Fors Clavigera (Volume 6 of 8): $b Letters to the workmen and labourers of Great BritainRuskin, John
General
Fors Clavigera (Volume 6 of 8): $b 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
I am sending in gifts to the men at Sheffield, wealth of various kinds,
in small instalments—but in secure forms. Five bits of opal; the market
value of one, just paid to Mr. Wright, of Great Russell Street, £3; a
beryl, of unusual shape, ditto, £2; a group of emeralds, from the mine
of Holy Faith of Bogota, and two pieces of moss gold,—market value £2
10s.,—just paid to Mr. Tennant. Also, the first volume of the Sheffield
Library; an English Bible of the thirteenth century,—market value
£50,—just paid to Mr. Ellis. I tell these prices only to secure the
men’s attention, because I am not sure what acceptant capacity they
have for them. When once they recognize the things themselves to be
wealth,—when they can see the opals, know the wonderfulness of the
beryl, enjoy the loveliness of the golden fibres, read the
illuminations of the Bible page,—they will not ask what the cost, nor
consider what they can get for them. I don’t believe they will think
even of lending their Bible out on usury.
I have no subscriptions, or other progress of the Society, to announce
this month.
II. Affairs of the Master.
I am a little ashamed of my accounts this time, having bought a missal
worth £320 for myself, and only given one worth £50 to Sheffield. I
might state several reasons, more or less excusing this selfishness;
one being that the £50 Bible is entirely perfect in every leaf, but
mine wants the first leaf of Genesis; and is not, therefore, with all
its beauty, fit for the first volume of the library. But it is one of
my present principles of action not at all to set myself up for a
reformer, and it must be always one not to set up for a saint; and I
must beg my severely judging readers, in the meantime, rather to look
at what I have done, than at what I have left undone, of the things I
ask others to do. To the St. George’s Fund I have given a tenth of my
living,—and much more than the tenth of the rest was before, and is
still, given to the poor. And if any of the rich people whom we all
know will do as much as this, I believe you may safely trust them to
discern and do what is right with the portion they keep, (if kept
openly, and not Ananias-fashion,) and if you press them farther, the
want of grace is more likely on your part than theirs. I have never,
myself, felt so much contempt for any living creature as for a
miserable Scotch woman—curiously enough of Burns’ country, and of the
Holy Willy breed,—whom I once by mischance allowed to come and stay in
my house; and who, asking, when I had stated some general truths of the
above nature, “why I kept my own pictures;” and being answered that I
kept them partly as a national property, in my charge, and partly as my
tools of work,—said “she liked to see how people reasoned when their
own interests were touched;”—the wretch herself evidently never in all
her days having had one generous thought which could not have been
smothered if it had touched ‘her own interest,’ and being therefore
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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