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CONTENTS OF VOL. VIII

UNIQUE DOGMATISM

(1878-1884)

LETTER 85 (January 1878)

2.

1. Plan and style of future Letters of Fors Clavigera.
Extension of the author's appeal. 3. How his immediate plans
for the help of the peasantry have been obscured and hindered.
The aim of all his writings, to teach or to praise, and hence they
are often unintelligible in the present day. 4. Article in the
Spectator on " Mr. Ruskin's Unique Dogmatism": with the author's
reply. 5. Future numbers of Fors to be an arrangement for
use of the scattered contents of previous ones.
6. The manage-
ment of floods: letter from Mr. Henry Willett.

NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE.-7. Affairs of the Company. 8. Affairs of the Master. 9. Letters concerning St. George's Land. 10. Letters on the Return of their incomes by the Bishops (see Letter 83, § 19). 11. Letter on the stoppage of the Cyfarthfa Iron Works. 12. Causes of the Depression in the Iron Trade. 13. Extract from an American paper: the choking power of interest compared to the growth of a Canada thistle. 14. Extracts from Viollet-le-Duc's book on Mont Blanc. Inundations and Avalanches. The regulation of streams advocated. The ill-advised destruction of forests in favour of pasturage.

LETTER 86 (February 1878)

LET US (ALL) EAT AND DRINK

1. Change in the author's standpoint in addressing his readers since 1875. But his earlier assertion that human probity is independent of any hope in futurity remains. 2. And is not retracted, though henceforth the author appeals as a Christian to Christians. The confession of Christ quite distinct from churchgoing. 3. The temporal lesson of history: worldly prosperity attendant on sincerity of Christian life. Sincerity, not form of belief, the essential thing. 4. The spiritual lesson: conditions of immortal art and literature exist in ages of faith. The

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arguments of masters and men on strikes. Are strikes ungrateful
and unwise? 5. The only solution, the laws of Grace and
Wisdom. Masters must be Masters in fact. 6. St. George's
word to masters who are but wolf-shepherds. 7. Guilds and
fixed wages.
8. Wages to be in kind, not money; or in money,
based on
a standard fixed in the necessities of life.
9. The
Deacon's service: breaking bread and pouring wine. Extract
from a sermon by Charles Kingsley on the Miracle of Cana. 10,
11. The author's schemes for preventing inundations in Italy.
His experiments at Brantwood. 12. Letter by Mr. Willett on

the storage of rain-water.

Articles of

NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE.-13. Affairs of the Guild. Association approved by the Board of Trade. Subscriptions. 14. Affairs of the Master. 15. Letter on the projected sewage farm in the Itchen valley at Winchester. 16. Letter from Mr. Willett on waste of sewage. 17. Letter on the stoppage of the Cyfarthfa Iron Works. 18-25. Author's correspondence with Miss Octavia Hill, arising out of her statement that the author was "incapable for management of great practical work.”

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THE SNOW MANGER

LETTER 87 (March 1878)

:

. 361

1. The author's promise to abstain from blame (Letter 84, § 13), to be honoured sometimes in the breach a warning against Miss Martineau's books. 2. A recommendation of Castle Blair and William Black's Adventures of a Phaeton. 3. A passage on children quoted with approval from Miss Martineau's Deerbrook, 4. The author's apology for his misunderstanding of Mr. Gladstone. The Eastern Question. 5. Discussions of it in the press. 6. The result of them summed up in the Second Psalm. 7. Author's criticism of the translation in the English Bible. Meaning of "He shall vex them in His sore displeasure": an illustration of it, a mother who leaves her child in the snow. 8. The conditions of rightly understanding the Psalm. 9. Articles in the current magazines, recommended for reading. A passage from a notice by R. W. Dale of George Dawson. 10. Other passages in which Dale insists on the constancy of the laws governing human life. 11. Further passage on the fixity of the laws of the spiritual universe. 12. The author accepts this latter passage, but declares the preceding passages to be inconsistent with the teaching of Christ. 13. Faith and Miracles. 14. Froude's account of the execution of the brethren of the Charterhouse (1535). (February 15.) 15. The First Chapter of Proverbs: with modern instances. 16. "The ways of every one that is greedy of gain:" closing of the Tredegar Iron Works.

LETTER 88 (March 1880)

THE CONVENTS OF ST. QUENTIN

1. The sixty-third Orphic Hymn. The author's recovery from illness: future plans for Fors. 2. Distinction between morbid inflammation of the brain, and excited temper and quickened thought leading up to it. 3. A consistent purpose, and perfectly conceived system, throughout Fors. 4. But the system is not the author's. For in teaching what is visibly salutary it does but follow the dictates of common sense, common equity, common humanity, and common sunshine. 5. Fors teaches also what is invisibly salutary; wherein its system is that of the wise of all the earth. 6. Fors contains, thirdly, trivial and desultory talk by the way, with expression of the author's personal feelings. (Sheffield, February 12.) 7. His "messages from St. Ursula" not inconsistent with common sense. 8. His illness the result, not of over-work, but of nothing coming of his work. 9. "Wounded in the house of my friends;" the author received no help from them in his social work. His disappointment at the recent work of Froude, contrasted with his earlier insight into past conditions of England. 10. Froude's indecision as to whether he ought finally to praise the former, or the latter, days. 11. His disadvantages: (i.) he has come to regard Protestantism and the love of truth as synonymous; (ii.) he has no knowledge of art. His description of the corruption of the monasteries. Beside which, the author sets descriptions of modern cells: passages from Jules Simon's L'Ouvrière. 15. Affairs of St. George's Guild. 16. The Master declines to remove the stockade which requires members of the Guild to give a tithe of their incomes. 17. He invites subscriptions for extending St. George's Museum.

LETTER 89 (September 1880)

WHOSE FAULT IS IT? TO THE TRADES UNIONS OF ENGLAND.

12-14.

(Beauvais, August 31.) 1. Why this Letter is so addressed. 2. And why earlier Letters were not: the author never speaks opinions, but only what he knows; and he knew more of his own class, than of that of the workmen. 3. He foresaw political changes, but as Professor at Oxford did not deem it right to discuss them. His message to the learned and rich, now given and ended. 4. The Trade Unions right in their self-assertion against Capital. The power of French fashions in dress over trade. 5. Do not the Trade Armies of Christendom claim a Birth Right as well as a Death Right? 6. Considerations on the Land Question. Land, by whomsoever held, to be made the

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most of. No man to possess more than he can use, but all men
to possess so much. Law of primogeniture. 7. Questions about
the best forms of practical administration difficult to decide, but
"opinions" about them lightly given: extract from Hartwig's
Polar World on the Norwegian peasantry. 8. Value of political
experiment. 9. Why "Trade" Guilds, when production, not
selling, is their main concern?

10. If the workmen are robbed
or beguiled, it is their own fault. 11. "Trade" Unions should be
"Labourers' Unions." The twenty-one essential and eternal divi-
sions of the Labour of Man. 12. Possession of land essential, but
it must be got by the law of labour, not of force. 13. This Fors
to be supplied free to Trade Unions. No pleasures to be had
without looking, thinking, doing.

NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE.-14. Letter on a movement for Land Reform under Secularist auspices: "where are the clergy?" 15. Letter in reply to one from the author on Co-operation and bad workmanship. 16. Letter from a village shopkeeper, a reader of Fors.

APPENDIX.-(I.) 17. Mr. Fowler's report on the condition of the Calder (1866). (II.) 18. The evils of gold-mining.

LOST JEWELS.

LETTER 90 (May 1883)

Relation of

1. Titles given to the several Letters in Fors. Fors to the author's other books. The First Principles of his Political Economy, as stated in Unto this Last and Munera Pulveris : the wealth of a country is not in its extent of territory, but in its good men and women. 2. Among whom, women are the guiding and purifying power (Sesame and Lilies). The early death of good girls. 3. The tragedy of girls' lives. The story of Sybilla Dowie. 4. A girl's proper confidant is her father. 5. Courtship and Probation. 6. The annual loss of a nation's girl-wealth. 7, 8. Miss Laffan's Baubie Clarke. 9. An implied moral of the story, that theatres are wicked places. Quotation from Helps' Social Pressure on opera-boxes for the poor. 10. Letter from an Edinburgh correspondent on Vegetarianism. 11. Orpheus' Hymn to the Earth. 12. Letter on behalf of the Dean and Chapter of Chester (see Letter 89, § 14).

LETTER 91 (September 1883)

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DUST OF GOLD

1, 2. "What are plain girls to do?" Plainness of mind, and of face. Examples from the author's travelling experiences, 3, 4. Beauty dependent on joy and peace and virtue. 5. Further

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