XXIX.

1

James i. 25;1 ii. 12, 13), so soon as you have got yourselves settled, and feel the ground well under you, we must have a school built on it for your children, with enforced sending of them to be schooled; in earliest course of which schooling your old Parish-church golden legend will be written by every boy, and stitched by every girl, and engraven with diamond point into the hearts of both,

"Fear God. Honour the King." 3

1["But whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty, and continueth therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed."]

2 ["So speak ye, and so do, as they that shall be judged by the law of liberty. For he shall have judgment without mercy, that hath shewed no mercy; and mercy rejoiceth against judgment."]

3 [1 Peter ii. 17.]

NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE

15. (I.) AFFAIRS of the Company.

1

A few of the Sheffield working-men who admit the possibility of St. George's notions being just, have asked me to let them rent some ground from the Company, whereupon to spend what spare hours they have, of morning or evening, in useful labour. I have accordingly authorized the sale of £2200 worth of our stock, to be re-invested on a little estate, near Sheffield, of thirteen acres, with good water supply. The workmen undertake to St. George for his three per cent.; and if they get tired of the bargain, the land will be always worth our stock. I have no knowledge yet of the men's plans in detail; nor, as I have said in the text,2 shall I much interfere with them, until I see how they develop themselves. But here is at last a little piece of England given into the English workman's hand, and heaven's.

16. (II.) Affairs of the Master.

I am beginning, for the first time in my life, to admit some notion into my head that I am a great man. God knows at how little rate I value the little that is in me; but the maintaining myself now quietly against the contradiction of every one of my best friends, rising as it does into more harmonious murmur of opposition at every new act to which I find myself compelled by compassion and justice, requires more than ordinary firmness: and the absolute fact that, being entirely at one in my views of Nature and life with every great classic author, I am yet alone in the midst of a modern crowd which rejects them all, is something to plume myself upon,-sorrowfully enough: but haughtily also. And now here has Fors reserved a strange piece of if one's vanity were to speak-good fortune for me; namely, that after being permitted, with my friend Mr. Sillar's guidance, to declare again in its full breadth the great command against usury, and to explain the intent of Shakespeare throughout the Merchant of Venice (see Munera Pulveris 4), it should also have been reserved for me to discover the first recorded words of Venice herself, on her Rialto!-words of the ninth century,* inscribed on her first church, St. James of the Rialto; and entirely unnoticed

* I have the best antiquarian in Venice as authority for this date-my own placing of them would have been in the eleventh.

[This is referred to below as the Abbeydale Estate (see pp. 112, 140, 207, 273); elsewhere as the Mickley, or Totley, Estate (see Introduction to Vol. XXX.).] 2 [See above, § 4.]

[See the Introduction to Vol. XXVII. p. xlvii.] 4 [Munera Pulveris, § 100 (Vol. XVII. p. 223).]

by all historians, hitherto; yet in letters which he who ran might read1:— only the historians never looked at the church, or at least, looked only at the front of it and never round the corners. When the church was restored in the sixteenth century, the inscription, no more to be obeyed, was yet (it seems) in reverence for the old writing, put on the gable at the back, where, an outhouse standing a little in the way, nobody noticed it any more till I came on it, poking about in search of the picturesque.2 I found it afterwards recorded in a manuscript catalogue of ancient inscriptions in Venice, in St. Mark's library (and as I write this page, Sunday, March 11th, 1877, the photograph I have had made of it is brought in to me-now in the Sheffield Museum). And this is the inscription on a St. George's Cross, with a narrow band of marble beneath-marble so good that the fine edges of the letters might have been cut yesterday.

On the cross

"Be thy Cross, oh Christ, the true safety of this place." (In case of mercantile panics, you see.)

On the band beneath it

"Around this temple, let the merchant's law be just-his weights true, and his agreements guileless."

Those, so please you, are the first words of Venice to the mercantile world-nor words only, but coupled with such laws as I have set before you-perfect laws of "liberty and fraternity," such as you know not, nor yet for many a day, can again learn.

It is something to be proud of to have deciphered this for you; and more to have shown you how you may attain to this honesty through Frankness. For indeed the law of St. George, that our dealings and fortunes are to be openly known, goes deeper even than this law of Venice, for it cuts at the root, not only of dishonesty, but of avarice and pride. Nor am I sorry that in myself submitting to it, my pride must be considerably mortified. If all my affairs had been conducted with prudence, or if my present position in the world were altogether stately, it might have been pleasant to unveil the statue of one's economy for public applause. But I scarcely think even those of my readers who least understand me, will now accuse me of ostentation.

17. My father left all his fortune to my mother and me: to my mother, thirty-seven thousand pounds and the house at Denmark Hill for life; to me a hundred and twenty thousand,† his leases at Herne and

* 15,000 Bank Stock.

+ I count Consols as thousands, forty thousand of this were in stocks.

1 [Habakkuk ii. 2.]

2 The inscription is reproduced on Plate LXII. in Vol. XXI. (see pp. 268, 269). For other references to it, see Unto this Last, note of 1877 in the Preface (Vol. XVII. p. 20); St. Mark's Rest, § 131 (Vol. XXIV. p. 308); Memorial Studies of St Mark's, §7 (ibid., p. 417); the "Catalogue of the Ruskin Museum," Vol. XXX. ; and Postscript to the "Legend of Santa Zita" in Roadside Songs of Tuscany (Vol. XXXII.).]

Denmark Hills, his freehold pottery at Greenwich, and his pictures, then estimated by him as worth ten thousand pounds, but now worth at least three times that sum.

My mother made two wills; one immediately after my father's death; the other (in gentle forgetfulness of all worldly things past)—immediately before her own. Both are in the same terms, "I leave all I have to my son." This sentence, expanded somewhat by legal artifice, remains yet pathetically clear, as the brief substance of both documents. I have therefore to-day, in total account of my stewardship, to declare what I have done with a hundred and fifty-seven thousand pounds; and certain houses and lands besides. In giving which account I shall say nothing of the share that other people have had in counselling or mis-counselling me; nor of my reasons for what I have done. St. George's bishops1 do not ask people who advised them, or what they intended to do; but only what they did.

18. My first performance was the investment of fifty thousand pounds in "entirely safe mortgages, which gave me five per cent. instead of three. I very soon, however, perceived it to be no less desirable, than difficult, to get quit of these "entirely safe" mortgages. The last of them that was worth anything came conveniently in last year (see Fors accounts 2). I lost about twenty thousand pounds on them, altogether.

In the second place, I thought it rather hard on my father's relations, that he should have left all his money to me only; and as I was very fond of some of them, indulged myself, and relieved my conscience at the same time, by giving seventeen thousand pounds to those I liked best. Money which has turned out to be quite rightly invested, and at a high interest; and has been fruitful to me of many good things, and much happiness.

Next I parted with some of my pictures, too large for the house I proposed to live in, and bought others at treble the price, the dealers always assuring me that the public would not look at any picture which I had seen reason to part with; and that I had only my own eloquence to thank for the prices of those I wished to buy.*

I bought next a collection of minerals (the foundation now of what are preparing for Sheffield and other schools) for a stipulated sum of three thousand pounds, on the owner's statement of its value. It proved not to

* Fortune also went always against me. I gave carte-blanche at Christie's for Turner's drawing of Terni (five inches by seven), and it cost me five hundred pounds. I put a limit of two hundred on the Roman Forum, and it was bought over me for a hundred and fifty, and I gnash my teeth whenever I think of it, because a commission had been given up to three hundred.

1 [See Vol. XXVIII. pp. 512-513.]

[See Letter 64, § 23, "Cash (Portsdown Mortgage)," Vol. XXVIII. p. 583.] [Chiefly Turner's "Grand Canal," sold by Ruskin in 1872, on leaving Denmark Hill for Brantwood: see Vol. XIII. p. 606.]

[No. 20 in the "Notes" on Ruskin's Collection: see Vol. XIII. p. 426 n.] [It does not appear to which of two drawings of this subject (both made for Hakewill's Tour) Ruskin refers-the "Forum from the Capitol," or the "Forum looking towards the Capitol." The former was last sold at Christie's in 1899; the latter in 1889.]

be worth five hundred. I went to law about it. The lawyers charged me a thousand pounds for their own services; gave me a thousand pounds back, out of the three; and made the defendant give me another five hundred pounds' worth of minerals. On the whole, a satisfactory legal performance; but it took two years in the doing, and caused me much worry; the lawyers spending most of the time they charged me for, in cross-examining me, and other witnesses, as to whether the agreement was made in the front or the back shop; with other particulars, interesting in a picturesque point of view, but wholly irrelevant to the business.1

Then Brantwood was offered me, which I bought, without seeing it,2 for fifteen hundred pounds (the fact being that I have no time to see things, and must decide at a guess; or not act at all).

Then the house at Brantwood, a mere shed of rotten timber and loose stone, had to be furnished, and repaired. For old acquaintance' sake, I went to my father's upholsterer in London (instead of the country Coniston one, as I ought) and had five pounds charged me for a footstool; the repairs also proving worse than complete rebuilding; and the moving one's chattels from London, no small matter. I got myself at last settled at my tea-table, one summer evening, with my view of the lake for a net four thousand pounds all told. I afterwards built a lodge nearly as big as the house, for a married servant, and cut and terraced a kitchen garden out of the "steep wood" *-another two thousand transforming themselves thus into "utilities embodied in material objects"; but these latter operations, under my own immediate direction, turning out approvable by neighbours, and, I imagine, not unprofitable as investment.

All these various shiftings of harness, and getting into saddle-with the furnishing also of my rooms at Oxford, and the pictures and universal acquisitions aforesaid-may be very moderately put at fifteen thousand for a total. I then proceeded to assist my young relation in business; with resultant loss, as before related, of fifteen thousand; 5 of which indeed he still holds himself responsible for ten, if ever able to pay it; but one of the pieces of the private message sent me, with St. Ursula's on Christmas Day, was that I should forgive this debt altogether. Which hereby my cousin will please observe, is very heartily done; and he is to be my cousin as he used to be, without any more thought of it.

Then, for my St. George and Oxford gifts-there are good fourteen thousand gone-nearer fifteen-even after allowing for stock prices, but say fourteen.

"Brant," Westmoreland for steep.

[In this case, which was put down for hearing in 1869, the actual value of the minerals and the sum which Ruskin had agreed to pay were in dispute. Ruskin drove down to Westminster on three successive days in order to give his evidence, but the case being blocked by a lengthy one before it, he characteristically declined to attend any more, and instructed his lawyers to make the best settlement they could out of court.]

2 See Vol. XXII. p. xxi.]

3 [See Letter 44, § 11 (Vol. XXVIII. p. 135).] See Letter 4, § 5 (Vol. XXVII. p. 64).]

5 See Letter 62, § 20 (Vol. XXVIII. p. 530).] [See above, p. 30.]