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
[101] I could not see this symbol at the height at which the picture
hung from the ground, when I described it in 1872. The folds of the
drapery in the hand are all but invisible, even when the picture is
seen close; and so neutral in their gray-green colour that they pass
imperceptibly into violet, as the faint green of evening sky fades into
its purple. But the folds are continued under the wrist in the
alternate waves which the reader may see on the Etruscan tomb in the
first room of the British Museum, with a sculpturesque severity which I
could not then understand, and could only account for by supposing that
Carpaccio had meant the Princess to “dream out the angel’s dress so
particularly”! I mistook the fillet of victory also for a scroll; and
could not make out the flowers in the window. They are pinks, the
favourite ones in Italian windows to this day, and having a particular
relation to St. Ursula in the way they rend their calyx; and I believe
also in their peculiar relation to the grasses, (of which more in
‘Proserpina’). St. Ursula is not meant, herself, to recognize the
angel. He enters under the door over which she has put her little
statue of Venus; and through that door the room is filled with light,
so that it will not seem to her strange that his own form, as he
enters, should be in shade: and she cannot see his dark wings. On the
tassel of her pillow, (Etrurian also,) is written “Infantia”; and above
her head, the carving of the bed ends in a spiral flame, typical of the
finally ascending Spirit. She lies on her bier, in the last picture but
one, exactly as here on her bed; only the coverlid is there changed
from scarlet to pale violet. See notes on the meaning of these colours
in third ‘Deucalion.’
[102] By report from Bank; but the ‘repayments’ named in it should not
have been added to the cash account, being on separate account with the
Company. I will make all clear in December.
[103] For Signora Caldara (Venetian botany).
[104] Nominally loan, to poor relation, but I do not suppose he will
ever be able to pay me. The following £200 I do not doubt receiving
again.
[105] May St. George be informed of how many members the American
Legislature is finally to be composed; and over whom it is to exercise
the proud function of legislation, which is to be the reward of heroic
and rightly-minded flunkeys?
[106] As a painter, no less than a philanthropist, I am curious to see
the effect of scenery, in these ‘polite’ terms of description, “dotted
over with establishments.”
[107] My original sketch is now in the Schools of Oxford.
[108] See terminal Article of Correspondence.
[109] Conf. ‘Inferno,’ XXIII. 123.
[110] Mr. Darwin’s last discoveries of the gestures of honour and
courtesy among baboons are a singular completion of the types of this
truth in the natural world.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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