strong in succession of vault and arch : it contains minor Roman monuments, gateways, theatres, baths, wreck?
of temples, which give the streets of its suburbs a character of
antiquity unexampled elsewhere, except in Rome itself. But it
contains, in the next place, what Rome does not contain—perfect
examples of the great twelfth-century Lombardic architecture,
which was the root of all the mediaeval art of Italy, without which
no Giottos, no Angelicos, no Raphaels would have been possible;
it contains that architecture, not in rude forms, but in the most
perfect and loveliest types it ever attained—contains those, not ir

LECT. II.]

III. ACCUMULATION.

5G

ruins, nor in altered and hardly decipherable fragments, but in
churches perfect from porch to apse, with all their carving fresh,
their pillars firm, their joints unloosened. Besides these, it
includes examples of the great thirteenth and fourteenth-century
Gothic of Italy, not merely perfect, but elsewhere unrivalled. At
Eome, the Roman—at Pisa, the Lombard, architecture may be
seen in greater or in equal nobleness; but not at Rome, nor Pisa,
nor Florence, nor in any city of the world, is there a great mediseval Gothic like the Gothic of Verona. Elsewhere, it is either
less pure in type or less lovely in completion : only at Verona may
you see it in the simplicity of its youthful power, and the tenderness of its accomplished beauty. And Verona possesses, in the
last place, the loveliest Renaissance architecture of Italy, not disturbed by pride, nor defiled by luxury, but rising in fair fulfilment
of domestic service, serenity of effortless grace, and modesty of
home seclusion; its richest work given to the windows that open
on the narrowest streets and most silent gardens. All this she
possesses, in the midst of natural scenery such as assuredly exists
nowhere else in the habitable globe—a wild Alpine river foaming
at her feet, from whose shores the rocks rise in a great crescent,
dark with cypress, and misty with olive: illimitably, from before
her southern gates, the tufted plains of Italy sweep and fade in
golden light; around her, north and west, the Alps crowd in
crested troops, and the winds of Benacus bear to her the coolness
of their snows.
And this is the city—such, and possessing such things as these
—at whose gates the decisive battles of Italy are fought continually : three days her towers trembled with the echo of the cannon
of Areola; heaped pebbles of the Mincio divide her fields to this
hour with lines of broken rampart, whence the tide of war rolled
back to No vara; and now on that crescent of her eastern cliffs,
whence the full moon used to rise through the bars of the
cypresses in her burning summer twilights, touching with soft

60

POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART.

[LECT. II.

increase of silver light the rosy marbles of her balconies, along
the ridge of that encompassing rock, other circles are increasing
now, white and p a l e ; Availed towers of cruel strength, sablespotted with cannon-courses.

I tell you, I have seen, when the

thunderclouds came down on those Italian hills, and all their crags
were dipped in t h e dark, terrible purple, as if the winepress of t h e
wrath of God had stained their mountain-raiment—I have seen the
hail fall in Italy till the forest branches stood stripped and bare as
if blasted by t h e locust; but t h e white hail never fell from those
clouds of heaven as the black hail will fall from the clouds of hell,
if ever one breath of Italian life stirs again in t h e streets of
Verona.
Sad as you will feel this to be, I do not say t h a t you can directly
prevent i t ; you cannot drive the Austrians ont of Italy, nor prevent t h e m from building forts where they choose, but I do say,*
* The reader can hardly but remember Mrs. Browning's beautiful appeal
for Italy, made on the occasion of the first great Exhibition of Art in
England:—
0 Magi of the east and of the west,
Your incense, gold, and myrrh are excellent!—
"What gifts for Christ, then, bring ye with the rest ?
Your hands have worked well. Is your courage spent
In handwork only ? Have you nothing best,
Which generous souls may perfect and present,
And He shall thank the givers for ? no light
Of teaching, liberal nations, for the poor,
"Who sit in darkness when it is not night ?
No cure for wicked children ? Christ,—no cure,
No help for women, sobbing out of sight
Because men made the laws ? no brothel-lure
Burnt out by popular lightnings ? Hast thou found
No remedy, my England, for such woes ?
No outlet, Austria, for the scourged and bound,
No call back for the exiled ? no repose,
Bussia, for knouted Poles worked under ground.

LECT. II.]

III. ACCUMULATION.

61

that you, and I, and all of us, ought to be both acting and feeling
with a full knowledge and understanding of these things, and that,
without trying to excite revolutions or weaken governments, we
may give our own thoughts and help, so as in a measure to prevent
needless destruction. We should do this, if we only realized the
thing thoroughly. You drive out day by day through your own
pretty suburbs, and you think only of making, wTith what money
you have to spare, your gateways handsomer, and your carriagedrives wider—and your drawing-rooms more splendid, having a
vague notion that you are all the while patronizing and advancing
art, and you make no effort to conceive the fact, that within a few
hours' journey of you, there are gateways and drawing-rooms
which might just as well be yours as these, all built already; gateways built by the greatest masters of sculpture that ever struck
marble ; drawing-rooms painted by Titian and Veronese; and you
won't accept, nor save these as they are, but you will rather fetch
the house-painter from over the way, and let Titian and Veronese
house the rats. "Yes," of course, you answer; "we want nice
houses here, not houses in Verona. "What should we do with
houses in Verona f • And I answer, do precisely what you do
with the most expensive part of your possessions here : take pride
in them—only a noble pride. You know well, when you examine
And gentle ladies bleached among the snows ?
No mercy for the slave, America ?
No hope for Rome, free France, chivalric France ?
A las, great nations have great shames, I say.
No pity, 0 world! no tender utterance
Of benediction, and prayers stretched this way
For poor Italia, baffled by mischance ?
0 gracious nations, give some ear to me I
You all go to your Fair, and I am one
Who at the roadside of humanity
Beseech your alms,—Glod's justice to be done,
So prosper!

62

POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART,

[LECT, II

your own hearts, that the greater part of the sums you spend on
possessions are spent for pride. Why are your carriages nicely
painted and finished outside ? You don't see the outsides as you
sit in them—the outsides are for other people to see. Why are
your exteriors of houses so well finished, your furniture so polished
and costly, but for other people to see ? You are just as comfortable yourselves, writing on your old friend of a desk, with the
white cloudings in his leather, and using the light of a window
which is nothing but a hole in the brick wall. And all that is
desirable to be done in this matter, is merely to take pride in preserving great art, instead of in producing mean art; pride in the
possession of precious and enduring things, a little way off, instead
of slight and perishing things near at hand. You know, in old
English times, our kings liked to have lordships and dukedoms
abroad, and why should not you, merchant princes, like to have
lordships and estates abroad? Believe me, rightly understood,
it would be a prouder, and in the full sense of our English
word, more "respectable" thing to be lord of a palace at Verona, or of a cloister full of frescos at Florence, than to have a
file of servantsf dressed in the finest liveries that ever tailor
stitched, as long as would reach from here to Bolton:—yes, and a
prouder thing to send people to travel in Italy, who would have
to say every now and then, of some fair piece of art, " Ah ! this
was Jcept here for us by the good people of Manchester," than to
bring them travelling all the way here, exclaiming of your various
art treasures, "These were brought here for us (not altogether
without harm) by the good people of Manchester." " A h ! " but
you say, " the Art Treasures Exhibition will pay; but Veronese
palaces won't." Pardon me. They would pay, less directly, but
far more richly. Do you suppose it is in the long run good for
Manchester, or good for England, that the Continent should be in
the state it is ? Do you think the perpetual fear of revolution, or
the perpetual repression of thought and energy that clouds and

LECT. II.]

III. ACCUMULATION.

63

encumbers the nations of Europe, is eventually profitable for us ?
"Were we any the better of the course of affairs in '48 ; or has the
stabling of the dragoon horses in the great houses of Italy, any
distinct effect in the promotion of the cotton-trade ? Not so. But
every stake that you could hold in the stability of the Continent,
and every effort that you could make to give example of English
habits and 'principles on the Continent, and every kind deed that
you could do in relieving distress and preventing despair on the
Continent, would have tenfold reaction on the prosperity of
England, and open and urge, in a thousand unforeseen directions,
the sluices of commerce and the springs of industry.
I could press, if I chose, both these motives upon you, of pride
and self-interest, with more force, but these are not motives which
ought to be urged upon you at all. The only motive that I ought
to put before you is simply that it would be right to do this; that
the holding of property abroad, and the personal efforts of Englishmen to redeem the condition of foreign nations, are among the
nibst direct pieces of duty which our wealth renders incumbent
upon us. I do not—and in all truth and deliberateness I say this
—I do not know anything more ludicrous among the self-deceptions of well-meaning people than their notion of patriotism, as
requiring them to limit their efforts to the good of their own
country;—the notion that charity is a geographical virtue, and
that what it is holy and righteous to do for people on one bank
of a river, it is quite improper and unnatural to do for people on
the other. It will be a wonderful thing, some day or other, for
the Christian world to remember, that it went on thinking for two
thousand years that neighbours were neighbours at Jerusalem, but
not at Jericho; a wonderful thing for us English to reflect, ii?
after-years, how long it was before we could shake hands with
anybody across that shallow salt wash, which the very chalk-dust
of its two shores whitens from Folkstone to Ambleteuse.
Nor ought the motive of gratitude, as well as that pf Mercy, t<?

64

POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART.

[ L E C T . II,

be without its influence on you, who have been the first to ask to
see, and the first to show to us, the treasures which this poor lost
Italy has given to England. Remember all these things that
delight you here were hers-—hers either in fact or in teaching;
hers, in fact, are all the most powerful and most touching paintings
of old time that now glow upon your walls; hers in teaching are
all the best and greatest of descendant souls—your Reynolds and
your Gainsborough never could have painted but for Venice; and
the energies which have given the only true life to your existing
art were first stirred by voices of the dead, that haunted the
Sacred Field of Pisa.
Well, all these motives for some definite course of action on
our part towards foreign countries rest upon very serious facts;
too serious, perhaps you will think, to be interfered with; for we
are all of us in the habit of leaving great things alone, as if Providence would mind them, and attending ourselves only to little
things which we know, practically, Providence doesn't mind unless
we do. We are ready enough to give care to the growing of
pines and lettuces, knowing that they don't grow Providentially
sweet or large unless we look after them; but we don't give
any care to the good of Italy or Germany, because we think that
they will grow Providentially happy without any of our meddling.
Let us leave the great things, then, and think of little things;
not of the destruction of whole provinces in war, which it may
not be any business of ours to prevent; but of the destruction of
poor little pictures in peace, from which it surely would not be
much out of our way to save them. You know I said, just now,
we were all of us engaged in pulling pictures to pieces by deputy,
and you did not believe me. Consider, then, this similitude of
ourselves. Suppose you saw (as I doubt not you often do see) a
prudent and kind young lady sitting at work, in the corner of a
quiet room, knitting comforters for her cousins, and that just out-

LECT. II.]

III. ACCUMULATION.

65

side, in the hall, you saw a cat and her kittens at play among the
family pictures; amusing themselves especially with the best
Vandykes, by getting on the tops of the frames, and then scrambling down the canvasses by their claws; and on some one's
informing the young lady of these proceedings of the cat and
kittens, suppose she answered that it wasn't her cat, but her
sister's, and the pictures weren't hers, but her uncle's, and she
couldn't leave her work, for she had to make so many pairs of
comforters before dinner. Would you not say that the prudent
and kind young lady was, on the whole, answerable for the additional touches of claw on the Vandykes? Now, that is precisely
what we prudent and kind English are doing, only on a larger
scale. Here we sit in Manchester, hard at work, very properly,
making comforters for our cousins all over the world. Just outside there in the hall—that beautiful marble hall of Italy—the
cats and kittens and monkeys are at play among the pictures : I
assure you, in the course of the fifteen years in which I have
been working in those places in which the most precious remnants
of European art exist, a sensation, whether I would or no, was
gradually made distinct and deep in my mind, that I was living
and working in the midst of a den of monkeys;—sometimes amiable and affectionate monkeys, with all manner of winning ways
and kind intentions;—more frequently selfish and malicious monkeys, but, whatever their disposition, squabbling continually about
nuts, and the best places on the barren sticks of trees; and
that all this monkeys' den was filled, by mischance, with precious
pictures, and the witty and wilful beasts were always wrapping
themselves up and going to sleep in pictures, or tearing holes in
them to grin through; or tasting them and spitting them out
again, or twisting them up into ropes and making swings of them ;
and that sometimes only, by watching one's opportunity, and bearing a scratch or a bite, one could rescue the corner of a Tintoret, or Paul Veronese, and push it through the bars into a

66

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[ L E C T . II.

place of safety. Literally, I assure you, this was, and this is, the
fixed impression on my mind of the state of matters in Italy.
And see how. The professors of art in Italy, having long followed a method of study peculiar to themselves, have at last
arrived at a form of art peculiar to themselves; very different
from that which was arrived at by Correggio and Titian. Naturally, the professors like their own form the best; and, as the
old pictures are generally not so startling to the eye as the
modern ones, the dukes and counts who possess them, and who
like to see their galleries look new and tine (and are persuaded
also that a celebrated chef-d'oeuvre ought always to catch the eye
at a quarter of a milev off), believe the professors who tell them
their sober pictures are quite faded, and good for nothing, and
should all be brought bright again; and accordingly, give the
sober pictures to the professors, to be put right by rules of art.
Then, the professors repaint the old pictures in all the principal places, leaving perhaps only a bit of background to set off
their own work. And thus the professors come to be generally
figured in my mind, as the monkeys who tear holes in the
pictures, to grin through. Then the picture-dealers, who live by
the pictures, cannot sell them to the English in their old and pure
state; all the good work must be covered with new paint, and varnished so as to look like one of the professorial pictures in the
great gallery, before it is saleable. And thus the dealers come to
be imaged, in my mind, as the monkeys who make ropes of
the pictures, to swing by. Then, every now and then, in some old
stable, or wine-cellar, or timber-shed, behind some forgotten vats
or faggots, somebody finds a fresco of Perugino's or Giotto's,
but doesn't think much of it, and has no idea of having people
coming into his cellar, or being obliged to move his faggots; and
so he whitewashes the fresco, and puts the faggots back again ;
and these kind of persons, therefore, come generally to be imaged
in my mind, as the monkeys who taste the pictures, and spit

LECT. II.]

i n . ACCUMULATION.

61

them out, not finding them nice. While, finally, the squabbling
for nuts and apples (called in Italy " bella liberta") goes on all
day long.
Now, all this might soon be put an end to, if we English, who
are so fond of travelling in the body, would also travel a little in
soul: We think it a great triumph to get our packages and our
persons carried at a fast pace, but we never take the slightest
trouble to put any pace into our perceptions; we stay usually at
home in thought, or if we ever mentally see the world, it is at the
old stage-coach or waggon rate. Do but consider what an odd
sight it would be, if it were only quite clear to you how things are
really going on—how, here in England, we are making enormous
and expensive efforts to produce new art of all kinds, knowing and
confessing all the while that the greater part of it is bad, but
struggling still to produce new patterns of wall-papers, and new
shapes of tea-pots, and new pictures, and statues, and architecture;
and pluming and cackling if ever a tea-pot or a picture has the
least good in it;—all the while taking no thought whatever of the
best possible pictures, and statues, and wall-patterns already in
existence, which require nothing but to be taken common care of,
and kept from damp and dust: but we let the walls fall that
Giotto patterned, and the canvasses rot that Tintoret painted, and
the architecture be dashed to pieces that St. Louis built, while we
are furnishing our drawing-rooms with prize upholstery, and
writing accounts of our handsome warehouses to the country
papers. Don't think I use my words vaguely or generally: I
speak of literal facts. Giotto's frescos at Assisi are perishing at
this moment for want of decent care ; Tintoret's pictures in San
Sebastian at Venice, are at this instant rotting piecemeal into grey
rags ; St. Louis's chapel, at Carcassonne, is at this moment lying
in shattered fragments in the market-place. And here we are all
cawing and crowing, poor little half-fledged daws as we are, about
the pretty sticks and wool in our own nests. There's hardly

68

POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART.

[LECT. II

a day passes, when I am at home, but I get a letter from some
well-meaning country clergyman, deeply anxious about the state
of his parish church, and breaking his heart to get money together
that he may hold up some wretched remnant of Tudor tracery,
with one niche in the corner and no statue—when all the while
the mightiest piles of religious architecture and sculpture that ever
the world saw are being blasted and withered away, without one
glance of pity or regret. The country clergyman does not care
for them—he has a sea-sick imagination that cannot cross channel.
What is it to him, if the angels of Assisi fade from its vaults, or
the queens and kings of Chartres fall from their pedestals ? They
are not in his parish.
" What!" you will say, " are we not to produce any new art,
nor take care of our parish churches V " No, certainly not, until
you have taken proper care of the art you have got already, and
of the best churches out of the parish. Your first and proper
standing is not as churchwardens and parish overseers, in an English county, but as members of the great Christian community of
Europe. And as members of that community (in which alone,
observe, pure and piecious ancient art exists, for there is none in
America, none in Asia, none in Africa), you conduct yourselves
precisely as a manufacturer would, who attended to his looms, but
left his warehouse without a roof. The rain floods your warehouse, the rats frolic in it, the spiders spin in it, the choughs build
in it, the wall-plague frets and festers in it, and still you keep
weave, weave, weaving at your wretched webs, and thinking you
are growing rich, while more is gnawed out of your warehouse in
an hour than you can weave in a twelvemonth.
Even this similitude is not absurd enough to set us rightly forth.
The weaver would, or might, at least, hope that his new woof was
as stout as the old ones, and that, therefore, in spite of rain and
ravage, he would have something to wrap himself in when he
needed it. But our webs rot as we spin. The very fact that we

LECT. II.]

III. ACCUMULATION.

69

despise the great art of the past shows that we cannot produce
great art now. If we could do it, we should love it when we saw
it done—if we really cared for it, we should recognise it and keep
it; but we don't care for it. It is not art that we want; it is
amusement, gratification of pride, present gain—anything in the
world but art: let it rot, we shall always have enough to talk
about and hang over our sideboards.
You will (I hope) finally ask me what is the outcome of all this,
practicable to-morrow morning by us who are sitting here ? These
are the main practical outcomes of it: In the first place, don't
grumble when you hear of a new picture being bought by Government at a large price. There are many pictures in Europe now
in danger of destruction which are, in the true sense of the word,
priceless; the proper price is simply that which it is necessary to
give to get and to save them. If you can get them for fifty
pounds, do; if not for less than a hundred, do; if not for less than
five thousand, do; if not for less than twenty thousand, do ; never
mind being imposed upon: there is nothing disgraceful in being
imposed upon; the only disgrace is in imposing; and you can't
in general get anything much worth having, in the way of Continental art, but it must be with the help or connivance of numbers
of people, who, indeed, ought to have nothing to do with the
matter, but who practically have, and always will have, everything
to do with i t ; and if you don't choose to submit to be cheated by
them out of a ducat here and a zecchin there, you will be cheated
by them out of your picture; and whether you are most imposed
upon in losing that, or the zecchins, I think I may leave you to
judge ; though I know there are many political economists, who
would rather leave a bag of gold on a garret-table, than give a
porter sixpence extra to carry it downstairs.
That, then, is the first practical outcome of the matter. Nevet
grumble, but be glad when you hear of a new picture being bought
at a large price. In the long run, the dearest pictures are always

70

POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART.

[ L E C T . II,

the best bargains; and, I repeat (for else you might think I said
it in mere hurry of talk, and not deliberately), there are some
pictures which are without price. You should stand, nationally,
at the edge of Dover cliffs—Shakespeare's—and wave blank
cheques in the eyes of the nations on the other side of the sea,
freely offered, for such and such canvasses of theirs.
Then the next practical outcome of it is-—Never buy a copy of
a picture, under any circumstances whatever. All copies are bad ;
because no painter who is worth a straw ever will copy. He will
make a study of a picture he likes, for his own use, in his own
way; but he won't and can't copy; whenever you buy a copy,
you buy so much misunderstanding of the original, and encourage
a dull person in following a business he is not fit for, besides
increasing ultimately chances of mistake and imposture, and farthering, as directly as money can farther, the cause of ignorance
in all directions. You may, in fact, consider yourself as having
purchased a certain quantity of mistakes; and, according to your
power, being engaged in disseminating them.
I do not mean, however, that copies should never be made
A certain number of dull persons should always be employed by
a Government in making the most accurate copies possible of all
good pictures ; these copies, though artistically valueless, would be
hictorically and documentarily valuable, in the event of the destruction of the original picture. The studies also made by great artists
for their own use, should be sought after with the greatest eagerness ; they are often to be bought cheap ; and in connection with
mechanical copies, would become very precious; tracings from
frescos and other large works are all of great value ; for though a
tracing is liable to just as many mistakes as a copy, the mistakes
in a tracing are of one kind only, which may be allowed for, but
the mistakes of a common copyist are of all conceivable kinds:
finally, engravings, in so far as they convey certain facts about the
pictures, are often serviceable and valuable. I can't, of course,

LECT. II.]

IV. DISTRIBUTION.

1l

enter into details in these matters just now; only this main piece
of advice I can safely give you—never to buy copies of pictures
(for your private possession) which pretend to give a facsimile that
shall be in any wise representative of, or equal to, the original.
Whenever you do so, you are only lowering your taste, and wasting your money. And if you are generous and wise, you will be
ready rather to subscribe as much as you would have given for a
copy of a great picture, towards its purchase, or the purchase of
some other like it, by the nation. There ought to be a great
National Society instituted for the purchase of pictures; presenting
them to the various galleries in our great cities, and watching
there over their safety: but in the meantime, you can always act
safely and beneficially by merely allowing your artist friends to
buy pictures for you, when they see good ones. Never buy for
yourselves, nor go to the foreign dealers; but let any painter whom
you know be entrusted, when he finds a neglected old picture in
an old house, to try if he cannot get it for you; then, if you like
it, keep it; if not, send it to the hammer, and you will find that
you do not lose money on pictures so purchased.
And the third and chief practical outcome of the matter is this
general one : Wherever you go, whatever you do, act more for
preservation and less for production. I assure you, the world is,
generally speaking, in calamitous disorder, and just because you
have managed to thrust some of the lumber aside, and get an
available corner for yourselves, you think you should do nothing
but sit spinning in it all day long—while, as householders and
economists, your first thought and effort should be, to set things
more square all about you. Try to set the ground floors in order,
and get the rottenness out of your granaries. Then sit and spin,
but not till then.
IV. DISTRIBUTION.—And now, lastly, we come to the fourth
great head of our inquiry, the question of the wise distribution of

72

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[ L E C T . II

the art we have gathered and preserved. It must be evident to us,
at a moment's thought, that the way in which works of art are
on the whole most useful to the nation to which they belong,
must be by their collection in public galleries, supposing those
galleries properly managed. But there is one disadvantage
attached necessarily to gallery exhibition, namely, the extent of
mischief which may be done by one foolish curator. As long as
the pictures which form the national wealth are disposed in private
collections, the chance is always that the people who buy them will
be just the people who are fond of them ; and that the sense of
exchangeable value in the commodity they possess, will induce
them, even if they do not esteem it themselves, to take such care
of it as will preserve its value undiminished. At all events, so
long as works of art are scattered throughout the nation, no universal destruction of them is possible; a certain average only are
lost by accidents from time to time. But when they are once
collected in a large public gallery, if the appointment of curator
becomes in any way a matter of formality, or the post is so lucrative as to be disputed by place-hunters, let but one foolish or careless person get possession of it, and perhaps you may have all your
line pictures repainted, and the national property destroyed, in a
month. That is actually the case at this moment in several great
foreign galleries. They are the places of execution of pictures :
over their doors you only want the Dantesque inscription, " Lasciate ogni speranza, voi che entrate.''
Supposing, however, this danger properly guarded against, as it
would be always by a nation which either knew the value, or
understood the meaning, of painting,* arrangement in a public
gallery is the safest, as well as the most serviceable, method of

* It would be a great point gained towards the preservation of pictures if
it were male a rule that at every operation they underwent, the exact spots
in which they have been re-painted should be recorded in writing.

LECT. II.]

IV. DISTRIBUTION.

?3

exhibiting pictures ; and it is the only mode in which their histori
cal value can be brought out, and their historical meaning made
clear. But great good is also to be done by encouraging the private possession of pictures; partly as a means of study, (much
more being always discovered in any work of art by a person who
has it perpetually near him than by one who only sees it from
time to time,) and also as a means of refining the habits and
touching the hearts of the masses of the nation in their domestic
life.
For these last purposes the most serviceable art is the living art
of the time; the particular tastes of the people will be best met,
and their particular ignorances best corrected, by painters labouring in the midst of them, more or less guided to the knowledge of
what is wanted by the degree of sympathy with which their work
is received. So then, generally, it should be the object of government, and of all patrons of art, to collect, as far as may be,
the works of dead masters in public galleries, arranging them so
as to illustrate the history of nations, and the progress and influence of their arts; and to encourage the private possession of the
works of living masters. And the first and best way in which to
encourage such private possession is, of course, to keep down the
price of them as far as you can.
I hope there are not a great many painters in the room; if
there are, I entreat their patience for the next quarter of an hour:
if they will bear with me for so long, I hope they will not, finally,
be offended by what I am going to say.
I repeat, trusting to their indulgence in the interim, that the
first object of our national economy, as respects the distribution
of modern art, should be steadily and rationally to limit its prices,
since by doing so, you will produce two effects; you will make
the painters produce more pictures, two or three instead of one,
if they wish to make money ; and you will, by bringing good
pictures within the reach of people of moderate income, excite the

14:

POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART.

[ L E C T . II.

general interest of the nation in them, increase a thousandfold the
demand for the commodity, and therefore its wholesome and
natural production,
I know how many objections must arise in your minds at this
moment to what I say; but you must be aware that it is not
possible for me in an hour to explain all the moral and commercial
bearings of such a principle as this. Only, believe me, I do not
speak lightly ; I think I have considered all the objections which
could be rationally brought forward, though I have time at present
only to glance at the main one, namely, the idea that the high
prices paid for modern pictures are either honourable, or serviceable, to the painter. So far from this being so, I believe one of
the principal obstacles to the progress of modern art to be the
high prices given for good modern pictures. For observe first the
action of this high remuneration on the artist's mind. If he
" gets on," as it is called, catches the eye of the public, and
especially of the public of the upper classes, there is hardly any
limit to the fortune he may acquire ; so that, in his early years,
his mind is naturally led to dwell on this worldly and wealthy
eminence as the main thing to be reached by his art; if he finds
that he is not gradually rising towards it, he thinks there is something wrong in his work; or, if he is too proud to think that,
still the bribe of wealth and honour warps him from his honest
labour into efforts to attract attention; and he gradually loses
both his power of mind and his rectitude of purpose. This,
according to the degree of avarice or ambition which exists in
any painter's mind, is the necessary influence upon him of the
hope of great wealth and reputation. But the harm is still
greater, in so far as the possibility of attaining fortune of this kind
tempts people continually to become painters who have no real
gift for the work; and on whom these motives of mere worldly
interest have exclusive influence;—men who torment and abuse
the patient workers, eclipse or thrust aside all delicate and good

LECT. II.]

IV. DISTRIBUTION

1h

pictures by their own gaudy and coarse ones, corrupt the taste of
the public, and do the greatest amount of mischief to the schools
of art in their day which it is possible for their capacities to effect,
and it is quite wonderful how much mischief may be done even
by small capacity. If you could by any means succeed in keeping the prices of pictures down, you would throw all these disturbers out of the way at once.
You may perhaps think that this severe treatment would do
more harm than good, by withdrawing the wholesome element of
emulation, and giving no stimulus to exertion; but I am sorry to
say that artists will always be sufficiently jealous of one another,
whether you pay them large or low prices; and as for stimulus to
exertion, believe me, no good work in this world was ever done
for money, nor while the slightest thought of money affected the
painter's mind. Whatever idea of pecuniary value enters into his
thoughts as he works, will, in proportion to the distinctness of its
presence, shorten his power. A real painter will work for you
exquisitely, if you give him, as I told you a little while ago, bread
and water and salt; and a bad painter will work badly and
hastily, though you give him a palace to live in, and a princedom
to live upon. Turner got, in his earlier years, half-a-crown a day
and his supper (not bad pay, neither); and he learned to paint
upon that. And I believe that there is no chance of art's truly
flourishing in any country, until you make it a simple and plain
business, providing its masters with an easy competence, but rarely
with anything more. And I say this, not because I despise the
great painter, but because I honour him; and f should no more
think of adding to his respectability or happiness by giving him
riches, than, if Shakspeare or Milton were alive, I should think
we added to their respectability, or were likely to get better work
from them, by making them millionaires.
But, observe, it is not only the painter himself whom you injure,
by giving him too high prices; you injure all the inferior painters

*76

POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART.

["LECT. II,

of the day. If they are modest, they will be discouraged and
depressed by the feeling that their doings are worth so little, comparatively, in your eyes;—if proud, all their worst passions will be
aroused, and the insult or opprobrium which they will try to cast
on their successful rival will not only afflict and wound him, but
at last sour and harden him: he cannot pass through such a trial
without grievous harm.
That, then, is the effect you produce on the painter of mark,
and on the inferior ones of his own standing. But you do worse
than this; you deprive yourselves, by what you give for the
fashionable picture, of the power of helping the younger men who
are coming forward. Be it admitted, for argument's sake, if you
are not convinced by what I have said, that you do no harm to
the great man by paying him well; yet certainly you do him no
special good. His reputation is established, and his fortune made ;
he does not care whether you buy or not: he thinks he is rather
doing you a favour than otherwise by letting you have one of his
pictures at all. All the good you do him is to help him to buy a
new pair of carriage horses; whereas, with that same sum which
thus you cast away, you might have relieved the hearts and preserved the health of twenty young painters; and if among those
twenty, you but chanced on one in whom a true latent power had
been hindered by his poverty, just consider what a far-branching,
far-embracing good you have wrought with that lucky expenditure
of yours. I say, " Consider it" in vain; you cannot consider it,
for you cannot conceive the sickness of the heart with which a
young painter of deep feeling toils through his first obscurity ;—
his sense of the strong voice within him, which you will not
hear ;-—his vain, fond, wondering witness to the things you will
not see;—his far away perception of things that he could accom
plish if he had but peace and time, all unapproachable and vanishing from him, because no one will leave him peace or grant him
time : all his friends falling back from him ; those whom he would

LECT. II.J

IV. DISTRIBUTION.

11

most reverently obey rebuking and paralysing him; and last and
worst of all, those who believe in him the most faithfully suffering
by him the most bitterly;—the wife's eyes, in their sweet ambition,
shining brighter as the cheek wastes away; and the little lips at
his side parched and pale which one day, he knows, though ha
may never see it, will quiver so proudly when they name his name,
calling him " our father." You deprive yourselves, by your large
expenditure for pictures of mark, of the power of relieving and
redeeming this distress ; you injure the painter whom you pay so
largely;—and what, after all, have you done for yourselves, or
got for yourselves ? It does not in the least follow that the hurried work of a fashionable painter will contain more for your
money than the quiet work of some unknown man. In all probability, you will find, if you rashly purchase what is popular at a
high price, that you have got one picture you don't care for, for
a sum which would have bought twenty you would have delighted
in. For remember always that the price of a picture by a living
artist, never represents, never can represent, the quantity of labour
or value in it. Its price represents, for the most part, the degree
of desire which the rich people of the country have to possess it.
Once get the wealthy classes to imagine that the possession of
pictures by a given artist adds to their " gentility," and there is
no price which his work may not immediately reach, and for years
maintain; and in buying at that price, you are not getting value
for your money, but merely disputing for victory in a contest of
ostentation. And it is hardly possible to spend your money in a
worse or more wasteful way; for though you may not be doing it
for ostentation yourself, you are, by your pertinacity, nourishing
the ostentation of others; you meet them in their game of wealth,
and continue it for them; if they had not found an opposite
player, the game would have been clone; for a proud man can
find no enjoyment in possessing himself of what nobody disputes
with him. So that by every farthing you give for a picture beyond

78

POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART.

[LECT. II

its fair price—that is to say, the price which will pay the painter foi
his time—you are not only cheating yourself and buying vanity, but
you are stimulating the vanity of others; paying, literally, for the
cultivation of pride. You may consider every pound that you
spend above the just price of a work of art, as an investment in a
cargo of mental quick-lime or guano, which, being laid on the
fields of human nature, is to grow a harvest of pride. You are in
fact ploughing and harrowing, in a most valuable part of your
land, in order to reap the whirlwind; you are setting your hand
stoutly to Job's agriculture, " Let thistles grow instead of wheat,
and cockle instead of barley.'*
Well, but you will say, there is one advantage in high prices,
which more than counterbalances all this mischief, namely, that
by great reward we both urge and enable a painter to produce
rather one perfect picture than many inferior ones : and one perfect picture (so you tell us, and we believe it) is worth a great
number of inferior ones.
It is so; but you cannot get it by paying for it. A great work
is only done when the painter gets into the humour for it, likes his
subject, and determines to paint it as well as he can, whether he
is paid for it or not; but bad work, and generally the worst sort
of bad work, is done when he is trying to produce a showy picture, or one that shall appear to have as much labour in it as shall
be worth a high price.*
* When this lecture was delivered, I gave here some data for approximate
estimates of the average value of good modern pictures of different classes;
but the subject is too complicated to be adequately treated in writing, with*
out introducing more detail than the reader will have patience for. But I
may state roughly, that prices above a hundred guineas are in general extravagant for water-colours, and above five hundred for oils. An artist
almost always does wrong who puts more work than these prices will remunerate him for into any single canvass—his talent would be better employed
in painting two pictures than one so elaborate. The water-colour painters

LECT. II.]

IV. DISTRIBUTION.

19

There is, however, another point, and a still more important
one, bearing on this matter of purchase, than the keeping down
of prices to a rational standard. And that is, that you pay your
prices into the hands of living men, and do not pour them into
coffins.
For observe that, as we arrange our payment of pictures at
present, no artist's work is worth half its proper value while he is
alive. The moment he dies, his pictures, if they are good, reach
double their former value ; but that rise of price represents simply
a profit made by the intelligent dealer or purchaser on his past
purchases. So that the real facts of the matter are, that the British public, spending a certain sum annually in art, determines
that, of every thousand it pays, only five hundred shall go to the
painter, or shall be at all concerned in the production of art; and
that the other five hundred shall be paid merely as a testimonial
to the intelligent dealer, who knew what to buy. Now, testimonials are very pretty and proper things, within due limits; but
testimonial to the amount of a hundred per cent, on the total
expenditure is not good political economy. Do not, therefore, in
general, unless you see it to be necessary for its preservation, buy
the picture of a dead artist. If you fear that it may be exposed to
contempt or neglect, buy i t ; its price will then, probably, not be
high : if you want to put it into a public gallery, buy it; you are
sure, then, that you do not spend your money selfishly : or, if you
loved the man's work while he was alive, and bought it then, buy
it also now, if you can see no living work equal to it. But if you
did not buy it while the man was living, never buy it after he is
also are getting into the habit of making their drawings too large, and in a
measure attaching their price rather to breadth and extent of touch than to
thoughtful labour. Of course marked exceptions occur here and there, as
in the case of John Lewis, whose drawings are wrought with unfailing precision throughout, whate'V er their scale. Hardly any price can be remune«
rative for such work.

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POLITICAL ECONOMY OF AET.

[LECT. II,

dead : you are then doing no good to him, and you are Joing some
shame to yourself. Look around you for pictures that you really
like, and by buying which you can help some genius yet unperished—that is the best atonement you can make to the one you
have neglected—and give to the living and struggling painter at
once wages, and testimonial.
So far then of the motives which should induce us to keep
down the prices of modern art, and thus render it, as a private
possession, attainable by greater numbers of people than at present.
But we should strive to render it accessible to them in other ways
also—chiefly by the permanent decoration of public buildings;
and it is in this field that I think we may look for the profitable
means of providing that constant employment for young painters
of which we were speaking last evening.
The first and most important kind of public buildings which we
are always sure to want, are schools: and I would ask you to consider very carefully, whether Ave may not wisely introduce some
great changes in the way of school decoration. Hitherto, as far as
I know, it has either been so difficult to give all the education we
wanted to our lads, that we have been obliged to do it, if at all,
with cheap furniture in bare walls; or else we have considered
that cheap furniture and bare walls are a proper part of the means
of education ; and supposed that boys learned best when they sat
on hard forms, and had nothing but blank plaster about and above
them whereupon to employ their spare attention ; also, that it was
as well they should be accustomed to rough and ugly conditions
of things, partly by way of preparing them for the hardships of
life, and partly that there might be the least possible damage done
to floors and forms, in the event of their becoming, during the
master's absence, the fields or instruments of battle. All this is
so far well and necessary, as it relates to the training of country
lads, and the first training of boys in general. But there certainly
comes a period in the life of a well educated youth, in which one

LECT. II.]

IY. DISTRIBUTION.

81

of the principal elements of his education is, or ought to be, to give
him refinement of habits; and not only to teach him the strong
exercises of which his frame is capable, but also to increase his
bodily sensibility and refinement, and show him such small matters as the way of handling things properly, and treating them
considerately. Not only so, but I believe the notion of fixing the
attention by keeping the room empty, is a wholly mistaken one :
I think it is just in the emptiest room that the mind wanders most;
for it gets restless, like a bird, for want of a perch, and casts about
for any possible means of getting out and away. And even if it
be fixed, by an effort, on the business in hand, that business
becomes itself repulsive, more than it need be, by the vileness of
its associations; and many a study appears dull or painful to a
boy, when it is pursued on a blotted deal desk, under a wall with
nothing on it but scratches and pegs, which w7ould have been pursued pleasantly enough in a curtained corner of his father's library,
or at the lattice window of his cottage. Nay, my own belief is,
that the best study of all is the most beautiful; and that a quiet
glade of forest, or the nook of a lake shore, are worth all the
schoolrooms in Christendom, when once you are past the multiplication table; but be that as it may, there is no question at all but
that a time ought to come in the life of a well trained youth,
when he can sit at a writing table without wanting to throw the
inkstand at his neighbour; and when also he will feel more capable of certain efforts of mind with beautiful and refined forms
about him than with ugly ones. When that time comes he
ought to be advanced into the decorated schools; and this advance
ought to be one of the important and honourable epochs of his
life.
I have not time, however, to insist on the mere serviceableness
to our youth of .refined architectural decoration, as such; for I
want you to consider the probable influence of the particular kind
of decoration which I wish you to get for them, namely, historical
4*

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[ L E C T . II

painting. You know we have hitherto been in the habit of conveying all our historical knowledge, such as it is, by the ear only,
never by the eye ; all our notions of things being ostensibly
derived from verbal description, not from sight. Now, I have no
doubt that, as we grow gradually wiser—and we are doing so
every day—we shall discover at last that the eye is a nobler organ
than the ear; and that through the eye we must, in reality,
obtain, or put into form, nearly all the useful information we are
to have about this world. Even as the matter stands, you will
find that the knowledge which a boy is supposed to receive from
verbal description is only available to him so far as in any underhand way he gets a sight of the thing you are talking about. I
remember well that, for many years of my life, the only notion I
had of the look of a Greek knight was complicated between recollection of a small engraving in my pocket Pope's Homer, and
reverent study of the Horse-Guards. And though I believe that
most boys collect their ideas from more varied sources, and
arrange them more carefully than I did; still, whatever sources
they seek must always be ocular: if they are clever boys, they
will go and look at the Greek vases and sculptures in the British
Museum, and at the weapons in our armouries—they will see
what real armour is like in lustre, and what Greek armour was
like in form, and so put a fairly true image together, but still not,
in ordinary cases, a very living or interesting one. Now, the use
of your decorative painting would be, in myriads of ways, to
animate their history for them, and to put the living aspect of
past things before their eyes as faithfully as intelligent invention
can; so that the master shall have nothing to do but once to
point to the schoolroom walls, and for ever afterwards the meaning
of any word would be fixed in a boy's mind in the best possible
way. Is it a question of classical dress—what a tunic was like,
or a chlamys, or a peplus ? At this day, you have to point to
tome vile woodcut, in the middle of a dictionary page, represent-

LECT. II.]

IV. DISTRIBUTION.

83

ing the thing hung upon a stick; but then, you would point to a
hundred figures, wearing the actual dress, in its fiery colours, in
all the actions of various stateliness or strength; you would understand at once how it fell round the people's limbs as they stood,
how it drifted from their shoulders as they went, how it veiled
their faces as they wept, how it covered their heads in the day ol
battle. Now, if you want to see what a weapon is like, you refer,
in like manner, to a numbered page, in which there are spearheads in rows, and sword-hilts in symmetrical groups; and
gradually the boy gets a dim mathematical notion how one
scymitar is hooked to the right and another to the left, and one
javelin has a knob to it and another none : while one glance at
your good picture would show him,—and the first rainy afternoon
in the schoolroom would for ever fix in his mind,—the look of the
sword and spear as they fell or flew; and how they pierced, or
bent, or shattered—how men wielded them, and how men died
by them. But far more than all this, is it a question not of
clothes or weapons, but of men ? how can we sufficiently estimate
the effect on the mind of a noble youth, at the time when the
world opens to him, of having faithful and touching representations put before him of the acts and presences of great men—
how many a resolution, which would alter and exalt the whole
course of his after-life, might be formed, when in some dreamy
twilight he met, through his own tears, the fixed eyes of those
shadows of the great dead, unescapable and calm, piercing to his
soul; or fancied that their lips moved in dread reproof or soundless exhortation. And if but for one out of many this were true—
if yet, in a few, you could be sure that such influence had indeed
changed their thoughts and destinies, and turned the eager and
reckless youth, who would have cast away his energies on the
race-horse or the gambling-table, to that noble life-race, that holy
life-hazard, which should win all glory to himself and all good to

84

POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART.

[LECT. II

his country—would not that, to some purpose, be ''political
economy of art V
And observe, there could be no monotony, no exhaustibleness,
in the scenes required to be thus portrayed. Even if there were,
and you wanted for every school in the kingdom, one death of
Leonidas; one battle of Marathon; one death of Cleobis and
Bito; there need not therefore be more monotony in your art
than there was in the repetition of a given cycle of subjects by
the religious painters of Italy. But we ought not to admit a cycle
at all. For though we had as many great schools as we have
great cities (one day I hope we shall have), centuries of paintingwould not exhaust, in all the number of them, the noble and
pathetic subjects which might be chosen from the history of even
one noble nation. But, beside this, you will not, in a little while,
limit your youths' studies to so narrow fields as you do now.
There will come a time—I am sure of it—when it will be found
that the same practical results, both in mental discipline, and in
political philosophy, are to be attained by the accurate study of
mediaeval and modern as of ancient history ; and that the facts
of mediaeval and modern history are, on the whole, the most important to us. And among these noble groups of constellated
schools which I foresee arising in our England, I foresee also that
there will be divided fields of thought; and that while each will
give its scholars a great general idea of the world's history, such
as all men should possess—each will also take upon itself, as its
own special duty, the closer study of the course of events in some
given place or time. It will review the rest of history, but it will
exhaust its own special field of it; and found its moral and
political teaching on the most perfect possible analysis of the
results of human conduct in one place, and at one epoch. And
then, the galleries of that school will be painted with the historical
scenes belonging to the age which it has chosen for its special
studv.

LECT.

II.J

IV.

DISTRIBUTION.

85

So far, then, of art as you may apply it to that great senes of
public buildings which you devote to the education of youth. The
next large class of public buildings in which we should introduce
it, is one which I think a few years more of national progress will
render more serviceable to us than they have been lately. I
mean, buildings for the meetings of guilds of trades.
And here, for the last time, I must again interrupt the course
of our chief inquiry, in order to state one other principle of
political economy, which is perfectly simple and indisputable; bat
which, nevertheless, we continually get into commercial embarrassments for want of understanding; and not only so, but suffer
much hindrance in our commercial discoveries, because many of
our business men do not practically admit it.
Supposing half a dozen or a dozen men were cast ashore from
a wreck on an uninhabited island, and left to their own resources,
one of course, according to his capacity, would be set to one
business and one to another; the strongest to dig and to cut wood,
and to build huts for the rest: the most dexterous to make shoes
out of bark and coats out of skins; the best educated to look for
iron or lead in the rocks, and to plan the channels for the irrigation of the fields. But though their labours were thus naturally
severed, that small group of shipwrecked men would understand
well enough that the speediest progress was to be made by helping each other,—not by opposing each other: and they would
know that this help could only be properly given so long as they
were frank and open in their relations, and the difficulties which
each lay under properly explained to the rest. So that any
appearance of secresy or separateness in the actions of any of
them would instantly, and justly, be looked upon with suspicion
by the rest, as the sign of some selfish or foolish proceeding on the
part of the individual. If, for instance, the scientific man were
found to have gone out at night, unknown to the rest, to alter the
sluices, the others would think, and in all probability rightly think,

86

POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART.

[ L E C T . II.

that he wanted to get the best supply of water to his own field;
and if the shoemaker refused to show them where the bark grew
which he made the sandals of, they would naturally think, and in
all probability rightly think, that he didn't want them to see how
much there was of it, and that he meant to ask from them more
corn and potatoes in exchange for his sandals than the trouble of
making them deserved. And thus, although each man would
have a portion of time to himself in which he was allowed to do
what he chose without let or inquiry,—so long as he was working
in that particular business which he had undertaken for the common benefit, any secresy on his part would be immediately supposed to mean mischief; and would require to be accounted for,
or put an end t o : and this all the more because, whatever the
work might be, certainly there would be difficulties about it which,
when once they were well explained, might be more or less done
away with by the help of the rest; so that assuredly every one of
them would advance with his labour not only more happily, but
more profitably and quickly, by having no secrets, and by frankly
bestowing, and frankly receiving, such help as lay in his way to
get or to give.
And, just as the best and richest result of wealth and happiness
to the whole of them, would follow on their perseverance in such
a system of frank communication and of helpful labour;—so precisely the worst and poorest result would be obtained by a system
of secresy and of enmity; and each man's happiness and wealth
would assuredly be diminished in proportion to the degree in
which jealousy and concealment became their social and economical principles. It would not, in the long run, bring good, but only
evil, to the man of science, if, instead of telling openly where he
had found good iron, he carefully concealed every new bed of it,
that he might ask, in exchange for the rare ploughshare, more
corn from the farmer, or in exchange for the rude needle, more
labour from the sempstress : and it would not ultimately bring

LECT.

II.J

IV.

DISTRIBUTION.

81

good, but only evil, to the farmers, if they sought to burn each
other's cornstacks, that they might raise the value of their grain,
or if the sempstresses tried to break each other's needles, that each
might get all the stitching to herself.
Now, these laws of human action are precisely as authoritative
in their application to the conduct of a million of men, as to that
of six or twelve. All enmity, jealousy, opposition, and secresy are
wholly, and in all circumstances, destructive in their nature—not
productive; and all kindness, fellowship, and communicativeness
are invariably productive in their operation,—not destructive; and
the evil principles of opposition and exclusiveness are not rendered less fatal, but more fatal, by their acceptance among large
masses of men; more fatal, I say, exactly in proportion as their
influence is more secret. For though the opposition does always
its own simple, necessary, direct quantity of harm, and withdraws
always its own simple, necessary, measurable quantity of wealth
from the sum possessed by the community, yet, in proportion to
the size of the community, it does another and more refined mischief than this, by concealing its own fatality under aspects of mercantile complication and expediency, and giving rise to multitudes
of false theories based or a mean belief in narrow and immediate
appearances of good done here and there by things which have
the universal and everlasting nature of evil. So that the time and
powers of the nation are wasted, not only in wretched struggling
against each other, but in vain complaints, and groundless discouragements, and empty investigations, and useless experiments in
laws, and elections, and inventions; with hope always to pull wisdom through some new-shaped slit in a ballot-box, and to drag
prosperity down out of the clouds along some new knot of electric
wire; while all the while Wisdom stands calling at the corners of
the streets, and the blessing of heaven waits ready to rain down
upon us, deeper than the rivers and broader than the dew, if only
we will obey the first plain principles of humanity, and the first

88

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[LEC'T. II.

plain precepts of the skies; "Execute true judgment, and show
mercy and compassion, every man to his brother; and let none of
you imagine evil against his brother in your heart."*
Therefore, I believe most firmly, that as the laws of national
prosperity get familiar to us, we shall more and more cast our toil
into social and communicative systems; and that one of the first
means of our doing so, will be the re-establishing guilds of every
important trade in a vital, not formal, condition;—that there will
be a great council or government house for the members of every
trade, built in whatever town of the kingdom occupies itself principally in such trade, with minor council halls in other cities; and
to each council-hall, officers attached, whose first business may be
* It would be well if, instead of preaching continually about the doctrine
of faith and good works, our clergymen would simply explain to their people
a little what good works mean. There is not a chapter in all the book we
profess to believe, more specially, and directly written for England, than the
second of Habakkuk, and I never in all my life heard one of its practical texts
preached from. I suppose the clergymen are all afraid, and know that their
flocks, while they will sit quite politely to hear syllogisms out of the epistle
to the Romans, would get restive directly if they ever pressed a practical
text home to them. But we should have no mercantile catastrophes, and no
distressful pauperism, if we only read often, and took to heart, those plain
words: "Yea, also, because he is a proud man, neither keepeth at home,
who enlargeth his desire as hell, and cannot be satisfied,—Shall not all these
take up a parable against him, and a taunting proverb against him, and sa}r,
'Woe to him that increaseth that which is not his: and to him that ladeth
himself with thick clay.'' " (What a glorious history, in one metaphor, of the
life of a man greedy of fortune.) " Woe to him that coveteth an evil covetousness that he may set his nest on high. Woe to him that buildeth a
town with blood, and stablisheth a city by iniquity. Behold, is it not of the
Lord of Hosts that the people shall labour in the very fire, and the people
shall weary themselves for very vanity."
The Americans, who have been sending out ships with sham bolt-heads or*
their timbers, and only half their bolts, may meditate on that " buildeth a
town with blood."

LECT. I I . ]

IV. DISTRIBUTION-.

89

to examine into the circumstances of every operative, in tbat trade,
who chooses to report himself to them when out of work, and to
set him to work, if he is indeed able and willing, at a fixed rate of
wages, determined at regular periods in the council-meetings;
and whose next duty may be to bring reports before the council
of all improvements made in the business, and means of its extension : not allowing private patents of any kind, but making all
improvements available to every member of the guild, only allotting, after successful trial of them, a certain reward to the inventors.
For these, and many other such purposes, such halls will be
again, I trust, fully established, and then, in the paintings and
decorations of them, especial effort ought to be made to express the
worthiness and honourableness of the trade for whose members
they are founded. For I believe one of the worst symptoms of
modern society to be, its notion of great inferiority, and ungentlemanliness, as necessarily belonging to the character of a tradesman,
I believe tradesmen may be, ought to be—often are, more gentlemen than idle and useless people: and I believe that art may do
noble work by recording in the hall of each trade, the services
which men belonging to that trade have done for their country,
both preserving the portraits, and recording the important incidents
in the lives, of those who have made great advances in commerce
and civilization. I cannot follow out this subject, it branches too
far, and in too many directions; besides, I have no doubt you will
at once see and accept the truth of the main principle, and be able
to think it out for yourselves. I would fain also have said something of what might be done, in the same manner, for almshouses
and hospitals, and for what, as I shall try to explain in notes to
this lecture, we may hope to see, some day, established with a
different meaning in their name than that they now bear—workhouses; but I have detained you too long already, and cannot
permit myself to trespass further on your patience except only to

90

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[LECT. II

recapitulate, in closing, the simple principles respecting wealth,
which we have gathered during the course of our inquiry; principles which are nothing more than the literal and practical acceptance of the saying, which is in all good men's mouths; namely,
that they are stewards or ministers of whatever talents are
entrusted to them. Only, is it not a strange thing, that while we
more or less accept the meaning of that saying, so long as it is
considered metaphorical, we never accept its meaning in its
own terms ? You know the lesson is given us under the form of a
story about money. Money was given to the servants to make use
of: the unprofitable servant dug in the earth, and hid his Lord's
money. Well, we, in our poetical and spiritual application of this,
say, that of course money doesn't mean money, it means wit, it
means intellect, it means influence in high quarters, it means everything in the world except itself. And do not you see what a
pretty and pleasant come-off there is for most of us, in this spiritual
application? Of course, if we had wit, we would use it for the
good of our fellow-creatures. But we haven't wit. Of course, if
we had influence with the bishops, we would use it for the good of
the Church; but we haven't any influence with the bishops. Of
course, if we had political power, we would use it for the good of
the nation; but we have no political power; we have no talents
entrusted to us of any sort or kind. It is true we have a little
money, but the parable can't possibly mean anything so vulgar
as money; our money's our own.
I believe, if you think seriously of this matter, you will feel that
the first and most literal application is just as necessary a one as
any other—that the story does very specially mean what it says—
plain money; and that the reason we don't at once believe it does
so, is a sort of tacit idea that while thought, wit, and intellect,
and all power of birth and position, are indeed given to us, and,
therefore, to be laid out for the Giver,—our wealth has not been
given to us; but we have worked for it, and have a right to spend

LECT. II.]

IV. DISTRIBUTION.

91

it as we choose. I think you will find that is the real substance
of our understanding in this matter. Beauty, we say, is given by
God—it is a talent; strength is given by God—it is a talent; position is given by God—it is a talent; but money is proper wages
for our day's work—it is not a talent, it is a due. We may justly
spend it on ourselves, if we have worked for it.
And there would be some shadow of excuse for this, were it not
that the very power of making the money is itself only one of the
applications of that intellect or strength which we confess to be
talents. Why is one man richer than another ? Because he is
more industrious, more persevering, and more sagacious. Well,
who made him more persevering and more sagacious than others ?
That power of endurance, that quickness of apprehension, that calmness of judgment, which enable him to seize the opportunities that
others lose, and persist in the lines of conduct in which others
fail—are these not talents ?—are they not in the present state
of the world, among the most distinguished and influential of mental gifts ? And is it not wonderful, that while we should be utterly ashamed to use a superiority of body, in order to thrust our
weaker companions aside from some place of advantage, we
unhesitatingly use our superiorities of mind to thrust them back
from whatever good that strength of mind can attain. You would
be indignant if you saw a strong man walk into a theatre or a
lecture-room, and, calmly choosing the best place, take his feeble
neighbour by the shoulder, and turn him out of it into the back
seats, or the street. You would be equally indignant if you saw^a
stout fellow thrust himself up to a table where some hungry children were being fed, and reach his arm over their heads and take
their bread from them. But you are not the least indignant if
when a man has stoutness of thought and swiftness of capacity, and,
instead of being long-armed only, has the much greater gift of
being long-headed—you thjink it perfectly just that he should use
his intellect to take the bread out of the mouths of all the other

02

POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART.

[LECT. II*

men in the fcown who are of the same trade with him; or use his
breadth and sweep of sight to gather some branch of the commerce of the country into one great cobweb, of which he is himself to be the central spider, making every thread vibrate with the
points of his claws, and commanding every avenue with the facets of
his eyes. You see no injustice in this.
But there is injustice; and, let us trust, one of which honourable men will at no very distant period disdain to be guilty. In
some degree, however, it is indeed not unjust; in some degree it is
necessary and intended. It is assuredly just that idleness should be
surpass-ed by energy; that the widest influence should be possessed
by those who are best able to wield it; and that a wise man, at
the end of his career, should be better off than a fool. But for
that reason, is the fool to be wretched, utterly crushed down, and
left in all the suffering which his conduct and capacity naturally
inflict?—Not so. What do you suppose fools were made for?
That you might tread upon them, and starve them, and get
the better of them in every possible way ? By no means. They
were made that wise people might take care of them. That is
the true and plain fact concerning the relations of every strong and
wise man to the world about him. He has his strength given him,
not that he may crush the weak, but that he may support and
guide them. In his own household he is to be the guide and the
support of his children; out of his household he is still to be the
father, that is, the guide and support of the weak and the poor;
not merely of the meritoriously weak and the innocently poor, but
of the guiltily and punishably poor; of the men who ought to have
known better—of the poor who ought to be ashamed of themselves.
It is nothing to give pension and cottage to the widow who has
lost her son ; it is nothing to give food and medicine to the workman who has broken his arm, or the decrepit woman wasting in
sickness. But it is something to use your time and strength to war
with the waywardness and thoughtlessness of mankind; to keep

LECT. II.]

IV. DISTRIBUTION.

93

the erring workman in your service till you have made him an
unerring one; and to direct your fellow-merchant to the opportunity
which his dulness would have lost. This is much; but it is yet
more, when you have fully achieved the superiority which is due to
you, and acquired the wealth which is the fitting reward of your
sagacity, if you solemnly accept the responsibility of it, as it is the
helm and guide of labour far and near. For you who have it in
your hands, are in reality the pilots of the power and effort of the
State. It is entrusted to you as an authority to be used for good
or evil, just as completely as kingly authority was ever given to a
prince, or military command to a captain. And, according to the
quantity of it that you have in your hands, you are the arbiters of
the will and work of England; and the wdiole issue, whether the
work of the State shall suffice for the State or not, depends upon
you. You may stretch out your sceptre over the heads of the
English labourers, and say to them, as they stoop to its waving,
" Subdue this obstacle that has baffled our fathers, put away this
plague that consumes our children ; water these dry places, plough
these desert ones, carry this food to those who are in hunger;
carry this light to those who are in darkness; carry this life to
those who are in death ;" or on the other side you may say to her
labourers : " Here am I ; this power is in my hand ; come, build a
mound here for me to be throned upon, high and wide; come, make
cvowns for my head, that men may see them shine from far away ;
come, weave tapestries for my feet, that I may tread softly on the
silk and purple; come, dance before me, that I may be gay; and
sing sweetly to me, that I may slumber; so shall I live in joy, and
die in honour." And better than such an honourable death, it
were that the day had perished wherein we were born, and the
night in which it wras said there is a child conceived.
I trust that in a little while, there will be few of our rich men
who, through carelessness or covetousness, thus forfeit the glorious
office which is intended for their hands. I said, just now, that

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[LECT. II.

wealth ill-used was as the net of the spider, entangling and
destroying: but wealth well used, is as the net of the sacred
fisher who gathers souls of men out of the deep. A time will
come—I do not think even now it is far from us—when this
golden net of the world's wealth will be spread abroad as the
flaming meshes of morning cloud are over the sky; bearing with
them the joy of light and the dew of the morning, as well as the
summons to honourable and peaceful toil. What less can we hope
from your wealth than this, rich men of England, when once you
feel fully how, by the strength of your possessions—not, observe, by
the exhaustion, but by the administration of them and the power
—you can direct the acts,—command the energies—inform the
ignorance,—prolong the existence, of the whole human race; and
how, even of worldly wisdom, which man employs faithfully, it is
true, not only that her ways are pleasantness, but that her paths are
peace; and that, for all the children of men, as wTell as for those
to whom she is given, Length of days are in her right hand, as in
her left hand Riches and Honour ?

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ADDENDA.
Note, p. 20.—" Fatherly authority."
THIS statement could not, of course, be heard without displeasure
by a certain class of politicians; and in one of the notices of these
lectures given in the Manchester journals at the time, endeavour
was made to get quit of it by referring to the Divine authority, as
the only Paternal power with respect to which men were truly
styled "brethren." Of course it is so, and, equally of course, all
human government is nothing else than the executive expression
of this Divine authority. The moment government ceases to be
the practical enforcement of Divine law, it is tyranny ; and the
meaning which I attach to the words, " paternal government," is
in more extended terms, simply this—" The executive fulfilment,
by formal human methods, of the will of the Father of mankind
respecting His children." I could not give such a definition of
Government as this in a popular lecture; and even in written
form, it will necessarily suggest many objections, of which I must
notice and answer the most probable.
Only, in order to avoid the recurrence of such tiresome phrases
as " it may be answered in the second place," and " it will be
objected in the third place," &c, I will ask the reader's leave to
arrange the discussion in the form of simple dialogue, letting O.
stand for objector, and R. for response.
0.—You define your paternal government to be the executive
fulfilment, by formal human methods, of the Divine will. But,
assuredly, that will cannot stand in need of aid or expression from
human laws. It cannot fail of its fulfilment.
R.—In the final sense it cannot; and in that sense, men who

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are committing murder and stealing are fulfilling the will of God
as much as the best and kindest people in the world. But in the
limited and present sense, the only sense with which we have anything to do, God's will concerning man is fulfilled by some men,
and thwarted by others. And those men who either persuade or
enforce the doing of it, stand towards those who are rebellious
against it exactly in the position of faithful children in a family,
who, when the father is out of sight, either compel or persuade
the rest to do as their father would have them, were he present;
and in so far as they are expressing and maintaining, for the time,
the paternal authority, they exercise, in the exact sense in which T
mean the phrase to be understood, paternal government over the rest.
0.—But, if Providence has left a liberty to man in many things
in order to prove him, why should human law abridge that liberty,
and take upon itself to compel what the great Lawgiver does not
compel ?
M.—It is confessed, in the enactment of any law whatsoever,
that human lawgivers have a right to do this. For, if you have
no right to abridge any of the liberty which Providence has left
to man, you have no right to punish any one for committing murder or robbery. You ought to leave them to the punishment of
God and Nature. But if you think yourself under obligation to
punish, as far as human laws can, the violation of the will of God
by these great sins, you are certainly under the same obligation to
punish, with proportionately less punishment, the violation of His
will in less sins.
0.—No; you must not attempt to punish less sins by law,
because you cannot properly define nor ascertain them. Everybody can determine whether murder has been committed or not,
but you cannot determine how far people have been unjust or
cruel in minor matters, and therefore cannot make or execute laws
concerning minor matters.
JR.—If I propose to you to punish faults which cannot be defined,
or to execute laws which cannot be made equitable, reject the
laws I propose. But do not generally object to the principle of law.
0,—Yes; I generally object to the principle of law as applied
to minor things; because, if you could succeed (which you can*

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not) in regulating the entire conduct of men by law in little things
as well as great, you would take away from human life all its probationary character, and render many virtues and pleasures impossible. You would reduce virtue to the movement of a machine,
instead of the act of a spirit.
R.—You have just said, parenthetically, and I fully and willingly admit it, that it is impossible to regulate all minor matters
by lawr. Is it not probable, therefore, that the degree in which it
is possible to regulate them by it, is also the degree in which it is
right to regulate them by it? Or what other means of judgment
will you employ, to separate the things which ought to be formally regulated from the things which ought not ? You admit
that great sins should be legally repressed; but you say that small
sins should not be legally repressed. How do you distinguish
between great and small sins; and how do you intend to determine, or do you in practice of daily life determine, on what occasion you should compel people to do right, and on what occasion
you should leave them the option of doing wrong ?
0.—I think you cannot make any accurate or logical distinction in such matters; but that common sense and instinct have, in
all civilized nations, indicated certain crimes of great social harmfulness, such as murder, theft, adultery, slander, and such like,
which it is proper to repress legally; and that common sense and
instinct indicate also the kind of crimes which it is proper for
laws to let alone, such as miserliness, ill-natured speaking, and
many of those commercial dishonesties which I have a notion you
want your paternal government to interfere with.
R.—Pray do not alarm yourself about what my paternal government is likely to interfere with, but keep to the matter in
hand. You say that " common sense and instinct" have, in all
civilized nations, distinguished between the sins that ought to be
legally dealt with and that ought not. Do you mean that the
laws of all civilized nations are perfect \
0.—No; certainly not.
R.—Or that they are perfect at least in their discrimination of
what crimes they should deal with, and what crimes they should
let alone ?
5

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POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART.

0.—No; not exactly.
R.—What do you mean then ?
0.—I mean that the general tendency is right in the laws of
civilized nations; and that, in due course of time, natural sense
and instinct point out the matters they should be brought to bear
upon. And each question of legislation must be made a separate
subject of inquiry as it presents itself: you cannot fix any general
principles about what should be dealt with legally, and what
should not.
R,—Supposing it to be so, do you think there are any points
in which our English legislation is capable of amendment, as it
bears on commercial and economical matters, in this present time ?
0.—Of course I do.
R.—Well, then, let us discuss these together quietly; and if the
points that I want amended seem to you incapable of amendment,
or not in need of amendment, say so : but don't object, at starting,
to the mere proposition of applying law to things which have not
had law applied to them before. You have admitted the fitness
of my expression, " paternal government:" it only has been,
and remains a question between us, how far such government
should extend. Perhaps you would like it only to regulate, among
the children, the length of their lessons ; and perhaps I should like
it also to regulate the hardness of their cricket-balls : but cannot
you wait quietly till you know what I want it to do, before quarrelling with the thing itself?
0.—No; I cannot wait quietly : in fact I don't see any use in
beginning such a discussion at all, because I am quite sure from
the first, that you want to meddle with things that you have no
business with, and to interfere with healthy liberty of action in all
sorts of ways; and I know that you can't propose any laws that
would be of real use.*
* If the reader is displeased with me for putting this foolish speech into
his mouth, I entreat his pardon; but he may be assured that it is a speech
which would be made by many people, and the substance of which would be
tacitly felt by many more, at this point of the discussion. I have really
tried, up to this point, to make the objector as intelligent a person as it is
possible for an author to imagine anybody to be, who differs with him

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JR.—If you indeed know that, you would be wrong to hear me
any farther. But if you are only in painful doubt about me, which
makes you unwilling to run the risk of wasting your time, I will
tell you beforehand what I really do think about this same liberty
of action, namely, that whenever we can make a perfectly equitable law about any matter, or even a law securing, on the whole,
more just conduct than unjust, we ought to make that law; and
that there will yet, on these conditions, always remain a namber
of matters respecting which legalism and formalism are impossible ;
enough, and more than enough, to exercise all human powers of
individual judgment, and afford all kinds of scope to individual
character. I think this; but of course it can only be proved by
separate examination of the possibilities of formal restraint in each
given field of action ; and these two lectures are nothing more
than a sketch of such a detailed examination in one field, namely,
that of art. You will find, however, one or two other remarks on
such possibilities in the next note.

Note 2nd, p. 22.—" Bight to public support"
It did not appear to me desirable, in the course of the spoken
lecture, to enter into details or offer suggestions on the questions
of the regulation of labour and distribution of relief, as it would
have been impossible to do so without touching on many disputed
or disputable points, not easily handled before a general audience.
But I must now supply what is wanting to make my general
statement clear.
I believe, in the first place, that no Christian nation has any
business to see one of its members in distress without helping him,
though, perhaps, at the same time punishing him : help, of course
—in nine cases out of ten—meaning guidance, much more than
gift, and, therefore, interference with liberty. When a peasant
mother sees one of her careless children fall into a ditch, her first
proceeding is to pull him out; her second, to box his ears; her
third, ordinarily, to lead him carefully a little way by the hand,

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or send him home for the rest of the day. The child usually
cries, and very often would clearly prefer remaining in the ditch;
and if he understood any of the terms of politics, would certainly
express resentment at the interference with his individual liberty :
but the mother has done her duty. Whereas the usual call of the
mother nation to any of her children, under such circumstances,
has lately been nothing more than the foxhunter's,—" Stay still
there; I shall clear you." A"hd if we always could clear them,
their requests to be left in muddy independence might be sometimes allowed by kind people, or their cries for help disdained by
unkind ones. But we can't clear them. The whole nation is, in
fact, bound together, as men are by ropes on a glacier—rif one
falls, the rest must either lift him or drag him along with them*
as dead weight, not without much increase of danger to themselves.
And the law of right being manifestly in this, as, whether manifestly or not, it is always, the law of prudence, the only question
is, how this wholesome help and interference are to be administered.
The first interference should be in education. In order that
men may be able to support themselves when they are grown,
their strength must be properly developed while they are young;
and the state should always see to this—not allowing their health
to be broken by too early labour, nor their powers to be wasted
for want of knowledge. Some questions connected with this
matter are noticed farther on under the head " trial schools:" one
point I must notice here, that I believe all youths of whatever
rank, ought to learn some manual trade thoroughly; for it is quite
wonderful how much a man's views of life are cleared by the
attainment of the capacity of doing any one thing well with his
hands and arms. For a long time, what right life there was in the
upper classes of Europe depended in no small degree on the
* It is very curious to watch the efforts of two shopkeepers to ruin each
other, neither having the least idea that his ruined neighbour must eventually
be supported at his own expense, with an increase of poor rates; and that
the contest between them is not in reality which shall get everything for
himself, but which shall first take upon himself and his customers the gratuitous maintenance of the other's family.

ADDENDA.

101

necessity which each man was under of being able to fence; at
this day, the most useful things which boys learn at public schools
are, I believe, riding, rowing, and cricketing. But it would be fa*
better that members of Parliament should be able to plough
straight, and make a horseshoe, than only to feather oars neatly
or point xheir toes prettily in stirrups. Then, in literary and
scientific teaching, the great point of economy is to give the discipline of it through knowledge which will immediately bear on
practical life. Our literary work has long been economically
useless to us because too much concerned with dead languages;
and our scientific work will yet, for some time, be a good deal lost,
because scientific men are too fond or too vain of their systems,
and waste the student's time in endeavouring to give him large
views, and make him perceive interesting connections of facts;
when there is not one student, no, nor one man, in a thousand,
who can feel the beauty of a system, or even take it clearly into
his head; but nearly all men can understand, and most will be
interested in, the facts which bear on daily life. Botanists have
discovered some wonderful connection between nettles and figs,
which a cowboy who will never see a ripe fig in his life need not
be at all troubled about; but it will be interesting to him to know
what effect nettles have on hay, and what taste they will give to
porridge; and it will give him nearly a new life if he can be got
but once, in a spring-time, to look well at the beautiful circlet of
the white nettle blossom, and work out with his schoolmaster the
curves of its petals, and^the way it is set on its central mast. So,
the principle of chemical equivalents, beautiful as it is, matters far
less to a peasant boy, and even to most sons of gentlemen, than their
knowing how to find whether the water is wholesome in the backkitchen cistern, or whether the seven-acre field wants sand or chalk.
Having, then, directed the studies of our youth so as to make
them practically serviceable men at the time of their entrance into
life, that entrance should always be ready for them in cases where
their private circumstances present no opening. There ought to
be government establishments for every trade, in which all youths
who desired it should be received as apprentices on their leaving
school; and men thrown out of work received at all times. At

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these government manufactories the discipline should be strict,
and the wages steady, not varying at all in proportion to the
demand for the article, but only in proportion to the price of food ;
the commodities produced being laid up in store to meet sudden
demands, and sudden fluctuations in prices prevented :—that gradual and necessary fluctuation only being allowed which is properly consequent on larger or more limited supply of raw material
and other natural causes. When there was a visible tendency to
produce a glut of any commodity, that tendency should be checked
by directing the youth at the government schools into other
trades; and the yearly surplus of commodities should be the principal means of government provision for the poor. That provision
should be large, and not disgraceful to them. At present there
are very strange notions in the public mind respecting the receiving of alms: most people are willing to take them in the form of
a pension from government, but unwilling to take them in the form
of a pension from their parishes. There may be some reason for this
singular prejudice, in the fact of the government pension being
usually given as a definite acknowledgment of some service done
to the country;—but the parish pension is, or ought to be, given
precisely on the same terms. A labourer serves his country with
his spade, just as a man in the middle ranks of life serves it with
his sword, pen, or lancet; if the service is less, and therefore the
wages during health less, then the reward, when health is broken,
may be less, but not, therefore, less honourable; and it ought to
be quite as natural and straightforward a matter for a labourer to
take his pension from his parish, because he has deserved well of
his parish, as for a man in higher rank to take his pension from
his country, because he has deserved well of his country. If there
be any disgrace in coming to the parish, because it may imply
improvidence in early life, much more is there disgrace in coming
to the government; since improvidence is far less justifiable in a
highly educated than in an imperfectly educated man; and far
less justifiable in a high rank, where extravagance must have been
luxury, than in a lowT rank, where it may only have been comfort.
So that the real fact of the matter is, that people will take alms
delightedly, consisting of a carriage and footmen, because those

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do not look like alms to the people in the street; hut they will
not take alms consisting only of bread and water and coals,
because everybody would understand what those meant. Mind,
I do not want any one to refuse the carriage who ought to have
it; but neither do I want them to refuse the coals. I should
indeed be sorry if any change in our views on these subjects
involved the least lessening of self-dependence in the English
mind ; but the common shrinking of men from the acceptance of
public charity is not self-dependence, but mere base and selfish
pride. It is not that they are unwilling to live at their neighbours'
expense, but that they are unwilling to confess they do ; it is not
dependence they wish to avoid, but gratitude. They will take
places in which they know there is nothing to be done—they will
borrow money they know they cannot repay—they will carry on
a losing business with other people's capital-—they will cheat the
public in their shops, or sponge on their friends at their houses;
but to say plainly they are poor men, who need the nation's help,
and go into an almshouse—this they loftily repudiate, and virtuously prefer being thieves to being paupers.
I trust that these deceptive efforts of dishonest men to appear
independent, and the agonizing efforts of unfortunate men to
remain independent, may both be in some degree checked by a
better administration and understanding of laws respecting the
poor. But the ordinances for relief and the ordinances for labour
must go together; otherwise distress caused by misfortune will
always be confounded, as it is now, with distress caused by idleness,
unthrift, and fraud. It is only when the state watches and guides
the middle life of men, that it can, without disgrace to them, protect their old age, acknowledging in that protection that they
have done their duty, or at least some portion of their duty, in
better days.
I know well how strange, fanciful, or impracticable these suggestions will appear to most of the business men of this day; men
who conceive the proper state of the world to be simply that of a
vast and disorganized mob, scrambling each for what he can get,
trampling down its children and old men in the mire, and doing
what work it finds must be done with any irregular squad of labour-

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ers it can bribe or inveigle together, and afterwards scatter to starvation. A great deal may, indeed, be done in this way by a nation
strong-elbowed and strong-hearted as we are—not easily frightened
by pushing, nor discouraged by falls. But it is still not the right
way of doing things, for people who call themselves Christians,
Every so named soul of man claims from every other such soul,
protection and education in childhood—help or punishment in
middle life—reward or relief, if needed, in old age; all of these
should be completely and unstinting] y given, and they can only be
given by the organization of such a system as I have described.

ISTote 3rd, p. 25.—" Trial Schooh."
It may be seriously questioned by the reader how much of painting talent we really lose on our present system,* and how much
* It will be observed that, in the lecture, it is assumed that works of art are
national treasures; and that it is desirable to withdraw all the hands capable
of painting or carving from other employments, in order that they may produce this kind of wealth. I do not, in assuming this, mean that works of art
add to the monetary resources of a nation, or form part of its wealth, in the
vulgar sense. The result of the sale of a picture in the country itself is
merely that a certain sum of money is transferred from the hands of B the
purchaser, to those of A. the producer; the sum ultimately to be distributed
remaining the same, only A. ultimately spending it instead of B., while the
labour of A. has been in the meantime withdrawn from productive channels ;
he has painted a picture which nobody can live upon, or live in, when he
might have grown corn or built houses: when the sale therefore is effected
in the country itself, it does not add to, but diminishes, the monetary resources
of the country, except only so far as it may appear probable, on other grounds,
that A. is likely to spend the sum he receives for his picture more rationally
and usefully than B. would have spent it. If, indeed, the picture, or other
work of art, be sold in foreign countries, either the money or the useful products of the foreign country being imported in exchange for it, such sale adds
to the monetary resources of the selling, and diminishes those of the purchasing nation. But sound political economy, strange as it may at first appear to
say so, has nothing whatever to do with separations between national interests. Political economy means the management of the affairs of citizens; and
it either regards exclusively the administration of the affairs of one nation, or
the administration of the affairs of the world considered as one nation. So

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we should gain by the proposed trial schools. For it migl t be
thought, that as matters stand at present, we have more painters
than we ought to have, having so many bad ones, and that all youths
who had true painters' genius forced their way out of obscurity.
when a transaction between individuals which enriches A., impoverishes B.
in precisely the same degree, the sound economist considers it an unproductive transaction between the individuals; and if a trade between two nations
which enriches one, impoverishes the other in the same degree, the sound
economist considers it an unproductive trade between the nations. It is
not a general question of political economy, but only a particular question
of local expediency, whether an article in itself valueless, may bear a value
of exchange in transactions with some other nation. The economist considers only the actual value of the thing done or produced; and if he sees a
quantity of labour spent, for instance, by the Swiss, in producing woodwork
for sale to the English, he at once sets the commercial impoverishment of the
English purchaser against the commercial enrichment of the Swiss seller; and
considers the whole transaction productive only so far as the woodwork itself is a
real addition to the wealth of the world. Eor the arrangement of the laws of a
nation so as to procure the greatest advantages to itself, and leave the smallest
advantages to other nations, is not a part of the science of political economy,
but merely a broad application of the science of fraud. Considered thus in
the abstract, pictures are not an addition to the monetary wealth of the world,
except in the amount of pleasure or instruction to be got out of them day by
day: but there is a certain protective effect on wealth exercised by works
of high art which must always be included in the estimate of their value.
G-enerally speaking, persons who decorate their houses with pictures, will
not spend so much money in papers, carpets, curtains, or other expensive and
perishable luxuries as they would otherwise. Works of good art, like books,
exercise a conservative effect on the rooms they are kept in ; and the wall
of the library or picture gallery remains undisturbed, when those of other
rooms are re-papered or re-panelled. Of course this effect is still more definite when the picture is on the walls themselves, either on canvass stretched
into fixed shapes on their panels, or in fresco; involving, of course, the preservation of the building from all unnecessary and capricious alteration. And
generally speaking, the occupation of a large number of hands in painting or
sculpture in any nation may be considered as tending to check the disposition
to indulge in perishable luxury. I do not, however, in my assumption that
works of art are treasures, take much into consideration this collateral monetary result. • I consider them treasures, merely as a permanent means of
pleasure and instruction; and having at other times tried to show the several
ways in which they can please and teach, assume here that they are thus useful ; and that it is desirable to make as many painters as we can.
5*

LG
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This is not so It is difficult to analyse the characters of mind
which cause youths to mistake their vocation, and to endeavour to
become artists, when they have no true artist's gift. But the fact
is, that multitudes of young men do this, and that by far the
greater number of living artists are men who have mistaken their
vocation. The peculiar circumstances of modern life, which exhibit art in almost every form to the sight of the youths in our great
cities, have a natural tendency to fill their imaginations with borrowed ideas, and their minds with imperfect science; the mere dislike of mechanical employments, either felt to be irksome, or
believed to be degrading, urges numbers of young men to become
painters, in the same temper in which they would enlist or go to
sea; others, the sons of engravers or artists, taught the business ot
the art by their parents, and having no gift for it themselves, follow
it as the means of livelihood, in an ignoble patience; or, if ambitious, seek to attract regard, or distance rivalry, by fantastic, meretricious, or unprecedented applications of their mechanical skill ;
while finally, many men earnest in feeling, and conscientious in
principle, mistake their desire to be useful for a love of art, and
their quickness of emotion for its capacity, and pass their lives in
painting moral and instructive pictures, which might almost justify
us in thinking nobody could be a painter but a rogue. On the
other hand, I believe that much of the best artistical intellect is
daily lost in other avocations. Generally, the temper which would
make an admirable artist is humble and observant, capable of
taking much interest in little things, and of entertaining itself
pleasantly in the dullest circumstances. Suppose, added to these
characters, a steady conscientiousness which seeks to do its duty
wherever it may be placed, and the power, denied to few artistical
minds, of ingenious invention in almost any practical department
of human skill, and it can hardly be doubted that the very
humility and conscientiousness which w^ould have perfected the
painter, have in many instances prevented his becoming one;
and that in the quiet life of our steady craftsmen—sagacious manufacturers, and uncomplaining clerks—there may frequently be concealed more genius than ever is raised to the direction of our public works, or to be the mark of our public praises.

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It is indeed probable, that intense disposition for art will conquer the most formidable obstacles, if the surrounding circumstances
are such as at all to present the idea of such conquest to the mind ;
but we have no ground for concluding that Giotto would ever have
been more than a shepherd, if Cimabue had not by chance found
him drawing ; or that among the shepherds of the Apennines there
were no other Giottos, undiscovered by Cimabue. We are too
much in the habit of considering happy accidents as what are
called "special Providences;" and thinking that when any great
work needs to be done, the man who is to do it will certainly be
pointed out by Providence, be he shepherd or sea-boy ; and prepared for his work by all kinds of minor providences, in the best
possible way. Whereas all the analogies of God's operations in
other matters prove the contrary of this; we find that " of
thousand seeds, He often brings but one to bear," often not one;
and the one seed which He appoints to bear is allowed to bear
crude or perfect fruit according to the dealings of the husbandman
with it. And there cannot be a doubt in the mind of any person
accustomed to take broad and logical views of the world's history,
that its events are ruled by Providence in precisely the same manner as its harvests ; that the seeds of good and evil are broadcast
among men, just as the seeds of thistles and fruits are; and that
according to the force of our industry, and wisdom of our husbandry, the ground will bring forth to us figs or thistles. So that
when it seems needed that a certain work should be done for the
world, and no man is there to do it, we have no right to say that
God did not wish it to be done; and therefore sent no man able
to do it. The probability (if I wrote my own convictions, I
should say certainty) is, that He sent many men, hundreds of men,
able to do it; and that we have rejected them, or crushed them;
by our previous folly of conduct or of institution, we have rendered
it impossible to distinguish, or impossible to reach them; and
when the need for them comes, and we suffer for the want of
them, it is not that God refuses to send us deliverers, and specially
appoints all our consequent sufferings; but that He has sent, and
we have refused, the deliverers; and the pain is then wrought out
by His eternal law, as surely as famine is wrought out by eternal

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law for a nation which will neither plough nor sow. No le<s are
we in error in supposing, as we so frequently do, that if a man be
found, he is sure to be in all respects fitted for the work to bo
done, as the key is to the lock : and that every accident which
happened in the forging him, only adapted him more truly to the
wards. It is pitiful to hear historians beguiling themselves and
their readers, by tracing in the early history of great men, the
minor circumstances which fitted them for the work they did,
without ever taking notice of the other circumstances which as
assuredly unfitted them for it; so concluding that miraculous interposition prepared them in all points for everything, and that
they did all that could have been desired or hoped for from them :
whereas the certainty of the matter is that, throughout their lives,
they were thwarted and corrupted by some things as certainly as
they were helped and disciplined by others; and that, in the
kindliest and most reverent view which can justly be taken of
them, they were but poor mistaken creatures, struggling with a
world more profoundly mistaken than they;—assuredly sinned
against, or sinning in thousands of w7ays, and bringing out at last
a maimed result—not what they might or ought to have done,
but all that could be done against the world's resistance, and in
spite of their own sorrowful falsehood to themselves.
And this being so, it is the practical duty of a wise nation, first
to withdraw, as far as may be, its youth from destructive influences;—then to try its material as far as possible, and to lose the
use of none that is good. I do not mean by " withdrawing from
destructive influences" the keeping of youths out of trials; but
the keeping them out of the way of things purely and absolutely
mischievous. I do not mean that we should shade our green corn
in all heat, and shelter it in all frost, but only that we should
dyke out the inundation from it, and drive the fowls away from
it Let your youth labour and sutler; but do not let it starve,
nor steal, nor blaspheme.
It is not, of course, in my power here to enter into details of schemes
of education ; and it will be long before the results of experiments
•aow in progress will give data for the solution of the most difficult
questions connected with the subject, of which the principal one is

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the mode in which the chance of advancement in life is to be extended to all, and yet made compatible with contentment in the
pursuit of lower avocations by those whose abilities do not qualify
them for the higher. But the general principle of trial schools
lies at the root of the matter—of schools, that is to say, in which
the knowledge offered and discipline enforced shall be all a part
of a great assay of the human soul, and in which the one shall be
increased, the other directed, as the tried heart and brain will best
bear, and no otherwise. One thing, however, I must say, that in
this trial I believe all emulation to be a false motive, and all giving of prizes a false means. All that you can depend upon in a
boy, as significative of true power, likely to issue in good fruit, is
his will to work for the work's sake, not his desire to surpass his
school-fellows ; and the aim of the teaching you give him ought to
be, to prove to him and strengthen in him his own separate gift,
not to puff him into swollen rivalry with those who are everlastingly greater than h e : still less ought you to hang favours and
ribands about the neck of the creature who is the greatest, to make
the rest envy him. Try to make them love him and follow him,
not struggle with him.
There must, of course, be examination to ascertain and attest
both progress and relative capacity; but our aim should be to make
the students rather look upon it as a means of ascertaining their
own true positions and powers in the world, than as an arena in
which to carry away a present victory. I have not, perhaps, in
the course of the lecture, insisted enough on the nature of relative
capacity and individual character, as the roots of all real value in
Art. We are too much in the habit, in these days, of acting as if
Art worth a price in the market were a commodity which people
could be generally taught to produce, and as if the education of the
artist, not his capacity, gave the sterling value to his work. No
impression can possibly be more absurd or false. Whatever people can? teach each other to do, they will estimate, and ought to
estimate, only as common industry; nothing will ever fetch a high
price but precisely that which cannot be taught, and which nobody
can do but the man from wdiom it is purchased. No state of
society, nor stage of knowledge, ever does away with the natural

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pre-eminence of one man over another; and it is that pre-eminence, and that only, which will give work high value in the market, or which ought to do so. It is a bad sign of the judgment,
and bad omen for the progress, of a nation, if it supposes itself to
possess many artists of equal merit. Noble art is nothing less than
the expression of a great soul; and great souls are not common
things. If ever we confound their work with that of others, it is
not through liberality, but through blindness.

Note 4th, p. 26.—-" Public favour:''
There is great difficulty in making any short or general statement of the difference between great and ignoble minds in their
behaviour to the " public." It is by no means universally the case
that a mean mind, as stated in the text, will bend itself to what
you ask of i t : on the contrary, there is one kind of mind, the
meanest of all, which perpetually complains of the public, contemplates and proclaims itself as a " genius," refuses all wholesome discipline or humble office, and ends in miserable and revengeful ruin ;
also, the greatest minds are marked by nothing more distinctly
than an inconceivable humility, and acceptance of work or instruction in any form, and from any quarter. They will learn from
everybody, and do anything that anybody asks of them, so long as
it involves only toil, or what other men would think degradation.
But the point of quarrel, nevertheless, assuredly rises some day
between the public and them, respecting some matter, not of humiliation, but of Fact. Your great man always at last comes to
see something the public don't see. This something he will
assuredly persist in asserting, whether with tongue or pencil, to be
as he sees it, not as they see it; and all the world in a heap on the
other side, will not get him to say otherwise. Then, if the world
objects to the saying, he may happen to get stoned or burnt for it,
but that does not in the least matter to him : if the world has no
particular objection to the saying, he may get leave to mutter it to
himself till he dies, and be merely taken for an idiot; that also
does not matter to him—mutter it he will, according to what he

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perceives to be fact, and not at all according to the roaring of the
walls of Red sea on the right hand or left of him. Hence tne
quarrel, sure at some time or other, to be started between the public and him; while your mean man, though he will spit and scratch
spiritedly at the public, while it does not attend to him, will bow
to it for its clap in any direction, and say anything when he has
got its ear, which he thinks will bring him another clap ; and thus,
as stated in the text, he and it go on smoothly together.
There are, however, times when the obstinacy of the mean man
looks very like the obstinacy of the great one; but if you look
closely into the matter, you will always see that the obstinacy of
the first is in the pronunciation of " I ; " and of the second, in the
pronunciation of " It."

Note 5th, p. 41.—" Invention of new wants?
It would have been impossible for political economists long to
have endured the error spoken of in the text,* had they not been
* I have given the political economists too much credit in saying this.
Actually, while these sheets are passing through the press, the blunt, broad,
unmitigated fallacy is enunciated, formally and precisely, by the common
councilmen of New York, in their report on the present commercial crisis.
Here is their collective opinion, published in the Times of November 23rd,
1857 :—"Another erroneous idea is that luxurious living, extravagant dressing, splendid turn-outs and fine houses, are the cause of distress to a nation.
No more erroneous impression could exist. Every extravagance that the
man of 100,000 or 1,000,000 dollars indulges in adds to the means, the support, the wealth of ten or a hundred who had little or nothing else but their
labour, their intellect, or their taste. If a man of 1,000,000 dollars spends
principal and interest in ten years, and finds himself beggared at the end of
that time, he has actually made a hundred who have catered to his extravagance, employers or employed, so much richer by the division of his wealth.
He may be ruined, but the nation is better off and richer, for one hundred
minds and hands, with 10,000 dollars apiece, are far more productive than
one with the whole."
Yes, gentlemen of the common council; but what has been doing in the
time of the transfer ? The spending of the fortune has taken a certain number of years (suppose ten), and during that time 1,000,000 dollars worth of

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confused by an idea, in part well founded, that the energies and re
finements, as well as the riches of civilized life, arose from imaginary wants. It is quite true, that the savage who knows no needs
but those of food, shelter, and sleep, and after he has snared his
venison and patched the rents of his hut, passes the rest of his
time in animal repose, is in a lower state than the man who labours
incessantly that he may procure for himself the luxuries of civilization ; and true also, that the difference between one and another
nation in progressive power depends in great part on vain desires ;
but these idle motives are merely to be considered as giving exercise to the national body and mind ; they are not sources of wealth,
except so far as they give the habits of industry and acquisitiveness.
If a boy is clumsy and lazy, we shall do good if we can persuade
him to carve cherry-stones and fly kites ; and this use of his fingers
and limbs may eventually be the cause of his becoming a wealthy
and happy man ; but we must not therefore argue that cherry-stones
are valuable property, or that kite-flying is a profitable mode of passing time. In like manner, a nation always wastes its time and
labour directly, when it invents a new want of a frivolous kind,
and yet the invention of such a want may be the sign of a healthy
activity, and the labour undergone to satisfy the new want may
lead, indirectly, to useful discoveries or to noble arts; so that a
nation is not to be discouraged in its fancies when it is either too
work has been done by the people, who have been paid that sum for it.
"Where is the product of that work ? By your own statement, wholly consumed ; for the man for whom it has been done is now a beggar. You have
given therefore, as a nation, 1,000,000 dollars worth of work, and ten years
of time, and you have produced, as ultimate result, one beggar! Excellent
economy, gentlemen; and sure to conduce, in due sequence, to the production of more than one beggar. Perhaps the matter may be made clearer to
you, however, by a more familiar instance. If a schoolboy goes out in the
morning with five shillings in his pocket, and comes home at night penniless,
having spent his all in tarts, prircipal and interest are gone, and fruiterer
and baker are enriched. So far so good. But suppose the schoolboy, instead,
has bought a book and a knife; principal and interest are gone, and bookseller and cutler are enriched. But the schoolboy is enriched also, and may
help his schoolfellows next day with knife and book, instead of lying in bed
and incurring a debt to the doctor.

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weak or foolish to be moved to exertion by anything but fancies,
or has attended to its serious business first. If a nation will not
forge iron, but likes distilling lavender, by all means give it lavender to distil; only do not let its economists suppose that lavender
is as profitable to it as oats, or that it helps poor people to live,
any more than the schoolboy's kite provides him his dinner.
Luxuries, whether national or personal, must be paid for by labour
withdrawn from useful things; and no nation has a right to
indulge in them until all its poor are comfortably housed and fed.
The enervating influence of luxury, and its tendencies to increase
vice, are points which I keep entirely out of consideration in the
present essay : but, so far as they bear on any question discussed,
they merely furnish additional evidence on the side which I have
taken. Thus, in the present case, I assume that the luxuries of
civilized life are in possession harmless, and in acquirement, serviceable as a motive for exertion; and even on these favourable
terms, we arrive at the conclusion that the nation ought not to
indulge in them except under severe limitations. Much less ought
it to indulge in them if the temptation consequent on their possession, or fatality incident to their manufacture, more than counterbalances the good done by the effort to obtain them.

Note 6th, p. 52.—"Economy of Literature"
I have been much impressed lately by one of the results of the
quantity of our books ; namely, the stern impossibility of getting
anything understood, that required patience to understand. I
observe always, in the case of my own writings, that if ever I
state anything which has cost me any trouble to ascertain, and
which, therefore, will probably require a minute or two of reflection from the reader before it can be accepted,—that statement
will not only be misunderstood, but in all probability taken to
mean something very nearly the reverse of what it does mean.
Now, whatever faults there may be in my modes of expression, I
know that the words I use will always be found, by Johnson's die-

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tionary, to bear, first of all, the sense I use them in; and that the
sentences, whether awkwardly turned or not, will, by the ordinary
rules of grammar, bear no other interpretation than that I mean
them to bear ; so that the misunderstanding of them must result,
ultimately, from the mere fact that their matter sometimes requires
a little patience. And I see the same kind of misinterpretation
put on the words of other writers, whenever they require the same
kind of thought.
I was at first a little despondent about this ; but, on the whole,
I believe it will have a good effect upon our literature for some
time to come ; and then, perhaps, the public may recover its
patience again. For certainly it is excellent discipline for an
author to feel that he must say all he has to say in the fewest possible words, or his reader is sure to skip them ; and in the plainest
possible words, or his reader will certainly misunderstand them.
Generally, also, a downright fact may be told in a plain way; and
we want downright facts at present more than anything else. And
though I often hear moral people complaining of the bad effects
of want of thought, for my part, it seems to me that one of the
worst diseases to which the human creature is liable is its disease
of thinking. If it would only just look* at a thing instead of
thinking what it must be like, or do a thing, instead of thinking it
cannot be done, we should all get on far better.
* There can be no question, however, of the mischievous tendency of the
hurry of the present day, in the way people undertake this very looking. I
gave three years' close and incessant labour to the examination of the chronology of the architecture of Yenice; two long winters being wholly spent
in the drawing of details on the spot: and yet I see constantly that architects
who pass three or four days in a gondola going up and down the grand canal,
think that their first impressions are just as likely to be true as my patiently
wrought conclusions. Mr. Street, for instance, glances hastily at the facade
of the Ducal Palace—so hastily that he does not even see what its pattern
is, and misses the alternation of red and black in the centres of its squares—
and yet he instantly ventures on an opinion on the chronology of its capitals,
which is one of the most complicated and difficult subjects in the whole range
of G-othic archaeology. It may, nevertheless, be ascertained with very fair
probability of correctness by any person who will give a month's hard work
to it, but it can be ascertained no otherwise.

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Note 7th, p. 93.— u Pilots of tie State."
"While, however, undoubtedly, these responsibilities attach to
every person possessed of wealth, it is necessary both to avoid any
stringency of statement respecting the benevolent modes of spending money, and to admit and approve so much liberty of spending it for selfish pleasures as may distinctly make wealth a personal
reward for toil, and secure in the minds of all men the right of
property. For although, without doubt, the purest pleasures it
can procure are not selfish, it is only as a means of personal gratification that it will be desired by a large majority of workers; and
it would be no less false ethics than false policy to check their
energy by any forms of public opinion which bore hardly against
the wanton expenditure of honestly got wealth. It would be hard
if a man who had passed the greater part of his life at the desk
or counter could not at last innocently gratify a caprice; and all
the best and most sacred ends of almsgiving would be at once disappointed, if the idea of a moral claim took the place of affectionate gratitude in the mind of the receiver.
Some distinction is made by us naturally in this respect between
earned and inherited wealth; that which is inherited appearing to
involve the most definite responsibilities, especially when consisting
in revenues derived from the soil. The form of taxation which
constitutes rental of lands places annually a certain portion of the
national wealth in the hands of the nobles, or other proprietors of
the soil, under conditions peculiarly calculated to induce them to
give their best care to its efficient administration. The want
of instruction in even the simplest principles of commerce and
economy, which hitherto has disgraced our schools and universities, has indeed been the cause of ruin or total inutility of life to
multitudes of our men of estate ; but this deficiency in our public
education cannot exist much longer, and it appears to be highly
advantageous for the State that a certain number of persons distinguished by race should be permitted to set examples of wise
expenditure, whether in the advancement of science, or in patronage of art and literature; only they must see to it that they take

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their right standing more firmly than they have done hitherto,
for the position of a rich man in relation to those around him
is, in our present real life, and is also contemplated generally by
political economists as being, precisely the reverse of what it
ought to be. A rich man ought to be continually examining how
he may spend his money for the advantage of others; at present,
others are continually plotting how they may beguile him into
spending it apparently for his own. The aspect which he presents
to the eyes of the world is generally that of a person holding a
bag of money with a staunch grasp, and resolved to part with
none of it unless he is forced, and all the people about him are
plotting how they may force him ; that is to say, how they may
persuade him that he wants this thing or that; or how they may
produce things that he will covet and buy. One man tries to per
suade him that he wants perfumes; another that he wants jewellery; another that he wants sugarplums; another that he wants
roses at Christmas. Anybody who can invent a new want for him
is supposed to be a benefactor to society ; and thus the energies
of the poorer people about him are continually directed to the
production of covetable, instead of serviceable things; and the rich
man has the general aspect of a fool, plotted against by all the
world. Whereas the real aspect which he ought to have is that
of a person wiser than others, entrusted with the management of
a larger quantity of capital, which he administers for the profit of
all, directing each man to the labour which is most healthy for
him, and most serviceable for the community.

Note 8th, p. 93.—" Silk and Purple:''
In various places throughout these lectures I have had to allude
to the distinction between productive and unproductive labour,
and between true and false wealth. I shall here endeavour, as
clearly as I can, to explain the distinction I mean.
Property may be divided generally into two kinds ; that which
produces life, and that which produces the objects of life. That
which produces or maintains life consists of food, in so far a,s it is

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nourishing; of furniture and clothing, in so far as they are pro tective or cherishing; of fuel; and of all land, instruments, or
materials, necessary to produce food, houses, clothes, and fuel. It
is specially and rightly called useful property.
The property which produces the objects of life consists of all
that gives pleasure or suggests and preserves thought: of food,
furniture, and land, in so far as they are pleasing to the appetite or
the eye; of luxurious dress, and all other kinds of luxuries; of
books, pictures, and architecture. But the modes of connection
of certain minor forms of property with human labour render it
desirable to arrange them under more than these two heads.
Property may therefore be conveniently considered as of five
kinds.
1st. Property necessary to life, but not producible by labour,
and therefore belonging of right, in a due measure, to every
human being as soon as he is born, and morally inalienable. As
for instance, his proper share of the atmosphere, without which, he
cannot breathe, and of water, which he needs to quench his thirst.
As much land as he needs to feed from is also inalienable; but in
well regulated communities this quantity of land may often be
represented by other possessions, or its need supplied by wages
and privileges.
2. Property necessary to life, but only producible by labour,
and of which the possession is morally connected with labour, so
that no person capable of doing the work necessary for its production has a right to it until he has done that work;—"he that
will not work, neither should he eat." It consists of simple food,
clothing, and habitation, with their seeds and materials, or instruments and machinery, and animals used for necessary draught or
locomotion, &c. It is to be observed of this kind of property,
that its increase cannot usually be carried beyond a certain point,
because it depends not on labour only, but on things of which the
supply is limited by nature. The possible accumulation of corn
depends on the quantity of corn-growing land possessed or commercially accessible ; and that of steel, similarly, on the accessible
quantity of coal and ironstone. It follows from this natural
limitation of supply that the accumulation of property of this kind

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in large masses at one point, or in one person's hands, eommcnly
involves, more or less, the scarcity of it at another point and in
other persons' hands; so that the accidents or energies which may
enable one man to procure a great deal of it, may, and in all likelihood will partially prevent other men procuring a sufficiency of
it, however willing they maybe to work for it; therefore, the
modes of its accumulation and distribution need to be in some
degree regulated by law and by national treaties, in order to
secure justice to all men.
Another point requiring notice respecting this sort of property
is, that no work can be wasted in producing it, provided only the
kind of it produced be preservable and distributable, since for
every grain of such commodities we produce we are rendering so
much more life possible on earth.* But though we are sure, thus,
that we are employing people well, we cannot be sure we might
not have employed them better ; for it is possible to direct labour
to the production of life, until little or none is left for that of the
objects of life, and thus to increase population at the expense of
* This point has sometimes been disputed; for instance, opening Mill's
Political Economy the other day, I chanced on a passage in which he says
that a man who makes a coat, if the person who wears the coat does nothing
useful while he wears it, has done no more good to society than the man
who has only raised a pine-apple. But this is a fallacy induced by endeavour
after too much subtlety. None of us have a right to say that the life of a
man is cf no use to him, though it may be of no use to us; and the man
who made the coat, and thereby prolonged another man's life, has done a
gracious and useful work, whatever may come of the life so prolonged. We
may say to the wearer of the coat, " You who are wearing coats, and doing
nothing in them, are at present wasting your own life and other people's;"
but we have no right to say that his existence, however wasted, is wasted
away. It may be just dragging itself on, in its thin golden line, with nothing
dependent upon it, to the point where it is to strengthen into good chain
cable, and have thousands of other lives dependent on it. Meantime, the
simple fact respecting the coat-maker is, that he has given so much life to
the creature, the results of which he cannot calculate; they may be—in all
probability will be—infinite results in some way. But the raiser of pines,
who has only given a pleasant taste in the mouth to some one, may see with
tolerable clearness to the end of the taste in the mouth, and of all conceivable results therefrom.

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civilization, learning, and morality: on the other hand, it is just
as possible—and the error is one to which the world is, on the
whole, more liable—to direct labour to the objects of life till too
little is left for life, and thus to increase luxury or learning at the
expense of population. Right political economy holds its aim
poised justly between the two extremes, desiring neither to crowd
its dominions with a race of savages, nor to found courts and
colleges in the midst of a desert.
3. The third kind of property is that which conduces to bodily
pleasures and conveniences, without directly tending to sustain
life; perhaps sometimes indirectly tending to destroy it. All
dainty (as distinguished from nourishing) food, and means of producing i t ; all scents not needed for health ; substances valued
only for their appearance and rarity (as gold and jewels); flowers
of difficult culture; animals used for delight (as horses for racing),
and such like, form property of this class; to which the term
" luxury, or luxuries," ought exclusively to belong.
Respecting which we have to note, first, that all such property
is of doubtful advantage even to its possessor. Furniture tempting
to indolence, sweet odours, and luscious food, are more or less injurious to health : while, jewels, liveries, and other such common
belongings of wealthy people, certainly convey no pleasure to
their owners proportionate to their cost.
Farther, such property, for the most part, perishes in the using.
Jewels form a great exception—but rich food, fine dresses, horses
and carriages, are consumed by the owner's use. It ought much
oftener be brought to the notice of rich men what sums of interest
of money they are paying towards the close of their lives, for luxuries consumed in the middle of them. It would be very interesting, for instance, to know the exact sum which the money spent
in London for ices, at its desserts and balls, during the last twenty
years had it been saved and put out at compound interest, would
at this moment have furnished for itseful purposes.
Also, in most cases, the enjoyment of such property is wholly
selfish, and limited to its possessor. Splendid dress and equipage,
however, when so arranged as to produce real beauty of effect, may
often be rather a generous than a selfish channel of expenditure.

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They will, however, necessarily in such case involve seme of the
arts of design ; and therefore take their place in a higher category
than that of luxuries merely.
4. The fourth kind of property is that which bestows intellectual
or emotional pleasure, consisting of land set apart for purposes of
delight more than for agriculture, of books, works of art, and
objects of natural history.
It is, of course, impossible to fix an accurate limit between property of the last class and of this class, since things which are a
mere luxury to one person are a means of intellectual occupation
to another. Flowers in a London ball-room are a luxury; in a
botanical garden, a delight of the intellect; and in their native
fields, both; wdiile the most noble works of art are continually
made material of vulgar luxury or of criminal pride; but, when
rightly used, property of this fourth class is the only kind which
deserves the name of real property; it is the only kind which a
man can truly be said to " possess." What a man eats, or drinks,
or wears, so long as it is only what is needful for life, can no more
be thought of as his possession than the air he breathes. The air
is as needful to him as the food; but we do not talk of a man's
wealth of air, and what food or clothing a man possesses more than
he himself requires, must be for others to use (and, to him, therefore, not a real property in itself, bat only a means of obtaining
some real property in exchange for it). Whereas the things thai
give intellectual or emotional enjoyment may be accumulated and
do not perish in using; but continually supply new pleasures and
new powers of giving pleasures to others. And these, therefore,
are the only things which can rightly be thought of as giving
" wealth " or " well being." Food conduces only to " being," but
these to " well being." And there is not any broader general distinction between lower and higher orders of men than rests on
their possession of this real property. The human race may be
properly divided by zoologists into " men who have gardens, libraries, or works of art; and who have none ;" and the former class
will include all noble persons, except only a few who make the
world their garden or museum; while the people who have not,
or, which is the same thing, do not care for gardens or libraries,

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but care for nothing but money or luxuries, will include none but
ignoble persons : only it is necessary to understand that I mean by
the term " garden " as much the Carthusian's plot of ground fifteen
feet square between his monastery buttresses, as I do the grounds
of Chats worth or Kew; and I mean by the term " art" as much
the old sailor's print of the Arethusa bearing up to engage the
Belle Poule, as I do Eaphael's " Disputa," and even rather more;
for when abundant, beautiful possessions of this kind are almost
always associated with vulgar luxury, and become then anything
but indicative of noble character in their possessors. The ideal of
human life is a union of Spartan simplicity of manners with Athenian sensibility and imagination, but in actual results, we are continually mistaking ignorance for simplicity, and sensuality for
refinement.
5. The fifth kind of property is representative property, consist™
ing of documents or money, or rather documents only, for money
itself is only a transferable document, current among societies of
men, giving claim, at sight, to some definite benefit or advantage,
most commonly to a certain share of real property existing in those
societies. The money is only genuine when the property it gives
claim to is real, or the advantages it gives claim to certain ; otherwise, it is false money, and may be considered as much " forged v
when issued by a government, or a bank, as when by an individual.
Thus, if a dozen of men, cast ashore on a desert island, pick up a
number of stones, put a red spot on each stone, and pass a law
that every stone marked with a red spot shall give claim to a peck
of wheat;—so long as no wheat exists, or can exist, on the island,
the stones are not money. But the moment so much wheat exists
as shall render it possible for the society always to give a peck for
every spotted stone, the spotted stones would become money, and
might be exchanged by their possessors for whatever other commodities they chose, to the value of the peck of wheat which the
stones represented. If more stones were issued than the quantity
of wheat could answer the demand of, the value of the stone
coinage would be depreciated, in proportion to its increase above
the quantity needed to answer it.
Again, supposing a certain number of the men so cast ashore
6

122

POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART„

were set aside by lot, or any other convention, to do the roughei
labour necessary for the whole society, they themselves beingmaintained by the daily allotment of a certain quantity of food,
clothing, &c. Then, if it were agreed that the stones spotted with
red should be signs of a Government order for the labour of these
men; and that any person presenting a spotted stone at the office
of the labourers, should be entitled to a man's work for a wTeek
or a day, the red stones would be money ; and might—probably
would,—immediately pass current in the island for as much food,
or clothing, or iron, or any other article as a man's work for the
period secured by the stone was worth9 But if the Government
issued so many spotted stones that it was impossible for the body
of men they employed to comply with the orders; as, suppose, if
they only employed twelve men, and issued eighteen spotted stones
daily, ordering a day's work each, then the six extra stones would
be forged or false money; and the effect of this forgery would be
the depreciation of the value of the whole coinage by one-third,
that being the period of shortcoming which would, on the average,
necessarily ensue in the execution of each order. Much occasional
work may be done in a state or society, by help of an issue of false
money (or false promises) by way of stimulants; and the fruit of
this work, if it comes into the promiser's hands, may sometimes
enable the false promises at last to be fulfilled: hence the frequent
issue of false money by governments and banks, and the not unfrequent escapes from the natural and proper consequences of such
false issues, so as to cause a confused conception in most people's
minds of what money really is. I am not sure whether some
quantity of such false issue may not really be permissible in a
nation, accurately proportioned to the minimum average produce
of the labour it excites; but all such procedures are more or less
unsound; and the notion of unlimited issue of currency is simply
one of the absurdest and most monstrous that ever came into disjointed human wits.
The use of objects of real or supposed value for currency, as
gold, jewellery, &c, is barbarous; and it always expresses either
the measure of the distrust in the society of its own government,
or the proportion of distrustful or barbarous nations with whom it

ADDENDA.

123

has to deal. A metal not easily corroded or imitated, is a desirable
medium of currency for the sake of cleanliness and convenience,
but were it possible to prevent forgery, the more worthless the
metal itself, the better. The use of worthless media, unrestrained
by the use of valuable media, has always hitherto involved, and is
therefore supposed to involve necessarily, unlimited, or at least
improperly extended, issue; but we might as well suppose that a
man must necessarily issue unlimited promises because his words
cost nothing. Intercourse with foreign nations must, indeed, for
ages yet to come, at the world's present rate of progress, be carried on by valuable currencies; but such transactions are nothing
more than forms of barter. The gold used at present as a currency
is not, in point of fact, currency at all, but the real property*
which the currency gives claim to, stamped to measure its quantity, and mingling with the real currency occasionally by barter.
The evils necessarily resulting from the use of baseless currencies have been terribly illustrated while these sheets have been
passing through the press; I have not had time to examine the
various conditions of dishonest or absurd trading which have led
to the late " panic" in America and England; this only I know,
that no merchant deserving the name ought to be more liable to
" panic" than a soldier should ; for his name should never be on
more paper than he can at any instant meet the call of, happen
what will. I do not say this without feeling at the same time
how difficult it is to mark, in existing commerce, the just limits
between the spirit of enterprise and of speculation. Something of
* Or rather, equivalent to such real property, because everybody has been
accustomed to look upon it as valuable; and therefore everybody is willing
to give labour or goods for it. But real property does ultimately consist only
in things that nourish the body or mind; gold would be useless to us if we
could not get mutton or books for it. Ultimately all commercial mistakes
and embarrassments result from people expecting to get goods without working for them, or wasting them after they have got them. A nation which
labours, and takes care of the fruits of labour, would be rich and happy;
though there were no gold in the universe. A nation which is idle, and
wastes the produce of what work it does, would be poor and miserable,
though all its mountains were of gold, and had glens filled with diamond
instead of glacier.

124

POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART,

the same temper which makes the English soldier do always all
that is possible, and attempt more than is possible, joins its influence with that of mere avaiice in tempting the English merchant
into risks which he cannot justify, and efforts which he cannot
sustain; and the same passion for adventure which our travellers
gratify every summer on perilous snow wreaths, and cloud-encompassed precipices, surrounds with a romantic fascination the glittering of a hollow investment, and gilds the clouds that curl round
gulfs of ruin. Nay, a higher and a more serious feeling frequently
mingles in the motley temptation; and men apply themselves to
the task of growing rich, as to a labour of providential appointment, from which they cannot pause without culpability, nor retire
without dishonour. Our large trading cities bear to me very
nearly the aspect of monastic establishments in which the roar of
the mill-wheel and the crane takes the place of other devotional
music : and in which the worship of Mammon and Moloch is conducted with a tender reverence and an exact propriety : the merchant rising to his Mammon matins with the self-denial of an anchorite, and expiating the frivolities into which he may be beguiled in
the course of the day by late attendance at Mammon vespers.
But, with every allowance that can be made for these conscientious and romantic persons, the fact remains the same, that by far
the greater number of the transactions which lead to these times
of commercial embarrassment may be ranged simply under two
great heads,—gambling and stealing; and both of these in their
most culpable form, namely, gambling with money which is not
ours, and stealing from those who trust us. I have sometimes
thought a day might come, when the nation would perceive that
a well-educated man who steals a hundred thousand pounds, involving the entire means of subsistence of a hundred families, deserves,
on the whole, as severe a punishment as an ill-educated man
who steals a purse from a pocket, or a mug from a pantry. But
without hoping for this success of clear-sightedness, we may at
least labour for a system of greater honesty and kindness in the
minor commerce of our daily life; since the great dishonesty of
the great buyers and sellers is nothing more than the natural
growth and outcome from the little dishonesty of the little buyers

ADDENDA.

125

and sellers. Every person who tries to buy an article for less than
its proper value, or who tries to sell it at more than its proper
value—every consumer who keeps a tradesman waiting for his
money, and every tradesman who bribes a consumer to extravagance by credit, is helping forward, according to his own measure
of power, a system of baseless and dishonourable commerce, and
forcing his country down into poverty and shame. And people
of moderate means and average powers of mind would do far more
real good by merely carrying out stern principles of justice and
honesty in common matters of trade, than by the most ingenious
schemes of extended philanthropy, or vociferous declarations of
theological doctrine. There are three weighty matters of the law
—justice, mercy, and truth ; and of these the Teacher puts truth
last, because that cannot be known but by a course of acts of justice and love. But men put, in all their efforts, truth first,
because they mean by it their own opinions ; and thus, while the
world has many people who would suffer martyrdom in the cause
of what they call truth, it has few who will suffer even a little
inconvenience in that of justice and mercy.

AN INQUIRY
INTO SOME OF

THE CONDITIONS AT PRESENT AFFECTING

a

THE

STUDY OF ARCHITECTURE1

m OUR SCHOOLS.

BY JOHN RITSKIN.
Read at the Ordinaly General Meeting of thf> Loyal Institute of British Architects,
May 15th, 1865.

NEW

YORK:

JOHN WILEY & SON, PUBLISHERS,
2 CLINTON HALL, ASTOR PLACE.
1869.

THE STUDY OF ARCHITECTURE.

I SUPPOSE there is no man who, permitted to address, for the
first time, the Institute of British Architects, would not feel
himself abashed and restrained, doubtful of his claim to be
heard by them, even if he attempted only to describe what
had come under his personal observation, much more if on
the occasion he thought it would be expected of him to
touch, upon any of the general principles of the art of architecture before its principal English masters.
But if any more than another should feel thus abashed, it
is certainly one who has first to ask their pardon for the petulance of boyish expressions of partial t h o u g h t ; for ungraceful advocacy of principles which needed no support from
him, and discourteous blame of work of which he had never
felt the difficulty.
Yet, when I ask this pardon, gentlemen—and I do it sin
cerely and in shame—it is not as desiring to retract anything
in the general tenor and scope of what I have hitherto tried

4
to say.

THE STUDY OF ARCHITECTURE.

Permit me the pain, and the apparent impertinence,

of speaking for a moment of my own past work; for it is
necessary that what I am about to submit to you to-night
should be spoken in no disadvantageous connexion with t h a t ;
and yet understood as spoken in no discordance of purpose
with that.

Indeed, there is much in old work of mine which

I could wish to put out of mind.

Reasonings, perhaps not

in themselves false, but founded on insufficient data and
imperfect experience—eager preferences, and dislikes, dependent on chance circumstances of association, and limitations
of sphere of labour: but, while I would fain now, if I could,
modify the applications, and chasten the extravagance of my
writings, let me also say of them that they were the expression of a delight in the art of architecture which was too
intense to be vitally deceived, and of an inquiry too honest
and eager to be without some useful result; and I only wish
I had now time, and strength, and power of mind, to carry
on, more worthily, the main endeavour of my early work.
That main endeavour has been throughout to set forth the life
of the individual human spirit as modifying the application
of the formal laws of architecture, no less than of all other
a r t s ; and to show that the power and advance of this art,
even in conditions of formal nobleness, were dependent on its
just association with sculpture as a means of expressing the
beauty of natural forms : and I the more boldly ask your

THE STUDY OF ARCHITECTURE.

5

permission to insist somewhat on this main meaning of my
past work, because there are many buildings now rising in
the streets of London, as in other cities of England, whicl
appear to be designed in accordance with this principle, and
which are, I believe, more offensive to all who thoughtfully
concur with me in accepting the principle of Naturalism than
they are to the classical architect to whose modes of design
they are visibly antagonistic.

These buildings, in which the

mere cast of a flower, or the realization of a vulgar face,
carved without pleasure by a workman who is only endeavouring to attract attention by novelty, and then fastened on,
or appearing to be fastened, as chance may dictate, to an
arch, or a pillar, or a wall, hold such relation to nobly naturalistic architecture as common sign-painter's furniture landscapes do to painting, or commonest wax-work to Greek
sculpture; and the feelings with which true naturalists regard
such buildings of this class are, as nearly as might be, what
a painter would experience, if, having contended earnestly
against conventional schools, and having asserted that the
Greek vase-painting, and Egyptian wall-painting, and Mediaeval glass-painting, though beautiful, all, in their place and
vvay, were yet subordinate arts, and culminated only in perfectly naturalistic w^ork such as Raphael's in fresco, and
Titian's on canvas;—if, I say, a painter, fixed in such faith
in an entire, intellectual, and manly truth, and maintaining

6

THE STUDY OF ARCHITECTURE.

that an Egyptian profile of a head, however decoratively
applicable, was only noble for such human truth as it con
tained, and was imperfect and ignoble beside a work of
Titian's, were shown, by his antagonist, the colored daguerreotype of a human body in its nakedness, and told that it
was art such, as that which he really advocated, and to such
art that his principles, if carried out, would finally lead.
And because this question lies at the very root of the
organization of the system of instruction for our youth, 1
venture boldly to express the surprise and regret with which
T see our schools still agitated by assertions of the opposition of Naturalism to Invention, and to the higher conditions
of art.

Even in this very room I believe there has lately

been question whether a sculptor should look at a real living
creature of which he had to carve the image.

I would

answer in one sense,—no ; that is to say, he ought to carve no
living creature while he still needs to look at it.

If we do

not know what a human body is like, we certainly had better
look, and look often, at it, before we carve i t ; but if we
already know the human likeness so well that we can carve it
by light of memory, we shall not need to ask whether we
ought now to look at it or n o t ; and what is true of man is
true of all other creatures and organisms—of bird s and
beast, and leaf.

~No assertion is more at variance with the

laws of classical as well as of subsequent art than the com

7

THE STUDY OF ARCHITECTURE.

mon one that species should not be distinguished in great
design.

W e might as well say that we ought to carve a man

so as not to know him from an ape, as that we should carve
a lily so as not to know it from a thistle.

I t is difficult for

me to conceive how this can be asserted in the presence of
any remains either of great Greek or Italian art.

A Greek

looked at a cockle-shell or a cuttle-fish as carefully as he
xooked at an Olympic conqueror.

The eagle of Elis, the

lion of Yelia, the horse of Syracuse, the bull of Thurii, the
dolphin of Tarentum, the crab of Agrigentum, and the crawfish of Catana, are studied as closely, every one of them, as
the Juno of Argos, or Apollo of Clazomenae.

Idealism, so

far from being contrary to special truth, is the yerj abstraction of specialty from everything else.

It is the earnest

statement of the characters which make man man, and cockle
cockle, and flesh flesh, and

fish

fish.

Feeble

thinkers

indeed, always suppose that distinction of kind involve*
meanness of style ; but the meanness is in the treatment, not
in the distinction.

There is a noble way of carving a man,

and a mean one ; and there is a noble way of carving a
beetle, and a mean one; and a great sculptor carves his scara
baeus grandly, as he carves his king, while a mean sculptor
makes vermin of both.

And it is a sorrowful truth, yet a

sublime one, that this greatness of treatment cannot be
taught by talking about it.

RTo, nor even by enforced imi-

8

THE STUDY OF ARCHITECTURE.

tative practice of it.

Men treat their subjects nobly only

when they themselves become noble; not till then.

And

that elevation of their own nature is assuredly not to be
effected by a course of drawing from models, however well
chosen, or of listening to lectures, however well intended.
Art, national or individual, is the result of a long course
of previous life and training; a necessary result, if that life
has been loyal, and an impossible one, if it has been base.
Let a nation be healthful, happy, pure in its enjoyments,
brave in its acts, and broad in its affections, and its art will
spring round and within it as freely as the foam from a fountain ; but let the springs of its life be impure, and its course
polluted, and you will not get the bright spray by treatises
on the mathematical structure of bubbles.
And I am to-night the more restrained in addressing you,
because, gentlemen—I tell you honestly—I am weary of all
writing and speaking about art, and most of my own.
good is to be reached that way.

No

The last fifty years have, in

every civilized country of Europe, produced more brilliant
thought, and more subtle reasoning about art, than the five
thousand before t h e m ; and what has it all come to ?

Do not

let it be thought that I am insensible to the high merits of
much of our modern work.

It cannot be for a moment sup-

posed that in speaking of the inefficient expression of the
doctrines which writers on art have tried to enforce, I was

9

THE STUDY OF ARCHITECTURE.

thinking of such Gothic as has been designed and built by
Mr. Scott, Mr. Butterfield, Mr. Street, Mr. Waterhouse, Mr.
Godwin, or my dead friend, Mr. Woodward.
has been original and independent.

Their work

So far as it is good, it

has been founded on principles learned not from books, but
by study of the monuments of the great schools, developed
by national grandeur, not by philosophical speculation.

But

I am entirely assured that those who have done best among
us are the least satisfied with what they have done, and will
admit a sorrowful concurrence in my belief that the spirit, or
rather, I should say, the dispirit, of the age, is heavily
against them; that all the ingenious writing or thinking
which is so rife amongst us has failed to educate a public
capable of taking true pleasure in any kind of art, and that
the best designers never satisfy their own requirements of
themselves, unless by vainly addressing another temper of
mind, and providing for another manner of life, than ours.
All lovely architecture was designed for cities in cloudless
air; for cities in which piazzas and gardens opened in bright
populousness and peace; cities built that men might live
happily in them, and take delight daily in each other's presence and powers,

But our cities, built in black air, w7hich,

by its accumulated foulness, first renders all ornament invisible in distance, and then chokes its interstices with soot;
cities which are mere crowded masses of store, and ware*
1*

10

THE STUDf OF ARCHITECTURE.

house, and counter, and are therefore to the rest of the
world what the larder and cellar are to a private house ;
cities in which the object of men is not life, but labour; and
in which all chief magnitude of edifice is to enclose machinery ; cities in which the streets are not the avenues for the
passing and procession of a happy people, but the drains for
the discharge of a tormented mob, in which the only object
In reaching any spot is to be transferred to another ; in which
existence becomes mere transition, and every creature is only
one atom in a drift of human dust, and current of interchanging particles, circulating here by tunnels under ground,
and there by tubes in the air; for a city, or cities, such as
this, no architecture is possible—nay, no desire of it is possible to their inhabitants.
One of the most singular proofs of the vanity of all hope
that conditions of art may be combined with the occupations
of such a city, has been given lately in the design of the new
iron bridge

over the Thames

at

Blackfriars.

Distinct

attempt has been there made to obtain architectural effect on
a grand scale.

Nor was there anything in the nature of the

work to prevent such an effort being successful.

It is not an

edifice's being of iron, or of glass, or thrown into new forms,
demanded by new purposes, which need hinder its being
beautiful.

But it is the absence of all desire of beauty, of

all joy in fancy, and of all freedom in thought.

If a Greek,

THE STUDY OF ARCHITECTURE.

11

or Egyptian, or Gothic architect had been required to design
such a bridge, he would have looked instantly at the main
conditions of its structure, and dwelt on them with the
delight of imagination.

He would have seen that the main

thing to be done was to hold a horizontal group of iron rods
steadily and straight over stone piers.

Then he would have

said to himself (or felt without saying), " It is this holding,
•—this grasp,—this seeming tenor of a thing which might be
shaken, so that it cannot be shaken, on which I have to
insist."

And he would have put some life into those iron

tenons.

As a Greek put human life into his pillars and pro-

duced the caryatid; and an Egyptian lotus life into his
pillars, and produced the lily capital: so here, either of them
would have put some gigantic or some angelic life into those
colossal sockets.

H e would perhaps have put vast winged

statues of bronze, folding their wings, and grasping the iron
rails with their hands; or monstrous eagles, or serpents
holding with claw or coil, or strong four-footed animals
couchant, holding with the paw, or in fierce action, holding
with teeth.

Thousands of grotesque or of lovely thoughts

would have risen before him, and the bronze forms, animal or
human, would have signified, either in symbol or in legend,
whatever might be gracefully told respecting the purposes of
the work and the districts to which it conducted.

Whereas,

now, the entire invention of the designer seems to have

12

THE STUDY OF ARCHITECTURE.

exhausted itself in exaggerating to an enormous size a weak
form of iron nut, and in conveying the information upon it,
in large letters, that it belongs to the London, Chatham, and
Dover Railway Company.

I believe then, gentlemen, that if

there were any life in the national mind in such respects, it
would be shown in these its most energetic and costly works.
But that there is no such life, nothing but a galvanic restlessness and covetousness, with which it is for the present vain
to strive; and in the midst of which, tormented at once by
its activities and its apathies, having their work continually
thrust aside and dishonoured, always seen to disadvantage,
and overtopped by huge masses, discordant and destructive,
even the best architects must be unable to do justice to their
own powers.
But, gentlemen, while thus the mechanisms of the age prevent even the wisest and best of its artists from producing
entirely good work, may we not reflect with consternation
what a marvellous ability the luxury of the age, and the very
advantages of education, Confer on the unwise and ignoble
for the production of attractively and infectiously bad work.
I do not think that this adverse influence, necessarily affecting all conditions of so-called civilization, has been ever
enough considered.

It is impossible to calculate the power

of the false workman in an advanced period of national life,
noi the temptation to all workmen to become false.

THE STUDY OF ARCHITECTURE.

First, there is the irresistible appeal to vanity.

13

There is

hardly any temptation of the kind (there cannot be) while
the arts are in progress.

The best men must then always be

ashamed of themselves; they never can be satisfied with
their work absolutely, but only as it is progressive.

Take,

for instance, any archaic head intended to be beautiful ; say,
the Attic Athena, on the early Arethusa of Syracuse.

In

that, and in all archaic work of promise, there is much that
is inefficient, much that to us appears ridiculous—but nothing
sensual, nothing vain, nothing spurious or imitative.

It is a

child's work, a childish nation's work, but not a fool's work.
You find in children the same tolerance of ugliness, the same
eager and innocent delight in their own work for

the

moment, however feeble ; but next day it is thrown aside,
and something better is done.

ISTow, in this careless play, a

child or a childish nation differs inherently from a foolish
educated person, or a nation advanced in pseudo-civilization.
The educated person has seen all kinds of beautiful things,
of which he would fain do the like—not to add to their number—but for his own vanity, that he also may be called an
artist.

Here is at once a singular and fatal difference.

The

childish nation sees nothing in its own past work to satisfy
itself.

It is pleased at having done this, but wants something

better; it is struggling forward always to reach this better,
this ideal conception.

It wants more beauty to look at, it

u

THE STUDY OF ARCHITECTURE.

wants more subject to feel.

It calls out to all its artists—

stretching its hands to them as a little child does—" Oh, if
you would but tell me another story,"—" Oh, if I might but
have a doll with bluer eyes."

That's the right temper to

work in, and to get work clone for you in.

But the vain,

aged, highly-educated nation is satiated with beautiful things
—it has myriads more than it can look a t ; it has fallen into
a habit of inattention ; it passes weary and jaded through
galleries which contain the best fruit of a thousand years of
human travail; it gapes and shrugs over them, and pushes its
way past them to the door.

But there is one feeling that is

always distinct; however jaded and languid we may be in all
other pleasures, we are never languid in vanity, and we would
still paint and carve for fame.
nations of Europe to-day?

W h a t other motive have the

If they wanted art for art's sake,

they would take care of what they have already got.

But at

this instant the two noblest pictures in Venice are lying
rolled up in out-houses, and the noblest portrait of Titian in
existence is hung forty feet from the ground.

W e have

absolutely no motive but vanity and the love of money—no
others, as nations, than these, whatever we may have as individuals.

And as the thirst of vanity thus increases, so the

temptation to it.
archaic days.

There was no fame of artists in these

Every year, every hour, saw some one rise to

surpass what had been done before.

And there was always

15

THE STUDY OF AliCHITECTUKE.

better work to be done, but never any credit to be got by it.
The artist lived in an atmosphere of perpetual, wholesome,
inevitable eclipse.

Do as well as you choose to-day,—make

the whole Borgo dance with delight, they would dance to a
better man's pipe to-morrow.

Oreclette Cimdbue nella pit-

turd) tener lo campo, et ova ha Giotto il griclo.

This was the

fate, the necessary fate, even of the strongest.

They could

only hope to be remembered as links in an endless chain.
For the weaker men it was no use even to put their name on
their works.

They did not.

If they could not work for joy

and for love, and take their part simply in the choir of human
toil, they might throw up their tools.

But now it is far

otherwise —now, the best having been done—and for a couple
of hundred years, the best of us being confessed to have
come short of it, everybody thinks that he may be the great
man once again; and this is certain, that whatever in art is
done for display, is invariably wrong.
But, secondly, consider the attractive power of false art,
completed, as compared with imperfect art advancing to
completion.

Archaic work, so far as faultful, is repulsive;

but advanced work is, in all its faults, attractive.

The

moment that art has reached the point at which it becomes
sensitively and

delicately imitative, it appeals to a new

audience.

From that instant it addresses the sensualist and

the idler.

Its deceptions, its successes, its subtleties, become

16

THE STUDY OF AKCHITECTUKE.

interesting to every condition of folly, of frivolity, and of
vice.

And this new audience brings to bear upon the art in

which its foolish and wicked interest has been unhappily
awakened, the full power of its riches : the largest bribes of
gold as well as of praise are offered to the artist who will
betray his art, until at last, from the sculpture of Phidias and
fresco of Luini, it sinks into the cabinet ivory and the picture
kept under lock and key.

Between these highest and lowest

types, there is a vast mass of merely imitative and delicately
sensual sculpture ; veiled nymphs—chained slaves—soft goddesses seen by rose-light through suspended curtains—drawing-room portraits and domesticities, and such like, in which
the interest is either merely personal and selfish, or dramatic
and sensational; in either case, destructive of the power of
the public to sympathize with the aims of great architects.
Gentlemen, I am no Puritan, and have never praised or
advocated Puritanical art.

The two pictures which I would

last part with out of our National Gallery, if there were
question of parting with any, would be Titian's Bacchus and
Correggio's Venus.

But the noble naturalism of these was

the fruit of ages of previous courage, continence, and religion—it was the fulness of passion in the life of a Britomart.
But the mid age and old age of nations is not like the mid age
or old age of noble women.
criminal.

National decrepitude must be

National death can only be by disease, and yet it

17

THE STUDY OF ARCHITECTURE.

is almost impossible, out of the history of the art of nations,
to elicit the true conditions relating to its decline in any
demonstrable manner.

The history of Italian art is that of a

struggle between superstition and naturalism on one side,
between continence and sensuality on another.

So far as

naturalism prevailed over superstition, there is always progress ; so far as sensuality over chastity, death.
two contests are simultaneous.

It is impossible to distin-

guish one victory from the other.

Observe, however, I say

victory over superstition, not over religion.
define the difference.

And the

Let me carefully

Superstition, in all times and among

all nations, is the fear of a spirit whose passions are those of
a man, whose acts are the acts of a man ; who is present in
some places, not in others; who makes some places holy, and
not others ; who is kind to one person, unkind to another;
who is pleased or angry according to the degree of attention
you pay to him, or praise you refuse to h i m ; who is hostile
generally to human pleasure, but may be bribed by sacrifice
of a part of that pleasure into permitting the rest.

This,

whatever form of faith it colours, is the essence of superstition.
And religion is the belief in a Spirit whose mercies are over
all His works—who is kind even to the unthankful and the
evil; who is everywhere present, and therefore is in no place
to be sought, and in no place to be evaded; to whom all
creatures, times, and things are everlastingly holy, and who

18

THE STUDY OF ARCHITECTURE.

claims—not tithes of wealth, nor sevenths of days—but all
the wealth that we have, and all the days that we live, and
all the beings that we are, but who claims that totality
because He delights only in the delight of His creatures ; and
because, therefore, the one duty that they owe to Him, and
the only service they can render Him, is to be happy.

A

Spirit, therefore,

be

whose

eternal benevolence

cannot

angered, cannot be appeased; whose laws are everlasting
and inexorable, so that heaven and earth must indeed pass
away if one jot of them failed: laws which attach to every
wrong and error a measured, inevitable penalty; to every
rightness and prudence, an assured reward ; penalty, of which
the remittance cannot be purchased ; and reward, of which
the promise cannot be broken.
And thus, in the history of art, we ought continually to
endeavour to distinguish (while, except in broadest lights, it
is impossible to distinguish) the work of religion from that of
superstition, and the work of reason from that of infidelity.
Religion devotes the artist, hand and mind, to the service of
the g o d s ; superstition makes him the slave of ecclesiastical
pride, or forbids his work altogether, in terror or disdain.
Religion perfects the form of the divine statue; superstition
distorts it into ghastly grotesque.

Religion contemplates the

gods as the lords of healing and life, surrounds them with
glory of affectionate service, and festivity of pure human

THE STUDY OF AECHITECTTJRE.

beauty.

19

Superstition contemplates its idols as lords of death,

appeases them with blood, and vows itself to them in torture
and solitude.

Religion proselytizes by love, superstition by

w a r ; religion teaches by example, superstition by persecution.

Religion gave granite shrine to the Egyptian, golden

temple to the Jew, sculptured corridor to the Greek, pillared
aisle and frescoed wall to the Christian.

Superstition made

idols of the splendours by which religion had spoken: reverenced pictures and stones, instead of t r u t h s ; letters and laws
instead of acts; and for ever, in various madness of fantastic
desolation, kneels in the temple while it crucifies the Christ.
On the other hand, to reason resisting superstition, we owe
the entire compass of modern energies and sciences: the
healthy laws of life, and the possibilities of future progress.
But to infidelity resisting religion (or which is often enough
the case, taking the mask of it), we owe sensuality, cruelty
and war, insolence and avarice, modern political economy,
life by conservation of forces, and salvation by every man's
looking after his own interests; and generally, whatsoever
of guilt, and folly, and death, there is abroad among us.
And of the two, a thousand-fold rather let us retain some
colour of superstition, so that we may keep also

some

strength of religion, than comfort ourselves with colour :>f
reason for the desolation of godlessness.

I would say to

every youth who entered our schools—be a Mahometan, a

20

THE STUDY OF ARCHITECTURE.

Diana-worshipper, a Fire-worshipper, Root-worshipper, if
you will; but at least be so much a man as to know what
worship means.

I had rather, a million-fold rather, see }oa

one of those " quibus hsec nascuntur in hortis numina," than
one of those quibus hgec non nascuntur in cordibus lumina;
and who are, by everlasting orphanage, divided from the
Father of Spirits, who is also the Father of lights, from
whom cometh every good and perfect gift.
" So much of man," I say, feeling profoundly that all right
exercise of any human gift, so descended from the Giver of
good, depends on the primary formation of the character of
true manliness in the youth,—that is to say, of a majestic,
grave, and deliberate strength.

How strange the words

sound; how little does it seem possible to conceive

of

majesty, and gravity, and deliberation in the daily track of
modern life.

Yet, gentlemen, we need not hope that our

work will be majestic if there is no majesty in ourselves.
The word

cc

manly" has come to mean practically, among us,

a schoolboy's character, not a man's.

W e are, at our best,

thoughtlessly impetuous, fond of adventure and excitement;
curious in knowledge for its novelty, not for its system and
results ; faithful and aifectionate to those among whom we
are by chance cast, but gently and calmly insolent to strangers ; we are stupidly conscientious, and instinctively brave,
and always ready to cast away the lives we take no pains to

THE STUDY OF ARCHITECTURE.

21

make valuable, in causes of which we have never ascertained
the justice.

This is our highest type-—notable peculiarly

among nations for its gentleness, together with its courage;
but in lower conditions it is especially liable to degradation
by its love of jest and of vulgar sensation.

It is against this

fetal tendency to vile play that Ave have chiefly to contend.
It is the spirit of Milton's Comus; bestial itself, but having
power to arrest

and paralyze all who

come within

its

influence, even pure creatures sitting helpless, mocked by it
on their marble thrones.

It is incompatible, not only with all

greatness of character, but with all true gladness of heart,
and it develops itself in nations in proportion to their degradation, connected with a peculiar gloom and a singular tendency to play with death, which is a morbid reaction from
the morbid excess.
A book has lately been published on the Mythology of the
Rhine, with illustrations by Gustave Dore.

The Rhine god

is represented in the vignette title-page with a pipe in one
hand and a pot of beer in the other.

You cannot have a

more complete type of the tendency which is chiefly to be
dreaded in this age than in this conception, as opposed to
any possibility of representation of a river-god, however
playful, in the mind of a Greek painter.

The example is the

more notable because Gustave Dore's is not a common mind,
and, if born in any other epoch, he wTould probably have

22

THE STUDY OF ARCHITECTURE.

done valuable (though never first-rate) w o r k ; but by glancing (it will be impossible for you to do more than glance) at
his illustrations of Balzac's "Contes Drolatiques," you will
see further bow this " drolatique," or semi-comic mask, is, in
the truth of it, the mask of a skull, and how the tendency to
burlesque jest is both in France and England only an effervescence from the cloaca maxima

of the putrid instincts which

fasten themselves on national sin, and are in the midst of the
luxury of European capitals, what Dante meant when he
wrote, quel mi sveglio col puzzo, of the body of the WealthSiren ; the mocking levity and mocking gloom being equally
signs of the

death of the

soul; just

as,

contrariwise,

a passionate seriousness and passionate joyfulness are signs
of its full life in works such as those of Angelico, Luini,
Ghiberti, or La Robbia.
It is to recover this stern seriousness, this pure and thrilling joy, together with perpetual sense and spiritual presence,
that all true education of youth must now be directed.

This

seriousness, this passion, this universal human religion, are
the first principles, the true roots of all art, as they are of all
doing, of all being.
work will follow.

Get this vis viva first and all great

Lose it, and your schools of art will stand

among other living schools as the frozen corpses stand by the
winding stair of the St. Michael's Convent of Mont Cenis,
holding their hands stretched out under their shrouds, as if

THE STUDY OF ARCHITECTURE.

23

beseeching the passer-by to look upon the wasting of their
death.
And all the higher branches of technical teaching are vain
without this; nay, are in some sort vain altogether, for they
are superseded by this.

You may teach imitation, because

the meanest man can imitate ; but you can neither teach idealism nor composition, because only a great man can choose,
conceive, or compose ; and he does all these necessarily, and
because of his nature. His greatness is in his choice of things,
in his analysis of t h e m ; and his combining powers involve
the totality of his knowledge in life.

His methods of obser-

vation and abstraction are essential habits of his thought, conditions of his being.

If he looks at a human form he recog-

nises the signs of nobility in it, and loves them—hates whatever is diseased, frightful, sinful, or designant of decay.

All

ugliness, and abortion, and fading a w a y ; all signs of vice
and foulness, he turns away from, as inherently diabolic and
horrible ; all signs of unconquered emotion he regrets, as
weaknesses.

H e looks only for the calm purity of the

human creature, in living conquest of its passions and of
fate.
That is idealism; but you cannot teach any one else tha
preference.

Take a man who likes to see and paint the gam

bier's rage ; the hedge-ruffian's enjoyment; the debauched
soldier's stiife; the vicious woman's degradation;—take a

THE STUDY OF ARCHITECTURE.

u

man led on the dusky picturesque of rags and guilt; talk to
him of principles of beauty! make him draw what you will,
how you will, he will leave the- stain of himself on whatever
he touches.

You had better go lecture to a snail, and tell it

to leave no slime behind it.

Try to make a mean man com-

pose ; you will find nothing in his thoughts consecutive or
proportioned—nothing consistent in his sight—nothing in his
fancy.

He cannot comprehend two things in relation at once

—how much less twenty ! How much less all!

Everything

is uppermost with him in its turn, and each as large as the
rest; but Titian or Veronese compose as tranquilly as they
would speak—inevitably.

The thing comes to them so—-

they see it so—rightly, and in harmony: they will not talk
to you of composition, hardly even understanding how lower
people see things otherwise, but knowing that if they do see
otherwise, there is for them the end there, talk as you will.
I had intended, in conclusion, gentlemen, to incur such
blame of presumption as might be involved in offering some
hints for present practical methods in architectural schools,
but here again I am checked, as I have been throughout, by
a sense of the uselessness of all minor means and helps, without the establishment of a true and broad educational system.

My wish would be to see the profession of the archi-

tect united, not with that of the engineer, but of the sculptor.

I think there should be a separate school and university

THE STUDY OF ARCHITECTURE.

25

course for engineers, in which the principal branches of study
connected with that of practical buil'ding should be the physical and exact sciences, and honours should be taken i
mathematics ; but I think there should be another school and
university course for the sculptor and architect in which literature and philosophy should be the associated branches of
study, and honours should be taken in Uteris

humanioribus,

and I think a young architect's examination for his degree
(for mere pass), should be much stricter than that of youths
intending to

enter other professions.

The quantity of

scholarship necessary for the efficiency of a country clergyman is not great.

So that he be modest and kindly, the

main truths lie has to teach may be learned better in his
heart than in books, and taught in very simple English.

The

best physicians I have known spent very little time in their
libraries; and though my lawyer sometimes chats with me
over a Greek coin, I think he regards the time so spent in
the light rather of concession to my idleness than as helpful
to his professional labours.
But there is no task undertaken b j a true architect of
which the honourable fulfilment will not require a range of
knowledge and habitual feeling only attainable by advanced
scholarship.
Since, however, such expansion of system is, at present,
beyond hope, the best we can do is to render the studied
2

26

THE STUDY OF ARCHITECTUKE.

undertaken in our schools thoughtful, reverent, and refined,
according to our power.

Especially it should be our aim to

prevent the minds of the students from being distracted by
models of an unworthy or mixed character.

A museum is

one thing—a school another; and I am persuaded that as the
efficiency of a school of literature depends on the mastering
a few good books, so the efficiency of a school of art will
depend on the understanding a few good models.

And so

strongly do I feel this that I would, for my own part, at once
consent to sacrifice my personal predilections in art, and to
vote for the exclusion of all Gothic or Mediaeval models whatsoever, if by this sacrifice I could obtain also the exclusion of
Byzantine, Indian, Renaissance-French, and other more or
less attractive but barbarous work ; and thus concentrate the
mind of the student wholly upon the study of natural form,
and upon its treatment by the sculptors and metal workers
of Greece, Ionia, Sicily, and Magna Graacia, between 500 and
350 B.C., but I should hope that exclusiveness need not be
carried quite so far.
I think Donatello, Mino of Fiesole, the Robbias, Ghiberti,
Verrocchio, and Michael Angelo, should be adequately represented in our schools—together with the Greeks—and that a
few carefully chosen examples of the floral sculpture of the
North in the thirteenth century should be added, with especial view to display the treatment of naturalistic ornament in

THE STUDY OF ARCHITECTURE.

27

subtle connexion with constructive requirements ; and in the
course of study pursued with reference to these models, as
of admitted perfection, I should endeavour first to make the
student thoroughly acquainted with the natural forms and
characters of the objects he had to treat, and then to exercise
him in the abstraction of these forms, and the suggestion of
these characters, under due sculptural limitation.

He should

first be taught to draw largely and simply; then he should
make quick and firm sketches of flowers, animals, drapery,
and figures, from nature, in the simplest terms of line, and
light, and shade; always being taught to look at the organic
actions and masses, not at the textures or accidental effects
of shade ; meantime his sentiment respecting all these things
should be cultivated by close and constant inquiry into their
mythological significance and

associated traditions; then,

knowing the things and creatures thoroughly, and regarding
them through an atmosphere of enchanted memory, he
should be shown how the facts he has taken so long to learn
are summed up by a great sculptor in a few touches: how
those touches are invariably arranged in musical and decorative relations ; how every detail unnecessary for his purpose
is refused ; how those necessary for his purpose are insisted
upon, or even exaggerated, or represented by singular artifice, when literal representation is impossible; and how all
this is done under the instinct and passion of an inner com-

28

THE STUDY OF ARCHITECTURE.

manding spirit which it is indeed impossible to imitate, but
possible, perhaps, to share.
Perhaps!

Pardon me that I speak despondingly.

For

my own part, I feel the force of mechanism and the fury of
avaricious commerce to be at present so irresistible, that I
have seceded from the study not only of architecture, but
nearly of all a r t ; and have given myself, as I would in a
besieged city, to seek the best modes of getting bread and
water for its multitudes, there remaining no question, it
seems to me, of other than such grave business for the time.
But there is, at least, this ground for courage, if not for
hope: As the evil spirits of avarice and luxury are directly
contrary to art, so, also, art is directly contrary to them
and according to its force expulsive of them and medicinal
against t h e m ; so that the establishment of such schools as I
have ventured to describe—whatever their immediate success or ill-success in the teaching of art—would yet b e the
directest method of resistance to those conditions of evil
among which our youth are cast at the most critical period
of their lives.

W e may not be able to produce architecture,

but, at the least, we shall resist vice.

I do not know if it

has been observed that while Dante rightly connects architecture, as the most permanent expression of the pride of
humanity, whether just or unjust, with the first cornice of
Purgatory, he indicates its noble function by engraving upon

THE STUDY OF ARCHITECTURE.

29

it, in perfect sculpture, the stories which rebuke the errors
and purifj the purposes of noblest souls. In the fulfilment
of such function, literally and practically, here among men,
is the only real use or pride of noble architecture, and on its
acceptance or surrender of that function it depends whether,
in future, the cities of England melt into a ruin more confused and ghastly than ever storm wasted or wolf inhabited,
or purge and exalt themselves into true habitations of
men, whose walls shall be Safety, and whose gates shall be
Praise.

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