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LECTURE V - THE WORK OF IRON, IN NATURE, ART, AND POLICY
_A Lecture Delivered at Tunbridge Wells, February, 1858._
When first I heard that you wished me to address you this evening, it
was a matter of some doubt with me whether I could find any subject
that would possess any sufficient interest for you to justify my
bringing you out of your comfortable houses on a winter's night. When I
venture to speak about my own special business of art, it is almost
always before students of art, among whom I may sometimes permit myself
to be dull, if I can feel that I am useful: but a mere talk about art,
especially without examples to refer to (and I have been unable to
prepare any careful illustrations for this lecture), is seldom of much
interest to a general audience. As I was considering what you might
best bear with me in speaking about, there came naturally into my mind
a subject connected with the origin and present prosperity of the town
you live in; and, it seemed to me, in the out-branchings of it, capable
of a very general interest. When, long ago (I am afraid to think how
long), Tunbridge Wells was my Switzerland, and I used to be brought
down here in the summer, a sufficiently active child, rejoicing in the
hope of clambering sandstone cliffs of stupendous height above the
common, there used sometimes, as, I suppose, there are in the lives of
all children at the Wells, to be dark days in my life--days of
condemnation to the pantiles and band--under which calamities my only
consolation used to be in watching, at every turn in my walk, the
welling forth of the spring over the orange rim of its marble basin.
The memory of the clear water, sparkling over its saffron stain, came
back to me as the strongest image connected with the place; and it
struck me that you might not be unwilling, to-night, to think a little
over the full significance of that saffron stain, and of the power, in
other ways and other functions, of the steelly element to which so many
here owe returning strength and life;--chief as it has been always, and
is yet more and more markedly so day by day, among the precious gifts
of the earth.
The subject is, of course, too wide to be more than suggestively
treated; and even my suggestions must be few, and drawn chiefly from my
own fields of work; nevertheless, I think I shall have time to indicate
some courses of thought which you may afterwards follow out for
yourselves if they interest you; and so I will not shrink from the full
scope of the subject which I have announced to you--the functions of
Iron, in Nature, Art, and Policy.
Without more preface, I will take up the first head.
I. IRON IN NATURE.--You all probably know that the ochreous stain,
which, perhaps, is often thought to spoil the basin of your spring, is
iron in a state of rust: and when you see rusty iron in other places
you generally think, not only that it spoils the places it stains, but
that it is spoiled itself--that rusty iron is spoiled iron.
For most of our uses it generally is so; and because we cannot use a
rusty knife or razor so well as a polished one, we suppose it to be a
great defect in iron that it is subject to rust. But not at all. On the
contrary, the most perfect and useful state of it is that ochreous
stain; and therefore it is endowed with so ready a disposition to get
itself into that state. It is not a fault in the iron, but a virtue, to
be so fond of getting rusted, for in that condition it fulfils its most
important functions in the universe, and most kindly duties to mankind.
Nay, in a certain sense, and almost a literal one, we may say that iron
rusted is Living; but when pure or polished, Dead. You all probably
know that in the mixed air we breathe, the part of it essentially
needful to us is called oxygen; and that this substance is to all
animals, in the most accurate sense of the word, "breath of life." The
nervous power of life is a different thing; but the supporting element
of the breath, without which the blood, and therefore the life, cannot
be nourished, is this oxygen. Now it is this very same air which the
iron breathes when it gets rusty. It takes the oxygen from the
atmosphere as eagerly as we do, though it uses it differently. The iron
keeps all that it gets; we, and other animals, part with it again; but
the metal absolutely keeps what it has once received of this aerial
gift; and the ochreous dust which we so much despise is, in fact, just
so much nobler than pure iron, in so far as it is _iron and the
air._ Nobler, and more useful--for, indeed, as I shall be able to
show you presently--the main service of this metal, and of all other
metals, to us, is not in making knives, and scissors, and pokers, and
pans, but in making the ground we feed from, and nearly all the
substances first needful to our existence. For these are all nothing
but metals and oxygen--metals with breath put into them. Sand, lime,
clay, and the rest of the earths--potash and soda, and the rest of the
alkalies--are all of them metals which have undergone this, so to
speak, vital change, and have been rendered fit for the service of man
by permanent unity with the purest air which he himself breathes. There
is only one metal which does not rust readily; and that, in its
influence on Man hitherto, has caused Death rather than Life; it will
not be put to its right use till it is made a pavement of, and so
trodden under foot.
Is there not something striking in this fact, considered largely as one
of the types, or lessons, furnished by the inanimate creation? Here you
have your hard, bright, cold, lifeless metal--good enough for swords
and scissors--but not for food. You think, perhaps, that your iron is
wonderfully useful in a pure form, but how would you like the world, if
all your meadows, instead of grass, grew nothing but iron wire--if all
your arable ground, instead of being made of sand and clay, were
suddenly turned into flat surfaces of steel--if the whole earth,
instead of its green and glowing sphere, rich with forest and flower,
showed nothing but the image of the vast furnace of a ghastly engine--a
globe of black, lifeless, excoriated metal? It would be that,--probably
it was once that; but assuredly it would be, were it not that all the
substance of which it is made sucks and breathes the brilliancy of the
atmosphere; and as it breathes, softening from its merciless hardness,
it falls into fruitful and beneficent dust; gathering itself again into
the earths from which we feed, and the stones with which we build;--
into the rocks that frame the mountains, and the sands that bind the
sea.
Hence, it is impossible for you to take up the most insignificant
pebble at your feet, without being able to read, if you like, this
curious lesson in it. You look upon it at first as if it were earth
only. Nay, it answers, "I am not earth--I am earth and air in one; part
of that blue heaven which you love, and long for, is already in me; it
is all my life--without it I should be nothing, and able for nothing; I
could not minister to you, nor nourish you--I should be a cruel and
helpless thing; but, because there is, according to my need and place
in creation, a kind of soul in me, I have become capable of good, and
helpful in the circles of vitality."
Thus far the same interest attaches to all the earths, and all the
metals of which they are made; but a deeper interest, and larger
beneficence belong to that ochreous earth of iron which stains the
marble of your springs. It stains much besides that marble. It stains
the great earth wheresoever you can see it, far and wide--it is the
colouring substance appointed to colour the globe for the sight, as
well as subdue it to the service of man. You have just seen your hills
covered with snow, and, perhaps, have enjoyed, at first, the contrast
of their fair white with the dark blocks of pine woods; but have you
ever considered how you would like them always white--not pure white,
but dirty white--the white of thaw, with all the chill of snow in it,
but none of its brightness? That is what the colour of the earth would
be without its iron; that would be its colour, not here or there only,
but in all places, and at all times. Follow out that idea till you get
it in some detail. Think first of your pretty gravel walks in your
gardens, yellow and fine, like plots of sunshine between the flower-
beds; fancy them all suddenly turned to the colour of ashes. That is
what they would be without iron ochre. Think of your winding walks over
the common, as warm to the eye as they are dry to the foot, and imagine
them all laid down suddenly with gray cinders. Then pass beyond the
common into the country, and pause at the first ploughed field that you
see sweeping up the hill sides in the sun, with its deep brown furrows,
and wealth of ridges all a-glow, heaved aside by the ploughshare, like
deep folds of a mantle of russet velvet--fancy it all changed suddenly
into grisly furrows in a field of mud. That is what it would be without
iron. Pass on, in fancy, over hill and dale, till you reach the bending
line of the sea shore; go down upon its breezy beach--watch the white
foam flashing among the amber of it, and all the blue sea embayed in
belts of gold: then fancy those circlets of far sweeping shore suddenly
put into mounds of mourning--all those golden sands turned into gray
slime, the fairies no more able to call to each other, "Come unto these
yellow sands;" but, "Come unto these drab sands." That is what they
would be, without iron.
Iron is in some sort, therefore, the sunshine and light of landscape,
so far as that light depends on the ground; but it is a source of
another kind of sunshine, quite as important to us in the way we live
at present--sunshine, not of landscape, but of dwelling-place.
In these days of swift locomotion I may doubtless assume that most of
my audience have been somewhere out of England--have been in Scotland,
or France, or Switzerland. Whatever may have been their impression, on
returning to their own country, of its superiority or inferiority in
other respects, they cannot but have felt one thing about it--the
comfortable look of its towns and villages. Foreign towns are often
very picturesque, very beautiful, but they never have quite that look
of warm self-sufficiency and wholesome quiet, with which our villages
nestle themselves down among the green fields. If you will take the
trouble to examine into the sources of this impression, you will find
that by far the greater part of that warm and satisfactory appearance
depends upon the rich scarlet colour of the bricks and tiles. It does
not belong to the neat building--very neat building has an
uncomfortable rather than a comfortable look--but it depends on the
_warm_ building; our villages are dressed in red tiles as our old
women are in red cloaks; and it does not matter how worn the cloaks, or
how bent and bowed the roof may be, so long as there are no holes in
either one or the other, and the sobered but unextinguishable colour
still glows in the shadow of the hood, and burns among the green mosses
of the gable. And what do you suppose dyes your tiles of cottage roof?
You don't paint them. It is nature who puts all that lovely vermilion
into the clay for you; and all that lovely vermilion is this oxide of
iron. Think, therefore, what your streets of towns would become--ugly
enough, indeed, already, some of them, but still comfortable-looking--
if instead of that warm brick red, the houses became all pepper-and-
salt colour. Fancy your country villages changing from that homely
scarlet of theirs which, in its sweet suggestion of laborious peace, is
as honourable as the soldiers' scarlet of laborious battle--suppose all
those cottage roofs, I say, turned at once into the colour of unbaked
clay, the colour of street gutters in rainy weather. That's what they
would be, without iron.
There is, however, yet another effect of colour in our English country
towns which, perhaps, you may not all yourselves have noticed, but for
which you must take the word of a sketcher. They are not so often
merely warm scarlet as they are warm purple;--a more beautiful colour
still: and they owe this colour to a mingling with the vermilion of the
deep grayish or purple hue of our fine Welsh slates on the more
respectable roofs, made more blue still by the colour of intervening
atmosphere. If you examine one of these Welsh slates freshly broken,
you will find its purple colour clear and vivid; and although never
strikingly so after it has been long exposed to weather, it always
retains enough of the tint to give rich harmonies of distant purple in
opposition to the green of our woods and fields. Whatever brightness or
power there is in the hue is entirely owing to the oxide of iron.
Without it the slates would either be pale stone colour, or cold gray,
or black.
Thus far we have only been considering the use and pleasantness of iron
in the common earth of clay. But there are three kinds of earth which
in mixed mass and prevalent quantity, form the world. Those are, in
common language, the earths of clay, of lime, and of flint. Many other
elements are mingled with these in sparing quantities; but the great
frame and substance of the earth is made of these three, so that
wherever you stand on solid ground, in any country of the globe, the
thing that is mainly under your feet will be either clay, limestone, or
some condition of the earth of flint, mingled with both.
These being what we have usually to deal with, Nature seems to have set
herself to make these three substances as interesting to us, and as
beautiful for us, as she can. The clay, being a soft and changeable
substance, she doesn't take much pains about, as we have seen, till it
is baked; she brings the colour into it only when it receives a
permanent form. But the limestone and flint she paints, in her own way,
in their native state: and her object in painting them seems to be much
the same as in her painting of flowers; to draw us, careless and idle
human creatures, to watch her a little, and see what she is about--that
being on the whole good for us,--her children. For Nature is always
carrying on very strange work with this limestone and flint of hers:
laying down beds of them at the bottom of the sea; building islands out
of the sea; filling chinks and veins in mountains with curious
treasures; petrifying mosses, and trees, and shells; in fact, carrying
on all sorts of business, subterranean or submarine, which it would be
highly desirable for us, who profit and live by it, to notice as it
goes on. And apparently to lead us to do this, she makes picture-books
for us of limestone and flint; and tempts us, like foolish children as
we are, to read her books by the pretty colours in them. The pretty
colours in her limestone-books form those variegated marbles which all
mankind have taken delight to polish and build with from the beginning
of time; and the pretty colours in her flint-books form those agates,
jaspers, cornelians, bloodstones, onyxes, cairngorms, chrysoprases,
which men have in like manner taken delight to cut, and polish, and
make ornaments of, from the beginning of time; and yet, so much of
babies are they, and so fond of looking at the pictures instead of
reading the book, that I question whether, after six thousand years of
cutting and polishing, there are above two or three people out of any
given hundred, who know, or care to know, how a bit of agate or a bit
of marble was made, or painted.
How it was made, may not be always very easy to say; but with what it
was painted there is no manner of question. All those beautiful violet
veinings and variegations of the marbles of Sicily and Spain, the
glowing orange and amber colours of those of Siena, the deep russet of
the Rosso antico, and the blood-colour of all the precious jaspers that
enrich the temples of Italy; and, finally, all the lovely transitions
of tint in the pebbles of Scotland and the Rhine, which form, though
not the most precious, by far the most interesting portion of our
modern jewellers' work;--all these are painted by nature with this one
material only, variously proportioned and applied--the oxide of iron
that stains your Tunbridge springs.
But this is not all, nor the best part of the work of iron. Its service
in producing these beautiful stones is only rendered to rich people,
who can afford to quarry and polish them. But Nature paints for all the
world, poor and rich together: and while, therefore, she thus adorns
the innermost rocks of her hills, to tempt your investigation, or
indulge your luxury,--she paints, far more carefully, the outsides of
the hills, which are for the eyes of the shepherd and the ploughman. I
spoke just now of the effect in the roofs of our villages of their
purple slates: but if the slates are beautiful even in their flat and
formal rows on house-roofs, much more are they beautiful on the rugged
crests and flanks of their native mountains. Have you ever considered,
in speaking as we do so often of distant blue hills, what it is that
makes them blue? To a certain extent it is distance; but distance alone
will not do it. Many hills look white, however distant. That lovely
dark purple colour of our Welsh and Highland hills is owing, not to
their distance merely, but to their rocks. Some of their rocks are,
indeed, too dark to be beautiful, being black or ashy gray; owing to
imperfect and porous structure. But when you see this dark colour
dashed with russet and blue, and coming out in masses among the green
ferns, so purple that you can hardly tell at first whether it is rock
or heather, then you must thank your old Tunbridge friend, the oxide of
iron.
But this is not all. It is necessary for the beauty of hill scenery
that Nature should colour not only her soft rocks, but her hard ones;
and she colours them with the same thing, only more beautifully.
Perhaps you have wondered at my use of the word "purple," so often of
stones; but the Greeks, and still more the Romans, who had profound
respect for purple, used it of stone long ago. You have all heard of
"porphyry" as among the most precious of the harder massive stones. The
colour which gave it that noble name, as well as that which gives the
flush to all the rosy granite of Egypt--yes, and to the rosiest summits
of the Alps themselves--is still owing to the same substance--your
humble oxide of iron.
And last of all:
A nobler colour than all these--the noblest colour ever seen on this
earth--one which belongs to a strength greater than that of the
Egyptian granite, and to a beauty greater than that of the sunset or
the rose--is still mysteriously connected with the presence of this
dark iron. I believe it is not ascertained on what the crimson of blood
actually depends; but the colour is connected, of course, with its
vitality, and that vitality with the existence of iron as one of its
substantial elements.
Is it not strange to find this stern and strong metal mingled so
delicately in our human life, that we cannot even blush without its
help? Think of it, my fair and gentle hearers; how terrible the
alternative--sometimes you have actually no choice but to be brazen-
faced, or iron-faced!
In this slight review of some of the functions of the metal, you
observe that I confine myself strictly to its operations as a colouring
element. I should only confuse your conception of the facts, if I
endeavoured to describe its uses as a substantial element, either in
strengthening rocks, or influencing vegetation by the decomposition of
rocks. I have not, therefore, even glanced at any of the more serious
uses of the metal in the economy of nature. But what I wish you to
carry clearly away with you is the remembrance that in all these uses
the metal would be nothing without the air. The pure metal has no
power, and never occurs in nature at all except in meteoric stones,
whose fall no one can account for, and which are useless after they
have fallen: in the necessary work of the world, the iron is invariably
joined with the oxygen, and would be capable of no service or beauty
whatever without it.
II. IRON IN ART.--Passing, then, from the offices of the metal in the
operations of nature to its uses in the hands of man, you must
remember, in the outset, that the type which has been thus given you,
by the lifeless metal, of the action of body and soul together, has
noble antitype in the operation of all human power. All art worthy the
name is the energy--neither of the human body alone, nor of the human
soul alone, but of both united, one guiding the other: good
craftsmanship and work of the fingers, joined with good emotion and
work of the heart.
There is no good art, nor possible judgment of art, when these two are
not united; yet we are constantly trying to separate them. Our amateurs
cannot be persuaded but that they may produce some kind of art by their
fancy or sensibility, without going through the necessary manual toil.
That is entirely hopeless. Without a certain number, and that a very
great number, of steady acts of hand--a practice as careful and
constant as would be necessary to learn any other manual business--no
drawing is possible. On the other side, the workman, and those who
employ him, are continually trying to produce art by trick or habit of
fingers, without using their fancy or sensibility. That also is
hopeless. Without mingling of heart-passion with hand-power, no art is
possible. [Footnote: No fine art, that is. See the previous definition
of fine art at p. 38.] The highest art unites both in their intensest
degrees: the action of the hand at its finest, with that of the heart
at its fullest.
Hence it follows that the utmost power of art can only be given in a
material capable of receiving and retaining the influence of the
subtlest touch of the human hand. That hand is the most perfect agent
of material power existing in the universe; and its full subtlety can
only be shown when the material it works on, or with, is entirely
yielding. The chords of a perfect instrument will receive it, but not
of an imperfect one; the softly bending point of the hair pencil, and
soft melting of colour, will receive it, but not even the chalk or pen
point, still less the steel point, chisel, or marble. The hand of a
sculptor may, indeed, be as subtle as that of a painter, but all its
subtlety is not bestowable nor expressible: the touch of Titian,
Correggio, or Turner, [Footnote: See Appendix IV., "Subtlety of Hand."]
is a far more marvellous piece of nervous action than can be shown in
anything but colour, or in the very highest conditions of executive
expression in music. In proportion as the material worked upon is less
delicate, the execution necessarily becomes lower, and the art with it.
This is one main principle of all work. Another is, that whatever the
material you choose to work with, your art is base if it does not bring
out the distinctive qualities of that material.
The reason of this second law is, that if you don't want the qualities
of the substance you use, you ought to use some other substance: it can
be only affectation, and desire to display your skill, that lead you to
employ a refractory substance, and therefore your art will all be base.
Glass, for instance, is eminently, in its nature, transparent. If you
don't want transparency, let the glass alone. Do not try to make a
window look like an opaque picture, but take an opaque ground to begin
with. Again, marble is eminently a solid and massive substance. Unless
you want mass and solidity, don't work in marble. If you wish for
lightness, take wood; if for freedom, take stucco; if for ductility,
take glass. Don't try to carve leathers, or trees, or nets, or foam,
out of marble. Carve white limbs and broad breasts only out of that.
So again, iron is eminently a ductile and tenacious substance--
tenacious above all things, ductile more than most. When you want
tenacity, therefore, and involved form, take iron. It is eminently made
for that. It is the material given to the sculptor as the companion of
marble, with a message, as plain as it can well be spoken, from the
lips of the earth-mother, "Here's for you to cut, and here's for you to
hammer. Shape this, and twist that. What is solid and simple, carve
out; what is thin and entangled, beat out. I give you all kinds of
forms to be delighted in;--fluttering leaves as well as fair bodies;
twisted branches as well as open brows. The leaf and the branch you may
beat and drag into their imagery: the body and brow you shall
reverently touch into their imagery. And if you choose rightly and work
rightly, what you do shall be safe afterwards. Your slender leaves
shall not break off in my tenacious iron, though they may be rusted a
little with an iron autumn. Your broad surfaces shall not be unsmoothed
in my pure crystalline marble--no decay shall touch them. But if you
carve in the marble what will break with a touch, or mould in the metal
what a stain of rust or verdigris will spoil, it is your fault--not
mine."
These are the main principles in this matter; which, like nearly all
other right principles in art, we moderns delight in contradicting as
directly and specially as may be. We continually look for, and praise,
in our exhibitions the sculpture of veils, and lace, and thin leaves,
and all kinds of impossible things pushed as far as possible in the
fragile stone, for the sake of showing the sculptor's dexterity.
[Footnote: I do not mean to attach any degree of blame to the effort to
represent leafage in marble for certain expressive purposes. The later
works of Mr. Munro have depended for some of their most tender thoughts
on a delicate and skilful use of such accessories. And in general, leaf
sculpture is good and admirable, if it renders, as in Gothic work, the
grace and lightness of the leaf by the arrangement of light and shadow
--supporting the masses well by strength of stone below; but all carving
is base which proposes to itself _slightness_ as an aim, and tries
to imitate the absolute thinness of thin or slight things, as much
modern wood carving does, I saw in Italy, a year or two ago, a marble
sculpture of birds' nests.] On the other hand, we _cast_ our iron
into bars--brittle, though an inch thick--sharpen them at the ends,
and consider fences, and other work, made of such materials,
decorative! I do not believe it would be easy to calculate the amount
of mischief done to our taste in England by that fence iron-work of
ours alone. If it were asked of us by a single characteristic, to
distinguish the dwellings of a country into two broad sections; and to
set, on one side, the places where people were, for the most part,
simple, happy, benevolent, and honest; and, on the other side, the
places where at least a great number of the people were sophisticated,
unkind, uncomfortable, and unprincipled, there is, I think, one feature
that you could fix upon as a positive test: the uncomfortable and
unprincipled parts of a country would be the parts where people lived
among iron railings, and the comfortable and principled parts where
they had none. A broad generalization, you will say! Perhaps a little
too broad; yet, in all sobriety, it will come truer than you think.
Consider every other kind of fence or defence, and you will find some
virtue in it; but in the iron railing none. There is, first, your
castle rampart of stone--somewhat too grand to be considered here among
our types of fencing; next, your garden or park wall of brick, which
has indeed often an unkind look on the outside, but there is more
modesty in it than unkindness. It generally means, not that the builder
of it wants to shut you out from the view of his garden, but from the
view of himself: it is a frank statement that as he needs a certain
portion of time to himself, so he needs a certain portion of ground to
himself, and must not be stared at when he digs there in his shirt-
sleeves, or plays at leapfrog with his boys from school, or talks over
old times with his wife, walking up and down in the evening sunshine.
Besides, the brick wall has good practical service in it, and shelters
you from the east wind, and ripens your peaches and nectarines, and
glows in autumn like a sunny bank. And, moreover, your brick wall, if
you build it properly, so that it shall stand long enough, is a
beautiful thing when it is old, and has assumed its grave purple red,
touched with mossy green.
Next to your lordly wall, in dignity of enclosure, comes your close-set
wooden paling, which is more objectionable, because it commonly means
enclosure on a larger scale than people want. Still it is significative
of pleasant parks, and well-kept field walks, and herds of deer, and
other such aristocratic pastoralisms, which have here and there their
proper place in a country, and may be passed without any discredit.
Next to your paling, comes your low stone dyke, your mountain fence,
indicative at a glance either of wild hill country, or of beds of stone
beneath the soil; the hedge of the mountains--delightful in all its
associations, and yet more in the varied and craggy forms of the loose
stones it is built of; and next to the low stone wall, your lowland
hedge, either in trim line of massive green, suggested of the
pleasances of old Elizabethan houses, and smooth alleys for aged feet,
and quaint labyrinths for young ones, or else in fair entanglement of
eglantine and virgin's bower, tossing its scented luxuriance along our
country waysides;--how many such you have here among your pretty hills,
fruitful with black clusters of the bramble for boys in autumn, and
crimson hawthorn berries for birds in winter. And then last, and most
difficult to class among fences, comes your handrail, expressive of all
sorts of things; sometimes having a knowing and vicious look, which it
learns at race-courses; sometimes an innocent and tender look, which it
learns at rustic bridges over cressy brooks; and sometimes a prudent
and protective look, which it learns on passes of the Alps, where it
has posts of granite and bars of pine, and guards the brows of cliffs
and the banks of torrents. So that in all these kinds of defence there
is some good, pleasant, or noble meaning. But what meaning has the iron
railing? Either, observe, that you are living in the midst of such bad
characters that you must keep them out by main force of bar, or that
you are yourself of a character requiring to be kept inside in the same
manner. Your iron railing always means thieves outside, or Bedlam
inside; it _can_ mean nothing else than that. If the people
outside were good for anything, a hint in the way of fence would be
enough for them; but because they are violent and at enmity with you,
you are forced to put the close bars and the spikes at the top.
Last summer I was lodging for a little while in a cottage in the
country, and in front of my low window there were, first some beds of
daisies, then a row of gooseberry and currant bushes, and then a low
wall about three feet above the ground, covered with stone-cress.
Outside, a corn-field, with its green ears glistening in the sun, and a
field path through it, just past the garden gate. From my window I
could see every peasant of the village who passed that way, with basket
on arm for market, or spade on shoulder for field. When I was inclined
for society, I could lean over my wall, and talk to anybody; when I was
inclined for science, I could botanize all along the top of my wall--
there were four species of stone-cress alone growing on it; and when I
was inclined for exercise, I could jump over my wall, backwards and
forwards. That's the sort of fence to have in a Christian country; not
a thing which you can't walk inside of without making yourself look
like a wild beast, nor look at out of your window in the morning
without expecting to see somebody impaled upon it in the night.
And yet farther, observe that the iron railing is a useless fence--it
can shelter nothing, and support nothing; you can't nail your peaches
to it, nor protect your flowers with it, nor make anything whatever out
of its costly tyranny; and besides being useless, it is an insolent
fence;--it says plainly to everybody who passes--"You may be an honest
person,--but, also, you may be a thief: honest or not, you shall not
get in here, for I am a respectable person, and much above you; you
shall only see what a grand place I have got to keep you out of--look
here, and depart in humiliation."
This, however, being in the present state of civilization a frequent
manner of discourse, and there being unfortunately many districts where
the iron railing is unavoidable, it yet remains a question whether you
need absolutely make it ugly, no less than significative of evil. You
must have railings round your squares in London, and at the sides of
your areas; but need you therefore have railings so ugly that the
constant sight of them is enough to neutralise the effect of all the
schools of art in the kingdom? You need not. Far from such necessity,
it is even in your power to turn all your police force of iron bars
actually into drawing masters, and natural historians. Not, of course,
without some trouble and some expense; you can do nothing much worth
doing, in this world, without trouble, you can get nothing much worth
having without expense. The main question is only--what is worth doing
and having:--Consider, therefore, if this be not. Here is your iron
railing, as yet, an uneducated monster; a sombre seneschal, incapable
of any words, except his perpetual "Keep out!" and "Away with you!"
Would it not be worth some trouble and cost to turn this ungainly
ruffian porter into a well-educated servant; who, while he was severe
as ever in forbidding entrance to evilly-disposed people, should yet
have a kind word for well-disposed people, and a pleasant look, and a
little useful information at his command, in case he should be asked a
question by the passers-by?
We have not time to-night to look at many examples of ironwork; and
those I happen to have by me are not the best; ironwork is not one of
my special subjects of study; so that I only have memoranda of bits
that happened to come into picturesque subjects which I was drawing for
other reasons. Besides, external ironwork is more difficult to find
good than any other sort of ancient art; for when it gets rusty and
broken, people are sure, if they can afford it, to send it to the old
iron shop, and get a fine new grating instead; and in the great cities
of Italy, the old iron is thus nearly all gone: the best bits I
remember in the open air were at Brescia;--fantastic sprays of laurel-
like foliage rising over the garden gates; and there are a few fine
fragments at Verona, and some good trellis-work enclosing the Scala
tombs; but on the whole, the most interesting pieces, though by no
means the purest in style, are to be found in out-of-the-way provincial
towns, where people do not care, or are unable, to make polite
alterations. The little town of Bellinzona, for instance, on the south
of the Alps, and that of Sion on the north, have both of them complete
schools of ironwork in their balconies and vineyard gates. That of
Bellinzona is the best, though not very old--I suppose most of it of
the seventeenth century; still it is very quaint and beautiful. Here,
for example, are two balconies, from two different houses; one has been
a cardinal's, and the hat is the principal ornament of the balcony; its
tassels being wrought with delightful delicacy and freedom; and
catching the eye clearly even among the mass of rich wreathed leaves.
These tassels and strings are precisely the kind of subject fit for
ironwork--noble in ironwork, they would have been entirely ignoble in
marble, on the grounds above stated. The real plant of oleander
standing in the window enriches the whole group of lines very happily.
The other balcony, from a very ordinary-looking house in the same
street, is much more interesting in its details. It is shown in the
plate as it appeared last summer, with convolvulus twined about the
bars, the arrow-shaped living leaves mingled among the leaves of iron;
but you may see in the centre of these real leaves a cluster of lighter
ones, which are those of the ironwork itself. This cluster is worth
giving a little larger to show its treatment. Fig. 2 (in Appendix V.)
is the front view of it: Fig. 4, its profile. It is composed of a large
tulip in the centre; then two turkscap lilies; then two pinks, a little
conventionalized; then two narcissi; then two nondescripts, or, at
least, flowers I do not know; and then two dark buds, and a few leaves.
I say, dark buds, for all these flowers have been coloured in their
original state. The plan of the group is exceedingly simple: it is all
enclosed in a pointed arch (Fig. 3, Appendix V.): the large mass of the
tulip forming the apex; a six-foiled star on each side; then a jagged
star; then a five-foiled star; then an unjagged star or rose; finally a
small bud, so as to establish relation and cadence through the whole
group. The profile is very free and fine, and the upper bar of the
balcony exceedingly beautiful in effect;--none the less so on account
of the marvellously simple means employed. A thin strip of iron is bent
over a square rod; out of the edge of this strip are cut a series of
triangular openings--widest at top, leaving projecting teeth of iron
(Appendix, Fig. 5); then each of these projecting pieces gets a little
sharp tap with the hammer in front, which beaks its edge inwards,
tearing it a little open at the same time, and the thing is done.
The common forms of Swiss ironwork are less naturalistic than these
Italian balconies, depending more on beautiful arrangements of various
curve; nevertheless, there has been a rich naturalist school at
Fribourg, where a few bell-handles are still left, consisting of rods
branched into laurel and other leafage. At Geneva, modern improvements
have left nothing; but at Annecy, a little good work remains; the
balcony of its old hotel de ville especially, with a trout of the lake
--presumably the town arms--forming its central ornament.
I might expatiate all night--if you would sit and hear me--on the
treatment of such required subject, or introduction of pleasant caprice
by the old workmen; but we have no more time to spare, and I must quit
this part of our subject--the rather as I could not explain to you the
intrinsic merit of such ironwork without going fully into the theory of
curvilinear design; only let me leave with you this one distinct
assertion--that the quaint beauty and character of many natural
objects, such as intricate branches, grass, foliage (especially thorny
branches and prickly foliage), as well as that of many animals, plumed,
spined, or bristled, is sculpturally expressible in iron only, and in
iron would be majestic and impressive in the highest degree; and that
every piece of metal work you use might be, rightly treated, not only a
superb decoration, but a most valuable abstract of portions of natural
forms, holding in dignity precisely the same relation to the painted
representation of plants, that a statue does to the painted form of
man. It is difficult to give you an idea of the grace and interest
which the simplest objects possess when their forms are thus abstracted
from among the surrounding of rich circumstance which in nature
disturbs the feebleness of our attention. In Plate 2, a few blades of
common green grass, and a wild leaf or two--just as they were thrown by
nature,--are thus abstracted from the associated redundance of the
forms about them, and shown on a dark ground: every cluster of herbage
would furnish fifty such groups, and every such group would work into
iron (fitting it, of course, rightly to its service) with perfect ease,
and endless grandeur of result.
III. IRON in POLICY.--Having thus obtained some idea of the use of iron
in art, as dependent on its ductility, I need not, certainly, say
anything of its uses in manufacture and commerce; we all of us know
enough,--perhaps a little too much--about _them_. So I pass lastly
to consider its uses in policy; dependent chiefly upon its tenacity--
that is to say, on its power of bearing a pull, and receiving an edge.
These powers, which enable it to pierce, to bind, and to smite, render
it fit for the three great instruments, by which its political action
may be simply typified; namely, the Plough, the Fetter, and the Sword.
On our understanding the right use of these three instruments, depend,
of course, all our power as a nation, and all our happiness as
individuals.
I. THE PLOUGH.--I say, first, on our understanding the right use of the
plough, with which, in justice to the fairest of our labourers, we must
always associate that feminine plough--the needle. The first
requirement for the happiness of a nation is that it should understand
the function in this world of these two great instruments: a happy
nation may be defined as one in which the husband's hand is on the
plough, and the housewife's on the needle; so in due time reaping its
golden harvest, and shining in golden vesture: and an unhappy nation is
one which, acknowledging no use of plough nor needle, will assuredly at
last find its storehouse empty in the famine, and its breast naked to
the cold.
Perhaps you think this is a mere truism, which I am wasting your time
in repeating. I wish it were.
By far the greater part of the suffering and crime which exist at this
moment in civilized Europe, arises simply from people not understanding
this truism--not knowing that produce or wealth is eternally connected
by the laws of heaven and earth with resolute labour; but hoping in
some way to cheat or abrogate this everlasting law of life, and to feed
where they have not furrowed, and be warm where they have not woven.
I repeat, nearly all our misery and crime result from this one
misapprehension. The law of nature is, that a certain quantity of work
is necessary to produce a certain quantity of good, of any kind
whatever. If you want knowledge, you must toil for it: if food, you
must toil for it; and if pleasure, you must toil for it. But men do not
acknowledge this law, or strive to evade it, hoping to get their
knowledge, and food, and pleasure for nothing; and in this effort they
either fail of getting them, and remain ignorant and miserable, or they
obtain them by making other men work for their benefit; and then they
are tyrants and robbers. Yes, and worse than robbers. I am not one who
in the least doubts or disputes the progress of this century in many
things useful to mankind; but it seems to me a very dark sign
respecting us that we look with so much indifference upon dishonesty
and cruelty in the pursuit of wealth. In the dream of Nebuchadnezzar it
was only the _feet_ that were part of iron and part of clay; but
many of us are now getting so cruel in our avarice, that it seems as
if, in us, the _heart_ were part of iron, and part of clay.
From what I have heard of the inhabitants of this town, I do not doubt
but that I may be permitted to do here what I have found it usually
thought elsewhere highly improper and absurd to do, namely, trace a few
Bible sentences to their practical result.
You cannot but have noticed how often in those parts of the Bible which
are likely to be oftenest opened when people look for guidance,
comfort, or help in the affairs of daily life, namely, the Psalms and
Proverbs, mention is made of the guilt attaching to the
_Oppression_ of the poor. Observe: not the neglect of them, but
the _Oppression_ of them: the word is as frequent as it is
strange. You can hardly open either of those books, but somewhere in
their pages you will find a description of the wicked man's attempts
against the poor: such as--"He doth ravish the poor when he getteth him
into his net."
"He sitteth in the lurking places of the villages; his eyes are privily
set against the poor."
"In his pride he doth persecute the poor, and blesseth the covetous,
whom God abhorreth."
"His mouth is full of deceit and fraud; in the secret places doth he
murder the innocent. Have the workers of iniquity no knowledge, who eat
up my people as they eat bread? They have drawn out the sword, and bent
the bow, to cast down the poor and needy."
"They are corrupt, and speak wickedly concerning oppression."
"Pride compasseth them about as a chain, and violence as a garment."
"Their poison is like the poison of a serpent. Ye weigh the violence of
your hands in the earth."
Yes: "Ye weigh the violence of your hands:"--weigh these words as well.
The last things we ever usually think of weighing are Bible words. We
like to dream and dispute over them; but to weigh them, and see what
their true contents are--anything but that. Yet, weigh these; for I
have purposely taken all these verses, perhaps more striking to you
read in this connection, than separately in their places, out of the
Psalms, because, for all people belonging to the Established Church of
this country these Psalms are appointed lessons, portioned out to them
by their clergy to be read once through every month. Presumably,
therefore, whatever portions of Scripture we may pass by or forget,
these at all events, must be brought continually to our observance as
useful for direction of daily life. Now, do we ever ask ourselves what
the real meaning of these passages may be, and who these wicked people
are, who are "murdering the innocent?" You know it is rather singular
language this!--rather strong language, we might, perhaps, call it--
hearing it for the first time. Murder! and murder of innocent people!--
nay, even a sort of cannibalism. Eating people,--yes, and God's people,
too--eating _My_ people as if they were bread! swords drawn, bows
bent, poison of serpents mixed! violence of hands weighed, measured,
and trafficked with as so much coin! where is all this going on? Do you
suppose it was only going on in the time of David, and that nobody but
Jews ever murder the poor? If so, it would surely be wiser not to
mutter and mumble for our daily lessons what does not concern us; but
if there be any chance that it may concern us, and if this description,
in the Psalms, of human guilt is at all generally applicable, as the
descriptions in the Psalms of human sorrow are, may it not be advisable
to know wherein this guilt is being committed round about us, or by
ourselves? and when we take the words of the Bible into our mouths in a
congregational way, to be sure whether we mean merely to chant a piece
of melodious poetry relating to other people--(we know not exactly to
whom)--or to assert our belief in facts bearing somewhat stringently on
ourselves and our daily business. And if you make up your minds to do
this no longer, and take pains to examine into the matter, you will
find that these strange words, occurring as they do, not in a few
places only, but almost in every alternate psalm and every alternate
chapter of proverb, or prophecy, with tremendous reiteration, were not
written for one nation or one time only; but for all nations and
languages, for all places and all centuries; and it is as true of the
wicked man now as ever it was of Nabal or Dives, that "his eyes are set
against the poor."
Set _against_ the poor, mind you. Not merely set _away_ from
the poor, so as to neglect or lose sight of them, but set against, so
as to afflict and destroy them. This is the main point I want to fix.
your attention upon. You will often hear sermons about neglect or
carelessness of the poor. But neglect and carelessness are not at all
the points. The Bible hardly ever talks about neglect of the poor. It
always talks of _oppression_ of the poor--a very different matter.
It does not merely speak of passing by on the other side, and binding
up no wounds, but of drawing the sword and ourselves smiting the men
down. It does not charge us with being idle in the pest-house, and
giving no medicine, but with being busy in the pest-house, and giving
much poison.
May we not advisedly look into this matter a little, even tonight, and
ask first, Who are these poor?
No country is, or ever will be, without them: that is to say, without
the class which cannot, on the average, do more by its labour than
provide for its subsistence, and which has no accumulations of property
laid by on any considerable scale. Now there are a certain number of
this class whom we cannot oppress with much severity. An able-bodied
and intelligent workman--sober, honest, and industrious, will almost
always command a fair price for his work, and lay by enough in a few
years to enable him to hold his own in the labour market. But all men
are not able-bodied, nor intelligent, nor industrious; and you cannot
expect them to be. 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. "Be assured, my good man,"--you say to him,--"that if you
work steadily for ten hours a day all your life long, and if you drink
nothing but water, or the very mildest beer, and live on very plain
food, and never lose your temper, and go to church every Sunday, and
always remain content in the position in which Providence has placed
you, and never grumble nor swear; and always keep your clothes decent,
and rise early, and use every opportunity of improving yourself, you
will get on very well, and never come to the parish."
All this is exceedingly true; but before giving the advice so
confidently, it would be well if we sometimes tried it practically
ourselves, and spent a year or so at some hard manual labour, not of an
entertaining kind--ploughing or digging, for instance, with a very
moderate allowance of beer; nothing hut bread and cheese for dinner; no
papers nor muffins in the morning; no sofas nor magazines at night; one
small room for parlour and kitchen; and a large family of children
always in the middle of the floor. If we think we could, under these
circumstances, enact Socrates or Epaminondas entirely to our own
satisfaction, we shall be somewhat justified in requiring the same
behaviour from our poorer neighbours; but if not, we should surely
consider a little whether among the various forms of the oppression of
the poor, we may not rank as one of the first and likeliest--the
oppression of expecting too much from them.
But let this pass; and let it be admitted that we can never be guilty
of oppression towards the sober, industrious, intelligent, exemplary
labourer. There will always be in the world some who are not
altogether, intelligent and exemplary; we shall, I believe, to the end
of time find the majority somewhat unintelligent, a little inclined to
be idle, and occasionally, on Saturday night, drunk; we must even be
prepared to hear of reprobates who like skittles on Sunday morning
better than prayers; and of unnatural parents who send their children
out to beg instead of to go to school.
Now these are the kind of people whom you _can_ oppress, and whom
you do oppress, and that to purpose,--and with all the more cruelty and
the greater sting, because it is just their own fault that puts them
into your power. You know the words about wicked people are, "He doth
ravish the poor when he getteth him _into his net_." This getting
into the net is constantly the fault or folly of the sufferer--his own
heedlessness or his own indolence; but after he is once in the net, the
oppression of him, and making the most of his distress, are ours. The
nets which we use against the poor are just those worldly
embarrassments which either their ignorance or their improvidence are
almost certain at some time or other to bring them into: then, just at
the time when we ought to hasten to help them, and disentangle them,
and teach them how to manage better in future, we rush forward to
_pillage_ them, and force all we can out of them in their
adversity. For, to take one instance only, remember this is literally
and simply what we do, whenever we buy, or try to buy, cheap goods--
goods offered at a price which we know cannot be remunerative for the
labour involved in them. Whenever we buy such goods, remember we are
stealing somebody's labour. Don't let us mince the matter. I say, in
plain Saxon, STEALING--taking from him the proper reward of his work,
and putting it into our own pocket. You know well enough that the thing
could not have been offered you at that price, unless distress of some
kind had forced the producer to part with it. You take advantage of
this distress, and you force as much out of him as you can under the
circumstances. The old barons of the middle ages used, in general, the
thumbscrew to extort property; we moderns use, in preference, hunger or
domestic affliction: but the fact of extortion remains precisely the
same. Whether we force the man's property from him by pinching his
stomach, or pinching his fingers, makes some difference anatomically;--
morally, none whatsoever: we use a form of torture of some sort in
order to make him give up his property; we use, indeed, the man's own
anxieties, instead of the rack; and his immediate peril of starvation,
instead of the pistol at the head; but otherwise we differ from Front
de Boeuf, or Dick Turpin, merely in being less dexterous, more cowardly,
and more cruel. More cruel, I say, because the fierce baron and the
redoubted highwayman are reported to have robbed, at least by
preference, only the rich; _we_ steal habitually from the poor. We
buy our liveries, and gild our prayer-books, with pilfered pence out of
children's and sick men's wages, and thus ingeniously dispose a given
quantity of Theft, so that it may produce the largest possible measure
of delicately distributed suffering.
But this is only one form of common oppression of the poor--only one
way of taking our hands off the plough handle, and binding another's
upon it. This first way of doing it is the economical way--the way
preferred by prudent and virtuous people. The bolder way is the
acquisitive way:--the way of speculation. You know we are considering
at present the various modes in which a nation corrupts itself, by not
acknowledging the eternal connection between its plough and its
pleasure;--by striving to get pleasure, without working for it. Well, I
say the first and commonest way of doing so is to try to get the
product of other people's work, and enjoy it ourselves, by cheapening
their labour in times of distress: then the second way is that grand
one of watching the chances of the market;--the way of speculation. Of
course there are some speculations that are fair and honest--
speculations made with our own money, and which do not involve in their
success the loss, by others, of what we gain. But generally modern
speculation involves much risk to others, with chance of profit only to
ourselves: even in its best conditions it is merely one of the forms of
gambling or treasure hunting; it is either leaving the steady plough
and the steady pilgrimage of life, to look for silver mines beside the
way; or else it is the full stop beside the dice-tables in Vanity Fair
--investing all the thoughts and passions of the soul in the fall of the
cards, and choosing rather the wild accidents of idle fortune than the
calm and accumulative rewards of toil. And this is destructive enough,
at least to our peace and virtue. But is usually destructive of far
more than _our_ peace, or _our_ virtue. Have you ever deliberately set
yourselves to imagine and measure the suffering, the guilt, and the
mortality caused necessarily by the failure of any large-dealing merchant,
or largely-branched bank? Take it at the lowest possible supposition-
count, at the fewest you choose, the families whose means of support have
been involved in the catastrophe. Then, on the morning after the intelli-
gence of ruin, let us go forth amongst them in earnest thought; let us use
that imagination which we waste so often on fictitious sorrow, to measure
the stern facts of that multitudinous distress; strike open the private
doors of their chambers, and enter silently into the midst of the domestic
misery; look upon the old men, who had reserved for their failing strength
some remainder of rest in the evening-tide of life, cast helplessly back
into its trouble and tumult; look upon the active strength of middle
age suddenly blasted into incapacity--its hopes crushed, and its hardly
earned rewards snatched away in the same instant--at once the heart
withered, and the right arm snapped; look upon the piteous children,
delicately nurtured, whose soft eyes, now large with wonder at their
parents' grief, must soon be set in the dimness of famine; and, far
more than all this, look forward to the length of sorrow beyond--to the
hardest labour of life, now to be undergone either in all the severity
of unexpected and inexperienced trial, or else, more bitter still, to
be begun again, and endured for the second time, amidst the ruins of
cherished hopes and the feebleness of advancing years, embittered by
the continual sting and taunt of the inner feeling that it has all been
brought about, not by the fair course of appointed circumstance, but by
miserable chance and wanton treachery; and, last of all, look beyond
this--to the shattered destinies of those who have faltered under the
trial, and sunk past recovery to despair. And then consider whether the
hand which has poured this poison into all the springs of life be one
whit less guiltily red with human blood than that which literally pours
the hemlock into the cup, or guides the dagger to the heart? We read
with horror of the crimes of a Borgia or a Tophana; but there never
lived Borgias such as live now in the midst of us. The cruel lady of
Ferrara slew only in the strength of passion--she slew only a few,
those who thwarted her purposes or who vexed her soul; she slew sharply
and suddenly, embittering the fate of her victims with no foretastes of
destruction, no prolongations of pain; and, finally and chiefly, she
slew, not without remorse, nor without pity. But _we,_ in no storm
of passion--in no blindness of wrath,--we, in calm and clear and
untempted selfishness, pour our poison--not for a few only, but for
multitudes;--not for those who have wronged us, or resisted,--but for
those who have trusted us and aided:--we, not with sudden gift of
merciful and unconscious death, but with slow waste of hunger and weary
rack of disappointment and despair;--we, last and chiefly, do our
murdering, not with any pauses of pity or scorching of conscience, but
in facile and forgetful calm of mind--and so, forsooth, read day by
day, complacently, as if they meant any one else than ourselves, the
words that forever describe the wicked: "The _poison of asps_ is
under their lips, and their _feet are swift to shed blood._"
You may indeed, perhaps, think there is some excuse for many in this
matter, just because the sin is so unconscious; that the guilt is not
so great when it is unapprehended, and that it is much more pardonable
to slay heedlessly than purposefully. I believe no feeling can be more
mistaken, and that in reality, and in the sight of heaven; the callous
indifference which pursues its own interests at any cost of life,
though it does not definitely adopt the purpose of sin, is a state of
mind at once more heinous and more hopeless than the wildest
aberrations of ungoverned passion. There may be, in the last case, some
elements of good and of redemption still mingled in the character; but,
in the other, few or none. There may be hope for the man who has slain
his enemy in anger; hope even for the man who has betrayed his friend
in fear; but what hope for him who trades in unregarded blood, and
builds his fortune on unrepented treason?
But, however this may be, and wherever you may think yourselves bound
in justice to impute the greater sin, be assured that the question is
one of responsibilities only, not of facts. The definite result of all
our modern haste to be rich is assuredly, and constantly, the murder of
a certain number of persons by our hands every year. I have not time to
go into the details of another--on the whole, the broadest and
terriblest way in which we cause the destruction of the poor--namely,
the way of luxury and waste, destroying, in improvidence, what might
have been the support of thousands; [Footnote: The analysis of this
error will be found completely carried out in my lectures on the
political economy of art. And it is an error worth analyzing; for until
it is finally trodden under foot, no healthy political, economical, or
moral action is _possible_ in any state. I do not say this
impetuously or suddenly, for I have investigated this subject as
deeply; and as long, as my own special subject of art; and the
principles of political economy which I have stated in those lectures
are as sure as the principles of Euclid. Foolish readers doubted their
certainty, because I told them I had "never read any books on Political
Economy" Did they suppose I had got my knowledge of art by reading
books?] but if you follow out the subject for yourselves at home--and
what I have endeavoured to lay before you to-night will only be useful
to you if you do--you will find that wherever and whenever men are
endeavouring to _make money hastily_, and to avoid the labour
which Providence has appointed to be tho only source of honourable
profit;--and also wherever and whenever they permit themselves to
_spend it luxuriously_, without reflecting how far they are
misguiding the labour of others;--there and then, in either case, they
are literally and infallibly causing, for their own benefit or their
own pleasure, a certain annual number of human deaths; that, therefore,
the choice given to every man born into this world is, simply, whether
he will be a labourer, or an assassin; and that whosoever has not his
hand on the Stilt of the plough, has it on the Hilt of the dagger.
It would also be quite vain for me to endeavour to follow out this
evening the lines of thought which would be suggested by the other two
great political uses of iron in the Fetter and the Sword: a few words
only I must permit myself respecting both.
2. THE FETTER.--As the plough is the typical instrument of industry, so
the fetter is the typical instrument of the restraint or subjection
necessary in a nation--either literally, for its evil-doers, or
figuratively, in accepted laws, for its wise and good men. You have to
choose between this figurative and literal use; for depend upon it, the
more laws you accept, the fewer penalties you will have to endure, and
the fewer punishments to enforce. For wise laws and just restraints are
to a noble nation not chains, but chain mail--strength and defence,
though something also of an incumbrance. And this necessity of
restraint, remember, is just as honourable to man as the necessity of
labour. You hear every day greater numbers of foolish people speaking
about liberty, as if it were such an honourable thing: so far from
being that, it is, on the whole, and in the broadest sense,
dishonourable, and an attribute of the lower creatures. No human being,
however great or powerful, was ever so free as a fish. There is always
something that he must, or must not do; while the fish may do whatever
he likes. All the kingdoms of the world put together are not half so
large as the sea, and all the railroads and wheels that ever were, or
will be, invented are not so easy as fins. You will find, on fairly
thinking of it, that it is his Restraint which is honourable to man,
not his Liberty; and, what is more, it is restraint which is honourable
even in the lower animals. A butterfly is much more free than a bee;
but you honour the bee more, just because it is subject to certain laws
which fit it for orderly function in bee society And throughout the
world, of the two abstract things, liberty and restraint, restraint is
always the more honourable. It is true, indeed, that in these and all
other matters you never can reason finally from the abstraction, for
both liberty and restraint are good when they are nobly chosen, and
both are bad when they are basely chosen; but of the two, I repeat, it
is restraint which characterizes the higher creature, and betters the
lower creature: and, from the ministering of the archangel to the
labour of the insect,--from the poising of the planets to the
gravitation of a grain of dust,--the power and glory of all creatures,
and all matter, consist in their obedience, not in their freedom. The
Sun has no liberty--a dead leaf has much. The dust of which you are
formed has no liberty. Its liberty will come--with its corruption.
And, therefore, I say boldly, though it seems a strange thing to say in
England, that as the first power of a nation consists in knowing how to
guide the Plough, its second power consists in knowing how to wear the
Fetter:--
3. THE SWORD.--And its third power, which perfects it as a nation,
consist in knowing how to wield the sword, so that the three talismans
of national existence are expressed in these three short words--Labour,
Law, and Courage.
This last virtue we at least possess; and all that is to be alleged
against us is that we do not honour it enough. I do not mean honour by
acknowledgment of service, though sometimes we are slow in doing even
that. But we do not honour it enough in consistent regard to the lives
and souls of our soldiers. How wantonly we have wasted their lives you
have seen lately in the reports of their mortality by disease, which a
little care and science might have prevented; but we regard their souls
less than their lives, by keeping them in ignorance and idleness, and
regarding them merely as instruments of battle. The argument brought
forward for the maintenance of a standing army usually refers only to
expediency in the case of unexpected war, whereas, one of the chief
reasons for the maintenance of an army is the advantage of the military
system as a method of education. The most fiery and headstrong, who are
often also the most gifted and generous of your youths, have always a
tendency both in the lower and upper classes to offer themselves for
your soldiers: others, weak and unserviceable in a civil capacity, are
tempted or entrapped into the army in a fortunate hour for them: out of
this fiery or uncouth material, it is only a soldier's discipline which
can bring the full value and power. Even at present, by mere force of
order and authority, the army is the salvation of myriads; and men who,
under other circumstances, would have sunk into lethargy or
dissipation, are redeemed into noble life by a service which at once
summons and directs their energies. How much more than this military
education is capable of doing, you will find only when you make it
education indeed. We have no excuse for leaving our private soldiers at
their present level of ignorance and want of refinement, for we shall
invariably find that, both among officers and men, the gentlest and
best informed are the bravest; still less have we excuse for
diminishing our army, either in the present state of political events,
or, as I believe, in any other conjunction of them that for many a year
will be possible in this world.
You may, perhaps, be surprised at my saying this; perhaps surprised at
my implying that war itself can be right, or necessary, or noble at
all. Nor do I speak of all war as necessary, nor of all war as noble.
Both peace and war are noble or ignoble according to their kind and
occasion. No man has a profounder sense of the horror and guilt of
ignoble war than I have: I have personally seen its effects, upon
nations, of unmitigated evil, on soul and body, with perhaps as much
pity, and as much bitterness of indignation, as any of those whom you
will hear continually declaiming in the cause of peace. But peace may
be sought in two ways. One way is as Gideon sought it, when he built
his altar in Ophrah, naming it, "God send peace," yet sought this peace
that he loved, as he was ordered to seek it, and the peace was sent, in
God's way:--"the country was in quietness forty years in the days of
Gideon." And the other way of seeking peace is as Menahem sought it
when he gave the King of Assyria a thousand talents of silver, that
"his hand might be with him." That is, you may either win your peace,
or buy it:--win it, by resistance to evil;--buy it, by compromise with
evil. You may buy your peace, with silenced consciences;--you may buy
it, with broken vows,--buy it, with lying words,--buy it, with base
connivances,--buy it, with the blood of the slain, and the cry of the
captive, and the silence of lost souls--over hemispheres of the earth,
while you sit smiling at your serene hearths, lisping comfortable
prayers evening and morning, and counting your pretty Protestant beads
(which are flat, and of gold, instead of round, and of ebony, as the
monks' ones were), and so mutter continually to yourselves, "Peace,
peace," when there is No peace; but only captivity and death, for you,
as well as for those you leave unsaved;--and yours darker than theirs.
I cannot utter to you what I would in this matter; we all see too
dimly, as yet, what our great world-duties are, to allow any of us to
try to outline their enlarging shadows. But think over what I have
said, and as you return to your quiet homes to-night, reflect that
their peace was not won for you by your own hands; but by theirs who
long ago jeoparded their lives for you, their children; and remember
that neither this inherited peace, nor any other, can be kept, but
through the same jeopardy. No peace was ever won from Fate by
subterfuge or agreement; no peace is ever in store for any of us, but
that which we shall win by victory over shame or sin;--victory over the
sin that oppresses, as well as over that which corrupts. For many a
year to come, the sword of every righteous nation must be whetted to
save or subdue; nor will it be by patience of others' suffering, but by
the offering of your own, that you ever will draw nearer to the time
when the great change shall pass upon the iron of the earth;--when men
shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into
pruning-hooks; neither shall they learn war any more.
Content of LECTURE V - THE WORK OF IRON, IN NATURE, ART, AND POLICY [John Ruskin's essay: The Two Paths]
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