-gladsome to see in operation. The righteous shall be glad when he seeth the vengeance-how much more in the mercy to thousands ?1

IV. THE COMMANDMENT OF THE LORD. Which is pure, enlightening the eyes.

This is the written law-under (as we count) ten articles, but in many more, if you will read. Teaching us, in so many words, when we cannot discern it unless we are told, what the will of our Master is.

V. THE FEAR OF THE LORD. Which is clean, enduring for ever.

Fear, or faith,-in this sense one: the human faculty that purifies, and enables us to see this sunshine; and to be warmed by it, and made to live for ever in it.

VI. THE JUDGMENTS OF THE LORD. Which are true, and righteous altogether.

2

These are His searchings out and chastisements of our sins; His praise and reward of our battle; the fiery trial that tries us, but is "no strange thing"; the crown that is laid up for all that love His appearing.3 "More to be desired are they than gold;"-(David thinks first of these special judgments)-"Sweeter than honey, or the honeycomb; -moreover by them is Thy servant warned, and in keeping of them there is great reward." Then-pausing—“Who can understand his errors? Cleanse Thou me from the faults I know not, and keep me from those I know; and let the words of my lips, and the thoughts of my brain, be acceptable in Thy open sight-oh Lord my strength, who hast made me, my Redeemer, who hast saved."

4. That is the natural and the spiritual astronomy of the nineteenth Psalm; and now you must turn back at

1 [Psalms lviii. 10; Jeremiah xxxii. 18.]

[See 1 Peter iv. 12.]

See 2 Timothy iv. 8.]

once to the analysis given you of the eighth, in Fors, May, 1875.1

For as, in the one, David looking at the sun in his light, passes on to the thought of the Light of God, which is His law, so in the eighth Psalm, looking at the sun on his throne, as the ruler and guide of the state of Heaven, he passes on to the thoughts of the throne and state of man, as the ruler and light of the World: "Thou hast made him a little lower than the angels,-Thou hast put all things under his feet,"-beasts and all cattle, creeping things and flying fowl.

It is of this dominion in love over the lower creatures that I have to speak to-day but I must pause a moment to point out to you the difference between David's astronomy with his eyes, and modern astronomy with telescopes.*

David's astronomy with the eyes, first rightly humbles him, then rightly exalts;-What is man that Thou so regardest him-yet, how Thou hast regarded! But modern astronomy with telescope first wrongly exalts us, then wrongly humbles.

First, it wrongly exalts. Lo and behold-we can see a dozen stars where David saw but one; we know how far they are from each other; nay, we know where they will all be, the day after to-morrow, and can make almanacks. What wise people are we! Solomon, and all the Seven Sages of Greece, where are they? Socrates, Plato, and Epaminondas-what talk you to us of them! Did they know, poor wretches, what the Dog Star smelt of?

5. We are generally content to pause at this pleasant stage of self-congratulation; by no means to ask further

Compare the whole of the lecture on Light, in Eagle's Nest [Vol. XXII. pp. 193-207].

1 [Letter 53, §§ 9-11 (Vol. XXVIII. pp. 325-328).]

[Compare what Ruskin says of the business of education being to "see the sky" in Letter 9 (Vol. XXVII. p. 164).]

3 [Ruskin here notes for Index: "Plato, Socrates, Epaminondas, Mr. John Bright's contempt of. Compare his speech in last number" (above, pp. 39–40 n.).]

Mere transhouses, and

The British

what the general conclusions of the telescope may be, concerning ourselves. It might, to some people, perhaps seem a deficiency in the telescope that it could discern no Gods in heaven; that, for all we could make out, it saw through the Gods, and out at the other side of them. parent space, where we thought there were gardens, and rivers, and angels, and what not. public does not concern itself about losses of that nature: behold, there is the Universe: and here are we, the British public, in the exact middle of it, and scientific of it in the accuratest manner. What a fine state of things! Oh, proud British public, have you ever taken this telescopic information well into your minds; and considered what it verily comes to?

Go out on the seashore when the tide is down, on some flat sand; and take a little sand up into your palm, and separate one grain of it from the rest. Then try to fancy the relation between that single grain and the number in all the shining fields of the far distant shore, and onward shores immeasurable. Your astronomer tells you, your world is such a grain compared with the worlds that are, but that he can see no inhabitants on them, no sign of habitation, or of beneficence. Terror and chance, cold and fire, light struck forth by collision,' desolateness of exploding orb and flying meteor. Meantime you, on your grain of sand-what are you? The little grain is itself mostly uninhabitable; has a damp green belt in the midst of it. In that, poor small vermin,-you live your span, fighting with each other for food, most of the time; or building -if perchance you are at peace-filthy nests, in which you perish of starvation, phthisis, profligate diseases, or despair. There is a history of civilization for you! briefer than Mr. Buckle's' and more true-when you see the Heavens and Earth without their God.

6. It is a fearful sight, and a false one. In what manner

1 [Compare Letter 6, § 9 (Vol. XXVII. p. 108).]

[For other references to Buckle's book, see Vol. XXVIII. p. 157.]

or way I neither know nor ask; this I know, that if a prophet touched your eyes, you might in an instant see all those eternal spaces filled with the heavenly host;1 and this also I know, that if you will begin to watch these stars with your human eyes, and learn what noble men have thought of them, and use their light to noble purposes, you will enter into a better joy and better science than ever eye hath seen.2

"Take stars for money-stars, not to be told
By any art,-yet to be purchased.” 3

I have nothing to do, nor have you, with what is happening in space (or possibly may happen in time), we have only to attend to what is happening here—and now. Yonder stars are rising. Have you ever noticed their order, heard their ancient names, thought of what they were, as teachers, "lecturers," in that large public hall of the night, to the wisest men of old? Have you ever thought of the direct promise to you yourselves, that you may be like them if you will? "They that be wise, shall shine as the brightness of the firmament; and they that turn many to righteousness, as the stars, for ever and ever."4

7. They that be wise. Don't think that means knowing how big the moon is. It means knowing what you ought to do, as man or woman; what your duty to your father is, to your child, to your neighbour, to nations your neighbours. A wise head of the English Government, for instance (Oliver, had he been alive"), would have sent word, a year ago, to the Grand Signior, that if he heard a word more of "atrocities" in Bulgaria after next week, he would blow his best palace into the Bosphorus. Irrespective of all other considerations, that was the first thing to be wisely said,

[Luke ii. 13.]

[See 1 Corinthians ii. 9.]

[George Herbert, The Temple ("Church Porch," stanza 29): compare Vol. XXVII. pp. 217, 419.]

[Daniel xii. 3.]

[For similar references to Cromwell, see Vol. XXVII. pp. 270, 272, 279.]

and done, if needful. What has been said and not done, since, the quantities of print printed, and talk talked, by every conceivable manner of fool,-not an honest syllable in all the lot of it (for even Mr. Bright's true and rational statement-the only quite right word, as far as I can judge, I've seen written on the business,* that Russians had as much right to the sea, everywhere, as anybody else,1 was tainted by his party spirit), I only wish I could show, in a heap of waste paper, to be made a bonfire of on Snowdon top.

That, I repeat, was the one simple, knightly, Englishhearted thing to be done; and so far as the "Interests of England" are concerned, her first interest was in this, to be England; and not a filthy nest of tax-gatherers and horse-dealers. For the horse-dealer and the man-dealer are alike ignoble persons, and their interests are of little consequence. But the horse-rider and the man-ruler, which was England's ancient notion of a man, and Venice's also (of which, in abrupt haste, but true sequence, I must now speak), have interests of a higher kind. But, if you would well understand what I have next to tell you, you must first read the opening chapter of my little Venetian guide, St. Mark's Rest,' which will tell you something of the two

* I do not venture to speak of the general statements in my master Carlyle's letter; but it seemed to me to dwell too much on the idea of total destruction to the Turk, and to involve considerations respecting the character of Turk and Russian not properly bearing on the business. It is not, surely, "the Eastern Question whether Turkey shall exist, or Russia triumph, but whether we shall or shall not stop a man in a turban from murdering a Christian.

1

[This was a principal contention in Bright's speech to his constituents at Birmingham on December 4, 1876.]

[See Vol. XXIV. pp. 207 seq.]

A letter to Mr. George Howard (afterwards Earl of Carlisle), dated November 24, and published in the Times of November 28, 1876. Carlyle, after praising the Russians as "a good and even noble element in Russia," went on to urge that "the unspeakable Turk" should "be peremptorily informed that we can stand no more of his attempts to govern in Europe, and that he must quam primum turn his face to the eastward." The letter was reprinted at vol. ii. pp. 307-311 of R. H. Shepherd's Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Thomas Carlyle (1881).]