flowing forth in fifties, hundreds, and thousands of pounds." Indeed, out of a fortune of nearly $800,000 inherited from his father, the greater part has been spent in endowing museums, opening art schools, establishing improved dwelling-houses for the poor, aiding young men and women to get educations, and helping the suffering; so that to-day, after deducting his gift to St. George's Company, Mr. Ruskin has only about $60,000 left for himself, or considerably less than one-twelfth of his original wealth.

Yet so far from getting commendation, Ruskin has chiefly met mockery, which he has not infrequently returned with interest. "Because," he says, "I have passed my life in alms-giving, not in fortune-hunting; because I have labored always for the honor of others, not of my own, and have chosen rather to make men look to Turner and Luini,1 than to form or exhibit the skill of my own hand; because I have lowered my rents, and assured the comfortable lives of my poor tenants, instead of taking from them all I could force for the roofs they needed; because I love a wood walk better than a London street; and would rather watch a seagull fly than shoot it, and rather hear a thrush sing than eat it; finally, because I never disobeyed my mother, because I have honored all women with solemn worship, and have been kind even to the unthankful and the evil; therefore, the hacks of English art and literature wag their heads at me."

But it is time to come back to St. George's Company.

1 Luini (Bernardino): an eminent Italian painter (pupil of Leonardo Da Vinci) of the latter part of the fifteenth and first of the sixteenth century. His principal works are at Milan. In "The Queen of the Air" Ruskin contrasts Luini with Turner.

In the spring of 1877, a few Sheffield workmen hired thirteen acres, at Abbey Dale, from the company at a rental of three per cent on cost, and the new community began its existence; the understanding being that all profits from the cultivation of the land were to be spent in future improvements, and that such improvements should tend to lower the rental instead of increasing it, as is usually the

case.

Three material things are named as essential objects to be labored for these are Pure Air, Water, and Earth. On these the master of St. George's lays especial emphasis. Pure air, in contrast to that of manufacturing towns, black with irritating coal-smoke and poisonous with chemical gases; Pure water, as opposed to streams so reeking with filth and refuse that they have become simply open sewers;1 Pure earth, as compared with soil trampled deep with coal ashes, and heaped with broken pottery, cinders, and slag. Next, three immaterial things: Admiration, Hope, and Love. "Admiration - the power of discerning and taking delight in what is beautiful in visible form, and lovely in human character. Hope the recognition, by true foresight, of better things to be reached hereafter, whether by ourselves or others. Love, both of family and neighbors, faithful and satisfied."

With these essentials to start with, says Ruskin, "we will try to make some small piece of English ground beautiful, peaceful, and fruitful. We will have no steam-engines upon it, and no railroads; we will have no untended or unthought-of creatures on it; none wretched but the

1 Pure water: the once beautiful streams of rural England are now evillooking and evil-smelling. Not long ago a woman fell into one of them and was shortly after taken out dead; not drowned, but poisoned!

sick; none idle but the dead. We will have no liberty upon it; but instant obedience to known law and appointed persons: no equality upon it; but recognition of every betterness that we can find, and reprobation of every worseness. When we want to go anywhere, we will go there quietly and safely, not at forty miles an hour, in the risk of our lives; when we want to carry anything anywhere, we will carry it either on the backs of beasts, or on our own, or in carts or boats; we will have plenty of flowers and vegetables in our gardens, plenty of corn and grass in our fields, and few bricks."

Whatever piece of land we begin work upon we shall treat thoroughly at once, putting unlimited manual labor on it until we have every foot of it under as strict care as a flower garden and the laborers shall be paid. sufficient, unchanging wages; and their children educated in agricultural schools inland, and naval schools by the sea, the indispensable first condition of such education being that the boys learn either to ride or to sail, the girls to spin, weave, and sew, and at a proper age to cook all ordinary food exquisitely; the youths of both sexes to be disciplined daily in the strictest practice of vocal music; and for morality, to be taught gentleness to all brute creatures, finished courtesy to each other, to speak truth with rigid care, and to obey orders with the precision of slaves. Then, as they grow older, they are to learn the natural history of the place they live in; to know Latin, boys and girls both, and the history of five cities, Athens, Rome, Venice, Florence, and London."

. . . In the history of the five cities I have named, they shall learn, so far as they can understand, what has been beautifully and bravely done; and they shall know

the lives of the heroes and heroines, in truth and naturalness; and shall be taught to remember the greatest of them on the days of their birth and death, so that the year shall have its full calendar of reverent memory. And on every day part of their morning service shall be a song in honor of the hero whose birthday it is, and part of the evening service a song of triumph for the fair death of one whose birthday it is; and in their first learning of notes they shall be taught the great purpose of music, which is to say a thing that you mean deeply, in the strongest and clearest possible way; and they shall never be taught to sing what they don't mean. They shall be able to sing merrily when they are happy, and earnestly when they are sad."

"... And these things are to be done not by competitive examination, but under absolute prohibition of all violent and strained effort most of all envious or anxious effort — in any exercise of body and mind, each one keeping these principles always in view :

"I. To do your own work well, whether it be for life or death.

"II. To help other people at theirs, when you can, and seek to avenge no injury.

"III. To be sure you can obey good laws before you seek to alter bad ones.'

Such, on the verge of his seventieth year, is John Ruskin's ideal of what England should aim at. Whether he is partly right or altogether wrong is for the reader to judge.

That he has the courage to grapple with such a problem proves at least that he, for one, is resolved to do his part. He finds men, as he believes, slaves to machines,

slaves to a heartless system of cut-throat competition, slaves to a joyless routine of mechanical labor, divided and subdivided until there are no entire workmen to be found, but only fractions, "so that all the little piece of intelligence that is left in a man is not enough to make a pin, or a nail, but exhausts itself in making the point of a pin, or the head of a nail."

His object is to lift the artisans of England out of their bondage and degradation, both for their own good and for the welfare and safety of the state. Whether we agree with him in any degree or not, no one can see "that spare, stooping figure, with rough-hewn kindly face, and clear deep eyes," still less can one hear his earnest unstudied eloquence of speech, without being drawn into sympathy with the man, though at the same time we cannot help regretting that Ruskin, like Hamlet,1 has felt called to take up a task so perilous not, indeed, too great for his generous purpose, but utterly beyond his saddened heart and failing strength.

1 "The time is out of joint:- O cursed spite,
That ever I was born to set it right!"

D. H. M.

Hamlet, Act I. Scene 5.