me, utter marvellousness, of that saying of Christ (when "on this wise showed He Himself") "Come and dine. So when they had dined," etc.1 I understand it now, with the "Children, have ye here any meat?" of the vision in the chamber. My hungry and thirsty friends, do not you also begin to understand the sacredness of your daily bread; nor the divinity of the great story of the world's beginning;-the infinite truth of its "Touch not-taste not-handle not, of the things that perish in the using, but only of things which, whether ye eat or drink, are to the glory of God"?3 10. But a few more words about Venice, and we come straight to Sheffield. My boy with his basket of rotten figs could only sell them in front of the sculpture of Noah, because all the nobles had perished from Venice, and he was there, poor little costermonger, stooping to cry fighiaie between his legs, where the stateliest lords in Europe were wont to walk, erect enough, and in no disordered haste. (Curiously, as I write this very page, one of the present authorities in progressive Italy, progressive without either legs or arms, has gone whizzing by, up the canal, in a steam propeller, like a large darting water beetle.) He could only sell them in that place, because the Lords of Venice were fallen, as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs; and the sentence is spoken against them, "No man eat fruit of thee, hereafter." 4 And he could only sell them in Venice at all, because the laws of the greater Lords of Venice who built her palaces are disobeyed in her modern liberties. Hear this, from the 1 [John xxi. 1, 12, 15.] 2 [John xxi. 5: compare (in a later volume) Letters on the Lord's Prayer (August 19).] 3 [Colossians ii. 21, 22; 1 Corinthians x. 31. With § 9 compare the passage from Ruskin's diary given in Vol. XXIV. p. xxxiii.] • [Revelation vi. 13; Mark xi. 14.] Venetian Laws of State respecting "Frutti e Fruttaroli," preserved in the Correr Museum : 19th June, 1516.*—" It is forbidden to all and sundry to sell bad fruits. Figs, especially, must not be kept in the shop from one day to another, on pain of fine of twenty-five lire." 30th June, 1518.-"The sale of squeezed figs and preserved figs is forbidden. They are to be sold ripe." 10th June, 1523.-"Figs cannot be preserved nor packed. They are to be sold in the same day that they are brought into this city." The intent of these laws is to supply the people largely and cheaply with ripe fresh figs from the mainland, and to prevent their ever being eaten in a state injurious to health, on the one side, or kept, to raise the price, on the other. Note the continual connection between Shakespeare's ideal, both of commerce and fairyland, with Greece, and Venice: "Feed him with apricocks and dewberries,—with purple grapes, green figs, and mulberries;" the laws of Venice respecting this particular fruit being originally Greek (Athenian; see derivation of word "sycophant,” in any good dictionary 2). 11. But the next law, 7th July, 1523, introduces question of a fruit still more important to Venetians: "On pain of fine (ut supra), let no spoiled or decaying melons or bottlegourds be sold, nor any yellow cucumbers." 9th June, 1524.-"The sale of fruits which are not good and nourishing is forbidden to every one, both on the canals and lands of this city. Similarly, it is forbidden to keep them in baskets more than a day; and, similarly, to keep bad mixed with the good." On the 15th July, 1545, a slight relaxation is granted of this law, as follows: "Sellers of melons cannot sell them either unripe or decayed (crudi o marci), without putting a ticket on them, to certify them as such.' * "Innibito a chiunque il vendere frutti cattivi." Before 1516, observe, nobody thought of doing so. 1 [A Midsummer Night's Dream, Act iii. sc. 1.] 2 ["A fig-shewer, i.e., one who informs against persons exporting figs from Attica, or plundering sacred fig-trees; hence a common informer, and so generally a false accuser" (Liddell and Scott).] And to ensure obedience to these most wholesome ordinances of state, the life of the Venetian greengrocer was rendered (according to Mr. John Bright *) a burden to him, by the following regulations :— 6th July, 1559.-"The superintendents of fruits shall be confined to the number of eight, of whom two every week (thus securing a monthly service of the whole octave) shall stand at the barrier, to the end that no fruits may pass, of any kind, that are not good." * Fors, January, 1874 [Letter 37, § 4 (Vol. XXVIII. p. 16)]. I observe that, in his recent speech at Rochdale, Mr. Bright makes mention of me which he "hopes I shall forgive." There is no question 1 [A speech on Temperance at the Rochdale Workmen's Club, fully reported in the Times of January 3, 1877. Bright said: "I have not come here for the purpose of lecturing or preaching to you. I agree very much with an observation that I met with the other day in a lecture by Mr. Ruskin, that there is a good deal of the patronizing style practised when men come forward to address any of the labouring classes or the workmen such as are members of this Club. I should like to read you an extract from one of his lectures to explain to you what I mean. Mr. Ruskin is a great critic; he is a man who writes beautifully; he says a great many things that are worth being remembered; and, I must say,-I hope he will forgive me he says a great many things that ought to be forgotten. Well, Mr. Ruskin on a subject like this says: 'Nothing appears to me at once more ludicrous and more melancholy than the way the people of the present age usually talk about the morals of labourers. You hardly ever address a labouring man upon his prospects in life, without quietly assuming that he is to possess, at starting, as a small moral capital to begin with, the virtue of Socrates, the philosophy of Plato, and the heroism of Epaminondas.' Now these were among the very greatest of the men of ancient Greece, and I think anybody who expects that is a little unfair. Mr. Ruskin says (here Bright quoted the rest of § 183 of The Two Paths, Vol. XVI. p. 400). I shall not follow the methods which Mr. Ruskin so amusingly condemns.' Later on in the speech Bright quoted "the lines of Ebenezer Elliott, the Sheffield poet, the Corn Law rhymer : "Bread-taxed weaver all may see What shall bread-tax do for thee, Dreams of evil spare my sight, And let that horror rest in night." Later, again, in extolling the blessings of the cheap press, with its daily panorama of the world, Bright said: "Then you go to India, and even this very day More special regulations follow, for completeness of examination; the refusal to obey the law becoming gradually, it is evident, more frequent as the moral temper of the people declined, until, just two centuries after the issuing of forgiveness in the matter; Mr. Bright speaks of me what he believes to be true, and what, to the best of his knowledge, is so he quotes a useful passage from the part of my books which he understands; and a notable stanza from the great song of Sheffield, whose final purport, nevertheless, Mr. Bright himself reaches only the third part of the way to understanding. He has left to me the duty of expressing the ultimate force of it, in such rude additional rhyme as came to me yesterday, while walking to and fro in St. Mark's porch, beside the grave of the Duke Marino Morosini;1 a man who knew more of the East than Mr. Bright, and than most of his Rochdale audience; but who, nevertheless, shared the incapacity of Socrates, Plato, and Epaminondas, to conceive the grandeur of the ceremony "which took place yesterday in Northern India.' Here is Ebenezer's stanza, then, with its sequence, taught me by Duke Morocen: : "What shall Bread-Tax do for thee, Venerable Monarchy ? Dreams of evil,-sparing sight, Let that horror rest in night. What shall Drink-Tax do for thee, Priestly King,-is this thy sign, Sale of Blessing,-Bread,—and Wine? What shall Roof-Tax do for thee, Life-Defending Monarchy ? Find'st thou rest for England's head, Only free among the Dead? Loosing still the stranger's slave, Sealing still thy Garden-Grave? Kneel thou there; and trembling pray, (Venice, 11th January, 1877.) -Socrates and Plato and Epaminondas and all the ancient Greeks and ancient Romans had never dreamt of such a thing as you see in your newspapers-read of the grand ceremony celebrated yesterday at Delhi, in North India, and the Proclamation made that the Queen of England was henceforth the Empress of the Indian Dominions." For a reference by Ruskin to the "Socrates, Plato, and Epaminondas" passage, see below, p. 58.] [For Ruskin's description of Morosini's tomb in the atrium of St. Mark's, see Stones of Venice, vol. iii. (Vol. XI. pp. 112-113).] of the first simple order, that no bad fruit is to be sold, the attempts at evasion have become both cunning and resolute, to the point of requiring greater power to be given to the officers, as follows: 28th April, 1725.-"The superintendents of the fruits may go through the shops, and seek in every place for fruits of bad quality, and they shall not be impeded by whomsoever it may be. They shall mount upon the boats of melons and other fruits, and shall prohibit the sale of bad ones, and shall denounce transgressors to the magistracy." Nor did the government once relax its insistance, or fail to carry its laws into effect, as long as there was a Duke in Venice. Her people are now Free, and all the glorious liberties of British trade are achieved by them. And having been here through the entire autumn, I have not once been able to taste wall-fruit from the Rialto market, which was not both unripe and rotten, it being invariably gathered hard, to last as long as possible in the baskets; and of course the rottenest sold first, and the rest as it duly attains that desirable state. 12. The Persian fruits, however, which, with pears and cherries, fill the baskets on the Ducal Palace capitals,' are to the people of far less importance than the gourd and melon. The "melon boats," as late as 1845, were still so splendid in beauty of fruit, that my then companion, J. D. Harding, always spent with me the first hour of our day in drawing at the Rialto market. Of these fruits, being a staple article in constant domestic consumption, not only the quality, but the price, became an object of anxious care to the government; and the view taken by the Venetian Senate on the question I proposed to you in last Fors, the function of the middleman in raising prices, is [See the descriptions of the 25th and 27th capitals in Stones of Venice, vol. ii. (Vol. X. pp. 423, 424).] 2 [For Ruskin's days at Venice with J. D. Harding, see the Epilogue to Modern Painters, vol. ii. (Vol. IV. p. 353).] 3 [See Letter 73, §§ 11, 12 (p. 21).] |