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
great law or Sun of Justice or Righteousness, which brings also life
and health in the daily strength and spreading of it, being spoken of
in the priest's language, (which they never explained to anybody, and
now wonder that nobody understands,) as having "healing in its wings:"
and the obedience to this law, as it gives strength to the heart, so
it gives light to the eyes of souls that have got any eyes, so that
they begin to see each other as lovely, and to love each other. That
is the final law respecting the sun, and all manner of minor lights
and candles, down to rushlights; and I once got it fairly explained,
two years ago, to an intelligent and obliging wax-and-tallow chandler
at Abbeville, in whose shop I used to sit sketching in rainy days;
and watching the cartloads of ornamental candles which he used to
supply for the church at the far east end of the town, (I forget
what saint it belongs to, but it is opposite the late Emperor's large
new cavalry barracks,) where the young ladies of the better class in
Abbeville had just got up a beautiful evening service, with a pyramid
of candles which it took at least half an hour to light, and as long
to put out again, and which, when lighted up to the top of the church,
were only to be looked at themselves, and sung to, and not to light
anybody or anything. I got the tallow-chandler to calculate vaguely the
probable cost of the candles lighted in this manner, every day, in all
the churches of France; and then I asked him how many cottagers' wives
he knew round Abbeville itself who could afford, without pinching,
either dip or mould in the evening to make their children's clothes
by, and whether, if the pink and green beeswax of the district were
divided every afternoon among them, it might not be quite as honourable
to God, and as good for the candle trade? Which he admitted readily
enough; but what I should have tried to convince the young ladies
themselves of, at the evening service, would probably not have been
admitted so readily;--that they themselves were nothing more than
an extremely graceful kind of wax-tapers which had got into their
heads that they were only to be looked at, for the honour of God,
and not to light anybody.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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