Fors Clavigera (Volume 3 of 8): Letters to the workmen and labourers of Great BritainRuskin, John
General
Fors Clavigera (Volume 3 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
Again; for the matter of lodging. Look at the Professor's page
73. There you find that in the street dedicated in Edinburgh to the
memory of the first Bishop of Jerusalem, in No. 23, there are living
220 persons. In the first floor of it live ten families,--forty-nine
persons; in the second floor, nine families--fifty-four persons;
and so on, up to six floors, the ground-floor being a shop; so that
"the whole 220 persons in the building are without one foot of the
actual surface of the land on which to exist."
"In my Father's house," says Christ, "are many mansions." Verily, that
appears to be also the case in some of His Scotch Evangelical servants'
houses here. And verecund Mr. McCosh, who will not venture to suggest
any better arrangement of the heavens,--has he likewise no suggestion
to offer as to the arrangement of No. 23, St. James's Street?
"Whose fault is it?" do you ask?
Immediately, the fault of the landlords; but the landlords from highest
to lowest, are more or less thoughtless and ignorant persons, from
whom you can expect no better. The persons really answerable for all
this are your two professed bodies of teachers; namely, the writers
for the public press, and the clergy.
Nearly everything that I ever did of any use in this world has been
done contrary to the advice of my friends; and as my friends are
unanimous at present in begging me never to write to newspapers,
I am somewhat under the impression that I ought to resign my
Oxford professorship, and try to get a sub-editorship in the
'Telegraph'. However, for the present, I content myself with my own
work, and have sustained patiently, for thirty years, the steady
opposition of the public press to whatever good was in it, (said
'Telegraph' always with thanks excepted) down to the article in the
'Spectator' of August 13th, 1870, which, on my endeavour to make
the study of art, and of Greek literature, of some avail in Oxford
to the confirmation of right principle in the minds of her youth,
instantly declared that "the artistic perception and skill of Greece
were nourished by the very lowness of her ethical code, by her lack
of high aims, by her freedom from all aspirations after moral good,
by her inability even to conceive a Hebrew tone of purity, by the
fact that she lived without God, and died without hope."
"High aims" are explained by the 'Spectator,' in another place,
to consist in zeal for the establishment of cotton mills. And the
main body of the writers for the public press are also--not of that
opinion--for they have no opinions; but they get their living by
asserting so much to you.
Against which testimony of theirs, you shall hear, to-day, the real
opinion of a man of whom Scotland once was proud; the man who first
led her to take some notice of that same reservoir of hers, which
Glasgow,--Clyde not being deep enough for her drinking, or perhaps,
(see above, xvi. 16) not being now so sweet as stolen waters,--cools
her tormented tongue with.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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