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VERONA 
 
 AND OTHER LECTURES 
 
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 VJ' 
 
 
 
 
 
 1 P'l'om thr: Tomb of Can Signono; Ver-ona ■ 
 
 Sl]lvle Nlrilie an 
 
VERONA 
 
 AND OTHER LECTURES 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN RUSKIN; D.C.L., LL.D. 
 
 HONORARY STUDENT OF CHRIST CHURCH, HONORARY FELLOW OF CORPUS 
 
 CHRISTI COLLEGE, AND SOMETIME SLADE PROFESSOR OF 
 
 FINE ART IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD 
 
 WITH ILLUSTRATIONS 
 FROM DRAWINGS BY THE AUTHOR 
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO. 
 
 AND LONDON 
 1894 
 
 All rights reserved 
 
COPVRIGHT, 1894, 
 
 By MACMILLAN AND CO. 
 
 
 7<^ 
 
 NaciBooS 53rtS2 : 
 
 J. S. Gushing & Co. — Berwick & Smith. 
 
 Boston, Mass., U.S.A. 
 
EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Of the five chapters in this volume, the first 
 three belong to the year 1870; the last two date 
 from 1882-1885. Three out of the five chapters 
 have been read as lectures ; and one of the others 
 was meant for delivery at Oxford, though it was 
 replaced, in fact, by a different discourse. Since 
 the latest in date, chapter IV., was written, the 
 Author has not spoken in public ; but this paper, 
 " Candida Casa," is sufficiently like the rest in 
 form, and closely enough connected with the 
 course on " The Pleasures of England," to justify 
 the general title of the volume — " Verona, and 
 other Lectures." 
 
 I. The first, at the time of its delivery, was 
 called "A Talk respecting Verona, and its Rivers." 
 It was given at the Royal Institution shortly after 
 the Author's return, on his election to the Slade 
 Professorship, from a stay of some months at 
 
VI EDITOR S INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Venice and Verona, where he had been studying 
 early architecture, and making careful sketches of 
 buildings which at that time were threatened with 
 imminent "restoration." On the occasion of the 
 lecture, he exhibited a series of fifty mounts of 
 drawings and photographs, illustrating the subject, 
 of which some twenty were his own work, though 
 not all done in that summer of 1869. The rest 
 were by his assistants, Mr. Arthur Burgess and 
 Mr. John W. Bunney ; with the well-known pencil 
 drawing by Prout of the Tomb of Can Signorio, 
 and some photographs specially taken from archi- 
 tectural details, and from pictures by the great 
 masters of whom he made mention. As one of 
 " the Masters," Carpaccio here appeared for the 
 first time in Mr. Ruskin's writings ; Sandro Botti- 
 celli still remained to be rated as a star of the first 
 magnitude, on the exhibition, soon afterwards, of 
 his Nativity, now in the National Gallery. A full 
 and annotated catalogue of this little exhibition is 
 given in " On the Old Road " (vol. L pp. 665-673) : 
 and some of the drawings, with others relating to 
 the subject, are now reproduced as illustrations to 
 this volume. 
 
EDITOR S INTRODUCTION. VU 
 
 This lecture was reported very briefly in the 
 Proceedings of the Royal Institution, vol. VI. p. 
 55; reprinted in "On the Old Road," vol. I. p. 
 654. A much fuller report was given by the Pall 
 Mall Gazette, and republished in the magazine 
 Igdrasil, vol. III. No. 16 ; also reprinted privately 
 in a volume entitled " Ruskiniana." The text now 
 given is complete, from the original fair copy of 
 the manuscript, and it contains much characteristic 
 matter not represented in the reports, or else 
 dulled by alteration of the lecturer's lively phras- 
 ing into journalistic oratio obliqiia. The fact, 
 however, that it had been so reported, and also 
 that the subject did not fit into any of the vol- 
 umes which the Author was then busy in bring- 
 ing out, will account for the suppression of the 
 "Verona" during so many years, and for its 
 appearance at last in this miscellany. 
 
 In connection with the closing topic of this 
 lecture, the control of irrigation and inundation, 
 Mr. Ruskin was afterwards drawn into corre- 
 spondence in the newspapers ; and he explained 
 his plans more fully in words which some readers 
 may like to see quoted at length. In this lee- 
 
Vlll EDITOR S INTRODUCTION. 
 
 ture on Verona, he said, " My principal object 
 was to state the causes of the incalculably de- 
 structive inundations of the Rhone, Toccia, and 
 Ticino, in 1868; and to point out that no moun- 
 tain river ever was or can be successfully em- 
 banked in the valleys ; but that the rainfall must 
 be arrested on the high and softly rounded hill 
 surfaces, before it reaches any ravine in which 
 its force can be concentrated. Every mountain 
 farm ought to have a dyke about two feet high 
 
 — with a small ditch within it — carried at inter- 
 vals in regular, scarcely perceptible incline, across 
 its fields ; — with discharge into a reservoir large 
 enough to contain a week's maximum rainfall on 
 the area of that farm in the stormiest weather 
 
 — the higher uncultivated land being guarded 
 over larger spaces with bolder embankments. 
 No drop of water that had once touched hill 
 ground ought ever to reach the plains till it was 
 wanted there : and the maintenance of the bank 
 and reservoir, once built, on any farm, would not 
 cost more than the keeping up of its cattle- 
 sheds against chance of whirlwind and snow. 
 The first construction of the work would be 
 
EDITOR S INTRODUCTION. IX 
 
 costly enough ; and, say the Economists, ' would 
 not pay.' I never heard of any National De- 
 fences that did ! . . . But my low embank- 
 ments would not depend for their utility on the 
 advent of a hypothetical foe, but would have to 
 contend with an instant and inevitable one ; yet 
 with one who is only an adversary if unresisted ; 
 who, resisted, becomes a faithful friend — a 
 lavish benefactor." ^ 
 
 Shortly afterwards the Daily Telegraph corre- 
 spondent at Rome wrote that a former letter 
 had been translated into Italian, and had set 
 people thinking; and he asked Mr. Ruskin to 
 state the case once more. On which Mr. 
 Ruskin wrote two additional letters to the Daily 
 Telegraph, the second of which recites his expe- 
 riences and observations of flood and drought in 
 Italy, and concludes thus : — 
 
 " If money were all that is needed, do we in 
 England owe so little to Italy of delight that we 
 cannot so much as lend her spades and pickaxes 
 at her need .' . . But she does not need us. 
 
 '^ Pall Mail Gazette, Jan. 19, 1871: ("Arrows of the Chace," 
 vol. II. p. 162.) 
 
X EDITOR S INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Good engineers she has, and has had many since 
 Leonardo designed the canals of Lombardy. Ag- 
 riculturists she has had, I think, among her gen- 
 tlemen a little before there were gentlemen farmers 
 in England; something she has told us of agri- 
 culture, also, pleasantly by the reeds of Mincio 
 and among the apple-blossoms wet with Arno. 
 Her streams have learned obedience before now ; 
 Fonte Branda and the Fountain of Joy flow at 
 Siena still; the rivulets that make green the 
 slopes of Casentino may yet satisfy true men's 
 thirst. ' Where is the money to come from ? ' 
 Let Italy keep her souls pure, and- she will not 
 need to. alloy her florins. The only question for 
 her is whether still the mossy rock and the ' rivus 
 aquas ' are ' in votis ' or, rather, the race-course 
 and the boulevard — the curses of England and 
 of France. 
 
 "At all events, if any one of the Princes of 
 Rome will lead, help enough will follow to set the 
 work on foot, and show the peasants, in some 
 narrow district, what can be done. Take any arid 
 piece of Apennine towards the sources of the 
 Tiber ; let the drainage be carried along the hill- 
 
EDITOR S INTRODUCTION. XI 
 
 sides away from the existing water-courses; let 
 cisterns, as of old in Palestine, and larger reser- 
 voirs, such as we now can build, be established at 
 every point convenient for arrest of the streams ; 
 let channels of regulated flow be established from 
 these over the tracts that are driest in summer; 
 let ramparts be carried, not along the river banks, 
 but round the heads of the ravines, throwing the 
 water aside into lateral canals ; then terrace and 
 support the looser soil on all the steeper slopes ; 
 and the entire mountain side may be made one 
 garden of orange and vine and olive, beneath ; 
 and a green highest pasture for cattle, and flow- 
 ers for bees — up to the edge of the snows of 
 spring." ^ 
 
 II. " The Story of Arachne " is another lecture 
 of Mr. Ruskin's annus mirabilis, 1870. Like 
 "Verona," it found no place in the volumes of 
 Oxford courses then begun with the " Inaugural 
 Lectures" and "Aratra Pentelici." It is now 
 printed for the first time, from the original man- 
 uscript, except that a few pages of introduction, 
 
 '^ Daily Telegraph, Feb. 7, 1871 ; ("Arrows of the Chace,'' vol. 
 II. p. 170.) 
 
Xll EDITOR S INTRODUCTION. 
 
 which have been lost, are supplied as well as may 
 be from the brief report in the Daily Telegraph 
 of Dec. 14, 1870. 
 
 III. The original of "The Tortoise of Aegina" 
 is marked by the Author, "Lect. 7;" showing 
 that it was intended for the seventh and last 
 lecture of the course on Greek Sculpture as 
 illustrated by Greek coins, given in Michaelmas 
 term, 1870. Before writing the peroration to 
 this lecture, and to the course in general, Mr. 
 Ruskin altered his plan, and, to serve his imme- 
 diate purpose, gave instead "The Relation of 
 Michael Angelo to Tintoret." This, being only 
 slightly connected with the course, was published 
 separately as a pamphlet; leaving the rest of 
 that autumn's lectures without proper conclu- 
 sion. It was only a year later, soon after his 
 illness at Matlock, that Mr. Ruskin wrote or 
 recast the ending, and published the book as 
 "Aratra Pentehci." This will explain the illu- 
 sion to § 9 of "The Tortoise," — about Minos, — 
 in § 207 of "Aratra;" as well as the prom- 
 ise, in § 10 of "The Tortoise," to discuss the 
 Bull of Thurium, — which was never done. 
 
EDITORS INTRODUCTION. Xlll 
 
 though the plate was prepared, and printed 
 as plate XX. in "Aratra," with merely a brief 
 paragraph (§ 203) inserted in explanation. 
 
 Thus the " Tortoise " remained without the 
 usual closing passage, though as far as it goes 
 it is finished work. It is closely connected with 
 the " Arachne ; " addressed, indeed, to a differ- 
 ent class of hearers, and yet continuing the 
 same subject, so as to make its present position 
 more suitable than any other would have been. 
 
 IV. and V. The last two chapters were intended 
 for one of the volumes of " Our Fathers have 
 told us," — a general review of Christian history, 
 attempted, as the Author says, " at the request 
 of a young English governess, that I would 
 write some pieces of history which her pupils 
 could gather some good out of ; — the fruit of 
 historical documents, placed by modern educa- 
 tional systems at her disposal, being to them 
 labour only, and sorrow. For true knowledge," 
 he continues, "is of Virtues only : of poisons 
 and vices, it is Hecate who teaches, not Athena." 
 
 The growth of Christendom, then, was to be 
 told in ten little volumes, each dealing with a 
 
XIV EDITOR S INTRODUCTION. 
 
 separate subject, and complete in itself. The 
 first was " The Bible of Amiens," which has 
 been published ; the last were to be " The Bay 
 of Uri " and " The Bells of Cluse," reviewing 
 pastoral Catholicism and Protestanism, down to 
 modern times. The intervening volumes were 
 to deal with Verona and Rome, Pisa and Flor- 
 ence, Chartres and Rouen ; and the sixth in the 
 series, "Valle Crucis," with England. It was 
 for this book, " Valle Crucis," that our last two 
 chapters were intended. The earliest, " Mend- 
 ing the Sieve," was read as a lecture at the 
 London Institution, on the Author's return from 
 his journey of 1882, to resume his Oxford Pro- 
 fessorship ; the other, " Candida Casa," was 
 never quite ended ; and curiously enough, the 
 text makes no allusion, as it now stands, to its 
 title. 
 
 "Candida Casa" — the White House, is the 
 ancient name of Whithorn or Whitherne Abbey 
 on the Solway. The place had a special interest 
 to Mr. Ruskin as the home of one branch of his 
 family ; but of course 'it was about St. Ninian's 
 famous foundation there that he meant to write. 
 
EDITOR S INTRODUCTION. XV 
 
 This chapter is the introduction to a sketch of 
 early Christianity, especially monastic Christianity, 
 in Britain, and needs only a few pages more to 
 lead up the story to the point at which the Author 
 meant to break off, in order to recommence, in his 
 next chapter, with the history of the Anglo-Saxon 
 Church. The missing pages can be partly recon- 
 structed from the Author's rough notes, from 
 which it seems that, after showing at some length 
 how much we in this island owe to foreign influ- 
 ence — our navy, for example, to the Franks, and 
 our Church to Rome, in the first instance, — he 
 was going to recur to the Pelagian heresy, as not 
 only a proof of island vigour and characteristic 
 independence, but also as the occasion for the 
 sending by Pope Celestine of Palladius, as first 
 bishop of the Scots of Ireland and the Hebrides. 
 This at once localises the story in the north-west, 
 and forms a link between Scottish Christianity and 
 Rome, in spite of the disclaimer of those who 
 would like to believe in an original British Church, 
 anti-Roman from the beginning. 
 
 The next topic was to have been the mission 
 of St. Germanus of Auxerre and St. Lupus of 
 
xvi EDITOR S INTRODUCTION. 
 
 TroyeS; another link between our country and 
 Roman Gaul. Their legend, and the story of the 
 Alleluia victory, which Mr. Ruskin has noted for 
 description, can be read in Bede (book I. chapters 
 17-20). The Author meant to return, in conclu- 
 sion, to the end of the fourth century, and to 
 St. Ninian, "a most reverend bishop and holy 
 man of the British nation," says Bede (book III. 
 chap. 4), "who had been regularly instructed at 
 Rome in the faith and mysteries of the truth ; 
 whose episcopal see, named after St. Martin, the 
 bishop " — whom he had visited and corresponded 
 with — " and famous for a stately church, wherein 
 he and many other saints rest in the body, is still 
 in existence among the English nation. The 
 place belongs to the province of the Bernicians, 
 and is generally called The White House, because 
 there he built a church of stone, which is not usual 
 among the Britons." 
 
 With which assemblage of pregnant associa- 
 tions — linking together Ninian, our north-country 
 patron of churches and holy-wells, with far-away 
 Rome ; and the Roman pilgrim with Wandering 
 Willie's country-side by Solway shore ; and wild 
 
EDITOR S INTRODUCTION. XVll 
 
 Galloway in the dark ages with wonderful St. 
 Martin of Tours; and the familiar ruins of Whit- 
 horn with the first glimmer, in Gaul, and Britain, 
 and the islands seen through the sea-fog, of all 
 the Lamps of Architecture : — with this bouquet, 
 so to speak, of poetical ideas, thus gathered 
 together, the story was to pause at Candida Casa. 
 In speaking of the origin of the navy (p. 103) 
 the Author inquires for information about barba- 
 rian shipping in the third century a.d. A better 
 answer than any literary records will be found in 
 archaeological discoveries, and especially in the 
 Nydam boat, which is exactly one of the Saxon 
 ships in question. As it is fully described and 
 illustrated in Du Chaillu's Viking Age (vol. I. 
 pp. 219-234), a work at present generally acces- 
 sible, there is no need to enter into detail here. 
 The reader might also look at engravings of ships 
 in the chapter on sculptured stones, vol. II. pp. 
 1 16-134; ^nd the bronze models of boats, vol. I. 
 p. 105, — as specimens of earlier vessels. The 
 later shipping is fully illustrated in vol. II. pp. 
 136-234. It is not agreed how much use was 
 made of sails in the third century ; but in the 
 
xviii EDITOR S INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Viking Age, vol. I. p. 107, there are indications 
 of sails in engravings on knives of the bronze 
 period- — -much earlier. 
 
 As to the circumstances under which the rowers 
 rowed, about which Mr. Ruskin asks (p. loi), 
 we gather that they were free men, as in the 
 triremes of ,the Peloponnesian war; not slaves, 
 as in modern galleys. Somewhat later, indeed, 
 but in ships similar in size to the Nydam boat, 
 for every rower there was also one man to pro- 
 tect him, and one more to do the fighting. 
 Among a race of athletes, rowing was not looked 
 upon as servile. Of " gentle shipmates " and 
 •' girls they left behind them," we have plenty of 
 legends in the Sagas. Their arts, by now, are 
 much better known than they were a generation 
 back; and what is known fully justifies Mr. 
 Ruskin's belief that they must have had fine 
 craftsmen and decorators among them, even at 
 the early period of which he writes. 
 
 These two chapters, then, were set up in type 
 years ago, and would have been published, if 
 two more chapters had been written to complete 
 the volume. But since these are not forthcom- 
 
EDITOR S INTRODUCTION. XIX 
 
 ing, the fragments are printed as fairly complete 
 in themselves. The few notes or references 
 which the Editor has ventured to add, are dis- 
 tinguished throughout the book by square brack- 
 ets, or worked into the Index at the end. 
 
 w. G. c. 
 
 CONISTON, Nov. 1893. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Editor's Introduction v 
 
 I. Verona, and its Rivers 3 
 
 II. The Story of Arachne . .... 39 
 
 in. The Tortoise of Aegina 67 
 
 IV. Candida Casa 93 
 
 Appendix to "Candida Casa"; on Saxon Money. 129 
 
 V. Mending the Sieve 135 
 
 Addenda to " Mending the Sieve "; on the 
 
 Foundation of Cluny 170 
 
 Index . . 1S3 
 
 xxi 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 I. From the Tomb of Can Signorio, Verona; Single 
 
 Niche, and Ironwork . . . Frontispiece 
 
 TO FACE tAGE 
 
 II. Fountain at Verona; 1841 3 
 
 III. Can Grande della Scala; equestrian statue . 5 
 
 IV. Grotesques; south door of the Duomo, Verona . 15 
 
 V. The Castelbarco Tomb, Sta. Anastasia, Verona, 
 
 1835 20 
 
 VI. Upper part of the Tomb of Can Signorio, Verona 21 
 
 VII. Detail from Can Grande's Tomb : Madonna of 
 
 the Annunciation, and heraldic Dog . . 23 
 
 VIII. Can Grande at the battle of Vicenza; bas- 
 relief 24 
 
 IX. Angle of the Ducal Palace, looking seaward 
 
 from the Piazzetta, Venice . . . -31 
 
 X. Capital, at Verona 35 
 
 XI. Lion of Leontini, and Tortoise of Aegina (from 
 
 casts of the Greek coins) .... 75 
 XII. Plan of a Cistercian Abbey. ... 158 
 
 (All these plates, except the last two, are photographic reproductions of 
 drawings by the Author.) 
 
VERONA, AND ITS RIVERS. 
 

 II. Foiintam at Verona, 
 1841. 
 
I. 
 
 VERONA, AND ITS RIVERS. 
 
 A Lecture given at the Royal Institution, Friday, February 4, 1870. 
 
 I. If you chance to be at Verona on a clear, 
 warm summer's day, and to be weary — as may 
 well happen — at the end of it, take a light car- 
 riage, and drive out at the eastern gate (on the 
 way to the station for Venice). You will see, fifty 
 yards beyond the gate, a good road turning to the 
 left — and from that, as immediately, another turn- 
 ing to the left again, which, by a gradual slope, 
 begins to ascend the hill on which the eastern 
 walls of Verona are built. 
 
 You will then presently find yourself, if it is 
 towards evening, in the shade of those walls, and 
 in the cool and pure air, ascending, by a winding 
 road, a hill covered with maize and vines ; into the 
 rocks of which, between you and the city walls a 
 steep ditch has been cut, — some thirty feet deep 
 
 3 
 
4 I. VERONA, AND ITS RIVERS. 
 
 by sixty or eighty wide, — the defence of the city 
 on that side being trusted to this one magnificent 
 trench cut out of the solid rock, and to the preci- 
 pice-like wall, above, with towers, crested with 
 forked battlements, set along it at due inter- 
 vals. 
 
 2. It was possible to cut that rock-trench — 
 which, as you will find presently — is carried up 
 the hill beside you for about an English mile — 
 without gunpowder, because the rock is a soft and 
 crumbling limestone, on which, when you see the 
 dusty banks of it emerge under the hedges by the 
 roadside, you, if a member of the Royal Institu- 
 tion, must look with great reverence. For in that 
 white rock there are fossil-creatures, still so like 
 the living creatures they were once, that there it 
 first occurred to the human brain to imagine that 
 the buried shapes were not mockeries of life, but 
 had indeed once lived and died. 
 
 Under those white banks by the roadside was 
 born, like a poor Italian gipsy, the Modern Science 
 of Geology. 
 
 3. Whether a member of the Royal Institution 
 or not — if you are a member of any Institution of 
 

 .w^^'._ 
 
 S>raB- Electric EngTavinf'^ Co 
 
 III. Can Grande della Scala. 
 Equestrian Statue. 
 
I. VERONA, AND ITS RIVERS. 5 
 
 a social and civil character — you must look with 
 still greater reverence on the grey moat and on 
 the wall that rise between you and the sun. The 
 wall was chiefly built, the moat entirely excavated, 
 by Can Grande della Scala; and they represent 
 typically the form of Defence which rendered it 
 possible for the life and the arts of Citizens to be 
 preserved and practised in an age of habitual war. 
 Not only so — but this is the wall of the actual 
 city which headed the great Lombard league — 
 which was the beginner of personal and indepen- 
 dent power in the Italian nation, and the first 
 banner-bearer, therefore, of all that has been 
 vitally independent in religion and in art through- 
 out the entire Christian world to this day. 
 
 4. The road ascends continually ; the vine-clad 
 slope on your right becoming steeper and prouder 
 — the great wall drawing itself out, tower above 
 tower, — and the blue of distant Lombardy flowing 
 deep and deeper over its lower battlements. After 
 walking the horses about a mile, there is a level 
 bit of road which brings you to the upper angle of 
 the wall ; and thence, looking down the northern 
 descent, you may see a great round tower at the 
 
O I. VERONA, AND ITS RIVERS. 
 
 foot of it — not forked, — this, in battlements, but 
 with embrasures for guns. 
 
 Now, the rock-banks under which you have 
 passed were the cradle of modern science. The 
 battlemented wall was the cradle of civic life. 
 That low circular tower is the cradle of modern 
 war and of all its desolation. It is the first Euro- 
 pean tower for artillery : the beginning of fortifi- 
 cation against gunpowder. T.he beginning, that 
 is to say, of the end of all fortification ; of the 
 system which costs you fifteen millions a year, 
 and leaves at this instant England without de- 
 fence. 
 
 5. While you think of these things, let the 
 horses go on quietly, — for the road now turns 
 away from the city and still ascends — until, in 
 another half hour, you will find yourself almost on 
 a mountain summit, broken down into crags to the 
 eastward, and grey — or grey-purple — with the 
 lurid but lovely blue of the field Eryngium. From 
 this brow you may see entire Verona, and all the 
 plain between Alp and Apennine; and so, if you 
 please, we will find a place where the rocks are 
 mossy, and sit down, and consider a little what this 
 
I. VERONA, AND ITS RIVERS. 7 
 
 landscape of all the landscapes in the world has 
 specially to say to us. 
 
 6. And, first, let us note exactly where we are. 
 We may now see easily that we are on the point 
 of a vast promontory or spur about ten miles long, 
 thrown out from the Alps ; and of which the last 
 rock dies into the plain, exactly at that eastern 
 gate of Verona out of which we came to climb it. 
 Now this promontory is one of the sides of the 
 great gate out of Germany into Italy, through 
 which the Goths always entered : cloven up to 
 Innspruck by the Inn ; and down to Verona by 
 the Adige. And by this gate not only the Gothic 
 armies came, but after the Italian nation is formed, 
 the current of northern life enters still into its 
 heart through the mountain artery, as constantly 
 and strongly as the cold waves of the Adige itself. 
 
 Now the porch of it here towards Italy is 
 literally like a scene in the Arabian Nights. It 
 reminds one precisely of some such passage 
 as — "And at the end of the plain the prince 
 came to a gate between two mountains ; and the 
 mountains were mixed of marble and brass." 
 That is here literally true. The rock of this 
 
8 I. VERONA, AND ITS RIVERS. 
 
 promontory on which we are seated hardens as 
 we trace it back to the Alps, first into a lime- 
 stone having knots of splendid brown jasper in 
 it, as our chalk has flints, and in a few miles 
 more into true marble, coloured by iron into a 
 glowing orange or pale, warm red — the peach- 
 blossom marble, of which Verona is chiefly built: 
 and then as you advance farther into the hills, 
 into variegated marbles, so rich and grotesque 
 in their veinings, and so fancifully lending them- 
 selves to decoration, that this last time of my 
 stay at Verona I was quite seriously impeded 
 in my examinations of sculpture, and disturbed 
 in what — at the age of S i — may yet be left in 
 me of poetical sentiment, by involuntary mis- 
 givings whether the churches were real churches, 
 or only museums of practical geology in connec- 
 tion with that of Jermyn Street. 
 
 7. Now, understand that you are seated upon 
 this mountain promontory, which at its base has 
 been the beginning of lovely building, and at 
 its extremity the beginning of accurate science. 
 I want you to look out from it again upon the 
 landscape at its feet. 
 
I. VERONA, AND ITS RIVERS. 9 
 
 There is, first, this blue Lombardic plain, wide 
 as the sea; and in the very centre of it, at about 
 twelve miles away from you, a little cluster of 
 domes and towers, with a gleam of white water 
 round them. That is Mantua. Look beyond its 
 fretted outline, and you will see that in that 
 direction the plain, elsewhere boundless, is ended 
 by undulation of soft hills. Those are the Apen- 
 nines above Parma. Then look to the left, and 
 just beyond the roots of the Alps, you will see 
 the cluster of the cones of the Euganean hills, 
 and the space at their feet in which rests Padua, 
 and the gleam of horizon beyond them in which 
 rests Venice. Look, then, north-eastward, and 
 touched into a crown of strange rubies as the 
 sun descends, there is the snowy cluster of the 
 Alps of Friuli. 
 
 8. Then turn to the north-west, and under the 
 sunset itself you will see the Adige flow from its 
 enchanted porch of marble, and in one strong and 
 almost straight stream, blanched always bright by 
 its swiftness, reflecting on its eddies neither bank 
 nor cloud, but only light, stretch itself along 
 among the vines, to the Verona lying at your 
 
lO I. VERONA, AND ITS RIVERS. 
 
 feet: there first it passes the garden walls of 
 the Church of St. Zeno, then under the battle- 
 ments of the great bridge of the Scaligers, then 
 passes away out of sight behind the hill on which, 
 though among ghastly modern buildings, here 
 and there you may still trace a grey fragment 
 of tower and wall — the remnants of the palace 
 of Theodoric of Verona — Dietrich of Bern. 
 
 9. Now, I do not think that there is any other 
 rock in all the world, from which the places, and 
 monuments, of so complex and deep a fragment 
 of the history of its ages can be visible, as from 
 this piece of crag, with its blue and prickly weeds. 
 For you have thus beneath you at once, the birth- 
 places of Virgil and of Livy, the homes of Dante 
 and Petrarch, and the source of the most sweet 
 and pathetic inspiration to your own Shakespeare; 
 the spot where the civilisation of the Gothic king- 
 doms was founded on the throne of Theodoric, 
 and where whatever was strongest in the Italian 
 race redeemed itself into life by its league against 
 Barbarossa. You have the cradle of natural 
 science and medicine in the schools of Padua ; 
 the central light of Italian chivalry in the power 
 
I. VERONA, AND ITS RIVERS. II 
 
 of the Scaligers; the chief stain of ItaHan cru- 
 elty, in that of Ezzelin; and, lastly, the birthplace 
 of the highest art; for among these hills, or 
 by this very Adige bank, were born Mantegna, 
 Titian, Correggio, and Veronese. 
 
 10. Now, I hope some day to trace out a few 
 threads of this history, especially that of the 
 earHer times, unspeakably full of pathetic inter- 
 est : there are no tragedies like the tragedies of 
 Verona under the Gothic and Lombard Kings. 
 To-night, I shall keep to my poor old work, only 
 among the Stones of Verona, instead of Venice. 
 I cannot disentangle for you even the simplest 
 of the inlaid threads of this tapestry of the fates 
 of men that here lies beneath us, infinite like 
 the purple of the great valley and the greater 
 hills. But I can now mass it out for you in its 
 broad design of light and darkness, — better, at 
 least, than I was able to do twenty years ago, 
 when I first tried to interpret the story of these 
 cities of the plain. 
 
 1 1 . You will find I have divided the drawings 
 from Verona placed here to-night,^ into three sepa- 
 
 PA full catalogue of which is given in "On the Old Road," 
 vol. i. pp. 665-673.] 
 
12 I. VERONA, AND ITS RIVERS. 
 
 rate series. The first, of so-called Lombard archi- 
 tecture ; the second, of Gothic ; the third, of the 
 early period of Revival, with its connected painting. 
 
 The first period — Lombard — extends to the 
 end of the 12th century ; and is the expression 
 of the introduction of Christianity into barbaric 
 minds. Now, whatever we may think, a savage 
 cannot be made a Christian at once ; and this 
 whole Lombardic period is not one of Chris- 
 tianity, but of Christianisation. 
 
 You have next the Gothic period, Dante's time, 
 lasting about two hundred years — from 1200 to 
 1400 — (Dante beginning his poem exactly in 
 the midst of it, in 1300.) This is the period 
 of vital Christianity, and of the development of 
 the laws of chivalry, and forms of imagination, 
 which are founded on Christianity. 
 
 Thirdly, you have the first period of the 
 Revival in which the arts of Greece, and some 
 of its religion, return ; and join themselves to 
 Christianity. They do not take away the sin- 
 cerity of our religion, nor even its earnestness ; 
 but they make it poetical instead of practical. 
 
 The fourth period is that in which even this 
 
I. VERONA, AND ITS RIVERS. 1 3 
 
 poetical Christianity expires. The arts become 
 devoted to the pursuit of pleasure : and in that 
 they perish, except where they are saved by a 
 healthy naturalism, or domesticity. 
 
 But there is so much of good and evil in this 
 period, including modern days, — so much truth 
 in what Carlyle has said, that we are saturated 
 with hypocrisy, — and yet so much strength and 
 life in the substance that is thus saturated, — 
 that I will venture no positive general statement 
 to you this evening. 
 
 I have only put one photograph from Raphael 
 next to one from John Bellini,^ to show you, in 
 sharp contrast, the mediaeval Christianity of which 
 John Bellini, and the modern Christianity of 
 which Raphael, are severally the most powerful 
 interpreters. 
 
 12. Let me characterise these periods more 
 distinctly. 
 
 The Lombardic period, that of Christianisation, 
 is one of savage but noble life gradually subjected 
 to law. It is the forming of men, not out of 
 
 [} The " Madonna della Seggiola " of Raphael, and a Madonna 
 of Bellini.] 
 
14 I. VERONA, AND ]TS RIVERS. 
 
 clay, but out of splendid wild beasts, often as 
 gentle as they are wild, but of unconquered 
 animal nature. And all art of that date, in all 
 countries, including our own Norman especially, 
 is, in the inner heart of it, the subjection of 
 savage or terrible, or wilful and wandering life, 
 to a dominant law. It is government and con- 
 quest of fearful dreams. There is in it as yet 
 no germ of true hope ; only the conquest of 
 evil, and the waking from darkness and terror. 
 
 The literature of it, as in Greece, is far in 
 advance of-^art, and is already full of the most 
 tender and impassioned beauty, while the art is 
 still grotesque and dreadful ; but however wild, 
 it is supreme above all others by its expression 
 of governing law, and here at Verona is the very 
 centre and utmost reach of that expression. I 
 know nothing in architecture at once so exquisite, 
 and so wild, and so strange, in the expression 
 of self-conquest achieved almost in a dream. 
 
 13. For, observe, these barbaric races, educated 
 in violence, chiefly in war and in hunting — can- 
 not feel or see clearly, as they are gradually civil- 
 ised, whether this element in which they have 
 
Swan ElectL-LcEn^ra'.^uj^ Cg 
 
 IV. Grotesques -, 
 Soutli iloor of the Duomo, Verona , 
 
I. VERONA, AND ITS RIVERS. 1 5 
 
 been brought up, is evil or not. They must be 
 good soldiers, and hunters, — that is their life; 
 yet they know now that killing is evil, and they 
 must not expect any more to find wild beasts to 
 hunt in heaven. They have been trained by pain, 
 by violence, by hunger and cold. They know 
 there is a good in these things as well as an evil ; 
 they are perpetually hesitating between the one 
 and other thought of them. But one thing is 
 clear to them, — that killing and hunting, and 
 every form of misery, of pleasure, and of pas- 
 sion, must somehow at last be subdued by law, 
 which shall bring good out of it all, and which they 
 feel more and more constraining them every hour. 
 14. Now if, with this sympathy, you look at 
 their dragon and wild beast decoration, you will 
 find that it now tells you about these Lombards 
 far more than they could know of themselves. 
 You may smile at my saying so : but all the 
 actions, and much more the arts, of men tell to 
 others, not only what the worker does not know 
 — but what he never can know of himself, which 
 you can only recognise by being in an element 
 more advanced and wider than his. 
 
1 6 I. VERONA, AND ITS RIVERS. 
 
 And then also remember, even in deliberate 
 symbolism, the question is always, as I have sev- 
 eral times lately had to urge ^ — not what a sym- 
 bol meant first, or meant elsewhere — but what it 
 means now, and means here. Now this dragon 
 symbol of the Lombards is used of course all over 
 the world: it means good here, and evil there; 
 sometimes means nothing, sometimes everything. 
 You have always to ask what the man who here 
 uses it means by it. Whatever is in his mind, 
 that he is sure partly to express by it ; nothing 
 else than that can he at all express by it. An 
 angel, to Angelico, is an angel indeed ; to Cor- 
 reggio, it is a cupid ; and a creature with eagle's 
 wings and lion's limbs is, to a Hebrew, a cherub,- 
 — to a Lombard, a griffin.^ 
 
 15. Now, in the second period which you may 
 think of broadly as Dante's time, you have the 
 highest development of Italian character and 
 chivalry with an entirely believed Christian re- 
 
 [^ Compare "Queen of the Air," chap, i., §§ 1-8.] 
 [^ See the plate in " Modern Painters," vol. iii. pi. I.] What it 
 means, doubtful; but, on the whole, grim power conquering pain 
 and temptation, the pillars of the church borne up by it. 
 
I. VERONA, AND ITS RIVERS. 1/ 
 
 ligion. You get therefore joy, and courtesy, and 
 hope, and a lovely peace in death. And with 
 these you have two fearful elements of evil. You 
 have, first, such confidence in the virtue of the 
 Creed, that men hate and persecute all who do 
 not accept it. And, worse still, you find such 
 confidence in the power of the Creed, that men 
 not only can do anything that is wrong, and be 
 themselves for a word of faith pardoned, but are 
 even sure that after the wrong is done, God is 
 sure to put it all right again for them, or even 
 make things better than they were before. 
 
 1 6. Now, I need not point out to you how the 
 spirit of persecution, as well as of vain hope 
 founded on a creed only, is mingled in every 
 line with the lovely moral teaching of the 
 Divina Commedia ; nor need I point out to you 
 how, between the persecution of other people's 
 creeds, and the absolution of one's own crimes, 
 all Christian error is concluded. 
 
 But I will give you two most singular instances 
 of both feelings, out of this Verona at our feet; 
 for the power of the city in Italy rose and fell 
 in the two centuries of the Christian period. 
 
1 8 I. VERONA, AND ITS RIVERS. 
 
 17. The founder of the power of the Scalas 
 was Mastino, a simple citizen, chosen first to be 
 Podesta, and then Captain of Verona after the 
 fall of Ezzelin. 
 
 He had been elected for his justice and sa- 
 gacity, and he perished by his gentleness; being 
 assassinated in private vengeance for his endeav- 
 our to end a family feud without blood. All his 
 policy was wise and peaceful, and it is only as 
 part of the fulfilment of his kindly purposes that 
 we have this fact recorded of the civil powers 
 underneath him. 
 
 " And because by the continuance of wars and 
 civil discords, many great abuses and heresies 
 had sprung up in the Veronese territory, it was 
 determined in the Council to extirpate that bad 
 root. And so in the year 1276, by command of 
 the citizens in authority, the Bishop of Verona, 
 and Brother Philip Bononcorsi, the Inquisitor of 
 Mantua, with Master Pinamonte, the father of 
 the said Inquisitor, and Podesta of Verona; and 
 finally Master Albert della Scala, the brother 
 and vicegerent of Master Mastino, the Captain ; 
 went with a troop to Sirmione, Peninsula of the 
 
I. VERONA, AND ITS RIVERS. I9 
 
 Lago di Garda, and proceeded in a brisk manner 
 — gagliardamente — against these said heretics 
 and bad Christians, as well of Sirmione as of 
 the surrounding villages and castles, in which 
 they found a good hundred — ben cento, includ- 
 ing both men and women, who were greatly 
 faultful and incorrigible, and they had them all 
 burned in the said place for an example to the 
 others, — Si fecero tiitti in detto luogo abbnicciare 
 per esempio degli altri." 
 
 18. That, then, is the spirit in which the 
 Gothic power is founded. And observe the 
 reason of its intense bitterness is, among many 
 others, this chiefly — the fear of the disturbance 
 of its hope after death. 
 
 And it is this hope, and the continual dwelling 
 upon the conquest of death, and the rewards of 
 faith, which distinctly mark the Christian time. 
 The Lombard architecture, observe, expresses the 
 triumph of law over passion; the Christian, that 
 of hope over sorrow. 
 
 And the loveliness of building which was before 
 given to churches only, now is given to tombs, 
 not merely as shrines of saints, but as the dwell- 
 
20 I. VERONA, AND ITS RIVERS. 
 
 iiig-places of those who have fallen asleep. Hence 
 it is that the tomb-buildings of Verona are per- 
 mitted to jstand among its palaces, and, side by 
 side, the presence chambers of the living and 
 the dead. 
 
 19. I have already had occasion to dwell 
 enough on the beauty of this feeling. I must 
 now mark also the danger of its corruption. 
 
 The most splendid of the tombs, of which you 
 will find various drawings in the next room, was 
 built — as you all probably know — by Can Sig- 
 norio della Scala, a prince who had in every way 
 benefited and cared for the city; and among 
 other minor gifts, bestowed on it one by which 
 it profits to this day, the fountain of the great 
 square. He was deeply religious ; meditated 
 constantly on his death, and believed that he 
 should be entirely happy in the next world, if 
 only he were assured of the prosperity and 
 secure reign of his children in this one. 
 
 Accordingly, " on the fourteenth day of Septem- 
 ber, 137s, knowing that his death drew near, he 
 called to him his two dear friends. Master 
 Guglielmo Bevilacqua and Master Tommaso de' 
 

 
 
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 S-wan ELl- cttii: EniSra-ving Co- 
 
 V. The Ca.stelbarco TomT] , 
 St£L. Anastasia. Verona. 
 
VI. The upper part, of tlie 
 To ml) of Can Sigii-orio, 
 Ve r o 11 a. . 
 
I. VERONA, AND ITS RIVERS. 21 
 
 Perigrini, with some of the first people of the 
 city ; and then he made come into his sight 
 Bartolommeo and Antonio his sons, one fifteen 
 years old and the other thirteen, and in the 
 presence of these gentlemen he said to them, 
 ' My sons, the love that I bear you is so great 
 that by cause of it I fear I shall suffer some pun- 
 ishment after I am dead, wishing to leave you 
 altogether lords ; and if in this I have committed 
 sin, may the Lord our God give me the punish- 
 ment of it, which willingly I shall suffer, so that 
 you may remain in prosperity. I am now leaving 
 you a most fair state, noble and faithful ; if you 
 will be good and temperate, you will enjoy it a 
 long time in stability ; but if,- on the contrary, you 
 become vile, foolish, and discordant, it will be 
 mutable and brief. Wherefore I command you 
 as your lord, and pray you as a tender father, that 
 you would be obedient to these gentlemen whom 
 I have always loved, and under whose govern- 
 ment and guardianship I leave you ; and above the 
 others I assign to you Master Gugliemo Builacqua 
 here for a father in my room, and Master Tom- 
 masso Peregrini for tutor; and if you use their 
 
22 I. VERONA, AND ITS RIVERS. 
 
 counsels, I have no doubt of your security, for I 
 leave you besides a state enriched with every 
 good; and above all things I recommend to you 
 justice, and the fear of the Highest God, and the 
 care of your people, to whom, if you are good and 
 just and pitiful lords, they will be faithful to you.' 
 Whereupon he kept silence, not being able to 
 speak more for abundance of tears." 
 
 20. The scene is a very touching one ; but the 
 fault of which Can Signorio thus prepared himself 
 to bear the punishment, had severe penalty, even 
 in the world he left. It was the murder of his 
 two brothers ; the second of whom he sent orders 
 to kill in prison, from this very deathbed, after he 
 had dismissed his children. And the end of all 
 was, that one of these children murdered the other, 
 and was driven himself from the throne — so end- 
 ing the dynasty of the Scalas. 
 
 21. Now of course your first impulse — when 
 you know the whole story — is to think the man's 
 entire character assumed. It was not assumed ; 
 and the great lesson we have to learn from him is 
 the boundless possibility of self-deception in relig- 
 ious bigotry, especially in Christian bigotry : for 
 
^^^. Detail from Can Grande's Tomli-, 
 Madonna of the AnnunciaUon and heraldic Do^S. 
 
I. VERONA, AND ITS RIVERS. 23 
 
 Christianity is a religion of mercy and truth, and 
 when it is corrupt it corrupts into its reverse ; and 
 there is no cruelty like the cruelty of Christians, 
 and no fallacy like their falsehood. We fancy we 
 are so very sincere ourselves ; but the Christian 
 avarice of London commits more murders in a day, 
 than the worst Christian ambition of the Scalas 
 did in their two centuries of power at Verona. 
 
 22. Well, we won't end the Gothic time with 
 Can Signorio. Here is the tomb of that pious 
 person: — but here is the tomb of a good knight 
 and true, living, I think, the busiest and the bright- 
 est life that you can find in the annals of chivalry. 
 
 His contemporary, Castruccio Castracani, whose 
 sword was given to the present King of Italy at 
 Lucca, was as brave and energetic, but yet selfish 
 and cold in temper compared to the Great Dog of 
 the Scalas — Cane Francesco, — Belligero terribile, 
 et robusto. 
 
 First he won his wife, Joanna, by a coup de 
 main; he fell in love with her when she was a 
 girl, in Rome ; then, she was going to be sent into 
 Scotland to be married ; but she had to go through 
 Verona, to the Adige gate. So Can Grande 
 
24 I- VERONA, AND ITS RIVERS. 
 
 pounced upon her; declared she was much too 
 precious a gem — preziosa gemma — to be sent to 
 Scotland, and — she went no farther. Then he 
 fortified, as I told you, Verona against the Ger- 
 mans ; dug the great moat out of its rocks ; built 
 its wall and towers ; established his court of royal 
 and thoughtful hospitality ; became the chief Ghi- 
 belline captain of Lombardy, and the receiver 
 of noble exiles from all other states ; possessed 
 himself by hard fighting of Vicenza also ; then 
 of Padua; then, either by strength or subtlety, 
 of Feltre, — Belluno, — Bassano ; and died at 37, 
 — of eating apples when he was too hot, — in 
 the year 1329. 
 
 23. And now, thirdly, we come to the period 
 when classical literature and art were again 
 known in Italy, and the painters and sculptors, 
 who had been gaining steadily in power for two 
 hundred years, — power not of practice merely, 
 but of race also, — with every circumstance in 
 their favour around them, received their finally 
 perfect instruction both in geometrical science, 
 in that of materials, and in the anatomy and 
 action of the human body. Also, the people 
 
SwaaELectiic Engraving Co- 
 
 ^/ni. Ca.n Grande at tlie Battle of Vicenza, 
 Bas relief. 
 
I. VERONA, AKD ITS RIVERS. 25 
 
 about them, — the models of their work, — had 
 been perfected in personal beauty by chivalric 
 war ; in imagination, by a transcendental philos- 
 ophy ; in practical intellect, by stern struggle for 
 civic law; and by commerce, not in falsely-made, 
 or vile, or unclean things, but in lovely things, 
 beautifully and honestly made. And now, 
 therefore, you get out of all the world's long 
 history since it was peopled by men till now 
 
 — you get just fifty years of perfect work. 
 Perfect. It is a strong word. It is also a 
 true one. The doing of these fifty years is 
 unaccusably Right, as art. What its senti- 
 ment may be — ^ whether too great or too little 
 
 — whether superficial or sincere, is another ques- 
 tion ; but as artist's work, it admits no concep- 
 tion of anything better. It is true that in the 
 following age, founded on the absolutely stern 
 rectitude of this, there came a phase of gigan- 
 tic power, and of exquisite ease and felicity, 
 which possess an awe and a charm of their own. 
 They are just as insuperable, and they are more 
 inimitable, than the work of the perfect School. 
 But they are not perfect. It is a most subtle 
 
26 I. VERONA, AND ITS RIVERS. 
 
 question whether the greater manifestation of 
 power in them indicate greater inherent power 
 or not. 
 
 24. I am not able — no man, unless one of 
 their equals, would be able — to tell you, whether 
 there is really more strength in Gainsborough, 
 who can draw a mouth with one undulatory sweep 
 of his pencil — or in Carpaccio, who will take 
 half-an-hour at least to do apparently little more. 
 But I can tell you positively that Carpaccio's 
 work is faultless. When done, it is a mouth ; 
 and a perfect one; whereas Gainsborough's is 
 only a lovely streak of vermilion, which looks 
 like a mouth a little way off. 
 
 25. Now it is very difficult to find a name for 
 this wonderful iifty years' space. You cannot 
 call it classical, for its style differs in all kinds 
 of ways from the time antique. Still less can 
 you call it Christian, for its direct inspiration is 
 entirely Heathen. You cannot name it from 
 any king ; for no king at this time was worthy ' 
 of the age ; and you cannot name it from any 
 one Art Master, for twenty masters were equally 
 worthy of it at once. So I shall call it simply 
 
I. VERONA, AND ITS RIVERS. 2J 
 
 the Age of the Masters. Fifty years, mind you. 
 I cannot name half their great workmen for you, 
 but these are the greatest of them — Luini, Lion- 
 ardo, John Belhni, Vettor Carpaccio, Andrea 
 Mantegna, Andrea Verrocchio, Cima da Coneg- 
 Uano, Perugino, and in date — though only in 
 his eadier life belonging to the school— Raphael. 
 But you may best recollect the great fifty years 
 as the prime of the life of three men: — John 
 Bellini, born 1426, died at 90, in 15 16; Man- 
 tegna, born 1430, died at "jQ, in 1506; and Vet- 
 tor Carpaccio, — the date of his birth is unknown, 
 but he died about 1522. 
 
 26. Now, observe, the object of these masters is 
 wholly different from that of the former school. 
 The central Gothic men always want chiefly to 
 impress you with the facts of their subject; but 
 the masters of this finished time desire only to 
 make everything dainty, delightful, and perfect. 
 We have not many pictures of the class in Eng- 
 land, but several have been of late added to the 
 National Gallery ; and the Perugino there, espe- 
 cially the compartment with Raphael and Tobit, 
 and the little St. Jerome by John Bellini, will per- 
 
28 I. VERONA, AND ITS RIVERS. 
 
 fectly show you this main character — pictorial per- 
 fectness and deliciousness — sought before every- 
 thing else. You will find, if you look into that St. 
 Jerome, that everything in it is exquisite, complete, 
 and pure ; there is not a particle of dust in the 
 cupboards nor of cloud in the air; the wooden 
 shutters are dainty, the candlesticks are dainty, 
 the saint's scarlet hat is dainty, and its violet 
 tassel, and its riband, and his blue cloak, and his 
 spare pair of shoes, and his little brown partridge ; 
 — it is all a perfect quintessence of innocent lux- 
 ury — absolute delight, without one drawback in it, 
 nor taint of the Devil anywhere. 
 
 I don't quite know another picture like it except 
 a Nativity by Luini belonging to the present Count 
 Borromeo ; — it is a picture about the same size, 
 painted rather more slightly than Luini's usual 
 work in oil, and with a felicity of heart that wholly 
 refuses to see anything grave in this Nativity ; it 
 is a bright fable of perfect joy, and heaven come 
 down to earth ; the Madonna is not worshipping 
 the child, but merely holding it and gazing at it, her 
 face lost in one sweet satisfied rapture of mere 
 love. She is going to lay it in the manger, — 
 
I. VERONA, AND ITS RIVERS. 29 
 
 and because the straw is out of order, two ex- 
 quisite little cherubs with ruby wings are shaking 
 it up. 
 
 27. Well; for other pictures of this class, there 
 were two exquisite ones in the Winter Academy, — 
 a little Narcissus by Luini, and the Peter Martyr 
 by John Bellini; the last very valuable, because 
 you saw in a moment the main characteristic of 
 the school, — that it mattered not in the least to 
 John, and that he doesn't expect it to matter to 
 you, whether people are martyred or not, so long 
 as one can make a pretty grey of their gowns, and 
 a nice white of their sleeves, and infinite decoration 
 of forest leaves behind, and a divine picture at last 
 out of all. Everything in the world was done and 
 made only that it might be rightly painted — that 
 is the true master's creed. 
 
 28. I used to think all this very wrong once, 
 and that it meant general falseness and hardness 
 of heart, and so on. It means nothing of the kind. 
 It means only that one's whole soul is put into 
 one's work; and that the entire soul so spent is 
 healthy and happy, and cannot vex itself with 
 questions, cares, or pains. 
 
30 I. VERONA, AND ITS RIVERS. 
 
 29. And now I have only a few words more to 
 say about a very different subject. 
 
 I asked you to come to-night that I might talk 
 to you about Verona and its rivers. There is but 
 one at Verona; nevertheless, Dante connects its 
 name with that of the Po, when he says of the 
 whole of Lombardy — 
 
 "In sul Paese, che Adice e Po riga, 
 Solea valore e cortesia trovarsi 
 Prima che Federigo avesse briga." 
 
 I want to speak for a minute or two about those 
 great rivers ; because in the efforts that are now 
 being made to restore some of its commerce to 
 Venice, precisely the same questions are being 
 debated which, again and again, ever since Venice 
 was a city, have put her senate at pause — namely, 
 how to hold in check the continually advancing 
 morass formed by the silt brought down by the 
 Alpine rivers. 
 
 30. Is it not strange that, for at least six hundred 
 years, the Venetians have been contending with 
 those great rivers — at their mouths, that is to say, 
 where their strength has become wholly irresistible ; 
 
k 
 r. 
 
 w^ 
 
 F.n;Sr„™^? I 
 
 IX, AniSle of the Ducal Palace. 
 
 o 
 
 looliing seaward from the 'Paazzetta., 
 Ve nice. 
 
I. VERONA, AND ITS RIVERS. 3 1 
 
 and never once thought of contending with them 
 at their sources, where their infinitely separated 
 streamlets might be — and are meant by heaven 
 to be — ruled, as easily as children ? And observe 
 how sternly, how constantly, the place where they 
 are to be governed is marked by the mischief done 
 by their liberty. Consider what the advance of 
 the delta of the Po in the Adriatic signifies among 
 the Alps. The evil of the delta itself, however 
 great, is as nothing in comparison of the mischief 
 which is in its origin. The gradual destruction of 
 the harbourage of Venice, the endless cost of de- 
 laying it, the malaria of the whole coast down to 
 Ravenna, nay, the raising of the bed of the Po, 
 to the imperilling of all Lombardy, are but sec- 
 ondary evils. Every acre of that increasing delta 
 means the devastation of part of an Alpine valley, 
 and the loss of so much fruitful soil and ministering 
 rain. Some of you now present must have passed 
 this year through the valleys of the Toccia and Ti- 
 cino. You know, therefore, the devastation that was 
 caused there, as well as in the valley of the Rhone, 
 by the great floods of 1868, and that ten years of 
 labour, even if the peasantry had still the heart 
 
32 I. VERONA, AND ITS RIVERS. 
 
 for labour, cannot redeem those districts into fer- 
 tility. What you have there seen on a vast scale, 
 takes place to a certain extent during every sum- 
 mer thunderstorm, and from the ruin of some por- 
 tion of fruitful land, the dust descends to increase 
 the marshes of the Po. 
 
 31. But observe farther, — whether fed by sud- 
 den melting of snow, or by storm, every destruc- 
 tive rise of the Italian rivers signifies the loss of 
 so much power of irrigation on the south side 
 of the Alps. You must all well know the look 
 of their chain, seen from Milan or Turin late in 
 summer, — how little snow is left, except on Monte 
 Rosa; how vast a territory of brown mountain- 
 side, heated and barren, without rocks, yet with- 
 out forest. There is in that brown-purple zone, 
 and along the flanks of every valley that divides 
 it, another Lombardy of cultivable land; and 
 every drift of rain that swells the mountain tor- 
 rents, if it were caught where it falls, is more 
 truly rain of gold than fell in the tower of Danae. 
 But we seek gold beneath the rocks ; and we will 
 not so much as make a trench along the hill-side 
 to catch it when it falls from heaven ; and where. 
 
I. VERONA, AND ITS RIVERS. 33 
 
 if not so caught, it changes into a frantic monster, 
 first ravaging hamlet and field in fury, and then 
 sinking, along the shores o'f Venice, into poisoned 
 sleep. Think what that belt of the Alps might 
 be — up to four thousand feet above the plain — 
 if the system of terraced irrigation, which even 
 half-savage nations discovered and practised long 
 ago, in China and in Borneo, and by which our 
 own engineers have subdued districts of farthest 
 India, were but in part also practised here, — 
 here, in the oldest and proudest centre of Euro- 
 pean arts, where Lionardo da Vinci — master 
 among the masters — first discovered the laws of 
 the coiling clouds and wandering streams, so that 
 to this day his engineering remains unbettered 
 by modern science ; and yet in this centre of all 
 human achievements of genius, no thought has 
 been taken to receive with sacred art these great 
 gifts of quiet snow and flying rain. Think, I 
 repeat, what that south slope of the Alps might 
 be ; one paradise of lovely pasture and avenued 
 forest of chestnut and blossomed trees, with cas- 
 cades, docile and innocent as infants, laughing 
 all summer long from crag to crag and pool to 
 
34 I- VERONA, AND ITS RIVERS. 
 
 pool, and the Adige and the Po, the Dora and 
 the Ticino, no more defiled, no more alternating 
 between fierce flood and venomous languor, but 
 in calm, clear currents, bearing ships to every 
 city, and health to every field of all that azure 
 plain of Lombard Italy. 
 
 32. Now I know that you come to the Royal 
 Institution that you may pass, if it may be, a. 
 pleasant evening, and that I have no right to 
 tease you with economical or philanthropical 
 projects : — but thinking of you now as indulgent 
 friends, with whom I am grateful to be allowed 
 to begin, as you know I first in public begin 
 to-day, work involving no small responsibility,^ 
 you will not think it wrong in me to tell you 
 that it has now become a most grave object with 
 me to get some of the great pictures of the 
 Italian schools into England, and that I think at 
 this time, with good help, it might be contrived. 
 Farther, without in the least urging my plans 
 impatiently on any one else, I know thoroughly 
 that this which I have said should be done for 
 the Italian rivers — can be done, and that no 
 
 [1 The work of the Slade Professorship.] 
 
X . (J a, pita,! at VeronEt. 
 
I. VERONA, AND ITS RIVERS, 35 
 
 method of employment of our idle able-bodied 
 labourers would in the end be more remunerative, 
 or in the beginnings of it more healthful and every 
 vviiy beneficial, than with the concurrence of the 
 Italian and Swiss governments, setting them to 
 redeem the valleys of the Ticino and the Rhone. 
 And I pray you to think of this ; for I tell you 
 truly, — you who love Italy, that both her pas- 
 sions and her mountain streams arc noble ; but 
 that her happiness depends, not on the Liberties, 
 but the right Government of both. 
 
II. 
 
 THE STORY OF ARACHNE. 
 
II. 
 
 THE STORY OF ARACHNE. 
 
 An Address, delivered on December lyk, 1870, ni the distribution 
 of prizes gained by Students in the Woolwich branch of the 
 Science and Art Department ; Prince Arthur {Duke of Con- 
 naught) in the chair. 
 
 [i. After apologising for the hasty preparation of his 
 Address, Professor Ruskin went on to speak rather to those 
 who had not succeeded in gaining prizes than to those who 
 had succeeded ; urging that to be undistinguished was the 
 lot, though not necessarily the misfortune, of many. At that 
 moment, every one had set his heart on Education, and it 
 seemed to be taken, that any education was better than none. 
 But no education was not always the worst of things, for one 
 of the best companions he had ever met was a Savoyard 
 peasant who could neither read nor write, but who was an 
 entertaining talker and a practical philosopher. A good 
 education was usually supposed to comprehend reading, writ- 
 ing, arithmetic, geography, geology, astronomy, Latin, Greek, 
 and other languages : — and after this, all that was to be done 
 was to grow rich and happy. He knew something of most 
 of these things, but they did not constitute his happiness ; 
 for the geologists disputed his theories, and he was miserable 
 
 39 
 
40 II. THE STORY OF ARACHNE. 
 
 about the smallness of his collection of specimens. When 
 he was a boy, and for the first time received the present of 
 a colour-box, he was delighted with all that he did with it. 
 " You don't suppose," he continued, " getting a colour-box is 
 any pleasure to me now. I'm ashamed to spoil the look of 
 the paints, for fear I shouldn't make a good picture out of 
 them."] 1 
 
 2. All thesd; things, — Literature, Science, and 
 Art, — have been to me, and will be to all other 
 men, good or evil, — not according to the degree 
 of their attainments in them, but according to the 
 use they make of them. And that depends upon 
 quite another sort of Education, which indeed is 
 beyond all price, and therefore which all parents 
 may give their children if they choose. I have 
 especially to thank mine for four pieces of Educa- 
 tion, to which I owe whatever happiness or power 
 remains to me. 
 
 3. First, I was taught to be obedient. That 
 discipline began very early. One evening, — my 
 mother being rather proud of this told me the 
 
 [' This paragraph in square brackets is compiled mainly from 
 the newspaper report, to take the place of the first few pages of 
 the original MS., which are wanting. 
 
 The " Savoyard peasant " is no doubt the guide Joseph Couttet, 
 of whom frequent mention is made in Prceterita.'] 
 
II. THE STORY OF ARACHNE. 4 1 
 
 story often, — when I was yet in my nurse's arms, 
 I wanted to touch the tea-urn, which was boiling 
 merrily. It was an early taste for bronzes, I sup- 
 pose : but I was resolute about it. My mother 
 bid me keep my fingers back : I insisted on put- 
 ting them forward. My nurse would have taken 
 me away from the urn, but my mother said — 
 " Let him touch it, Nurse." So I touched it, — 
 and that was my first lesson in the meaning of 
 the word Liberty. It was the first piece of Lib- 
 erty I got ; and the last which for some time I 
 asked for. 
 
 4. Secondly, I was taught to be quiet. 
 
 When I was a very little child, my parents not 
 being rich, and my mother having to see to many 
 things herself, she used to shut me into a room 
 upstairs, with some bits of wood and a bunch of 
 keys, and say — " John, if you make a noise, you 
 shall be whipped." 
 
 To that piece of Education I owe most of my 
 powers of thinking ; and, — more valuable to me 
 still, — of amusing myself anywhere and with any- 
 thing. 
 
 5. Thirdly ; as soon as I could run, I was taken 
 
43 II. THE STORY OF ARACHNE. 
 
 down to Croydon, and left to play by the river 
 Wandel ; and afterwards, when I was older, to 
 Cumberland and Yorkshire. And that was the 
 most important part of my Science and Art Edu- 
 cation : the rest I've done pretty nearly for myself, 
 with help of books. 
 
 6. Then, the fourth thing I was taught was 
 Kindness to Animals, and curiosity about seeing 
 them, — not stuffed in a scientific manner, but with 
 their heads set on their shoulders in their own 
 way. 
 
 Not that even thafs always a graceful way : and 
 the more I look at them, sometimes, the less grace- 
 ful I think it. Indeed, I once got into violent 
 disgrace in a religious journal, for having alleged 
 that, in a certain sense, machines were more per- 
 fect things than animals. 
 
 I am afraid you will not give me credit for un- 
 derstanding, or appreciating, anything in machin- 
 ery, unless I read you this passage : — 
 
 7. " I cannot express the amazed awe, — the 
 crushed humility, — with which I sometimes watch 
 a locomotive take its breath at a railway station, 
 and think what work there is in its bars and 
 
II. THE STORY OF ARACHNE. 43 
 
 wheels, and what manner of men they must be 
 who dig brown ironstone out of the ground, and 
 forge it into that ! What assemblage of accurate 
 and mighty faculties in them ; more than fleshly 
 power over melting crag and coiling fire, fettered, 
 and finessed at last into the precision of watch- 
 making ; Titanian hammer-strokes, beating, out of 
 lava, these glittering cylinders and timely-respond- 
 ent valves, and fine-ribbed rods, which touch each 
 other as a serpent writhes, in noiseless gliding, 
 and omnipotence of grasp ; infinitely complex 
 anatomy of active steel, compared with which the 
 skeleton of a living creature would seem, to a 
 careless observer, clumsy and vile, — -a mere mor- 
 bid secretion and phosphatous prop of flesh ! 
 What would the men who thought out this, — who 
 beat it out, who touched it into its polished calm 
 of power, who set it to its appointed task, and 
 triumphantly saw it fulfil this task to the utmost 
 of their will, — feel or think about this weak hand 
 of mine, timidly leading a little stain of watercol- 
 our, which I cannot manage, into an imperfect 
 shadow of something else, — mere failure in every 
 motion, and endless disappointment, — What, I 
 
44 II- THE STORY OF ARACHNE. 
 
 repeat, would these Iron-dominant Genii think of 
 me? — and what ought I to think of them?" 
 
 8. That was what I felt then, and feel always ; 
 and I wonder often whether you dexterous mechan- 
 ists share with me in this feeling of the incomple- 
 tion and rudeness of the mechanical arrangements 
 in animals. I am nearly always disappointed in 
 watching the way they set about things. Of 
 course, allowance must be made for their languor 
 and carelessness in captivity ; but, with every such 
 allowance, I still am impressed with their ineffi- 
 ciency of instrument. 
 
 9. Look at an eagle feeding ! He does not so 
 much hold or grasp his piece of meat, as stand on it. 
 He pulls languidly at it from between his toes, — it 
 drags through his toothless beak. He pulls harder 
 at it, and upsets himself, — and recovers his bal- 
 ance with a frightened flap of his wing ; and so 
 goes on, tearing and tottering through his din- 
 ner, — an ignoble, uncomfortable creature, — a 
 most weak machine. 
 
 Nay, a friend of mine one day saw two eagles 
 trying to catch a mouse. One pounced down 
 upon it, and it got through the hollow of his 
 
II. THE STORY OF ARACHNE. 45 
 
 claws ; the other came to help him, — but they 
 only ran against each other, and the mouse got 
 away between them. 
 
 10. Look at a pelican trying to get a fish out of 
 the water ; not a living fish, — that would be too 
 much to expect of him, — but a stone dead one. 
 He gapes at it, and slobbers, and gets half hold of 
 it, and lets it slip, and tries, and tries again, with a 
 — not exemplary, but stupid patience. I've only 
 once seen him get one fairly into his mouth : I've 
 seen him again and again trying to catch his own 
 cast feathers, instead of fish ; which does not 
 seem much in favour of the theory which my 
 much-respected friend. Professor Huxley, asserted 
 to me only the other day, — that sight was a 
 mechanical operation. If it were mechanical, I 
 think, it would be, in some cases, worse done, — 
 in many, better; and pelicans wouldn't try to 
 catch their own feathers. 
 
 11. And so throughout the inferior races of 
 animals ; there is not so much, really, to be struck 
 with in the beauty, as in the awkwardness of their 
 mechanism. They stand on one leg, and don't 
 know what to do with the other ; they hop in an 
 
46 II. THE STORY OF ARACHNE. 
 
 unseemly manner; they waddle; they squat; 
 they try to scratch themselves where they can't 
 reach ; they try to eat what they can't swallow ; 
 their existence is an alternation between clumsy 
 effort and sulky repose. There are rare excep- 
 tions : — a swift on the wing, for instance ; even 
 then, with the great drawback that its voice is 
 nearly as horrible a piece of mechanism as a 
 steam whistle : — admirable exceptions, on the 
 perfect side, counterbalanced by agonies of awk- 
 wardness on the deficient side ; as, for instance, 
 the unscrewed joints and altogether ridiculous 
 over-leverage in the framework of a daddy-long- 
 legs, leaving his legs in your tea. 
 
 12. That's what I feel, and what I must — if 
 I say anything — say that I feel. And so I get 
 into final disgrace with the religious journal, 
 which dutifully felt — as it was expected of it to 
 feel on all occasions. But the religious journal, 
 in its hasty offence, had not noticed that in ad- 
 mitting the deficient mechanism, I had been only 
 the more asserting the presence of a strange 
 spirit in the creatures, and contemplating, with 
 ever and ever renewed amazement, something 
 
II. THE STORY OF ARACHNE. 47 
 
 infinitely beyond mechanism, which taught, — or, 
 more accurately speaking, compelled them to do 
 what was indeed essential to their lives, in what 
 was not necessarily a beautiful — but was always 
 a quite incomprehensible manner; and that, not 
 merely incomprehensible in the instinct of it (as 
 in the dexterity with which a bird weaves the 
 twigs in its nest, and fastens it securely into the 
 fork of a tree that swings in the wind like a 
 pendulum) — not in the mere instinct and wit 
 of it only amazing, but after, also, in an inscru- 
 table mystery of method. 
 
 13. Take, for instance, quite one of the sim- 
 plest pieces of the art of animals, — a Cobweb. 
 It is one of which, if I am called upon in my 
 capacity of Professor of Fine Art to give a criti- 
 cal opinion, I cannot speak in terms of too strong 
 admiration ; though also one, with respect to 
 which, as a political economist, I entirely con- 
 cur in the sentiments of the exemplary British 
 House-wife or House-maiden. 
 
 14. But have you ever considered how a spider 
 constructs it .' You see it is always a kind of 
 suspension-bridge, — a complex system of wires. 
 
48 II. THE STORY OF ARACHNE. 
 
 — hung across a space. How is the first wire 
 cable got across .' Take the simplest instance, — 
 a cobweb in the corner of a room. Do you think 
 the spider spins her first thread along the walls 
 round the corner, and then, when she has got to 
 the opposite point, pulls it tight .'' Not she. Her 
 thread is strongly glutinous ; if she carried it 
 round, it would stick to the wall all the way ; and 
 when she had got it round, and had to pull it 
 tight, what would she do with the length to spare .-' 
 She has no windlass to wind it on, and if she had, 
 couldn't afford to waste all that cable; for she 
 spins her cable out of her life, and her life depends 
 on her having enough of it always to replace the 
 housemaid's ruin of her. She can't afford to 
 waste lengths of it to go round corners with. 
 No ! She goes straight across in the air. But 
 how .' It isn't easy to see her at her work, for she 
 gets away, or feigns dead, if you look too close ; 
 but if you stay quite quiet when she is spinning 
 among trees, until she takes you for an ugly log 
 rather in her way, she'll go on ; and then you will 
 see, still more, how impossible it is for her to 
 carry her cable down and up, as you do. Fancy 
 
11. THE STORY OF ARACHNE. 49 
 
 carrying a thin, sticlcy thread of gum, in and out 
 among tree branches and leaves, six feet or so 
 down to the ground, and up again to the branch 
 she wants, and then pulling it tight, — twelve feet 
 of sticky, slack cable among twigs, for six inches 
 wanted taut ! 
 
 IS' Not she! You may see her cross as 
 calmly as if there was a railroad in the air. You 
 cannot see the thread she crosses on, — it is 
 too fine. Yet that fine thread she has thrown 
 out first before her, — thrown out with an aim, 
 as a chameleon its tongue at an insect ; struck 
 the exact leaf she wants ; will go on with her 
 cross-threads, striking the point she wants with 
 the end of her thread as surely as you would 
 with a rifle-shot, — literally "projecting" her 
 geometrical figures that way. 
 
 Fancy the jugglery there is in that! You 
 may have seen a juggler wind tape out of his 
 mouth before now, but did you ever see him 
 throw out a cable from his mouth, fifty yards 
 long, straight as a shot ? 
 
 16. I am not sure how far this contrivance of 
 the spider be indeed inexplicable ; but I am 
 
50 II. THE STORY OF ARACHNE. 
 
 quite sure you will find it wonderful. And so, 
 I am sure of this, which is the thing I wish to 
 impress upon you, that all fine art begins with 
 the inexplicable ; that only in the thing which 
 you cannot show another person how to do, is 
 there anything really beautiful. And it is the 
 great mistake we English make about art and 
 nature, both (art and science, that is :) — we 
 think that somehow the trick of both can be 
 taught; that by formal rules and mechanical 
 work we can turn out Tintorets and Michael 
 Angelos, as we do locomotives ; and that by 
 careful dissection we shall detect, at last, how a 
 spider — or a man — works, as we find out the 
 springs of a Dutch toy. 
 
 17. That is not so; but these are not the first 
 days in which it has been so imagined. This 
 very spider's web, of which we have been talk- 
 ing, was made by the ancients their daily lesson 
 in this matter. You have all heard of Arachne, 
 and how she was changed into a spider; but per- 
 haps you never have heard her story quite through, 
 — and it is worth hearing and thinking of. 
 
 18. Arachne was a Lydian girl, of a poor 
 
II. THE STORY OF ARACHNE. 5 1 
 
 family; and, as all girls should do, she had 
 learned to spin and to weave ; and not merely to 
 weave or knit good stout clothes, but to make 
 pictures upon, or in them, such as, you know, 
 Penelope is said to have woven, and such as 
 the queen of our own William the Conqueror 
 embroidered, which are still preserved at Bayeux 
 in Normandy, and known all over the world as 
 the Bayeux tapestry. 
 
 Well, Arachne could make the most beautiful 
 pictures, with her needle or shuttle, that ever 
 were seen in those days. I don't know if young 
 girls still sew "sampler;" I wish they did, and 
 will tell you why presently. But to finish with 
 Arachne. 
 
 19. She was so proud of her beautiful sewing, 
 that she wished the goddess Minerva herself, — 
 whom, if you will not think it affected, I would 
 rather call by her own name of Athena, — would 
 come and try her skill against her. Now the 
 goddess Athena always wove and embroidered 
 her own dresses, and she was not going to let 
 a poor little Lydian girl challenge her at her 
 own special work. So she came first to Arachne 
 
52 II. THE STORY OF ARACHNE. 
 
 under the likeness of an old woman, prudent and 
 gentle ; and spoke kindly to Arachne, and told 
 her a little Lydian girl ought not to be proud, 
 and ought not to challenge goddesses. But 
 Arachne, on that, only got more insolent; told 
 the old woman to hold her tongue, and that she 
 only wished Athena would come herself that 
 instant. So Athena changed from the old woman 
 into herself, and accepted the challenge ; and they 
 sat down beside each other, the goddess and 
 the girl, and began to weave. 
 
 20. Now, the story, as it is carelessly read, 
 ends, as it seems, quite disgracefully for the god- 
 dess. Arachne's work is as quickly done as hers ; 
 and as well. It is surrounded and finished with 
 an exquisite border of ivy-leaves. Athena looks 
 close, and cannot find the least fault with it. 
 Whereupon she loses her temper; tears her 
 rival's tapestry to pieces ; and strikes her four 
 times across the forehead with her box-wood 
 shuttle. Arachne, mad with anger, hangs her- 
 self ; and Athena changes her into a venomous 
 spider.^ 
 
 [1 Ovid, Metamorphoses, vi. 1-145.] 
 
11. THE STORY OF ARACHNE. 53 
 
 At first sight, like many other stories of the 
 kind, this seems not only degrading, but mean- 
 ingless. The old mythologists, however, always 
 made their best fables rough on the outside. 
 If you chose to throw them away for that, so 
 much the worse for you. You did not deserve, 
 they thought, to understand them. 
 
 21. Let us look into the story a little closer. 
 First, you may be surprised at the Goddess of 
 
 Wisdom losing her temper. But, of all the 
 goddesses, she always is the angriest, when she 
 is angry ; and if ever you yourselves go on doing 
 a great many foolish things, one after another, 
 and obstinately don't attend to anything she 
 says quietly, you will find she bursts out upon 
 you all at once ; and when she does, I can tell 
 you, you won't forget it in a hurry.^ 
 
 22. But next, why are you told that Arachne's 
 work was bordered with ivy-leaves .'' 
 
 Because ivy-leaves, in their wanton running 
 about everywhere, were the emblem of the wild 
 god, Bacchus ; and were put there in express 
 impertinence to Athena, and wilful insult to her 
 
 [1 See "The Queen of the Air," § 117.] 
 
54 li- THE STORY OF ARACHNE. 
 
 trim-leaved olive of peace. But more than that. 
 Arachne had made all the pictures in her tap- 
 estry of base and abominable things ; while 
 Athena had woven in hers, the council of the 
 gods about Athens, how the city should be 
 named. 
 
 Nor were the things which Arachne had pic- 
 tured abominable merely, but they were all insult- 
 ing to the gods, and dwelt on every legend which 
 could make sacred and solemn things despised 
 by men. That was why Athena tore the tap- 
 estry to pieces, not because she was jealous 
 of it. 
 
 23. Then, thirdly, we are told she coul,d find 
 no fault with it. 
 
 Now, one of the things I have always tried 
 most to impress on the British workman, is 
 that his work must not be too precise, — • that 
 he must not think of avoiding faults, but of 
 gaining virtues.^ To young students, indeed, I 
 have always said, and shall always say, the exact 
 reverse of that : " See that every step you take 
 
 [1 See, for example, "Stones of Venice," vol. ii., chapter on 
 the Nature of Gothic] 
 
II. THE STORY OF ARACHNE. 55 
 
 is right ; it does not matter in the beginning 
 how small your merits, so only that you commit, 
 wilfully, no errors." But to the finished work- 
 man or artist, though it will be wise for him 
 also often to hold to his student's rule, still, when 
 he is to do his best, he need never think to do 
 it without manifold failure. If he has not failed 
 somewhere, he has only tried to do, as Arachne 
 did, — ignoble things. Phidias had faults ; Raph- 
 ael had faults ; Reynolds had faults, and many, 
 and bad ones. Arachne, in the outer aspect 
 of her work, had none ; but in the inner power 
 of it, it was fault altogether. 
 
 Fault, also, — remember — of a poisonous and 
 degrading kind, sensual, insolent, and foul ; so 
 that she is changed by Athena into the meanest 
 of animals, and the most loathsomely venomous ; 
 whose work, instead of being an honour to the 
 palaces of kings, is to be a disgrace to the room 
 of the simplest cottager. 
 
 24. That is the story of Arachne in the sum 
 of it : and now I must go back upon two minor 
 points in it; the first, the value of this tapestry- 
 work itself ; the second, the meaning of Athena's 
 
S6 II. THE STORY OF ARACHNE. 
 
 picture of the gods taking counsel about the 
 name of the city. 
 
 First, why is this fable told you of tapestry ? 
 Why is Athena's own special work of honour — 
 making her own dresses ? 
 
 25. I have been now at least these ten years 
 trying to convince scientific and artistic persons 
 who would listen to me, that true science and 
 art must begin in what, from time immemorial, 
 has been among the most important rights of 
 men, and the pleasantest rights of women. It 
 is quite one of the most important and neces- 
 sary rights of man to have a good dinner, well 
 cooked, when he comes in from his work. And 
 it is quite one of the pleasantest rights of woman 
 to have a pretty dress to put on, when she has 
 done hers. The first of sciences, therefore, is 
 that of cookery, and the first of arts, that of dress. 
 
 26. Now you are likely to laugh, I know well 
 enough beforehand, when I say this ; and I'm 
 very glad that you should laugh, provided only 
 you distinctly understand that Vm not laugh- 
 ing, but in most absolute and accurate serious- 
 ness, stating to you what I believe to be necessary 
 
II. THE STORY OF ARACHNE. 5/ 
 
 for the prosperity of this and of every other 
 nation ; namely, first, diligent purification and 
 kindly distribution of food, so that we should 
 be able, not only on Sundays, but after the 
 daily labour, which, if it be rightly understood, 
 is a constantly recurrent and daily divine ser- 
 vice, — that we should be able, I say, then to 
 eat the fat, and drink the sweet, and send por- 
 tions to them for whom nothing is prepared. 
 And, secondly, I say gravely and earnestly 
 also, and with assured confidence in the truth 
 of it, that no nation is healthy or prosperous 
 unless the women wear tidy dresses for their 
 morning's work, and pretty ones in the after- 
 noon ; which means many things, observe. It 
 means that their morning work is to be house- 
 hold-work, or field or garden-work, and not — 
 I'll venture to say it, even in this room — not 
 packing cartridges. It means also that the men 
 of England are not to stand by idle, or drink 
 till they can't stand, idle or any wise ; nor tramp 
 as vagabonds about the country; nor be set to 
 picking oakum ; nor be sent to prison and fed 
 there at the country's expense, with committees 
 
S8 II. THE STORY OF ARACHNE. 
 
 to see that they are fatter when they come out 
 than when they went in ; while the women — 
 poor, simple wretches — agitate for the right to 
 do their work for them. That's what tidy and 
 clean dressing in the morning means. 
 
 27. And pretty dressing in the afternoon 
 means that they are to have an afternoon, or an 
 evening, at least, for the fireside ; and that they 
 are to have the pride and pleasure of looking 
 as nice then for their lovers, and husbands, as 
 rich girls like to look for theirs ; each having 
 indeed such dress as is suited for their rank in 
 life; but pretty and bright in colour, and sub- 
 stantial, for the poor as well as the rich : so 
 that for kings now, no less than in old time, it 
 may be one of the praises in their epitaph, that 
 they clothed the daughters of their people in 
 scarlet, with other delights, and put on orna- 
 ments of gold on their apparel. 
 
 28. The words may sound strange to you, 
 when perhaps for the first time you think of 
 them with true and active application. They 
 are, nevertheless, perfectly literal in their mean- 
 ing. Scarlet is a delightful colour, and a much 
 
11. THE STORY OF ARACHNE. SQ 
 
 more delightful one — again I beg pardon when 
 I remember where I am speaking — a much 
 more delightful one in cloaks, and petticoats, 
 than in regimentals. And ornaments of real 
 gold and silver are meant to be possessed by 
 all happy peasantries, and handed down with 
 pride from mother to daughter, to be worn at 
 weddings, christenings, and Christmas merry- 
 makings; and neither to be sent to the pawn- 
 broker's, nor expose their wearers to be strangled 
 by thieves in the next alley. Among a happy 
 people there are no thieves ; and there used to 
 be villages in England, and there are still vil- 
 lages in Scotland, Norway, and, I believe, Ire- 
 land, where you may sleep with your door 
 open. 
 
 Ornaments of gold for everybody, and scarlet 
 petticoats, and nice costume ; — and then the art 
 of the goldsmith becomes a living one, and goes 
 on into true sculpture. That, then, is why 
 Athena's work is making her own dress. 
 
 29. But, lastly, why does she embroider, by 
 way of picture, the council of the gods about 
 the name of her city.' 
 
6o II. THE STORY OF ARACHNE. 
 
 Will you let me tell you one Greek fable 
 more, about ants, instead of spiders? 
 
 How often have we not all heard of the word 
 "Myrmidons"? You know that eloquent per- 
 sons, whenever they want to finish a sentence 
 sublimely, bring in something about "Tyrants 
 -and their Myrmidons." 
 
 30. Now, let me give you one piece of advice, 
 which, if you take it, will, I assure you, one day 
 make you feel that you didn't let me talk to you 
 to-night for nothing. 
 
 Never read any piece of writing unless you 
 are prepared to take whatever trouble may be 
 necessary thoroughly to understand it. There's 
 a great deal of the best and most useful writing, 
 which may be understood in a moment. But 
 as soon as it sets up for being fine, see that 
 you find out whether it is fine or not; and to 
 that end, never let one word pass, without con- 
 sidering, and finding out, if possible, what it 
 means. 
 
 31. "Myrmidons" are usually supposed to 
 mean the men who execute the will of a savage 
 master. But first of all, that arises from one of 
 
II. THE STORY OF ARACHNE. 6 1 
 
 the usual popular mistakes about character, — 
 the character in this instance of the Achilles of 
 Homer; who is not a savage person at all, but a 
 quite boundlessly affectionate and faithful one ; 
 only, in the strongest sense of the term, " hot- 
 headed." The Myrmidons were his soldiers, and 
 so have come to mean — servants of tyrants, and 
 what else they are supposed to be by eloquent 
 persons. But in its first and pure sense. Myrmi- 
 don does not mean a soldier of Achilles at all. 
 The Myrmidons were the inhabitants of an island 
 which was of great importance in Greece, because, 
 among other things, money was first coined there ; 
 and a king reigned over it, who was the most just 
 of kings, and counted and divided the money care- 
 fully; and so became at last one of the three 
 great judges of the dead.^ But his own island, 
 Aegina, he fortified with walls of rock, and did 
 justice there always : and at last the Fates got 
 jealous of him, and sent a dragon, or a plague, 
 which devoured the people of his country, and 
 left it desolate. And he prayed to Jupiter wildly 
 
 [1 See, for the character of Aeacus, the lecture following, — The 
 Tortoise of Aegina.] 
 
62 II. THE STORY OF ARACHNE. 
 
 to restore his people ; and fell asleep, praying in 
 his sorrow. And as he slept, he saw the ants, 
 from an ants' nest at the root of an oak-tree, climb 
 into the branches of the tree ; and there — they 
 changed one by one into little children, and fell 
 down like a shower of apples. And when he 
 woke, he heard a murmur as of an army in the 
 fields; and when he looked out in the morning 
 light, the island was filled with new multitudes. 
 And they were called Myrmidons, — Ant-born. ^ 
 
 32. Now the meaning of that fable I must be 
 quick in telling you. 
 
 There were two places in Greece, renowned for 
 their strength. One was this island of Aegina, 
 fortified against robbery, as the centre of com- 
 merce. The other was the city of Thebes, forti- 
 fied against war. 
 
 The walls of Aegina were of rock, built by 
 Aeacus, who is the Lord of Justice. 
 
 The walls of Thebes were of stones, which 
 Amphion, the son of Jupiter, made join each 
 other by music; and the first queen of the city 
 was Harmonia — Harmony. 
 
 [} Ovid, Metamorphoses, vii. 523-657.] 
 
II. THE STORY OF ARACHNE. 63 
 
 And together the fables mean, that the strength 
 of states, for defence against foreign war, consists 
 in harmony ; or musical and joyful concord among 
 all the orders of the people : and that the strength 
 of states for multitude, on their industry being 
 humble, and directly set to the ground, and ruled 
 by justice in dividing. 
 
 33. But observe chiefly ; your walls must be 
 built by music. All your defences of iron and 
 reserves of cold shot are useless, unless English- 
 men learn to love and trust each other, in all 
 classes. The only way to be loved is to become 
 loveable, and the only way to be trusted is to be 
 honest. No forms of voting, no mechanism of 
 constitution — for of all contemptible faiths in 
 mechanism, that is the basest, that a country is 
 like a watch and can go on tick by its constitu- 
 tion, without having any soul : — no goodliness of 
 form or strength in government or people will 
 avail against enemies, unless they learn to be 
 faithful to each other, and to depend upon each 
 other. 
 
 34. My friends, you are continually advised 
 to seek for independence. 
 
64 II. THE STORY OF ARACHNE. 
 
 I have some workmen myself, and have had, 
 for many years, under me. Heaven knows I 
 am not independent of them ; and I do not 
 think they either are, or wish to be, indepen- 
 dent of me. We depend heartily, and always, — 
 they upon my word, and upon my desire for 
 their welfare; — I, upon their work, and their 
 pride in doing it well, and I think, also, their 
 desire to do it well .for me. Believe me, my 
 friends, there is no such thing as independence 
 till we die. In the grave we shall be indepen- 
 dent to purpose, — not till then. While we live, 
 the defence and prosperity of our country de- 
 pends less even on hearts of oak than on hearts 
 of flesh; on the patience which seeks improve- 
 ment with hope but not with haste; on the 
 science which discerns what is lovely in char- 
 acter and honourable in act; and on the Fine 
 Art and tact of happy submission to the guid- 
 ance of good men, and the laws of nature and 
 of heaven. 
 
III. 
 
 THE TORTOISE OF AEGINA. 
 
III. 
 
 THE TORTOISE OF AEGINA. 
 
 I. The reign of Pheidon, King of Argos, re- 
 ferred by Mr. Grote — probably — " to the period 
 a little before, and a little after, the 8th Olym- 
 piad, — between 770 and 730 b.c. "^ will give, I 
 think, at once a land-mark, and a sea-mark, from 
 which we may always begin our study of Historic 
 Greece, as opposed to Mythic Greece. I suppose 
 everything is known more clearly now than in 
 my undergraduate days, and I need hardly press 
 on you the importance of this eighth century, 
 and the beginning, in the two peninsulas, almost 
 in the same year, of the powers of Greece and 
 Rome. 
 
 Pheidon is said to have marched to Olympia 
 747 B.C., and celebrated the games there himself, 
 
 [1 Grote: History of Greece, Part II. chap. 4.J 
 67 
 
68 III. THE TORTOISE OF AEGINA. 
 
 as the lineal descendant of Herakles. Recollect, 
 then, we have the actual historic king celebrating 
 the games as the descendant of the God. And 
 real history begins. 
 
 2. Pheidon of Argos — I now use Mr. Grote's 
 words — " first coined both copper and silver 
 money in Aegina;" and he presently adds: — 
 "The first coinage of copper and silver money is 
 a capital event in Grecian history." ^ It is so, 
 and in wider history than that of Greece. " First 
 coined," that is to say, divided into given weights, 
 and stamped these weights that they might be of 
 all men known. These weights chosen by Phei- 
 don were Babylonian, approximating closely to 
 those of the Hebrews, Phoenicians, and Egyp- 
 tians ; but first, probably, determined by " the 
 Chaldsean priesthood of Babylon." 
 
 You will find presently that Mr. Grote disputes 
 the statement, that this money was first coined 
 actually in the island of Aegina. It is not the 
 least consequence whether it was or not. But 
 this fact is of consequence; — Pheidon fixed meas- 
 
 [ 1 Grote : History of Greece, Part II. chap. 4.] 
 
III. THE TORTOISE OF AEGINA. 69 
 
 ure both of capacity and weight, and those meas- 
 ures were called Pheidonian. 
 
 But the measures of weight, and therefore of 
 money, were afterwards specially called Aegine- 
 tan — partly to distinguish them from the stand- 
 ard of Euboea, but much more because of the 
 early commercial power of Aegina. 
 
 3. I have just said it was of no consequence 
 whether money was first actually coined in 
 Aegina or Argos. Remember, in all your his- 
 torical investigations, there are two entirely dis- 
 tinct branches of them. One is this history of 
 the Acts of men ; the other the history of their 
 Thoughts. In general, it matters to the future 
 very little, comparatively, what men did ; but it 
 matters everything to know why they did it. 
 For the event to them, and to us, depends always 
 not on the deed merely, but the intent of it ; 
 so that even the truth of the deed itself is 
 often of little importance, compared with the 
 results of it. 
 
 4. Take an instance in comparatively recent 
 history. Modern investigation has shown that 
 in all probability no such person ever existed as 
 
^0 III. THE TORTOISE OF AEGINA. 
 
 William Tell, and that all the acts related of him 
 were fables. Do you think, therefore, that you 
 could be wise, as historians, of the Swiss, in omit- 
 ting all mention of Tell, and of their belief in 
 him ? On the contrary ; for the vanished fact of 
 the hero's existence, you get the much more won- 
 derful and important fact of the Imagination of 
 his existence ; you find that the character of this 
 mountain people was, at one time of their history, 
 such that they could take up a child's fairy tale, — 
 repeat it, till it became a veracity to them, — and 
 then regulate all their life and war by their trust 
 in its truth. 
 
 5. We will begin the mythic history of Aegina, 
 then, with the splendid passage in the 8th Olym- 
 pian ode of Pindar : — 
 
 " Aegina, sweeping with her oars, where Eternal 
 Law, Saviour of men, throned beside the God of 
 the stranger, is obeyed with more than human 
 truth. For it is hard to discern uprightly — of 
 things that are warped greatly, and in many ways : 
 but some established decree of the immortals has 
 fixed under itself a divine pillar, and trust for all 
 strange people, — this place, sea-ramparted, meas- 
 
III. THE TORTOISE OF AEGINA. /I 
 
 ured out in stewardship by Aeacus ^ to the Dorian 
 people." 
 
 6. Now, before going on to the next verses, con- 
 sider who Aeacus was. 
 
 Of course the numbers, two, three, four, seven, 
 nine, twelve, and forty, are continually used 
 vaguely in all mythic art; nevertheless, every 
 writer makes his own "three," or his own "four," 
 or his own "seven," express some special division 
 of the subject in his mind; and when you get any- 
 thing like a consistent adoption of any given num- 
 ber by many writers for a long time, you will find, 
 
 "■ Note that i^ Alaxov has a double force, meaning partly " from 
 the time of Aeacus," partly " as out of his power." 
 
 [The passage translated, and continued later on in this lecture, 
 is: — 
 
 "Evda ^lircipa, Aibs ^evlov 
 HdpeSpo!, diTKetrai Q4ius 
 "E^ox' dvOpdjirctiv ■ 6 tl ycLp 
 
 IIoXl), Kal TToWg p^TTCi, 
 
 'OpSq. SiaKplvciv (ppevl, iitj irapi Kaipbv, 
 Ava-TaXh • redjjJbs Si Tis i,8avi,Tav 
 Kai T&vS' aXiepKia x<bpa.v 
 TLavTo5airoL(nv vTviffTatre pivots 
 Klova Saiiiovlav . . . 
 Aoiptei \a<f Ta/jnevo/iivav f| AtaraO.] 
 
72 III. THE TORTOISE OF AEGINA. 
 
 at last, that the really great ones among them give 
 a special significance to each of the names. So, 
 though at first when you think that you have 
 three Gorgons — Graces — Fates — and Judges, 
 you may feel as if the number meant nothing, 
 yet among the closely thinking writers, every 
 Gorgon, and Grace, and Fate — and Judge — has 
 a special function ; and the functions of the 
 Three Great Judges are specific, in a clear 
 and consistently separate way. 
 
 7. I must now use a .passage of mine on the 
 division of law, written ten years ago : — 
 
 " Critic law determines questions of injury, and 
 assigns due rewards and punishments to con- 
 duct. 
 
 "Therefore, in order to true analysis of it, we 
 must understand the real meaning of this word 
 'injury.' 
 
 " We commonly understand by it, any kind of 
 harm done by one man to another ; but we do not 
 define the idea of harm ; sometimes we limit it to 
 the harm which the sufferer is conscious of; 
 whereas much the worst injuries are those he is 
 2^«conscious of ; and, at other times, we limit the 
 
III. THE TORTOISE OF AEGINA. 73 
 
 idea to violence, or restraint : whereas much the 
 worst forms of injury are to be accomplished 
 by carelessness, and the withdrawal of restraint. 
 
 " ' Injury ' is, then, simply the refusal, or viola- 
 tion, of any man's right or claim upon his fellows : 
 which claim, much talked of in modern times, un- 
 der the term ' right,' is mainly resolvable into two 
 branches : a man's claim not to be hindered from 
 doing what he should ; and his claim to be hin- 
 dered from doing what he should not ; these two 
 forms of hindrance being intensified by reward, 
 or help, and fortune, or Fors, on one side, and by 
 punishment, impediment, and even final arrest, or 
 Mors, on the other. 
 
 " Now, in order to a man's obtaining these two 
 rights, it is clearly needful that the worth of him 
 should be approximately known ; as well as the 
 want of worth, which has, unhappily, been usually 
 the principal subject of study for critic law, care- 
 ful hitherto only to mark degrees of de-merit, 
 instead of merit; — assigning, indeed, to the De'h- 
 ciencies (not always, alas ! even to these) just fine, 
 diminution, or (with the broad vowels) damnation ; 
 but to the .fi/ficiences, on the other side, which 
 
74 III. THE TORTOISE OF AEGINA. 
 
 are by much the more interesting, as well as 
 the only profitable part of the subject, assign- 
 ing in any clear way neither measurement nor 
 aid. 
 
 " Now it is in this higher and perfect function 
 of critic law, enshling as well as dtsahling, that 
 it becomes truly Kingly or Basilican, instead of 
 Draconic : (what Providence gave the great old 
 wrathful legislator his namei") — that is, it becomes 
 the law of man and of life, instead of the law of 
 the worm and of death." ^ 
 
 8. Observe, then ; the reward of good is es- 
 sentially Life, and the wages of Sin is Death. 
 Now the Rewarding Judge is Rhadamanthus, 
 "Bright Rhadamanthus" — Xanthos, the golden- 
 haired, lord of the Elysian fields.^ And the 
 punishing or Tormenting Judge — the worm 
 that dies not, and fire that is not quenched — is 
 
 [1 Munera Pulveris, chap. V. § 116-120; somewhat varying from 
 the published text.] 
 
 [^ Odyssey Iv. 563-565. 
 
 'AXXd ff ^s 'nXufftoi/ iredlov Kal irGipara yairis 
 dddvaTOi iriiJ.^ov(7iVj bdi. ^avBbs 'FaddfiavOvs, 
 Tri Tep py^iffTq ^lqtti TrAet dvdpiinroLcrtv.'] 
 
XL Lioii. of Leontiiii 
 Tortoise of Aog-ma 
 
HI. THE TORTOISE OF AEGINA. 75 
 
 Minos ; merciless, and in his nature brutal and 
 rabid. Never forget the lines of Horace ^ — 
 
 " Jam galeam Pallas et aegida, 
 Currusque et rabiem parat." 
 
 Inevitable ! The serpents of the Aegis gath- 
 ered into one immortal serpent, whose coils are 
 close according to the sin it punishes. 
 
 9. Now hear what Dante says of Minos, and 
 you will understand at once more of the Greek 
 and Italian mind than you can usually learn in 
 a summer's day. 
 
 At the gate of . Hell, " Stavvi Minos orribil- 
 mente, e ringhia." ^ 
 
 Frowned horribly — frowned as a beast frowns 
 — (you shall see what that means at once — 
 here [opposite] is a Leontine lion) — " quando 
 I'anima mal nata li vien dinanzi, tutta si con- 
 fessa." Observe this statement by Dante of the 
 strange power that the penalty of crime has, in 
 making it visible to the culprit. Until the pain 
 comes, the ill-born spirits cannot perceive the 
 
 [1 Odes I. XV. II, 12.] 
 
 \} Dante : Inferno V. 4 and following lines.] 
 
76 in. THE TORTOISE OF AEGINA. 
 
 sin ; but as soon as they suffer for it, they do 
 not merely confess it to others — they feel it to 
 be sin themselves, as they never did before. 
 On the contrary, a well-born or noble person, is 
 made to feel his sin by the pardon of it, as the 
 base, by punishment ; and each of them gets 
 from heaven and man what will make him feel 
 it in his own way. I go on : — 
 
 " E quel conoscitor delle peccata 
 Vede qual luogo d'Inferno ^ da essa : 
 Cignesi con la coda tante volte 
 Quantunque gradi vuol, che giu sia messa." 
 
 Now just observe how much Dante, like the 
 other strong men, expects you to find out for 
 yourself. He never tells you even what shape 
 Minos is ; but you find with a start at the end 
 of the passage that he is a serpent; and then, 
 if you understand the true nature of sin and its 
 punishment, you can enter into the myth. Ob- 
 serve, once more, Minos' warning: — "Take care 
 that the breadth of the way does not deceive 
 thee." 1 You think that you may escape punish- 
 
 [1 Inferno V. 20.] 
 
III. THE TORTOISE OF AEGINA. "jf 
 
 ment because so many sin with you — that it 
 cannot be a sin that many commit. 
 
 lo. When we come to the coins of Thurium and 
 the bull,i we shall have to examine farther the 
 power of Minos in Crete. In the meantime you 
 will trust me for this general aspect of the two 
 judges for Condemnation and Reward.^ 
 
 1 think I shall best fasten in your minds this 
 distinct function of Aeacus as the counting or 
 measuring judge, by reading you a bit of Lucian, 
 which may give you a little rest. With him, 
 Rhadamanthus is the great judge of the evil and 
 the good ; Minos not appearing ; but Aeacus is en- 
 trusted — not with the judgment, but the number- 
 
 \} See Aratra Pentelici, plate 20.] 
 
 2 Except only — look at Pindar, Olymp. II. 137. [The passage 
 referred to is : — 
 
 "OiroL 5' ^T6\fJUiffav h rpls 
 
 ''EKaT^padt fietvavre^ 
 
 'Airb irdfiTrav ddUiov ex«P 
 
 ^vx^Vj ereiXav Aids 
 
 'OSbv irapk Kp6mv ripaiv ' ivda ixaK&pwv 
 
 ISaffov tiiKeaviSes 
 
 ASpai irepnrvioiKnv . . . 
 
 BouXats ^v 6p6ats 'Padafxdvdvos ' 
 
 "Ov irar^p e^et ^p6vos eToip.ov avT^ irdpeSpov.l 
 
■78 III. THE TORTOISE OF AEGINA. 
 
 ing of the dead. This is a piece of the dialogue 
 called "the Ferry," which you probably all know 
 well, but will not mind hearing, with reference to 
 the matter in hand. 
 
 II. Clotho and Charon are waiting together 
 at the Ferry-side of Lethe. Hermes is late for 
 the boat, and Charon is cross. Clotho speaks — 
 " Keep thy temper, Charon, here he is at last ; and 
 a fine set he has got with him — all as close as a 
 flock of goats. Nay, what next .'' There's some 
 one bound in the middle of them, and there's one 
 keeping guard over him with a stick! And just 
 look at Hermes, — what a state he is in ; all over 
 sweat, and panting as if he had an asthma, and 
 his feet covered with dust! How now, Hermes, 
 what's the matter.'' 
 
 Hermes. What should be the matter, Clotho 1 
 but that I've been running after this fellow who 
 had got away. I had like to have lost my number 
 in the ship's company myself. 
 
 Clotho. But who is he ; or what did he want to 
 get away for .' 
 
 H'ermes. That's clear enough, surely — that he 
 would rather live than die ! and he must be some 
 
III. THE T0RT0ISEie,OF AEGINA. 79 
 
 king or tyrant or other ; and by the noise he 
 makes, it seems he must have been well off where 
 he was. 
 
 Clotho. And the fool ran away, as if he could 
 have lived after his thread was run out .'' 
 
 Hermes. Run away he did — assuredly ! And 
 if this fine old gentleman with the stick hadn't 
 helped me, he would have got off altogether, for 
 from the first minute that Atropos passed him to 
 me, he pulled and struggled, and stood with his 
 feet against the ground, all along the road. And 
 then when we got to the gate, and I was counting 
 off the dead to Aeacus as usual, and he was check- 
 ing them off by your sister's list, this thrice cursed 
 fellow slipped behind somehow and made off; so 
 there was one dead man missing from the reckon- 
 ing. And Aeacus, knitting his brows, — Hermes, 
 says he, you must keep your roguery for proper 
 times and places; you have games enough up in 
 heaven ; but the affairs of the dead are accurate, 
 and nothing can be secret in those. Here's the 
 list, as you see, with a thousand and four set 
 down : and you have brought me one too few — 
 unless you have the impudence to say Atropos has 
 
8o III. THE TORTOISE OF AEGINA. 
 
 made a mistake. So I, blushing at what he said, 
 recollected instantly what had been going on all 
 the way ; and looking about me, I missed my gen- 
 tleman. I went after him as fast as I could, but I 
 only caught him as he was on the point of getting 
 out at Tsenarus." [KaraTrXou?, 3, 4.] 
 
 12. I had another reason for detaining you with 
 the reading of this passage : — that you might 
 notice, in passing, the allusion to Mercury's power 
 as the cloud-god, distinct from that of the herald 
 of the dead. "You have games enough up in 
 heaven there." 
 
 You have, then, these three offices of the three 
 judges : — Rhadamanthus to reward, Minos to 
 condemn, Aeacus to count and divide. Next you 
 must remember the story of his birth. 
 
 13. He is a son of Zeus, by the nymph Aegina; 
 and Aegina is one of the daughters of the great 
 river-god Asopus. Or, broadly, the Asopus rep- 
 resents the power of all the streams of Arcadia ; 
 and the marriage of Zeus to his daughters, in the 
 physical meaning of it, is that the clouds from the 
 valleys of Arcadia feed the springs of the islands, 
 and on the highest rocks. Hence one of the 
 
in. THE TORTOISE OF AEGINA, 8l 
 
 daughters of the Asopus gives name to the island 
 of Salamis ; another to that of Aegina, and a 
 third ^ to Thebes, so far as Thebes was dependent 
 on the springs of Dirce ; while finally, Asopus 
 himself gives the fountain of Peirene to Sisyphus 
 on the crag of Corinth : — but observe for what 
 service he did this. When Zeus carried off his 
 daughter Aegina, Asopus was seeking for her in 
 vain, until Sisyphus told him who had taken her. 
 I'^or that help he got his fountain on Corinth, and 
 his stone in Hell.^ 
 
 14. Now — (you will find it partly traced in 
 my " Queen of the Air " 3) Sisyphus represents 
 always, physically, the power of the winds in tran- 
 sit across the isthmus ; and, morally, he is the god 
 of transit or trade, — tciphitno^ dvSpcov. And you 
 shall see presently why his betrayal of the flight 
 of Aegina is so heavily punished. But first fix in 
 your own minds this character of Sisyphus as 
 restless and cunning beyond all men, so that by 
 his cunning he even raised himself from the 
 
 [' Thebe or Ismene, who was married to Amphion or Zethus, 
 according to some legends.] 
 
 ['' Pausanias, I. § 5, i.] I' Chap. I. § 29.] 
 
82 III. THE TORTOISE OF AEGINA. 
 
 dead ; ^ and then you will find that throughout 
 subsequent legends there is an antagonism be- 
 tween the power of the Aeacidse, in justice, and of 
 the descendants of Sisyphus, in turbulence and the 
 defiance of justice, as the opposition of a pillar to 
 a tempest ; and which you will find hinted even in 
 such short passages as the speech of Philoctetes 
 to Neoptolemus : — 
 
 " T^v <f)vcnv S' cSei^as, w tckvov, 
 i^ -qs l;8A.ao-Tes, ov^i Sicrvc^ov Trarpos, 
 dX\' i^ 'A^iAAe'ws, OS /uero. ^(ivTuyv & or rjv 
 ■qKov apLdTa, vvv Se Tu>v TcBvrjKOTiav." 
 
 [Sophocles: Philoctetes, 1310-1313.] 
 
 You find, then, that in spite of the river- 
 power, Asopus, and of the storm-power, Sisy- 
 phus, Aegina is carried away by Zeus to the 
 quiet island, and bears to Zeus — this son Aeacus. 
 
 15. Now, let us collect the legends about him, 
 and see to what they all point. 
 
 [} According to a myth preserved by Schohasts, Sisyphus, dying, 
 asked his wife to leave his body unburied. In Hades he begged 
 to be allovfed to return,- to punish what he pretended to be his 
 wife's neglect. His prayer was granted — and then he refused to 
 go back to Hades.] 
 
in. THE TORTOISE OF AEGINA. 83 
 
 First : Aegina is difficult of access ; and he 
 increases this difficulty, encumbering the chan- 
 nels round the port with rocks, so as to defend 
 it, Pausanias says,^ against piracy ; but observe 
 always the sense of future definition, enclosure, 
 and peace, which connects itself with his name. 
 
 16. Then you find him joined with Apollo 
 and Poseidon to build the walls of Troy ; and 
 in the ode we have just paused at,^ you find 
 that having built them, there appeared three 
 
 [} II^o<nrXe0(rat dk Atyivd icrri v^cruv twv ^'EWrjvtduv aVo/jwrtiT; • 
 iriTpat. re yap vtfxiKot. irepl iraaav Kal xoipdSes d,veffT7}Kaffi ' p.rjxo.v'^- 
 ffaffdai Si i^eirlTTjdes ravra AtaK6v ipaffi XrQareiCjv Tutv iK SaKdo'cnjs 
 06j3(j>, Kal iroXc/xiois dj/5pd(Ti pAj dvev KivSimv rfpcti. (Pausanias, II. 
 
 29. § 6-)] 
 
 [^ Ihv (sc. A.la.Kbv) Trats 6 Karov's eipvfi48ojv re XlocreiSai', 
 'l\i(f fjL4WovT€i iwl (rT4(f>ayov 
 Tcu^ai, KoKitravro <rvvepy6v 
 Teix^os " ^v Stl vlv Treirpcafi^vov 
 'Oppvfj.4f(»jv TroX^fJLOJv 
 IlTo\nr6p0OiS iv fxdxoits 
 Ad^pov dfnrv€v<TaL Katrvov. 
 V\avKol Sk SpdKovres., i-jrel KrlirdT}^ viov 
 XlOpyov i<Ta\\6fj.ei'0L rpeis, 
 01 5i)o fJL^v Kdirerov, 
 AiS^t 5', drufo/A^foj, ttvools ^d\ov' 
 
 Efs 5' kffbpovffe ^odaas. 
 
 Pindar, 01. VIII. 41-52.] 
 
84 ni. THE TORTOISE OF AEGINA. 
 
 dragons, and rushed against the walls ; that the 
 part built by Apollo and Poseidon stood, but 
 that the wall, where built by Aeacus, fell before 
 the snake. Upon which Apollo is said to have 
 foretold the destruction of Troy by the Aeac- 
 idae ; but you will easily see that this interpreta- 
 tion must be a late gloss on the myth, for it 
 is no interpretation of the ^yhole of it. If the 
 dragon which attacked the wall of Aeacus meant 
 the descendants of Aeacus, that which attacked 
 the wall of Apollo must have meant the de- 
 scendants of Apollo ; which is wholly inadmis- 
 sible. The natural interpretation is that the 
 work of each beneficent power of defence was 
 tried by the passion, or demon, that was antag- 
 onistic to that power; and that Apollo and 
 Poseidon gave strength of mind and body, which 
 would be unbroken in Troy ; but Aeacus gave 
 justice and continence; and in these they failed. 
 17. Next you, have the story of the depopu- 
 lation of his own country by a dragon sent by 
 Juno : and then the birth of the Myrmidons.^ 
 Now, you will be told by modern historians 
 [' See the lecture in this volume on the Story of Arachne. ] 
 
III. THE TORTOISE OF AEGINA. 85 
 
 that this transformation of ants into men sig- 
 nifies only the peopling of the island by a new 
 tribe. Well — of course it does mean that ; and 
 it would equally have meant that, whether you 
 had been told that the new inhabitants were 
 made of ants, or sticks, or leaves, or dust. 
 
 But what you have to discern, in any of the 
 myths that have long dwelt in human thought, 
 is not, what fact they represented, but what 
 colour they were intended to give to it. You 
 have all the Deucalionidse of the earth made 
 of stones ; they being, in the sum of them, little 
 more than that — the mob of common men 
 being as the shingle to the wave. You have 
 the warrior-race of Thebes made of dragon's 
 teeth. You have the commercial race ^ of Aegina 
 made of ants. And out of this industrial race, 
 governed by strict justice, you have at last a 
 warrior strength better than that at Thebes ; 
 the chief strength of Greece; a Peleus, noble 
 
 [^ Mores, quos ante gerebant, 
 Nunc quoque habent; parcumque genus, patiensque laborum 
 Qusesitique tenax, et qui quassita reservant. 
 
 Ovid, Met. VII. 655.] 
 
86 III. THE TORTOISE OF AEGINA. 
 
 enough to have granted to him for wife the 
 sea-goddess whom the immortals dared not wed, 
 lest they should be dethroned by their children ; 
 and from them descended the chief soldier among 
 men : ^ — " among men," I say, as distinguished 
 from the half divine hero-nature of the Dios- 
 curi, or Herakles ; until at last the myth changes 
 gradually into a literal historic truth, and you 
 read that — in the fight of Salamis. 
 
 1 8. And now I must pass — too sharply, but 
 necessarily — to quite another piece of mythol- 
 ogy. We all recognise the importance, not 
 only in the Greek mind, but in every subse- 
 quent conception, of the three, great Titan God- 
 desses, Rhea, Themis, and Mnemosune. In a 
 less degree we also acknowledge the powers 
 
 [1 The allusions may be made clearer by drawing out the gene- 
 alogy of the Aeacidse : — 
 
 Zeus = Aegina, daughter of Asopus. 
 
 Aeacus = Endeis, daughter of Cheiron. 
 
 , ' 1 
 
 Telamon Peleus = Thetis, daughter of Nereus. 
 
 I ' i I 
 
 Teucer Ajax Achilles = Deidamia 
 
 Neoptolemus.] 
 
in. THE TORTOISE OF AEGINA. 8/ 
 
 of Phoebe and of Tethys. But the sixth of 
 the Titan sisters, and the one who is first named 
 by Hesiod,^ we usually forget, — Theia, the most 
 ancient goddess of Light. 
 
 19. Now the marriage of Theia and Hyperion, 
 and the birth of their children, the Sun, the 
 Moon, and the Dawn, — Helios, Selene and Eos, 
 — is a myth of even higher rank and import 
 than that of the marriage of Cronos and Rhea, 
 of Oceanus and Tethys, and of Coeus and 
 Phoebe ; for Theia is in a certain sense the 
 greatest of all the Titans — she is the origin 
 of light and harmony : the embodied " Let there 
 be light " of the heathen world ; and while the 
 powers of the other Titans, and of their descend- 
 ants, relate chiefly to the law and course of fate 
 in this world, and Themis and Mnemosune have 
 power only over things that are passing or 
 passed, Theia rules the great and eternal heav- 
 
 [} Qdr)v re, 'Peldv re, Qifuv re, Mv-riiiaaivriv re, 
 ^oi^riv re xpi«roiTT^0a!'OV, tri9iv r' ipareiviiv. 
 
 (Hesiod, Theogony, 134.) 
 
 For the marriage and family of Theia, see Theogony, 371-374. 
 She is, of course, the Thea of Keats's Hyperion.'\ 
 
05 III. THE TORTOISE OF AEGINA. 
 
 ens, and the course of the sun and moon, and 
 the seven stars. 
 
 20. Now you remember how, in my first course 
 of lectures,^ I dwelt again and again on the laws 
 of the Greeks for light, and its relation to their 
 ideas both of science and justice, including in 
 the word "justice" all order and harmony. I 
 also endeavoured to bring before you some of 
 the evidence that the tortoise-shell of Hermes 
 meant the concave of the cloudy heaven, and ulti- 
 mately, that of the starry vault in which Hermes 
 is lord of motion.^ But when the lyre of Hermes 
 becomes also that of Orpheus, it has to express 
 not movement only, but harmony of movement, 
 and pacification, or charming of all irregular 
 impulse. 
 
 21. And now if you will look at Lucian's 
 essay on Astrology, which is mythic, not merely 
 of the heaven itself or of its stars, but of the 
 truth and divine knowledge which frorti them 
 enters into the life of men, you will find it a 
 clue to what I think is the ultimate sense of the 
 
 [1 See "Lectures on Art," VI. § 151-158; VII. § 180.] 
 [2 Ibid,, § 15s, 156.] 
 
III. THE TORTOISE OF AEGINA. 89 
 
 Orphic legends. The seven chords of the lyre 
 are there spoken of as indicating power over 
 the seven planets, — the wild creatures who are 
 represented surrounding the statue of Orpheus 
 are the circling zodiacal signs, — and the legends 
 of Teiresias and of the Atreidae are explained 
 in their right connexion with this principal one.^ 
 The legend of Orpheus, however, we have to 
 examine in another place ; for the present, remem- 
 ber only that the tortoise-shell, as a part of the 
 lyre, whether of Hermes or Orpheus, signifies the 
 measured Harmony and spheric Order of Life. 
 
 [} Lucian irepl t^! A<rTpo\o-ylris, 10-12. He connects Teiresias 
 with those planets which were called epicene or hermaphrodite by 
 early astronomers or " astrologers," deriving their ideas from Baby- 
 Ionian sources. Venus as evening star was a female in Chaldsean 
 astrology; as morning star she was a male, or hermaphrodite. 
 Thyestes, again, is supposed by Lucian to represent Aries of the 
 zodiac, and Atreus the sun; whence their strife, as the sun seems 
 to move in the opposite direction to the stars, and so to attack 
 them.] 
 
IV. 
 CANDIDA CASA. 
 
IV. 
 
 CANDIDA CASA. 
 
 1. In the most finished of the poems which 
 Wordsworth dedicated to the affections, — Lucy 
 Gray, — the most descriptive also of the local 
 English character of which his works are the 
 monument at once, and epitaph, — I would pray 
 any of my elder readers cognisant of the grace 
 of literature, to consider a little the power of the 
 line in the introductory stanzas, — "The Minster-. 
 clock has just struck two," — partly to enhance, 
 partly to localise, the aspect of mountain solitude 
 which the rest of the poem is intended to de- 
 scribe ; and to associate with it in the reader's 
 thought, another manner of solitude, no less 
 pathetic, belonging to more ancient time. 
 
 2. For, suppose that the verse had allowed, 
 and the poet used, the word 'Cathedral' instead 
 of Minster } ' Cathedral ' is the more musical 
 
 93 
 
94 IV. CANDIDA CASA. 
 
 word of the two, and defines no less clearly the 
 relation of the wild moor to the inhabited plain 
 with its market-city. But the reader of cultivated 
 taste would feel in a moment, not only that the 
 line itself had lost its total value by the substi- 
 tution, but that the purity and force of the entire 
 poem were seriously impaired. 
 
 It would be difficult to exaggerate the force 
 of evidence given, in this slight trial, of the affec- 
 tion and respect with which all remaining traces 
 and memories of the monastic life of our country 
 are regarded by the scholarly and healthy English 
 mind : by all educated men, that is to say, whose 
 habits of life and tones of temper have not been 
 perverted by avarice, ambition, or sensuality. 
 
 3. On the other hand, that most deadly form of 
 all ambition, the religious one, which is the root 
 of schism, manifests itself most furiously, as most 
 ignorantly, in those states of temper which are 
 chiefly antagonistic to the monastic life : while 
 the avarice, which is at once the demon and 
 torture of the modern laic mind, beginning, as of 
 old, with the pillage of whatever the piety, wis- 
 dom, and sorrow of its ancestors had bequeathed 
 
IV. CANDIDA CASA. g5 
 
 to houses of charity, concludes in a fierceness of 
 steady enmity to the monkish character and prin- 
 ciple — past or present — the like of which has 
 not, so far as I am acquainted with history, been 
 ever till now recorded in all the darkest annals 
 of human malice. 
 
 4. I have devoted these chapters to showing 
 some part of the ground on which English re- 
 spect for the former monks of England, inerad- 
 icable by our anger, and ineffaceable by our folly, 
 was originally and for ever founded : but I must 
 first divide the space of English history which this 
 section of my book^ includes, into the periods 
 which my younger readers will find the most 
 clearly limited for successive examination. 
 
 In doing this, I must introduce reference not 
 to times only, but to countries, and to distinc- 
 tions of race, which require to be held in mind 
 together with the general chronology ; and which 
 force us . to break up that chronology into pieces 
 that sometimes overlap one another, and some- 
 times leave interstices between one another. 
 
 [i"Valle Crucis," the second part of "Our Fathers have Told 
 us," of which only this chapter and the next were completed.] 
 
go IV. CANDIDA CASA. 
 
 Thus, it is quite easy to constitute a broad first 
 period of ' British ' or ' British Isle ' Christian- 
 ity, from the death of Boadicea, a.d. 6i, to the 
 arrival of the Saxons, in 449. But this British 
 Christianity is itself separated into the three 
 minor dynasties; — "English" — that is to say, 
 of the English lowlands; British, of the moun- 
 tain districts of Cornwall, Wales, and Cumber- 
 land ; and lernic, extending from the north of 
 Ireland across into Scotland and down into 
 Northumberland. These are three entirely sepa- 
 rate well-heads of the Christian Faith, repre- 
 sented both essentially and historically in the 
 persons of St. Alban, King Arthur, and St. Co- 
 lumba; and the Saxon invasion terminates the 
 flow of none, though it presents a new condition 
 of embankment, and new fields for irrigation, to 
 all. To outward appearance, however, the Low- 
 land religion vanishes under the Saxon sword : 
 and that of the British mountain border passes 
 into the spiritual energy of tradition only : while 
 that of Ireland and Scotland rises into the most 
 splendidly practical missionary power; and, so 
 far from being checked by Saxon barbarism, is 
 
IV. CANDIDA CASA. 97 
 
 at its own culminating height in the seventh 
 century ! 
 
 5. Understanding, by this first example, the 
 impossibility of bringing our subject within merely 
 chronological limits, the reader will find it never- 
 theless convenient to arrange the studies belong- 
 ing to the religion of his own country under 
 these following successive heads, and spaces of 
 time : — 
 
 1. The British period: that of the progress 
 
 of religious feeling in England, from the 
 death of Boadicea to the landing of 
 Hengist. a.d. 6i — 449. 
 
 2. The lernic^ period: that of the missionary 
 
 force of Ireland and Scotland, from the 
 birth of St. Patrick to the death of St. 
 Cuthbert. 372 — 687. 
 
 ^ 1 am forced to use the word lernic rather than ■ Irish,' because 
 this latter word would now imply separation from Scotland, whereas 
 the methods of decoration which I call lernic, (because their spring 
 is in Ireland,) are developed by St. Columba in Scotland, and 
 carried by St. Columbanus into Burgundy, whence crossing the 
 Alps, they receive their final and loveliest forms at Monte Cassino, 
 in the thirteenth century. 
 G 
 
98 IV. CANDIDA CASA. 
 
 3. The Heptarchy, and gathering of England. 
 
 449—829. 
 
 4. The youth of England, and her education by 
 
 Alfred, Canute, and the Confessor. 
 
 849 — 1066. 
 
 5. The training of England, under her French 
 
 kings, from the battle of Hastings to the 
 deposition of the son of the Black Prince. 
 
 1066 — 1399. 
 
 6. The Fates of the House of Lancaster. 
 
 1399—1461- 
 
 Of these dates the young student should com- 
 mit to memory only the cardinals, 61, 449, 1066, 
 1 46 1, which bound the three great periods of Brit- 
 ish, Saxon, and Norman Christianity ; and he may 
 mass these three periods still more broadly in his 
 mind as extending from the first to the fifth cen- 
 tury inclusive, from the fifth to the tenth inclusive, 
 and from the tenth to the fifteenth inclusive ; the 
 fifteenth century closing in England, as elsewhere, 
 the history of Christen^i?^?, — that is to say, of the 
 dominion of Christ in all matters temporal and 
 spiritual over the nation's acts and heart. 
 
IV. CANDIDA CASA. 99 
 
 6. And we shall find this division still more 
 vital and serviceable, as we examine the history 
 of those arts which are the exponents of religion. 
 For during the first of them, "^a.^ progressive art of 
 England is merely the adoption of that of Rome, 
 with what refracted influence could through her 
 be received from Greece : but between the fifth 
 and tenth centuries, the school of Saxon art de- 
 velops itself with a freedom of manner and a ful- 
 ness of meaning which might have led — no one 
 can say how far, unless it had been repressed by 
 the Normans. Their invasion congeals the Saxon 
 fluency, condenses their spiritualism, and the tran- 
 sitions of style in our religious architecture are 
 thenceforward either in sympathy with the French 
 schools, or, so far as independent, become so only 
 by narrowness of aim, as in the development of 
 effect by mere depth of mouldings and grace of 
 archivolt-curve, in Early English Gothic. 
 
 Massing therefore in our minds, so far as we are 
 concerned with the progress of technical design, 
 the entire space of time through which, here in 
 our own island, manual skill developed itself under 
 Christian impulses, — into five centuries of British, 
 
100 IV. CANDIDA CASA. 
 
 five centuries of Saxon, and five centuries of Nor- 
 man, art — periods not at all gradated into each 
 other, nor even much mingling with or mortised 
 into each other, but each of them outlined with 
 heraldic precision, — we note within them, in the 
 order above given, the vital conditions of advance. 
 
 7. (i) The British Period: the beginning, 
 that is to say, of the influence of Christianity in 
 the island of Britain. In which there are of 
 course two stages — first, the fall of Druid faith 
 before the classic gods of the Romans — the 
 "Gods" of Lear and Cymbeline; and secondly, 
 the diffusion amidst Roman law, and civil luxury, 
 of the fresh and recent faith in Christ. 
 
 These two states of the national mind have 
 been, strange to say, of all that England has 
 passed through, most fruitful and enduring among 
 us at this day. The relation of literature and art 
 to the religion of the Saxon has passed altogether 
 from our own, — the red cross of Norman devo- 
 tion is on the English knight's breast only an 
 order of merit, and has been effaced utterly from 
 the national coin, while the proud legend of the 
 Protestant monarchy, "FID. DEF." — shortened 
 
IV. CANDIDA CASA. lOI 
 
 already to its initials, is likely soon also to disap- 
 pear. But the natural virtue of Cordelia and 
 Imogen remains still the standard of honour to 
 British maid and wife, and the Christianity of 
 Arthur is still the inspiration of our noblest 
 British song. 
 
 8. One of the most singular proofs of the 
 energy of this early British religion, is the 'force 
 and the precision of its heresy. It is absolutely 
 necessary, amidst the endless petty confusions of 
 doctrinal dispute, that the careful reader of Church 
 history should know the vital from the verbal 
 questions, and the practical heresies from the 
 speculative.-' Disputes concerning the nature of 
 God are in their nature endless; but those con- 
 cerning the duty of man may be settled by reason 
 and experience. 
 
 The essentially British heresy, the Pelagian — 
 that men can save themselves by the exertion of 
 
 1 AH heresies which have widely and enduringly divided the 
 Church may be wisely and usefully massed under three heads : — 
 
 On the nature of Man, Pelagian, with antagonist St. Augustine. 
 
 On the nature of God, Arian, with antagonist St. Athanase. 
 
 On the nature of Duty, Lutheran, with antagonists St. Peter and 
 St. James. 
 
I02 IV. CANDIDA CASA. 
 
 their own will, and do not need the calling or 
 grace of God — is also the essentially practical 
 one — an extremely healthy heresy, to my think- 
 ing, and one half of it quite true ; for indeed the 
 will of a man to do his best is like the staunchness 
 of masts and trim of sail in a good ship, without 
 which the rudder is of no avail ; - — but the other 
 half of the wisest men's creed in this matter, that 
 " it is God that worketh in us, both to will and to 
 do, of His good pleasure," is the essentially Chris- 
 tian half ; — and as such, fought for by the French 
 orthodox bishops, against the strong, saucy, and 
 plausible British heresy, in a most impatient and 
 diligent manner. 
 
 9. And as the vigour of our heresy, so also was 
 the vigour of our work. This first phase of 
 British history is, of course, exactly co-existent 
 with the duration of the Roman Empire ; and in 
 the importance of its civil progress there has been 
 nothing since to compare with it. Under the 
 protection of the Romans, ninety-two considerable 
 towns had arisen in the several parts of England, 
 and among these " thirty-three cities were dis- 
 tinguished by their superior privileges and im- 
 
IV. CANDIDA CASA. IO3 
 
 portance. Each of these cities, as in all the other 
 provinces of the empire, formed a legal corporation 
 for the purpose of regulating their domestic policy, 
 and the powers of municipal government were 
 distributed among annual magistrates, a select 
 senate, and the assembly of the people, accord- 
 ing to the original model of the Roman constitu- 
 tion. The habits of public counsel and command 
 were inherent in these petty republics, and the 
 episcopal synods were the only councils that could 
 pretend (as distinguished from them), to the 
 weight and authority of a national assembly. In 
 such councils, when the princes and magistrates 
 sat promiscuously with the bishops, the important 
 affairs of the State as well as of the Church might 
 be freely debated, and there is reason to believe 
 that in moments of extreme danger a Pendragon 
 or Dictator was elected by the general consent 
 of the Britons."! 
 
 10. To my own mind, this form of ' British con- 
 stitution ' seems extremely preferable to some of 
 our more recent ideals — much more, to their real- 
 isations ; but it is a most material question to de- 
 
 1 Gibbon, vol. v., pp. 349-52, with omission of irrelevant matter. 
 
I04 IV. CANDIDA CASA. 
 
 termine how far it was an artificial and impressed 
 form only ; and how far a natural and crystalline 
 one. 
 
 I have above given the date of the death of 
 Boadicea for the beginning of the British Chris- 
 tian period, because the temper which under that 
 Queen had displayed itself in the torture of the 
 most beautiful and high-born ladies of Rome, is 
 by her death brought finally under the temporal 
 and spiritual power of Rome : temporal instantly, 
 by Agricola — spiritual gradually, by missionary 
 and captain alike, down to Constantius. Moulded 
 by these Roman influences to what she was at the 
 fall of the empire, she remained and remains in 
 some measure the same, even through Saxon and 
 Norman days, to our own — so far as this Roman 
 law is in her heart, and Roman pride in her 
 nature. 
 
 1 1 . Taking then the death of ' Lioness Boadi- 
 cea,' A.D. 6i, for the beginning of Christendom in 
 England, I shall take the words of the reputed 
 earliest English historian, Gildas, for the first of 
 our English history. 
 
 Prefatorily, be this much said of Gildas himself. 
 
IV. CANDIDA CASA. lOS 
 
 — that nothing is known of him, and all that is 
 said, contradicted instantly ; but that his book 
 exists, undeniable, substantial, and pleasantly read- 
 able, — altogether good, right, and modest in tem- 
 per, ingenious and graceful in thought, quoting 
 nothing but the Bible, and to be received as one 
 among the sacredest of writings founded on the 
 Bible. 
 
 Of which book the author himself says, that " in 
 zeal for the house of God and for His holy law, 
 constrained alike by the reasonings of my own 
 thoughts and the entreaties of my brethren, I now 
 discharge the debt so long exacted of me, humble 
 indeed in style, but faithful, as I think, and 
 friendly to all Christ's youthful soldiers." 
 
 The title of the first translation ^ is as follows : — 
 "The Epistle of Gildas, the most ancient British 
 author, who flourished in the year of our Lord 
 546, and who by his great erudition, sanctity, and 
 wisdom, acquired the name of Sapiens, the wise." 
 
 12. Of which let us take, for outset of instruc- 
 
 1 London, i2mo, 1638. I use throughout Mr. Giles's translation, 
 Bohn, 1841, which, with the series of which it forms a part, should 
 be in every student's library. 
 
I06 IV. CANDIDA CAS A. 
 
 tion, this following description of the " Island of 
 Britain, poised in the divine balance which sup- 
 ports the whole world." 
 
 " It is famous for eight-and-twenty cities, and is 
 embellished by certain castles, with walls, towers, 
 well-barred gates, and houses with threatening bat- 
 tlements built on high, and provided with all requi- 
 site instruments of defence. Its plains are spacious, 
 its hills are pleasantly situated, adapted for supe- 
 rior tillage, and its mountains are admirably calcu- 
 lated for the alternate pasturage of cattle, where 
 flowers of various colours, trodden by the feet of 
 man, give it the appearance of a lovely picture. 
 It is decked, like a man's chosen bride, with divers 
 jewels, with lucid fountains, and abundant brooks 
 wandering over the snow-white sands ; with trans- 
 parent rivers, flowing in gentle murmurs, and 
 offering a sweet pledge of slumber to those who 
 recline upon their banks, whilst it is irrigated by 
 abundant lakes, which pour forth cool torrents of 
 refreshing water. 
 
 " This island, stiff-necked and stubborn-minded 
 from the time of its being first inhabited, ungrate- 
 fully rebels, sometimes against God, sometimes 
 
IV. CANDIDA CASA. I07 
 
 against her own citizens, and frequently, also, 
 against foreign kings and their subjects." 
 
 Under this impression of our national character, 
 (not likely, it seems to me, to have been less dis- 
 tinct, had Gildas lived in these days,) the historian 
 gradually saddens to severer thoughts of the land 
 itself, and advising us, a few sentences further on, 
 that, after Boadicea's defeat, it was no longer 
 thought to be Britain, but a Roman island, and all 
 its money, whether of copper, gold, or silver, was 
 stamped with Caesar's image, tells of its dawn of 
 Christian faith in these terms : — 
 
 " Meanwhile these islands, stiff with cold and 
 frost, and in a distant region of the world, re- 
 mote from the visible sun, received the beams 
 of light, that is, the holy precepts of Christ, — 
 who is the true Sun, and who shows to the 
 whole world His splendour, not only from the 
 temporal firmament, but from the height of 
 heaven, which surpasses every thing temporal, — 
 at the latter part, as we know, of the reign of 
 Tiberius Caesar, by whom His religion was prop- 
 agated without impediment, and death threatened 
 to those who interfered with its professors." 
 
I08 IV. CANDIDA CASA. 
 
 Meaning by Tiberius, doubtless, the first Clau- 
 dius, by whom a Roman colony was founded at 
 Camelodunum in a.d. 43, just before Boadicea's 
 revolt; between which time and a.d. 61 I note 
 only, among the many persons reported by tra- 
 dition to have brought Christianity to England, 
 two, of whose existence, and the place and man- 
 ner of it, there is no doubt. 
 
 The first, the beautiful British lady, Claudia, 
 the wife of Pudens, and St. Paul's friend (2 Tim. 
 iv. 21), celebrated by Martial for her beauty and 
 wit ; 1 the second, Pomponia Grascina, the wife of 
 the first governor of the Roman province formed 
 by Claudius in South Britain. I give Henry's 
 translation of Tacitus' account of her, with his 
 following comment : — 
 
 " Pomponia Graecina, an illustrious lady, mar- 
 ried to Plautius, who was honoured with an 
 ovation or lesser triumph for his victories in 
 Britain, was accused of having embraced a 
 strange and foreign superstition ; and her trial 
 for that crime was committed to her husband. 
 
 ^ Henry, i. 126 ; whose suggestion respecting Pomponia is in the 
 preceding page. 
 
IV. CANDIDA CASA. IO9 
 
 He, according to ancient law and custom, con- 
 vened her whole family and relations, and having, 
 in their presence, tried her for her life and fame, 
 pronounced her innocent of anything immoral. 
 
 " Pomponia lived many years after this trial, 
 but always led a gloomy, melancholy kind of life." 
 
 " It is highly probable that the strange super- 
 stition of which Pomponia was accused, was 
 Christianity ; for the Roman writers of these 
 times knew very little of that religion, and always 
 speak of it in such slight contemptuous terms. 
 The great innocence of her manners, and the 
 kind of life which she had led after her trial, 
 render this still more probable. Now, if this 
 illustrious lady was really a Christian, and accom- 
 panied her husband during his residence in 
 Britain, from a.d. 43 to a.d. 47, she might be one 
 of the first who brought the knowledge of Christ 
 into this island, and might engage some of the 
 first preachers of the Gospel to come into it 
 in this very early period." 
 
 Without pressing this conjecture too far, still 
 less the tradition that St. Paul himself before his 
 death visited both Britain and Spain — of which 
 
no IV. CANDIDA CASA. 
 
 there is considerable evidence, and no disproof 
 — this at least is sure, that the continually in- 
 creasing intercourse between Rome and Britain 
 must have brought with it manifold seeds of 
 Christianity, and " as the conquest of South 
 Britain was completed by the Romans before 
 the end of the first century, we have reason to 
 think that the name and religion of Christ were 
 known, in some degree, in almost every corner of 
 that country, about the beginning of the second." 
 
 From that time forward, we have two separate 
 currents of formative energy in the British peo- 
 ple — a certain number of little known Christian 
 persons, increasing unawares, and dimly influ- 
 encing those near them ; while the mass of the 
 nation was learning what it could of the Gods, the 
 laws, and, as aforesaid, the proud mind, of Rome. 
 
 13. How far in the future the noble pride of 
 Rome did remain for her bequest to Britain, 
 can best be judged by Shakespeare's perfect 
 rendering of the character of Coriolanus, and 
 his easy and infallible sympathy with every 
 motive of heroism, and majesty of race, by 
 which Rome had lived, and in the forfeiture of 
 
IV. CANDIDA CASA. Ill 
 
 which she fell. The three tragedies of Corio- 
 lanus, Caesar, and Antony, are all based on the 
 excess, or defeat of pride : Coriolanus showing 
 how it changes into selfishness, — Caesar, how it 
 passes into impiety, (all the insolence of suc- 
 ceeding emperors gathered into the words by 
 which he pronounces his own death, — 
 
 ' " I do know but one, 
 
 That unassailable holds on his rank, 
 Unshamed of motion ; and that I am he,") — 
 
 and Antony, the disgrace of it by lower pas- 
 sion. But with the gentleness by which this 
 pride was tempered in the gracious emperors 
 who redeemed the state in the third century, 
 and made Rome capable of becoming the centre 
 of Christianity, Shakespeare himself had little 
 sympathy ; and the reader of mere history has no 
 chance of comprehending it, under the mass of 
 horror which alone attracts the vulgar historian. 
 14. Of these gracious emperors, the first, 
 Claudius the Dacian,^ best exhibits the new 
 virtue of Justice in pity instead of anger, whose 
 
 ■■ Reigned from March 268 to March 270 : Gibbon, ii. 8 et seq. 
 
112 IV. CANDIDA CASA. 
 
 ensign of the Cross was so soon to rise above 
 the Eagles. On his accession, " an aged woman 
 threw herself at his feet, and complained that 
 a general of the late emperor had obtained an 
 arbitrary grant of her patrimony. This general 
 was Claudius himself, who had not entirely 
 escaped the contagion of the times. The em- 
 peror blushed at the reproach, but deserved 
 the confidence which she had reposed in his 
 equity. The confession of his fault was accom- 
 panied with immediate and ample restitution." 
 And at the very same instant, we find in the 
 prayer of the people for the punishment of 
 Gallienus after death, "terram matrem deosque 
 inferos precaretur sedes impias uti Gallieno da- 
 rent," the beginning of the deeper sense of inex- 
 piable guilt which culminates in the days of Dante. 
 But the reflection of this first act of Claudius, 
 in the justice of Trajan to the widow, was ac- 
 cepted both by Dante and the Senate of Venice, 
 as the type of enduring Roman virtue ; though 
 in the sermon-sculpture of the Ducal Palace, all 
 is taught by the memory of the good ; and 
 there is no word of the death of the wicked. 
 
IV. CANDIDA CASA. II3 
 
 15. Claudius died in his native district of Sir- 
 mium, (where also the father of Aurelian was 
 a peasant leaseholder of a small farm) : Gothic 
 Claudius, he is called, according to historians, 
 for his Gothic victories, — but, remember, he is 
 also of Gothic race, and to us in England of 
 most enduring interest, because his grand-nephew, 
 Constantius, invading us from Boulogne, ends 
 the last effort of Britain for ,her island inde- 
 pendence, and founds, at York, the undivided 
 empire of Constantine over the Western and 
 Eastern world. 
 
 16. He founds it in his gentleness. While 
 yet the vicegerent of Diocletian, " his mild and 
 humane temper was averse from the oppression 
 of any part of his subjects. The principal 
 offices of his palace were filled by Christians ; he 
 loved their persons, esteemed their fidelity, and 
 entertained not any dislike to their religious 
 principles." ^ It was not, indeed, in his power 
 openly to reject the edicts of Diocletian, or to 
 disobey the commands of Maximian. His author- 
 ity contributed, however, to alleviate the suffer- 
 
 1 Gibbon, ii. 481 et seq. 
 H 
 
I 14 IV. CANDIDA CASA. 
 
 ings which he pitied and abhorred. " He 
 consented with reluctance to the ruin of the 
 churches ; but he ventured to protect the Chris- 
 tians themselves from the fury of the populace, 
 and from the rigour of the laws. The prov- 
 inces of Gaul were indebted for the singular 
 tranquillity which they enjoyed to the gentle in- 
 terposition of their sovereign. The elevation of 
 Constantius to the supreme and independent 
 dignity of Augustus, gave a free scope to the 
 exercise of his virtues, and the shortness of his 
 reign did not prevent him from establishing a 
 system of toleration, of which he left the pre- 
 cept and the example to his son Constantine. 
 His fortunate son, from the first moment of his 
 accession, declaring himself the protector of the 
 Church, at length deserved the appellation of 
 the first emperor who publicly professed and 
 established the Christian religion." 
 
 17. Now, (a.d. 306) — the moment we hear of 
 the crowning of Constantine, we all of us rush 
 over instantly to Italy, and the Hellespont, and 
 think not a whit more of old Britain and the 
 way she was constructing herself, under the 
 
IV. CANDIDA CASA. IIS 
 
 new dispensation. From 306 to the Saxon inva- 
 sion, 449, there are, however, one hundred and 
 forty-three years, concerning the rehgious pro- 
 gress of which, I must leave the reader to 
 gather what he can find from other sources ; 
 I having only room here to take note of an 
 extremely momentous practical event which 
 takes place in them, — the founding, namely, 
 of the British Navy. 
 
 18. Which it is well that the British boy-reader 
 should be made clearly, however reluctantly, 
 aware, that we owe entirely to the French, Dutch, 
 and Germans ; and, but for them, for aught we 
 know, might have been to this day upsetting our- 
 selves in wicker coracles ; — a sorrowful remnant 
 of which ancestral habit is visible in our two great 
 British distinctive naval performances — the loss 
 of the ' Royal George,' and the ' Captain.' No 
 other nation is recorded in history as having sunk 
 a ship of the line while it was being painted in 
 the harbour, or sent one to sea which would turn 
 bottom upwards in the first squall that struck it.^ 
 
 1 The subjoined letter from Mr. Robert Leslie may be depended 
 upon by the reader in its corroboration of the statements in the 
 
Il6 IV. CANDIDA CASA. 
 
 19. The beginners of all our rule of the waves 
 in everything, then, wonderful to say, are the 
 French. In the middle of the third century — 256 
 — Gaul had to be delivered from the Rhine-swim- 
 ming and Maes-jumping Franks, by that Post- 
 humus, whom Shakespeare, contrary to his wont, 
 has made an incredible Briton of in ' Cymbeline ' ; 
 the real Posthumus being the saviour of Gaul, not 
 England, from the spluttering and spray of the 
 
 text which might otherwise be laid to the account of my love of 
 
 paradox : — 
 
 "6 MoiKA Place, Southampton, 
 
 Shrove Tuesday, 1885. 
 
 " Dear Mr. Ruskin, — 1 am afraid you much overvalue any- 
 thing I can tell you about boats at any time, while I think no one 
 knows much about them when the Celts went to sea in skin boats, 
 as the Esquimaux do now. I believe the Irish fishermen had boats 
 of this sort until quite recently, and went far away long-line fishing 
 in them. 
 
 " There may have been coracles and coracles, for we know that 
 the Madras surf boats are nothing but great coracles. And again, 
 there is the strange fact, that so late as the time of Columbus, the 
 North American Indian had not advanced beyond the birch-bark 
 canoe or his dug-out in naval architecture. The English fishermen 
 have always been noted beachmen, and have always used the clench, 
 or overlapping plank, riveted together for their boats. (I have said 
 something about this on page 32 in the scrap-book.) The Norway 
 people also seem to have built in this way mostly. I have myself 
 
IV. CANDIDA CASA. II7 
 
 Franks, which for twelve years, unchecked, had 
 kept the whole of Gaul in hot water, — splashed 
 over even into Spain — and, at last, " when that 
 exhausted country no longer supplied a variety 
 of plunder," or variety of entertainment, to the 
 Prankish mind, they seized on some vessels in 
 the ports of Spain and transported themselves 
 over into Mauritania! (G. i. 437)-^ What became 
 
 seen a fisherman (professional) in a coracle upon the Dee in 
 Wales. 
 
 " On the other hand, I think that in the South and South-east of 
 England, shipbuilding was carried on by settlers from France or 
 Denmark from very early times indeed. 
 
 "Round here, at such little places as Burseldon, Beirleux, 
 Limangton, etc., there were great ships built for the navy : this I 
 know from a list of them given in Charnock's ' Naval Architecture.' 
 
 " I believe you cannot lay too much stress upon the fact that all 
 naval progress came to us first from France. 
 
 " I don't quite like the name of the poor old ' Royal George,' 
 coupled with that ridiculous arrangement of iron and air cells, ' The 
 Captain.' You will find in my book a scrap bearing upon this 
 subject, written in 1883, which may interest you. Still you are 
 right in the main (as you always are), about the 'Royal George,' 
 for our old Enghsh liners were at that time very kettle-bottomed, and 
 did not compare well with the French models of the same period." 
 
 1 The reader will have no occasion to refer to Gibbon — unless 
 he like, — or suspect me of unfair quotation, — in which case he 
 will find that my numerals refer to volume and page of Milman's 
 
Il8 IV. CANDIDA CASA. 
 
 of this first Frank expedition to Algeria one does 
 not hear ; ^ but it is evermore to be remembered 
 as tlie beginning of the grand naval thieving 
 expeditions in which our Gothic sailors were bred, 
 consummating themselves in Sir Francis Drake, 
 and his Sunday morning arrival. (' Fors,' Let- 
 ter XIV.2) 
 
 20. This first French naval excursion was, you 
 see, exquisitely and typically piratical ; for they 
 stole even the ships they sailed in ! But the next 
 nautical adventure is German-Gothic, and pre- 
 pared with every appliance of native builders' art. 
 
 Already, even in the tempestuous northern belt, 
 and under the feet of its fiercest soldiery, had 
 
 edition (Murray, 1838). What I think it necessary should be read, 
 I shall quote in full, so that I shall not give references to any other 
 edition than that I use. 
 
 1 From Gibbon, at least, who leaves them stranded in Morocco, 
 and passes on to the Suevi, vi^hom he makes an extremely early 
 sprout of Saxons — then Semnones. The inextricable notes of his 
 tenth chapter are, I suppose, now superseded, or I would have cut 
 some way through them. 
 
 [2 " Master Francis Drake, setting out in his little Paschal Lamb 
 to seek his fortune on the Spanish seas, and coming home, on that 
 happy Sunday morning, to the unspeakable delight of the Cornish 
 congregation."] 
 
IV. CANDIDA CASA. II9 
 
 grown up, like the wood-sorrel beneath its pines, 
 the gradually softened and informed classes of 
 the husbandman and craftsman. The class con- 
 cerned with tillage is of comparatively little im- 
 portance among Huns, Teutons, or Goths : but 
 the craftsmen, never spoken of by historians any 
 more than the peasantry, must very early have 
 been of great and gaining influence, — and thus, 
 in A.D. 269, we are told by Gibbon, in his politely 
 alternative and safely dubious form of statement, 
 that " The various nations who fought under the 
 Gothic standard constructed on the banks of the 
 Dniester a fleet of two thousand, or even of six 
 thousand, vessels, in order to transport a pretended 
 army of three hundred and twenty thousand bar- 
 barians " (ii. 9, 10). 
 
 The student is expected, within the limits thus 
 suggested, to determine for himself how many 
 vessels there probably were, and to what force 
 the pretended army is to be reduced, (surely the 
 odd twenty thousand of imaginary troops might 
 have been thrown out, or another eighty thousand 
 thrown in, for the sake of round numbers T) Be- 
 yond a few vague hints in chap. XXV. Gibbon 
 
I20 IV. CANDIDA CAS A. 
 
 does not tell us what a Gothic ship was like, or 
 how many of the crew could fight, and under 
 what sort of compulsion the rest rowed. Let us 
 get, however, at what stable, however few, real- 
 ities of the old earth and sea we may glean out 
 of the alternatives and dubieties thus proposed 
 to us. 
 
 21. In the first place, for leaders, and types 
 in character of " various nations who fought under 
 the Gothic standard," we need not hesitate to 
 take the tribe afterwards called ' Saxons ' ; for 
 there is no rational doubt that the prime plotters 
 in the business were the Cimbri of Tacitus, — 
 the unconquerable German power, — " potius 
 triumphata quam victa," which held the root of 
 the Danish Peninsula, and took its enduring 
 name afterwards from a single tribe in the 
 midst of it. So much of claim in these, and 
 pride in their first recorded seafaring, we have, 
 as in our veins of Saxon blood. 
 
 22. Next, look back to p. 94 of ' The Bible 
 of Amiens ' for account of the two moat rivers 
 of Europe — Vistula and Dniester. These Saxons, 
 you will then perceive, not yet knowing what 
 
IV. CANDIDA CASA. 121 
 
 they are about, will circumnavigate Europe proper 
 as one island. The exploring Saxons float them- 
 selves up Vistula, — inquire what water-carriage 
 may be, among the farther hills; and hear good 
 report of Dniester flowing exactly counter to 
 Vistula, and as nearly as may be of the same 
 length. In weight of waters, however, and 
 knowable depth of constant channel, the Vistula 
 is much the nobler stream ; the Dniester is for 
 most of its course shifty and shallow, ending in 
 mere lagoon ; so that the tall and bony hundreds 
 of thousands have to float themselves down it 
 in, assuredly, some flat-bottomed type of barge, 
 in which, nevertheless, they fearlessly betake 
 themselves to the Black Sea, coast it down to 
 the Bosphorus, — run through that, and the Dar- 
 danelles, — and then divide themselves for dis- 
 covery, southward and westward, of what may 
 be curious or profitable. Part of them, the bold- 
 est, down the ^gea.n to Cyprus, where one does 
 not hear what happens to them ; the greater part 
 more cautious, by coast of Thrace to Athos, 
 where they take to land again, and straggle 
 about, troublesome to the good people of Thrace 
 
122 IV. CANDIDA CASA. 
 
 till they fall in with the Emperor Claudius, who 
 beats them home over the Carpathians. 
 
 23. But think what all this, on the least 
 conceivable scale, involves necessarily of crafts- 
 manship, seamanship, captainship, clerkship of 
 a kind, and commissariat. These flat-bottomed 
 floats could not have been mere logs lashed 
 together ! I believe our own Thames barges are 
 not afraid of a breeze at the Nore, but the 
 Black Sea and JEgea.n are wilder waved than 
 the brackish tides by Sheppey and Rochester; 
 and there must have been good squaring and 
 fitting of timber in that coasting fleet. The 
 ship- or even stout boat-builder is one of the 
 highest of craftsmen. Metal working and forg- 
 ing must have been on no inconsiderable scale 
 also ; sail-making, and cordage, and all associated 
 spinnings and weavings. Of decoration, and in- 
 spiring sounds — what art .'' no one tells us, — 
 some, certainly, pict or embroidered, blown on 
 pipes or dubbed upon drums. Of Song, or 
 kindly mutual cheer and Yo Heave-oh, what 
 topics — what measures ? Camp followers or 
 camp companions, or gentle shipmates, any .' if 
 
IV. CANDIDA CASA. 1 23 
 
 not, in what temper of expectation, what com- 
 fort of household circumstance, the girls they 
 left behind them ? It is all less and less con- 
 ceivable the more we try to conceive — the 
 purple and black sails of Odysseus, — of Jason, 
 — of Theseus, infinitely clearer on the horizon 
 than these. But all this did in some solid man- 
 ner actually happen, with many consequences 
 for us ; though what record there is of it in any 
 credible tradition preserved in writing might, I 
 suppose, be put in small compass by an exact 
 scholar ; — is there any exact one at leisure to do 
 it for us, ready for supplementary and revisional 
 notes if ever we get to the end of our text .' 
 
 24. This much, or little, then, — date no matter, 
 facts on indeterminable scale, but true as light- 
 ning, and ominous of all storm to come, is the 
 first you hear of the Northmen, on the Greek 
 seas. Eight years afterwards, follow again the 
 Franks.^ 
 
 When the Emperor Probus delivered Gaul from 
 the Franks, Burgundians, and black-painted Lygii, 
 
 1 The three memorable dates are, 256, Franks in Morocco; 269, 
 Northmen at Cyprus; 277, Franks from Phasis to Rhine. 
 
124 IV. CANDIDA CASA. 
 
 in 277, he sets a price on the heads of the Lygii, 
 and makes the Burgundians buy peace with the 
 surrender of spoil. But though he drives the 
 Franks "bade into their morasses" (G. 11. 74) in 
 Holland, he feels them so strong, and finds them 
 so trustworthy, that he establishes a colony of 
 them on the Black Sea, to hold for Rome against 
 the Goths (Alani, G. 11. 82). The Franks do 
 what they undertook to do; but finding it not 
 lively work enough to keep the Alani in check, 
 get hold of some (Gibbon does not say whose, but 
 I suppose Roman) war ships stationed in a Euxine 
 harbour, and set off on an independent cruise. 
 
 25. I now — with the always necessary que- 
 ries — must trust myself to Gibbonian eloquence. 
 " They resolved, through unknown seas, to ex- 
 plore their way from the mouth of the Phasis 
 to that of the Rhine. They easily escaped" 
 (from whose pursuit .■") " through the Bosphorus 
 and Hellespont, and, cruising along the Mediterra- 
 nean, indulged their appetite for revenge " (but 
 who had offended them then?) "and plunder" 
 (but maintaining always of course the honourable 
 name of Freemen), " by frequent descents on the 
 
IV. CANDIDA CASA. 125 
 
 unsuspecting shores of Asia, Greece, and Africa. 
 The opulent city of Syracuse, in whose port the 
 navies of Athens and Carthage had formerly 
 been sunk, was sacked by a handful of barba- 
 rians who massacred the greatest part of the 
 trembling inhabitants." This is a sublime antith- 
 esis; but if, instead of the highly imaginative 
 epithet 'trembling,' the historian had only told 
 us how many of these unwarlike inhabitants there 
 were, or what he means by a ' handful ' of Franks, 
 he would have deserved more thanks, if less admi- 
 ration. "From the island of Sicily, the Franks 
 proceeded to the columns of Hercules, trusted 
 themselves to the ocean, coasted round Spain 
 and Gaul, and steering their triumphant course 
 through the British Channel " (Britannia at pres- 
 ent nowhere, you observe), "at length finished 
 their surprising voyage by landing in safety on 
 the Batavian shores." 
 
 26. In plain English, I suppose the facts were 
 that the Black Sea colony grew tired of fighting 
 for Probus, and, fearing that they could not make 
 their way by land, seized some Roman ships and 
 robbed their living round by sea, — a splendid 
 
126 IV. CANDIDA CASA. 
 
 piece of early seamanship,^ and more necessary 
 piracy and massacre than our own descents or 
 ascents against Caffres and Afghans, for their 
 poor properties to help out our wretchedness in 
 London. But at all events, tliis is the beginning 
 both of the French and British Navies. For, 
 once knowing their way, the Rhenish Franks 
 began to make a regular business of naval ex- 
 cursions through the straits of Dover and along 
 the coast of France for whatever they could pick 
 up. To check these piracies, the emperor (Pro- 
 bus .' ^) established a Roman fleet in the straits, 
 
 1 Of this expedition, Mr. Sharon Turner observes, with the 
 tranquil wisdom peculiar to the modern British historian, that " its 
 novelty and improbability secured its success" (i., p. 142). 
 
 ^ Gibbon does not give the name, but the revolt of Carausius 
 being in 287, it is not too much to allow at the least five years for the 
 previous consolidation of his force, and the accumulation of wealth 
 which caused Maximian to give orders for his death, and so compel 
 him to rebellion, or at least, assertion of independent power, after- 
 wards ratified by Diocletian. Now Probus was assassinated in 282, 
 so that we can scarcely be wrong in attributing to him the appoint- 
 ment of Carausius, and the consequent establishing of Boulogne as 
 the chief Gallic naval station in the north, — Bononia Oceanensis, 
 " Bologna of the Sea," as distinguished from the Bologna of Italy, 
 is its proper name. 
 
 I see, however, that the Emperor Claudius is spoken of as 
 
IV. CANDIDA CASA. I27 
 
 having its harbour at Boulogne, and commanded 
 by an admiral from the Low Countries — Carau- 
 sius, — who, being a man of strong sense and 
 courage, gradually becomes the felt and acknowl- 
 edged Master as well as admiral of the Roman 
 fleet — enriches his sailors with the confiscated 
 spoils of the pirate Franks ; then, feeling him- 
 self strong enough, lands at Dover, wins over 
 the Roman Legions iA England, and proclaims 
 himself the Roman Emperor of England. 
 
 27. This beginning of our worldly prosperity, 
 at sea, then, is owing to the Franks ; not to Rome 
 at all. But our Christianity and our civic prosper- 
 ity from 306 to 409 are altogether owing to Rome, 
 and under the authority of Rome; only reflecting 
 back to her our own fresh spirit-power. 
 
 Think of it ! Constantine was crowned at York 
 in 306. His mother, an innkeeper's daughter by 
 the shore of Hellespont : his father, a Dacian 
 
 having sailed for Britain from it. It was first fortified by Pedius, 
 Julius Caesar's grandnephew and legate in Gaul; who is said to 
 have been born at Bologna, and to have planned some resemblance 
 in the upper walled town to his own native one. Caligula built its 
 first lighthouse, which was still standing in the seventeenth century 
 iHistoire des villes de France). 
 
128 IV. CANDIDA CASA. 
 
 mountaineer : he himself born in the very midst 
 of Northern Macedon — the race of the Danube 
 and the Scamander mixed, — the " come over into 
 Macedonia and help us " brought now over into 
 Britain indeed ; and, from this piece of British 
 plain, carried back to Byzantium. 
 
 28. Then, note that during these 143 years of 
 following State Christianity in Britain, the whole 
 work of St. Jerome is done at Rome and Bethle- 
 hem. He was a youth at Julian's death in 363, 
 and died at Bethlehem, 30th September, 420. 
 Antony in Egypt is 305-370; Ulphilas in Moesia, 
 360. So that you have these years of Britain's 
 own Christian pride, — briefly, the fourth century 
 and one-third of the fifth, — founding monastic 
 life all through the East, and fixing, for West and 
 East alike, the Canon of the Bible. 
 
 And all this, before a Saxon syllable is heard in 
 British air.^ 
 
 [1 See the introduction to this volume for a sketch of the 
 intended continuation of this subject.] 
 
APPENDIX TO "CANDIDA CASA. I29 
 
 APPENDIX TO "CANDIDA CASA." 
 On Saxon Money. 
 
 All Saxon money was either of pure gold or silver, with the 
 exception of one small coin, the " styca " (derivation, needed i), 
 which corresponded nearly to the modern French decime, 
 the tenth of a penny. But, as we now in England manage 
 to do without decimes (not that we are therefore the wiser), 
 so the Saxons seem to have made little use of their stycas, 
 of which, as far as I can make out, those that have been 
 found belong chiefly to the Northumbrian kingdom. Accept- 
 ing them, however, as an essential part of the currency, we 
 shall have to consider, altogether, twelve denominations of 
 money in use among the Saxons ; three names of gold, and 
 nine of silver. 
 
 On Edward III.'s noble the motto bears witness to Christ's 
 victory : " He, passing through the midst of them, went 
 His way.'' 
 
 On the half noble : " O Lord, rebuke me not in Thine 
 anger." 
 
 On the quarter noble: The Cross. " It shall be exalted in 
 glory " (" Exaltabitur in gloria ") . 
 
 On Henry V.'s groat : " Deum adjutorem meum." 
 
 [1 = German, stuck; Danish, stykke ; Icelandic, stykki ; a bit, 
 small piece.] 
 
130 APPENDIX TO "CANDIDA CASA." 
 
 These denominations are then, as aforesaid, three of gold, 
 nine of silver, namely : — 
 
 Of Gold. 
 
 I. 
 
 The Byzant. 
 
 2. 
 
 The Ducat, or Mancus, 
 
 3- 
 
 The Lesser Mancus. 
 
 
 Of Silver. 
 
 I. 
 
 The Pound. 
 
 2. 
 
 The Mark. 
 
 3- 
 
 The Ora. 
 
 4- 
 
 The Shilhng. 
 
 S- 
 
 The Thrimta. 
 
 6. 
 
 The Penny. 
 
 7- 
 
 The Halfpenny. 
 
 8. 
 
 The Farthing. 
 
 9- 
 
 The Styca. 
 
 Now in order to understand the value of all these coins or 
 standards clearly, our first business is to know what the 
 "pound" and " ora" were. The pound, called by the Saxons 
 Tower pound, being weighed and answered for at their Tower 
 (central to the whole state) of London, weighed 5,400 troy 
 grains; and the ora, or Tower ounce, 450 troy grains. There 
 were, therefore, twelve Tower ounces, or oras, in the Tower 
 pound of pure silver. 
 
 This most notable of all European measures, the pound, 
 was, without doubt, brought from Germany by the Saxons ; 
 but it is originally Roman, and the Roman word for it, libra. 
 
APPENDIX TO "CANDIDA CASA. I3I 
 
 was accepted from them by the Greeks of Sicily in tlieir 
 XtTpa, litra, now the French "litre." But how the weight of 
 the pound was first determined by the Romans, or out of 
 what convenience of measure it developed itself, I can find, 
 in my whole library, no book that tells me.' 
 
 The first positive determination of the legal pound for the 
 Romans was by the Emperor Vespasian in the year of Christ 
 75, a measure called a congius being then placed in the 
 Capitol, which held exactly ten Roman pounds" weight of 
 water (Hussey, "Ancient Weights and Measures," p. 126). 
 This measure (now, where?) was taken to Dresden in 1721, 
 and the quantity of water it held weighed by Dr. Hase, and 
 thus the weight of the Roman pound determined by him, in 
 the year 1824, as 5,204 grains troy. Among the northern 
 nations this weight was increased to 5,400 grains, or in Ger- 
 many a little more; but our Saxon Tower pound was 5,400 
 troy grains exactly, dividing into twelve ounces, each weigh- 
 ing, therefore, 450 grains. 
 
 Which might, I think, be at once fixed in school memories 
 by the rhyming couplets : — 
 
 Ounce of comb in Saxon hive, 
 Count it ten times forty-five : 
 Pound of grain in Saxon store, 
 Count it hundreds fifty-four. 
 Count ye true in Saxon tower 
 Pound by ounce, and day by hour. 
 
 [1 Mommsen (Hist. Rome, book I., chap. 14) says that " the 
 weight " {libra) is the burden which a man is able to poise (librare) 
 on his hand while he holds his arm stretched out.] 
 
MENDING THE SIEVE. 
 
V 
 MENDING THE SIEVE. 
 
 Read, as a lecture., at the London Institution, December 4, 1S82. 
 
 I. Among the circumstances of my early life 
 which I count most helpful, and for which I look 
 back with more than filial gratitude to my father's 
 care, was his fixed habit of stopping with me, on 
 his business journeys, patiently at any country 
 inn that was near a castle, or an abbey, until 
 I had seen all the pictures in the castle, and 
 explored, as he always found me willing enough 
 to do, all the nooks of the cloister. In these 
 more romantic expeditions, aided and inspired by 
 Scott, and never weary of re-reading the stories 
 of the Monastery, the Abbot, and the Antiquary, 
 I took an interest more deep than that of an 
 ordinary child ; and received impressions which 
 guided and solemnized the whole subsequent 
 tenour of my life. 
 
 13s 
 
136 V. MENDING THE SIEVE. 
 
 2. One error there was, and one only, in the 
 feehng with which these scenes were interpreted 
 to me. For though I was bred in the strictest 
 principles of Calvinism, my father and mother 
 were both too well-informed to look without rever- 
 ence on the vestiges of early Catholic religion in 
 Britain : nor did they ever speak of it in dishon- 
 ourable terms, or cast doubt on the sincerity of 
 the faith which had founded our fairest cathe- 
 drals, and consecrated our bravest kings. But, 
 in common with most English people of their 
 day, they were suspicious of the Monastic as dis- 
 tinguished from the Clerical power ; and it was 
 an inevitable consequence, that, as we descended 
 from the hillsides of Yorkshire, or the Lothians, 
 into the sweet meadows beside their pebbly 
 streams, and saw the cattle resting in the shad- 
 ows of Jedburgh or Bolton, it should have been 
 pointed out to me, not without a smile, how care- 
 ful the monks had been to secure the richest 
 lands of the district for their possession, and the 
 sweetest recesses of the vale for their shelter. 
 
 3. Nor was Scott himself without" some share 
 in the blame of this gravely harmful misrepre- 
 
V. MENDING THE SIEVE. 1 37 
 
 sentation. I cannot but regard with continually 
 increasing surprise, the offence which was taken 
 by the more zealous members of the Scottish 
 Church, at what they imagined Scott's partiality 
 to Catholicism. The fact really is that every 
 heroic, graceful, and intelligent virtue is attrib- 
 uted by him at every period of the Reformation 
 to the sincere disciples of Presbyterian doctrine, 
 but that, on the contrary, he has been content 
 to portray the Catholic faith only in its corrup- 
 tion or its depression. Finding material enough, 
 and that of the most tractable kind, in the pic- 
 turesque and pathetic oppositions of the Camero- 
 nian and Cavalier, the Puritan and Catholic, the 
 mountaineer and dalesman, he gave in the stories 
 of 'Waverley,' 'Rob Roy,' 'Old Mortality,' 'Red- 
 gauntlet,' 'Nigel,' 'Peveril,' and 'The Abbot,' a 
 series of realisations which are, respecting their 
 several periods, the best historical painting yet 
 done in Europe. But the libraries and old book- 
 stalls of Edinburgh seldom threw a parchment in 
 his way which would give him clue to the reali- 
 ties of human life before the fifteenth century ; 
 his conception of more remote periods, coloured 
 
138 V. MENDING THE SIEVE. 
 
 by the partialities of his heart, and discoloured by 
 the dulnesses of scholastic history, dwelt rather 
 on the military than the missionary functions of 
 British Christianity. The crosier and the cowl 
 become with him little more than paraphernalia 
 of the theatre, to relieve in richer chiaroscuro 
 its armour and plumage ; and the final outcome 
 and effective conclusion of all his moonlight rev- 
 eries in St. Mary's aisle, was but, for himself and 
 for his reader, that 
 
 " The Monks of Melrose made gude kale 
 On Fridays, when they fasted." 
 
 I am going to ask you to consider with me, this 
 evening, whether, admitting such to be the fact, 
 the monks of Tweeddale were altogether to be 
 blamed, or ridiculed, for the excellence of their 
 broth, — whether, on the contrary, the making 
 of good broth be not one of the essential func- 
 tions of a good monk, — and even whether, but 
 for the gray brother's intervention, the kale pot 
 would in those times have boiled as merrily at 
 Melrose, even for other people. 
 4. You cannot but feel that this British Isle 
 
V. MENDING THE SIEVE. 1 39 
 
 of ours, after all its orthodox Reformations and 
 cautious constitutions, presents you with mate- 
 rials for this inquiry in extreme sharpness and 
 simplicity. At one crook of the glen are the 
 remains of the Abbey, with its half-fallen tower 
 and half-buried cloister ; at the next are the new 
 mills, with their cloud-piercing and cloud-compel- 
 ling chimney, and their quarter of a mile of 
 square windows in dead wall. As you walk back 
 to the village inn, you meet the clergyman in- 
 specting the restoration of his parish church ; in 
 the parlour of it you find the squire, bent on the 
 introduction of agricultural machinery, which will 
 send the congregation to America. And among 
 the various shades of benevolent avarice, pious 
 egotism, and interest-bearing charity, in which the 
 enterprises of a rational age must be undertaken, 
 we shall surely be able to discover, if human nature 
 be as constant as it is alleged, the likeness, in some 
 sort, or even the remnant, of ancient enthusiasm, 
 and discern, in the better movements and kindlier 
 impulses of our own hearts, ground for believing 
 that even monastic sentiment was not entirely 
 dishonest, nor monastic adventure entirely selfish. 
 
140 V. MENDING THE SIEVE. 
 
 5. And as the first step towards a true estimate 
 of either, we must address ourselves to obtain 
 some idea of the aspect of these glens of ours 
 before the monks settled in them. Those now 
 daisy-sprinkled or deep-furrowed fields were not 
 laid in their sweet levels by the mountain streams ; 
 and the land which we conceive to have attracted 
 the covetousness of the friars lay in alternations 
 of shingle and of marsh, under shades of thorny 
 thicket and heath-beset rock. The sagacity which 
 discerned and the industry which redeemed the 
 waste alluvial soil, not of our English dells only, 
 but of the river-sides throughout Europe, where 
 they were pestilent with miasma, desolate by flood, 
 and dark with forest, were found exclusively 
 among the societies of men whom we might, with 
 no unapt distinction, call the Valley Monks, wisely 
 and calmly devoted to all the arts and labours 
 which are serviceable to mankind ; skilful espe- 
 cially in the primary ones of architecture and 
 agriculture, but the leaders also in the literature of 
 their time, and its tutors in the soundest principles 
 of temporal policy. 
 
 6. These Monks of the Valley, — distinct alike 
 
V. MENDING THE SIEVE. I4I 
 
 from the earlier mountain Eremites, and from all 
 contemporary or subsequent brotherhoods, who 
 led lives of meditation inconsistent with practical 
 and affectionate duty, — will be discerned by the 
 final justice of history to have been absolutely the 
 purest, and probably the most vital, element of 
 Christian civilisation during a period, of which I 
 can scarcely venture to state the duration, without 
 first sketching in simpler terms than are usually 
 allowed by its chroniclers, the seras of rise and 
 decline in our old ecclesiastical polity. 
 
 In eighteen years from next Christmas will 
 open the twentieth century of the Christian sera. 
 If we divide by simplest arithmetic these two 
 thousand years into four groups of five hundred 
 each, they will successively present us with a quite 
 distinct series of phenomena, more intelligible 
 and memorable, by far, in their separate than in 
 their consecutive aspect. 
 
 I. In the first five hundred years you have, with 
 the fall of the Roman empire, the extinction of 
 ceremonial Paganism in South Europe, the estab- 
 lishment of the traditions of the mystic saints, 
 chiefly martyrs, and of the theories and practices 
 
142 V. MENDING THE SIEVE. 
 
 of ascetic monarchism. The Vulgate translation of 
 the Bible is finished at Bethlehem by St. Jerome, 
 and the doctrinal and imaginative machineries of 
 the Catholic Church are completed, with such 
 faults and virtues as we may each of us see good 
 to ascribe or concede to them. 
 
 II. In the second five hundred years the proper 
 work of the church begins upon the ruins of 
 Paganism. Her working saints, not St. Cather- 
 ines, nor St. Cecilias, nor St. Damians, nor St. 
 Christophers, but people of substantial presence 
 in flesh and blood ; — people who by no means 
 appear only to expire, and exist thenceforward as 
 pictures stuck full of hearts and arrows, but per- 
 sons as busy, as obstinate, and as inevitable as 
 modern engineers and railway contractors, are 
 estabhshing not Christian belief merely, but Chris- 
 tian law, in every Saxon, French, Latin, and 
 Byzantine town. Their disciple-kings, Theodoric, 
 Alfred, Canute, Charlemagne, are forming and 
 consolidating the civil dynasties of the North ; and 
 the narrow, but not false, Mohammedan theology 
 is similarly tempering to its fiery edge the scimitar 
 of the Saracen. 
 
V. MENDING THE SIEVE. I43 
 
 III. In the third five hundred years you have 
 in no small degree by the energy of the Cistercian 
 order, on whom our attention is fixed this evening, 
 the creation of Gothic architecture, with all that 
 it means; and by that of the Franciscans and 
 Dominicans, the resuscitation of the art of paint- 
 ing, lost since Apelles, with all that it means. 
 
 You have perfect laws of honest — I lean on 
 the word, — honest — commerce engraved on the 
 walls of the churches by which its activities are 
 centralised at Florence and on the Rialto. You 
 have a perfect scheme of Christian education 
 defined for you also on the walls of Florence. 
 And you have the perfect victory of civil justice 
 in Christian Kinghood, when the king and the 
 barons of England submitted their quarrel to the 
 arbitrement of St. Louis. 
 
 All these unquestionable pieces of good work 
 you find to have been done, beyond any bettering, 
 in these great five hundred years of the Church's 
 life. Towards their close, it corrupts itself; in 
 their close, it virtually expires. 
 
 IV. And then, fourth and lastly, in these pres- 
 ently proceeding, fast concluding, five hundred 
 
144 v. MENDING THE SIEVE. 
 
 years, you have printing, gunpowder, and steam ; 
 Liberty, Reason, and Science ; Parliamentary elo- 
 quence, and Parliamentary Cloture, doing for you 
 
 it yet remains to be seen, exactly, what. 
 
 7. The trenchant separation of these groups of 
 years would commend itself to you still more 
 frankly, if we were more in the habit of con- 
 necting the history of art with that of religion ; 
 but, while historians cannot fail to see that it is 
 necessary for them to follow with some attention 
 the changes in. links of armour and locks of hel- 
 mets, they think it matter of no serious moment 
 whether kings are enthroned under round arches 
 or pointed, and whether priests chant beneath 
 carved walls or coloured windows. My own mind 
 has become much sobered in its estimate of such 
 things, since my literary efforts began with the 
 ' Poetry of Architecture ' ; but the pilgrimage from 
 which I have just returned, through the earlier 
 Burgundian churches, to the birthplaces of the 
 two St. Bernards, of the Alp and of the Vale, 
 has for the moment thrown me back into old 
 channels of affection, wherein I trust your 
 indulgence for an hour's lingering with you. 
 
V. MENDING THE SIEVE. I45 
 
 8. Lingering, however, with some timidity, — 
 first, because I imagine many here must know 
 most of what I have to tell at least as well as 
 I do ; and secondly, because it must be con- 
 fessed that the traditions we can now collect 
 respecting either Bernards or Benedicts are of 
 a nature more calculated to amuse young people 
 than to edify the members of the London Insti- 
 tution. Yet it cannot but be remembered, in 
 our dealing with them, that these fairy tales, 
 though in their first aspect a good deal more 
 foolish than any that are acceptable in the nur- 
 sery, have at the root of them some unquestion- 
 able fact, the basis of things real and visible 
 around us, — fact of which we can only hope to 
 be made intelligently aware, by letting it an- 
 nounce and describe itself first in its own way. 
 
 Returning, then, to my divisions of five hun- 
 dred years, and it being of course understood 
 that we must not in the joints of such massive 
 chronology run the exact dates too fine, I will 
 ask the younger part of my audience to fix in 
 their memories the two precise years of 480 and 
 1480, giving a clear thousand years in the inter- 
 
146 V. MENDING THE SIEVE. 
 
 val, for the limits of our second and third relig- 
 ious asras — beginning the second with the reign 
 of Theodoric and closing the third at the birth 
 of Raphael. 
 
 9. In that first year, 480, there was born in 
 Rome, then fallen for ever from her war-throne, 
 but more luxurious and wanton in her disgrace 
 than in her majesty — there was born a boy of 
 a senatorial house, who was brought up during 
 his childhood amidst all the pleasures, and 
 shames, of the most godless city of the earth. 
 There was no atheism, says Mr. Froude, like 
 the atheism of Rome ; and I may refer you to 
 the pictures of Mr. Alma Tadema for a realisa- 
 tion, both learned and vivid, of the kind of life 
 her atheism ended in. Such as it was, this 
 strange boy, at fifteen years old, could no 
 longer endure it; resolved to break with it and 
 have done with it, left his father's house alone, 
 and escaped to the hills beyond the Campagna. 
 What search was made for him by his parents 
 we know not. One person, however — his 
 nurse — sought for him indefatigably ; found 
 him, was allowed to stay with him for a while. 
 
V. MENDING THE SIEVE. 1 47 
 
 and take care of him. And I could very ear- 
 nestly wish, for my own part, that both Shak- 
 speare and the British public had been less lavish 
 of their emotions about the Veronese legend of 
 Juliet and her nurse, and had but been one half 
 as interested in conceiving the quiet little domestic 
 drama of St. Benedict and his nurse, which had 
 far more useful consequences. 
 
 10. Many a library shelf have I sifted, always in 
 vain, to find out who gave him, or how he got, his 
 name. He found his way to a hermit, who taught 
 him the hope of a better life than that in Rome ; 
 and, I suppose, baptized him in such hope, and 
 blessed him in the search for it. Thenceforth, for 
 him also, the verse of the Virgin's song became 
 true, " All generations shall call me blessed." Yet 
 in a still higher sense, not merely happy, which is 
 all that the Madonna claims to be called, but in 
 the more solemn power of the word in the Bene- 
 dictus itself, " Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, 
 for He has visited and redeemed His people." 
 
 11. You will not, I think, find the working 
 saints, of whom this one is the Captain of the 
 Host, lean much upon their miracles ; and I sup- 
 
148 V. MENDING THE SIEVE. 
 
 pose no modern philosophy could conceive the 
 subsequent effect upon human imagination of the 
 belief in that extremely tiny miracle with which 
 St. Benedict's ministry traditionally begins : mend- 
 ing a corn-sieve which his nurse had broken, only 
 because she was so vexed about it. He did not 
 care for himself to have his corn sifted. 
 
 Of course, I could not offer you a little miracle 
 more easily, if you wish it, explained away ; and 
 that without having the least recourse to the vul- 
 gar Gibbonian theory of pious imposture. The 
 Gibbonian method is the most simple, and to 
 minds of a certain temper the most satisfactory : 
 you explain the miracle in Cana, for instance, by 
 supposing that the Madonna had arranged with 
 the servants the moment for exchanging the pots. , 
 But for our poor little nursery miracle here, we 
 need accuse no one of any guile ; and merely ad- 
 mitting the young Benedict to have been neat 
 with his fingers, as some of our own boys are, 
 though their virtue does not always show itself in 
 the mending of things, we can fancy his nurse's 
 ecstasy of admiration at her boy's dexterity — ^' e 
 un miracolo " — and so forth. 
 
V. MENDING THE SIEVE. I49 
 
 12. Make what you will of it — break what you 
 will of it, the absolute fact remains fast, that in all 
 the choral services of the Church this legend 
 holds the first place in the praise of St. Benedict. 
 It is just as important in his life as the killing of 
 the Nemean lion is in the life of Herakles. And 
 when we come to reflect on the essential function 
 of the Benedictine, I do not think there will 
 remain any difficulty in seeing how this myth 
 became the popular symbol of it. 
 
 During all the past five hundred years. Chris- 
 tians had been doing very little else than getting 
 themselves persecuted for public nuisances. They 
 had talked a great deal, quarrelled a great deal, 
 suffered much, — but hitherto, in any palpable 
 manner, mended nothing — hitherto produced 
 nothing — hitherto shown the way to nothing — 
 that anybody wanted to find a way to. They had 
 gone mad, in great numbers, — had lived on black- 
 berries, and scratched themselves virulently with 
 the thorns of them, — had let their hair and nails 
 grow too long, — had worn unbecoming old rags 
 and mats, — - had been often very dirty, and almost 
 always, as far as other people could judge, very 
 miserable. 
 
ISO V. MENDING THE SIEVE. 
 
 13. St. Benedict examines into all that; tries 
 what advantage there may really be in it. Does 
 a certain quantity of rolling himself in nettles 
 and the like ; and hears with respect all that 
 hermits have to say for their vocation. Finally, 
 however, determines that Christian men ought 
 not to be hermits, but actively helpful members 
 of society : that they are to live by their own 
 labour, and to feed other people by it to the best 
 of their power. He is the apostle, first, of the 
 peasant's agriculture, and secondly, of the squire's 
 agricultural machines — for whatever good there 
 is in them. The corn and the corn-sieve are 
 alike sacred in his eyes. And, once understand- 
 ing that, and considering what part of the 
 'library' of his day, the Bible of St. Jerome's 
 giving, would either touch himself most closely, 
 or would be looked to by others as most descrip- 
 tive of him, you will feel that the especially 
 agricultural prophecy of Amos would become the 
 guide of Benedictine expectation, and you may 
 even, in thinking of him, find a weight in the 
 words of it yourselves, unperceived before. 
 
 " For lo, I will command, and I will sift the 
 
V. MENDING THE SIEVE. I5I 
 
 house of Israel among all nations, like as corn 
 is sifted in a sieve, yet shall not the least grain 
 fall upon the earth. 
 
 " Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that 
 the ploughman ■ shall overtake the reaper, and the 
 treader of grapes, him that soweth seed, and the 
 mountains shall drop sweet wine, and all the hills 
 shall melt. 
 
 " And I will bring again the captivity of my 
 people, and they shall build the waste cities and 
 inhabit them, — they shall also make gardens, 
 and eat the fruit of them, and I will plant them 
 upon their land, and they shall no more be 
 plucked up out of their land which I have given 
 them, saith the Lord thy God." 
 
 14. This is the efficient practical Benediction 
 with which the active Saint begins the second 
 sera of Christendom. But he had also a doc- 
 trinal message, which we have no time this 
 evening to examine ; yet it must be noted as of 
 equal moment with that which immediately in- 
 terests us. We said that the first five hundred 
 years after Christ saw the extinction of Pagan- 
 ism. In the deeper sense, nothing that once 
 
152 V. MENDING THE SIEVE. 
 
 enters the human soul is afterwards extinct in 
 it. Every great symbol and oracle of Paganism 
 is still understood in the middle ages ; and I have 
 just been drawing from the twelfth-century porch 
 of Avallon the sculptures of Herodias and her 
 daughter on the one side, and of Nessus and 
 Deianira on the other. But as a formal wor- 
 ship, Paganism may be considered as signifi- 
 cantly closing with the destruction, by St. Bene- 
 dict and his disciples, of the temple of Apollo 
 on Monte Cassino. All the idolatry of the 
 world, in the sense of misdirected faith, was 
 recognised by the first instincts of Christianity, 
 as worship of Baal, — worship of the sun by 
 day, of the moon by night, as the vital powers 
 of nature instead of God. And the darkening 
 of the sun and moon on each side of the 
 Cross, in symbolical representations of the Cru- 
 cifixion, is not, I believe, meant to express only 
 the temporal affliction of them, but the passing 
 away of their spiritual power. And in the 
 Benedictine sign given on Monte Cassino, you 
 have the true beginning of those ages, dark, 
 as they have so long been called, in which the 
 
V. MENDING THE SIEVE. 153 
 
 Apolline oracles and inspiration pass away ; and 
 which are ended by the resuscitation of Pagan- 
 ism, under the same symbol, as I pointed out 
 now many and many a year ago, ^ — when the 
 Dispute of the Sacrament and the Choir of 
 Parnassus were painted side by side in the same 
 chamber of the Vatican. 
 
 15. In the proclamation, then, of useful labour 
 as man's duty upon earth, and of the Sun of 
 Righteousness as his Lord in Heaven, you have 
 the Benedictine gospel : of which the most sensi- 
 ble and impartial of French historians writes, 
 with no more than justice, " La Regie de Saint 
 Benoit est peut^tre le plus grand fait historique 
 du moyen Age." ^ 
 
 I translate to the best of my power the noble 
 passage which follows. 
 
 "We who live under regular governments, and 
 in legally protected society, can only with diffi- 
 culty conceive the disorder which followed the 
 
 [1 See "Lectures on Architecture and Painting," iv. p. 213, 
 edition of 1854; § 125-127 new edition.] 
 
 [2 VioUet-le-Duc, " Dictionnaire de I'Architecture," torn. I. p. 
 242.] 
 
154 V. MENDING THE SIEVE. 
 
 fall of the Roman Empire in the West. Every- 
 where ruin and distraction, — the triumph of 
 brutal force, the loss of all respect for human 
 dignity, the cultivated lands trampled by famished 
 multitudes, the cities devastated, entire popula- 
 tions driven out or massacred, and over all this 
 chaos of society in agony, wave upon wave the 
 inundations of barbarians as tides upon the 
 sea-sand. The monks descending from Monte 
 Cassino spread themselves through Germany and 
 Gaul even to the northern limits of Europe, 
 opening out the forests, directing the water 
 courses, and founding monasteries surrounded by 
 workshops, which became centres, to the peas- 
 antry, of moral force and protected industry ; to 
 whom the new apostles, after providing for their 
 safety and support, taught letters, sciences, and 
 arts ; fortified their souls, gave them the example 
 of self-denial, taught them to love and to protect 
 the weak, to succour the poor ; to expiate faults, 
 and to exercise themselves in virtue. They sowed 
 among servile and degraded races the first seeds 
 of independence and liberty, and they opened 
 to them, as the last asylum against distress of 
 
V. MENDING THE SIEVE, 1 55 
 
 body and soul, inviolable and sacred houses of 
 prayer." 
 
 1 6. This passage, you will observe, includes, 
 in the general grasp of it, the entire function of 
 the Benedictine order, with that of all its later 
 branches. For our own purposes, we must now 
 follow out the more distinctive characters of these 
 in relation to their times. 
 
 You will recollect — I again address my 
 younger hearers — the year 480, of St. Bene- 
 dict's birth. He gives his rule about 505, and, 
 in the time between its promulgation and the 
 close of the year 1000, the order of St. Benedict 
 had founded 15,070 abbeys throughout the world 
 then known. 
 
 Abbeys — institutions, that is to say, under the 
 government of an Abbot — a totally different per- 
 son, in the ideal of him, from a bishop. Partly 
 a farmer, partly a schoolmaster, partly an inn- 
 keeper. Not, essentially, lie, concerned with the 
 cure of souls, but with the comfort of bodies, 
 and the instruction of brains. Not merely given 
 to hospitality, apt to teach, — but vowed to hos- 
 pitality, bound to teach. 
 
IS6 V. MENDING THE SIEVE. 
 
 17. Fifteen thousand, then, you have of these 
 Abbot Samsons, representing the schoolmaster 
 abroad and at home, at the close of the tenth 
 century. A power independent of the Episcopal, 
 often in rivalry with it, assuredly in front of it, 
 in all progressive movement, and in its own cen- 
 trifugal energy throwing off bishops and cardinals 
 
 — ay, and popes when they were wanted, like 
 fire from a grindstone. Seven thousand bishops 
 they had given to the Church, and twenty-four 
 popes, up to the time at which we have to study 
 their division into the two branches of Cluny 
 and Clteaux. 
 
 18. I call those orders, you observe, branches 
 
 — not reforms of the Benedictine. In an old 
 thing and a strong thing, much may be faultful, 
 much decayed, and more unable for other work 
 than it did in its youth, and for other place than 
 it found for its springing. But you might as 
 well call the branches of the old Hampton Court 
 vine, reforms of that, as Cluny and Clteaux re- 
 forms of Monte Cassino. More various office 
 was asked of the monks now. What we call 
 " civilisation " was beginning to fasten society 
 
V. MENDING THE SIEVE. 1 57 
 
 painfully into its present orders of the rich and 
 the poor. Practically, Climy was founded for 
 the Schooling of the rich, and Citeaux for the 
 Help of the poor. The lands of Cluny were 
 given it by a Duke of Aquitaine, its walls were 
 raised by the Kings of France and England, 
 and the greatest prince was not educated with 
 more care in the palace of kings than was the 
 least of the children of Cluny. ^ But the first 
 territory of Citeaux was a desolate marsh. Its 
 order was founded by a poor brother of the 
 Abbey of Molesmes, with a few companions, 
 vowed to the barest poverty and the rudest 
 labour. Passed but a few years, and at their 
 bidding, and in their monks' dress, you might 
 see the most powerful lords drive the plough 
 beside the poorest peasant. 
 
 19. Now, let us get the idea of the main stem 
 and these two resilient branches well into our 
 minds. How the axe was laid to the root of 
 them, or how the wild boar out of the wood 
 devoured, you will find many a scornful historian 
 glad to tell. But learn first, for truth's sake and 
 
 [1 See Appendix on " The Foundation of Cluny."] 
 
IS8 V. MENDING THE SIEVE. 
 
 love's, what the living stem was, and the' use of 
 God's two grafts on it. 
 
 The diagram (opposite) may stand for the gen- 
 eral plan of a Benedictine abbey of any place 
 or time ; but it is, actually, that of the Abbey of 
 St. Gall, given by Viollet-le-Duc as in all proba- 
 bility arranged by Abbot Eginhardt, Charlemagne s 
 own master of works : and it is drawn in the origi- 
 nal with such completeness that every bed in the 
 kitchen garden has the name written beside it 
 of the particular " kale " that is to be grown 
 there. 
 
 The design of the church, with two circular 
 apses, one at each end, is of singular complete- 
 ness and beauty, but reduces itself afterwards to 
 the square terminations which are constant in 
 your English churches. The main entrance is 
 at the west, between two detached chapels, one 
 to the Archangel Michael, the other to Gabriel. 
 There are two smaller lateral entrances ; one for 
 the guests of the Abbey, the other for its farm 
 and other servants. 
 
 20. On the sides of the east chancel you have 
 on the right the monks' entrance and the sacristy. 
 
ijisVa 9 "I'M 
 
 ^•* a. .ail'*' 
 aa.*0ae2 
 
 
 J 
 
 
 
 w 
 
 ^3 o o ^o 
 
 GR 
 
 +. Sacristy S . Schools 
 
 L . Libraiy H . Hospice 
 
 A. Abbots House K. Hospice E-tdaea 
 
 a. . Abbots Kitchen 
 
 N . Norices House 
 
 I , TnfJTTn at-v 
 
 mg-. Medicme Garden 
 md. Doctors House 
 ph.. Phaimacy 
 
 C Qoisters D . Dormitories 
 
 P. Pilgriin's House R. Refectoiy 
 
 p . Pilgrim's E-tchen. c . Cellar 
 
 K . Kitcheo. 
 
 "W. Workshops 
 
 ;. 0. 
 
 Orchard 
 
 M. Mills 
 
 G. 
 
 Garden 
 
 GR. Granaries 
 
 §■■ 
 
 Gardeners House 
 
 
 F 
 
 Fruit House 
 
 
 y- 
 
 Poultry yard 
 
 XII. Plan of a Cistercian AlDTaey. 
 
V. MENDING THE SIEVE. 1 59 
 
 marked by a cross ; — on the left the Abbot's 
 entrance and the library, consisting of the scribes' 
 room below, and manuscript room above. Then, 
 on what you may think of as the literary and 
 lay side of the nave, the north, the schools ; to the 
 south for what sun could be had, the cloisters. 
 Between the schools and library, the Abbot's 
 house and servants' offices, summed in the plan 
 as the abbot's kitchen (little a). Next to the 
 schools, H, the hospice or general stranger guest 
 house, with attached offices and kitchen (little h). 
 Next to the cloisters, P, the pilgrims' house, 
 and little p, the pilgrims' kitchen. Round the 
 cloisters, D the dormitories, R the refectory, little 
 c the cellars — everybody's cellar, mind you, as 
 well as the monks', though of course they had 
 their bins in it ; and if you choose to read big C 
 and little c for Creature comforts — the sunny 
 side of the church and the private key of the 
 cellar, that was certainly so. Also here, you 
 observe, that the kale might be hot as well as 
 good, is the special refectory kitchen. Then be- 
 yond the eastern apse, N, the house of the novices, 
 I, of the old and infirm monks, who could work 
 
l6o V. MENDING THE SIEVE. 
 
 no more. Young and old, each with their own 
 little chapel : we may perhaps hope that the old 
 monks' chapel was warmed for winter matins. 
 Also for their refreshment, and old man's work — 
 Simon Lee's weary hand on the mattock, — here 
 the orchard, there the garden, but the gardener 
 himself an important personage, with his house 
 nearly as big as the Abbot's. The fruit-store also 
 very large. Doesn't it all remind you who know 
 your Scott of the old abbot-gardener at Loch 
 Leven .■" 
 
 21. Opposite, in due symmetry, the physician's 
 house, with its separate garden of medicinal herbs, 
 and his store-house for them, and laboratory. 
 
 Then lastly, but occupying, you see, the space 
 on one side of the cloisters, corresponding to that 
 of the church on the other, you have the work- 
 shops and farm-buildings. 'SS!or\i-shops I have 
 called them ; properly ateliers only, — no selling, 
 here, all giving. You know well enough what 
 became of the Church when she took to trading. 
 In the meantime — whatever were the Abbot's 
 faults as head of the firm, he took no commission 
 on his workmen's labour. 
 
V. MENDING THE SIEVE. l6l 
 
 Ateliers — of every useful handicraft known, 
 but with a curious difference, afterwards estab- 
 lishing itself, between those of Cluny and Citeaux. 
 At Cluny the leading work is the jeweller's — 
 goldsmith's and jeweller's, that is to say — and 
 what sort of work it was you may still see in the 
 brooch which clasped the mantle of St. Louis. 
 
 At Citeaux there is no jewellery going on any 
 more, but we have an entire — I was going to 
 say Rochdale ^ — -but I ought to say Clear-Dale 
 (Clairvaux) co-operation of every food-producing 
 and pot-boiling business, organised in groups, 
 each with their own master, the brother millers, 
 brother bakers, green-grocers, carpenters, masons, 
 smiths, weavers; and at the head of the collec- 
 tive groups belonging to each abbey one monk 
 charged with the distribution and organisation of 
 all the work. 
 
 22. Now, again, yoimg people, fix this distinc- 
 tion between Cluny and Citeaux well in your 
 minds. Cluny is the culmination of the power 
 of the monastic system, the universal monastic 
 system of hill and plain, of town and country, of 
 sackcloth and cloth of gold. It is Westminster 
 
1 62 V. MENDING THE SIEVE. 
 
 Abbey and Bond Street in one — but missing out, 
 I am sorry to confess, St. George's, Hanover 
 Square. But all that was noblest, kingliest, 
 brightest in the active world, looked for its 
 guidance there. Its church was the largest 
 church in all the west; its plan was given by 
 St. Peter in a dream. 
 
 The popes had successively granted to its 
 abbots formal bulls of exemption from the epis- 
 copal interference, and the abbots could menace 
 with excommunication any bishop who tres- 
 passed on their privileges. In the time of St. 
 Hugo of Cluny, the abbey with its dependen- 
 cies formed a European university, with the 
 power of a kingdom. He was called to regu- 
 late the religion of Spain by Alphonse of Cas- 
 tille, of England by William the Conqueror, and 
 struck his own coinage at Cluny as the King 
 of France at Paris. 
 
 23. Now turn we to Clteaux. I do not think 
 the readers of the essays on architecture, which 
 of all my writings have had the most direct 
 practical influence, will think their hour mis- 
 spent in enabling me personally to ask their 
 
V. MENDING THE SIEVE. 163 
 
 pardon for the narrowness of statements into 
 which either their controversial character, or 
 the special direction of my earlier studies, hur- 
 ried me. Of which faults, one of the chief 
 lay in the depreciation of ecclesiastical influence, 
 and the strong insistence on the national styles 
 of civil building, into which my dread of ritual- 
 ist devotion in the first place, and in the second 
 my too sanguine hope of turning the streets 
 of London into the likeness of those of Nurem- 
 berg, provoked, or tempted me. It is indeed 
 perfectly true, and I have nothing to retract 
 from the distinctness of the assertion, that 
 Gothic architecture is not, in the total spirit 
 of it, _ more devotional than humane ; that all 
 the beautiful forms of it will condescend to the 
 simplest domestic comfort, and that the luxurious 
 and insensate splendours of it are as much for- 
 bidden to the church as to the palace and the 
 council-hall. But also it is true, and salient 
 among the noblest truths which illustrate the 
 nature of man, that as the visionary faith of 
 the Franciscans purified and animated the art 
 of painting from its Roman pollution and its 
 
164 V. MENDING THE SIEVE. 
 
 Byzantine palsy, so the modesty and valour of 
 the Cistercians, subdued by the severe lessons 
 of St. Bernard, and restricting itself always to 
 the use of materials nearest to their hand, pro- 
 duced types of rational and beautiful structure 
 of which the remains, in our age of iron, are 
 still held sacred to the memory of the Catholic 
 Church, and can scarcely be used in a civil 
 building without a sense of profanity. 
 
 24. The severe lessons, I have said, admit- 
 ting the popular impression of them. The loving 
 lessons had been a juster word. He was the 
 first of the noble Puritans, in the rejection of 
 all that was unseemly, luxurious, or vain in the 
 pretended service of God. He was the head and 
 captain of the great race of northern farmers, who 
 themselves preached, and to purpose, their more 
 than one sermon a week, and stubbed Thornaby 
 Waste as well. But all this he was because he 
 loved God, and believed, with all his heart and 
 soul and strength. And whatever in the fullest 
 glow of unsullied Christianity — whatever of com- 
 forting or purifying in the thoughts of a future 
 state, we have associated most intimately with 
 
V. MENDING THE SIEVE. 1 65 
 
 our social affections and earthly work, you will 
 find to have been first rooted in the conviction 
 and the benevolence of St. Bernard. 
 
 25. The name of his birthplace, you may easily 
 remember ; and the spot of it you may reach, by 
 no toilsome, no irrational pilgrimage. 
 
 But two short miles to the north of Dijon, only 
 just far enough to detach them completely from 
 the new suburban city, rise the little hill and 
 village of La Fontaine. Mound, rather than hill, 
 it should be called ; an outlier of the thin-bedded 
 Jura limestone which forms all the long cdteau 
 to the west of Dijon and M^con. Steep enough 
 the little mound, almost craggy on one side, slop- 
 ing down on the other with its rough-built village 
 some 150 feet into the plain, but completely insu- 
 lated, and the summit of it not more than a fur- 
 long square, occupied by a small farmhouse, and 
 its yet smaller garden. Farmhouse built more or 
 less out of the ruins of the older chateau, itself 
 also now in process of demolition, or readjust- 
 ment to a modern chapel, enlarging from the 
 recess behind the altar, which occupies the exact 
 site of the room in which St. Bernard was born. 
 
l66 V. MENDING THE SIEVE. 
 
 26." Feudal castle it was, remember : no stone 
 of it now left on another ; but you may stand at 
 the edge of the little garden, on the rock where 
 his childish feet first stood firm ; the simple 
 kinds of the wild flowers he knew, still nestle, 
 or wander, there, unchanged ; the soft dingles of 
 the C6te d'Or cast still the same shadows in the 
 morning light ; eastward, the cliffs and folds of 
 Jura, and the one white cloud beyond, that never 
 fades; — all these were, of his life, the same part 
 that they are of ours ; how far his work and 
 thoughts are still to be with 11s, can scarcely be 
 judged well, here in our London circus ; you would 
 judge of them otherwise, I believe, in looking from 
 his native rock down the vast vale of the Sadne, 
 where, only fifteen miles to the south, the lines 
 of poplar and aspen that soften the horizon, grow 
 by the idle streams of what was once — Ctteaux. 
 
 27. Nothing is left of the abbey walls ; a 
 modern industrial school occupies their site. The 
 only vestige left of times even a little separated 
 from our own is a, literally, moated grange, 
 where a wide pond, almost a lake of absolutely 
 quiet water, lulled among its reeds, is deep round 
 
V. MENDING THE SIEVE. 167 
 
 the foundation stones of a granary, outbuilding 
 once of the Cistercian farm. 
 
 The first brothers who settled there, those from 
 the Abbey of Molesmes, had hard times for many 
 a day. The marshes would not drain, the seeds 
 would not grow ; the monks themselves died one 
 by one, of damp and fatigue. They had to rise 
 at two in the morning for matins ; it was not right 
 to go to sleep again afterwards, — they were re- 
 quired to meditate till dawn, but I suppose, by 
 Heaven's grace, sometimes nodded. They had to 
 work with strength of hand seven hours a day, 
 at one time or another. Dined at twelve ; no 
 animal food allowed except in sickness, and only 
 a pound and a half of bread; vegetables, I sup- 
 pose, what they would, except on fast days, — 
 total, twice a week, as far as I can make out. 
 Common human blood could not stand it ; the 
 marsh of Citeaux was too deadly for them, and 
 they died, and died, nameless people, foolish peo- 
 ple, what you choose to call them, — yet they 
 died for you, and for your children. 
 
 28. At last Bernard heard of them — then a 
 youth, just back from Paris University. Gath- 
 
l68 V. MENDING THE SIEVE. 
 
 ered a few more fiery ones, of his own sort, and 
 plunged into the marsh to the rescue. The poor 
 Abbot and his forlorn hope of friars went out to 
 meet them, singing songs of deliverance. In less 
 than twenty-five years there were more than sixty 
 thousand Cistercian monks, at work on any bit of 
 trenchable ground they were allowed to come at, 
 between the bay of Genoa and the Baltic. 
 
 29. Trenchable ground, I say, with intention; 
 for there were two things, mind you, that the 
 Cistercians always wanted : the ground on which 
 they could do most good ; the water with which 
 they could do most work. Therefore in England 
 you always find the monastery at the point of 
 the valley where the stream first becomes man- 
 ageable on the level, and yet where the mill- 
 wheel would still turn merrily. 
 
 Only, the defect of the whole institution to my 
 own poor mind is, that you get the mill indeed, 
 and the miller, but not the miller's daughter! 
 And in that degree I own myself still a bigoted 
 Protestant, — that Mysie Happer seems to me a 
 most laudable adjunct to the Cistercian economy, 
 and that I can imagine benighted persons who 
 
V. MENDING THE SIEVE. I69 
 
 would be much better helped by the good heart 
 and good looks of Mysie than by any higher 
 images of the Queen of the Angels. Howbeit, 
 whatever good there may be for persons of 
 higher temperament, in Madonnas del Sisto or 
 del Cardellino, of course it is St. Bernard who 
 begins all that for them, with the rest of his 
 beginnings. 
 
 30. In 1090 he is born at La Fontaine, and 
 whatever is loveliest in chivalry and ladyhood 
 comes after that. You have trusted the tradi- 
 tions of them now to the overseer's factory chim- 
 ney, to the squire's threshing machine, to the 
 Board's school, industrial and other. For all 
 these you have one watchword, — " Let us eat 
 and drink, for to-morrow we die:" the exact con- 
 tradiction to St. Bernard's — " Let us watch and 
 pray, for to-morrow we live." 
 
 It is not mine to tell you which of these is 
 true ; but there is one word that is true for the 
 feeblest of us, and for all it should be enough. 
 " Let us labour joyfully while we have the light. 
 The night cometh ; — but thou knowest not what 
 shall be on the morrow." 
 
170 ADDENDA TO "MENDING THE SIEVE." 
 
 ADDENDA TO "MENDING THE SIEVE": 
 On the Foundation of Cluny. 
 
 " Under Charlemagne, the religious " (meaning 
 monastic) " establishments held the head {tenaient 
 la tite) of public instruction, of agriculture, of 
 manufacture, of the arts and of the sciences. 
 They alone of political bodies presented regular 
 and stable constitutions. Out of their bosom 
 came all the men destined to play any part in 
 the world outside of the career of arms. From 
 its foundation" (say in 505) "to the year of the 
 Council of Constance, 1005, the order of St. Bene- 
 dict had founded fifteen thousand and seventy 
 abbeys throughout the world then known; given 
 to the Church twenty-four popes, two hundred 
 cardinals, four hundred archbishops, and seven 
 thousand bishops.^ 
 
 " But this prodigious influence had been the 
 
 [1 VioUet-le-Duc, "Diet, de 1' Architecture," torn. I. p. 245.] 
 
ADDENDA TO "MENDING THE SIEVE." 171 
 
 cause 1 of numerous abuses. The rule of St. 
 Benedict had been far relaxed in the tenth cen- 
 tury ; the periodical invasions of the Normans 
 had destroyed the monasteries and dispersed 
 the monks;" — (and this 'dispersion,' mind you, 
 which historians speak of as if it were merely 
 the driving chaff before the wind, means — for 
 human creatures who have hearts — much more 
 than scattering. It means heart-breaking. For 
 one monk who broke his vows in pride or weak- 
 ness, hundreds were driven from the peace and 
 fruition of their fulfilment, in despair) " misery, 
 and the disorders which are the consequence of 
 misery, altered the characters of the institution, 
 and feudal morcellement completed the ruin of 
 what the abuse of riches and power, as well as 
 the misfortune of the time, had already under- 
 
 1 Not the ' cause,' rightly thinking of the matter; the indefinitely 
 increased monastic power was not the origin of abuses, but became 
 the inevitably imperfect and decaying subject or sufferer of them, 
 as the trunk of a great tree decays inwardly or is knotted and 
 warped outwardly, while yet its branches are green, and its vital 
 functions for a time retained. The 'abuses,' as the following sen- 
 tences show, were rather those of the outward world than of the 
 monasteries. 
 
172 ADDENDA TO "MENDING THE SIEVE." 
 
 mined. Modern civilisation, scarcely born under 
 the reign of Charlemagne, seemed expiring in the 
 tenth century, but from the order of St. Benedict, 
 reformed by the abbots of Cluny and the rule of 
 Ctteaux, enduring shoots of new life were to spring. 
 " In the tenth century ^ Cluny was a little 
 village in the district of Macon, which had be- 
 come by bequest a part of the estates of William, 
 afterwards called the Pious, Duke of Aquitaine. 
 Towards the close of his life" — (I must now 
 go on in my own words) — he wished to com- 
 mend his soul and the souls of his ancestors to 
 God, by founding a new monastery. Of the 
 superstition, if he please to call it so, I pray the 
 kindly reader to think, if not with respect, at 
 least with pity : and I assure the proud and un- 
 kindly reader — whose eyes may fall on the pas- 
 sage — that the state of mind is nobler and wiser 
 in which men give lands away in the hope of 
 commending their souls to God, than that in 
 
 ' The reader will take note of the continually reinforced im- 
 portance of the cardinal divisions of time we at first assumed at the 
 close of the fifth, tenth, and fifteenth centuries. The actual date 
 of the first founding of Cluny above told is 909. 
 
ADDENDA TO "MENDING THE SIEVE." 1 73 
 
 which they let them at auction to swindling 
 builders, raise their rents on industrious farmers, 
 gamble them away in hells at watering-places, or 
 borrow money on them for their melius plaisirs. 
 For the rest, Duke WiUiam did not defer his 
 design to his last hour, but while yet able to 
 govern his lands and judge of their fitness for 
 this or the other purpose, he sent for a monk 
 whom he could trust as a friend, Bernon, Abbot 
 of Gigny and Baume, and with him visited per- 
 sonally the whole of his estates,^ to fix on a 
 proper place for the foundation of the new abbey. 
 "'They arrived at last,' says the chronicle, ^ 'in 
 a place so far removed from all human society, 
 that it seemed in some sort the image of the 
 celestial solitude.'^ It was ■ Cluny. But when 
 
 1 Personal — it is not said of what extent. The vast titular duke- 
 dom, Aquitaine, would imply a proportional estate of residence to 
 which the bequest of Cluny would be a scarcely observed addition. 
 
 2 VioUet-le-Duc does not say what chronicle; but refers to the 
 ' Histoire de I'Abbaye de Cluny,' par P. Lorain, Paris, 1845, P- l^- 
 
 2 In all such chance expressions, or indications without aistinct 
 expression, of a true desire for solitude as one of the conditions of 
 religious felicity, it must be remembered that the real meaning is 
 always that of being as a separate Spirit, alone with God. " Thou, 
 when thou prayest, pray to thy Father which is in secret." 
 
174 ADDENDA TO "MENDING THE SIEVE. 
 
 the Duke objected that it would not be possible 
 to establish a monastic society in that place, 
 because of the hunters and their dogs ! who filled 
 the forest with which the country was covered, 
 Bernon replied, laughing, ' Drive away the dogs, 
 and fetch the friars ; know you not whether will 
 yield the better profit, the hounds' yelp or the 
 monks' prayer ? ' " 
 
 M. Lorain's translation of the Duke's deed of 
 gift is throughout of extreme interest, but I must 
 limit myself here to the following centrally impor- 
 tant passages : — " All my domain of Cluny, and 
 all that is dependent on it, farms, oratories, slaves 
 of both sexes, vineyards, fields under culture, 
 waters, mills, meadows, forests, and wild land, 
 I, William, and my wife Ingelberge, together 
 give to the fore-named apostles (Peter and Paul) : 
 first, for the love of God ; then also for the love 
 (or sake) of the King Eudes, my Lord; and of 
 my father and my mother; for me also, for my 
 wife, for my sister Albane, who left me these pos- 
 sessions, for all the members of our family, and 
 for the faithful persons attached to our service, 
 and for the maintenance and integrity of the 
 
ADDENDA TO "MENDING THE SIEVE." 1 7$ 
 
 Catholic Religion. But I give these lands on 
 condition that a monastery under regular orders 
 shall be built at Cluny, to the honour of the apos- 
 tles Peter and Paul; and that therein shall be 
 united a society of monks living according to 
 the rule of St. Benedict, possessing, detaining 
 (' detenant '), and governing the things now given 
 in perpetuity, so that this house may become the 
 venerable abode of prayer; that it may be filled 
 without ceasing by faithful wishes and pious peti- 
 tions ; and that therein may be sought always, 
 with vivid desire and heartfelt ardour, the miracles 
 of Coinniunion with God." 
 
 Now observe you have here a perfect, authori- 
 tative, and indisputable type of the tenth-century 
 Catholicism in a knight's mind. Fifth-century 
 Catholicism, seventh-century Catholicism, are dif- 
 ferent from this, and they are beautiful, in their 
 own places and times, in the minds of good men 
 and women. We will examine them in their 
 order, only first here is what they lead up to — 
 with the good, or evil, or error that it means — 
 here is your Lord of lands and men, giving away 
 so many square miles of land with the inhabitants 
 
176 ADDENDA TO "MENDING THE SIEVE." 
 
 thereof, slaves, and other, (no slaves forced to 
 work underground and be blown to pieces by 
 scores every week, like ours; or to pass their 
 lives in learning to blow other people to pieces; 
 but hard-working, healthy creatures, raising their 
 own food and clothing, happy when they were 
 honest, and raised according to their merit, — 
 emigrating, when they did so, with their landlord 
 for leader of the expedition,) — giving away, I say, 
 the Land, and the Waters, and the Birds and the 
 Beasts and the creeping things, and the Adams 
 and Eves, and all the goodness of the days of 
 its creation, for the maintenance of a certain 
 separate group of select persons, in a miraculous 
 communion with God. 
 
 What you please to think of all this is not 
 my present business, only to state the facts to 
 you indisputably. 
 
 I take up now Viollet-le-Duc's summary of 
 them, p. 123, vol. I. "In 909, Duke William 
 of Aquitaine had founded the abbey of Cluny, 
 and given the lands of it to the apostles Peter 
 and Paul. 
 
 " A bull of John IX., in March 932, confirms 
 
ADDENDA TO "MENDING THE SIEVE. 1 7/ 
 
 the charter of William, and frees the monas- 
 tery ' from all dependence on any King, Bishop, 
 or Count whatsoever, and from any even of 
 Duke William's own family.' 
 
 "You must not judge this intervention of the 
 Roman Pontiffs by modern ideas. You must 
 reflect with conviction^ that in the midst of 
 general anarchy, of these thrusting encroach- 
 ments of all powers, one against another, of 
 this unbridled oppression by brutal force, the 
 sovereignty (' suzerainty '), — accepted by the 
 chair of St. Peter could oppose an invincible 
 barrier to material force, could establish spirit- 
 ual unity, and constitute a moral force of im- 
 measurable power in the full heart of barbarism. 
 And that was actually what happened. St. 
 Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury, St. Hugo, 
 Abbot of Cluny, and Gregory VII., are the 
 great figures which rule this epoch, and estab- 
 lish, no more to be overthrown,^ the independ- 
 
 i"Il faut songer.'' — Laconic and firm French, not otherwise 
 translatable with less lengthy English. 
 
 2 "D'une maniere inebranlable.'' — Of course the Priests' office, 
 once the apostle's, may to-day be forfeited or sold, as in old days, 
 but never, bv external force, overthrown. 
 
178 ADDENDA TO "MENDING THE SIEVE." 
 
 ence of the clergy. As may well be believed, 
 the populations were not indifferent in their great 
 debates; they saw rise round them, for an effi- 
 cacious refuge ^ against oppression, these monas- 
 teries in which were concentrated the men of 
 intelligence, the Spirits d'dlite, who in the one 
 strength given by profound conviction, that of 
 a regular and devoted life, held in check all 
 the great wordly power of the age. ' Opinion,' 
 to use a modern word, was all for them, and 
 it was not their least support; the regular 
 clergy then gathered into and around them- 
 selves all the hopes of the lower orders. There- 
 fore you must not be astonished if during the 
 eleventh and part of the twelfth century they 
 became the centre of all influence, all progress, 
 and all knowledge. Everywhere they founded 
 schools in which were taught letters, philosophy, 
 theology, the sciences and the arts. At the 
 Abbey of Bee, Lanfranc, and St. Anselm, being 
 Priors, did not disdain to instruct the secular 
 youth, to correct, during their vigils,^ the errors 
 
 1 Refuge, meaning, not merely Sanctuary, but Fortress. 
 
 2 Veilles — ' Watches of the Night.' 
 
ADDENDA TO "MENDING THE SIEVE." 179 
 
 in the manuscripts of Pagan authors, of the 
 Holy Writings, or of the Fathers. At Chmy 
 the most attentive cares ^ were given to teach- 
 ing. Ulric consecrates two chapters of his 
 'Customs of Cluny'2 in detailing the duties of 
 the masters towards the children, or adults con- 
 fided to them. ' The greatest prince was not 
 educated with more care in the palace of kings 
 than was the least of the children of Cluny.' " 
 
 Now, observe, the principles of teaching in 
 their schools were not "founded" with the 
 schools. There was no new system, no new 
 philosophy, no new science, set up for a new 
 light of the world by the Priors of Cluny. The 
 teaching throughout was the teaching of Charle- 
 magne : he is the Founder of the Schools of 
 France ; and through all the ruin of his temporal 
 dynasty, what he appointed to be taught of sacred 
 and everlasting truth and righteousness was still 
 taught by the patience and cherished in the hearts 
 
 1 " Les soins les plus attentifs." — The French plural is able to 
 express the divided and opposite cares of true education where our 
 English " care " does little more than indicate general anxiety, per- 
 haps acting only in a single direction, and that a blundering one. 
 
 2 Udalrici Antiq. Consuet. Clun. Mon. lib. III., ch. viii. et ix. 
 
l8o ADDENDA TO "MENDING THE SIEVE." 
 
 of his clergy. "The schools founded by Charle- 
 magne ^ rose under the shelter of the churches ; 
 there necessarily took refuge all intelligence 
 devoted to the study of the sciences and arts. 
 Geometry, drawing, sculpture and painting could 
 be taught only in the establishments which pre- 
 served yet a little of calm and tranquillity in the 
 midst of the frightful chaos of the Carlovingian 
 epoch. ^ And towards the end of the tenth cen- 
 tury, at the moment when it seemed that society 
 was about to extinguish itself^ in barbarism, an 
 abbey founded itself at Cluny, and from the 
 bosom of that religious order, for more than a 
 century, came out nearly all the men who, with 
 an incomparable patience and energy, arrested 
 the progress of the barbarism — put order into 
 the chaos, and regulated the education — of West- 
 ern Europe from Spain to Poland. There is no 
 
 1 Viollet-le-Duc, under the word " Architecte," p. lo8, where it 
 is of extreme interest to see how his mind instantly fastens on Cluny 
 as the Mistress of his own Art. 
 
 2 Chaotic, however, only in central Europe, and only among the 
 military powers. 
 
 * S'eteindre. — Another precious French idiom. Let no society 
 — no person — ever speak of their ' extinction ' but as self-caused. 
 
ADDENDA TO "MENDING THE SIEVE. l8l 
 
 doubt that Cluny gave to Western Europe, not 
 only her popes, her bishops, her ambassadors, 
 and — r so far as their education reached — her 
 kings, but also her architects, painters, physicians, 
 reforming scholars, and school-professors. Raze 
 Cluny from the eleventh century, and we find 
 scarcely anything left but darkness, gross igno- 
 rance, and monstrous abuses." 
 
INDEX. 
 
 The References are to pages of this volume. 
 
 Abbey, plan of Benedictine, 158-161. 
 Abbot, duties of Benedictine, 154-156. 
 — ' — Bernon, 173. 
 
 Eginhardt, 158. 
 
 Hugo, 162. 
 
 Samson (Carlyle's), 156. 
 
 Scott's novel, 135. 
 
 Academy (R. A. Exhibition of Old Masters), 29. 
 
 Acliilles, 61, 82, 86. 
 
 Adige, 7-1 1, 23, 30, 34. 
 
 Aeacidae, 82, SB. 
 
 Aeacus, 61, 62, 71, 77-85. 
 
 Aegina (island), 61, 62, 68-70, 72, 83, 85. 
 
 (nymph), 80, 82, 85 
 
 Aegis, symbolism, 75. 
 
 Aeras of Church history, 141-146. 
 
 Agricola, 104. 
 
 Agriculture of the monks, 140, 160, 168. 
 
 Albane, sister of William of Aquitaine, 174. 
 
 Alban, St., 96. 
 
 Albert della Scala, 18. 
 
 Alfred, King, 98, 142. 
 
 183 
 
184 INDEX. 
 
 Algeria, Franks and French in, 1 17. 
 Alma Tadema, Mr., 146. 
 Alphonse of Castille, 162. 
 Alps in summer, 32. 
 
 of Verona, 6-10. 
 
 rivers of the, 29, 30-34. 
 
 Amos the prophet, 150. 
 Amphion, 62, 81. 
 Angelico, Frk, 16. 
 
 Animals, imperfection of, 42-46. 
 
 marvellous instincts, 46-50. 
 
 kindness to, 42. 
 
 Anselm, 177, 178. 
 "Antiquary" (Scott's novel), 135. 
 Antonio della Scala, 21. 
 Antony the hermit, 128. 
 
 (Shakespeare's), III. 
 
 Ants, Greek myths about, 60-62. 
 Apelles, 143. 
 
 Apennines near Verona, 6, 9. 
 Apollo, 83, 84. 
 
 temple at Monte Cassino, 152. 
 
 Aquitaine, William, Duke of, 157, 172, 176. 
 
 Arabian Nights, 7. 
 
 Arachne, 50-55. 
 
 Arcadia, stream-myths, 80. 
 
 Architecture, Lombardic, 15. 
 
 military, 6. 
 
 monastic, 143, 158, 163. 
 
 see also Gothic, Revival. 
 
INDEX. 185 
 
 Argos, 67-69. 
 
 Arian heresy, loi. 
 
 Art, barbaric, 14, 15, 100. 
 
 Gothic Christian, 19, 143, 163. 
 
 importance to history, 144. 
 
 not to be taught by rules, 50. 
 
 perfection impossible, 55. 
 
 Renaissance, 24-29. 
 
 see also Architecture, Painting. 
 
 Arthur, King, 96, loi. 
 
 Prince, 39. 
 
 Asopus, myths of, 80, 86. 
 
 " Astrology " of Lucian, 88, 89. 
 
 Athanasius, St., loi. 
 
 Athena, and see Minerva, Pallas, 51-56, 59. 
 
 Athos, Saxons at Mt., 121. 
 
 Atreids, Atreus, myths of, 89. 
 
 Atropos, 79. 
 
 Augustine, St., loi. 
 
 Aurelian, Emperor, 113. 
 
 Author (John Ruskin) : (a) Personal : — 
 
 at Verona, 8. 
 
 change of opinion on art, 29, 144, 163. 
 
 journey of, 144. 
 
 plans and aims, 34, 56, 163. 
 
 Protestantism, 162, 168. 
 
 reminiscences of childhood, 39-42, 135. 
 (p) Works alluded to : — 
 
 Aratra Pentelici, 77. 
 
 Bible of Amiens, 120. 
 
1 86 INDEX. 
 
 Author (John Ruskin) : — 
 
 (F) Works alluded to {continued) : — 
 
 Fors Clavigera, ii8. 
 
 Lectures on Architecture and Painting, 153. 
 
 Lectures on Art (1870), 88. 
 
 Modern Painters, 16. 
 
 Munera Pulveris, 7--74. 
 
 On the Old Road, 1 1 . 
 
 Our Fathers have Told us, 95. 
 
 Poetry of Architecture, 144. 
 
 Praeterita, 40. 
 
 Queen of the Air, 16, 45, 68. 
 
 Stones of Venice, 11, 54. 
 
 Valle Crucis, 95. 
 Avallon, porch of St. Ladre, 152. 
 Awkwardness of animals, 44, 45, 46. 
 
 Baal worship symbolised, 152. 
 
 Babylonian weights used by Greeks, 68. 
 
 Barbaric art and religion, 12, 13, 15, 84. 
 
 Barbarossa, 10. 
 
 Barges, sea-worthy, 121. 
 
 Bartolommeo della Scala, 21. 
 
 Bassano, 24. 
 
 Batavia, Franks in, 125. 
 
 Bayeux tapestry, 5 1 . 
 
 Bellini, John, 13, 27, 29. 
 
 Belluno, 24. 
 
 Benedictine Gospel, 153. 
 
 Order, 149, 156, 170. 
 
INDEX. 187 
 
 Benedict, St., 145-155. 
 Bern {i.e. Verona), 10. 
 Bernard, St., of Clairvaux, 144, 164-169. 
 Bernard, St., of Menthon, 144. 
 Bernon, Abbot, 173, 174. 
 Bethlehem, St. Jerome at, 128, 142. 
 Bevilacqua, or Builacqua of Verona, 21. 
 Bible quoted : — 
 
 "Let there be light" (Gen. i. 3), 87. 
 
 " clothed daughters of people in scarlet " (2 Sam. i. 
 24), 58. 
 
 " portions to them for whom nothing is prepared " 
 (Neh. viii. 10), 57. 
 
 prophecy of Amos (ix. 9, 13-15), 150. 
 
 Magnificat and Benedictus (Luke i. 46, 68), 147. 
 
 Miracle at Cana (John ii.), 148. 
 
 "The night cometh" (John ix. 4), 169. 
 
 "Come over into Macedonia" (Acts xvi. 9), 128. 
 
 "The wages of sin is death " (Rom. vi. 23), 74. 
 
 "Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die" (i Cor. 
 XV. 32), 169. 
 
 Pudens and Claudia (2 Tim. iv. 21), 108. 
 Bigotry, 22. 
 Bird's nest, 47. 
 Black Prince, 98. 
 
 Black Sea, Saxons in, 121, 125 ; and see Euxine. 
 Boadicea, 96, 97, 104, 107. 
 Bolton Abbey, 136. 
 Bononcorsi, inquisitor of Mantua, 18. 
 Borneo, terraced irrigation, 33. 
 
155 INDEX. 
 
 Borromeo, Count, 28. 
 Bosphorus, Saxons in, 121, 124. 
 Boulogne, early history, 113, 127. 
 British Christianity, g6-i:o. 
 
 history, 102-128. 
 
 navy, 115-12B. 
 
 workman, advice to, 54, 63. 
 
 Burgundy evangelised by Columbanus, 97. 
 
 Burseldon, Beirleux and Limangton, ancient shipbuilding 
 ports (Beaulieu, Lymington), 117. 
 
 CjESAR (Shakespeare's), 11 1. 
 
 Caligula, 127. 
 
 Camelodunum, 108. 
 
 Cana, miracle at, 148. 
 
 Can Grande della Scala, 5, 23. 
 
 Can Signorio della Scala, 20-23. 
 
 Canute, 98, 142. 
 
 "Captain," loss of the, 115, 117. 
 
 Carausius, 126. 
 
 Carlyle quoted, 13. 
 
 Carpaccio, 26, 27. 
 
 Castruccio Castracani, 23. 
 
 Cathedral and minster, 93. 
 
 Catherine, St., 142. 
 
 Cecilia, St., 142. 
 
 Charlemagne, 142, 158, 170, 172, 179. 
 
 Charnock's "Naval Architecture," 117. 
 
 Charon, 78. 
 
 China, terraced irrigation, 33, 
 
INDEX. 189 
 
 Christendom defined, 98. 
 Christianisation of barbarians, 12, 13. 
 Christianity, development, 12-14, I4'> HQ- 
 
 early British, 96-110. 
 
 heresies, 101. 
 
 in corruption, 22, 23, 152. 
 
 mediaeval, 17-22, 138, 143, 152, 175, 176. 
 
 monastic, 136-181. 
 
 Christopher, St., 142. 
 Cima da Conegliano, 27. 
 Cimbri, 120. 
 Cistercians, 143, 164. 
 
 Citeaux, 156, 157, 161, 162, 166-167. 
 Clairvaux (St. Bernard's Abbey), 161. 
 Claudia, wife of Pudens, 108. 
 Claudius, Emperor, 108, 126. 
 
 the Dacian, in, 112, 122. 
 
 Clench in boat-building, 116. 
 Clotho, 78. 
 
 Cluny, 156, 157, 161, 162, 170-181. 
 
 Cobweb, 47-50. 
 
 Coeus the Titan, 87. 
 
 Coinage : Abbey of Cluny, 162. 
 
 Early Greek, 68. 
 
 English, 100, 129. 
 
 Romano-British, 107. 
 
 Saxon, 129-131. 
 
 Columba, St., 96, 97. 
 Columbanus, St., 97. 
 Columbus, 116. 
 
igO INDEX. 
 
 Confessor, Edward the, 98. 
 
 Congius of the Capitol, 131. 
 
 Constance, Council of, a.d. 1005 [sic in loc. cii.l, 170. 
 
 Constantine, Emperor, 113, 114, 127. 
 
 Constantius, 104, 113. 
 
 Cookery, 56, 57. 
 
 Co-operative manufactures of the monks, 160. 
 
 Coracles, 116. 
 
 Cordelia (Shakespeare's " King Lear"), loi. 
 
 Corinth, 81. 
 
 Coriolanus (Shakespeare's), no. 
 
 Correggio, 11, 16. 
 
 C6te d'or, 166. 
 
 Couttet, Joseph, 40. 
 
 Craftsmanship of barbarians, 122, 123. 
 
 of monks, 159, 160. 
 
 Crete, 77. 
 
 " Critic Law," 72-74. 
 
 Cronos, 7y, 87. 
 
 Cross, red, of Normans, 100. 
 
 symbolism, 152. 
 
 Croydon, author at, 42. 
 Cumberland, author in, 42. 
 Cymbeline (Shakespeare's), 100, 116. 
 Cyprus, Northmen in, 121, 123. 
 
 Daddy-long-legs, 46. 
 Damian, St., 142. 
 Danae, 32. 
 Dante, 10, 12, 16, 63. 
 
INDEX. 191 
 
 Dante, quoted : — " In sul paese " ^ (Purg. XVI. 115), 30 
 
 Minos (Inf. V.), 76, 77. 
 
 Trajan (Purg. X. 76-93), 112. 
 Dardanelles, Saxons in, 121 ; and see Hellespont. 
 Dates of English epochs, 97, 98. 
 Dee, coracles on the, 1 16. 
 Delta of the Po, 31. 
 Deucalionidas, 85. 
 Dietrich (Theodoric), 10. 
 Dijon, 165. 
 
 Diocletian, Emperor, 106, 159. 
 Dioscuri, 86. 
 Dirce, Si. 
 
 Divina Commedia, 17; and see Dante. 
 Dniester, Northmen on the, 119-121. 
 Dominicans, their influence on art, 143. 
 Dora river, 34. 
 Dorians, 71. 
 
 Dover, Carausius at, 127. 
 Draco, Athenian legislator, 74. 
 Dragon, of Aegina, 61, 84. 
 
 of the Lombards, 15, 16. 
 
 of Troy, 83, 84. 
 
 teeth of Thebes, 85 . 
 
 Drake, Sir Francis, 118. 
 
 1 " In the land laved by Po and Adige 
 Valour and courtesy used to be found 
 Before that Frederick had his controversy," 
 
 i.e. the war between Frederick II. and Pope Gregory IX. 
 
192 INDEX. 
 
 Dresden, congius of the Capitol at, 131. 
 
 Dress, 56-59. 
 
 Dutch influence on English navy, 115. 
 
 Eagle feeding, 44, 45. 
 Edinburgh, 137. 
 Education, 39-42, 178-18 1 
 Edward the Confessor, 98. 
 
 the Third's coins, 129. 
 
 Eginhardt, Abbot, 158. 
 Elysian fields, myth of, 74. 
 
 Embroidery of Arachne and Athena, 50-54, 59. 
 
 Eos, 87. 
 
 Epochs of English history, 97, 98. 
 
 of Church history, 141-143. 
 
 Eremites, hermits, 141, 150. 
 Eryngium campestre (field Eryngo), 6. 
 Esquimaux canoes, 116. 
 
 Eubcea, metric standard, 69. 
 
 Eudes (King of France, 887-898 a.d.), 174. 
 
 Euganean hills, 9. 
 
 Euxine, Northmen on the, 124; and see Black Sea. 
 
 Ezzelin, 11. 
 
 Faults in good art inevitable, 55. 
 Federigo (Frederick II.), 30; see Dante. 
 Feltre, 24. 
 
 Ferry (KarciTrAovs) of Lucian, 78, 79. 
 
 Florence, 143 (referring to the Spanish chapel: see "Morn- 
 ings in Florence : the Strait Gate ") . 
 Fors and Mors, 73. 
 
INDEX. 193 
 
 Fortification of Verona, 3-5, 24. 
 
 Fossils of Verona, 4. 
 
 Franciscans, their influence on art, 143, 163. 
 
 Franks, 106, 116, 117, 123-127. 
 
 French idioms, 177-180. 
 
 influence on English navy, 115, 116. 
 
 Friuli, 9. 
 
 Froude, Mr., 146. 
 
 Gainsborough, Thomas, 26. 
 Gall, Abbey of St., 158. 
 Gallienus, Emperor, 112. 
 Garda, Lago di, 19. 
 Gardens of the monks, 158-160. 
 Gaul, 114, 116, 123, 125, 154. 
 Genealogy of the Aeacidae, 86. 
 Geology, birth of, 4. 
 
 of Verona, 8. 
 
 Ghibellines of Lombardy, 24. 
 
 Gibbon quoted, 103, iii, 113, 117-119, 124, 126, 148. 
 
 Gildas quoted, 104-107. 
 
 Giles, Dr., translator of Gildas, 105. 
 
 Goldsmith's art, 59, i6i. 
 
 Gothic art and religion, 143, 162, 163. 
 
 in England, 99. 
 
 in Italy, II, 12, 19. 
 
 Goths in Italy, 7, 10, 11, 113. 
 
 as sailors, 1 18-124. 
 
 Government, 35, 62-64. 
 Greece, early history, 67-82. 
 
194 INDEX. 
 
 Greece, influence on early Britain, 99. 
 
 on the Renaissance, 12. 
 
 Greece, literature in advance of art, 14. 
 
 myths, 50-62, 70-89. 
 
 Griffin of Verona, 16. 
 
 Grote's History of Greece quoted, d-j, 68. 
 
 Harmonia, myth of, 62. 
 
 Hase on weights and measures, 131. 
 
 Hastings, battle of, 98. 
 
 Helios, 87. 
 
 Hellespont, Northmen in the, 124; and see Dardanelles. 
 
 Hengist, 97. 
 
 Henry's History of England quoted, 108, 109. 
 
 Henry the Fifth's groat, 129. 
 
 Herakles, 68, 86. 
 
 Hercules, columns of, 125. 
 
 Heresies of the Church, loi, 102. 
 
 Heretics burnt at Verona, 19. 
 
 Hermes, myths of, 78, 79, 88. 
 
 Herodias carved at Avallon, 152. 
 
 Hesiod quoted, 87. 
 
 Histoire des Villes de France, 127. 
 
 History of Acts and Thoughts (Fact and Myth) , 69. 
 
 Homer quoted, 61, 74. 
 
 Horace quoted, 75. 
 
 Hugo, St., of Cluny, 162, 177. 
 
 Hussey's "Ancient Weights and Measures," 131. 
 
 Huxley, Professor, 45. 
 
 Hyperion, 87. 
 
INDEX. 195 
 
 Iernic Christianity, 96, 97. 
 
 Imagination, and Fact, in History, 70. 
 
 Imogen (Shakespeare's "Cymbeline"), loi. 
 
 Independence, 63-64. 
 
 Indian canoes, 116. 
 
 India, terraced irrigation, 33. 
 
 Ingelberge of Aquitaine, 174. 
 
 Injury, meaning of the word, 72-73. 
 
 Inn, river, 7. 
 
 Innspruclc, 7. 
 
 Ireland, early Christianity, 96, 97. 
 
 Irish coracles, 116. 
 
 Ismene, 81. 
 
 Italian character and religion, 16, 17, 35. 
 
 masters in the Renaissance, 24-29. 
 
 Italy, King of (Victor Emmanuel), 23. 
 Ivy, symbol of Bacchus, 53. 
 
 James, St., ioi. 
 
 Jason, 123. 
 
 Jasper of Verona, 8. 
 
 Jedburgh, author at, 136. 
 
 Jermyn Street (Museum of School of Mines), 
 
 Jerome, St., 128, 142. 
 
 by Bellini, 27, 28. 
 
 Joanna, wife of Can Grande, 23. 
 
 Judges in Greek mythology, 72, 74, 76. 
 
 Juliet (Shakespeare's), 147. 
 
 Juno, 84. 
 
 Jupiter, 61 ; and see Zeus. 
 
 Jura mountains, 165. 
 
196 INDEX. 
 
 Kale of the Monks, 138, 158, 159. 
 Keats's " Hyperion," 87. 
 
 Labour, a divine service, 57 ; and see Benedictine Gospel. 
 
 La Fontaine, St. Bernard's birthplace, 165. 
 
 Lancaster, Wars of the Roses, 98. 
 
 Lanfranc, 178. 
 
 Law, "Critic," 72-74. 
 
 Lear (Shakespeare's), 100, 
 
 Leslie, Mr. Robert, 11 5-1 17. 
 
 Lethe, 78. 
 
 Liberty, 35, 41, 122. 
 
 Libra, litre, 131. 
 
 Limestone of Verona, 8. 
 
 Lion of Leontini, 75. 
 
 Lionardo da Vinci, 27, 33. 
 
 Livy, 10. 
 
 Loch Leven (Scott's "Abbot"), 160. 
 
 Locomotive described, 42. 
 
 Lombard art and character, 12, 13, 14, 19. 
 
 kings of Verona, 11. 
 
 league, 5. 
 
 Lombardy, plain, 5, 6, 9. 
 
 rivers, 30, 35. 
 
 London Institution, 135, 145 ; at Finsbury Circus, 166. 
 
 streets, 163. 
 
 Lorain, P&re, " History of Cluny," 173, 174. 
 
 Louis, St., 143. 
 
 Lucca, 23. 
 
 Lucian quoted, 77-80, 88, 89. 
 
INDEX. 197 
 
 " Lucy Gray" (Wordsworth), 93. 
 Luini, 27-29. 
 Lutheranism, 10 1. 
 
 Machinery and animals, 42-46. 
 Macon, 165, 172. 
 Madonna, by Luini, 28. 
 
 by Raphael, 13, 169. 
 
 Mantegna, 11, 27. 
 Mantua, 9, 18. 
 
 Manufacture and trade of the monks, 159, 160. 
 
 Marble of Verona, 8. 
 
 Martial alluded to (Epig. xi. 53), 108. 
 
 Mary's, St., Melrose, 138. 
 
 Masters, age of the, 27. 
 
 Mastino I. of Verona, 18. 
 
 Maximian, Emperor, 113, 126. 
 
 Melrose Abbey, 138, 139. 
 
 Mercury, 80 ; see Hermes. 
 
 Metamorphoses, see Ovid. 
 
 Milan, 32. 
 
 Minerva, 51 ; and see Athena, Pallas. 
 
 Minos, 75-80. 
 
 Minster and cathedral, 93. 
 
 Miracles, 147, 148. 
 
 Mnemosune the Titan, 86, 87. 
 
 Modern dislike of monks, 136-139. 
 
 life, 139, 144' 
 
 Mohammedanism, narrow but not'false, 142. 
 Molesmes Abbey, 157, 167. 
 
igS INDEX. 
 
 Mommsen quoted, 131. 
 
 "Monastery'' (Scott), 135; and see Mysie, Happer. 
 
 Monasticism, 94, 136-181. 
 
 Benedictine, 1 53-1 61. 
 
 Monte Cassino, 97, 152, 154. 
 Monte Rosa, 32. 
 
 Mottoes on coins, 100, 129. 
 
 Moutli painted by Gainsborougii and Carpaccio, 26. 
 
 Myrmidons, 60-62, 84-S7. 
 
 Mysie Happer (Scott's "Monastery"), 168. 
 
 Mytliology, 53, 62, 70-72, 84-86, 145, 147. 
 
 Mytlis, of Aeacus, 77-84. 
 
 Arachne, 50-59. 
 
 Asopus and rivers, 80. 
 
 Charon's ferry, 78, 79. 
 
 Hermes as cloud-god, 79, 88. 
 
 Minos, 75-77. 
 
 Myrmidons, 60-62, 84-87. 
 
 Orplieus, Teiresias, Atreus, 89. 
 
 Rhadamantlius, 74. 
 
 Sisyplius, 81, 82. 
 
 Titans, 86, 87. 
 
 Troy walls, 83, 84. 
 
 William Tell, 70. 
 
 Narcissus by Luini, 29. 
 National Gallery, 27. 
 
 strength, 62-64. 
 
 Nativity by Luini, 28. 
 
 Nature worship and Christianity, 152. 
 
INDEX. 199 
 
 Navy, Roman and British, 1 14-128. 
 
 Neoptolemus, 82, 86. 
 
 Nessus and Deianira, carved at Avallon, 152. 
 
 Norman art and character, 14, 99. 
 
 Northmen in the Mediterranean, &c., 124. 
 
 Norway boats, 116. 
 
 Numbers, tlieir symbohsm, 71, 72. 
 
 Nuremberg, 163. 
 
 Nurse of Juliet, of St. Benedict, 147-149. 
 
 Obedience, child's lesson in, 40. 
 
 Oceanus, 87. 
 
 Odysseus, 123. 
 
 Olive, symbol of Athena, 54. 
 
 Olympia, 67. 
 
 Orpheus, myth of, 88, 89. 
 
 Ovid quoted, 52, 62, 85. 
 
 Padua, 9, 10, 24. 
 
 Pallas, 75 ; and see Athena, Minerva. 
 
 Painting, developed by monks, 143, 163. 
 
 Parma, 9. 
 
 Patrick, St., 97. 
 
 Paul, St, 108, 109, 174, 175. 
 
 Pausanias quoted, 81, 83. 
 
 Peasantry, dress of, 57-S9- 
 
 Pedius founds Boulogne, 127. 
 
 Peirene, myth of, 81. 
 
 Pelagian heresy, loi. 
 
 Peleus, 86. 
 
200 INDEX. 
 
 Pelican feeding, 45. 
 
 Penelope's web, 51. 
 
 Peregrini or Perigrini, Tommaso, 20, 21. 
 
 Perfect art, 24-29. 
 
 Perugino, 27. 
 
 Peter Martyr, by Bellini (now in the National Gallery), 29. 
 
 Peter, St., loi, 162, 174, 175. 
 
 Petrarch, 10. 
 
 Phasis, Franks at, 124. 
 
 Pheidon of Argos, 67, 68. 
 
 Phidias, 55. 
 
 Philoctetes of Sophocles, 82. 
 
 Phoebe the Titan, 87. 
 
 Pinamonte, Podestk of Verona, 18. 
 
 Pindar quoted, 70, Tj, 83. 
 
 Plan of abbey, 158-161. 
 
 Plautius, 108. 
 
 Po, river, 30-34. 
 
 Pomponia Gra;cina, 108, 109. 
 
 Poseidon, 83, 84. 
 
 Posthumus (in history and in Shakespeare's "Cymbeline"), 
 
 116. 
 Pound, Saxon and Roman, 130-131. 
 Probus, 123, 126. 
 Pudens, 108. 
 Punishment, use of, 75. 
 
 Raphael and Tobit (Tobias), by Perugino (Nat. Gall.), 27. 
 
 Sanzio, 13, 27, 55, 146. 
 
 Ravenna, 31. 
 
INDEX. 201 
 
 Reading, advice on, 60, 93. 
 
 Revival (Renaissance), 12, 13, 24-29. 
 
 Reynolds, Sir Joshua, 55. 
 
 Rhadamanthus, 74, 77, 80. 
 
 Rhea, 86. 
 
 Rhine, 124. 
 
 Rhone, 31, 35. 
 
 Rialto, 143. 
 
 Rights of men and women, 56. 
 
 Rivers of Verona and Lombardy, 30-35. 
 
 Roman pound, 130, 131. 
 
 Rome, Can Grande at, 23. 
 
 decline of, 146, 154. 
 
 influence on Britain, 99-128. 
 
 " Royal George," loss of the, 115, 117. 
 Royal Institution of London, 3, 4, 34. 
 
 Saints, 141, 142, 147. 
 Salamis, battle, 86. 
 
 island and myths, 86. 
 
 Samplers, 51. 
 
 Sa6ne, 166. 
 
 Savoyard peasant (Couttet), 40. 
 
 Saxons as sailors, 120. 
 
 in England, 96-99, 130. 
 
 Scala family, Scaligers, 11, 18-23. 
 Scarlet in cloaks and regimentals, 58, 59. 
 Scotland, 23, 96, 97. 
 
 Scott, Sir Walter, 135-137, 160. 
 Selene the Titan, 87. 
 
202 INDEX. 
 
 Serpents of the Aegis, and of Minos, 76. 
 
 Shakespeare, 10, no, iii, 116, 147. 
 
 Ships, 1 1 5-1 23. 
 
 Sicily, Northmen in, 125. 
 
 Sieve of St. Benedict. 147-149, 150. 
 
 Sight, is it mechanical, 45. 
 
 Simon Lee (Wordsworth), 160. 
 
 Sirmione, 19. 
 
 Sirmium, 113. 
 
 Sisyphus, myths of, 81, 82. 
 
 Sophocles quoted, 82. 
 
 Spain, 109, 117, 125, 180. 
 
 Spider, 47-50> 5-' 55- 
 
 Spirit or life in animals, 46. 
 
 Study of art, advice on, 55. 
 
 of literature, 60, 93. 
 
 Styca, 129. 
 
 Swift's flight and voice, 46. 
 
 Swiss character shown in the myth of Tell, 70. 
 
 Symbolism, 16, 53, 71, 72. 
 
 Syracuse, 125. 
 
 Tacitus quoted, 108, 120. 
 Teiresias, myth of, 89. 
 Tennyson, alluded to, lOI, 164. 
 Tethys, 87. 
 Thea, Theia, 87. 
 Thebe, myth of, 80. 
 Thebes, 62, 81, 85. 
 Themis, 86, 87. 
 
INDEX. 203 
 
 Theodoric, 10, 142, 146. 
 
 Theogony quoted, see Hesiod. 
 
 Theseus, 123. 
 
 Thornaby Waste (Tennyson's Northern Farmer), 164. 
 
 Thrace, Saxons in, 121. 
 
 Thuriun, coins of, 77. 
 
 Tiberius Cssar {i.e. Claudius), 107. 
 
 Ticino river, 31-34. 
 
 Titans, myth of, 86, 87. 
 
 Titian, 11. 
 
 Toccia river, 31. 
 
 Tombs of Verona, 20. 
 
 Tortoise, myth of, 88, 89. 
 
 Tower pound and ounce, 130. 
 
 Tragedies of Verona, 11. 
 
 Trajan and the widow, 112; and see Dante. 
 
 Troy walls, myth of, 83, 84. 
 
 Turner, Sharon (Hist, of England), 126. 
 
 Tyrants and their myrmidons, 60. 
 
 Udalric or Ulric, " Customs of Cluny," 179. 
 Ulphilas, 128. 
 
 Valleys, reclaimed by monks, 140. 
 Vatican, Raphael's frescoes, 1 53. 
 Venice, 3, 9, 11, 30, 33. 
 
 Ducal palace, sculpture of Trajan, 112. 
 
 Rialto, laws of commerce, 143. 
 
 Verona, 3-24, 30, 147. 
 Veronese, Paul, 11. 
 
204 INDEX. 
 
 Verrocchio, 27. 
 
 Vespasian, Emperor, 131. 
 
 Vicenza, battle of, 24. 
 
 VioUet-le-Duc, quoted, 153, 158, 170-180. 
 
 Virgil, 10. 
 
 Vistula, Saxons on the, 120, 121. 
 
 Vulgate Bible, 142. 
 
 Wandel, river, 42. 
 
 War as educating humanity, 25. 
 
 William, Duke of Aquitaine, 157, 172-177. 
 
 the Conqueror, 51, 162. 
 
 Women's rights and work, 58. 
 Woolwich, 39. 
 Wordsworth, 93, 160. 
 
 York, early history, 113, 127. 
 Yorkshire, author's early days in, 42, 136. 
 
 Zeno, San (Verona), 10. 
 Zethus, 81. 
 
 Zeus, 80, 81, 86; see Jupiter. 
 Zodiac, myths of, 89. 
 
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