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not work, and the wasteful person who lays nothing by, at the end of the same time will be doubly poor-poor in possession, and dissolute in moral habit; and he will then naturally 5 covet the money which the other has saved. And if he is then allowed to attack the other, and rob him of his well earned wealth, there is no more any motive for saving, or any reward for good conduct; and all society is there

rapine. Therefore the first necessity of social life is the clearness of national conscience in enforcing the law-that he should keep who has Justly Earned.

fasted, and wearied itself with policies, and ambitions, and self-denials, God had placed its real happiness in the keeping of the little mosses of the wayside, and of the clouds of the firmament. Now and then a weary king, or a tormented slave, found out where the true kingdoms of the world were, and possessed himself, in a furrow or two of garden ground, of a truly infinite dominion. But the world would not believe their report, and went on 10 upon dissolved, or exists only in systems of trampling down the mosses, and forgetting the clouds, and seeking happiness in its own way, until, at last, blundering and late, came natural science; and in natural science not only the observation of things, but the finding out of 15 new uses for them. Of course the world, having a choice left to it, went wrong as usual, and thought that these mere material uses were to be the sources of its happiness. It got the clouds packed into iron cylinders, and made 20 it carry its wise self at their own cloud pace. It got weaveable fibres out of the mosses, and made clothes for itself, cheap and fine,-here was happiness at last. To go as fast as the clouds, and manufacture everything out of 25 and more or less cowardly. It is physically anything,-here was paradise, indeed!

That law I say, is the proper basis of distinction between rich and poor. But there is also a false basis of distinction; namely, the power held over those who are earning wealth by those who already possess it, and only use it to gain more. There will be always a number of men who would fain set themselves to the accumulation of wealth as the sole object of their lives. Necessarily that class of men is an uneducated class, inferior in intellect,

impossible for a well-educated, intellectual, or brave man to make money the chief object of his thoughts; just as it is for him to make his dinner the principal object of them. All healthy people like their dinners, but their dinner is not the main object of their lives. So all healthily-minded people, like making money ought to like it, and to enjoy the sensation of winning it: but the main object

And now, when in a little while it is unparadised again, if there were any other mistake that the world could make, it would of course make it. But I see not that there is any other; 30 and, standing fairly well at its wits' end, having found that going fast, when it is used to it, is no more paradisiacal than going slow; and that all the prints and cottons in Manchester cannot make it comfortable in its mind, I do 35 of their life is not money; it is something better

verily believe it will come, finally to understand that God paints the clouds and shapes the moss-fibres, that men may be happy in seeing Him at His work, and that in resting quietly beside Him, and watching His work- 40 ing, and—according to the power He has communicated to ourselves, and the guidance He grants,―in carrying out His purposes of peace and charity among all His creatures, are the only real happinesses that ever were, or will be, 45 possible to mankind.

MONEY

than money. A good soldier, for instance, mainly wishes to do his fighting well. He is glad of his pay-very properly so, and justly grumbles when you keep him ten years without it-still, his main notion of life is to win battles, not to be paid for winning them. So of clergymen. They like pew-rents, and baptismal fees, of course; but yet, if they are brave and well-educated, the pew-rent is not the sole object of their lives, and the baptismal fee is not the sole purpose of the baptism; the clergyman's object is essentially to baptize and preach, not to be paid for preaching. So of doctors. They like fees no doubt, ought to 50 like them; yet if they are brave and well-educated the entire object of their lives is not fees. They, on the whole, desire to cure the sick; and, if they are good doctors, and the choice were fairly put to them--would rather cure

(From The Crown of Wild Olive, 1866) The lawful basis of wealth is, that a man who works should be paid the fair value of his work; and that if he does not choose to spend it today, he should have free leave to keep it, 55 their patient, and lose their fee, than kill him,

and spend it tomorrow. Thus, an industrious man working daily, attains at last the possession of an accumulated sum of wealth, to which he has absolute right. The idle person who will

and get it. And so with all other brave and rightly trained men; their work is first, their fee second-very important always, but still, second. But in every nation, as I said, there are

a vast class who are ill-educated, cowardly, and more or less stupid. And with these people, just as certainly the fee is first, and the work second, as with the brave people the work is first, and the fee second. And this is no small distinction. It is between life and death in a man; between heaven and hell for him. You cannot serve two masters:-you must serve one or other. If your work is first with you, and your fee second, work is your master, and 10 once obtained, has over the labour of the poor,

that benevolent business; makes his own little job out of it at all events, come what will. And thus, out of every mass of men, you have a certain number of bagmen-your "fee-first" 5 men, whose main object is to make money. And they do make it-make it in all sorts of unfair ways, chiefly by the force and weight of money itself, or what is called the power of capital; that is to say, the power which money,

so that the capitalist can take all its produce to himself, except the labourer's food. That is the modern Judas's way of "carrying the bag," and "bearing what is put therein."

Nay, but (it is asked) how is that an unfair advantage? Has not the man who has worked for the money a right to use it as he best can? No, in this respect, money is now exactly what mountain promontories over public roads were

the lord of work, who is God. But if your fee is first with you, and your work second, fee is your master, and the lord of fee, who is the Devil; and not only the Devil, but the lowest of devils-the "least erected fiend that fell.”1 15 So there you have it in brief terms; Work first-you are God's servants; Fee first-you are the Fiend's. And it makes a difference, now and ever, believe me, whether you serve him who has on His vesture and thigh written, 20 in old times. The barons fought for them "King of Kings," and whose service is perfect freedom; or him on whose vesture and thigh the name is written, "Slave of Slaves," and whose service is perfect slavery.

fairly; the strongest and cunningest got them; then fortified them, and made every one who passed below pay toll. Well, capital now is exactly what crags were then. Men fight

it is more than we ought) for their money; but, once having got it, the fortified millionaire can make everybody who passes below pay toll to his million, and build another tower of

However in every nation there are, and must 25 fairly (we will, at least, grant so much, though always be, a certain number of these Fiend's servants, who have it principally for the object of their life to make money. They are always, as I said, more or less stupid, and cannot conceive of anything else so nice as money. Stu- 30 his money castle. And I can tell you, the poor

pidity is always the basis of the Judas bargain. We do great injustice to Iscariot, in thinking him wicked above all common wickedness. He was only a common money-lover, and, like all money-lovers, did not understand Christ;-35 could not make out the worth of Him, or meaning of Him. He never thought he would be killed. He was horror-struck when he found that Christ would be killed; threw his money away instantly, and hanged himself. How 40 many of our present money-seekers, think you, would have the grace to hang themselves, whoever was killed? But Judas was a common, selfish, muddle-headed, pilfering fellow; his hand always in the bag of the poor, not 45 caring for them. Helpless to understand Christ, he yet believed in Him, much more than most of us do; had seen Him do miracles, thought he was quite strong enough to shift

vagrants by the roadside suffer quite as much
from the bag-baron, as ever they did from the
crag-baron. Bags and crags have just the same
result on rags.
I have no time however, to-
night, to show you in how many ways the
power of capital is unjust; but remember this
one great principle-you will find it unfailing-
that whenever money is the principal object
of life with either man or nation, it is both got
ill, and spent ill; and does harm both in the
getting and spending; but when it is not the
principal object, it and all other things will
be well got, and well spent.

TASTE

(From the same)

Now pardon me for telling you frankly

for Himself, and he, Judas, might as well make 50 you cannot have good architecture merely by

his own little bye-perquisites out of the affair. Christ would come out of it well enough, and he have his thirty pieces. Now, that is the money-seeker's idea, all over the world. He doesn't hate Christ, but can't understand 55 Him-doesn't care for Him-sees no good in

"Mammon, the least erected spirit that fell." Milton, Par. Lost, I. 679. 2 Rev., xix. 16.

asking people's advice on occasion. All good architecture is the expression of national life and character; and it is produced by a prevalent and eager national taste, or desire for

This selection is from an address delivered in the Town Hall at Bradford, a prosperous manufacturing city of Yorkshire. Ruskin had been invited to lecture there on an Exchange which the city proposed to build. He said little of the Exchange, but spoke of the relation of industrial civilization to art. The address was afterwards included in The Crown of Wild Olive.

beauty. And I want you to think a little of the deep significance of this word "taste;" for no statement of mine has been more earnestly or oftener controverted than that good taste is essentially a moral quality. "No," say many of my antagonists, "taste is one thing, morality is another. Tell us what is pretty: we shall be glad to know that; but we need no sermons, even were you able to preach them, which may be doubted."

is to make people not merely do the right things, but enjoy the right things:-not merely industrious, but to love industry-not merely learned, but to love knowledge-not merely 5 pure, but to love purity-not merely just, but to hunger and thirst after justice.

But you may answer or think, “Is the liking for outside ornaments,-for pictures, or statues, or furniture, or architecture, a moral quality?” 10 Yes, most surely, if a rightly set liking. Taste for any pictures or statues is not a moral quality, but taste for good ones is. Only here again we have to define the word "good," cleveror learned-or difficult in the doing. Take a

Permit me, therefore, to fortify this old dogma of mine somewhat. Taste is not only a part and an index of morality;-it is the ONLY morality. The first, and last, and closest trial question to any living creature is, 15 picture by Teniers, of sots quarreling over "What do you like?" Tell me what you like and I'll tell you what you are. Go out into the street, and ask the first man or woman you meet, what their "taste" is; and if they answer candidly, you know them, body and soul. 20 "You, my friend in the rags, with the unsteady gait, what do you like?" "A pipe and a quartern of gin." I know you. "You, good woman, with the quick step and tidy bonnet, what do you like?" "A swept hearth, and a 25 clean tea-table; and my husband opposite me, and a baby at my breast." Good, I know you also. "You, little girl with the golden hair and the soft eyes, what do you like?" "My canary, and a run among the wood hyacinths." 30 "You, little boy with the dirty hands, and the low forehead, what do you like?" "A shy at the sparrows, and a game at pitch farthing.' Good; we know them all now. What more need we ask?

their dice; it is an entirely clever picture; so clever that nothing in its kind has ever been done equal to it; but it is also an entirely base and evil picture. It is an expression of delight in the prolonged contemplation of a vile thing. and delight in that is an "unmannered," or "immoral" quality. It is "bad taste" in the profoundest sense-it is the taste of the devils. On the other hand, a picture of Titian's, or a Greek statue, or a Greek coin, or a Turner landscape, expresses delight in the perpetual contemplation of a good and perfect thing. That is an entirely moral quality-it is the taste of the angels. And all delight in fine art, and all love of it, resolve themselves into simple love of that which deserves love. That deserving is the quality which we call "loveliness" (we ought to have an opposite word, hateliness, to be said of the things which de35 serve to be hated); and it is not an indifferent nor optional thing whether we love this or that; but it is just the vital function of all our being. What we like determines what we are, and is the sign of what we are; and to teach taste is to inevitably form character.

As I was thinking over this, in walking up Fleet Street the other day, my eye caught the title of a book standing open in a bookseller's window. It was-"On the necessity of the diffusion of taste among all classes." "Ah," I thought to myself, "my classifying friend, when you have diffused your taste, where will your classes be? The man who likes what you like, belongs to the same class with you, I

"Nay," perhaps you answer; "we need rather to ask what these people and children do, than what they like. If they do right, it is no matter that they like what is wrong; and if they do wrong, it is no matter that they like 40 what is right. Doing is the great thing; and it does not matter that the man likes drinking, so that he does not drink; nor that the little girl likes to be kind to her canary, if she will not learn her lessons; nor that the little boy 45 likes throwing stones at the sparrows, if he goes to the Sunday school." Indeed for a short time, and in a provisional sense, this is true. For if, resolutely, people do what is right, in time to come they like doing it. But 50 think. Inevitably so. You may put him to they only are in a right moral state when they have come to like doing it; and as long as they don't like it, they are still in a vicious state. The man is not in health of body who is always thinking of the bottle in the cupboard, though 55 who enjoyed the Newgate Calendar for literahe bravely bears his thirst; but the man who heartily enjoys water in the morning, and wine in the evening, each in its own proper time. And the entire object of true education

other work if you choose; but, by the condition you have brought him into, he will dislike the work as much as you would yourself. You get hold of a scavenger or a costermonger,

ture, and "Pop goes the weasel" for music. You think you can make him like Dante and

An account of famous criminals who had served terms in Newgate prison.

Beethoven? I wish you joy of your lessons; but if you do, you have made a gentleman of him: he won't like to go back to his costermongering."

ART AND CHARACTER

(From The Queen of the Air, 1869)

I have now only a few words to say, bearing on what seems to me present need, respecting the third function of Athena, conceived as the directress of human passion, resolution, and labour.

If stone work is well put together, it means that a thoughtful man planned it, and a careful man cut it, and an honest man cemented it. If it has too much ornament, it means that 5 its carver was too greedy of pleasure; if too little, that he was rude, or insensitive, or stupid, and the like. So that when once you have learned how to spell these most precious of all legends, pictures and buildings, you may 10 read the characters of men, and of nations, in their art, as in a mirror;-nay, as in a microscope, and magnified a hundredfold; for the character becomes passionate in the art, and intensifies itself in all its noblest or meanest delights. 15 Nay, not only as in a microscope, but as under a scalpel, and in dissection; for a man may hide himself from you, or misrepresent himself to you, every other way; but he cannot in his work: there, be sure, you have him to the in

Few words, for I am not yet prepared to give an accurate distinction between the intellectual rule of Athena and that of the Muses: but, broadly, the Muses, with their king, preside over meditative, historical, and poetic arts, 20 most. All that he likes, all that he sees,-all whose end is the discovery of light or truth, and the creation of beauty: but Athena rules over moral passion, and practically useful art. She does not make men learned, but prudent and subtle: she does not teach them to make 25 their work beautiful, but to make it right.

In different places of my writings, and through many years of endeavour to define the laws of art, I have insisted on this rightness in work, and on its connection with virtue of 30 character, in so many partial ways, that the impression left on the reader's mind-if, indeed, it was ever impressed at all-has been confused and uncertain. In beginning the

that he can do,-his imaginations, his affections, his perseverance, his impatience, his clumsiness, cleverness, everything is there. If the work is a cobweb, you know it was made by a spider; if a honeycomb, by a bee; a wormcast is thrown up by a worm, and a nest wreathed by a bird; and a house built by a man, worthily, if he be worthy, and ignobly, if he is ignoble.

And always, from the least to the greatest, as the made thing is good or bad, so is the maker of it.

You all use this faculty of judgment more or less, whether you theoretically admit the

series of my corrected works, I wish this prin- 35 principle or not. Take that floral gable; you

ciple (in my own mind the foundation of every other) to be mad plain, if nothing else is: and will try, therefore, to make it so, as far as, by any effort, I can put it into unmistakable words. And, first, here is a very simple state- 40 ment of it, given lately in a lecture on the Architecture of the Valley of the Somme, which will be better read in this place than in its incidental connection with my account of the porches of Abbeville.

I had used, in a preceding part of the lecture, the expression, "by what faults" this Gothic architecture fell. We continually speak thus of works of art. We talk of their faults

don't suppose the man who built Stonehenge could have built that, or that the man who built that, would have built Stonehenge? Do you think an old Roman would have liked such a piece of filagree work? or that Michael Angelo would have spent his time in twisting these stems of roses in and out? Or, of modern handcraftsmen, do you think a burglar, or a brute, or a pickpocket, could have carved it? Could 45 Bill Sykes have done it? or the Dodger,1 dexterous with finger and tool? You will find in the end, that no man could have done it but exactly the man who did it; and by looking close at it, you may, if you know your letters, read

and merits, as of virtues and vices. What do 50 precisely the manner of man he was.
we mean by talking of the faults of a picture,
or the merits of a piece of stone?

The faults of a work of art are the faults of its workman, and its virtues his virtues.

Great art is the expression of the mind of a great man, and mean art, that of the want of mind of a weak man. A foolish person builds foolishly, and a wise one, sensibly; a virtuous one, beautifully; and a vicious one, basely.

55

Now I must insist on this matter, for a grave reason. Of all facts concerning art, this is the one most necessary to be known, that, while manufacture is the work of hands only, art is the work of the whole spirit of man; and as that spirit is, so is the deed of it: and by whatever power of vice or virtue any art is produced, the same vice or virtue it reproduces and

1 Criminal characters in Dickens' Oliver Twist.

teaches. That which is born of evil begets evil; and that which is born of valour and honour, teaches valour and honour. All art is either infection or education. It must be one or other of these.

of moral character in war. I must make both these assertions clearer, and prove them.

First, of the foundation of art in moral character. Of course art-gift and amiability of 5 disposition are two different things; a good man is not necessarily a painter, nor does an eye for colour necessarily imply an honest mind. But great art implies the union of both powers: it is the expression, by an art-gift, of a pure

This, I repeat, of all truths respecting art, is the one of which understanding is the most precious, and denial the most deadly. And I assert it the more, because it has of late been repeatedly, expressly, and with contumely de- 10 soul. If the gift is not there, we can have no

art at all; and if the soul-and a right soul too -is not there, the art is bad, however dextrous. But also, remember, that the art-gift itself is only the result of the moral character of

nied; and that by high authority: and I hold it one of the most sorrowful facts connected with the decline of the arts among us, that English gentlemen, of high standing as scholars and artists, should have been blinded into the 15 generations. A bad woman may have a sweet acceptance, and been betrayed into the assertion, of a fallacy which only authority such as theirs could have rendered for an instant credible. For the contrary of it is written in the history of all great nations; it is the one 20 sentence always inscribed on the steps of their thrones; the one concordant voice in which they speak to us out of the dust.

All such nations first manifest themselves as a pure and beautiful animal race, with in- 25 tense energy and imagination. They live

voice; but that sweetness of voice comes of the past morality of her race. That she can sing with it at all, she owes to the determination of laws of music by the morality of the past. Every act, every impulse, of virtue and vice, affects in any creature, face, voice, nervous power, and vigour and harmony of invention, at once. Perseverance in rightness of human conduct, renders, after a certain number of generations, human art possible; every sin clouds it, be it ever so little a one; and persistent vicious living and following of pleasure render, after a certain number of generations, all art impossible. Men are deceived by the

take in a nation, the reward of the virtue of its sires for the issue of its own sins. The time of their visitation will come, and that inevitably; for, it is always true, that if the fathers have eaten sour grapes, the children's teeth are set on edge. And for the individual, as soon as you have learned to read, you may. as I have said, know him to the heart's core, through his art. Let his art-gift be never so great, and cultivated to the height by the schools of a great race of men; and it is still but a tapestry thrown over his own being and inner soul; and the bearing of it will show, infallibly, whether it hangs on a man, or on a skeleton. If you are dim-eyed, you may not see the difference in the fall of the folds at first, but learn how to look, and the folds themselves will become transparent, and you shall see through them the death's shape, or the divine one,

lives of hardship by choice, and by grand instinct of manly discipline: they become fierce and irresistible soldiers; the nation is always its own army, and their king, or chief head of 30 long-suffering of the laws of nature; and misgovernment, is always their first soldier. Pharaoh, or David, or Leonidas, or Valerius, or Barbarossa, or Cœur de Lion, or St. Louis, or Dandolo, or Frederick the Great;-Egyptian, Jew, Greek, Roman, German, English, 35 French, Venetian,-that is inviolable law for them all; their king must be their first soldier, or they cannot be in progressive power. Then, after their great military period; in which, without betraying the discipline of war, they 40 add to their great soldiership the delights and possessions of a delicate and tender home-life; and then, for all nations, is the time of their perfect art, which is the fruit, the evidence, the reward of their national ideal of character, 45 developed by the finished care of the occupations of peace. That is the history of all true art that ever was, or can be: palpably the history of it,-unmistakably,-written on the forehead of it in letters of light,-in tongues of 50 making the tissue above it as a cloud of light, fire, by which the seal of virtue is branded as deep as ever iron burnt into a convict's flesh the seal of crime. But always, hitherto, after the great period, has followed the day of luxury, and pursuit of the arts for pleasure only. And 55 bears fruit of virtue, and is didactic in its own all has so ended.

Thus far of Abbeville building. Now I have here asserted two things,-first, the foundation of art in moral character; next, the foundation

or as a winding sheet.

Then farther, observe, I have said (and you will find it true, and that to the uttermost) that, as all lovely art is rooted in virtue, so it

nature. It is often didactic also in actually expressed thought, as Giotto's, Michael Angelo's, Dürer's, and hundreds more; but that is not its special function,-it is didactic chiefly by

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