FORS CLAVIGERA. LETTERS TO THE WORKMEN AND LABOURERS OF GREAT BRITAIN. BY JOHN RUSKIN, LL.D., HONORARY STUDENT OF CHRIST CHURCH, AND SLADE PROFESSOR OF FINE ART. Vol. V. GEORGE ALLEN, SUNNYSIDE, ORPINGTON, KENT. 1875. FORS CLAVIGERA. LETTER XLIX. I wonder if Fors will let me say any small proportion, this year, of what I intend. I wish she would, for my readers have every right to be doubtful of my plan till they see it more defined; and yet to define it severely would be to falsify it, for all that is best in it depends on my adopting whatever good I can find, in men and things, that will work to my purpose; which of course means action in myriads of ways that I neither wish to define, nor attempt to anticipate. Nay, I am wrong, even in speaking of it as a plan or scheme at all. It is only a method of uniting the force of all good plans and wise schemes; it is a principle and tendency, like the law of form in a crystal; not a plan. If I live, as I said at first, I will endeavour to show some small part of it in action; but it would be a poor design indeed, for the bettering of the world, which any man could see either quite round the outside, or quite into the inside of. But I hope in the letters of this next year to spend less time in argument or attack; what I wish the reader to know, of principle, is already enough proved, if only he take the pains to read the preceding letters thoroughly; and I shall now, as far as Fors will let me, carry out my purpose of choosing and annotating passages of confirmatory classical literature; and answering, as they occur, the questions of my earnest correspondents, as to what each of them, in their place of life, may immediately do with advantage for St. George’s help. If those of my readers who have been under the impression that I wanted them to join me in establishing some model institution or colony, will look to the fifth page of Letter I., they will see that so far from intending or undertaking any such thing, I meant to put my whole strength into my Oxford teaching; and, for my own part, to get rid of begging letters and live in peace. Of course, when I have given fourteen thousand pounds away in a year, [1] everybody who wants some money thinks I have plenty for them. But my having given fourteen thousand pounds is just the reason I have not plenty for them; and, moreover, have no time to attend to them, (and generally, henceforward, my friends will please to note that I have spent my life in helping other people, and am quite tired of it; and if they can now help me in my work, or praise me for it, I shall be much obliged to them; but I can’t help them at theirs).