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
But, without even such small cost, they might have taught the
poor many beneficial things. In some places they have taught them
manners, which is already much. They might have cheaply taught them
merriment also:--dancing and singing, for instance. The young English
ladies who sit nightly to be instructed, themselves, at some cost,
in melodies illustrative of the consumption of La Traviata, and
the damnation of Don Juan, might have taught every girl peasant
in England to join in costless choirs of innocent song. Here and
there, perhaps, a gentleman might have been found able to teach his
peasantry some science and art. Science and fine art don't pay; but
they cost little. Tithes--not of the income of the country, but of the
income, say, of its brewers--nay, probably the sum devoted annually by
England to provide drugs for the adulteration of its own beer,--would
have founded lovely little museums, and perfect libraries, in every
village. And if here and there an English churchman had been found
(such as Dean Stanley) willing to explain to peasants the sculpture of
his and their own cathedral, and to read its black-letter inscriptions
for them; and, on warm Sundays, when they were too sleepy to attend
to anything more proper--to tell them a story about some of the
people who had built it, or lay buried in it--we perhaps might have
been quite as religious as we are, and yet need not now have been
offering prizes for competition in art schools, nor lecturing with
tender sentiment on the inimitableness of the works of Fra Angelico.
These things the great Picnic Party might have taught without cost,
and with amusement to themselves. One thing, at least, they were
bound to teach, whether it amused them or not;--how, day by day, the
daily bread they expected their village children to pray to God for,
might be earned in accordance with the laws of God. This they might
have taught, not only without cost, but with great gain. One thing
only they have taught, and at considerable cost.
They have spent four hundred millions [5] of pounds here in England
within the last twenty years!--how much in France and Germany, I will
take some pains to ascertain for you,--and with this initial outlay of
capital, have taught the peasants of Europe--to pull each other's hair.
With this result, 17th January, 1871, at and around the chief palace
of their own pleasures, and the chief city of their delights:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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