"If he can manage the streams, he can also the people; for the people also form alternately torrent and maremma, in pestilential fury or pestilential idleness. They also will change into living streams of men, if their Kings literally 'lead them forth beside the waters of comfort.' Half the money lost by this inundation of Tiber, spent rightly on the hill-sides last summer, would have changed every wave of it into so much fruit and foliage in spring, where now they will be only burning rock. And the men who have been killed within the last two months, and whose work, and the money spent in doing it, have filled Europe with misery which fifty years will not efface, had they been set at the same cost to do good instead of evil, and to save life instead of destroy it, might, by this 10th of January, 1871, have embanked every dangerous stream at the roots of the Rhine, the Rhone, and the Po, and left to Germany, to France, and to Italy an inheritance of blessing for centuries to come--they and their families living all the while in brightest happiness and peace. And now! Let the Red Prince look to it; red inundation bears also its fruit in time. "I am, sir, your obedient servant, "John Ruskin." "Jan. 10." Daily Telegraph, Jan. 12, 1871. FORS CLAVIGERA. LETTER XXXIV. "Love, it is a wrathful peace, A free acquittance, without release, And truth with falsehood all a-fret, And fear within secureness set; In heart it is despairing hope; And full of hope, it is vain hope. Wise madness and wild reasonne, And sweet danger, wherein to droune. A heavy burden, light to bear; A wicked way, away to wear. It is discordance that can accord, And accordance to discord; It is cunning without science, Wisdom without sapience, Wit without discretion, Having, without possession, And health full of malady, And charity full of envy, And restraint full of abundance, And a greedy suffisaunce. Delight right full of heaviness, And drearihood, full of gladness; Bitter sweetness, and sweet error, Right evil savoured good savour; Sin, that pardon hath within, And pardon, spotted outside with sin: A pain also it is joyous, And cruelty, right piteous; A strength weak to stand upright, And feebleness full of might; Wit unadvised, sage follie, And joy full of tormentry. A laughter it is, weeping aye; Rest, that travaileth night and day; Also a sweet Hell it is, And a sorrowful Paradise; [83] A pleasant gaol, and an easy prison, And full of froste, summer season; Prime-time, full of froste's white, And May devoid of all delight."