Fors Clavigera (Volume 1 of 8): Letters to the workmen and labourers of Great BritainRuskin, John
General
Fors Clavigera (Volume 1 of 8): Letters to the workmen and labourers of Great Britain
Ruskin, John
Aesthetics; Conduct of life; Great Britain -- Social conditions -- 19th century; Social problems; Working class -- Great Britain
This merry round person was a Tyrolese peasant; and I hold it an
entirely practical proceeding, since I find my idea of felicity
actually produced in the Tyrol, to set about the production of it,
here, on Tyrolese principles; which, you will find, on inquiry,
have not hitherto implied the employment of steam, nor submission
to the great Universal Law of Supply and Demand, nor even Demand for
the local Supply of a "Liberal" government. But they do imply labour
of all hands on pure earth and in fresh air. They do imply obedience
to government which endeavours to be just, and faith in a religion
which endeavours to be moral. And they result in strength of limbs,
clearness of throats, roundness of waists, and pretty jackets, and
still prettier corsets to fit them.
I must pass, disjointedly, to matters which, in a written letter, would
have been put in a postscript; but I do not care, in a printed one,
to leave a useless gap in the type. First, the reference in page 11 of
last number to the works of Mr. Zion Ward, is incorrect. The passage I
quoted is not in the "Letter to a Friend," price twopence, but in the
"Origin of Evil Discovered," price fourpence. (John Bolton, Steel House
Lane, Birmingham.) And, by the way, I wish that booksellers would save
themselves, and me, some (now steadily enlarging) trouble, by noting
that the price of these Letters to friends of mine, as supplied by
me, the original inditer, to all and sundry, through my only shopman,
Mr. Allen, is sevenpence per epistle, and not fivepence half-penny;
and that the trade profit on the sale of them is intended to be, and
must eventually be, as I intend, a quite honestly confessed profit,
charged to the customer, not compressed out of the author; which
object may be easily achieved by the retail bookseller, if he will
resolvedly charge the symmetrical sum of Tenpence per epistle over his
counter, as it is my purpose he should. But to return to Mr. Ward;
the correction of my reference was sent me by one of his disciples,
in a very earnest and courteous letter, written chiefly to complain
that my quotation totally misrepresented Mr. Ward's opinions. I
regret that it should have done so, but gave the quotation neither
to represent nor misrepresent Mr. Ward's opinions; but to show, which
the sentence, though brief, quite sufficiently shows, that he had no
right to have any.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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