“In later life, my lot was cast in Liverpool, and after six or seven years spent in China, where I have seen the horrors of war, and where a cannon shot came through our roof, as we sat at tiffin, I found myself in London. “My old business of a merchant I cannot carry on; though I have capital sufficient for fair trade, I cannot carry it on in the face of the fierce competition by unprincipled men on borrowed money: ‘Where man competes with man like foe with foe, Till death that thins them scarce seem public woe’— my business as a banker and bullion broker is sealed to me as iniquitous. “At present, therefore, I am free to act; I fret because I am in a state of inactivity. I feel that I have health and strength, and that in a thousand ways I could be useful, but wherever I turn I am stopped. I am a good rough joiner; I can do small work in iron and brass; and I am a good practical chemist: my laboratory was recommended as an example of how a laboratory should be kept, by the editor of the ‘Chemical News’ and an F.R.S. “Now allow me to ask you seriously, would you have me to go out alone into the wilderness, and live like a Robinson Crusoe till I see an opening? The point is, the opening might come directly, or it might not come for years, and meantime I am standing in the market-place, such as it is (why is there not a real one?). It is this uncertainty that distresses me, for I must work for my living, and my substance is gradually melting away. “Believe me, my dear Mr. Ruskin, ever yours affectionately, “Rob. G. Sillar. “P.S.—I am glad to see you have challenged Dr. Fraser. I had a correspondence with him some years ago. I saw in one of Carlyle’s works, that I might do some good, if I had two fingers and a pen; so, after getting no answer from my own clergyman, and the secretary of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, relative to the leaving out of a verse in the fifteenth Psalm in our collection, I appealed to the bishop. He was very polite, and corresponded with me till he felt it dangerous to go on, and then informed me that he really had no time to examine into the lawfulness of interest. “I confess I don’t like an officer who has no time to read and examine his standing orders, but who yet retains the command of the regiment; so as you told me in ‘Sheepfolds’ [54] that in our army the King was beside every one of us to appeal to in case of doubt, I ended by telling his lordship, as he had no time to hear me, I must leave it in other hands, videat Altissimus, and our correspondence closed.” FORS CLAVIGERA. [I am honoured in the charge given me, without dissent, by the present members of the St. George’s Company, to convey their thanks to Mr. Samuel Plimsoll, in the terms stated at the close of my last letter.] LETTER LVII.