CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 GIFT OF 
 
 Anonymous 
 UNDERGRADUATE LIBRARY 
 
Cornell University Library 
 PR 525S.A1 1891 
 
 The crown of wild olives.Four lectures o 
 
 3 1924 009 636 345 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tliis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924009636345 
 
JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
CROWN OF WILD 
 OLIVE. 
 
 FOUR LECTURES 
 
 ON WORK, TRAFFIC, WAR, AND THE FUTURE 
 OF ENGLAND. X"- 
 
 ■ — BY — 
 
 JOHN RUSKIN, M. A.^ 
 
 And indeed it should have been of gold, had not Jupiter 
 been so poor — Aeistophanes. {Pluius), 
 
 New Yoke : 
 HTTBST AND COMPANY, 
 
 FUBLISHEBS. 
 
 ■ APR 16 1980 
 
 URIS LIBRARY 
 
J J 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 LECTURE L 
 
 FAOS. 
 
 WoiK 37 
 
 LECTURE II. 
 Tkafvic 81 
 
 LECTURE in. 
 Wak i2j 
 
 LECTURE IV. 
 The lyruRx ov England iSi 
 
 ^rF£NPJX..< ,...,,..., 2117 
 
preface: 
 
 TwKJMTV years ago, there was no loveliei 
 piece of lowland scenery in South England, 
 nor any more pathetic in the world, by its ex- 
 pression of sweet human character and life, 
 than that immediately bordering on the sources 
 of the Wandle, and including the lower moors 
 of Addington, and the villages of Beddington 
 and Carshalton, with all their pools and 
 streams. No clearer or diviner waters ever 
 sang with constant lips of the hand which ' 
 " giveth rain from heaven ; " no pastures ever 
 lightened in -springtime with more passionate 
 blossoming ; no sweeter homes ever hallowed 
 the heart of the passer-by with their pride of 
 peaceful gladness — fain-hidden — ^yet full-con- 
 fessed. The place remains, or, until a few 
 months ago, remained, nearly unchanged in its 
 larger features ; but, with deliberate mind I 
 say, that I have never seen anything so ghastly 
 
^ pRSPAdM. 
 
 in its inner tragic meaning, — not in Pisan 
 Maremma, — not by Campagna tomb, — not by 
 the sand-isles of the Torcellan shore, — as the 
 slow stealing of aspects of reckless, indolent, 
 animal neglect, over the delicate sweetness of 
 that English scene : nor is any blasphemy or 
 impiety — any frantic saying or godless thought 
 — more appalling to me, using the best power 
 of judgment I have to discern its sense and 
 scope, than the insolent defilings of those 
 springs by the human herds that drink of 
 them. Just where the welling of stainless 
 water, trembling and pure, like a body of light, 
 enters the pool of Carshalton, cutting itself a 
 radiant channel down to the gravel, through 
 warp of feathery weeds, all waving, which it 
 traverses with its deep threads of clearness, 
 like the chalcedony in moss-agate, starred here 
 and there with white grenouillette ; just in the 
 very rush and murmur of the first spreading 
 currents, the human wretches of the place cast 
 their street and house foulness ; heaps of dust 
 and slime, and broken shreds of old metal, 
 and rags of putrid clothes; they having 
 neither energy to cart it away, nor decency 
 enough to dig it into the ground, thus shed 
 lata the strean)j to diffuse what venom of it 
 
PREPACM. if 
 
 Will float and melt, far awky, in all places 
 ■where God meant those waters to bring joy 
 and health. And, in a little pool, behind 
 some houses farther in the village, where 
 another spring rises, the shattered stones of 
 the well, and of the little fretted channel 
 which was long ago built and^traced foirit by 
 gentler hands, lie scattered, each from each, 
 under a ragged bank of mortar, and scoria, 
 and bricklayers' refuse, on one side, which the 
 clean water nevertheless chastises to purity; 
 but it cannot conquer the dead earth beyond ; 
 and- there, circled and coiled under festering 
 scum, the stagnant edge of the pool effaces 
 itself into a slope of black slime, the accumu- 
 lation of indolent years. Half a dozen men, 
 with one day's work, could cleans© those pools, 
 and trim the , flowers about their banks, and 
 make every breath of summer air above them 
 rich with cool balm ; and every glittering wave 
 medicinal, as if it ran, troubled of angels, 
 from the porch of Bethesda. But that day's 
 work is never given, nor will be ; nor will any 
 joy be possible to heart of man, for evermore, 
 about those wells of English waters. 
 
 When I last left them, I walked up slowly 
 1^ou|h the back gtreet^ of Croydon, from t^^ 
 
8 PREFACE. 
 
 old church to the hospital ; and, just on the 
 left, before coming up to the crossing of the 
 High Street, there was a new public-house 
 built. And the front of it was built in so wise 
 manner, that a recess of two feet was left 
 below its front windows, between them and 
 the street-pavement — a recess too narrow for 
 any possible use (for even if it had been occu- 
 pied by a seat, as in old time it might have 
 been, everybody walking along the street 
 would have fallen over the legs of the reposing 
 wayfarers). But, by way of making this two 
 ' feet depth of freehold land more expressive of 
 the dignity of an establishment for the sale of 
 spirituous liquors, it was fenced from the 
 pavement by an imposing iron railing, having 
 four or five spearheads to the yard of it, and 
 six feet high ; containing as much iron and 
 iron-work, indeed, as could well be piit into 
 the space ; and by this stately arrangement, 
 the little piece of dead ground within, between 
 wall and street, becp.me a protective receptacle 
 of refuse ; cigar ends, and oyster shells, and 
 the like, such as an open-handed English 
 street-populace habitually scatters from its 
 presence, and was thus left, unsweepable by 
 any ordinary method^, l^ow the iroa bara 
 
PREFACE. ^^■ 
 
 ■which, uselessly (or in great degree worse than 
 uselessly), enclosed this bit of ground, and 
 made it pestilent, represented a quantity of 
 work whicli would have cleansed the Carshal- 
 ton pools three times over ; — of work, partly 
 cramped and deadly, in the mine ; partly 
 fierce * and exhaustive, at the furnace, partly 
 
 * " A fearful occurrence took place a few days since, 
 near Wolverhampton. Thomas Snape, aged nineteen, 
 was on duty as the 'keeper' of a blast furnace at 
 Deepfield, assisted by John Gardner, aged eighteen, 
 and Joseph Swift, aged thirty-seven. The furnace con- 
 tained four-tons of molten iron, and an equal amount 
 of cinders, and ought to have been run out at 7.30 
 p. M. But Snape and his mates, engaged in talking 
 and drinldng, neglected their duty, and, in the mean. 
 time, the iron rose in the furnace untiL it reached a pipe 
 ■wherein water was contained. Just as the men had 
 stripped, and were proceeding to tap the furnace, the 
 water in the pipe, converted into steam, burst down its 
 front and let loose on them the molten metal, which 
 instantaneously consumed Gardner; Snape, terribly 
 burnt, and mad with pain, leaped into the canal and 
 then ran home and fell dead on the threshold ; Swift 
 survived to reach the hospital, where he died too." 
 
 In further illustration of this matter, I beg the 
 reader to look at the article on the " Decay of the 
 English Race," in the Pall Mall Gazette of April 17, of 
 this year; and at the articles on the f Report of the 
 Thames Cammission," in any journals of the sam^ 
 
lO PREFACE. 
 
 foolish and "sedentary, of ill-taught students 
 making bad designs : work from the beginning 
 to the last fruits of it, and in all the branches 
 of it, venomous, deathful, and miserable. 
 Now, how did it come to pass that this work 
 was done instead of the other; that the 
 strength and life of the English operative were 
 spent in defiling ground, instead of redeeming 
 it ; and in producing an entirely (in that place) 
 valueless piece of metal, which can neither be 
 eaten nor breathed, instead of medicinal fresh 
 air, and pure Mif ater ? 
 
 There is but one reason for it, and at pres- 
 ent a conclusive one, — that the capitalist can 
 charge percentage on the work in the one 
 case, and cannot in the other. If, having 
 certain funds for supporting labor at my dis- 
 posal, I pay men merely to keep my ground 
 in order, my money is, in that function, spent 
 once,for all ; but if I pay them to dig iron out 
 of my ground, ^nd work it, and sell it, I can 
 charge rent foi" the ground, and percentage 
 both on the manufacture and the sale, and 
 make my capital profitable in these three by- 
 ways. The greater part of the profitable in- 
 vestment of capital in the present day, is in 
 operations pf this kipd, Iq which the public i^ 
 
i>REPAC£. \X 
 
 persuaded to buy something of no use to it, 
 on production, or sale, of wliich, the capitalist 
 may charge percentage; the said public re- 
 maining all the while under the persuasion 
 that the percentage thus obtained are real 
 national gains, whereas, they are merely filch- 
 ings out of partially light pockets, to swell 
 heavy ones. , 
 
 Thus, the Croydon publican buys the iron 
 railing, to make himself more conspicuous to 
 drunkards. The public-house keeper on the 
 other side of the way presently, buys another 
 railing, to out-rail him with. Both are, as to 
 tiieir relative attractiveness to customers of 
 taste, just where they were before ; but they 
 have lost the price of the railings ; which 
 they must either themselves finally lose, or 
 make their aforesaid customers ,of taste pay, 
 by raising the price of their beer, or adulterat- 
 ing it. Either the publicans, or their cus- 
 tomers, are thus poorer by precisely what the 
 capitalist has gained ; and the value of the 
 work itself, mea.ntime, has been lost, to the 
 nation ; , the iron bars in that form and place 
 being wholly useless. It is this mode of tax- 
 ation of the poor by the rich which is referred 
 to in the text (page ), in comparing th« 
 
is PREFACE. 
 
 modem acquisitive power of capital with that 
 of the lance and sword ; the only difference 
 being that the levy of black-mail in old times 
 was by force, and is now by cozening. The 
 old rider and reiver frankly quartered himself 
 on the publican for the night ; the modern one 
 merely makes his lance into an iron spike, 
 and persuades his host to buy it. One comes 
 as an open robber, the other as a cheating ped- 
 dler; but the result, to the injured person's 
 pocket, is absolutely the same. Of course 
 many useful industries mingle with, and dis- 
 guise the useless ones ; and in the habits of 
 energy aroused by tlie struggle, there is a 
 certain direct good. It is far better to spend 
 four thousand pounds in making a good gun, 
 and then to blow it to pieces, than to pass 
 life in idleness. Only do not let it be called 
 " political economy." There is also a confused 
 notion in the minds of many persons, that the 
 gathering of the property of the poor into the 
 hands of the rich does no ultimate harm; 
 since in whosesoever hands it may be, it must 
 be spent at last, and thus, they think, return 
 to the poor again. This fallacy has been 
 again and again exposed ; but .grant the plea 
 true, and (he same apology may, of course. bQ 
 
PREFACE. 13 
 
 made for black-mail, or any other form ol 
 robbery. It might be (though practically i( 
 never is) as advantageous for the nation thai 
 the robber should have the spending of the 
 money he extorts, as that the person robbed 
 should have spent it. But this is no excuse 
 for the theft.- if I were to put a turnpike on 
 the road where it passes my own gate, and en? 
 deavor to exact a shilling from every passenger, 
 the public would soon do away with my gate, 
 ■without listening to any plea on my part that 
 " it was as advantageous to them, in the end, 
 that I should spend their shillings, as thai 
 they themselves should." But if, instead ol 
 out-facing them with a turnpike, I tan onlj 
 persuade them to come in and buy stoties, 01 
 old iron, or any other useless thing, out of mj 
 ground, I may rob them to tlie same exten^ 
 and be, moreover, thanked as a public bene- 
 factor, and promoter of commercial prosperity. 
 And this main question for the poor of Eng- 
 land — for the poor of all countries — is wholly 
 omitted in every common treatise on the sub- 
 ject of wealth. Even by the laborers them- 
 selves, the operation of capital is regarded 
 only in its eifect on their immediate interests j 
 p&vsK in the far more Xsxa&a power of its ai» 
 
14 PREFACE. 
 
 pointment of the kind and the object of labor. 
 It matters little, ultimately, how much a la- 
 borer is paid for making anything; but it 
 matters fearfully what the thing is, which he 
 is compelled to make. If his labor is so 
 ordered as to. produce food, and fresh air, and 
 fresh water, no matter that his wages are low ; 
 —the food and fresh air and water will be at 
 last there ; and he will at last get them. But 
 if he is paid to destroy food and fresh air or 
 to ptoduce iron bars instead of them, — the 
 food and air will finally not be there, and he 
 will not get them, to his great and final incon- 
 venience. So that, conclusively, in political 
 as in household economy, the great question 
 is, not so much what money you have in your 
 pocket, as what you will buy with it, and do 
 with it. 
 
 r I have been long accustomed, as all men 
 engaged in work of investigation must be, to 
 hear my statements laughed at for years, before 
 they are examined or believed ; and I am 
 generally content to wait the public's time. 
 But it has not been without displeased sur- 
 prise that I have found myself totally unable, 
 as yet, by any repetition, or illustration, to 
 force this plain thought into my readers' heads, 
 
i'REFACM. tj 
 
 —that the wealth of nations, as o£ men, con- 
 sists in . substance, not in ciphers ; and that 
 the rea.1 good of all work, and of all commerce, 
 depends on the final worth of the thing you 
 make, or, get by it. This is a practical enough, 
 statement, one would think : but the English 
 public has been so possessed by its modern 
 school of economists with the notion that- 
 Business is always good, whether it be busy 
 in mischief or in benefit ; and that buying and 
 selling are always salutary, whatever the in- 
 trinsic worth of what you buy or sell, — that it 
 seems impossible to gain so much as a pa- 
 tient hearing for any inquiry respecting the 
 substantial result of our eager modern labors. 
 I have never felt more checked by the sense 
 of this impossibility than in arranging the 
 Leads of the following three lectures, which, 
 though delivered at considerable intervals of 
 time, and in different places, were not pre- 
 pared without reference to each other. Their 
 connection would, however, have been made 
 far more distinct, if I had not been prevented, 
 ty what I feel to be another great difliculty in 
 addressing English audiences, from enforcing, 
 with any decision, the common, and to me 
 the mast important^ part of their 3ubject8r 
 
l6 PREFAch. 
 
 I chiefly desired (as I have just said) to queSi 
 tioa my hearers — operatives, merchants, and 
 soldiers, as to the ultimate meaning of the 
 business they had in hand ; and to know from 
 them what they expected or intended their 
 manufacture to Come to, their selling to come 
 to, and their killing to come to. That ap- 
 peared the first point needing determinatioa 
 before I could speak to them with any real 
 utility or eflect. " You craftsmen — salesmen 
 — swordsmen, — do but tell me clearly what 
 you want ; then if I can say anything to help 
 you, I will ; and if not, I will account to you 
 as I best may for my inability." But ia 
 order to put this question into any terms, one 
 had first of all to face the difBculty just spoken 
 of — ^to -me for the present insuperable, — the 
 difficulty of knowing whether to address one's 
 audience as believing, or not believing, in any 
 other world than this. For if you address 
 any average modern English company as 
 believing in an Eternal life, and endeavor to 
 draw any conclusions, from this assumed 
 belief, as to their present business, they will 
 forthwith tell you that what you say is very 
 beautiful, but it is not practical. I^ on the 
 contrary, you frankly address them as uii< 
 
Preface. ij^ 
 
 believers of Eternal life, and try to draw any 
 consequences . from that unbelief, — they im- 
 mediately hold you for an accursed person, 
 and shake off the dust from their feet at you. 
 And the more I thought over what I had got 
 to say, the less I found I could say it, without 
 some reference to this intangible or intractable 
 part of the subject. It made all the difference, 
 in asserting any principle of war, whether one 
 assumed that a discharge of artillery would 
 merely knead down a certain quantity of red 
 clay into a level line, as in a brickfield ; or 
 ■whether, out of every separately Christian- 
 named portion of the ruinous heap, there went 
 out, into the smoke and dead-fallen air of 
 battle, some astonished condition of soul, un- 
 willingly released. It made all the difference, 
 in speaking pi the possible range of commerce, 
 whether one assumed that all bargains related 
 only to visible property^ — or whether property, 
 for the present invisible, but nevertheless real, 
 ■was elsewhere purchasable on other terms. It 
 made all the difference, in addressing a body of 
 men subject to considerable hardship, and 
 having to find some way out of it — ^whether one 
 could confidently say to them, " My friends,— 
 you have only to die, and all will be right ; " or 
 
l8 PREFACE. y 
 
 whether one had any secret misgiving that 
 such advice was more blessed to him that 
 gave, than to him that took it. And there- 
 fore tlie deliberate reader will find, throughout 
 these lectures, a hesitation in driving points 
 home, and a pausing short of conclusions 
 which he will feel I would fain have come to ; 
 hesitation which arises wholly from this un- 
 certainty of my hearers' temper. For I do 
 not now speak, nor have I ever spoken, since 
 the time of first forward youth, in any prose- 
 lyting temper, as desiring to persuade any one 
 of what, in such matters, I thought myself; 
 but, whomsoever I venture to address, I take 
 for the time his creed as I find it ; and en- 
 deavor to push it into ' sucK vital fruit as it 
 seems capable of. Thus, it is a creed with a 
 great part of the existing English people, that 
 they are in possession of a book which tells 
 them, straight from the lips of God, all they 
 ought to do, and need to know. I have read 
 that book, with as much care as most of them, 
 for some forty years ; and am thankful that, 
 on those who trust it, I can press its pleadings. 
 My endeavor has been uniformly to make 
 them trust it more deeply than they do ; trust 
 it^ not in their own favorite verses onl^, but iq 
 
PREFACE. 1^ 
 
 the sum of all ; trust it not as a fetish of talis- 
 man, which they are to be saved by daily 
 repetitions of ; but as a Captain's order, to be 
 heard and obeyed at their peril. I was 
 always encouraged by supposing my hearers to 
 hold such belief. To these, if to any, I once 
 had hope -of addressing, with acceptance, 
 words which insisted on the guilt of pride, 
 and the futility of avarice ; irom these, if from 
 any, I once expected ratification of a political 
 economy, which asserted that the life was 
 more than the meat, and the body than rai- 
 ment ; and these, it once seemed to me, I 
 might ask, without accusation of fanaticism, 
 not merely in doctrine of the lips, but in the 
 bestowal of their heart's treasure, to separata 
 themselves from the crowd of whom it is 
 written, " After all these things do the Gentiles 
 seek." 
 
 It cannot, however, be assumed, with any 
 semblance of reason, that a general audience 
 is now wholly, or even in majority, composed 
 of these religious persons. A large portion 
 must always consist of men who admit no such 
 creed ; or who, at least, are inaccessible to 
 appeals founded on it. And as, with the so- 
 palled Qhristian, I desired to plead for honest 
 
to PREFACE. 
 
 declaration and ^fulfilment of his belief in 
 life, — with the so-called infidel, I desired tc 
 plead for an honest declaration and falfilmen* 
 of his belief in death. The dilemma is inevi? 
 table. Men must either hereafter live, or her^ 
 after die ; fate may be bravely met, and coix= 
 duct wisely, ordered, on either expectation ; but 
 never in hesitation between ungrasped hops» 
 and unconfronted fear. We usually believe vet 
 immortality, so far as to avoid preparation for 
 death ; and in mortality, so far as to avoid prep* 
 paration for anything 'after death/ Whereas^ 
 a wise man will at least hold himself prepared 
 for one or other of two events, of which on a 
 or other is inevitable ; and will have all thing;* 
 in order, for his sleep, or in readiness, for hia 
 awa,kening. 
 
 Nor have we any right to call it an ignoble 
 judgment, if he determine to put them in order^ 
 as for sleep. A brave belief in life is indeed 
 an enviable state of mind, but, as far as I can. 
 discern, an unusual one. I know few Chris* 
 tians so convinced of the splendor of the rooms 
 in their Father's house, as to be happier when 
 their friends are called to those mansions, than 
 they would have been if the Queen had sent 
 for them to live at court ; nor bas the C^htirch's 
 
Preface. a 
 
 most ardent "desire to depart, and be with 
 Christ," ever cured it of the singular habit of 
 putting on mourning for every person sum- 
 moned to such departure. On the contrary, a 
 brave belief in death has been assuredly hald 
 by many not ignoble persons, and it is a sign 
 of the last depravity in the Church itself, when 
 it assumes that such a belief is inconsistent 
 with either purity of character, or energy of 
 hand. The shortness of life is not, to any 
 rational person, a conclusive reason for wast- 
 ing the space of it which may be granted him ; 
 nor does the anticipation of death to-morrow 
 suggest, to any one but a drunkard, the ex- 
 pediency of drunkenness to-day. Tb teach 
 that there is no device in the grave, may indeed 
 make the deviceless person more contented in 
 his dulness ; but it will make the deviser only 
 more earnest in devising : nor is human con- 
 duct likely, in every case, to be purer, under 
 the conviction that all its evil may in a moment 
 be pardoned, and all its wrong-doing in a 
 moment redeemed; and that the sigh of re- 
 pentance, which purges the guilt of the past, 
 will waft the soul into a felicity which forget? 
 its pain, — ^than it may be under the sterner, 
 and to many not unwise minds, more probable, 
 
gl PREFACE. 
 
 apprehension, that " what a man soweth that 
 shall he also reap," — or others reap, — ^when he, 
 the living seed of pestilence, walketh no more 
 in darkness, but lies down therein. 
 
 Eut to men whose feebleness of sight, or 
 titterness of soul, or the offence given by the 
 conduct of those who claim higher hope, may- 
 have rendered this painful creed the only pos- 
 sible one, there is an appeal to be madej more 
 secure^ in its ground than any which can be 
 addressed to happier persons. I would fain^ 
 if I might offencelessly, have spoken to them 
 as if none others heard ; and have said thus 5 
 Hear me, you dijm% men, who will soon be 
 deaf forever. For these others, at your right 
 hand and your left, who look forward to a state 
 cf infant existence, in which all their errors 
 •will be overruled, and all their faults forgiven j 
 for these, who, stained and blackened in the 
 battle-smoke of mortality^ have but to dip them.- 
 selves for an instant in the font of death, and 
 to rise renewed of plumage, as a dove that is 
 covered with silver, and her feathers like gold j 
 for these, indeed, it may be permissible to 
 •waste their numbered moments, through faith. 
 in a future of innumerable hours ; to these, in 
 their weakness, it may be conceded that they 
 
PREFACE. 23 
 
 should tamper with sin which can only bring 
 fortli fruit of righteousness, and profit by the 
 iniquity which, one day, will be remembered 
 no more. In them, it may be no sign of hard- 
 ness of heart to neglect the poor, over whorn 
 they know their Master is watching ; and to 
 leave those to perish temporarily, who cannot 
 perish eternally. But, for you, there is no such 
 hope, and therefore no such excuse. This fate 
 which you ordain for the wretched, you believe 
 to be all their inheritance ; you may crush 
 them, before the moth, and they will never 
 rise to rebuke you ; — their breath, which fails 
 for lack of food, once expiring, will never be 
 recalled to whisper against you a word of 
 accusing; — they and you, as you think, shall 
 lie down together in the dust, and the worms 
 cover you; — and for them there shall be nc» 
 consolation, and on you no vengeance, — only 
 the question murmured above your grave r 
 *' Who shall repay him what he hath done ? " 
 Is it therefore easier for you in your heart to 
 inflict the sorrow for which there is no remedy ? 
 Will you take, wantonly, this little all of his life 
 from your poor brother, and make his brief hours 
 long to him with pain ? Will you be readier 
 {0 the injustice which can never be redressed ; 
 
24 PREFACE. 
 
 and niggardly of mercy which you can bestow 
 but once, arid which, refusing, you refuse for- 
 ever ? I think better of you, even of the most 
 selfish,J:han that you would do this, well under- 
 stood. And for yourselves, it seems to me, 
 the question becomes not less grave, in these 
 curt limits. If your life were but a fever 
 fit, — the madness of a night, whose follies were 
 all to be forgotten in the dav/n, it might mat- 
 ter little how you fretted away the sickly hours, 
 — what toys you snatched at, or let fall, — ^what 
 visions you followed wistfully with the deceived 
 eyes of sleepless phrenzy. Is the earth only an 
 hospital ? Play, if you care to play, on the floor 
 of the hospital dens. Knit its straw into what 
 crowns please you ; gather the dust of it for 
 treasure, and die rich in that, clutching at the 
 black motes in the air with ypur dying hands ; — ■ 
 and yet, it may be well with you. But if this life 
 be no dream, and the world no hospital ; if all 
 the peace and power and joy you can ever win, 
 must be won now; and all fruit of victory 
 gathered here, or never ; — will you stilV 
 throughout the puny totality of your life, weary 
 yourselves in the fire for vanity ? If there is 
 no rest which remaineth for you, is there none 
 you mi^ht presently take ? was this grass q% 
 
PREFACE. I 2$ 
 
 tiie esirth made green for your shroud only, 
 not for your bed ? and can you never lie down 
 upon it, but only under it ? The heathen, to 
 whose creed you have returned, thought not 
 so. They knew that life brought its contest 
 but they expected from it also the crown of all 
 contest : No proud one 1 no jewelled circlet 
 flaming through Heaven above the height of 
 the unmerited throne ; only some few leaves 
 of wild olive, cool to the tired brow, through 
 a few years of peace. It should have been o£ 
 gold, they thought ; but Jupiter was poor ; this 
 was the best the god could give them. Seek- 
 ing a greater than this, they had known it a 
 mockery. Not in war, not in wealth, not in 
 tyranny, wis there any happiness to be found 
 for them — only in kindly peace, fruitful and 
 free. The wreath was to be of wz/d olive, mark 
 you:-~the tree that grows carelessly, tufting 
 the rocks with no vivid bloom, no verdure of 
 branch ; only with soft snow of blossom, and 
 scarcely fulfilled fruit, mixed with gray leaf 
 and^ thorn-set stem ; no fastening of diadem for 
 you but with such sharp embroidery ! But 
 this, such as it is, you may win while yet you 
 live ; type of great honor and sweet rest.* 
 
S6 PREFACE. 
 
 Free-heartedness, and graciousness, and undis* 
 turbed trust, and requited love, ctid the sight 
 of the peace of others, and the ininJstry to 
 their pain; — these, and the blue sky above i 
 you, and the sweet waters and flowers of the 
 earth beneath ; and mysteries and presences, 
 innumerable, of living things, — these may yet 
 be here your riches ; untormenting and divine : 
 serviceable for the life that now is ; nor, it may 
 be, vrithout promise of that which is to come. 
 
LECTURE I. 
 
THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 LECTURE I. 
 
 WORK. 
 fPMaertdiefDft U* Warkmg RUtft ItisiUuie, at CamiermB^ 
 
 My Fri£:nds, — I have not come among you 
 .to-night to endeavor to give you an entertain- 
 ing lecture ; but to tell you a few plain facts, 
 and ask you some plain, but necessary ques- 
 tions. I have seen and known too much of 
 the struggle for life among our laboring pop- 
 ulation, to feel at ease, even under any circum- 
 stances, in inviting them to dwell on the trivi- 
 alities of my own studies ; but, much more, 
 as I meet * night, for the first time, the mem- 
 bers of a WDrking Institute established in the 
 district in which I have passed the greater 
 part of my life, I am desirous that we should 
 at once understand each other, on graver mat- 
 ters. I would fain tell you, with what feelings, 
 god with what hope, I regard this Institution, 
 
 »9 
 
3© THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVTS. 
 
 as one of many such, now happily established 
 throughout England, as -well as in other coun- 
 tries ; — Institutions which are preparing the 
 ■way for a great change in all the circumstances 
 of industrial life ; but of which the success 
 must wholly depend upon our clearly under- 
 standing the circumstances and necessary 
 limits of this change. No teacher can truly 
 promote the cause of education, until he knows 
 the conditions of the life for which that edu- 
 cation is to prepare his pupil. And the fact 
 that he is called upon to address you, nomi- 
 nally, as a " Working Class," must compel him, 
 if he is in any wise earnest or thoughtful, to 
 inquire in the outset, on what you yourselves 
 suppose this class distinction has been founded 
 in the past, and must be founded in the future. 
 The manner of the amusement, and the matter 
 of the teaching, which any of us can offer you, 
 must depend wholly on our first understand- 
 ing from you, whether you think the distinc- 
 tion heretofore drawn between working men 
 and others, is truly or falsely founded. Do 
 you accept it as it stands ? do you wish it to 
 be modified ? or do you think the object of 
 education is to ^ace it, and make us for|;et; if 
 forever j 
 
Lpt me make myself more distinctly under- 
 stood. We call this — you and I — a " Work- 
 ing Men's " Institute, and our college in Lon- 
 don, a " Working Men's " College. Now, how 
 do you consider that these several institutes 
 differ, or ought to differ, from "idle men's" 
 institutes and " idle men's " colleges ? Or by 
 what pther word than " idle " shall I distin- 
 guish those whom the happiest and wisest of 
 •working men do not object to call the " Upper 
 Classes " ? Are there really upper classes,— 
 are there lower? How much should they 
 always be elevated, how much always de- 
 pressea ? And, gentlemen and ladies — I pray 
 those of you who are here to forgive me the 
 offence there may be in what I am going to 
 say. It is not / who wish to say it. Bitter 
 voices say it : voices of battle and of famine 
 through all the world, which must be heard 
 some day, whoever keeps silence. Neither is 
 it to ^ou specially that I say it. I am sure 
 that most now present know their duties of 
 kindness, aad fulfil them, better perhaps than 
 I do mine, Lut I speak to you as represent- 
 ing your whole class, which errs, I know, 
 chiefly by thoughtlessness, but not therefore 
 the less teiribl^, Wilful ei^ror is limited by 
 
32 tlTE CRdlVN OF WILD OUVB. 
 
 the will, but what limit is there to thkt ot 
 which \va are unconscious? 
 
 Bear with me, therefore, while I turn to 
 these workmen, and ask them, also as repre- 
 senting a great multitude, what they think the 
 " upper classes " are, and ought to be, in rela- 
 tion to them. Answer, you workmen who are 
 here, as you would among yourselves, frankly ; 
 and tell me how you would have me call those 
 classes. Am I to call them — ^would you think 
 me right in calling them — the idle classes ? I 
 think you would feel somewhat uneasy, and as 
 if I were not treating my subj^t honestly, or 
 speaking from my heart, if I went on under 
 the supposition that all rich people were idle. 
 You would be both unjust and unwise if you 
 allowed me to say that ; — not less unjust than 
 the rich people who say that all the poor are 
 idle, and will never work if they can help it, or 
 more than they can help. 
 
 For indeed the fact is, that there are idle 
 poor and idle rich ; and there are busy poor 
 and busy rich. Many a beggar is as lazy as 
 if he had ten thousand a year ,■" and many a 
 many of large fortune is busier than his er 
 rand-boy, and never would think of stopping in 
 the street to play marbles, go that^ in a larga 
 
view, the distinction between workers and 
 idlers, as between knaves and and honest men, 
 runs through the very heart and innermost 
 economies of men of all ranks and in all posi 
 tions. There is a working class — strong and 
 happy — among both rich and poor; there is 
 an idle class — weak, wicked, and miserable— 
 among both rich and poor. And the worst of 
 the misunderstandings arising between the two 
 orders come of the unlucky, fact that the wise 
 of one class habitually contemplate the foolish 
 of the other. If the busy rich people watched 
 and rebuked the idle rich people, all would be 
 right; and if the busy poor people ' watched 
 and rebuked the idle poor people, all would 
 be right. But each class has a tendency to 
 look for the faults of the other. A hard-work- 
 ing man of property is particularly offended 
 by an idle beggar ; and an orderly, but poor, 
 workman is naturally intolerant of the licen- 
 tious luxury of the rich. And what is severe 
 judgment in the minds of the just men of either 
 class, becomes fierce enmity in the unjust— 
 but among the unjust onfy. None but the 
 dissolute among the poor look upon the rich 
 as their natural enemies, or desire to pillage 
 their house and, divide their |)roperty. None 
 
j4 TITE CROWN OF WlLb OLlVk. 
 
 but the dissolute among the rich speak in op- 
 probi.''ous terms of the vices and follies of tlie 
 poor. 
 
 Tliere is, then, no class distinction between 
 idle and industrious people ; and I am going 
 to-night to speak only of the industrious. 
 The idle people we will put out of our thoughts 
 at once — they 'are mere nuisances — what ought 
 to be done with them, we'll talk of at another 
 time. But there are class distinctions among 
 the industrious themselves ; — ^tremendous dis- 
 tinctions, which rise and fall to every degree in 
 the infinite thermometer of human pain and of 
 human power — distinctions of high and low, 
 of lost and won, to the whole reach of man's 
 soul and body. 
 
 These separations we will study, and the 
 laws of them, among energetic men only, who, 
 whether they work or whether they play, put 
 their strength into the work, and their strength 
 into the game ; being in the full sense of the 
 word "industrious," one way or another — ^with 
 a purpose, or without. And these distinctions 
 are mainly four : 
 
 I. Between those who work, and those wlia 
 play. 
 
WORK. 
 
 35 
 
 II. Between those who produce the means 
 of life, and those who consume them. 
 
 III. Between those who work with the head, 
 and those who work with the hand. 
 
 IV. Between those who work wisely, and 
 who work foolishly. 
 
 For easier memory, let us say we are going 
 to oppose, in our examination, — 
 I. Work to play ; 
 II. Production to consumption j 
 III. Head to hand ; and, 
 IV. Sense to nonsense. 
 
 I. First, then, of the distinction between the 
 classes who work and the classes who play. Of 
 course we must agree upon a definition of these 
 terms,— work and play, — before going farther. 
 Now, roughly, not with vain subtlety of defini- 
 tion, but for plain use of the words, "play " is 
 an exertion of body or mind, made to please 
 ourselves, and with no determined end ; and 
 work is a thing, done because it ought to 
 be done, and with a determined end. You 
 play, as you call it, at cricket, for instance. 
 That is as hard work as anything else ; but it 
 amuses you, and it has no result but the 
 amusement. If it were done as an ordered 
 isxm. ai exeicise| for health's sake, it would 
 
36 THE CROWN OF WILD OLJVM, 
 
 become vrork directly. So, in like mannef, 
 whatever we do to please ourselves, and only 
 for the sake of the pleasure, not for an ultimate 
 object, is " play," the " pleasing thing," not the 
 useful tiling. Play may be useful in a second- 
 ary sense (nothing is indeed more useful or 
 necessary) ; but the use of it depends on its 
 being spontaneous. 
 
 Let us, then, inquire together what sort of 
 games the playing class in England spend 
 their lives in playing at. 
 
 The first of all English games is making 
 money. That is an all-absorbing game ; and 
 we knock each other down oftener in playing 
 at that than at foot-ball, or any other roughest 
 sport; and' it is absolutely without purpose; 
 no one who engages heartily in that game 
 fever knows why. .Ask a great money-maker 
 what he wants to do with his money — he never 
 knows. He doesn't make it to do anything 
 ■with it. He gets it only that he fnay get it. 
 " What will you make of what you have got ? " 
 you ask. " Well, I'll get more," he says. Just 
 as, at cricket, you get more runs. There's 
 no use in the runs, but to get more of them 
 than other people is the game. And there's 
 no use in the money, but to have more of it 
 
than other people is the game. So all that 
 great foul city of London there, — rattling, 
 growling, smoking, stinking, — a ghastly heap 
 of fermenting brickwork, pouring out poison 
 at every pore, — ^you fancy it is a city of 
 ■work ? Not a street of it 1 _It is a great city 
 of play ; very nasty play, and very hard play„ 
 but still play. It is only Lord's cricket ground 
 •without the turf, — a huge billiard table without 
 the cloth, and with pockets as deep as th& 
 bottomless pit ; but mainly a billiard table, 
 after all. 
 
 Well, the first great English game is this 
 playing at counters. It differs from the rest 
 in that it appears always to be producing 
 money, while every other game is expensive. 
 But it does not always produce money. 
 There's a great difference between " winning " 
 money and " making " it ; a great difference 
 between getting it out of another man's pocket 
 into ours, or filling both. Collecting money is 
 by no means the sapie thing as making it ; the 
 tax-gatherer's house is not the Mint; and 
 much of the apparent gain (so called), in com- 
 merce, is only a form ®f taxation on carriage 
 or exchange. 
 
 Our next great English game, however, 
 
3? Tirn CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 hunting and shooting, is costly altogether; 
 and how much we are fined for it annually in 
 land, horses, gamekeepers, and game laws, 
 and all else that accompanies that beautiful 
 and special English game, I will not endeavor 
 to count now : but note only that, except for 
 exercise, this is not merely a useless game, 
 but a deadly one, to all connected with it. 
 For through horse-racing, you get every form 
 of what the higher classes everywhere call 
 " Play," in distinction from all other plays ; 
 that is — ^gambling ; by no means a beneficial 
 or recreative game : and, through game-preserv- 
 ing, you get also some curious laying out of 
 ground; that beautiful arrangement of dwell- 
 ing-house for man and beast, by which we 
 have grouse and blackcock — so many brace to 
 the acre, and men and women — so many brace 
 to the garret. I often wonder what the an- 
 gelic builders and surveyors — the angelic 
 builders who build the " many mansions " up 
 above there ; and the angelic surveyors, who 
 measured that four-square city with their 
 measuring reeds — I wonder what they think, 
 or are supposed to think, of the laying out of 
 ground by this nation, which has set itself, as 
 it seems, literally to accomplish, word foe 
 
WOR^. ^-^ 
 
 word, or rather fact for word, in 'tiie persons 
 of those poor whom its Master left to rep- 
 resent him, what that Master said of himself — 
 that foxes and birds had homes, but He 
 none. 
 
 Then, next to the gentlemen's game of 
 hunting, we must put the ladies' game of dress- 
 ing. It is not the cheapest of games. I saw 
 a brooch at a jeweller's in Bond Street a fort- 
 night ago, not an inch wide, and without any 
 singular jewel in it, yet worth 3,000/. And I 
 wish I could tell you what this " play *' costs, - 
 altogether, in England, France, and Russia 
 annually. But it is a pretty game, and on cer- 
 tain terms, I like it ; nay, I don't see it played 
 quite as much as I would fain have it. You 
 ladies like to lead the fashion : — by all means 
 lead it — lead it thoroughly, lead it far enough. 
 Dress yourselves nicely, and dress everybody 
 else nicely. Lead the fashions for the poor %x^t ; 
 make them look well, and you yourselves will 
 look, in ways ot which you have now no con- 
 ception, all the better. The fashions you have 
 set for some -time among your peasantry are 
 not pretty ones ; their doublets are too irregu- 
 larly slashed, and the wind blows too frankly 
 through theoi. 
 
40 TifE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 Then there are other games, wild enough, 
 as I could show you if I had time. 
 
 There's playing at literature, and playing at 
 art — ^very difEerent, both, from working at 
 literature, or working at art, but I've no time 
 to speak of these. I pass to the greatest of 
 all — ^the play of plays, the great gentlemen's 
 game, which ladies like them best to play at, 
 —the game of War. It is entrancingly pleas- 
 ant to the imagination ; the facts of it, not 
 always so pleasant. We dress for it, however, 
 more finely than for any other sport ; and go 
 out to it, not merely in scarlet, as to hunt, 
 but in scarlet and gold, and all manner of fine 
 colors : of course we could fight better in 
 gray, and without feathers ; but all nations 
 have agreed that it is good to be well dressed 
 at this play. Then the bats and > balls are 
 very costly; our English and French bats, 
 with the balls and wickets, even those which 
 we don't make any use of, costing, I suppose, 
 now about fifteen millions of money annually 
 to each nation ; all of which you know is paid 
 for by hard laborer's work in the furrow and 
 furnace. A costly game ! — not to speak of 
 its consequences ; I will say at present noth- 
 ing of these, The mere immediate cost of ay 
 
these plays is what I want you to consider ; 
 they all cost deadly work somewhere, as many 
 of us know too well. The jewel-cutter, whose 
 sight fails over the diamonds ; the weaver, 
 whose arm fails over the web ; the iron-forgqr, 
 whose breath fails before the furnace — i/iey 
 know what work is — they, who have all the 
 work, and none of the^play, except a kind 
 they have named for themselves down in the 
 black north country, where "play" means 
 being laid up by "sickness. It is a pretty 
 example for philologists, of varying dialect, 
 this change in the sense of the word " play," as' 
 used in the black country of Birmingham, and. 
 the red and black country of Baden Baden. 
 Yes, gentlemen, and gentlewomen, of England, 
 •who think " one moment unamused a misery, 
 not made for feeble man," this is what you 
 have brought the word " play " to mean, in the 
 heart of merry England ! You may have 
 your fluting and piping; but there are sad 
 children sitting in the market-place, who 
 indeed cannot say to you, "We have piped 
 unto you, and ye have not danced : " but eter- 
 nally shall say to you, " We have mourned 
 unto you, and ye have not lamented." 
 
 This, then, is th^ fir^t distinction between 
 
42 THE CROWN' OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 the " upper and lower " classes. And this is 
 one which is by no means necessary ; which 
 indeed must, in process of good time, be by 
 all honest men's consent abolished. Men will 
 be taught that an existence of play, sustained 
 by the blood of other creatures, is a good 
 existence for gnats and sucking fish ; but not 
 for men : that neither days, nor lives, can be 
 made holy by doing nothing in them : that 
 the best prayer at the beginning of a day is 
 that we may not lose its moments ; and the 
 best grace before meat, the consciousness that 
 •we have justly earned our dinner. And when, 
 •we have tjiis mucli of plain Christianity 
 preached to us again, and enough respect what 
 we regard as inspiration, as not to think that 
 " Son, go work to-day in my vineyard," means 
 " Fool, go play. to-day in my vineyard," we shall 
 all be workers, in one way or another.; and 
 this much at least of the distinction between 
 " upper " and " lower " forgotten. . 
 
 II. I pass then to our second distinction ; 
 between the rich and poor, between Dives 
 and Lazarus, — distinction which exists more 
 sternly, I suppose, in this day, than ever in 
 the world, Pagan or Christian, till now. I will 
 put it sharply before you, to begin with, merely 
 
tvoRir. 
 
 43 
 
 by reading two paragraphs which I cut from 
 two papers that lay on my breakfast table on 
 the same morning, the 25tli of November, 
 1864. The >^iece about the rich Russian at 
 Paris is commonplace enough, and stupid 
 besides (for fifteen francs, — 12s. 6d., — is noth- 
 ing for a rich man to give for a couple of 
 peaches, out of season). Still, the two para- 
 graphs printed on the same day are worth 
 putting side by side. 
 
 " Such a man is now here. He is a Russian, 
 and, with your permission, we will call him 
 Count Teufelskine. In dress he is sublime ; 
 art is considered in that toilet, the harmony of 
 color respected, the ckiar' oscuro evident in 
 well-selected contrast. In manners he is dig- 
 nified — nay, perhaps apathetic ; nothing dis- 
 turbs the placid serenity of that calm exterior. 
 One day our friend breakfasted chez Bignon. 
 When the bill came he read, ' Two peaches^ 
 iSf.'' He paid. ' Peaches scarce, I presume ? ' 
 was his sole remark. ' No, sir,' replied the 
 waiter, ' but Teufelskines are.' " — Telegraphy 
 November 15, 1864. 
 
 " Yesterday morning, at eight o'clock, a 
 woman, passing a dung heap in the stone 
 yard near the recently-erected almshouses in 
 
44 i'ffS CROWN OF WILD OtJVE. 
 
 Shadwell Gap, High Street, Shadwell, called 
 the attention of a Thames police-constable to 
 a man in a sitting position on the dung heap, 
 and said she was afraid he was dead. Her 
 fears proved to be true. The wretched creat- 
 ure appeared to have been dead several hours. 
 He had perished of cold and wet, and the rain 
 had been beating down on him all night. The 
 deceased was a bone-picker. He was in the 
 lowest stage of poverty, poorly clad, and half- 
 starved. The police had frequently driven 
 him away from the stone yard, between sunset 
 and sunrise, and told him to go home. He 
 selected a most desolate spot for his wretched 
 death. A penny and some bones were found 
 in his pockets. The deceased was between 
 fifty and sixty years of age. Inspector Ro- 
 berts, of the K division, has given directions for 
 inquiries to be made at the lodging-houses 
 respecting the deceased, to ascertain his iden- 
 tity if possible." — Morning Post, November 25, 
 1864. 
 
 You have the separation thus in brief com- 
 pass ; and I want you to take notice of the 
 " a penny and some bones were found in his 
 pockets," and to compare it with this third 
 
statement, from the TelegrqpA of January 16th 
 of this year : — 
 
 " Again, the dietary scale for adult and 
 juvenile paupers was drawn up by the most 
 conspicuous political economists in England. 
 It is low in quantity, but it is sufficient to sup- 
 port nature ; yet within ten years of the pass- 
 ing of the Poor Law Act, we heard of the pau- 
 pers in the Andover Union gnawing the scraps 
 of putrid flesh and sucking the marrow from 
 the bones of horses which they were employed 
 to crush." 
 
 You see my reason for thinking that our 
 JLazarus of Christianity has some advantage 
 over the Jewish one. Jewish Lazarus expected, 
 or at least prayed, to be fed with crumbs from 
 the rich man's table ; but our Lazarus is fed 
 •with crumbs from the dog's table. 
 
 Now this distinction between rich and poor 
 rests on two bases. Within its proper limits, 
 on a basis which is lawful and everlastingly 
 necessary ; beyond them, on a basis unlawful, 
 and everlastingly corrupting the frame-work of 
 society. The lawful basis of wealth is, that a 
 man who works should be paid the fair value 
 of his work : and if he does not choose to 
 spend it to-day, he should have free leave to 
 
46 TfTE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 keep it, and spend it to-morrow. Thus, an 
 industrious man working daily, and laying by 
 daily, attains at last the possession of an ac- 
 cumulated sum of wealth, to which he has ab- 
 solute right. The idle person who will not 
 work, and the wasteful person who lays-nothing 
 by, at the end of the same time will be doubly 
 poor — ^poor in possession, and dissolute ia 
 moral habit ; and he will then naturally covet 
 the money which the other has saved. And 
 if he is then allowed to attack the other, and 
 rob him of his well-earned wealth, there is n» 
 more any motive for saving, or any reward for 
 good conduct ; and all society is tliereupon 
 dissolved, or exists only in systems of rapine. 
 Therefore the first necessity of social life is 
 the clearness of national conscience in en- 
 forcing the law — ^that he should keep who has 
 
 JUSTLY EARNED. 
 
 That law, I say, is the proper basis of dis- 
 tinction between rich and poor. But there is 
 also a false basis of distinction ; namely, the 
 power held over those who earn wealth by 
 those who levy or exact it. There will be always 
 a number of men who would fain set them- 
 selves to the accumulation of wealth as the 
 §ole object of their live^. JN'ecessahly, that 
 
tronx: 
 
 47 
 
 tiass of men is an uneducated class, inferior in 
 intellect, and more or less cowardly. It is 
 physically impossible for a well-educated, in- 
 tellectual, or brave man to make money the 
 chief object of his thoughts ; as physically im- 
 possible as it is for him to make his dinner 
 thL ^jrincipal object of them. All healthy 
 people like their dinners, but their dinner is 
 not the main object of their lives. So all 
 healthily minded people like making money — 
 ought to like it, and to enjoy the sensation of 
 ■winning it ; but the main object of their life is 
 not money ; it is something better than money. 
 A good soldier, for instance, mainly wishes to 
 do his fighting well. He is glad of his pay — 
 very properly so, and justly grumbles Tyhen 
 you keep him ten years without it — still, his 
 main notion of life is to win battles, not to be 
 paid for winning tliem. So of clergymen. 
 They like pew-rents, and baptismal fees, of 
 course; but yet, if they are brave and well 
 educated, the pew-rent is not the sole object of 
 their lives, and the baptismal fee is not the sole 
 purpose of the baptism ; the clergyman's object 
 is essentially to baptize and preach, not to be 
 paid for preaching. So of doctors. They like 
 fees no doubt, — ought to like them ; yet if they 
 
4§ TffE CROWN OF WlLt) OLZVM. 
 
 are brave and well educated, the entire object 
 of their lives is not fees. They, on the whole, 
 desire ,to cure the sick; and, — if they are 
 good doctors, and the choice were fairly put 
 . to them, — ^would rather cure their patient, and 
 lose their fee, than kill him, and get it. And 
 60 with all other brave and rightly trained 
 men; their work is first, their fee seconds- 
 very important always, but still second. But 
 in every nation, as I said, there are a vast 
 class who are ill-educated, cowardly, and more 
 or less stupid. And with these people, just 
 as certainly the fee is first, and the work 
 second, as witli brave people the work is first 
 and the fee second. And this is no small 
 distinction. It is the whole distinction ia 
 man ; distinction between life and death in 
 him, between heaven and hell for him. You 
 cannot serve two masters ; — ^you must servo 
 one or other. If your work is first with 
 you, and your fee second, work is your 
 master, and the lord of work, who is God. 
 But if- your fee is first with you, and your 
 work second, fee is your master, and the lord 
 of fee, who is the Devil ; and not only the 
 Devil, but the lowest of devils — the " least 
 ^ected fiend that fell." So there you have it 
 
WORlC. 4$ 
 
 in the briefest terms; Work first — you are 
 God's servants ; Fee first — you are the 
 Fiend's. And it makes a difference, now 
 and ever, believe me, whether you serve ]Iim 
 •who has on His vesture and thigh written, 
 " King of Kings," and whose service is perfect 
 freedom ; or him on whose vesture and thigh 
 the name is written, " Slave of Slaves," and 
 whose service is perfect slavery. 
 
 However, in every nation there are, and 
 must always be a certain number of these 
 Fiend's servants, who have it principally for 
 the object of their lives to make money. 
 They are always, as I said, more or less 
 stupid, and cannot conceive of anything else 
 so nice as money. Stupidity is always the 
 basis of the Judas bargain. We do great in- 
 justice to Iscariot, in thinking him wicked above 
 all common wickedness. He was only a com- 
 mon money-lover, and, like all money-lovers, 
 didn't understand Christ ; — couldn't make out 
 the worth of Him, or meaning of Him. He was 
 liorror-struck when he found that Christ would 
 be killed; threw his money away instantly, 
 and hanged himself. How many of our pres- 
 .ent money-seekers, think yod, would have the 
 grace to hang themselves, whoever was killed f 
 4 
 
go irirM cRowif bF wild ol/PS. 
 
 But Judas was a common, selfish, muddls* 
 headed, pilfering fellow ; his hand always in 
 the bag of the poor, not caring for them. Ha 
 ■ydn't understand Christ; — ^yet believed in 
 ilim, much more than most of us do; had 
 seen Him do miracles, thought He was quite 
 strong enough to shift for Himself, and he, 
 Judas, might as well make his own little by- 
 perguisites out of the affair. Christ would 
 come out of it well enough, and he have his 
 thirty pieces. Now, that is the money-seeker's 
 idea, all over the world. He dpesn't hate 
 Christ, but can't understand Him — doesn't 
 care for Him — sees no good in that benevo- 
 lent business ; makes his own little job out of 
 it at all events, come what will. And thus, ' 
 out of every mass of men, you have a certain 
 number of bag-men-r-your " fee first " men, 
 whose main object is to make money. And 
 they do make it — make it in all sorts of unfair 
 ■ways, chiefly -by the weight and force of money 
 itself, or what is called the power of capital ; 
 that is to say, the power which money, once 
 obtained, has over the labor of the poor, so 
 that the capitalist can take all its produce to 
 lumself txcept the lalaorer's food. That ia 
 
WORJC. IJl 
 
 fte modern Judas's way of " carrying the bag," 
 and bearing what is put therein. 
 
 Nay, but (it is asked) how is that an unfaii 
 advantage ? Has not the man who has 
 ■worked for the money a right to use it as he 
 best can ? No ; in this respect, money is now 
 exactly what mountain promontories ovet 
 public roads were in old times. The barons 
 fought for then fairly r — ^the strongest and 
 cunningest got them; then fortified them; 
 and made every one who passed below pay 
 toll. Well, capital now is exactly what crags 
 ■were then. Men fight fairly (we will, at leasf^ 
 grant so much, though it is more than we 
 ought) for their money ; but, once having got 
 it, the fortified millionaire can make every- 
 body who passes below pay toll to his million, 
 and build another tower of his money castle. 
 And I can tell you, the poor vagrants by the 
 roadside suffer now quite as much from the bag- 
 baron, as ever they did from the crag-baron. 
 Bags and crags have jjist the same result on 
 rags. I have not time, however, to-night to 
 show you in how many ways the power of 
 capital is unjust ; but this one great principle I 
 have to assert — you will find it quite indispu-. 
 fably true — ^that whenever money is the prin,<i. 
 
52 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 cipal object of life with either man or nation, 
 it is both got ill, and spent ill ; and does harm 
 both in the getting and spending ; but when 
 it is not the principal object, it and all other 
 things will be well got, and well spent. And 
 here is the test, with every man, of whether 
 money is the principal object with him, or 
 not. If in mid-life he could pause and say, 
 "Now I have enough to live upon, I'll 
 live upon it; and having well earned it, 
 I will also well spend it, and go out of 
 the world poor, as I came into it," then 
 money is not principal with him ; but if, 
 having enough to live upon in the manner be- 
 fitting his character and rank, he still wants 
 to make more, and to die rich, then money is 
 the principal object with him, and it becomes 
 a curse to himself, and generally to those 
 who spend it after him. For you know it 
 must be spent some day ; the only question is 
 whether the man who makes it shall spend it, 
 or some one else. And generally it is better 
 for the maker to spend it, for he will know- 
 best its value and use. This is the true law 
 of life. And if a man does not choose thus to 
 spend his money, he must either hoard it or 
 lead 1^ and the wgrst thing he can generally 
 
U^ORSt 
 
 53 
 
 do is to lend it ; for borrowers are nearly 
 always ill-spenders, and it la with lent money 
 that all evil is mainly done and all unjust war 
 protracted. 
 
 For observe what the real fact is, respecting 
 loans to foreign military governments, and 
 how strange it is. If your little boy came to 
 you to ask for money to spend in squibs and 
 crackers, you would think tv/ice before you 
 gave it him ; and you would have some idea that 
 it was wasted, when you sav/ it fly off in fire- 
 works, even though he did no mischief with it. 
 But the Russian children, and Austrian chil- 
 dren, come to you, borrov/ing money, not to 
 spend in innocent squibs, but in cartridges 
 and bayonets to attack you in India with, 
 and to keep down all noble life in Italy with, 
 and to murder Polish women and children 
 with ; and that you will give at once, because 
 they pay you interest for it. Now, in order 
 to pay you that interest, they must tax every 
 working peasant in their dominions ; and on 
 that work you live. You therefore at once 
 rob the Austrian peasant, assassinate or 
 banish the Polish peasant, and you live on the 
 produce of the theft, and the bribe for the 
 assassiuation I That is the broad fact-^that 
 
^4 THE CROtVN 6P UriLD OLIVM. 
 
 is the practical meaning of your foreign loans, 
 and of most large interest of money ; and then 
 you quarrel with Bishop Colenso, forsooth, 
 as if he denied the Bible, and you believed it I 
 though, wretches as you are, every deliberate 
 act of your lives is a new defiance of its 
 primary orders ; and as if, for most of the rich 
 men of England at this moment, it were not 
 indeed to be desired, as the best thing at 
 least ior them, thdX the Bible should not ha 
 true, since against them these words are 
 vrritten in it : " The rust of your gold and 
 silver shall be a witness against you, and 
 shall eat your flesh, as it were fire." 
 
 III. r pass now to our third condition of 
 separation, between the men who work with, 
 the hand, and those who work with the head. 
 
 And here we have at last an inevitable dis- 
 tinction. Th&t&must be work done by the 
 arms, or none of us could live. There must 
 be work done by the brains, or the life we get 
 would not be worth having. And the same 
 men cannot do both. There is rough work to 
 be done, and rough men must do it ; there is 
 gentle work to be 4one, and gentlemen must 
 do it ; and it is physically impossible that one 
 class sbculd do, or divide, the work of the 
 
WORK. SS 
 
 other. And it is of no use to try to conceal 
 this sorrowful fact by fine -words, and to talk 
 to the workman about the honorableness of 
 manual labor, and the dignity of humanity. 
 That is a grand . old proverb of Sancho 
 Panza's, " Fine words butter no parsnips ; " 
 and I can tell you that, all over England just 
 now, you workmen are buying a great deal too 
 much butter at that dairy. Rough v/ork, hon- 
 orable or not, takes the life out of us; and 
 the man who has been heaving clay out cf a 
 ditch all day, or driving an express train 
 against the north wind all night, or holding a 
 collier's helni in a gale on a lee-shore, or whirl- 
 ing white-hot iron at a furnace mouth, that 
 man is not the same at the end of his day, or 
 night, as one who has been sitting in a quiet 
 room, with everything comfortable about him, 
 reading books, or classing butterflies, or paint- 
 ing pictures. If it is any comfort to you to 
 be told that the rough work is the more honor- 
 able of the two, I should be sorry to take that 
 much of consolation from you ; and in some 
 sense I need not. The rough work is at all 
 events real, honest, and, generally, though not 
 always, useful ; while the fine work is, a great 
 deal of it, iooli^h and false a§ well as fine, an^ 
 
56 rSB CROWN OF WILD OLIVB. 
 
 therefore dishonorable : but when both kinds 
 are equally well and wortliily done, the head's 
 is the noble work, and the hand's the ignoble ; 
 and of all hand work whatsoever, necessary 
 for the maintenance of life, those gld words, 
 " In the sweat of thy face thou shalt eat bread," 
 indicate that the inherent nature of it is one of 
 calamity ; and that the ground, cursed for our 
 sake, casts also some shadow of degradation 
 into our contest with its thorn and its thistle ; 
 so that all nations have held their days honor- 
 able, or " holy," and constituted them " holy- 
 days," " or holidays," by making them days of 
 rest ; and the promise, which, among all our 
 distant hopes, seems to cast the chief bright- 
 ness over death, is that blessing of the dead 
 ■who die in the Lord, that " they rest from 
 their labors, and their works do follow 
 them." 
 
 And thus the perpetual question and con- 
 test must arise, who is to do this rough work ? 
 and how is the worker of it to be comforted, 
 redeemed, and rewarded ? and what kind of 
 play should he have, and what rest, in this 
 world, sometimes, as well as in the next? 
 Well, my good working friends, these ques" 
 tions will take a little time to answer yet, 
 
woinc. sy 
 
 They must be answered : all good men are 
 occupied with them, and all honest thinkers. 
 There's grand head work doing about them ; 
 but much must be discovered, and much (at- 
 tempted in vain, before anything decisive caa 
 be told you. Only note these few particulars, 
 irhich are already sure. 
 
 As to the distribution of the hard work. None 
 of us, or very few of us, do either hard or soft 
 work because we think we ought ; but because 
 ■we have chanced to fall into the way of it, 
 and cannot help ourselves. Now, nobody 
 does anything well that they cannot help 
 doing : work is only done well when it is done 
 with a will ; and no man has a thoroughly- 
 sound will unless he knows he is, doing what 
 he should, and is in his place. And, depend. 
 upon it, all work must be done at last, not ia 
 a disorderly, scrambling, doggish way, but ia 
 an ordered, soldierly, human way — a lawful 
 ■way. Men are enlisted for the, labor that 
 ■Icills — the labor of war : they are counted, 
 trained, fed, dressed, and praised for that. 
 Let them be enlisted also for the labor that 
 feeds: l^t them be counted, trained, fed, 
 dressed, praised for that. Teach the plough 
 exercise as carefully as you do the sword ex- 
 
jg THB CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 ercise, and let the officers of troops of life be 
 held as much gentlemen as the officers of 
 troops of death ; and all is done : but neither 
 this, nor any other right thing, can be accom- 
 plished — ^you can't even see your v/ay to it — 
 unless, first of all, both servant and master 
 are resolved that, come what will of it, they 
 •will do each other justice. People are per- 
 petually squabbling about what will be best to 
 do, or easiest to do, or adviseablest to do, or 
 profitablest to do ; but they never, so far as I 
 hear them talk, ever ask what it is Just to do. 
 And it is the law of heaven that you shall not 
 be able to judge what is wise or easy, unless 
 you are first resolved to judge what is just, 
 and to do it. This is the one thing constantly 
 reiterated by our Master — the order of all 
 others that is given oftenest — " Do justice and 
 judgment." That's your Bible order; that's 
 the " Service of God," not praying nor psalm- 
 singing. You are told, indeed, to sing psalms 
 vhen you are merry, and to pray when you 
 need anything ; and, by the perversion of the 
 32vil Spirit, we get to think that praying and 
 psalm-singing are "service." If a child finds 
 itself in want of anything, it runs in and asks 
 it^ father for it — dqes il; call that, doin^ it^ 
 
father a service ? If, it begs for a toy or a 
 piece of cake — does it call that serving its 
 father ? That, with God, is prayer, and He 
 likes to hear it : He likes you to ask Him for 
 cake when you want it ; but He doesn't call that 
 "serving Him." Begging is' not serving: 
 God likes mere beggars as little as you do— 
 He likes honest servants, not beggars. So 
 when a child loves its father, very muchy and 
 is very happy, it may sing little songs about 
 him ; but it doesn't call that serving its 
 father; neither is singing songs about God, 
 serving God. It is enjoying ourselves, if it's 
 anything; most probably it is nothing; but if 
 it's anything, it is serving ourselves, not God. 
 And yet we are impudent enough to call our 
 beggings and chauntings " Divine Service : " we 
 say " Divine service will be ' performed' 
 (that's our word — the form of it gone through) 
 " at eleven o'clock." Alas ! — ^unless we per- 
 form Divine service in every willing act of our 
 life, we never perform it at all. The one 
 Divine work — the one ordered sacrifice — is to 
 do justice ; and it is the last we are ever in- 
 clined to do. Anything rather than that ! 
 As much charity as you choose, but no justice. 
 "Nay," you will say, "charity is greater than 
 
6o THE CROWN OF tVILD OLIt^M. 
 
 justice," Yes, it is greater ; it is the summit 
 of justice — it is the temple of which justice is 
 the foundation. But you can't have the top 
 without the bottom; you cannot build upon 
 charity. You must build upon justice, for this 
 main reason, that you have not, at first, charity 
 to build with. It is the last reward of good 
 •work. Do justice to your brotlier (you can do 
 that whether you love him or not), and you 
 will come to love him. But do injustice to 
 him, because you don't love him ; and you will 
 come to hate Hm. It is all very fine to think 
 you can build upon charity to begin with ; 
 but you will find all you have got to begin, 
 with, begins at home, and is essentially love 
 of yourself. You well-to-do people, for in- 
 stance, who are here to-night, will go to 
 *' Divine service " next Sunday, all nice and 
 tidy, and your little children will have their 
 tight little Sunday boots on, and lovely little 
 Sunday feathers in their hat^; and you'll 
 think, complacently and piously, how lovely 
 they look ! So they do : and you love them 
 heartily, and you like sticking feathers in their 
 hats. That's all right : that is charity ; but it 
 is charity beginning at home. Then you will 
 come to the poor little crossing-sweeper, got 
 
ap also, — It, m its Sunday dress, — the dirtiest 
 rags it has, — that it may beg the better : we 
 shall give it a penny, and think how good we 
 are. That's charity going abroad. But what 
 does Justice say, walking and watching near 
 us? Christian Justice has been strangely 
 mute, and seemingly blind ; and, if not blind, 
 decrepit, this many a day : she keeps her ac- 
 counts still, however — quite steadily — doing 
 them at nights, carefully, with her bandage off, 
 and through acutest spectacles (the only 
 modern scientific invention she cares about). 
 You must put your ear down ever so close to 
 her lips to hear her speak ; and then you will 
 start at what she first whispers, for it will cer- 
 tainly be, "Why shouldn't that little cross- 
 ing-sweeper have a feather on its head, as well 
 as your own child ? " Then you may ask Jus- 
 tice in an amazed manner, " How she can pos- 
 sibly be so foolish as to think children could 
 sweep crossings with feathers on their heads ? " 
 Then you stoop again, and Justice says — still 
 in her dull, stupid way — "Then, why don't 
 you, every other Sunday, leave your child to 
 sweep the crossing, and take the little sweeper 
 to church in a hat and feather ? " Mercy on 
 us ^ou tbink^ what will she say next \ And 
 
63 THE CROWN^ OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 you answer, of course, that " you don't, because 
 everybody ought to remain content ia tlie 
 position in which Providence has placed them." 
 Ah, my friends, that's the gist of the whole 
 question. Did Providence put them in that 
 position^ or did youi You knock a man 
 into -a ditch, and then you tell him to remain 
 content ia the " position in which Providence 
 has placed him," That's modem Christianity* 
 You say — "We did not knock him into the 
 ditch." How do you know what you have 
 done, or are doing? That's just what we 
 have all got to know, and what we shall never 
 know until the question with us every morning, 
 is, not how to do the gainful thing, but how to 
 do the just thing ; nor until we are at least so 
 far on the way to being Christian, as to have 
 underistood that maxim of the poor half-way 
 Mahometan, " One hour in the execution of 
 justices is worth seventy years of prayer." 
 
 Supposing, then, we have it determined with 
 appropriate justice, who is to do the hand 
 work, the next questions must be how the 
 hand-workers are to be paid, and how they are 
 to be refreshed, and what play they are to 
 have.- Now, the possible quantity of play 
 {depends Qa the possible quantity of pay : and 
 
the quantity of pay is not a matter for con- 
 sideration to hand-workers only, but to all 
 "Workers. Generally, good, useful work, 
 ■whether ojE the hand or head, is either ill-paid, 
 or not paid at all. I don't say it should be so, 
 but it always is so. Peoplej^ as a rule, only 
 pay for being amused or being cheated, not for 
 being served. Five thousand a year to your 
 talker, and a shilling a day to your fighter, 
 digger, and thinker, is the rule. None of the 
 best head work in art, literature, or science, is 
 ever paid for. How much do you think Homer 
 got for his Iliad ? or Dante for his Paradise? 
 only bitter bread and salt, and going up and 
 down other people's stairsl In science, the 
 man who discovered the telescope, and first saw 
 beaven, was paid with a dungeon ; the man 
 who invented the microscope, and first saw 
 earth, died of starvation, driven from his 
 borne : it is indeed very clear that God means 
 all thoroughly good work and talk to be done 
 for nothing "Baruch, the scribe, did not get 
 a penny a line for writing Jeremiah's second 
 roll for him, I fancy ; and St. Stephen did not 
 get bishop's pay for that long sermon of his to 
 the Pharisees ; nothing but stones. For indeed 
 tbat is the world-father's proper payment. Sa 
 
surely as any of the world's children ■work £^i' 
 the world's good, honestly, with head and 
 heart ; and come to it, saying, " Give us a little 
 bread, just to keep the life in us," the world- 
 father answers them, "No, my children, not 
 bread ; a stone, if you like, or as many as you 
 need, to keep you quiet." But the hand-work- 
 ers are not so ill off as all this comes to. The 
 worst that can happen to you is to break 
 stones ; not be broken by them. And for you 
 there will come a time for better payment; 
 some day, assuredly, more pence will be paid 
 to Peter the Fisherman, and fewer to Peter the 
 Pope ; we shall pay people not quite so much 
 for talking in Parliament and doing nothing, 
 as for holding their tongues out of it and doing 
 something ; we shall pay our ploughman a little 
 more and our lawyer a little less, and so on : 
 but, at least, we may even now take care that 
 ■whatever work is done shall be fully paid for ; 
 and the man who does it paid for it, not some- 
 body else ; and that it shall be done in an 
 orderly, soldierly, well-guided, wholesome 
 way, under good captains and lieutenants of 
 labor; and that it shall have its appointed 
 times of rest, and enough of them ; and that 
 in thos& times the play shall be wholesome 
 
play, not in theatrical gardens, with tin flowers 
 and gas sunshine, and girls dancing because 
 of their misery ; but in true gardens, with real 
 flowers, and real sunshine, and children dancing 
 because of their gladness ; so that truly the 
 streets shall be full (the " streets," mind you, 
 liot the gutters) of children, playing in the midst 
 thereof. We may take care that working-men 
 shall have at least as good books to read as 
 anybody else, when they've time to read them ; 
 and as comfortable firesides to sit at as anybody 
 else when they've time to sit at them. This, I 
 think, can be managed for you, my Working 
 friends, in the good time. 
 
 IV. I must go on, however, to our last head, 
 concerning ourselves all, as v/orkers. What 
 is wise work, and what is foolish v/ork ? What 
 the difference between sense and nonsense, in 
 daily occupation ? 
 
 Well, wise work is, briefly, work wiiA God. 
 Foolish work is work against God. And work 
 done with God, which He will help, may be 
 briefly described as " Putting in Order " — that- 
 is, enforcing God's law of order, spiritual and 
 material, over men and things. The first thing 
 you have to do, essentially; the real "good 
 Work " is, with respect Xa men, to enforce joSf 
 % 
 
66 THM CROV/2^ OF WILD OLiP'M. 
 
 tice, and with respect to things, to enforce tidt 
 ness, and f ruitfulness. _ And against these two 
 great human deeds, justice and order, there 
 are perpetually two great demons contending, 
 — the devil of iniquity, or inequity, and the 
 devil of disorder, or of death ; for death is only 
 consummation of disorder. You have to fight 
 these two fiends daily. So far as you don't 
 fight against the fiend of iniquity, you work 
 for him. You " work iniquity, ** and the judg- 
 ment upon you, for all your " Lord, Lord's," will 
 be " Depart from me, ye that work iniquity." 
 And so far as you do not resist the fiend of dis" 
 order, you work disorder, and you yourself da 
 the work of Death, which is sin, and has for its 
 wages. Death himself. 
 
 Observe then, all wise work is mainly three- 
 fold in character. It is honest, useful, and 
 cheerful. 
 
 I. It is HONEST. I hardly know anything 
 more strange than .that j'ou recognize honesty 
 in play, and you do not in work. In your 
 lightest games, you have always some one to 
 see what you call " fair-play." It boxing, you 
 must hit fair ; in racing, start fair. Your Eng- 
 lish watchword is fair-play, your English 
 batredy foul-play, Did it ever strike you that 
 
WORIf. 67 
 
 you wanteJ another watchword also, fair-worlc, 
 and another hatred also, foul-work? Your 
 prize-fighter has some honor in him yet ; and 
 so have the men in the ring round him : they 
 •will judge him to lose the match, by foul hit- 
 ting. But your prize-merchant gains his match 
 by foul selling, and no one cries out against 
 that. You drive a gambler out of the gam- 
 tling-room who loads dice, but you leave a 
 tradesman in flourishing business who loads 
 scales ! For observe, all dishonest dealing is. 
 loading scales. What does it matter whether 
 I get short weight, adulterate substance, oe 
 dishonest fabric ? The fault in the fabric is 
 incomparably the worst of thp two. Give me 
 short measure of food, and I only lose by you ; 
 but give me adulterate food, and I die by you. 
 Here, then, is your chief duty, you workmen 
 and tradesmen — to be true to yourselves, and 
 to us who would help you. We can do nothing 
 for you, nor you for yourselves, without 
 lionesty. Get that, you get all ; without tha^ 
 your suffrages, your reforms, your free-trade 
 measures, your institutions of science, are all 
 in vain. It is useless to put your heads to- 
 gether, if you can't put your hearts together. 
 gb9VL)4^ %Q giioulder; right tiaa4 to ri^ht itaucl^ 
 
68 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVS. 
 
 among yourselves, and no wrong hand to anj» 
 body else, and you'll win the world yet. 
 
 II. Then, secondly, wise work is useful. 
 No man minds, or ought to mind, its being 
 hard, if only it comes to something ; but whea 
 it is hard, and comes to nothing ; when all 
 our bees' business turns to spiders' ; and for 
 honey-comb we have only resultant cobweb, 
 blown away by the next breeze — that is the 
 cruel thing for the worker. Yet do we ever 
 aSk ourselves, personally, or even nationally, 
 whether our work is coming to anything cr 
 not ? We don't care to keep what has been 
 nob ly~ done ; still less do we care to do nobly 
 what others would keep ; and, least of all, to 
 make the work itself useful instead of deadly 
 to the doer, so as to use his life indeed, but 
 not to waste it. Of all wastes, the greatest 
 waste that you can commit is the waste of 
 labor. If you v/ent down in the morning into 
 your dairy, and you found that your youngest 
 child had got d. wn before you ; and that he 
 and the cat were at play together, and that he 
 '.lad poured out all the cream on the floor for 
 the cat to lap up, you would scold the child, 
 and be sorry the milk was wasted. But if, 
 ii)steac| of >irooden bowls with milk in them^ 
 
there are golden bowls with human life in 
 them, and instead of the cat to play with — the 
 devil tQ play with ; and you yourself the 
 player; and instead of leaving that golden 
 bowl to be broken by God at the fountain, you 
 treak it in .the dust yourself j and pour the 
 human blood out on the gmund for the fiend 
 to lick up — that is no Tyaste ! What ! you 
 perhaps think, " to waste the labor of men is 
 not to kill them.'' Is it not ? I should like to 
 know how you could kill them more utterly^ 
 kill them with second deaths? It is the 
 slightest way of killing to stop a man's breath. 
 Nay, the hunger, and the cold, and the little 
 ■whistling bullets — our love-messengers be- 
 tween nation and nation — have brought 
 pleasant messages from us to many a maa 
 before now ; orders of sweet release, and 
 leave at last to go where he will be most 
 ■welcome and mt.>st happy. At the worst you 
 do but shorten his life, you do not corrupt 
 his life. -But if you put him to base labor, if 
 you bind his thoughts, if you blind his eyes, if 
 you blunt his hop<;s, if you steal his joys, if 
 you stunt his body, and blast his soul, and at 
 last leave him not so much as to reap the 
 poor fruit of his degradation, but gather that 
 
Yo CROWN' OF WiLn OUVB. 
 
 for yourself, and dismiss him to the grave^ 
 ■when you have done with him, having, so far 
 as in you lay, made the walls of that grave 
 everlasting (though, indeed, I fancy the goodly 
 bricks of some of our family vaults will hold 
 closer in the resurrection day than the sod 
 over the laborer's head), this you think is no 
 waste, and no sin ! 
 
 III. Then, lastly, wise work is cheerful, 
 as a child's work is. And now I want you to 
 take one thought home with you, and let it 
 stay with you. 
 
 Everybody in this room has been taught to 
 pray daily, " Thy kingdom come." Now, if we 
 hear a man swear in the streets, we think it 
 ■Bery wrong, and say he " takes God's name in 
 vain." But there's a twenty times worse way 
 of taking His name in vain than that. It is to 
 ask God for what we don'i want. He doesn't 
 like that sort of prayer. If you don't want a 
 thing, don't ask for it: such asking is the 
 •worst mockery of your King you can mock 
 Him with ; the soldiers striking Him on the 
 head with the reed was nothing to that. If 
 you do not wish for His kingdom, don't pray 
 for it. But if you do, you must do more than 
 pray for it ; you must work for it. And, to 
 
work for it, you must know what it is: we 
 have all prayed for it many a day without 
 thinking. Observe, it is a kingdom that is to 
 come to us ; we are not to go to it. Also, it is 
 not to be a kingdom of the dead, but of the 
 living. Also, it is not to come all at once, but 
 quietly ; nobody knows how " The kingdom of 
 God Cometh not with observation." Also, 
 it is not to come outside of us, but in the 
 hearts of us : " the kingdom of God is within 
 you." And being within us, it is not a thing 
 to be seen, but to be felt; and though it 
 brings all substance of good with it, it does 
 not consist in that : " the kingdom of God is 
 not meat and drink, but righteousness, peace, 
 and joy in the Holy Ghost : " joy, that is to 
 say, in the holy, healthful, and helpful Spirit. 
 Now, if we want to work for this kingdom, 
 and to bring it, and enter into it, there's just 
 one condition to be first accepted. You must 
 enter it as children, or not at all ; " Whosoever 
 will not receive it as a little child shall not 
 enter therein." And again, " Suffer little 
 children to come unto me, and forbid theni 
 not, for of such is the kingdom of heaven." 
 
 Of such, observe. Not of children them- 
 ^e).Yes, but of i^uch as cbildien. I believe 
 
p THE CROWN' OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 most mothers who rSad that text think that all 
 heaven is to be full of babies. But that's not 
 so. There •will be children there, but the 
 hoary head is the crown. " Length of days, 
 and long life and peace," that is the blessing, 
 not to die in babyhood. Children die but for 
 their parent's sins ; God means them to live, 
 Jjut He can't let them always ; then they have 
 their earlier place in heaven : and the little 
 child of David, vainly prayed for ;^the little 
 child of Jeroboam, killed by its mother's step 
 on its own threshold, — they will be there. But 
 ■weary old David, and weary old Barzillai, hav- 
 ing learned children's lessons at last, will be 
 there too : and the one question for us all, 
 young or old, is, have we learned our child's 
 lesson ? it is the character of children we want; 
 and must gain at our peril ; let us see, briefly, 
 in what it consists. 
 
 The first character of right childhood is that 
 it is Modest. A well-bred child does not 
 think it can teach its parents, or that it knows 
 everything. It may think its father and 
 mother know everything, — perhaps that all 
 grown-up people know everything; very cer- 
 tainly it is sure that it does not. And it is 
 always asking questions, and wanting to know 
 
WORJC. 73 
 
 tfiore. Well, that is the first character of a 
 good and wise man at his work. To know 
 that he knows very little ; — to perceive that 
 there are many above him wiser than he ; and 
 to be always asking questions, wanting to 
 learn, not to teach. No one ever teaches well 
 who wants to-teach, or governs well who wants 
 to govern ; it is an old saying (Plato's, but I 
 know not if his, first), and as wise as old. 
 
 Then, the second character of right child- 
 hood is to be faithful. Perceiving that its 
 father knows best wh^t is good for it, and 
 having found always, when it has tried its 
 own way against his, that he was right and it 
 was wrong, a noble child trusts him at last 
 wholly, gives him its hand, and will walk 
 blindfold with him, if he bids it. And that is 
 the true character of all good men also, as 
 obedi«4nt workers, or soldiers under captains. 
 They must trust their captains ; — they are 
 bound for their lives to choose none but those 
 whom they can trust. Then, they are not 
 always to be thinking that what seems strange 
 to them, or wrong in what they are desired to 
 do, is strange or wrong. They know their 
 captain : where he leads they must follow, 
 \ifhat he bids, they must do j and without thi? 
 
J4 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 trust and faith, without this captainship and 
 soldiership, no great deed, no great salvation, 
 is possible to man. Among all the nations it 
 is only when this faith is attained by them 
 that they become great : the Jew, the Greek, 
 and th^ Mahometan, agree at least in testify- 
 ing to this. It was a deed of this absolute 
 trust which made Abraham the father of the 
 faithful ; it was the declaration of the power of 
 God as captain over all men, and the accept- 
 ance of a leader appointed by Him as com- 
 mander of the faithful, which laid the founda- 
 tion of whatever national power yet exists in. 
 the East ; and the deed of the Greeks, which 
 has become the type of unselfish and noble 
 soldiership to all lands, and to all times, was 
 commemorated, on the tomb of those who 
 gave their lives to do it, in the most pathetic, 
 so far as I know, or can feel, of all humaa 
 utterances : " Oh, stranger, go and tell our 
 people that we are lying here, having obeyed 
 their words.'' 
 
 Then the third character of right childhood 
 is to be Loving and Generous. Give a little 
 love to a child, and you get a great deal back. 
 It loves everything near it, when it is a right 
 ^d of ci^ild — would hurt nothing woulci 
 
give the best It has away, always, if you need 
 it — does not lay plans for getting everything 
 in the house for itself, and delights in helping 
 people ; you cannot please it so much as by 
 giving it a chance of being useful', in ever so 
 little a way. 
 
 And because of all these characters, lastly, 
 it is Cheerful. Putting, its trust in its father, 
 it is careful for nothing — being full of love to 
 every creature, it is happy always, whether ia 
 its play or in its duty. Well, that's 'the gr^at 
 worker's character also. Taking no thought 
 for the morrow ; taking thought only for the 
 duty of the day ; trusting somebody else to take 
 care of to-morrow ; knowing indeed what labor 
 is, but not what sorrow is ; and always ready 
 for play, — ^beautiful play, — ^for lovely humaa 
 play is like the play of the Sun. There's a 
 worker for you. He, steady to his time, is set 
 as a strong man to run his course, but also, 
 he rejoiceth as a strong man to run his course. 
 See how he plays in the morning, with the 
 mists below, and the clouds above, with a ray 
 here and a flash there, and a shower of jewel? 
 everywhere ; — that's the Sun's play ; and great 
 human play is like his — all various — all full 
 of light and life, and tender, as the dew of thQ 
 morning, . r^-; -/ ^ .-^ 
 
76 THE CROtVN' OP mti) OLIV^ 
 
 So then, you have the child's character in 
 these four things — Humility, Faith, Charity, 
 and Cheerfulness. That's v/hat you have got 
 to be converted to. " Except ye be converted 
 and become as little children " — You hear 
 much of conversion nowadays; but people 
 always seem to think you have got to be made 
 wretched by conversion, — to be converted to 
 long faces. No, friends, you have got to be 
 converted to short ones ; you have to repent 
 into childhood, to repent into delight, and de- 
 lightsomeness. You can't go into a convent- 
 icle but"you'll hear, plenty of talk of back- 
 sliding. Backsliding, indeed ! I Crfn tell you, 
 on the ways most of us go, the faster we slide 
 back the better. Slide back into the cradle^ 
 if going on is into the grave — ^back, I tell you ; 
 back — out of your long faces, and into your 
 long clothes. It is among children only, and 
 as children only, that you will find medicine 
 for your healing and tru*: wisdom for your 
 teaching. There is poison in the counsels of 
 the man of this world ; the words they speak 
 are all bitterness, " the poison of asps is under 
 their lips," but " the sucking child shall play 
 by the hole of the asp." There is death in the 
 looks of men. " Thcdr eyes axe pdviiy set 
 
wosx. ii 
 
 against the poor ; " they are as the uncharm- 
 able serpent, the cockatrice, which slew by 
 seeing. But " the weaned child shall lay his 
 hand on the cockatrice den.'' There is death 
 in the steps of men : " their feet are swift to 
 shed blood ; they have compassed us ia our 
 steps like the lion that is greedy of his prey, 
 and the young lion lurking in secret places," 
 but, in that kingdom, the wolf- shall lie down 
 •with the lamb, and the fatling with the lion, 
 and " a little child shall lead them." There 
 is death in the thoughts of men ; the world is 
 one wide riddle to them, darker and darker as 
 it draws to a close ; but the secret of it is 
 known to the child, and the Lord of heaven 
 and earth is most to be thanked in that " He 
 has hidden these things from the wise and 
 prudent, and has revealed them unto babes." 
 Yes, and there is death — infinitude of death 
 in the principalities and powers of men. As 
 far as the east is from the west, so far our sins 
 sxe—not set from us, but multiplied around 
 us : the Sun himself, think you he now " re- 
 joices " to run his course, when he plunges 
 westward to the horizon, so widely red, not 
 with clouds, but blood ? And it will be red 
 wore widely yet. Whatever drought of th^ 
 
J8 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 early and latter rain maybe, there will be none 
 of that red rain. You fortify yourselves against 
 - it in vain ; the enemy and avenger will be 
 upon you also, unless you learn that it is not 
 out of the mouths of the knitted gun, or the 
 smoothed rifle, but " out ^of the mouths of 
 babes and sucklings " that the strength is or- 
 dained, which shall "still the enemy and 
 avenger," 
 
iECTURE It. 
 
 XMAFFIC , 
 
'LECTURE 11.). 
 
 TRAFFIC. 
 (DtlivereJtx the Town Hall, Bradford^ 
 
 My good Yorkshire friends, you have asked 
 me down here among your hills that I might 
 talk to you about this Exchange you are going 
 to build ; but earnestly and seriously asking 
 you to pardon me, I am going to do nothing 
 of the kind. I cannot talk, or at least can say 
 very little, about this same Exchange. I must 
 talk of quite other things, though not un« 
 ■willingly ;^I could not deserve your pardon, 
 if when you invited me to speak on one sub- 
 ject, I wilfully spoke on another. But I can- 
 not speak, to purpose, of anything about 
 •which I do not care ; and most simply and 
 sorrowfully I have to tell you, in the outset, 
 that I do not care about this Exchange of 
 yours. 
 
 If, however, when you sent me your invita- 
 tion, I had answered, " I won't come, I don't 
 
t K2 
 
 tz fH^ CROWN OF WILb OLlp-£. 
 
 care about the Exchange of Bradford," you 
 would have been justly offended witli me, not 
 knowing the reason of so blunt a carelessness. 
 Sp I have come down, hoping that you will 
 patiently let me tell you why, on tlas, and 
 many other such occasions, I now remain 
 silent, when formerly I should have caught at 
 the opportunity of speaking to a gracious au- 
 dience. 
 
 In a word, tten, I do not care about this 
 Exchange, — h&caxise you don't; and because 
 you know perfectly well I cannot make you. 
 Look at the essential circumstances of the 
 case, which you, as business men, know per- 
 fectly well, though perhaps you think I forget 
 them. You are going to spend 30,000/., 
 which to you, collectively, is nothing ; the buy- 
 ing a new coat is, as to the cost of it, a much, 
 more important Blatter of consideration to me 
 than building a new Exchange is to you. But 
 you think you may as well have the right 
 thing for your money. You know there are a 
 great many odd styles of architecture about ; 
 you don't want to do anything ridiculous ; 
 you hear of me, among others, as a respectable 
 architectural man-milliner : and you send for 
 me, that I may tell you the leading fashioa} 
 
TRAFFIC. 83 
 
 and what is, in our shops, for the moment, the 
 newest and sweetest thing in pinnacles. 
 
 Now, pardon me for telling you frankly, you 
 cannot have good architecture merely by 
 asking people's advice on occasion. All good 
 architecture is the expression of national life 
 and character, and it is produced by a pre- 
 valent and eager national taste, or desire for 
 beauty. And I want you to think a little of 
 the deep significance of this word " taste ; " for 
 no statement of mine has been more earnestly 
 or oftener controverted than that good taste is 
 essentially a moral quality. " No," say many 
 of my antagonists^,^" taste is one thing, morality 
 is anoth;er. Tell us what is pretty; we shall 
 be glad to know that ; but preach no sermons 
 to us." 
 
 Permit me, therefore, to fortify this old 
 dogma of mine somewhat. Taste is not only 
 a part and an index of morality — it is the only 
 morality. The first, and last, and closest trial 
 question to any living creature is, " What do 
 you like ? " Tell me what you like, and I'll tell 
 you what you are. Go out into the street, and 
 ask the first man or woman you meet, what 
 their " taste " is, and if they answer candidly, 
 you know them, body and soul " You, my 
 
$4 TffE CROWN' OF WILD OZTVB. 
 
 friend in the rags, with the unsteady gait, what 
 do you like ? " " A pipe and a quartern of gin." 
 I know you. " You, my good woman, with the 
 quick step and tidy bonnet, wliat do you like ? " 
 " A swept hearth and a clean tea-table, and my 
 husband opposite me, and a baby at my breast." 
 Good, I know you also. " You, little girl with 
 the golden hair and soft eyes, what do you 
 Kke ? " " My canary, and a run among the 
 wood hyacinths." "You, little boy with the 
 dirty hands and the low forehead, what do you 
 like ? " "A shy at the sparrows, and a game 
 at pitch-farthing." Good ; we know them all 
 now. What more need v/e ask? 
 
 " Nay," perhaps~-you answer : " we need 
 rather to ask what these people and children 
 do, than what they like,. If they do right, it is 
 no matter that they like what is wrong ; and if 
 they do wrong, it is no matter that they like 
 what is right. Doing is the great thing ; and 
 it does not matter that the man likes drinking, 
 so that he does not drink ; nor that the little 
 girl likes to be kind to her canary, if she will 
 not learn her lessons ; nor that the little boy 
 likes throwing stones at the sparrows, if he 
 goes to th^ Sunday school." Indeed, for a 
 ^hort time, and in a provisional sense, this i$ 
 
fRAFFTC. t$ 
 
 true. For if, resolutely, people do what is 
 right, in time they come to like doing it. But 
 they only are in a right moral stage when they 
 have come to like doing it ; and as long as they 
 don't like it, they are still in a vicious state. 
 The man is not in health of body who is always 
 thirsting for the bottle in the cupboard, though 
 he bravely bears his thirst ; but the man who 
 heartily enjoys water in the morning and wine 
 in the evening, each in its proper quantity and 
 time. And the entire object of true education 
 is to make people not merely do the right 
 things, but enjoy the right things — not merely 
 industrious, but to love industry — not merely 
 learned, but to love knowledge — not merely 
 pure, but to love purity— not merely just, but 
 to hunger and thirst after justice. 
 
 But you may answer or think, " Is the liking 
 for outside ornaments, — for pictures, for stat- 
 ues, or furniture, or -architecture, — a moral 
 quality ? " Yes, most surely, if a rightly set 
 liking. Taste for any pictures or statues is 
 not a moral quality, but taste for good ones is. 
 Only here again we have to define the word 
 " good." I don't mean by " good," clever — or 
 learned — or difficult in the doing. Take a 
 picture by Teniers, of sots quarrelling over 
 
36 THE CROWN' OF WILD OLIl^k. 
 
 their dice : it is an entirely clever picture ; SO 
 clever that nothing in its kind has ever been 
 done equal to it ; but it is also an entirely base 
 and evil picture. It is an expression of delight 
 in the prolonged contemplation of a vile thing, 
 and delight in that is an " unmannered," or 
 " immoral " quality. It is " bad taste " in the 
 profoundest sense — it is the taste of the devils. 
 On the other hand, a picture of Titian's, or a 
 Greek statue, or a Greek coin, or a Turner 
 landscape, expresses delight in the perpetual 
 contemplation of a good and perfect thing. 
 That is an entirely moral quality — it is the 
 taste of the angels. And all delight in art, and 
 all love of it, resolve themselves into simple 
 love of that which deserves love. That de- 
 serving is thequality which we call " loveliness " 
 — (we ought to have an opposite word, hate- 
 liness, to be said of the things which deserve 
 to be hated) ; and it is not an indifferent nor 
 optional thing whether we love this or that ; 
 but it is just the vital function of all, our being. 
 What we like determines what we are, and is 
 the sign of what we are ; and to teach taste is 
 inevitably to form character. As I was thinking 
 over this, in walking up Fleet Street the other 
 da^y my eye caught the title of a book standing 
 
TRAFFIC. 87 
 
 open in 3- idoAseller's windcjw. It was — " On 
 the necessity of the difEusioa of taste among 
 all classes." " Ah," I thoijght to myself, " my 
 classifying friend, when you have disused your 
 taste, where will your classes be ? The men 
 who likes what you like, belongs to the same 
 class with you, I tliink. Inevitably so. You 
 may put him to other work if you choose ; but, 
 by the condition you have brought hira into, 
 he will dislike the other work as much as you 
 would yourself. You get hoH of a scavenger, 
 or a costermonger, who enjoyed the Newgate 
 Calendar for literature, and ' Pop goes the 
 Weasel 1 ' for mtisic. You think you can make 
 him like Dante or Beethoven ? I wish you joy 
 of your lessons ; but if you do, you have made 
 a gentleman of him : — ^he won't like to go back 
 to his costermongering." 
 
 And as completely and unexceptionally is 
 this so, that, if I had time to-night, I could 
 show you that a nation cannot be affected by 
 any vice, or weakness, without expressing it, 
 legibly, and forever, either in bad art, or by 
 want of art ; and that there is no national 
 virtue, small or great, which is not manifestly 
 expressed in all the art which circumstances 
 enable the people possessing that virtue to 
 
88 THE CROWN O/- WILb OLTVE. 
 
 produce. Take, for instance, your great Engfc 
 lish virtue of enduring and patient courage. 
 You have at present in England only one art 
 of any consequence — that is, iron-working. 
 You know thoroughly well how to cast and 
 hammer iron. Now, do you think in those 
 masses of lava which you build volcanic 
 cones to melt, and which you forge at the 
 mouths of the Infernos you have created ; do 
 you think, on those iron plates, your courage 
 and endurance are not written forever — not 
 merely with an iron pen, but on iron parch- 
 ment ? And take also your great English vice 
 — European vice — ^vice of all the world — ^vice 
 of all other worlds that roll or shine in heaven, 
 bearing with them yet the atmosphere of hell 
 — the vice of jealousy, which brings competi- 
 tion into commerce, treachery into your coun- 
 cils, and dishonor into your wars — that vice 
 •which has rendered for you, and for your next 
 neighboring nation, the daily occupations of 
 existence no longer possible, but with the mail 
 upon your breasts and the sword loose in its 
 sheath ; so that, at last, you have realized for 
 all the multitudes of the two great peoples 
 who lead the so-called civilization of the earth, 
 i— you have realized for them all, I say, i9 
 
TRAFFIC. 89 
 
 person and in policy, what was once true only 
 of the rough Border riders of your Cheviot 
 hills— 
 
 They carved at the meal 
 
 With gloves of steel, 
 And they drank the red wine through the helmet 
 barr'd ; — 
 
 do you think that this national shame and 
 dastardliness of heart are not written as legibly 
 on every rivet of your iron armor as the 
 strength of the right hands that forged it? 
 Friends, I know not whether this thing be the 
 more ludicrous or the more melancholy. It is 
 quite unspeakably botli. Suppose, instead of 
 being now sent for by you, I had been sent 
 for by some private gentleman, living in a 
 suburban house, with his ' garden separated 
 only by a fruit-wall from his next-door neigh- 
 bor's ; and he had called me to consult with 
 him on the furnishing of his drawing-room. I 
 begin looking about me, and find the v/alls 
 rather bare ; I think such and such a paper 
 might be desirable — perhaps a little fresco 
 here and there on the ceiling — a damask cur- 
 tain or so at the windows. " Ah," says my 
 employer, " damask curtains, indeed ! That's 
 all very fine^ but you know I can't afEord that 
 
90 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 kind of thing just nowl" "Yet the world 
 credits you with a splendid income 1 " " All, 
 yes," says my friend, " but do you know, at 
 present, I am obliged to spend it nearly all 
 in steel-traps ? " " Steel-traps ! for whom ? " 
 "Why, for that fellow on the other side the 
 wall, you know : we're very good friends, cap- 
 ital friends ; but we are obliged to keep our 
 traps set on both sides of the wall ; we could 
 not possibly keep on friendly terms without 
 them, and our spring-gunS; The worst of it 
 is, we are both clever fellov/s enour;h ; and 
 there's never a day passes that we don't find 
 out a new trap, or, a new gun-barrel, or some- 
 thing ; we spend about fifteen millions a year 
 each in our traps, take it all together ; and I 
 don't see how we're to do with less. " A highly 
 comic state of life for two private gentlemen ! 
 but for two nations, it seems to me, not wholly 
 comic 1 Bedlam would be comic, perhaps, if 
 there were only one madman in it ; and your 
 Christmas pantomime is comic, when there is 
 only one clown in it ; but when the whole 
 world turns clown, and paints itself red with 
 its own heart's bl6od instead of vermilion, it 
 is something else than comic, I think. 
 
 IV^ind, I know a great deal of this is play, 
 
TRAFFIC. 9i 
 
 and willingly allow for that. You don't know 
 what to do with yourselves for a sensation : 
 fox-hunting and cricketing will not carry you 
 through the whole of this unendurably long 
 mortal life ; you liked pop-guns when you 
 were schoolboys, and rifles and Armstrongs, 
 are only the same things better made: but 
 then the worst of it is, that^hat was play to 
 you when boys, was not play to the sparrows ; 
 and what is play to you now, is not play to 
 the small birds of State neither ; and for the 
 black eagles, you are somewhat shy of taking 
 shots at them, if I mistake not. 
 
 I must get back to the matter in hand, how- 
 ever. Believe me, without farther instance, I 
 could show you, in all time, that every nation's 
 vice, or virtue, was written in its art: the 
 soldiership of early Greece ; the sensuality of 
 late Italy ; the visionary religion of Tuscany ; 
 the splendid human energy and beauty of 
 Venice. I have no time to do this to-night 
 (I have done it elsewhere before now) ; but I 
 proceed to apply the principle to ourselves ia 
 a more -searching manner. 
 
 I notice that among all the new buildings 
 that cover your once wild hills, churches and 
 schools are mixed in duCi that is to say, Iq 
 
92 
 
 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 large proportion, with your mills and man- 
 sions ; and I notice also that the churches ^nd 
 schools are almost always Gothic, and the 
 mansions and mills are never Gothic Will 
 you allow me to ask precisely the meaning of 
 this ? For remember, it is peculiarly a mod- 
 ern phenomenon. When Gothic was invented, 
 houses were Gothic as well as churches ; and 
 when the Italian style superseded the Gothic, 
 churches were Italian as well as houses. If 
 Jhere is a Gothic spire to the caliiedral of Ant- 
 werp, if there is a Gothic belfry to the Hotel de 
 Ville at Brussels ; if Inigo Jones builds an Ital- 
 ian Whitehall, Sir Christopher Wren builds an 
 Italian St. Paul's. But now you live under 
 one school of architecture, and worship under 
 another. What do you mean by doing this ? 
 Am I to understand that you are thinking of 
 changing your architecture- back to Gothic ; 
 and that you treat your churches experiment- 
 ally, because it does not matter what mis- 
 takes you make in a church ? Or am I to un- 
 derstand that you consider Gothic a pre-emi- 
 nently sacred and beautiful mode'of building, 
 v/hich you think, like the fine frankincense, 
 should be mixed for the tabernacle only, and 
 reserved ior your religious services ? For if 
 
TRAIfFIC. 93 
 
 this be the feeling, though it may seem at first 
 as if it were graceful and reverent, you will 
 . find that, at the root of the matter, it signifies 
 neither more nor less than that you have 
 separated your religion from your life. 
 
 For consider what a wide significance this 
 fact has ; and remember that it is not you only, 
 but all the people of England, who are behav- 
 ing thus just now. 
 
 You have all got into the habit of calling the 
 church " the house of God." I have seen, over 
 the doors of many churches, the legend act- 
 ually carved, " TTiis is the house of God, and 
 this is the gate of heaven." Now, note where 
 that legend comes from, and of what place it 
 Teas first spoken. A boy leaves his father's 
 house to go on a long journey on foot, to visit 
 his uncle ; he has to cross a wild hill-desert ; 
 just as if one of your own boys had to cross 
 the wolds of Westmoreland, to visit an uncla 
 at Carlisle. The second or third day'your boy 
 finds himself somewhere between Hawes and 
 Brough, in the midst of the moors, at sunset. 
 It is stony ground, and boggy ; he cannot go 
 one foot farther that night. Down he lies, to 
 sleep, on Wharnside, where best he may, 
 gathering a few of the stones together to 
 
94 THE CJiOWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 put under his head ; — so wild the place is, he 
 cannot get anything but stones. And there,' 
 lying under the broad night, he has a 
 dream ; and he sees a ladder set up on tlie 
 earth, and the top of it reaches to heaven, and 
 the angels of God are ascending and descend- 
 ing upon it. And when he wakes out of his 
 sleep, he says, " How dreadful is this place ; 
 surely, this is none other than the house of 
 God, and this is tlie gate of heaven." This 
 PLACK, observe ; not this church ; not this 
 city ; not this stone, even, which he puts up 
 for a memorial — the piece of flint on which his 
 head has lain. But this place; this windy 
 slope of Whamside; this moorland hollow, 
 torrent-bitten, snow-blighte4 ; this any place 
 where God lets down the ladder. And how 
 are you to know where that will be ? or how 
 are you to determine where it may be, but by 
 being ready for it always ? Do you know 
 where the lightning is to fall next ? You do 
 know that, partly ; you can guide the lightning ; 
 but you cannot guide the going forth of the 
 Spirit, which is that lightning when it shines 
 from the east to the west. 
 
 But the perpetual and insolent warping of 
 that Strong verse to serve a merely ecclesiastt- 
 
TJtAPPld. 
 
 95 
 
 Cai purpose, is only one of the thousand in- 
 stances in which we sink back into gross 
 Judaism. We call our churches " temples." 
 Now, you know, or ought to know, they are 
 not temples. They have never had, never can 
 have, anything whatever to do with temples. 
 They are "synagogues" — "gathering places'* 
 ■^where you gather yourselves together as an 
 assembly; and by not calling them so, you 
 again miss the force of another mighty text — ■ 
 " Thou, when thou prayest, shalt not be as the 
 hypocrites are ; for they love to pray standing 
 in ihe churches'" [we should translate it], "that 
 they may be seen of men. But thou, whea 
 thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when 
 thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father,"— 
 ■which is, not in chancel nor in aisle, but "ia 
 secret." 
 
 Now, you feel, as I say this to you — I know 
 you feel — as if I were trying to take away the 
 honor of your churches. Not so ; I am facing 
 to prove to you the honor of your houses and 
 your hills ; I am trying to show you — not that 
 the Church is not sacred — ^butthat the whole 
 Earth is. I would have yoti feel, what care- 
 less, what constant, what infectious sin there 
 is in all modes of thought, whereby, in calling 
 
96 tffS CRO\^^ OP WILD OLtV&. 
 
 your churches only "holy, "you call your hearths 
 and homes profane ; and have separated 
 yourselves from the heathen by casting all 
 your household gods to the ground, instead of 
 lecognizing, in the place of their many and 
 ieeble Lares, the presence of your One and 
 Mighty Lord and Lar. 
 
 " But what has all this to do with our Ex- 
 change ? " you ask me, impatiently. My dear 
 friends, it has just everything to do with it y 
 on these inner and great questions depend all 
 the outer and little ones ; and if you have 
 asked me down here to speak to you be- 
 cause you had before been interested in any- 
 thing I have written, you must know that all 
 I have yet said about architecture was to show 
 this. The book I called " The Seven Lamps '» 
 was to show that certain right states of temper 
 and moral feeling were the magic powers by 
 ■which all good architecture, without exception, 
 liad been produced. " The Stones of Venice " 
 had, from beginning to end, no other aim than 
 to show that the Gothic architecture of Venice 
 had arisen out of, and indicated in all its 
 features, a state of pure national faith, and of 
 domestic virtue; and that its Renaissance 
 iurdutecture ,b«d aiiseo out of, and in all its 
 
YRAPPid. 
 
 97 
 
 features indicated, a state of concealed national 
 infidelity, and of doniestic corruption. And 
 now, you ask nie what style is best to build 
 in ; and how can I answer, knowing the mean- 
 ing of the two styles, but by another question — 
 do you mean to build as Christians or as In- 
 fidels ? And still more — do you mean to build 
 as honest Christians or as honest Infidels ? as 
 thoroughly and confessedly, either one or the 
 other ? You don't -like to be asked such rude 
 questions. I cannot help it ; they are of much. 
 more irriportance then this Exchange business ; 
 and if they can be at once answered, the Ex- 
 change business settles itself in a moment. 
 But, before I press them farther, I must ask 
 leave to explain one point clearly. In all my 
 past work, my endeavor has been to show that 
 good architecture is essentially religious — the 
 production of a faithful and virtuous, not of an 
 infidel and corrupted people. But in the course 
 of doing this, I have had also to show that 
 good architecture is not ecclesiastical. People 
 axe so apt to look upon religion as the busi- 
 ness of the clergy, not their own, that the 
 moment they hear of anything depending on 
 " religion," they think it must also have de- 
 ipended oa the priesthood ; and I have had to 
 t 
 
$S tffE CROWN OP WILD OLIVS. 
 
 take what place was to be occupied between 
 these two errors, an'd fight both, often with 
 seeming contradiction. Good architectvire is 
 the work of good and believing men ; there- 
 fore, you say, at least some people say, " Good 
 architecture must essentially have been the 
 work orthe clergy, not of the laity." No — a 
 thousand times no; good architecture has 
 always been the work of the commonatly, not of 
 the clergy. What, you say, those glorious 
 cathedrals — the pride of Europe— rdid their 
 builders not form Gothic architecture ? No ; 
 they corrupted Gothic architecture. Gothic 
 was formed in the baron's castle, and the 
 burgher's street. It was formed by the 
 thoughts, and hands, and powers of free citizens 
 and soldier kings. By the monk it was used 
 as an instrument for the aid of his superstition • 
 when that superstition became a beautiful inad- 
 ness, and the best hearts of Europe vainly 
 dreamed and pined in the cloister, and vainly 
 raged and perished in the crusader-through - 
 that fury of perverted faith and wasted war, 
 the Gothic rose also to its loveliest, most fan- 
 tastic, and, finally most foolish dreams ; and, 
 in' those dreams, was lost. 
 I hope^ now, that there is no risk of youi 
 
TRAFFIC. 99 
 
 inisunderstanding me when I come to the gist 
 of what I want to say to-night — when I repeat, 
 that every great national architecture has been 
 the result and exponent of a great national re- 
 ligion. You can't have bits of it here, bits 
 there — you must have it everywhere, or no- 
 where. It is not the monopoly of a clerical 
 company— it is not the exponent of a theological 
 dogma-^it is not the hieroglyphic writing of an 
 initated priesthood ; it is the manly language 
 of a people inspired by resolute and common 
 purpose, and rendering resolute and common 
 fidelity to the legible laws of an undoubted God. 
 Now, there have as yet been three distinct 
 schools of European architecture. I say, 
 European, because Asiatic and African archi- 
 tectures belong so entirely to other races and 
 climates, that there is no question of them 
 here ; only, in passing, I will simply assure 
 you that whatever is good or great in Egypt, 
 and Syria, and India, is just good or great for 
 the same reasons as the buildings on our side 
 of the Bosphorus. We Europeans, then, have 
 had three great religions ; the Greek, which 
 was the worship of the God of Wisdom and 
 Power ; the Mediaeval, which was the Worship 
 gf the God of Judgment and Co»solation j th^ 
 
100 TffE CROWIf OP WILD OLIVE. 
 
 Renaissance, which was the worship of the 
 God of Pride and Beauty ; these three we have 
 had — they are past, — and now, at last, we 
 English have got a f ourthj religion, and a God 
 of our own, about which I want to ask you. 
 But I must explain these three old ones first. 
 
 I repeat, first, the Greeks essentially wor- 
 shipped the God of Wisdom ; so that what- 
 ever contended against their religion, — to the 
 Jews a stumbling-block, — was, to the Greeks 
 '^Foolishness. 
 
 The first Greek idea of Deity v/as that ex- 
 pressed in the word, of which v.'c keep the 
 remnant in our words, " 2?z-urnal " and " JDi- 
 vine " — the god of Day, Jupiter the revealcr. 
 Athena is his daughter, but especially daughter 
 of the Intellect, springing armed from the 
 head. We are only with the help of recent 
 investigation beginning to penetrate the depth 
 of meaning couched under the Athenaic sym- 
 bols ; but I may note rapidly, that her ssgis 
 the mantle with the serpent fringes, in which 
 she often, in the best statues, is represented 
 as folding up her left hand for better guard, 
 and the Gorgon on her shield, are both repre- 
 sentative mainly of the chilling horror and 
 sadness (turning men to stone, as it were)^ of 
 
TRAFFIC. tot 
 
 the outmost and superficial spheres of knowI« 
 edge — that knowledge which separates, in 
 bitterness, hardness, and sorrow, the heart oi 
 the full-grown man from the heart of the 
 child~ For out of imperfect knowledge spring 
 terror, dissension, danger, and disdain ; but 
 from perfect knowledge, given by the fuU- 
 levealed Athena, strength and peace, in sign 
 of which she is crowned with the -olive spray, 
 and bears the resistless spear. 
 
 Tliis, then, was the Greek conception of 
 purest Deity, and every habit of life, and every 
 form of his art developed themselves from the 
 seeking this bright, serene, resistless •wisdom ; 
 and setting himself, as a man, to do things 
 evermore rightly and strongly ; * not with any 
 
 * It is an error to suppose tbal^ the Greek worships 
 or seeking, was chiefly of Beauty. It was essentially of 
 Kiglitness and Strength founded oH Forethought ; the 
 principal cliaracter of Greek art is la^t Beauty, but de- 
 sign ; and the Dorian Apollo-worshlit) and Athenian 
 Virgin-worship are both expression? of adoration of 
 divine Wisdom and Purity. Next to these great 
 deities rank, in power over tbe national mind, Dionjr- 
 sus and Ceres, the givers of human strength and life ; 
 • then, for heroic example, Hercules. Thers is no VenuS" 
 worship among the Greeks in *h«i great tines ; and the 
 Muses are essentially teachers qk Truth, a»d of its hart 
 fnonieaa 
 
io3 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIV&. 
 
 ardent affection or ultimate hope ; but with a 
 resolute and contingent energy of will, as know- 
 ing that for failure there was no consolation, 
 and for sin there was no remission. And the 
 Greek architecture rose unerring, bright, 
 clearly defined, and self-contained. 
 
 Next followed iii Europe the great Christian 
 faith, which was essentially the religion of 
 Comfort. Its great doctrine is the remission 
 of sins ; for which cause it happens, too often, 
 in certain phases of Christianity, that sin and 
 sickness themselves are partly glorified, as if, 
 the more you have to be healed of, the 
 more divine was the healing. The 'practi- 
 cal result of this doctrine, in art, is a continual 
 contemplation of sin and |disease, and of 
 imaginary states of purification from them; 
 thus we have an architecture conceived in a 
 mingled sentiment of melancholy and ^aspira- 
 tion, partly severe, partly luxuriant, which will 
 bend itself to every one of our needs, and 
 every one of our fancies, and be strong or 
 weak with us, as we are strong or weak our- 
 selves. It is, of all architecture, the basest, 
 when base people build it — of all, the noblest, 
 when built by the noble.. 
 
 ^And now note that both these religion^-* 
 
TRAFFIC 103 
 
 Greek and Mediaeval-^perished by falsehood in 
 their own main purpose. The Greek religion of 
 Wisdom perished in a false philosophy — " Op- 
 positions of science, falsely so called." The 
 Mediaeval religion of Consolation perished in 
 Ealse comfort ; in remission of sins given ly- 
 bgly. It was the selling of absolution that 
 ended the Mediseval faith ; and I can tell you 
 more, it is the selling of absolution which, to 
 the end of time, will mark false Christianity. 
 Pure Christianity gives her remission of sins 
 only by ending them; but false Christianity- 
 gets her remission of sins by compounding for 
 them. And there are many ways of compound- 
 ing for them. We English have beautiful 
 little quiet ways of buying absolution, whether 
 in low Church or high, far more cunning than 
 any of Tetzel's trading. 
 
 Then, thirdly, there followed the religion of 
 Pleasure, in which, all Europe gave itself to 
 luxury, ending in death. First, bals masquis 
 in every saloon, and then guillotines in every 
 square. And all these three worships issue ia 
 vast temple building. Your Greek worshipped 
 Wisdom, and built you the Parthenon — th« 
 Virgin's temple. The Mediaeval worshipped 
 <^onsQlaU(>a, and built 70U Yirgia temples als9 
 
)to4 TITE CROWrr OF X7TLD OLIVB, 
 
 ^but to our Lady o£ Salvation. Then <h9 
 Revivalist worshipped beauty, of a sprt, and 
 built you Versailles, and the Vatican. Now, 
 lastly, will you tell me v/hat tje worship, and 
 what we build ? 
 
 You know we are speaking always c£ the 
 real, active, continual, national worship ; that 
 by which men act whUe they live ; net that 
 which they talk of when tliey die. Now, we 
 have, indeed, a nominal religion, to which v/e 
 pay tithes of property and sevenths of time ; 
 but we have also a practical and earnest 
 religion, to which we devote nine-tenths of our 
 property and sixth-sevenths of our time. And 
 we dispute a great deal about the nominal 
 religion ; but we are all unanimous about this 
 practical one, of which I think you will admit 
 that the ruling goddess may be best generally 
 described as the " Goddess of Getting-on," or 
 " Britannia of the Market." The Athenians 
 had an '' Athena Agoraia," or Minerva of the 
 Market ; but she was a subordinate t)rpe of 
 their goddess, while our Britannia Agoraia is 
 the principal type of ours. And all your great 
 architectural works, are, of course, built to her. 
 It is long since you built a great cathedral ; 
 aad how you would laugh at me, if I propose4 
 
TRAFFIC. ,105 
 
 building a cathedral on the top of one of these 
 hills of yours, taking it for an Acropolis ! But 
 your railroad mounds, prolonged masses of 
 Acropolis ; your railroad stations, vaster than 
 the Parthenon, and innumerable ; your chim- 
 neys, how much more mighty and costly than 
 cathedral spires ! your harbor-piers ; your ware- 
 houses ; your exchanges ! — all these are built 
 to your great Goddess of " Getting-on ; " and 
 she has formed, and will continue to form, yout 
 architecture, as long as you worship her ; and 
 it is quite vain to ask me to tell you how to 
 build to her; you know far better than I. 
 
 There might indeed, on some theories, be a 
 conceivably good architecture for Exchanges 
 — that is to say if there were any heroism in 
 the fact or deed of exchange, which might be 
 typically carved on the outside of your build- 
 ing. For, you know, all beautiful architecture 
 must be adorned with sculpture or painting ; 
 and for sculpture or painting, you must have a 
 subject. And hitherto it has been a received 
 opinion among the nations of the world that the 
 only right subjects for either, were heroisms of 
 some sort. Even on his pots and his flagons, 
 the Greek put a Hercules slaying lions, or an 
 Apollo slaying serpents, or Baqcbus slaying 
 
Io6 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 melancholy giants, and earth-borne despond- 
 encies. On his temples, the Greek put con- 
 tests of great warriors in founding states, or of 
 gods with evil spirits. On his houses and 
 temples alike, the Christian put carvings of 
 angels conquering devils ; or of hero-martyrs 
 exchanging this world for another ; subject 
 inappropriate, I think, to our manner of ex- 
 change here. And the Master of Christians 
 not only left his followers without any orders 
 as to the sculpture of aiiairs of exchange on 
 the outside of buildings, but gave some strong 
 evidence ot his dislike of afEairs of exchange 
 within them. And yet there might surely be a 
 heroism in such affairs ; and all commerce 
 become a kind of selling of doves, not im- 
 pious. The wonder has always been great 
 to me, that heroism has never been supposed 
 to be in anywise consistent with the practice 
 of supplying people with food, or clothes; 
 but rather with that of quartering oneself 
 upon them for food, and stripping them of 
 their clothes. Spoiling of armor is an heroic 
 deed in all ages ; but the selling of clothes, 
 old or new, has never taken any color of mag- 
 nanimity. Yet one does not see why feeding 
 the hungry and clothing the naked should 
 
TRAFFIC. io7 
 
 ever become base businesses, even when en- 
 gaged in on a large scale. If one could con- 
 'trive to attach the notion of conquest to them 
 anyhow? so that, supposing there were any- 
 where an obstinate race, who refused to be 
 comforted, one might take some pride in giv- 
 ing them compulsory comfort ; and as it were, 
 " occupying a country " with one's gifts, in- 
 stead of one's armies ? If one could only con- 
 sider it as much a victory to get a barren field 
 sown, as to get an eared field stripped ; and 
 contend who should build villages, instead of 
 ■who should " carry " them. Are not all forms 
 of heroism conceivable in doing these service- 
 able , deeds ? You doubt who is strongest ? 
 It might be ascertained by push of spade, as 
 •well as push of sword. Who is wisest? 
 There are witty things to be thought of in 
 planning other business than campaigns. 
 Who is bravest? There are always tht 
 elements to fight with, stronger than men; 
 and nearly as merciless. The only absolutely 
 and unapproachably heroic element in the 
 soldier's work seems to be — that he is paid 
 little for it — and regularly : while you traffick- 
 ers, and exchangers, and others occupied in 
 presumably benevolent business, like to be 
 
l«5 THE CROIVN OF V/ILD btlVS. 
 
 jisid /nuch for it — and by chance, I nevef 
 can inake out how it is that a knight-errant 
 does not expect to be paid for his troublcj but 
 a pedler-errant always does ; — that people are 
 willing to take hard knocks for nothing, but 
 never to sell ribbons cheap ; — that they are 
 ready to go on fervent crusades to recover the 
 tomb of a buried God, never on any travels to 
 fulfil the orders of a living God ; — that they 
 Vfill go anywhere barefoot to preach their 
 faith, but must be well bribed to practise it, 
 and are perfectly ready to give the Gospel 
 gratis, but never the loaves and fishes. If 
 you choose to take the matter up on any such 
 soldierly principle, to do your commerce, and 
 your feeding of nations, for fixed salaries ; and 
 to be as particular about giving people the 
 best food, and the best cloth, as soldiers are 
 about giving them the best gunpowder, I could 
 carve something for you on your exchange 
 ■worth looking at. But I can only at present 
 suggest decorating its frieze with pendant 
 purses; and making its pillars broad at the 
 base, for the sticking of bills. And in the 
 innermost chambers of it there might be a 
 statue of Britannia of the Market, who may 
 bave^ perhaps advisably, a partridge for bar 
 
TRAFFIC. 
 
 109 
 
 crest, typical at once of her courage in fighting 
 for noble ideas ; and of her interest in game ; 
 and round its neck the inscription in golden 
 letters, " PerdLx fovit quaa non peperit." * 
 Then, for her spear, she might have a weaver's 
 beam ; and on her shield, instead of her Cross, 
 tlie Milanese boar, semi-fleeced, with the 
 town of Gennesaret proper, in the field and 
 the legend "In the best market," and her 
 corselet, of leather, folded over her heart in the 
 shape of a purse, with thirty slits in it for a 
 piece of money to go in at, on each day of the 
 month. And I doubt not but that people 
 would come to see your exchange, and its god- 
 dess, with applause. 
 
 Nevertheless, I want to point out to you 
 certain strange characters in this goddess of 
 yours. She differs from the great Greek and 
 Mediaeval deities essentially in two things — 
 first, as to the continuance of her presumed' 
 power ; secondly, as to the extent of it. 
 
 rst, as to the Continuance. 
 
 * Jerem. xvii. (best in Septuagint and Vulgate). 
 "As the partridge, fostering what she brought not 
 forth, so he that getteth riches not by right, shall leave 
 them in the midst of his days, and at his end shall be a 
 fooL" 
 
tio THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE.: 
 
 The Greek Goddess of Wisdom gave coiv 
 tinual increase of wisdom, as the Christian 
 Spirit of Comfort (or Comforter) continual in- 
 crease of comfort. There was no question, 
 with these, of any limit or cessation of func- 
 tion. But with your Agora Goddess, that is 
 just the most important question. Getting on 
 — ^but where to ? Gathering together — but 
 how much ? Do you mean to gather always 
 ■ — 'never to spend ? If so, J_wish you joy of 
 your goddess, for I am just as well off as you, 
 without the trouble of worshipping her at all. 
 But if you do not spend, somebody else will — 
 somebody else must. And it is because of 
 this (among many other such errors) that I 
 have fearlessly declared your so-called science 
 of Political Economy to be no science; 
 because, namely, it has omitted the study of 
 exactly the most important branch of the busi- 
 ness — the study of spending. For spend you 
 miist, and as much as y6u make, ultimately. 
 You gather corni — will you bury England 
 under a heap of grain ; or will you, when you 
 have gathered, finally eat ? You gather gold : 
 — ^will you make your house-roofs of it, or 
 pave your streets with it ? That is still one 
 yrajr of spending it. But Lf you keep it, you 
 
Traffic. tw 
 
 may get more, I'll give you more ; I'll give 
 you all the gold you want — all you can imagine 
 — If you can tell me what you'll do with it. 
 You shall have thousands of gold pieces ;— 
 thousands of thousands — millions — mountains, 
 of gold : ■ where will yoU keep them ? Will you 
 put an Olympus of silver upon a golden Pelio» 
 -—make Ossa like a wart ? Do you think the 
 rain and dew would then come down to you, 
 in the streams from such mountains, more 
 blessedly than they will down the mountains 
 ■which God has made for you, of moss and 
 Tvhinstone ? But it is not gold that you want 
 to gather ! What is it ? greenbacks ? No ; 
 not those neither. What is it then — is it 
 ciphers after a capital I ? Cannot you prac- 
 tise writing ciphers, and write as many as you 
 ■want ? Write ciphers for an hour every morn- 
 £ig, in a big book, and say every evening, I 
 am worth all those noughts more than I was 
 yesterday. Won't that do ? Well, what in 
 the name of Plutus is it you want ? Not gold, 
 not greenbacks, not ciphers after a capital 1 1 
 You "'ill have to answer, after all, " No ; we 
 want, somehow or other, money's worth" 
 Well) what is thatr Let your Goddfiss of 
 
ti2^ t'li^ CROVirN OF WILD bUVE. 
 
 Grettmg-on discover it, and let her learn ta 
 Stay therein. 
 
 II. But there is another question to be 
 asked respecting this Goddess of Getting-on. 
 The first was of the continuance of her power ; 
 the second is of its extent. 
 
 Pallas and the Madonna were supposed to 
 be all the world's Pallas, and all the world's 
 Madonna. They could teach all men, and 
 they could comfort all men. But, look strictly 
 into the nature of the power of your God- 
 dess of Getting-on ; and you will find she is 
 the Goddess — not of everybody's getting on — 
 but only of somebody's getting on. This is 
 a vital, or rather deathful, distinction. Ex- 
 amine it in your own ideal of the state of 
 national life which this Goddess is to evoke 
 and maintain. I asked you what it was, whea 
 I was last here ; * — you have never told me. 
 Now, shall I try to tell you ? 
 
 Your ideal of human life then is, I, think, 
 that it should be passed in a pleasant undulat- 
 ing world, with iron and coal everywhere un- 
 derneath it. On each pleasant bank of this 
 world is to be a beautiful mansion, with two 
 
 • Two Paths, p. 98. 
 
v^ings ; and stables, and coach-houses ; a mod- 
 erately sized park ; a large garden and hot- 
 houses ; and pleasant carriage drives through 
 the shrubberies. In this mansion are to live 
 the favored votaries of the Goddess ; the 
 English gentleman, with his gracious •wife, 
 End his beautiful family ; always able to have 
 the boudoir and the jewels for the wife, and 
 the beautiful ball-dresses for the daughters, 
 and hunters for the sons, and a shooting in 
 the Highlands for himself. At the bottom of 
 the bank, is to be the mill ; not less than a 
 quarter of a mile long, with a steam engine at 
 each end, and two in the middle, and a chim- 
 ney three hundred feet high. In this mill are 
 to be in constant employment from eight hun- 
 dred to a thousand workers, who never drink, 
 never strike, always go to church on Sunday, 
 and always express themselves in respectful 
 language. 
 
 Is not that, broadly, and in the main feat-, 
 ures, the kind of thing you propose to your- 
 selves ? It is very pretty indeed seen from 
 above ; not at all so pretty, seen from below. 
 For, observe,^ while to one family this deity is 
 indeed the Goddess of Getting-on, to a thou- 
 sand families she is the Goddess of not Get- 
 8 
 
ii4 THE CROW^ OF WILD OLifS. 
 
 ting-on. " Nay," you say, " they have all theSr 
 chance." Yes, so has every one in a lottery, 
 but there must always be the same number d 
 blanks. " Ah I but in a lottery it is not skill 
 and intelligence which take the lead, but 
 blind chance." What then ! do you think the 
 old practice, that " they should take who have 
 the power, and they should keep who can," is 
 less iniquitous, when the power has become 
 power of brains instead of fist? and that, 
 •though we may not take advantage of a child's 
 or a woman's weakness, we may of a man's 
 foolishness ? " Nay, but finally, work must 
 be done, and some one must be at the top, 
 some one at the bottom." Granted, my 
 friends. Work must always be ; and captains 
 of work must always be ; and if yoir in the 
 least remember the tone of any of my writings, 
 you must know that they are thought unfit for 
 this age, because they are insisting on need of 
 government, and speaking with scorn of liberty. 
 But I beg you to observe that there is a wide 
 difference between being captains or governors 
 of work, and taking the profits of it. It does 
 no^ follow, because you are general of an 
 army, that you are to take all the treasure, or 
 laud^ it wins (ji it £gbt for treasure or land) ; 
 
TRAFFIC. 115 
 
 neither, because you are king of a nation, that 
 you are to consume all the profits of the 
 nation's work. Real kings, on the contrary, 
 are known invariably by their doing quite the 
 reverse of this, — by their taking the least pos- 
 sible quantity of the nation's work for them- 
 selves. There is no test of real knighthood 
 so infallible as that. Does the crowned creat- 
 ure live simply, bravely, unostentatiously? 
 probably he ^ a ICing. Does he cover his 
 body with jewels, and his table with delicates ? 
 in -all probability he \^not a King. It is pos- 
 sible he may be, as Solomon was ; but that is 
 when the nation shares his splendor with him. 
 Solomon made gold, not only to be in his own 
 palace as stones, but to be" in Jerusalem as 
 stones. But even so, for the most part, these 
 splendid kinghoods expire in ruin, and only 
 the true kinghoods live, which are of royal 
 laborers; who, both leading rough lives, estab- 
 lish the true dynasties. Conclusively you will 
 find that because you are king of a nation, it 
 does not follow that you are to gather for 
 yourself all the wealth of that nation ; neither, 
 because you are king of a small part of the 
 nation, and lord over the means of its main* 
 (eoaace— ever field, or mill, or mine, are you 
 
ii6 THE CROwrr Of wild olive. 
 
 to take all the projiuce of that piece cl tba 
 foundation of national existence for yourself. 
 
 You ■will tell me I need not preach against 
 these things, for I cannot mend them. No, 
 good friends, I cannot ; but you can, and you 
 will ; or something else can and will. Do you 
 think these phenomena are to stay always in 
 their present power or aspect? All history 
 shows, on the contrary, that to be the exact 
 thing they never can do. Change must come ; 
 but it is ours to determine whether change of 
 growth, or change of death. Shall the Parthe- 
 non be in ruins on its rock, and Bolton priory 
 - in its meadow, but these mills of yours be the 
 consummation of the buildings of the earth, 
 and their wheels be as the wheels of eternity ? 
 Think you that " men may come, and men 
 may go," but — mills — ^go on forever ? Not so; 
 out of these, better or worse shall come ; and 
 it is for you to choose which. 
 
 I know that none of this wrong is done with 
 deliberate purpose. I know, on the contrary, 
 that you wish your workmen well ; that you do 
 much for them, and that you desire to do more 
 for them, if you saw your way to it safely. I 
 know that many of you have done, and are 
 f very day doing, whatever ygu feel to be u| 
 
TTtAFFtC. iij^ 
 
 your power ; and that even all this wrong and 
 misery are brought about by a warped sense of 
 duty, each of you striving to do his best, with- 
 out noticing that this best is essentially and 
 centrally the best for himself, not for others. 
 And all this has come of the spreading of that 
 thrice accursed, thrice impious doctrine of the 
 modern economist, that " To do the best for 
 yourself,, is finally to do the best for others." 
 Friends, our great Master said not so ; and 
 most absolutely we shall find this world is not 
 made so. Indeed, to do the best for others, 
 is finally to do the best for ourselves ; but it 
 will not do to have our eyes fixed on that issue. 
 The Pagans had got beyond that. Hear what 
 a Pagan says of this matter ; hear what were, 
 perhaps, the last written words of Plato, — i| 
 not the last actually written (for this we can 
 not know), yet assuredly in fact and power hit 
 parting words — in which, endeavoring to give 
 full crowning and harmonious close to all his 
 thoughts, and to speak the sum of them by 
 the imagined sentence of the Great Spirit, his 
 strength and his heart fail him, and the words 
 cease, broken off forever. It is the close of 
 the dialogue called "Critias," in which ha 
 ^escribes, partly fr6m real tradition, partly in 
 
iiS Ttm CROJVJ/ OP Wild otivM. 
 
 ideal dream, the early state of Athens ; and 
 the genesis, and order, and religion, of the 
 fabled isle of Atlantis ; in which genesis ha 
 conceives the same first perfection and final 
 degeneracy of man, which in our own Scri{»- 
 tural tradition is expressed by saying that the 
 Sons of God intermarried with the daughters 
 of men, for he supposes the earliest race to 
 have been indeed the children of God ; and to 
 have corrupted themselves, until " their spot 
 was not the spot of his children." And this,, 
 he says, was the end ; that indeed " through 
 many generations, so long as the God's nature 
 in them yet was full, they were submissive to 
 the sacred laws, and carried themselves lov- 
 ingly to all that had kindred with them in 
 divineness : for their uttermost spirit was faith- 
 ful and true, and in every wise great ; so that, 
 in all meekness of wisdom, they dealt with 
 each other, and took all the chances of life ; 
 and despising all things except virtue, they 
 cared little what happened day by day, and 
 bore lightly the burden of gold and of posses- 
 sions ; for they saw that, if only their common 
 love and virtue increased, all these things 
 would be increased together with them ; but 
 to set their esteem and ardent pursuit upon 
 
TRAFFIC. 
 
 119 
 
 material possession would be to lose that firs^ 
 and their virtue and affection together with it. 
 And by such reasoning, and^what of the divine 
 nature remained in them, tliey gained all this 
 greatness of which we have already told ; but 
 when the God's part of them faded and became 
 extinct, being mixed again and again, and 
 effaced by the prevalent mortality; and the 
 human nature at last exceeded, they then be- 
 came unable to endure the courses of fortune ; 
 and fell into shapelessness of life, and base- 
 ness in the sight of him who could see, having 
 lost everything that was fairest of their honor; 
 while to the blind hearts which could not dis- 
 cern the true life, tending to happiness, it 
 seemed that they were then chiefly noble and 
 happy, being filled with all iniquity of inordi- 
 nate possession and power. Whereupon, the 
 God of Gods, whose Kingdom is in laws, be- 
 holding a once just nation thus cast into mis- 
 ery, and desiring to lay such punishment upon 
 them as might make them repent into restrain- 
 ing, gathered together all the gods into his 
 dwelling-place, which from heaven's centre 
 overlooks whatever has part in creation j and 
 
 Having assembled them, he said " 
 
 fhe rest i§ 3il^ac^. So eQde4 ^^ the las| 
 
120 THE CROWy OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 XiTords of the chief wisdom of the heathen, 
 spoken of this idol of riches ; this idol of 
 yours ; this golden image high by measureless 
 cubits, set up where your green fields of Eng- 
 land are furnace-burnt into the likeness of the 
 plain of Dura : this idol, forbidden to us, first 
 of all idols, by your own Master' and faith ; 
 forbidden to us also by every human lip that 
 has ever, in any age or people, been accounted 
 of as able to speak according to the purposes 
 of God. Continue to make that forbidden 
 deity your principal one, and soon no more 
 art, no more science, no more pleasure will be 
 possible. Catastrophe will come ; or worse 
 than catastrophe, slow mouldering and wither- 
 ing into Hades. But if you can fix some con- 
 ception of a true human state of life to be 
 striven for — life for all men as for yourselves 
 —if you can determine some honest and sim- 
 ple order of existence ; following those trodden 
 ■ways of wisdom, which are pleasantness, and 
 seeking her quiet and withdrawn paths, which 
 are peace ; — then, and so sanctifying wealth 
 into " commonwealth," all your art, your lit- 
 erature, your daily labors, your domestic affec- 
 tion, and citizen's duty, will join and increase 
 ^to onema^nificentharmony. You will kno^ 
 
TRAFFIC, 12 « 
 
 then how to build, well enough ; you will build 
 with stone well, but with flesh better ; temples 
 not made with hands, but riveted of hearts ; 
 and that kind of marble, crimsoji'^eined, is i» 
 
LECTURE IR 
 
 WAR. 
 
LECTURE III. 
 
 WAR. 
 
 ^PtlivtrtJ at iht Ri^at WUitarf Aeademj), tf'tietalitJi.i 
 
 Young soldiers, I do not doubt but that 
 many of you came unwillingly to-night, and 
 many in merely contemptuous curiosity, to 
 hear what a writer on painting could possibly 
 say, or would venture to say, respecting your 
 great art of war. You may well think within 
 yourselves, that a painter might, perhaps with- 
 out immodesty, lecture younger painters upon 
 paintingj but not young lawyers upon law, nor 
 young physicians upon medicine — least of all, 
 it may seem to you, young warriors upon war. 
 And, indeed, when I was asked to address 
 you, I declined at first, and declined long ; for 
 I felt that you would not be interested in my 
 special business, and would certainly think 
 there was small need for me to come to teach 
 you yours. Nay, I knew that there ought to 
 be w such need, for the great veteran soldiers 
 
126 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 of England are now men everyway so thought* 
 ful, so noble, and so good, that no other teach- 
 ing than their knightly example, and their few 
 ■words of grave and tried counsel should be 
 either necessary for you, or even, ■without as- 
 surance of due modesty in the offerer, endured 
 by you. 
 
 But being asked, not once nor twice, I have 
 not ventured persistently to refuse ; and I will 
 try, in very few words, to lay before you some 
 reason why you should accept my excuse and 
 hear me patiently. You may imagine that 
 your work is wholly foreign to, and separate 
 from mine. So far from that, all the pure and 
 noble arts of peace are founded on war ; no 
 great art ever yet rose on earth, but' among a 
 nation of soldiers. There is no art among a 
 shepherd people, if it remains at peace. There 
 is no art among an agricultural people, if it re- 
 mains at peace. Commerce is barely consist- 
 ent with fine art; but cannot produce it. 
 Manufacture ndt only is unable to produce it. 
 but invariably destroys whatever s&eds of it 
 exist. There is no great art possible to a 
 nation but that which is based on battle. 
 
 Now, though I hope you love fighting for 
 its o«ii sakSi^Qumust^ I imagiae, be surprised 
 
U-aA 
 
 t2j 
 
 at my assertion that there is any such good 
 fruit of fighting. You supposed, probably, 
 Ihat your office was to defend the works of 
 peace, but certainly not to found them : nay, 
 the common course of' war, you may have 
 thought, was only to destroy them. And truly, 
 I who tell you this of the Use of war, should 
 have been the last of men to tell you so, had"I 
 trusted my own experience only. Hear why : 
 I have given a considerable part of my life to 
 the investigation of Venetian painting; and 
 tlie result of that inquiry was my fixing upon 
 one man as the greatest of all Venetians, and 
 therefore, as I believed, of all painters whatso- 
 ever. I formed this faith (whether right or 
 wrong matters at present nothing), in the su- 
 premacy of the painter Tintoret, under a roof 
 covered with his pictures ; and of those pictures, 
 three of the noblest- were then in the form of 
 ragged canvas, mixed up with the laths of tha 
 roof, rent through by three Ji.ustrian shells. 
 Now it is not every lecturer who could tell you 
 that he had seen three of his favorite pictures 
 torn to rags by bombshells. And after such a 
 sight, it is not every lecturer who would tell you 
 ihat, nevertheless, war was the foundation oi 
 all great art 
 
IC^ fHE CROWN- OF l^ltb OLlPS. 
 
 Yet the conclusion is inevitable, from any 
 careful comparison of the states of great his- 
 toric races at different periods. Merely to 
 show you what I mean, I 'will sketch for you, 
 very briefly, the broad steps of the advance of 
 the best art of the world. The first dawn of it 
 is in Egypt ; and the power of it is founded on 
 the perpetual contemplation of death, and of 
 future judgment, by the mind of a nation of 
 nrhich the ruling caste were priests, and the 
 second, soldiers. The greatest works produced 
 by them are sculptures of their kings going out 
 to battle, or receiving the homage of conquered 
 armies. And you must remember also, as one 
 of the great keys to the splendor of the Elgyp- 
 tian nation, that the priests were not occupied 
 in theology only. Their theology was the basis 
 of practical government and law ; so that they 
 were not so much priests as religious judges : 
 the office of Samuel, among the Jews, bdng as 
 nearly as possible correspondent to theirs. 
 
 All the rudiments of art then, and much more 
 than the rudiments of all science, are laid first 
 by this great vrarrior-nation, which held in 
 contempt all mechanical trades, and in absolute 
 hatred the peaceful life of shepherds. From 
 Egypt art passes directly into Greece, wherv 
 
fill poetry, And all painting, are nothing else 
 than the description, praise, or dramatic rep- 
 resentation of war or of the exercises which 
 prepare 'for it, in their connection with ofiices 
 of religion. All Greek institutions had first 
 respect to war ; and their conception of it, as 
 one necessary office of all human and divine 
 life, is expressed simply l?y the images of their 
 guiding gods. Apollo is the god of all wisdom 
 of the intellect ; he bears the arrow and the bow, 
 before he bears the lyre. Again, Athena is the 
 goddess of all v/isdora in conduct. It is by 
 the helmet and the shield, oftener than by the 
 shuttle, that she is distinguished from other 
 deities. 
 
 There were, however, two great differences 
 in principle between the Greek and the Egyp- 
 tian theories of policy. In Greece there was 
 no soldier caste ; every citizen was necessarily 
 a soldier. And, again, while the Greeks rightly 
 ^despised mechanical arts as much as the ^gyp- 
 tians, they did not make the fatal mistake o£ 
 despising agricultural and pastoral life; but 
 perfectly honored both. These two conditions 
 of truer thought raise them quite into the high- 
 est rank of wise manhood that has yet been 
 reached ; for all our great arts, and nearly all 
 9 
 
i30 tim CROWN OF iVILD OL'ZV'E. 
 
 our great thoughts, have been borrowed or 
 derived from them. Take away from us what 
 they have given ; and I hardly can imagine how 
 low the modern European would stand. 
 
 Now, you are to remember, in passing to the 
 next phase of history, that though you tnusi 
 have war to produce art — ^you must also hav9 
 much more than war ; namely, an art-instinct 
 or genius in the people ; and that, though all 
 -the talent for painting in the world won't make 
 painters of you, unless you have a gift for 
 fighting, and none for painting. Now, in the 
 next great d3masty of soldiers, the art-instinct 
 is wholly wanting. I have not yet investigated 
 the Roman character enough to tell you the 
 causes of this ; but I believe, paradoxical as it 
 may seem to you, that, however truly the Roman 
 might say of himself that he was born of Mars, 
 and suckled by the wolf, he was nevertheless, 
 at heart, more of a farmer than a soldier. The 
 exercises of war were with him practical, not 
 poetical ; his poetry was in domestic life only, 
 and the object of battle, " pacis iraponere 
 morem." And the arts are extinguished in his 
 hands, and do not rise again, until, with Gothic 
 chivalry, there comes back into the mind of 
 Europe a passionate delight in war itself for 
 
the sake of war. And then, with the romantic 
 knighthood which can imagine no other noble 
 employment, — under the fighting kings of 
 France, England, and Spain ; and under the 
 fighting dukeships and citizenships of Italy, 
 art is born again, and rises to her height in 
 the great valleys of Lombardy and Tuscany, 
 through which there flows not a single stream, 
 from all their Alps or Apennines, that did not 
 once run dark red from battle : and it reaches 
 its culminating glory in the city which gave to 
 history the most intense type of soldiership yet 
 seen among men ; — the city whose armies were 
 led in their assault by their king, led through, 
 it to victory by their king, and so led, though 
 that king of theirs was blind, and in the extrem- 
 ity of his age. 
 
 And from this time forward, as peace is 
 established or extended in Europe, the arts 
 decline. They reach an unparalleled pitch of 
 costliness, but lose their life, enlist themselves 
 at last on the side of luxury and various cor- 
 ruption, and, among wholly tranquil nations, 
 wither utterly away,; remaining only in partial 
 practice among races who, like the French 
 and us, have still the minds, though we cannot 
 ^ Jiye |iif UvQSj of goldi^is. 
 
»32 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 " It may be so," I can suppose that a 
 philanthropist might exclaim. " Perish then 
 the arts, if they can flourish only at such a cost. 
 What worth is there in toys of canvas and 
 stone, if compared to the joy and peace of 
 artless domestic life ? " And the answer is — 
 truly, in themselves, none. But as expressions 
 of the highest state of the human spirit, their 
 worth is infinite. As results they may be 
 ■worthless, but, as signs, they are above price. 
 For it is an assured truth that, whenever the 
 faculties of men are at their fulness, they musf 
 express themselves by art ; and to say that a 
 state is without such expression, is to say that 
 it is sunk from its proper level of manly nature. 
 So that, when I tell you that war is the founda- 
 tion of all the arts, I mean also that it is the 
 foundation of all the high virtues and faculties 
 of men. 
 
 It was very strange to me to discover this ; 
 and very dreadful — but I saw it to be quite an 
 undeniable fact. The common notion that 
 peace and the virtues of civil life flourished to- 
 gether, I found to be wholly untenable. Peace 
 and the vices of civil life only flourish together. 
 We talk of peace and learning, and of peace 
 and plenty, and of peace and civilization ; but 
 
I found that those were not the words which 
 the Muse of History coupled together ; that on 
 her lips, the words were — peace and sensuality, 
 peace and selfishness, peace and corruption, 
 peace and death. I found, in brief, that all 
 great nations learned their truth of word, and, 
 strengtii of thought, in war; that they were 
 nourished in war, and wasted by peace ; taught 
 by war, and deceived by peace ; trained by war 
 and betrayed by peace ; — in a word, that they 
 were born in war and expired in peace. 
 
 Yet now note carefully, in the second place, 
 it is not all war of which this can be said — nor 
 all dragon's teeth, which, sown, will start up 
 into men. It is not the ravage of a barbarian 
 wolf-flock, as under Genseric or Suwarrow; 
 nor the habitual restlessness and rapine of 
 mountaineers, as on the old borders of Scot- 
 land ; nor the occasional struggle of a strong 
 peaceful nation for its life, as in the wars of 
 the Swiss with Austria; nor the contest of 
 merely ambitious nations for extent of power, 
 as in the wars of France under Napoleon, or 
 the just terminated war in America. None of 
 these forms of war build anything but tombs. 
 But the creative or foundational war is that in 
 irhich the natural restlessness and love of coo,- 
 
134 "^^^ CROWN^ 6f ihriLD OL/t^S. 
 
 test among men are disciplined, by consent, 
 into modes of beautiful — though it may be 
 fatal — play : in which the natural ambition and 
 love of power of men are disciplined into the 
 aggressive conquest of surrounding evil : and 
 in which the natural instincts of self-defence 
 are sanctified by the nobleness of the institu- 
 tions, and purity of the households, which they 
 are appointed to defend. To such war as 
 this all men are born ; in such war as this any 
 man may happily die ; and forth from such 
 war as this have arisen throughout the extent 
 of past ages, all the highest sanctities and 
 virtues of humanity. 
 
 I shall therefore divide the war of which I 
 would speak to you into three heads. War for 
 exercise or play ; war for dominion ; and war 
 for defence, 
 
 I. And first, of war for exercise or play. I 
 speak of it primarily in this light, because, 
 through all past history, manly war has been 
 more an exercise than anything else, among 
 the classes who cause, and proclaim it. It is 
 not k game to the conscript, or the pressed 
 sailor ; but neither of these are the causers of 
 it. To the governor who determines that war 
 shall be, and to the youths who voluntarily 
 
WAR. J3S 
 
 * 
 
 adopt it as their profession, it has always been 
 a grand pastime ; and chiefly pursued because 
 they had nothing else to do. And this is true 
 without any exception. No king whose mind 
 was fully occupied with the development of 
 the inner resources of his kingdom, or with 
 any other sufficing subject of, thought, ever 
 entered into war but on compulsion. No youth 
 who was earnestly busy with any peaceful sub- 
 ject of study, or set on any serviceable course 
 of action, ever voluntarily became a soldier. 
 Occupy him early, and wisely, in agriculture 
 or business, in science or in literature, and he 
 will never think of war otherwise than as a 
 calamity. But leave him idle ; and, the more 
 brave and active and capable he is by nature, 
 the more he will thirst for some appointed field 
 for action ; and find, in the passion and peril 
 of battle, the only satisfying fulfilment of his 
 
 ' unoccupied being. And from the earliest in- 
 cipient civilization until now, the population 
 
 ' of the earth divides itself, when you look at it 
 widely, into two races ; one of workers, and 
 the other of players — one tilling the ground, 
 manufacturing, building, and otherwise pro- 
 viding for the necessities of life ; — the other 
 part proudly idle, and coutinually therefore 
 
136 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 needing recreation, in which they use the pro 
 ductive and laborious orders partly as their 
 cattle, and partly as their puppets or pieces in 
 the game of death. 
 
 Now, remember, whatever virtue or good- 
 liness there may be in this game of war, rightly 
 played, there is none when you thus play it 
 with a multitude of small human pawns. 
 
 If you, the gentlemen of this or any other 
 kingdom, choose to make your pastime of con- 
 test, do so, and welcome ; but set not up these 
 unhappy peasant-pieces upon the green fielded 
 board. If the wager is to be of death, lay it 
 on your own heads, not theirs. A goodly 
 struggle in, the Olympic dust, though it be the 
 dust of the grave, the gods will look upon, and 
 be with you in ; but they will not be with you, 
 if you sit on the sides of the amphitheatre, 
 whose steps are the mountains of earth, whose 
 arena its valleys, to urge your peasant millions 
 into gladiatorial war. You also, you tender 
 and delicate women, for whom, and by whose 
 command, all true battle has been, and must 
 ever be ; you would perhaps shrink now, though 
 you need not, from the thought of sitting as 
 queens above set lists where the jousting game 
 might be mortal. How much more, then, 
 
U^AJ;. 137 
 
 ought you to shrink from the thought of sitting 
 above a theatre pit in which even a few con- 
 demned slaves were slaying each other only 
 for your delight. And do you not shrink from 
 the fad of sitting above a theatre pit, where, 
 — not condemned slaves, — but tlie best and 
 bravest of the poor sons of your people, slay 
 each other, — not man to man, — as the coupled 
 gladiators'; but race to race, in duel of gener- 
 ations ? You would tell me, perhaps, that you 
 do not sit to see this ; and it is indeed true, 
 that the women of Europe— those who have no 
 heart-interest of their own at peril in the con- 
 test — draw the curtains of their boxes, and 
 muffle the openings ; so that from the pit of 
 the circus of slaughter there may reach them 
 only at intervals a half-heard cry and a mur- 
 mur as of the wind's sighing, when m)n:iads of 
 souls expire. They shut out the death-cries ; 
 and are happy, and talk wittily among them- 
 selves. That is the utter literal fact of what 
 our ladies do in their pleasant lives. 
 
 Nay, you might answer, speaking for them — 
 " We do not let these wars come to pass for 
 our play, nor by our carelessness ; we cannot 
 help them. How can any final quarrel of 
 aatipns be settled otherwise than by war ? " 
 
xgS THE CROWTf OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 I cannot now delay, to tell you how political 
 quarrels might be otherwise settled. But grant 
 that they cannot. Grant that no law of reason 
 can be understood by nations; no law of 
 justice submitted to, by them : and Jhat, while 
 questions of a few acres, and of petty cash, 
 can be determined by truth and equity, the 
 questions which are to issue in the perishing 
 or saving of kingdoms can be determined 
 only by the truth of the sword, and the equity 
 of the rifle. Grant this, and even then, judge 
 if it will always be necessary for you to put 
 your quarrel into the hearts of your poor, and 
 sign your treaties with peasants' blood. You 
 ■would be ashamed to do tliis in your own 
 private position and power. Why should you 
 not be ashamed also to do it in public place and 
 power ? If you quarrel with your neighbor, 
 and the quarrel be indeterminable by law, and 
 mortal, you and he do not send your footmen, 
 to Battersea fields to fight it out ; nor do you 
 set fire to his tenants' cottages, nor s»oil their 
 goods. You fight out your quarrel yourselves, 
 and at your own danger, if at all. And you do 
 not think it materially affects the arbitrament 
 that one of you has a larger household than 
 tJ^e other ; go that^ if the servants or $<uiants 
 
^^A 139 
 
 were brought into the field with their masters, 
 the issue of the contest could not be doubtful ? 
 You either refuse the private duel, or you 
 practise it under laws of honor, not of physical 
 force ; that so it may be, in a manner, justly 
 concluded. Now the just or unjust conclusion 
 of the private feud is of little moment, while 
 the just or unjust conclusion of the public feud 
 is of eternal moment : and yet, in this public 
 quarrel, you take your servants' sons from their 
 arms to fight for it, and your servants' food 
 from their lips to support it ; and the black 
 seals on theparchmentof your treaties of peace 
 are the deserted hearth and the fruitless field. 
 There is a ghastly ludicrousness m this, as 
 there is mostly in these wide and universal 
 crimes. Hear the statement of the very fact 
 of it in the most literal words of the greatest 
 of our English thinkers : — 
 
 " What, speaking in quite uno£Scial language, is the 
 net-purport and" upshot of war ? To my own knowl- 
 edge, for example, there dwell and toil, in the British 
 village of Dumdrudge, usually some five hundred souls. 
 From these, by certain ' natural enemies ' of the 
 French, there are successively selected, during the 
 French war, say thirty able-bodied men. Dumdrudge, 
 at her own expense, has suckled and nursed them ; she 
 Jias; not without difficulty and sorrow^ fed them up to 
 
140 tHE CROWJSr OP Witt) OtlVB. 
 
 manhood, and ever trained them to crafts, so that one 
 can weave, another build, another hammer, and the 
 weakest can stand under thirty stone avoirdupois. 
 Nevertheless, amid much weeping and swearing, they 
 are selected ; all dressed in red ; and shipped away, at 
 the public charges, some two thousand miles, or say 
 only to the south of Spain ; and fed there till wanted. 
 
 " And now to that same spot in the south of Spain 
 are thirty similar French artisans, from a French Dum- 
 drudge, in lilce manner wending ; till at length, after in- 
 finite effort, the two parties comeinto actual juxtaposi- 
 tion J and Thirty stands fronting Thirty, each with a 
 gun in his hand. 
 
 " Straightway the word ' Fire I ' is given, and they 
 blow the souls out of one another, and in place of sixty 
 brisk useful craftsmen, the world has sixty dead carcases, 
 which it must bury, and anon shed tears for. Had 
 these men any quarrel ? Busy as the devil is, not the 
 smallest I They lived far enough apart ; were the en- 
 tirest strangers ; nay, in so wide a universe, there was 
 even unconsciously, by commerce, some mutual help- 
 fulness between them. How then ? Simpleton I their 
 governors had fallen out; and instead of shooting one 
 another, had the cunning to make these poor block- 
 heads shoot." (Sartor Resartus.) 
 
 Positively, then, gentlemen, the game of bat- 
 tle must not, and shall not, ultimately be 
 played this way. But should it be played any 
 way ? Should it, if not by your servants, be 
 practised by yourselves ? I think, yes. Both 
 
tlstory and human instinct seem alike to say, 
 yes. All healthy men like fighting, and like 
 the sense of danger ; all brave women like to 
 hear of their fighting, and of their facing dan- 
 ger. This is a fixed instinct in the fine race 
 of them ; and I cannot help fancying that fait 
 fight is the best play for them ; and that a tour- 
 nament was a better game than a steeple-ofease. 
 The time may perhaps come in France as well 
 as here, for universal hurdle-races and cricket- 
 ing : but I do not think universal " crickets " 
 ■will bring out the best qualities of the nobles 
 of either country. I use, in such question, the 
 test which I have adopted, of the connection 
 of war with other arts ; and I reflect how, as 
 a sculptor, I should feel, if I were asked to de- 
 sign a monument for a dead knight, in West- 
 minster Abbey, with a carving of a bat at one 
 end, and a ball at the other. It may be the 
 remains in me only of savage Gothic preju- 
 dice ; but I had rather carve it with a shield 
 at one end, and a sword at the other. And 
 this, observe, with no reference whatever to 
 any story of duty done, or cause defended. 
 Assume the kpight merely to have ridden out 
 occasionally to fight his neighbor for exercise; 
 assume him even s, soldier of fortune, and ta 
 
j:42 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 have gained his bread, and filled his purse, at 
 the. sword's point. Still, I feel as if it were, 
 somehow, grander and worthier in him to have 
 made his bread by sword play than any other 
 play ; I had rather he had made it by thrust- 
 ing than batting ; — much more, than by bet- 
 ting. Much rather tliat he should ride war 
 horses, than back race horses ; and — I say it 
 sternly and deliberately — much rather Vifould 
 I have him slay his neighbor, than cheat him. 
 
 But remember, so far as this may be true, 
 the game of war is only that in which the 
 full personal power of the human creature is 
 brought out in management 'of its weapons. 
 And this for three reasons : — 
 
 First, the great justification of this game is 
 that it truly, when well played, determines 
 who is the best man ; — ^who isthe highest bred, 
 the most self-denying, the most fearless, the 
 coolest of nerve, the swiftest of eye and hand. 
 You cannot test these qualities wholly, unless 
 there is a clear possibility of the struggle's 
 ending in death. It is only in the fronting 
 of that condition that the full trial of the man, 
 soul and body, comes out. You may go to 
 your game of wickets, or of hurdles, or of cards, 
 Aiul any knavery that is in you may stay un< 
 
challenged all the while. But if the play may 
 be ended at any moment by a lance-thrust, a 
 man will probably make up his accounts a 
 little before he enters it. Whatever is rotten 
 and evil in hira will weaken his hand more in 
 holding a sword hilt, than in balancing a 
 billiard cue ; and on the whole, the habit of 
 living lightly hearted, in daily presence of 
 death, always has had, and must have, a ten- 
 dency both to the making and testing of honest 
 men. But for the final testing, observe, you 
 must make the issue of battle strictly depend- 
 ent on fineness of frame, and firmness of 
 hand. You must not make it the question, 
 ■which of the combatants has the longest gun, 
 or which has got behind the biggest tree, or 
 •which has the wind in his face, or which has 
 gunpowder made by best chemists, or iron 
 smelted with the best coal, or the angriest 
 mob at his back. Decide your battle, whether 
 of nations, or individuals, on ^Aose terms ; — 
 and you have only multiplied confusion, and 
 added slaughter to iniquity. But decide your 
 battle by pure trial which has the strongest 
 arm, and steadiest heart,— and you have gone 
 far to decide a great many matters beside?, 
 and to decide them rightly. 
 
I.t4 'i'ffE CRdtVN OP WILD OLIV± 
 
 And the other reasons for this mode o£ 
 decision of cause, are the diminution both of 
 the material destructivencss, or cost, and of 
 the physical distress of war. For you- must 
 not think that in speaking to- you in this (as 
 you may imagine) fantastic praise of battle, I 
 have overlooked the conditions weighing 
 against me. I pray all of you, who have not 
 read, to read with the most earnest attention, 
 Mr. Helps' two essays on War and Government, 
 in the first volume of the last series of " Friends 
 in Counsel." Everything that can be urged 
 against war is there simply, exhaustively, and 
 most graphically stated. And all, there urged, 
 is true. But the tv/o great counts of evil 
 alleged against war by this most thoughtful 
 writer, hold only against piodern war. If you 
 have to take away masses of men from all in- 
 dustrial employment, — to feed them by the 
 labor of others, — to move them and provide 
 them with destructive machines, varied daily 
 in national rivalship of inventive cost ; if you 
 have to ravage the country which you attack, 
 • — to destroy for a score of future years, its 
 roads, its woods, its cities, and its harbors ; — < 
 and if, finally, having brought masses of men, 
 counted bjr hundreds of thousands, face to face. 
 
you tear those masses to pieces with jagged 
 shot, and leave the fragments of Uving creat- 
 ures, countlessly beyond all help of surgery, to 
 starve and parch, through days of torture, 
 down into clots of clay — what book of accounts 
 shall record the cost of your work ; — What 
 book of judgment sentence the guilt of it? 
 
 That, I say, is modern war, — scientific war, — 
 chemical and mechanic war, worse even than 
 the savage's poisoned arrow. And yet 3'ou 
 ■will tell me, perhaps, that any other war than 
 this is impossible now. It may be so ; the 
 progress of science cannot, perhaps, be other- 
 wise registered than by new facilities of de- 
 struction ; and the brotherly love of our enlarg- 
 ing Christianity be only proved by multiplica' 
 tion of murder. Yet hear, for a moment, 
 ■what war was, in Pagan and ignorant days ; — 
 what war might yet be, if we could extinguish 
 our science in darkness, and join the heathen's 
 practice to the Christian's theory. I read you 
 this from a book which probably most of you 
 know well, and all ought to know — Miiller's 
 " Dorians ; " — but I have put the points I 
 wish you to remember in closer connection 
 than in his text. 
 
 " The chief characteristic of the warriors ol 
 10 
 
■^ I TH£ CROWN bF Wild ouVk. \ 
 
 Sparta was great composure and subdued 
 strength; the violence (XiSo-o-a) of Aristdde- 
 mus and Isadas being considered as deserv- 
 ing rather of blame than praise ; and these 
 qualities in general distinguished the Greeks 
 from the northern Barbarians, whose boldness 
 always consisted in n^ise and tumult. For 
 the same reason the Spartans sacrificed to the 
 Muses before an action; these goddesses 
 being expected to produce regularity and 
 order in battle ; as they sacrificed on the same 
 cccasion in Crete to the god of love, as the con- 
 iirmer of mutual esteem and shame, Every- 
 man put on a crown, when the band of flute- 
 players gave the signal for attack; all the 
 shields of the line glittered with their high 
 polish, and mingled their splendor with the 
 dark red of the purple mantles, which were 
 meant both to adorn the combatant, and to 
 conceal the blood of the wounded ; to fall 
 well and decorously being an incentive the 
 more to the most heroic valor. The conduct 
 of the Spartans in battle denotes a high and 
 noble disposition, which rejected all the ex- 
 tremes of brutal rage. The pursuit of the 
 enemy ceased when the victory was com- 
 pleted ; and after the signal for retreat ba4 
 
been given, all hostilities ceased. The spoil- 
 ing of arms, at least during the battle, was 
 also interdicted ; and the consecration of the 
 spoils of slain enemies to the gods, as, in 
 general, all rejoicings for victory, were con- 
 sidered as ill-omened." 
 
 Such was the war of the greatest soldiers 
 •who prayed to heathen gods. What Christian 
 war is, preached by Christian ministers, let 
 any one tell you who saw the sacred crowning, 
 and heard the sacred flute-playing, and was 
 inspired and sanctified by the divinely- 
 measured and musical language, of any North 
 American regiment preparing for its charge. 
 And what is the relative cost of life in Pagan, 
 and Christian wars, let this one fact tell you : 
 — the Spartans won the decisive battle of 
 Corinth with the loss of eight men ; ths 
 ■victors at indecisive Gettysburg confess te 
 the loss of 30,000. 
 
 II. I pass now to our second order of war, 
 the commonest among men, that undertaken 
 in desire of dominion. And let me ask you 
 to think for a few moments what the real 
 meaning of this desire of dominion is — first in 
 the minds of kings — then in that of nations. 
 
 ^ow, mi»d you this firsta— that I speak 
 
'l4S THE CROIVN OF WILD OLIVB. 
 
 either about kings, or masses of men, with a 
 fixed conviction that human nature is a noble 
 and beautiful thing; not a foul nor a base 
 thing. All the sin of men I esteem as their 
 disease, not their nature; as a folly which 
 may be prevented, not a necessity which must 
 be accepted. And my wonder, even whea 
 things are at their worst, is always at the 
 height which this human nature can attain. 
 Thinking it high, I find it always a higher 
 thing than I thought it ; while tliose v/ho think 
 it low, find it, and will find it, always lower 
 than they thought it : the fact being, that it is 
 infinite, and capable of infinite height and in- 
 finite fall ; bv-t the nature of it — and here is 
 the faith which I would have you hold with 
 me — the nature of it is in the nobleness, not 
 in the catastrophe. 
 
 Take the faith in its utmost terms. Wheis 
 \the captain of the " London " shook hands 
 with his mate saying " God speed you ! I will 
 go down with my passengers," that I believe" 
 to be " human nature." He does not do it 
 from any religious motive — ^froni any hope of 
 reward, or any fear of punishment ; he does it 
 because he is a man. But when a mother, 
 }iving among the fair fields of meny England, 
 
gives her two-year-old child to be suffocated 
 under a mattress in her inner room, while the 
 said mother waits and talks outside; tAaf I 
 believe to be, nof human nature. You have 
 the two extremes there, shortly. And you, 
 men, and mothers, who are here face to face 
 with me to-night, I call upon you to say which 
 of these is human, and which inhuman — ^whicb 
 " natural," and which " unnatural ? " Choose 
 your creed at once, I beseech you : — choose it 
 with unshaken choice — choose it forever. 
 Will you take, for foundation of act and hope, 
 the faith that this man v/as sucli as God made 
 him, or that this woman was such as God 
 made her? Which of them has failed from 
 their nature — ^from their present, possible, 
 actual nature ; — not their nature of long ago, 
 but their nature of now ? Which has betrayed 
 it — falsified it ? Did the guardian who died ia 
 his trust die inhumanly, and as a fool ; and 
 did the murderess of her child fulfil the law of 
 her being ? Choose, I say ; infinitude of 
 choices hang upon this. You have had false 
 prophets among you — ^for centuries you have 
 had them — solemnly warned against them 
 though you were ; false prophets, who have 
 told you that all men are nothing but fiends ox 
 
ISO TffE CROWN- OF WILD OLtVS. 
 
 wolves, half beast, half devil. Believe thal^ 
 and indeed you may sink to that. But refuse 
 that, and have faith that God " made you up- 
 right," though you have sought out many in- 
 ventions ; so you will strive daily to become 
 more what your Maker meant and means you 
 to be, and daily gives you also the power to 
 be — and you will cling more and more to the 
 nobleness and virtue that is in you, saying, 
 "My righteousness I hold fast, and will not 
 let it go." 
 
 I have put this to you as a choice, as if you 
 might hold either of these creeds you liked 
 best. But there is in reality no choice for 
 you; the facts being quite easily. ascertain- 
 able. You have no business to think about 
 this matter, or to choose in it. The broad 
 fact is, that a human creature of the highest 
 race, and most perfect as a human thing, is 
 invariably both kind and true ; and that as 
 you lower the race, you get cruelty and false- 
 ness, as you get deformity : and this so steadily 
 and assuredly, that the two great words which, 
 ia their first use, meant only perfection of race, 
 have come, by consequence of the invariable 
 connection of virtue with the fine hnman 
 nature^ both to signify beaevolence of disposj* 
 
H'AJ!. 
 
 IS I 
 
 tion. The ■word'getjerous, and the word gen- 
 tle, both, in their origin, meant only " of pure 
 race," but because diarity and tenderness are 
 inseparable from this purity of blood, the 
 words which once stood only for pride, now 
 stand as synonyms for virtue. 
 
 Now, this being the true power of our in- 
 herent humanity, and seeing that all the aim 
 of education should be to develop this ; — and 
 seeing also what magnificent self-sacrifice the 
 higher classes of men are capable of, for any 
 cause that they understand or feel, — it is 
 wholly inconceivable to nie how well-educated 
 princes, who ought to be of all gentlemen the 
 gentlest, and of all nobles the most generous, 
 and whose title of royalty means only their 
 function of doing every ma.n "■ rig'M" — how 
 these, r say, throughout history, should so 
 rarely pronounce themselves on the side of 
 the poor and of justice, but continually maintaia 
 themselves and their own interests by oppres- 
 sion of the poor, and by wresting of justice ; 
 and how this should be accepted as so natural, 
 that the word loyalty, which means faithful- 
 ness to law, is used as if it were only the duty 
 of a people to be loyal to their king, and not 
 |he duty of a king to be infinitely more loyal 
 
152 THE CROIVX7 CF V/JLD OLIVE. 
 
 to his people. Hov/ comes it to pass that a 
 captain will die with his passengers, and lean 
 over the gunwale to give the parting boat its 
 course ; but that a king will not usually die 
 with, much \^h%for, his passengers, — thinks it 
 rather incumbent on his passengers, in any 
 number, to die for him ? Think, I beseech 
 you, of the wonder of this. The sea captain, 
 not captain by divine right, but only by com- 
 pany's appointment ; — not a man of royal de- 
 scent, but only a plebeian who can steer ;— 
 not with the eyes of the world upon him, but 
 v/ith feeble chance, depending, on' one poor 
 boat, of his name being ever heard above the 
 wash of the fatal waves ; — not with the cause 
 of a nation resting on his act, but helpless to 
 save so much as a child from among the lost 
 crowd with whom he resolves to be lost, — yet 
 goes down- quietly to his grave, rather than 
 break his faith to these few emigrants. . But 
 your captain by divine right, — -your captain 
 with the hues of a hundred shields of kings 
 upon his breast,-^your captain whose every 
 deed, brave or base, will be illuminated or 
 branded forever before unescapable eyes of 
 men, — ^your captain whose every thought and 
 act are IspneQceat, or fatal, from gunrising t9 
 
setting, blessing re the sunshine, or shadow- 
 ing as the night, — this captain, as you find 
 him in history, for the most part thinlcs only 
 Ijow he may tax his passengers, and sit at 
 most ease in his state cabin ! 
 
 For observe, if there had been indeed in 
 tlie hearts of the rulers of great multitudes cf 
 men any such conception of work for the 
 good of those under their command, as there 
 is in the good and thoughtful masters of any 
 small company of men, not only wars for the 
 sake of mere increase of power could nevoc 
 take place, but our idea of power itself would 
 be entirely altered. Do you suppose that to 
 think and act even for a million of men, to 
 hear their complaint, watch their weaknesses, 
 restrain their vices, make laws for them, lead 
 them, day by day, to purer life, is not enough 
 for one man's work ? If any of us were abso- 
 lute lord only of a district of a hundred miles 
 square, and were resolved on doing our utmost 
 for it ; making it feed as large a number of 
 people as possible; making every clod pro- 
 ductive, and every rock defensive, and every 
 human being happy; should we not have 
 enough on our hands think you ? But if the 
 piler hag any other aiiji than this j if) careless 
 
154 1 THE CROWIf OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 of the result of -his interference, he desire 
 only the authority to interfere; and, regard- 
 less of what is ill-done or well-done, cares 
 only that it shall be .done at his bidding ; — if 
 he would rather do two hundred miles' space 
 of mischief, than one hundred miles' space of 
 good, of course he will try to add to his ter- 
 ritory ; and to add inimitably. But does he 
 add to his power ? Do you call it power in a 
 child, if he is allowed to play with the wheels 
 and bands of some vast engine, pleased with 
 their murmur and whirl, till his unwise touch, 
 wandering where it ought not, scatters beam 
 and wheel into ruin ? Yet what machine is so 
 vast, so incognizable, as the working of the 
 mind of a nation ; what child's touch so wan- 
 ton, as the word of a selfish king? And yet, 
 how long have we allowed the historian to speak 
 of the extent of the calamity a man causes, as a 
 just ground for his pride ; and to extol him as 
 the greatest pripce, who is only the centre of 
 the widest error. Follow out this thought by 
 yourselves ; and you will find that all power, 
 properly so called, is wise and benevolent. 
 There may be capacity in a drifting fire-ship 
 to destroy a fleet ; there may be venom enough 
 in a dead bod^ to iiif ect a nation : — ^but which 
 
of you, the most ambitious, would desire a 
 drifting kinghood, robsd in consuming fire, or 
 a poison-dipped sceptre whose touch was mor- 
 tal ? There is no true potency, remember, 
 but that of help ; nor true ambition, but ambi- 
 tioa *• save. 
 
 And then, observe farther, this true power, 
 the power of saving, depends neither on mul- 
 titude of men, nor on extent of territory. We 
 are continually assuming that nations become 
 strong according to their numbers. They m- 
 deed become so, if those numbers can be 
 made of one mind ; but how are you sure you 
 can stay them in one mind, and keep them 
 from having north and south minds ? Grant 
 them unanimous, hov/ know you they will be 
 unanimous in right ? If they are unanimous 
 in wrong, the more they are, essentially the 
 ■weaker they are. Or, suppose that they can 
 neither be of one mind, nor of two minds, but 
 can only be of no mind ? Suppose they are a 
 mere helpless mob ; tottering into precipitant 
 catastrophe, like a wagon load of stones whea 
 the wheel comes off. Dangerous enough for 
 their nei^bors, certainly, but not " powerful." 
 
 Neither does strength depend on extent of 
 territory, any vaox^ than upon number of 
 
156 TH& CROWN OF WILD OLIVM. 
 
 population; Take up your maps when you go 
 home this evening, — put the cluster of British 
 Isles beside the mass of South America ; and 
 then consider whether any race of men need 
 care how much ground they stand upon. The 
 strength is in the men, and in their unity and 
 virtue, not in their standing room : a little 
 group of v/ise hearts is better than a wilderness 
 full of fools ; and only that nation gains true 
 territory, which gains itself. 
 
 And now for the brief practical outcome of 
 all this. Remember, ^no government is ulti- 
 mately strong, but in proportion to its kindness 
 and justice ; and that a nation does not 
 strengthen, by merely multiplying and diffusing 
 itselfi We have not strengthened as yet, by 
 multiplying i:.to America.^ Nay, even when it 
 has not to encounter the separating conditions 
 of emigration, a nation need not boast itself of 
 multiplying on its own ground, if it multiplies 
 only as flies or locusts do, with the god of flies 
 for its god. It multiplies its strength only by 
 increasing as one great family, in perfect fel- 
 lowship and brotherhood. And lastly, it does 
 not strengthen itself by seizing dominion over 
 raaes whom it cannot benefit. Austria is r>ct 
 
JVAH. 157 
 
 Strengthened, but weakened, . by her grasp of 
 Lombardy ; and whatever apparent increase 
 of majesty and of wealth may have accrued to 
 us from the possession of India, whether these 
 prove to us ultimately power or weakness, de- 
 pends wholly on the degree in which our in- 
 fluence en the native race shall be benevolent 
 and exalting. But, as it is at their own peril 
 that any race extends their dominion in mere 
 desise of power, so it is at their own still 
 greater peril that they refuse to undertake 
 aggressive war, according to their force, when- 
 ever they are assured that their authority would 
 be helpful and protective. Nor need you listea 
 to any sophistical objection of the impossibility 
 of knowing when a people's help is needed, or 
 ■when not. Make your national conscience 
 clean, and your national eyes will soon be 
 clear. No man who is truly ready to take 
 part in a noble quarrel will ever stand long ia 
 doubt by whom, or in what cause, his aid is. 
 needed. I hold it my duty to make no polit- 
 ical statement of any special bearing in this 
 presence ; but I tell you broadly and boldly, 
 that, within these last ten years, we English 
 have, as a knightly nation, lost our spurs : wa 
 have fought where we shgwld not have fought. 
 
158 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVB: 
 
 tor gain ; and we have been passive where we 
 should not have been passive, for fear. I tell 
 you that the principle of non-intervention, as 
 now preached among us, is as selfish and 
 cruel as the worst frenzy of conquest, and dif' 
 fers from it only by being not only malignant^ 
 but dastardly. 
 
 I know, however, that my opinions on this 
 subject differ too widely from those ordinarily 
 held, to be any farther intruded upon you ; and 
 therefore I pass lastly to examine the conditions 
 of the third kind of noble war ; — ^war waged 
 simply for the defence of the country in which 
 we were born, and for the maintenance and 
 execution of her laws, by whomsoever threat- 
 ened or defied. It is to this duty that I sup» 
 pose most men entering the army consider 
 themselves in reality to be bound, and I want 
 you now to reflect what the laws of mere de- 
 fence are ; and what the soldier's duty, as now 
 understood, or supposed to be understood. 
 You have solemnly devoted yourselves to be 
 English soldiers, for the guardianship of Eng- 
 land, i want you to feel what this vow of 
 yours indeed means, or is gradually coming to 
 mean. You take it upon you, first, while you 
 sxe senUmental sphoolboyg ; you go into yout 
 
military convent, or barracks, jdst as a ^rl 
 goes into her convent while she is a sentimen- 
 tal schoolgirl ; neither of you then know what 
 you are about, though both the good soldiers 
 and good nuns make the best of it afterwards. 
 You don't understand perhaps why I call you 
 " sentimental " schoolboys, when you go into 
 the ajrmy ? Because, on the whole, it is love 
 of adventure, of excitement, of fine dress and 
 of the pride of fame, all which are sentimental 
 motives, which chiefly make a boy like going 
 into the Guards better than into a counting- 
 .house. You fancy, perhaps, that there is a 
 severe sense of duty mixed with these peacocky 
 motives ? And in the best of you, there is ; 
 but do not think tliat it is principal. If you 
 cared to do your duty to your country in a 
 prosaic and unsentimental way, depend upon 
 it, there is now truer duty to be done in rais- 
 ing harvests, than in burning them ; more in 
 building houses, than in selling them — more 
 in winning money by your own work, where- 
 with to help men, than in taxing other people's 
 work, for money wherewith to slay men ; more 
 duty, finally, in honest and unselfish living than 
 in honest and unselfish dying, though that seems 
 to your boys' eyes the bravest. So far thei^ 
 
l5o THE CROWN' OF WILD OLTVB. 
 
 as for j'our own honor and the honor of yoiil 
 families, you choose brave death in a red coat 
 before brave life in a black one, you are senti- 
 mental ; and now see what this passionate 
 vow of yours comes to. For a little while you 
 ride, and you hunt tigers or savages, you shoot, 
 and are shot ; you are happy, and proud, always, 
 and honored and wept if you die ; and you are 
 satisfied with your life, and with the end of it ; 
 believing, on the whole, that good rather than 
 harm of it comes to others, and much pleasure 
 to you. But as the sense of duty enters into 
 your forming minds, the vow takes another 
 aspect. You find that you have put yourselves 
 into the hand of your country as a weapon. 
 You have vowed to strike, when she bids you, 
 and to stay scabbarded when she bids you ; 
 all that you need answer for is, that you fail 
 not in her grasp. And there is goodness in 
 this, and greatness, if you can trust the hand 
 and heart of the Britomart who has braced you 
 to her side, and are assured that when she 
 leaves you sheathed in darkness, there is no 
 need for your flash to the sun. But remember, 
 good and noble as this state may be, it is a 
 state of slavery. There are different kinds of 
 slaves and different masters. Some slaves arQ 
 
ITAJl. i6S 
 
 scourged to their work by whips, others are 
 scourged to it by restlessness or ambition. It 
 does not matter what the whip is ; it is none the 
 less a whip, because you have cut thongs for 
 it out of your own souls: the fact, so far, of 
 slavery, is in beiing driven to your work with- 
 out thought, at another's bidding.. Again, 
 some slaves are bought v/ith money, and others 
 •with praise. It matters not what the purchase- 
 money is. The distinguishing sign of slavery 
 is to have a price, and be bought for it. Again, 
 it matters not what kind of work you are set 
 on ; some slaves are set to forced diggings, 
 others to forced marches ; some dig furrows, 
 others field-work, and others graves. Some 
 press the juice of reeds, and some the juice of 
 "vines, and some the blood of men. The fact 
 of the captivity is the same whatever work we 
 are set upon, though the fruits of the toil may 
 be different. But, remember, in thus vowing 
 ourselves to be the slaves of any master, it 
 ought to be some subject of forethought with 
 lis, what work he is likely to put us upon, You 
 may think that the whole duty of a soldier is to 
 be passive, that it is the country you have left 
 behind who is to command, and you have only to 
 obey. £ut are you sure that you have left aU 
 
j63 the crown 6f wild OLIVS. 
 
 your country behind, or that the part of it you 
 have so ^ft is indeed the best part c£ it? 
 Suppose — and, remember, it is quite conceiv* 
 able — that you yourselves are indeed the best 
 part of England ; that you, who have become 
 the slaves, ought to have been the masters ; 
 and that tiiose who are the masters, ought to 
 Kave been the slaves ! If it is a noble and 
 ■whole-hearted England, whose bidding you are 
 bound to do, it is well ; but if you are your- 
 selves the best of her heart, and the England 
 you have left be but a half-hearted England, 
 how siy you of your obedience ? You were too 
 proud to become shopkeepers : are you satisfied 
 then to become servants of shopkeepers? 
 You were too proud to become merchants or 
 farmers yourselves : will you have merchants 
 or farmers then for your field marshals ? You 
 had no gifts of special grace for Exeter Hall : 
 will you have some gifted person thereat for 
 your commander-in-chief, to judge of your 
 work, and reward ? You imagine yourselves 
 to be the army of England : how if you should 
 find yourselves, at last, only the police of her 
 manufacturing towns, and the beadles of her 
 kittle Bethels ? 
 
 It is not so yet, aor will be sOi I trust, foe 
 
ever ; but what I want you to see. and to 
 assured of, is, that the ideal of soldiership is 
 not mere passive obedience and bravery ; that, 
 so far from this, no country is in a healthy 
 state which has separated, even in a small 
 degree, her civil from her military power. All 
 states of the world, however great, fall at once 
 when they use mercenary armies ; and although 
 it is a less instant form of error (because in- 
 volving no national taint of cowardice), it is 
 yet an error no less ultimately fatal — it is the 
 error especially of modern times, of which we 
 cannot yet know all the calamitous con- 
 sequences — to take away the best blood and 
 strength of the nation, all the soul-substance 
 of it that is brave, and careless of reward, and 
 scornful of pain, and faithful in trust ; and ' to 
 cast that into steel, and make a mere sword of 
 it; taking away its voice and will ; but to keep 
 the worst part of the nation — whatever is cow- 
 ardly, avaricious, sensual, and faithless — and 
 to give to this the voice, to this the authority, 
 to this the chief privilege, where, there is least 
 capacity, of thought. The fulfilment of your 
 vow for the defence of England will by no 
 means consist in carrying out such a system, 
 you are not true soldiers, if you only mean tp 
 
l64 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. > 
 
 Stand at a shop door, to protect sHop-boyS 
 who are cheating inside. A soldier's vow to 
 his country is that he will die for the^uardian- 
 ship of her domestic virtue, of her righteous 
 laws, and of her anyway challenged or endan- 
 gered honor. A state without virtue, without 
 la,ws, and without honor, he is bound not to 
 -defend ; nay, bound to redress by his own 
 right hand that which he sees to be base in 
 her. So sternly is the law of Nature and life, 
 that a nation once utterly corrupt can only be 
 redeemed by a military despotism — never by 
 talking, nor by its free effort. And the health 
 of any state consists simply in this : tliat in it, 
 those who are wisest shall also be strongest ; 
 its rulers should be also its soldiers ; or, rather, 
 by force of intellect more than of sword, its 
 soldiers its rulers- Whatever the hold which 
 the aristocracy of England has on the heart of 
 England, in that they are still always in front 
 of her battles, this hold will not be enough, 
 unless they are also in front of her thoughts. 
 And truly her thoughts need good captain's 
 reading now, if ever ! Do you know what, by 
 this beautiful division of labor (her brave men 
 fighting, and her cowards thinking), she has 
 come at last to thiak ? Here is a bit of paper 
 
in my hand,* a good one too, ana an honest 
 one ; quite representative of the best common 
 public thought of England at this moment ; 
 and it is holding forth in one of its leaders 
 upon our " social welfare " — upon our " vivid 
 life " — upon the *' political supremacy of Great 
 Britain." And what do you think all these are 
 owing to ? -To what our English sires have 
 done for us, and taught us, age after age ? No : 
 not to that. To our honesty of heart, or coo^ 
 ness of head, or steadiness of will ? No : not 
 
 * I do not care to refer to the journal quoted, because 
 the article was unworthy of its general tone, though in 
 order to enable the audience to verify the quoted sen- 
 tence, I left the number containing it on the table, when 
 , I delivered this lecture. But a saying of Baron Liebig's, 
 ^quoted at the head of a leader on the same subject in 
 .the Daily Telegraph of January ii, 1866, summarily 
 ! digests and presents the maximum folly of modem 
 thought in this respect. " Civilization," says the Baron, 
 " is the economy of power, and English power is coal." 
 Not altogether sc, my chemical friend. Civilization is 
 the making of civil persons, which is a kind of distilla- 
 tion of which alembics are incapable, and does not at 
 all imply the turning of a small company of gentlemen 
 into a large company of ironmongers. . And English 
 power (what little of it may be left), is by no means 
 coal, but, indeed, of that which, « when the whole world 
 turns to coal, then chiefly livesi'' 
 
i66 THE CROWN- OF WILD OLIVE. \ 
 
 to these. To our thinkers, or our statesmen, 
 or our poets, or our captains, or our mart)n:s, 
 or the patient labor of our poor ? No : not to 
 these ; or at least not to these in any chief 
 measure. Nay, says the journal, " more thaa 
 any agency, it is the cheapness and abundance 
 cf our coal which have made us what we are." 
 If it be so^ then " ashes to ashes " be our 
 epitaph ! and the sooner the better. I tell 
 ' you, gentlemen of England, if ever you would 
 have your country breathe the pure breath of 
 heaven again, and receive again a soul into 
 her body, instead of rotting into a carcase, 
 blown up in the belly with carbonic acid (and 
 great that way), you must think, and feel, for 
 your England, as well as fight for her : you 
 must teach her that all the true greatness she 
 ever had, or ever can have, she won while her 
 fields were green and her faces ruddy — that 
 greatness is still possible for Englishmen, evea 
 though the ground be not hollow under their 
 feet, nor the sky black over their heads ; — and 
 that, when the day comes for their country to 
 lay her honors in the dust, her crest will not 
 rise from it more loftily because it is dust of 
 coal. Gentlemen, I tell you, solemnly, that 
 the day is coming when the soldiers of foglaod 
 
must be hef tutors ; and the captains of her 
 army, captains also of her mind. 
 
 And now, remember, you soldier youths, 
 who are thus in all ways the hope of your 
 Country; or must, be, if she have any hope: 
 remember that your fitness for all future trust 
 depends upon what you are now. No good 
 soldier in his old age was ever careless or indo- 
 lent in his youth. Many a giddy and thought- 
 less boy has becoine a good bishop, or a good 
 ' lawyer, or a good merchant ; but no such an 
 one cVer became a good general. I challenge 
 you, in all history, to find a record of a good 
 soldier who was not grave and earnest in his 
 youth. And, in general, I have no patience 
 with people who talk about ' ' the thoughtless- 
 ness of youth " indulgently. I had infinitely 
 rather hear of thoughtless old age, and the 
 indulgence due to i^af. When a man has done 
 his work, and nothing can any way be materi- 
 ally altered in his fate> let him forget his toil, 
 atid jest with his fate, if he will; but what ex- 
 cuse can you find for wilfulness of thought, at 
 the very time when every crisis of future . 
 fortune hangs on your decisions ? A youth 
 thoughtless ! -vvhen all the happiness of his home 
 forever de^end^s qn the c^iances, or the pas- 
 
l68 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVB.^ 
 
 sions, of an hour ! A youth thoughtless ! when 
 the career of all his days depends on the op- 
 portunity of a moment ! A youth thoughtless! 
 when his every act is a foundation-stone of 
 future conduct, and every imagination a fount- 
 ain of life or death I Be tlioughtless in any 
 after years, rather than now — tliough, indeed, 
 there is only one place where a man may be 
 nobly thoughtless, — his death-bed. No thinkr 
 ing should ever be left to be done there. 
 
 Having, then, resolved that you v/ill not 
 waste recklessly, but earnestly use, these early 
 days of yours, remember that all the duties of 
 her children to England may be summed in 
 two words — industry, and honor. I say first, 
 industry, for it is in this that soldier you A, 
 are especially tempted to fail. Yet, surely, 
 there is no reason, because your life may 
 possibly or probably be shorter than other 
 men's, that you should therefore waste more 
 recklessly the portion of it that is granted you ; 
 neither do the duties of your profession, which 
 require you to keep your bodies strong, in any 
 wise involve the keeping of your minds weak. 
 So far from that, the experience, the hardship, 
 and the activity of a soldier's life render his 
 powers of thought more accurate than those of 
 
Othei" men ; and while, for others, all knowl- 
 edge is often little more than a means cf 
 amusement, there is no form cf science 
 which a soldier may not at some time or 
 otlier find bearing on 'business of life and 
 death. A young mathematician may be ex- 
 cused for languor in studying curves to be 
 des^cribed only with a pencil ; but not in trac- 
 ing those which are to be described with a 
 rocket. Your knowledge of a wholesome herb 
 may ihvolve the feeding of an army ; and ac- 
 quaintance with an obscure point of geography, 
 the success of a campaign. Never waste an 
 instant's ''me, therefore; the sin' of idleness 
 is a thousand-fold greater in you than in other 
 youths ; for the fates of those who will one 
 day be under your command hang upon your 
 knowledge; lost moments now will be lost 
 lives then, and every instant which you care- 
 lessly take for play, you buy with blood. 
 But there is one way of wasting time, of all 
 the vilest, because it wastes, not time only, but 
 the interest and energy of your minds. Of all 
 the ungentlemanly habits into which you can 
 fall, the vilest is betting, or interesting your- 
 selves in the issues of betting. It unites nearly 
 every condition of folly and yice: you coi^- 
 
i;o THE CROV/N OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 centrate your interest upon a matter of chance^ 
 instead of upon a subject of true knowledge ; 
 and you back opinions . which you have no 
 grounds for fomiing, merely because they are 
 your own. All the itjsolence of egotism is in 
 this ; and so fa,r as the love of excitement is 
 complicated with the hope of winning moriey, 
 you turn yourselves into the basest sort of 
 tradesmen — those who live by speculatioii. 
 Were there no other ground for industry, this 
 ■would be a sufficient one ; that it protected 
 you from the temptation to so scandalous a 
 vice. V/ork faithfully, and you will put your- 
 selves in possession of a glorious and enlarg- 
 ing happiness ; not such as can be won by the 
 speed of a horse, or marred by the obliquity 
 ,of a ball. 
 
 First, then, by industry you must fulfil your 
 vow to your country; but all industry and 
 earnestness will be useless unless they are 
 consecrated by your resolution to be in all 
 things men of honor ; not honor in the com- 
 mon sense only, but in the highest. Rest on 
 the force of the two main words in the great 
 verse, integer vitae, scelerisque purus. You 
 have vowed your life to England ; give it her 
 wholly — a bright, stainless, perfect life— a 
 
knightly life. Because you have to fight with 
 machines instead of lances, there may be a 
 necessiEy for more ghastly danger, but there is 
 none tor less worthiness of character, than in 
 olden tfciie. You may be true knights yet, 
 though perhaps not equites ; you may have to 
 call yoursoives " cannonry " instead of " chiv- 
 alry," but «riat is no reason why you should 
 not call yotirselves true men. So the first 
 thing you h%'ve to see to in becoming soldiers 
 is that you make yourselves wholly true. 
 Courage is a mere matter of course among any 
 ordinarily well-born youths-; but neither truth 
 nor gentleness is matter of course. You must 
 bind them like shields about'your necks ; you 
 must write them on the tables of your hearts. 
 Though it be not exacted of you, yet exact it 
 of yourselves,- this vow. of stainless truth. 
 Your hearts are, if you leave them unstirred, 
 as tombs in which a god lies buried. Vo\K 
 yourselves crusaders to redeem that sacred 
 sepulchre. And remember, before all things 
 — for no other memory will be so protective of 
 you: — that the highest law of this knightly 
 truth Is that under which it is vowed to women. 
 Whomsoever else you deceive^ whomsoever 
 ^ou injure, whomsoever you leave unaided. 
 
ijz Tir£ CROtVN- OP mi£) 6LTVM. 
 
 you must not deceive, nor injure, nor leave 
 unaided, according to your power, any woman 
 of whatever rank. Believe me, every virtue of 
 the higher phases of manly character begins 
 in this ; — in truth and modesty before the face 
 of all maidens ; in truth and pity, or truth and 
 reverence, to all womanhood. 
 
 And now let me turn for a moment to you, 
 —wives and maidens, who are the souls of 
 soldiers • fo you, — mothers, who have devoted 
 your children to the great hierarchy of war. 
 Let me ask you to consider what part you 
 have to take for the aid of those who love 
 you ; for if you fail in your part ^they cannot 
 fulfil theirs ; such absolute helpmates you are 
 that no man can stand without that help, nor 
 labor in his own strength. 
 
 I know your hearts, and that the truth of 
 them never fails when an hour of trial comes 
 which you recognize for such. But you know 
 not when the hour of trial first finds you, nor 
 when it verily finds you. You imagine that 
 you are only called upon to wait and suffer ; 
 to surrender and to mourn. You know that 
 you must not weaken the hearts of your hus- 
 bands and lovers, even by the one fear of 
 which those hearts W9 capable, — this fear of 
 
parting from you, or of causing you grief. 
 Through weary years of separation; through 
 fearful expectancies of unknown fate ; throuq-h 
 the tenfold bitterness of the sorrow which 
 might so easily have been joy, and the tenfold 
 yearning for glorious life struck down in 'ts 
 prime — through all these agonies you fail not, 
 and never will fail. But your trial is not in 
 (these. To be heroic in danger is little ; — you 
 are Englishwomen. To be heroic in change 
 and sway of fortune is little ; — for do you not 
 love ? To be patient through the great chasm 
 and pause of loss is little ; for do you not still 
 love in heaven ? But to be heroic in happi- 
 ness ; to bear yourselves gravely and right- 
 eously in the dazzling of the sunshine of 
 morning ; not to forget the God in whom you 
 trust, when He gives you most; not to fail 
 those who trust you, when they seem to need 
 you least ; this is the difficult fortitude. It is 
 not in the pining of absence, not in the peril 
 of battle, not in the wasting of sickness, that 
 your prayer should be. most passionate, or 
 your guardianship most tender. Pray, mothers 
 and maidens, for your young soldiers in the 
 bloom of their pride ; pray for them, while the 
 only dangers round them are in their owq 
 
J 74 ^^-S CROWN' OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 wayward will? ; watch you, and pray, when 
 they have to face, not death, but temptation. 
 But it is this fortitude also for which there is 
 the crowning reward. Believe me, the ' whole 
 course and character of your lovers' lives is ia 
 your hands ; what you would have them be, 
 they shall be, if you not only desire to have 
 them so, but dpserve to have them so; for 
 they are but, mirrors 'in whichi you will see 
 yourselves imaged. If you are frivolous, they 
 will be so also ; if you have no understanding 
 of the scope of their duty, they also will for- 
 get it; they will listen, — they can listen, — to 
 no other interpretation of it than that uttered 
 from your lips. Bid them be brave ; — they 
 will be brave for you ; bid them be cowards ; 
 and how noble soever they be, they will quail 
 for you. Bid them be wise,' and they will be 
 wise for you ; mock at their counsel, and they 
 will be fools for you : such and so absolute 
 is your rule over them. You fancy, perhaps, 
 as you have been told so often, that a wife's 
 rule should only be over her husband's house, 
 not over his mind. Ah, no 1 the true rule is 
 just the reverse of that ; a true wife, in her 
 husband's house, is his servant; it Is in his 
 lieaxt that she is queen. Whatever of the best 
 
lie can conceive, it is h^rpart to be } whatever 
 of highest lie can hope, it is hers to promise ; 
 all that is dark in him she must purge into 
 purity-, all that is failing in him she must 
 Strengthen into truth : from her, through all 
 the world's clamor, he must win his praise ; 
 in her, through all the world's warfare, he must 
 find his peace. 
 
 And, now, but one word more. You may- 
 wonder, perhaps, that I have spoken all this 
 night in praise of war. Yet, truly, if it might 
 be, I, for one, would fain join in the cadence 
 of hammer-strokes that should beat swords 
 into ploughshares : and that this cannot be, is 
 not the fault of us men. It is your fault 
 Wholly yours. Only by your command, or by 
 your permission, can any contest take placa 
 among us. And the real, final, reason for all 
 the poverty, misery, and rage of battle^ 
 throughout Europe, is simply that you women, 
 however good, however religious, however self- 
 sacrificing for those whom you love, are too 
 selfish arid too thoughtless to take pains for 
 any creature out of your own immediate cir- 
 cles. You fancy that you are sorry for the 
 pain Of others. Now I just tell yoii this, that 
 jf the usual course of war^ instead of unroof'* 
 
i;^ TtlE CROWN OP WILD OLIVE. 
 
 ing peasants' houses, and ravaging peasants* 
 fields, merely broke the china upon your own 
 drawing-room tables, no war in civilized coun- 
 tries would last a week. I tell you more, that 
 at whatever moment you chose to put a 
 period to war, you could do it with less 
 trouble than you take any day to go out to 
 dinner. You know, or at least you might 
 know if you would think, that every battle you 
 hear of has made many widows and orphans. 
 We have, none of us, heart enough truly to 
 mourn with these. But at least we might put 
 on the outer symbols of mourning with them. 
 Let but every Christian lady who has con- 
 science towards God, vow that she will mourn, 
 at least outwardly, for His killed creatures. 
 Your praying is useless, and your church- 
 going mere mockery of God, if you have not 
 plain obedience in you enough for this. Let 
 every lady in the upper classes of civilized 
 Europe simply vow, that, while any cruel war~ 
 proceeds, she will wear black ; — a mute's black, 
 — with no jewel, no ornament, no excuse for, 
 or evasion into, prettiness. — I tell you again, 
 no war would last a week. 
 
 And lastly. You women of England are all 
 pow sbriekiag with one voice. — ^you and yout 
 
clergymen together.—because you hear of your 
 Eibles being attached. If you choose to 
 obey your Bibles, yoi» will never care , who 
 attacks them. It is just because you never 
 fulfil a single downrigh* precept of the Book, 
 that you are so careful for its credit : and just 
 because you don't care tc obey its whole words, 
 that you are so particular about the letters of 
 them. The Bible tells you to dress plainly, — 
 and you are mad for finery ; the Bible tells 
 you to have pity on the poor, — and you crush 
 them under your carriage-wheels ; the Bible 
 tells you to do judgment and justice, — and 
 you do not know, nor care to knov?; so much 
 as what the Bible word " justice " means. 
 Do but learn so much of God's truth as that 
 comes to ; know what He means whea He 
 tells you to be just: and teach your sons, 
 that their bravery is but a fool's boast, and 
 their deeds but a firebrand's tossing, unless 
 they are indeed Just men, and Perfect in the 
 fear of God ; and you will soon have no more 
 war, unless it be indeed such as is willed by 
 Him, of whom, though Prince of Peace, it ia 
 also written, "In Righteousnesa He doth 
 judge, and make war.". 
 
LECTURE IV. 
 
 JEZ FUTURE OFENGLANOl 
 
LECTURE IV; 
 
 THE FUTURE OF ENGLAND. 
 
 (peUvereel at the R. A. Inttitution, Woolwich, December 
 14, 1869.) 
 
 I WOULD fain have left to the frank ex- 
 pression of the moment, but fear I could 
 not have found clear words — I cannot easily 
 find them, even deliberately, — to tell you how 
 glad I am, and yet how ashamed, to accept 
 your permission to speak to you. Ashamed 
 of appearing to think that I can tell you any 
 truth which you have not more deeply felt 
 than I ; but glad in the thought that my less 
 experience, and way of life sheltered from tlif 
 trials, and free from the responsibilities ofe 
 yours, may have left me with something of a 
 child's power of help to you ; a sureness of 
 hope, which may perhaps be the one thing 
 that can be helpful to men who have done too 
 much not to have often failed in doing all 
 that they desired. And indeed, even the most 
 liopeful of us cannot but now be in many 
 
 i8i 
 
i82 fff£ CROWN OF W}Lt) OLlfA 
 
 things apprehensive. For this at least we all 
 know too well, that we are on the eve of a 
 great political crisis, if not of political change. 
 That a struggle is approaching between the 
 newly-risen power of democracy and the ap- 
 parently departing power of feudalism; and 
 another struggle, no less imminent, and far 
 more dangerous, between wealth and pau- 
 perism. These two quarrels are constantly 
 thought of as the same. They are being 
 fought together, and an apparently common 
 interest unites for the most part the million- 
 aire with the noble, in resistance to a multi> 
 tude, crying, part of it for bread and part of it 
 for liberty. 
 
 And yet no two quarrels can be more 
 distinct. Riches — so far from being necessary 
 to noblesse — are adverse to it. So utterly 
 adverse, that the first character of all the 
 Nobilities which have founded great dynasties 
 in the world is to be poor ; — often poor by 
 oath — always poor by generosity. And of 
 every true knight in the chivalric ages, the first 
 thing history tells you is, that he never kept 
 treasure for himselL 
 
 Thus the causes of wealth and noblesse 
 are not the samti} but opposite. On tht 
 
THE FUTURE OF ENGLAND. 183 
 
 Other hand, the causes of anarchy and of the 
 poor are not the same, but opposite. Side by 
 side, in the samb rank, are now indeed set the 
 pride that revolts against authority, and the 
 misery that appeals against avarice. But, so 
 far from being a common cause, all anarchy 
 is the forerunner of poverty, and all 
 prosperity begins in obedience. So thaf^ 
 thus, it has become impossible to give due 
 support to the cause of order, ■without seem- 
 ing to countenance injury ; and impossible to 
 plead justly the claims of sorrow, without 
 seeming to plead also for those of licence. 
 
 Let me try, then, to put in very brief terms 
 the real plan of this various quarrel, and the 
 truth of the cause on each side. Let us face 
 that full truth, whatever it may be, and decide 
 •what part, according to our power, we should 
 take in the quarrel. 
 
 First For eleven hundred years, all 
 but five, since Charlemagne set on his head 
 the Lombard crown, the body of European 
 people have submitted patiently to be gov- 
 erned generally by kings — always by single 
 leaders of some kind. Cut for the last fifty 
 years they have begun to suspect, and of late 
 they have many of them Qoniduded, that they 
 
184 TITJS CROWN' OF V/'ILD OLTVS. 
 
 have been on the whole ill-governed, cr inisgov- 
 emed, by their kings. Whereupon they say, 
 more and more widely, "Let us henceforth 
 have no kings ; and no government at all." 
 
 Now we said, v/e must face the full truth of 
 the matter, in order to see what we are to do; 
 And the truth is tliat the people have been 
 misgoverned ; — that very little is to be saic^ 
 hitherto, for most of their masters — and that 
 certainly in many places they will try their 
 new system of " no masters : " — and as that 
 arrangement will be delightful to all foolish 
 persons, and, at first, profitable to all wicked 
 ones,i — and as these classes are not wanting 
 or unimportant in any human society, — the ex- 
 periment is likely to be tried extensively. 
 And the world may be quite content to endure 
 much suffering with this fresh hope, and re- 
 tain its faith in anarchy, whatever comes of il^ 
 till it can endure no more. 
 
 Then, secondly. The- people have be- 
 gpn to suspect that one particular form of 
 this past misgovemment has been, that their 
 masters have set them to do all the work, 
 and have themselves taken all the wages. In 
 a word, that what was called governing them, 
 lljieaut only wearing fine clothes, and living oa 
 
THE FUTURE OF ENGLAND. iSj' 
 
 good fare at their expense. And I am sorry 
 to say, the people are quite riglit in tliis opin- 
 ion also. If you inquire into the vital fact of 
 the matter, this you will find to be the con- 
 stant structure of European society for the 
 thousand years of the feudal system ; it was 
 divided into peasants who lived by working ; 
 priests who lived by begging ; and knights 
 who lived by pillaging ; and as the luminous 
 public mind becomes gradually cognizant of 
 these facts, it will assuredly not suffer things 
 to be altogether arranged that way any more ; 
 and the devising of other ways will be an 
 agitating business ; especially because the 
 first impression of the intelligent populace is, 
 that whereas, in the dark ages, half the nation 
 lived idle, in the bright ages to come, the 
 whole of it may. 
 
 Now, thirdly — and here is much «« 
 worst phase of the crisis. This past system 
 of misgovemment, especially during the last 
 three hundred years, has prepared, by its 
 neglect, a class among the lower orders which 
 it is now peculiarly difficult to govern. It 
 deservedly lost their respect — but that was 
 the least part of mischief. The deadly part of 
 it waSf that the lower orders lost their habit^ 
 
l86 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 and at last their faculty, of respect ; — ^lost the 
 very capability of reverence, which is the most 
 precious part of the human soul. Exactly in 
 the degree in which you can find creatures, 
 greater than yourself, to look up to, in that 
 degree, you are ennobled yourself, and, in 
 that degree, happy. If you could live always 
 in the presence of archangels, you would be 
 happier than in that of men ; but even if only 
 in the' company of admirable knights and 
 beautiful ladies, the more noble and bright 
 they were, and the more you could reverence 
 their virtue, the happier you would be. On 
 the contrary, if you vrere condemned to live 
 among a multitude of idiots, dumb, distorted, 
 and malicious, you would not be happy in the 
 constant sense of your own superiority. Thus 
 all real joy and power of progress in humanity 
 depend on finding something to reverence, 
 and all the baseness and misery of humanity 
 begin in a habit of disdain. Now, by general 
 misgovemment, I repeat, we have created in 
 Europe a vast populace, and out of Europe a 
 still vaster one, which has lost even the power 
 and conception of reverence ;* — ^which exists 
 
 * Compare Time and Tide, § i6q, vaAFors Clavigcra 
 letter XIV, pa^e 9, 
 
fe-£ FUTURE OF ENGLAND. 1I7 
 
 only in the worship of itself — ^which can 
 neither see anything beautiful around it, nor 
 conceive anything virtuous above it; whicli 
 has, towards all goodness and greatness, no 
 other feelings than those of the lowest creat- 
 ures — ^fear, hatred, or hunger ; a populace 
 which has sunk below your appeal in their 
 nature, as it has risen beyond your power in 
 their multitude ; — ^whom you can now no 
 more charm than you can the adder, nor dis- 
 cipline, than you can the summer fly. 
 
 It is a crisis, gentlemen ; and time to think 
 of it. I have jroughly and broadly put it be- 
 fore you in its darkness. Let us look what 
 ■we may find of light. 
 
 Only the other day, in a journal which 
 is a fairly representative exponent of the Con- 
 servatism of our day, and for the most part 
 not at all in favor of strikes or other popular 
 proceedings ; only about three weeks since, 
 there was a leader, with this, or a similar, title 
 — "What is to become of the House of 
 Lords ? " It startled me, for it seemed as if 
 we were going even faster than I had thought, 
 when such a question was put as a subject of 
 quite open debate, in a journal meant chiefly 
 for the reading of the middle and upper classes. 
 
iSS TTiA CkbWN OF VsriLt) OttVE. 
 
 Open or not — the debate is near. What h 
 to become of them ? And the answer to such 
 question depends first on their being able to 
 answer another question — "What is the ust 
 of them ? " For some time bade, I think the 
 theory of the nation has been, that they are 
 useful as impediments to business, so as to 
 give time for second thoughts. But the na- 
 tion is getting impatient of impediments to 
 business ; and certainly, sooner or later, will 
 think it needless to maintain these expensive 
 obstacles to its humors. And I have not 
 heard, either in public, or from any of them- 
 selves, a clear expression of their own concep- 
 tion of their use. So that it seems thus to be- 
 come needful for all men to tell them, as our 
 one quite clear-sighted teacher, Carlyle, has 
 been telling us for many a year, that the use 
 of the Lords of a country is to govern the coun- 
 try. If they answer that use, the country will 
 rejoice in keeping them ; if not, that will be- 
 come of them which must of all things found 
 to have lost their serviceableness. 
 
 Here, therefore, is the one question, at 
 this crisis, for them, and for us. Will they be 
 lords indeed, and give us laws — dtikes indeed, 
 and give us guiding — ^princes indeed, and give 
 
> TaS FUTURE OF ENGLAND. 189 
 
 Us beginning, of truer dynasty, which shall not 
 be soiled by covetousness, nor disordered by 
 iniquity ? Have they themselves sunk so far 
 as not to hope this ? Are there yet any among 
 theni who can stand forward with open Eng- 
 lish brows, and say, — So far as in me lies, I 
 will govern with my might, not for Dieu ct tnon 
 Droit, but for the first grand reading of the 
 war cry from which that was corrupted, " Dieu 
 et Droit"? Among tliem I know there are 
 some — among you, soldiers of England, I know 
 there are many, who can do this ; and in you 
 is our trust, I, one of the lower people of 
 your country, ask of you in their name, — ^you 
 whom I will not any more call soldiers, but by 
 the truer name of Knights ; — Equites of Eng- 
 land, — how many yet of you are there, knights 
 errant now beyond all former fields of danger 
 — ^knights patient now beyond all former endur- 
 ance ; who still retain the ancient and eternal 
 purpose of knighthood, to subdue the wicked, 
 and aid the weak ? To fiiem, be they few or 
 many, we English people call for help to the 
 wretchedness, and for rule over the baseness, 
 of multitudes desolate and deceived, shrieking 
 to one another, this new gospel of their new 
 religion. " Let the weak do as they can, and 
 tJl§ Vigkf 4 a? the^ wiiy'_^ 
 
igo THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 I can hear you saying in your hearts, 
 even the bravest of you, " The time is past 
 for all that." Gentlemen, it is not so. The 
 time has come for more than all that. Hither- 
 to, soldiers have given their lives for false 
 fame, and for cruel power. The day is now 
 when they must give their lives for true fame, 
 and for beneficent power : and the work is 
 near every one of you — close beside you — the 
 means of it even thrust into your hands. 
 The people are crying to you for command, 
 and you stand there at pause, and silent. 
 You think they don't want to be commanded ; 
 try them ; determine what is needful for them 
 — -honorable for them; show it them,' promise 
 to bring them to it, and they .will follow you 
 through fire. " Govern us," they cry with one 
 heart, though many minds. They can be 
 governed still, these English ; they are men 
 still; nor gnats, nor serpents. They love 
 their old ways yet, and their old masters, and 
 their old land. They would fain live in it, as 
 many as may stay there, if you will show them 
 how, there, to live , — or show them even, how, 
 there, like Englishmen, to die. 
 
 " To live in it, as many as may ! " How 
 many do you think may? How manjr 
 
THE FtJTURE OF ENGLAND. igi 
 
 tan 1 How many do you want to live there ? 
 As masters, your first object must be to in- 
 crease your power ; and in what does the 
 • power of a country consist ? Will you have 
 dominion over its stones, or over its clouds, 
 or over its souls ? What do you mean by a 
 great nation, but a great multitude of men 
 who are true to each other, and strong, and of 
 worth ? Now you can increase the multitude 
 only definitely — ^your island has only so much 
 standing room — ^but you can increase the 
 worth indefinitely. It is but a little island ;-r 
 suppose, little as it is, you were to fill it with 
 friends? You may, and that easily. You 
 must, and that speedily ; or there will be an 
 end to this England of ours, and to all its 
 loves and enmities. 
 
 To fill this little island with true friends 
 —men brave, wise and happy ! Is it so 
 impossible, think you, after the world's 
 eighteen hundred years of Christianity, and 
 our own thousand years of toil, to fill only 
 this little /rhite gleaming crag with happy 
 creatures, helpful to each other ? Africa, and 
 India, and the Brazilian wide-watered plain, 
 are these not wide enough for the ignorance 
 of our race? have thev not space enough for 
 
192 TBE CRdW^ OF WILD OLIVE.- 
 
 its pain ? Must we remain ^(»r also savage,—* 
 here at enmity with each other, — ^r^foodless, 
 houseless, in rags, in dust, and without hope, 
 as thousands and tens of thousands of us are 
 lying ? Do not think it, gentlemen. The 
 thought that it is inevitable is the last in- 
 fidelity; infidelity not to God only, but to 
 eveiy creature and every law that Pie has 
 made. Are we to think that the earth was 
 only shaped to be a globe of torture ; and 
 that there cannot be one^ spot of it where 
 peace can rest, or justice reign ? Where are 
 men ever to be happy, if not in England ? by 
 ■whom shall they ever be taught to do right, if 
 not by you ? Are we not of a race first among 
 the strong ones of the earth ; the blood in us 
 incapable of weariness, unconquerable by 
 grief ? Have we not a history of which we 
 can hardly think without becoming insolent in 
 our just pride of it ? Can we dare, without 
 passing every limit of courtesy to other nations, 
 to say how much more we have to be proud 
 of in our ancestors than they ? Among our 
 ancient monarchs, great crimes stand out as 
 monstrous and strange. But their valor, and, 
 according to their understanding, their be- 
 nevolence, are constant. The Wais of the 
 
tits FUTURE OF ENGLAND. 193 
 
 Roses, which are as a fearful crimson shadow 
 oa our land, represent the normal conditioa 
 of other nations ; vrhile from the days of the 
 Heptarchy downwards we have had examples 
 pven us, in all ranks, of the most varied and 
 exalted virtue; a heap of treasure tliat no 
 moth can corrupt, and which even our 
 traitorship, if we are to become traitors to it^ 
 cannot sully. 
 
 And this is the race, then, that we 
 know not a»y more how to govern 1 and this 
 the history which we are to behold broken ofiE 
 by sedition ! and this is the country, of all 
 others, where life is to become difficult to the 
 honest, and ridiculous to the wise ! And the 
 catastrophe, forsooth, is to come just when we 
 have been making swiftest progress beyond 
 the wisdom and wealth of the past. ,Our 
 cities are a wilderness of spinning wheels 
 instead of palaces ; yet the people have not 
 clothes. We have blackened every leaf ol 
 English greenwood with ashes, and the 
 people die of cold ; our harbors are a forest 
 of merchant ships, and the people die o£ 
 hunger. 
 
 Whose fault is it? Yours, gentlemen; 
 yours only. You alone can feed them, and 
 »4 
 
l94 ^-^-S CROV^N OP WILD OLIJ^E. 
 
 clothe, and bring into their right minds, for 
 you only can govern — that is to say, you only 
 can educate them. 
 
 Educate, or govern, they are one and 
 the same word. Education does not mean 
 teaching people to know what they do not 
 know. It means teaching them to behave as 
 they do not behave. And the true " com- 
 pulsory education " which the people now ask 
 of you is not catechism, but drill. It is not 
 teaching the youth of England the shapes ol 
 letters and the tricks of numbers ; and then 
 leaving them to turn their arithmetic to rogu- 
 ery, and their literature to lust. It is, on the 
 contrary, training them into the perfect ex- 
 ercise and kingly continence of their bodies 
 and souls. It is a painful, continual, and 
 difficult work ; to be done by kindness, by 
 ■watching, by warning, by precept, and by- 
 praise, — but above all — ty example. 
 
 Coinpulsory ! Yes, by all means 1 " Go 
 ye out into the highways and hedges^ 
 and compel them to come in." Compulsory ! 
 Yes, and gratis also. Dei Gratia, they must 
 be taught, as, Dei Gratia, you are set to teach, 
 them. I hear strange talk continually, " how 
 difficult it is to make people pay for being edit- 
 
THS PVTMRE OF ENGLAND.. 195 
 
 cated I " Why, I should think so ! Do you 
 make your children pay for their education, or 
 do you give it them compulsorily, and gratis ? 
 You do not expect them to pay you for their 
 teaching, except by becoming good children. 
 Why should you expect a peasant to pay for 
 lis, except by becoming a good man ? — ^pay- 
 ment enough, I think, if we knew it. Pay- 
 ment enough to himself, as to us. For that 
 is another of our grand popular mistakes — 
 people are always thinking of education as a 
 means of livelihood. Education is not a profit- 
 able business, but a costly one ; nay, even 
 the best attainments of it are always unprofit- 
 able, in any terms of coin. No nation ever 
 made its bread either by its greit arts, or its 
 great wisdoms. By its minor arts or manu- 
 factures, by its practical knowledges, yes : but 
 Its noble scholarship, its noble philosophy, 
 and its noble art, are always to be bought as 
 a treasure, not sold for a livelihoocJ. You 
 do not leam that you may live — you live that 
 you may leam. You are to spend on Na- 
 tional Education, and to be spent for it, and 
 to make by it, not more money, but better 
 men; — to get into this British Island the 
 greatest possibly fiumber qi good ^nd }}rave 
 
198 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 Englishmen. Th^ are to be your " money's 
 worth." 
 
 But vrhere is the money to come from? 
 Yes, tliat is to be asked. Let us, as quite the 
 first business in this our national crisis, look not 
 only into our affairs, but into our accounts, 
 and obtain some general notion how we an> 
 nually spend our money, and Vrhat we are get- 
 ting for it. Observe, I do not mean to inquire 
 into the public revenue only; of that some 
 account is rendered already. But let us do 
 the best we can to set down the items of the 
 baiiobzl^rivaU expenditure ; and know what 
 we spend altogether, and how. 
 
 To begin with this matter of education. 
 You probably have nearly all seen the 
 admirable lecture lately ^ven by Captain 
 Maxse, at Southampton. It contains a clear 
 statement of the facts at present ascertained 
 as to our expenditure in that respect. It ap- 
 pears that of our public moneys, for every 
 pound that we spend on education we spend 
 twelve either in charity or punishment ; — ^ten 
 millions a year in pauperism and crime, and 
 eight hundred thousand in instruction. Now 
 Captain Maxse adds to this estimate of ten 
 oullien$ public money spent on cnme and 
 
TtTE FUTURE OP BmtAND. t^ 
 
 want, a more or less conjectural sum of eight 
 millions for private charities. My impressipa 
 is that this is much beneath the truth, but at 
 all events it leaves out of consideration much, 
 the heaviest and saddest form of charity — ^the 
 maintenance, by the working members of 
 families, of the unfortunate or ill-conducted 
 persons whom the general course of misrule 
 now leaves helpless to be the burden of the 
 rest 
 
 Now I want to get first at some, I do not 
 say approximate, but at all events some 
 suggestive, estimate of the quantity of real 
 distress and misguided life in this country. 
 Then next, I want some fairly representative 
 estimate of our private expenditure in luxuries. 
 We won't spend more, publicly, it appears, 
 than eight hundred thousand a year, on educat- 
 ing men, gratis. I want to know, as nearly 
 as possible, what we spend privately a year, 
 in educating horses gratis. Let us, at leas^ 
 quit ourselves in this from the taunt of Rab- 
 shakeh, and see that for every horse we train 
 also a horseman; and that the rider be at 
 least as high-bred as the horse, not jockey, 
 but chevalier. Again, we spend eight hun- 
 Aed thousand, which is ceitainly a great deal 
 
igS THE dUtWN OP WILD OLlVE. 
 
 of money, in making rough minds bright 1 
 want to know how much we spend annually in 
 making rough stones bright ; that is to say, 
 what may be the united annual sum, or near 
 it, of our jewellers' bills. So much we pay for 
 educating children gratis ; — ^how much for 
 educating diamonds gratis ? and -which pays 
 best for brightening the spirit, or the charcoal? 
 let us get those two items set down with some 
 sincerity, and a few more of the same kind. 
 JPublicly se*- down. We must not be ashamed 
 of the way we spend our money. If our right 
 Land is not to know what our left does, it 
 must not be because it would be ashanled if it 
 did. 
 
 That is, therefore, quite the first practical 
 thing to be done. Let every man who wishes 
 ■well to his country, render it yearly an account 
 of his income, and of the main heads of his 
 expenditure ; or, if he is ashamed to do so, let 
 him no more impute to the poor their poverty 
 as a crime, nor set them to break stones ia 
 order to frighten them ftom committing it. 
 To lose money ill is indeed often a crime ; but 
 to get it ill is a worse one', and to spend it ill, 
 worst of all. You object, Lords of England, 
 to increase, to the poor, the wages you give 
 
THE FUTURE OF ENGLAND.- tg^ 
 
 tiiem, because they spend them, you say, un- 
 advisedly. Render them, therefore, an ao 
 count of the wages which iAey give jou ; arid 
 show them, by your example, how to spend 
 theirs, to the last farthing, advisedly. 
 
 It is indeed time to make this an ao' 
 knowledged subject of instruction, to the 
 working-man, — how to spend his wages. For, 
 gentlemen, we musf give that instruction, 
 whether we will or no, one way or the other. 
 We have given it in years gone by ; and now 
 we find fault with our peasantry for having 
 been too docile, and profited too shrewdly by 
 our tuition. Only a few days since I had a 
 letter from the wife of a village rector, a man 
 of common sense and kindness, who was 
 greatly troubled in his mind because it was 
 precisely the men who got highest wages ia 
 summer that came destitute to his door in the 
 'winter. Destitute, and of riotous temper — ior 
 their method of spending wages in their period 
 •'of prosperity was by sitting two days a week 
 ia the tavern parlor, ladling port wine, not out 
 of bowls, but out of buckets. Well, gentle- 
 men, who taught them that method of festivity ? 
 Thirty years ago, I, a most inexperienced 
 freshman, yrent to my first college supper ; at 
 
aoo THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 the head of the table sat a nobleman of high 
 promise and of admirable powers since dead 
 of palsy; there also we had in the midst of us, 
 not buckets, indeed, but bowls as large aa 
 buckets ; there also we helped ourselves with 
 ladles. There (for this beginning of college 
 education was compulsory), I, choosing Iadle> 
 fuls of punch instead of claret, because I was 
 then able, unperceived, to pour them into my 
 waistcoat instead of down my throat, stood it 
 out to the end, and helped to carry four of my 
 fellow students, one of them the son of the 
 head of a college, head-foremost downstairs 
 and home. 
 
 Such things are no more; but the fruit 
 of them remains, and will for many a day to 
 come. The laborers whom you cannot now 
 shut out of the ale-house are only the too 
 faithful disciples of the gentlemen who were 
 wont to shut themselves into the dining-room. 
 The gentlemen have not thought it necessary, 
 in order to correct their own habits, to dimin* 
 ish their incomes ; and, believe me, the way 
 to deal with your drunken workman is not to 
 lower his wages, — ^but to mend his wits.* 
 
 f Compare | 70 of Time and Tuft, 
 
THE FUTURE OF ENGLAND. 20t 
 
 And if indeed we do not yet' see quite 
 dearly how to deal with the sins of our poor 
 brother, it is possible that our dimness of 
 sight may still have other causes that can be 
 cast out. There are two opposite cries of the 
 great Liberal and Conservative parties, which 
 are both most right, and worthy to be rallying 
 cries. On their side, " Let every man have 
 his chance ; " on yours, " Let every man stand 
 in his place." Yes, indeed, let that be so, 
 every man in his place, and every man fit for 
 it See that he holds that place from Heaven's 
 Providence ; and not from his family's Provi- 
 dence. Let the Lords Spiritual quit them- 
 selves of simony, we laymen will look after 
 the heretics for them. Let the Lords Tem- 
 poral quit themselves of nepotism, and we 
 will take care of their authority for them. 
 Publish for us, you soldiers, an army gazette, 
 in which the one subject of daily intelligence 
 shall be the grounds of promotion ; a gazette 
 which shall simply tell us, what there certainly 
 can be no detriment to the service in our know- 
 ing, when any officer is appointed to a new 
 command, — what his former services and suc- 
 cesses have been, — whom he has superseded,— 
 luid on what ground, ^t will be always a sat- 
 
202 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVS. 
 
 isfaction to us ; it may sometimes be an ad 
 vantage to you : and then, when there is really 
 necessary debate respecting reduction of 
 ■wages, let us always begin not with the wages 
 of the industrious classes, but with those of 
 the idle ones. Let there be honorary titles, 
 if people like them ; but let .there be no hon- 
 orary incomes. 
 
 So much for the master's motto, "Every 
 man in his place." Next for the laborer's 
 motto, " Every man his chance." Let us 
 mend that for them a little, and say, " Every 
 man his certainty " — certainty, that if he does 
 well, he will be honored, and aided, and ad- 
 vanced in such degree as may be fitting for 
 his faculty and consistent with his peace ; and 
 equal certainty that if he does ill, he will by 
 sure justice be judged, and by sure punish- 
 ment be chastised; if it may be, corrected; 
 and if that may not be, condemned. That is 
 the right reading of the Republican motto, 
 "Every man his chance." And then, with 
 such a system of government, pure, watchful, 
 and just, you may approach your great prob- 
 lem of national education, or, in other words, 
 of national employment. For all education 
 hegius ii;i work. Wh^.t we thinly or what we 
 
, THE FUTVRE 6F ENGLAND. 263 
 
 know, or what we believe, is in the end of 
 little consequence. The only thing of conse- 
 quence is what we do : and for man, woman or 
 child, the first point of education is to make 
 tliem do their iest. It is the law of good 
 economy to make the best of everything. How 
 much more to make the best of every creature ! 
 Therefore, when your pauper comes to you 
 and asks for bread, ask of him instantly-— 
 What faculty have you ? What, can you do 
 best ? Can you drive a nail into wood .■' Go 
 and mend the parish fences. Can you -lay a 
 brick ? Mend the walls of the cottages where 
 the wind comes in. Can you lift a spadeful of 
 earth ? Turn this field up three feet deep all 
 over. Can you only drag a weight with your 
 shoulders? Stand at the bottom of this hill 
 and help up the overladen horses. Can you 
 weld iron and chisel stone ? Fortify this 
 wreck-strewn coast into a harbor ; and change 
 these shifting sands into fruitful ground. 
 Wherever death was, bring life ; that is to be 
 your work ; that your parish refuge ; that your 
 education. So and no otherwise can we meet 
 existent distress. But for the continual educa- 
 tion of the whole people, and for their future 
 jiiappiness, 0iey must have such consistent 
 
4o4 Ttm CROWlf OF tVTLD OLTV^. 
 
 V 
 
 employment, as shall develop all the powers of 
 the fingers, and the limbs, and the brain : and 
 that development in only to be obtained by 
 hand-labor, of which you have these four great 
 divisions — hand-labor on the earth, hand-labor 
 on the sea, hand-labor in art, hand-labor in war. 
 Of the last two of these I cannot speak to-night, 
 and of the first two only with extreme brevity. 
 I. Hand-labor on the eartli, the work of 
 the husbandman and of the shepherd ; — to 
 dress the earth and to keep the flocks of it — 
 the first task of man, and the final one — tlie 
 education always of noblest lawgivers, kings 
 and teachers ; the education of Hesiod, of 
 Moses, of David, of all the true strength of 
 Kome ; and all its tenderness : the pride of 
 Cincinnatus and the inspiration of Virg^ 
 Hand-labor on the earth, and the harvest of k 
 brought forth with singing : — not steam-piston 
 labor on the earth, and the harvest of it brought 
 forth with steam-whistling. You will have no 
 prophet's voice accompanied by that shep- 
 herd's pipe, and pastoral symphony. Do 
 you know that lately, in Cumberland, in the 
 chief pastoral district of England, — in Words- 
 worth's own home, — a procession of villagers 
 on their fssta day provided ior themselvesp bv 
 
TirS FVTURE OF ENGLAND. 205 
 
 way of music, a steam-plough -whistling at the 
 h(»*d of them I 
 
 Give me patience while I put the prin- 
 ciple of machine labor before you, as clearly 
 and in as short compass as possible ; it is 
 one tliat should be known at tliis junct- 
 lure. Suppose a farming proprietor needs to 
 employ a hundred men on his estate, and that 
 tlie labor of these hundred men is enough, but 
 not more than enough, to till all his land, and 
 to raise from it food for his own family, and 
 for the hundred laborers. He is obliged, un- 
 der such circumstances, to maintain all the 
 men in moderate comfort, and can only by 
 economy accumulate much for himself. But, 
 suppose he contrive amacliine that will easily 
 do the work of fifty men, with only one man 
 to watch it. This sounds like a great advance 
 in civilization. The farmer of course gets his 
 machine made, turns off the fifty men who 
 may starve or emigrate at their choice, and 
 now he can keep half of the produce of his ' 
 estate, which formerly went to feed them, all to 
 himself. That is the essential and constant 
 operation of machinery among us at this mo> 
 ment 
 
 Nay, it is at first answered; no man caa 
 
3o6 THE CROWN' OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 in reality keep half the produce cf an estate 
 to himself, nor can he in the end keep 
 more than his own human share of anything ; 
 his riches must diffuse themselves at some 
 time ; he must maintain somebody else with 
 them, however he spends them. That is 
 mainly true (not altogether so), for food and 
 fuel are in ordinary circumstances personally 
 ■wasted by rich people, in quantities v/hich 
 •would save many lives. One of my ov/n great 
 luxuries, for instance, is candlelight — and I 
 probably burn, for myself alone, as maiiy can- 
 dles during the winter, as would comfort the old 
 eyes, or spare' the young ones, cf a whole 
 rushlighted country village. Still, it is mainly 
 true that it is not by their personal waste that 
 rich people prevent the lives of the poor. This 
 is the way they do it. Let me go back to my 
 farmer. He has got his machine made, which 
 goes creaking, screaming, and occasionally ex- 
 ploding, about modern Arcadia. He has turned 
 ofiE his fifty men to starve. Now, at some 
 distance from his own farm, there is another 
 on which the laborers were working for their 
 bread in the same way, by tilling, the land. 
 The machinist sends over to these, saying — " I 
 Jiave got food enough for yon wtbout yout 
 
fee FUTURE OP kNGLANb: aojf 
 
 digging or ploughing any more. I can main* 
 
 tain you in otlier occupations instead of plough- 
 iiig that land ; i£ you rake in its gravel you will 
 find some hard stones — ^you shall grind those 
 on mills till they glitter ; then, my wife shall 
 wear a necklace of them. Also, if you turn up 
 the meadows below you wUl find some fine white 
 clay, of which you shall make a porcelain service 
 for me : and the rest of the farm I want for 
 pasture for horses for my carriage — and you 
 shall groom them, and some of you ride behind 
 the carriage with staves in your hands, and I 
 will keep you much f atj:er for doing that thau 
 you can keep yourselves by digging." 
 
 Well — but it is answered, are we to have 
 no diamonds, nor china, nor pictures, nor 
 footmen, then — ^but all to be farmers? I 
 am not saying what we ought to do, I want 
 only to show you with perfect clearness first 
 what we are doing ; and that, I repeat, is the 
 upshot of machine-contriving ip this country. 
 And observe its effect on the national strength. 
 Without machines, you have a hundred and 
 fifty yeomen ready to join fo defence of 
 the land. You get your machii. 2, starve fifty 
 of them, make diamond-cutters or footmen of 
 as many more^ and for your national defence 
 
AoS tff£ Ckd'WN OF WILD OLIV£. 
 
 against an enemy, you have' now, and canhvre^ 
 only fifty men, instead of a hundred and fifty ; 
 these also now with minds much alienated 
 from you as their chief,* and the rest, lapidaries 
 or footmen ; — and a steam plough. 
 
 That is the one effect of machinery ; but 
 at all events, if we have thus lost in men, we 
 have gained in riches ; insteadof happy human 
 souls, we have at least got pictures, china, 
 horses, and are ourselves better off than we 
 were before. But very often, and in much of 
 our machine-contriving, even that result does 
 not follow. We are not one whit the richer 
 for the machine, we only employ it for our 
 amusement. For observe, our gaining in riches 
 depends on the men who are out of employment 
 consenting to be starved, or sent out of the 
 country. But suppose they do not consent 
 passively to be starved,' but some of them be- 
 come criminals, and have to be taken charge 
 of and fed at a much greater cost than if they 
 ■were at work, and others, paupers, rioters, and 
 the like, thei you attain the real outcome of 
 modem wisd m and ingenuity. You had your 
 hundred men honestly at country work ; but 
 
 * [They were deserting, I am informed, in the early 
 part of this year, 1873, at the rate of a regiment a week.] 
 
tff£ FUTURE OF ENGLAN'b. 209 
 
 you don't like the sight of human beings in 
 your fields ; you like better to see a smoking 
 kettle. You pay, as an amateur, for that 
 pleasure, and you employ your fifty men in 
 picking oakum, or begging, rioting, and thiev- 
 ing. 
 
 By hand-labor, therefore, and that alone, 
 ■we are to till the ground. By hand-labor 
 also to plough the sea ; both for food, 
 and in commerce, and in war ; not with float- 
 ing kettles there neither, but with hempen 
 bridle, and the winds of heaven in harness. 
 That is the way the power of Greece rose on 
 her Egean, the power of Venice on her Adria, 
 of Amalfl in her blue bay, of the Norman sea- 
 riders from the North Cape to Sicily : — so, 
 your own dominion also of the past. Of the 
 past, mind you. On the Baltic and the Nile, 
 your power is already departed. By ma- 
 chinery you would advance to discovery ; by 
 machinery you would carry your commerce ; — 
 you would be engineers instead of sailors ; 
 and instantly in the North seas you are beaten 
 among the ice, and before the very Gods of 
 Nile, beaten among the sand. Agriculture, 
 then, by the hand or by the plough drawn 
 only by animals ; and shepherd and pastoral 
 14 
 
2IO TtlE CROWN OP WILD OLiVk. ^ 
 
 husbandry, are to be the chief schools of 
 Englishmen, And this most royal academy of 
 all academies you have to open over all the 
 land, purifying your heaths and hills, and 
 ■waters, and keeping them full of every kind of 
 lovely natural organism, in tree, herb, and living 
 creature. All land that is waste and ugly, you 
 must redeem into ordered fruitfulness ; all ruin, 
 desolateness, imperfectness of hut or habita- 
 tion, you must do away with ; and throughout 
 every village and city of your English dominion, 
 there must not be a hand that cannot find a 
 helper, nor a heart that cannot find a com- 
 forter. 
 
 " How impossible ! " I know, you are 
 thinking. Ah ! So far from, impossible, it is 
 easy, it is natural, it is necessary, and I de- 
 clare to you that, sooner or later, it must he 
 done, at our peril. If now our English lords 
 of land will fix this idea steadily before 
 them ; take the people to their hearts, trust 
 to their loyalty, lead their labor ; — ^then 
 indeed there will be princes again in the 
 midst of us, wbrthy of the island throne, 
 
 " This royal throne of kings — this sceptred isle— 
 This fortress built by nature for herself, 
 Against infection, and the hand of war ; 
 
Tff£ FUTURE OF ENGLAND. zx\ 
 
 This precious stone set in the silver sea; 
 This happy breed of men — ^this little world} 
 This other Edeil — Demi-Paradise." 
 
 But if they refuse to do this, and hesitate and 
 equivocate, clutching through the confused 
 catastrophe of all things only at what they can 
 still keep stealthily for themselves, — their 
 doom is nearer than even their adversaries 
 hope,- and it will be deeper than even their 
 despisers dream. 
 
 That, believe me, is the work you have to 
 do in England ; and out of England you have 
 room for everything else you care to do. Are 
 her dominions in the world so narrow that 
 she can find no place to spin cotton in but 
 Yorkshire ? We may organize emigration into 
 an infinite power. We may assemble troops 
 of the more adventurous and ambitious of our 
 youth; we may send them on truest foreigf 
 service, founding new seats of authority, an^ 
 centres of thought, in uncultivated and un- 
 conquered lands ; retaining the full affection 
 to the native country no less in our colonists 
 than in our armies, teaching them to maintain 
 allegiance to their fatherland in labor no less 
 than in battle ; aiding them with free hand in 
 the prosecution of discoveiy, and the victory 
 
212 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 over adverse natural powers; establishing 
 seats of every manufacture in the climates and 
 places best fitted for it, and bringing ourselves 
 into due alliance and harmony of skill with 
 the dexterities of every race, and the wisdoms 
 of every tradition and every tongue. 
 
 And then you may make England itself the 
 centre of the learning, of the arts, of the court- 
 esies and felicities of the world. You may cover 
 her mountains with pasture ; her plains with 
 com, her valleys with the lily, and her gardens 
 ■with tlie rose. You may bring together there 
 in peace the wise and the pure, and the gentle 
 of the earth, and by their word, command 
 through its farthest darkness the birth of 
 " God's first creature, which was Light." You 
 know whose words those are; the words of 
 the wisest of Englishmen. He, and with him 
 the wisest of all other great nations, have 
 spoken always to men of this hope, and they 
 ■would not hear. Plato, in the dialogue of 
 Critias, his last, broken off at his death, — • 
 Pindar, in passionate singing of the fortunate 
 islands, — ^Virgil, in the prophetic tenth eclogue, 
 — Bacon, in his fable of the New Atlantis, — 
 More, in the book which, too impatiently wise, 
 became the b^e-word of fools — ^these, all, have 
 
tBE FUTURE OF ENGLAND. 2 1^ 
 
 told us with one voice what we should strive 
 to attain ; they not hopeless of it, but for our 
 follies forced, as it seen\f , by heaven, to tell us 
 only partly and in parables, lest we should hear 
 them and obey. 
 
 Shall we never listen to the words <rf these 
 wisest of men ? Then listen at least to the 
 words of your children — let us in the lips of 
 babes and sucklings find our strength ; and 
 see that we do not make them mock instead 
 of pray, when we teach them, night and morn- 
 ing, to ask for what we believe never can be 
 granted ; — that the will of the Father, — which 
 is, that His creatures may be righteous and 
 happy, — should be done, on earth, as it is in 
 Heaven. 
 
APPENDIX, 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 WOTES ON THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF PRUSSIA. 
 
 I AM often accused of inconsistency ; biit 
 believe myself defensible against the charge 
 with respect to what I have said on nearly 
 every subject except that of war. It is impos- 
 sible for me to write consistently of war, for 
 the groups of facts I have gathered about it 
 lead me to two precisely opposite conclusions. 
 
 When I find this the case, in other matters, 
 I am sUent, till I can choose my conclusion : 
 but, with respect to war, I am forced to speak, 
 by the necessities of time ; and forced to act, 
 one way or another. The conviction on which 
 I act is that it causes an incalculable amount 
 of avoidable human suffering, and that it 
 ought to cease among Christian nations ; and 
 if therefore any of my boy-friends desire to be 
 soldiers, I try my utmost to bring them into 
 what I conceive to be a better mind. But, on 
 the other hand, I know certainly that the most 
 beautiful characters yet developed among 
 mep have been formed in war ; — ^that all great 
 ^tions have been warrior nations, and that 
 
 21? 
 
2i8 THE CROWN OP WILD OLIVE. 
 
 the only kinds of peace which we are likely to 
 get in the present age are 'ruinous alike to the 
 intellect, and the heart. 
 
 The third lecture, in this volume, addresse.. 
 to young soldiers, had for its subject to 
 strengthen their trust in the virtue of their 
 profession. It is inconsistent with itself, ia 
 its closing appeal to women, praying them to 
 use their influence to bring wars to an elid. 
 And I have been hindered from completing 
 my long intended notes on the economy of 
 the Kings of Prussia by continually increas- 
 ing doubt how far the machinery and disci- 
 pline of war, under which they learned the art 
 of government, was essential for such lesson ; 
 and what the honesty and sagacity of tlie 
 Triedrich who so nobly repaired his ruined 
 Prussia might have done for the happiness of 
 his Prussia, unruined. 
 
 In war, however, or ip peace, the character 
 ■which Carlyle chiefly loves him for, and in 
 "which Carlyle has shown him to differ from 
 all kings up to this time succeeding him, 4s 
 his constant purpose to use every power in- 
 trusted to him for the good of his people ; and 
 be, not in name only, but in heart and hand, 
 their king. 
 
 Not in ambition, but in natural instinct of 
 duty. Friedrich, born to govern, determines 
 to govern to the best of -his faculty. That 
 " best " may sometimes be unwise ; and self- 
 will, or love of glory, may have their oblique 
 hold on his miod, and warp it this way or that^ 
 
APPENDIX-. 2ig 
 
 tut they are never principal with him. He 
 believes that Vifar is necessary, and maintains 
 it ; sees that peace is necessary, and calmly 
 persists in the work of it to the day of his 
 death, not claiming therein more praise than 
 the head of any ordinary household, who rules 
 it simply because it is his place, and he must 
 not yield the mastery of it to another. 
 
 How far, in the future, it may be possible 
 for men to gain the strength necessary for 
 kingship without either fronting death, or in- 
 flicting it, seems tojne not at present deter- 
 minable. The historical facts are that, broadly 
 speaking, none but soldiers, or persons with a 
 soldierly faculty, have ever yet shown them- 
 selves fit to be kings ; and that no other men 
 are so gentle, so just, or so clear-sighted. 
 Wordsworth's character of the happy warrior 
 cannot be reached in the height of it but by a 
 warrior ; nay, so much is it beyond common 
 strength that I had supposed the entire mean- 
 ing of it to be metaphorical, until one of the 
 best soldiers of England himself read me the 
 poem,* and taught me, what I might have 
 Known, had I enough watched his own life, 
 that it was entirely literal. There is nothing 
 of so high reach distinctly demonstrable in 
 Friedrich : but I see more and more, as I grow 
 older, that the things which are the most 
 ■worth, encumbered among the errors and 
 faults of every man's nature, are never clearly 
 
 . * The late Sii Herbert Edwardes. 
 
i20 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 demonstrable ; and are often most forcible 
 ■when they are scarcely distinct to his own 
 conscience, — how much less, clamorous for 
 recognition by others ! 
 
 Nothing can be more beautiful than Carlyle'f 
 showing of this, to any careful reader of Fried- 
 rich. But careful readers are but one in the 
 thpusand ; and by the careless, the masses of 
 detail with which the historian must deal are 
 insurmountable. 
 
 My own notes, made for the special purpose 
 of hunting down the one point of economy, 
 though they cruelly spoil Carlyle's own cur- 
 rent and method of thought, may yet be use- 
 ful in enabling readers, unaccustomed to 
 books involving so vast a range of conception, 
 to discern what, on this one subject only, may 
 be gathered from that history. On any other 
 subject of importance, similar gatherings 
 might be made of other passages. The his- 
 torian has to deal with all at once. 
 
 I therefore have determined to print here, 
 as a sequel to the Essay on War, my notes 
 from the first volume of Friedrich, on the 
 economies of Brandenburg, up to the date of 
 the establishment of the Prussian monarchy. 
 The economies of the first three Kings of 
 Prussia I shall then take up in Fors Clavigera, 
 finding them fitter for examination in connec- 
 tion with the subject of that book than of 
 this. 
 
 I assume, that the reader will take down his 
 £ist volume of Carl^le, and read attentively 
 
APPENDIX. 221 
 
 the passages to which I refer him. I give the 
 reference first to the largest edition, in six 
 volumes (1858-1865) ; then, in parenthesis, to 
 the smallest or "people's edition" (1872- 
 1873). The pieces which I have quoted ia 
 my own text are for the use of readers who 
 may not have ready access to the book ; and 
 are enough for the explanation of the points 
 to which" I wish them to direct their thoughts 
 in reading such histories of soldiers or soldier- 
 kingdoms. 
 
 I. 
 
 Ytar 928 to 936. — Damn of Order in Christian Ger- 
 many. 
 
 Book IL Chap. i. p. (fj (47). 
 
 Henry the Fowler, " the beginning of 
 German kings," is a mighty soldier in the 
 cause of peace; his essential work the building 
 and organization of fortified towns for the pro- 
 tection of men. 
 
 Read page 72 with utmost care (5 1), " He 
 fortified towns " to end of small print. I have! 
 added some notes on the matter in my lecture 
 on Giovanni Pisano ; but whether you can 
 glance at them or not, fix in your mind this 
 institution of truly civil or civic building in 
 Germany, as distinct from the building of 
 baronial castles for the security of robbers t 
 and of a standing army consisting of every 
 ninth man, called a "burgher " (" townsman "> 
 
222 THE CROWN OP WILD OLIVE. 
 
 —a soldier appointed to learn that profession 
 that he may guard the walls — the exact reverse 
 of our notion of a burgher. 
 
 Frederick's final idea of his army is, indeed, 
 only this. 
 
 Brannibor, a chief fortress of the Wends, 
 is thus taken, and further strengthened by 
 Henry the Fowler ; wardens appointed for it ; 
 and thus the history of Brandenburg begins. 
 On all frontiers, also, this "beginning of 
 German kings " has his " Markgraf ," " Ancient 
 of the marked place." Read page 73, 
 measuredlyj learning it by heart, if it may be. 
 (S1-2). 
 
 II. 
 
 536 — KMO.—ffisiory of Nascent Brandenburg.^ 
 
 The passage I last desired you to read ends 
 with this sentence : " The sea-wall you build, 
 and what main floodgates you establish in it^ 
 ■will depend on the state of tlie outer sea." 
 
 From this time forward you have to keep 
 clearly separate in your minds, (a) the history 
 of that outer sea, Pagan Scandinavia, Russia, 
 and Bor-Russia, or Prussia proper; (b) the 
 history of Henry the Fowler's Eastern and 
 Western Marches; asserting themselves grad- 
 ually as Austria and the Netherlands ; and 
 (c) the history of this inconsiderable fortress 
 of Brandenburg, gradually becoming consider- 
 able, and the capital city of increasing district 
 between them, That last history, hawev^i). 
 
APPENDIX. 323 
 
 Carlyle Is obliged to leave vague and gray 
 for two hundred years after Henry's death. 
 Absolutely dim for the first century, in which 
 nothing is evident but that its wardens or 
 Markgraves had no peaceable possession of 
 the place. Read the second paragraph in 
 page 74 (52-3), "in old books" to "reader," 
 and the first in page 83 (59), "meanwhile," to 
 " substantial," consecutively. They bring the 
 story of Brandenburg itself down, at any rate, 
 from 936 to 1000, 
 
 III. 
 
 936 — 1000. — state of the Outer Sea4 
 
 Read now Chapter II. beginning at page 
 76 (54), wherein you will get account of the 
 beginning of vigorous inissionary work on the 
 outer sea, in Prussia proper ; of the death of 
 St. Adalbert, and of the purchase of his dead 
 body by the Duke of Poland. 
 
 You will not easily understand Carlyle's 
 laugh in this chapter, unless you have learned 
 yourself to laugh in sadness, and to laugh in 
 love; 
 
 " No Czech blows his pipe in the woodlands 
 ■without certain precautions and preliminary 
 fuglings' of a devotional nature." (Imagine 
 St. Adalbert, in spirit, at the railway station^ 
 in Birmingham !) 
 
 My own main point for notice in the chapter 
 is the purchase of his body for its " weight in 
 gold." Swindling angels held it up in tha 
 
224 TH^ CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 scales ; it did not weigh so much as a web of 
 gossamer. "Had such excellent odor, too, 
 and came for a mere nothing of gold," says 
 Carlyle. It is one of the first commercial 
 transactions of Germany, but I regret the con- 
 duct of the angels on the occasion. Evangeli- 
 calism has been proud of ceasing to invest in 
 relics, its swindling angels helping it to better 
 things, as it supposes. For my own part, I 
 believe Christian Germany could not have 
 bought at this time any treasure more pre- 
 cious ; nevertheless, the missionary work it- 
 self you find is wholly vain. The difEerence 
 of opinion between St. Adalbert and the 
 Wends, on Divine matters, does not signify to 
 the Fates. They will not have it disputed 
 about ; and end the dispute adversely, to St. 
 Adalbert, — adversely, even, to Brandenburg 
 and its civilizing power, as you will imme- 
 diately see, 
 
 IV. 
 
 1000 — 1030. — History of Brandenhurg in Trouile. 
 Book II. Chap. iii. p. 83 (J9). 
 
 The adventures of Brandenbutg in contest 
 with Pagan Prussia, irritated, rather than 
 amended, by St, Adalbert. In 1023, roughly, 
 a hundred years after Henry the Fowler's 
 death, Brandenburg is taken by the Wends, 
 and its first line of Markgraves ended; its 
 population mostljT butchered, especially th« 
 
APPMNDIX. 225 
 
 priests; and the Wends' God, Triglaph, 
 " something like three whales' cubs combined 
 by boiling," set up on the top of St. Mary's 
 Hill. 
 
 Here is an adverse " Doctrine of the 
 Trinity " which has its supporters 1 It Is 
 ■wonderful, — this Tripod and Triglyph, — three- 
 footed, three-cut faith of the North and South, 
 the leaf of the oxalis, and strawberry, and 
 clover, fostering the same in their simple 
 manner. I suppose it to be the most savage 
 and natural of notions about Deity ; a prismatic 
 idol-shape of Him, rude as a triangular log, as 
 a trefoil grass. I do not find how long 
 Triglaph held his state on Si. Mary's Hill. 
 *' For a time," says Carlyle, " the priests all 
 sladn or fled, — shadowy Markgraves the like 
 — church and state lay in ashes, and Triglaph, 
 like a triple porpoise under the influence o€ 
 laudanum, stood, I know not whether on his 
 head or his tail, aloft on the Harlungsberg, as 
 the Supreme of this Universe for the time 
 being." 
 
 V. 
 
 1030^1130. — Brandenburg under the Dit- 
 marsch Markgraves, or Ditmarsch-Stade 
 Markgraves. 
 
 Book II. Chap. ill. p. 85 (60). 
 
 Or Anglish, or Saxon breed. They attack 
 Srandenbuig, under its Triglyphic protectw, 
 
 »5 
 
a2§ THE CROr^N OF WILD OLIVB. 
 
 take it — dethrone liim, apd hold the town for 
 a hundred years, their history " stamped bene- 
 ficially on the face of things, Markgraf after 
 Markgraf getting killed in the business. 
 ' Erschlagen,' 'slain,' fighting with the Hea- 
 then — say the old books, and pass on to 
 another." If we allow seven years to Triglaph 
 — we get a clear century for these — as above 
 indicated. They die out in 1150, . 
 
 1 130 — 1170. — Brandenburg under Albert the 
 Bear. 
 
 Book II. Chap. iv. p. gi (64O. 
 
 He is the first of the Ascanien Markgraves, 
 whose castle of Ascanica is on the northern 
 slope of the Hartz Mountains, "ruins still 
 dimly traceable." 
 
 Tliere had been no soldier or king of note 
 among the DiJ:marsch Markgraves, so that 
 you v/ill do well to fix in your mind succes- 
 sively the three men, Henry the Fowler, St. 
 Adalbert^ ind Albert the Bear. A soldier 
 again, and a strong one. Named the Bear 
 only from the device on his shield, first wholly 
 definite Markgraf of Brandenburg that there 
 is, " and that the luckiest of events for Brand- 
 enburg." Read page 93 (66) carefully, and 
 note this of his economies. 
 
APPErrDix. 227 
 
 ♦^ — 
 
 * Nothing better is known to me ©f Albert 
 the Bear than his introducing large numbers 
 of Dutch Netherlanders into those countries ; 
 men thrown out of work, who already knew 
 how to deal with bog and sand, by mixing and 
 delving, and who first taught Brandenburg 
 what greenness and cow-pasture was. The 
 Wends, in presence of such things, could not 
 but consent more and more to efface them- 
 selves — either to become German, and grow 
 milk and cheese in the Dutch manner, or to 
 disappear from the world. 
 
 " After two hundred and fifty years of bark- 
 ing and worrying, the Wends are now finally 
 reduced to silence ; their anarchy well buried 
 and wholesome Dutch cabbage planted over 
 it ; Albert did several great things in the world ; 
 but this, for posterity, remains his memorable 
 feat. Not done quite easily, but done : big 
 destinies of nations or of persons are not 
 founded gratis in this world. He had a sore, 
 toilsome time of it, coercing, warring, manag- 
 ing among his fellow-creatures, while his day's 
 work lasted — fifty years or so, for it began 
 early. He died in his Castle of Ballenstadt, 
 peaceably among the Hartz Mountains at last, 
 in the year 11 70, age about sixty-five." 
 
 Now, note in all this the ste'ady gain of 
 soldiership enforcing order and agriculture, 
 with St. Adalbert giving higher strain to the 
 imagination. Henry the Fowler establishes 
 
228 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 walled towns, fighting for mere peace. Albert 
 the Bear plants the country with cabbages, 
 fighting for his cabbage-fields. And the dis- 
 ciples of St. Adalbert, generally, have suc- 
 ceeded in substituting some idea of Christ for 
 the idea of Triglaph. Some idea only ; other 
 ideas than of Christ haunt even to this day 
 those Hartz Mountains among which Albert 
 the Bear died so peacefully. Mephistopheles, 
 and all his ministers, inhabit there, command- 
 ing mepbitic clouds and earth-born dreams. 
 
 VII. 
 
 H70 — 1320. — Brandenburg 1^0 years under 
 the Ascanien Markgraves. 
 
 Vol. I. Book II. Chap. viii. p. 135 (96). ' 
 
 "Wholesome Dutch cabbages continued to 
 be more and more planted by them in the 
 waste sand : intrusive chaos, and Triglaph 
 held at bay by them," till at last in 1240, 
 seventy years after the great Bear's death, they 
 fortify a new Burg, a" little rampart," Wehrlin, 
 diminutive of Wehr (or vallum), gradually 
 smoothing itself, with a little echo of the Bear 
 in it too, into Ber-lin, the oily river Spree flow- 
 ing by, " in which you catch various fish ; " 
 while trade over the flats and by the dull 
 streams, is widely possible. Of the Ascanien 
 race, the notablest is Otto with tlia Axxov, 
 
Appendix. 22^ 
 
 •wiiose story see, pp. 138-141 (98-109), noting 
 that Otto is one of the first Minnesingers; 
 that, being a prisoner to the Archbishop of 
 Magdeburg, his wife rescues him, selling her 
 jewels to bribe the canons; and that the 
 Knight, set free on parole and promise of fur- 
 ther ransom, rides back with his own price in 
 his hand ; holding himself thereat cheaply 
 bought, though no angelic legerdemain hap- 
 pens to 4;he scales now. His own estimate of 
 his price- — " Rain gold ducats on my war-horse 
 and me, till you cannot see the point of my 
 spear atop." 
 
 Emptiness of utter pride, you think ? 
 
 Not so. Consider with yourself, reader, 
 how much you dare to say, aloud, you are 
 worth. If you have mo courage to name any 
 price whatsoever for yourself, believe me, the 
 cause is not your modesty, but that in very 
 truth' you feel in your heart there would be no 
 bid for you at Lucian's sale of lives, were that 
 again possible, at Christie and Manson's. 
 
 Finally (13 19 exactly ; say 1320, for memory), 
 the Ascanien line expired in Brandenburg, and 
 the little town and its* electorate lapsed to the 
 Kaiser : meantime other economical arrange- 
 ments had been in progress ; but observe first 
 how far we have got. 
 
 The Fowler, St. Adalbert, and the Bear have 
 established order, and some sort of Chris- 
 tianity ; but the established persons begin to 
 think somewhat too well of themselvas. Oa 
 ^uite honest terms, a dead saint or a living 
 
630 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVS. 
 
 knight ought to lie worth their true " weight 
 in gold." ' But a pyramid, with only the point 
 of the spear seen at top, would be many times 
 over one's weight in gold. And although men. 
 were yet far enough from the notion of modern, 
 days, that the gold is better than the flesh, 
 and from buying it with the clay of one's body, 
 and even the fire of one's soul, instead of soul 
 and body with it, they were beginning to fight 
 for their own supremacy, or for their own 
 religious fancies, and not at all to any useful 
 end, until an entirely unexpected movement is 
 made in the old useful direction forsooth, only 
 by some kind ship-captains of Lubeck 1 
 
 VIII. 
 
 1210 — 1320. — Civil work, aiding military, 
 during the Ascanien period 
 
 Vol. I. Book II. Chap. vL p. 109 (77). 
 
 In the year 1190, Acre not yet taken, and 
 the crusading army wasting by murrain on the 
 shore, the German soldiers especially having 
 none to look after them, certain compassionate 
 ship-captains of Liibeck, one Walpot von Bas- 
 senheim taking the lead, formed themselves 
 into an union for succor of the sick and the 
 dying, set up canvas tents from the Lubeck 
 ship stores, and did what utmost was iu theoa 
 
APPENDIX. i^x 
 
 Silently ift the name of mercy and heaven, 
 rinding its work prosper, the little medicinal 
 and weather-fending company took vows on it- 
 self, strict chivalry forms, and decided to be- 
 come permanent " Knights Hospitallers of our 
 dear Lady of Mount Zion," separate from the 
 former Knights Hospitallers, as being entirely 
 German : yet soon, as the German Order of St. 
 Mary, eclipsing in importance Templars, Hos- 
 pitallers, and every other chivalric order then 
 extant ; no purpose of battle in them, but much 
 strength for it ; their purpose only the helping 
 of German pilgrims.. To this only they are 
 bound by their vow, " gelbiide," and become 
 one of the usefullest of clubs in all the Pall 
 Mall of Europe. 
 
 Finding pilgrimage in Palestine falling slack, 
 and more need for them on the homeward side 
 of the sea, their Hochmeister, Hermann of the 
 Salza, goes over to Venice in 12 lo. There, 
 the titular bishop of still unconverted Preussen 
 advises him of that field of work for his idle 
 knights. Hermann thinks well of it : sets his 
 St. Mary's riders at Triglaph, with the sword 
 in one hand and a missal in the other. 
 
 Not your modern way of effecting conversion ! 
 Too illiberal, you think ; and what would Mr. 
 J. S. Mill say ? 
 
 But if Triglaph had been verily "three 
 whales' cubs combined by boiling,"" you would 
 yourself have promoted attack on him for the 
 ^ake of his oil, would not ^ou ? The Teutsch 
 
832 TBE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. ' 
 
 Ritters, fighting him for charity, are they so 
 much inferior to you ? 
 
 " They built, and burnt, innumerable stock- 
 ades for and against ; built wooden forts which 
 are now stone towns. They fought much and 
 prevalently ; galloped desperately to and fro^ 
 ever on the alert. In peaceabler ulterior times, 
 they fenced in the Nogat and the Weichsel 
 with dams, whereby unlimited quagmire might 
 become grassy meadow — as it continues to this 
 day. Marienburg (Mary's Burg), with its grand 
 stone Schloss still visible and even habitable : 
 this was at length their headquarter. But how 
 many Burgs of wood and stone they built, in 
 different parts ; what revolts, surprisals, furious 
 fights in woody, boggy places they had, no 
 man has counted. 
 
 " But always some preaching by zealous 
 monks, accompanied the chivalrous fighting. 
 And colonists came in from Germany ; trick- 
 ling in, or at times streaming. Victorious Rit- 
 terdom offers terms to the beaten heathen: 
 terms not of tolerant nature, but which will be 
 punctually kept by Ritterdom. When the flame 
 of revolt or general conspiracy burnt up again 
 too extensively^ high personages came on cru- 
 sade to them. Ottocar, King of Bohemia, 
 with his extensive far-shining chivalry, ' con- 
 quered Samland in a month ; ' tore up the 
 Roraova where Adalbert had been massacred, * 
 and burnt it from the face of the earth. A 
 pertain fortress was fouiided a^ that tiiu% 
 
APPENDIX. 233 
 
 in Ottocar's presence; and in honor of him 
 they named it King's Fortress, ' Konigsberg.' 
 Among King Ottocar's esquires, or subaltern 
 junior officials, on this occasion, is one Rudolf, 
 "heir of a poor Swiss lordship and -gray hill 
 castle, called Hapsburg, rather in reduced 
 circumstances, whom Ottocar likes for his 
 prudent, hardy ways ; a stout, modest, wise 
 young man, who may chance to redeem Haps- 
 burg a little, if he lives. 
 
 " Conversion, and complete conquest cnce 
 come, there was a happy time for Prussia ; 
 ploughshare instead of sword : busy sea-havens, 
 German towns, getting built ; churches every- 
 where rising; grass growing, and peaceable 
 cows, where formerly had been quaginire and 
 snakes, and for the Order a happy time. On 
 the whole, this Teutsch Ritterdom, for the first 
 century and more, was a grand phenomenon, 
 and flamed like a bright blessed beacon through 
 the night of things, in those Northern countries. 
 For above a century, v/e perceive, it was the 
 rallying place of all brave njen who had a 
 career to seek on terms other than vulgar. 
 The noble Soul, aiming beyond money, and 
 sensible to more than hunger in this .world, had 
 a beacon burning (as we say), if the night 
 chanced to overtake it, and the earth to grow 
 too intricate, as is not uncommon. Better than 
 the career of stump-oratory, I should fancy, 
 and its Hesperides apples, golden, and of gilt 
 horse-dung. Better than puddling away one's 
 poor spiritual gift of God ^loan, not ^if t), sucb 
 
434 TUB CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 as it may be, in building the lofty rhyme, the 
 lofty review article, for a discerning public that 
 has sixpence to spare ! Times alter greatly." * 
 
 We must pause here again for a moment to 
 think where we are, and who is with us. The 
 Teutsch Ritters have been fighting, independ- 
 ently of all states, for their own hand, or St. 
 Adalbert's ; — partly for mere love of fight, 
 partly for love of order, partly for love of God. 
 Meantime, other Riders have been fighting 
 •wholly for what they could get by it ; and other 
 persons, not Riders, have not been fighting at 
 all, but in their own towns peacefully manu- 
 facturing and selling. 
 
 Of Henry the Fowler's Marches, Austria has 
 become a military power, Flanders a mercantile 
 one, pious only in the degree consistent with, 
 their several occupations. Prussia is now a 
 practical and farming country, more Christiaa 
 than its longer-converted neighbors. 
 
 " Towns are built, Konigsberg (King Otto- 
 car's town), Thoren (Thorn, City of the 
 Gates), with many others; so that the wild 
 population and the tame now lived tolerably 
 together, under Gospel and LUbeck law ; and 
 all was ploughing and trading." 
 
 But Brandenburg itself, what of it ? 
 
 • I would much rather print these passages of Car- 
 lyle in large golden letters than small black ones ; but 
 they are only here at all for unlucky people whg caii'f 
 lead tbem with the context. 
 
The Ascanien Markgraves rule it on the 
 ■whole prosperously down to 1320, when their 
 line expires, and it falls into the power of Im- 
 perial Austria. 
 
 IX. 
 
 1320 — 1415. — Brandenburg under the AuS' 
 trians. 
 
 A CENTURY — the fourteenth — of miserable 
 anarchy and decline for Brandenburg, its 
 Kurfiirsts, in deadly succession, making what 
 they can out of it for their own pockets. The 
 city itself- and its territory utterly helpless. 
 Read pp. 180, 181 (129, 130). "The towns 
 suffered much, any trade they might have had 
 going to wreck. Robber castles flourished, 
 all else decayed, no highway safe, -What are 
 Hamburg peddlers made for but to be 
 robbed?" 
 
 X. 
 
 1415 — 1440. — Brandenburg under Friedrichof 
 Nuremberg. 
 
 This is the fourth of the men whom you are 
 to remember as creators of the Prussian mon- 
 archy, Henry the Fowler, St. Adalbert, Albert 
 the Bear, of Ascanien, and Friedrich of 
 Nuremberg; (of Hohenzollern by name, and 
 
23^ THE CROWri^ dp W'ILD OL/p-M.] 
 
 by country of the Black Forest, north of the 
 Lake of Constance). 
 
 Brandenburg is sold to him at Constance^ 
 during the great Council, for about ;£'2oo,ooo of 
 our money, worth perhaps a million in that 
 day ; still, with its capabilities, " dog cheap." 
 Admitting, what no one at the time denied, the 
 general marketableness of states as private 
 property, this is the one practical result, thinks 
 Carlyle (not likely to think wrong), of that 
 oecumenical deliberation, four years long, of 
 the " elixir of the intellect and dignity of 
 Europe. And that one thing was not its 
 doing ; but a pawnbroking job, intercalated," 
 putting, however, at last, Brandenburg agaia 
 under the wilL of one strong man. On St. 
 John's Day, 1412, he first set foot in his town, 
 "and Brandenburg, under its wise Kurfurst, 
 begins to be cosmic again." The story of 
 Heavy Peg, p^ges 195-198 (138, 140), is one 
 of the most brilliant and important passages 
 of the first volume ; page 199, specially to our 
 purpose, must be given entire :— 
 
 " The offer to be Kaiser was made him in 
 his old days ; but he wisely declined that too. 
 It was in Brandenburg, by what he silently 
 founded there, that he did his chief benefit to 
 Germany and mankind. He understood the 
 noble art of governing men ; had in him the 
 justness, clearness, valor, and patience needed 
 for that. A man of sterling probity, for one 
 thing. WAkA indeed is the fint requisite in 
 
APPENDIX. 237 
 
 said art : — if you will have youf laws obeyed 
 without mutiny, see well that they be pieces 
 of _ God Almighty's law ; otherwise all the 
 artillery in the world will not keep down 
 mutiny. 
 
 " Friedrich ' travelled much over Branden- 
 burg ; ' looking into evei;ything with his own 
 eyes ; making, I can well fancy, innumerable 
 crooked things straight ; reducing more and 
 more that famishing dog-kennel of a Branden- 
 burg into a fruitful arable field. His portraits 
 represent a square-headed, mild-looking, solid 
 gentleman, with a certain twinkle of mirth in 
 the serious eyes of him. Except in those 
 Hussite wars for Kaiser Sigismu'nd and the 
 Reich, in which no man could prosper, he may 
 be defined as constantly prosperous. To 
 Brandenburg he was, very literally, the bless- 
 ing of blessings ; redemption out of death 
 into life. In the ruins of that old Friesack 
 Castle, battered down by Heavy Peg, anti- 
 quarian science (if it had any eyes) might look 
 for the tap-root of the Prussian nation, and the 
 ' beginning of all that Brandenburg has since 
 grown to under the sun." 
 
 Which growth is now traced by Carlyle- in 
 its various budding and withering, under the 
 succession of the twelve Electors, of whom 
 Friedrich, with his Heavy Peg, is first, and 
 Friedrich, first King of Prussia, grandfather of 
 Fliedrich the Great, the twelfth. 
 
238 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 XI. 
 
 1415 — 1701. — Brandenburg under the Hohen- 
 zollern Kurfursts 
 
 Book III. 
 
 Who the HohenzoUems were, and how they 
 came to power in Nuremberg, is told in Chap. 
 v. of Book II. 
 
 Their succession in Brandenburg is given in 
 brief at page 377 (269). I copy it, in absolute 
 barrenness of enumeration, for our momen- 
 tary convenience, here : — 
 
 Friedrich ist of Brandenburg (6th of 
 
 Niiremberg) 1412-1/L40 
 
 Friedrich II., called "Iron Teeth" 1440-1472 
 
 Albert 1472-1486 
 
 Johann 1 486-1 499 - 
 
 Joachim 1 1499-1535 
 
 Joachim II i53S-iS7i 
 
 Johann George 1571-1598 
 
 Joachim Friedrich .... 1 598-1 608 
 Joha,nn Sigismund .... 1608-1619 
 
 George Wilhelm 16x9-1640 
 
 Friedrich Wilhelm (the Great Elec- 
 tor) 1640-1688 
 
 Friedrich, first King; crowned i8th 
 
 January .... 1701 
 
 Of this line of princes we have to say they 
 loUowed generally in their ancestor's steps, 
 
and had success of the like kind more or less ; 
 Hohenzollerns all of them, by character and 
 behavior as well as by descent. No lack of 
 quiet energj jf thrift, sound sense. There 
 was likewise solid fair play in general, no 
 founding of yourself on ground that will not 
 carry, and there was instant, gentle, but inexor- 
 able crushing of mutiny, if it showed itself, 
 which, after the Second Elector, or at most 
 the Third, it had altogether ceased to do. 
 
 This is the general account of them ; cw 
 special matters note the following : — 
 
 II. Friedrich, called " Iron-teeth," from Ais 
 firmness, proves a notable" manager and gov- 
 ernor. Builds the palace at Berlin in its first 
 form, and makes it his chief residence. Buys 
 Neumark from the fallen Teutsch Ritters, and 
 generally establishes things on securer footing. 
 
 III. Albert, " a fiery, tough old Gentleman," 
 called the Achilles of Germany in his day ; has 
 half-a-century of fighting with his own Nurem- 
 bergers, with Bavaria, France, Burgundy and its 
 fiery Charles, besides being head constable to 
 the Kaiser among any .disorderly persons in the 
 East. "His skull, long shown on his tomb, 
 " marvellous for strength and with no visible 
 futures." 
 
 jV. John, the orator of his race ; (but the 
 orations unrecorded). His second son. Arch- 
 bishop of Maintz, for whose piece of memo- 
 rable work see page 223 (143), and read in con- 
 Siectioa with that the history of Markgraf 
 
240 TBE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 George, pp. 237 — 241 (152 — 154), and the 8th 
 chapter of the third book, 
 
 V. Joachim I, of little note ; thinks there has 
 been enough Reformation, and checks proceed- 
 ings in a dull stubbornness, causing him at 
 least grave dornestic difficulties. — Page 271 
 
 (173). 
 
 VI. Joachim II, Again active m the Re- 
 formation, and stauncl^ 
 
 "though generall]^ in a cautious, weighty, 
 never in a rash, swift way, to the great cause 
 of Protestantism and to all good causes. He 
 TiTas himself a solemnly devout man ; deep, 
 av/e-stricken reverence dwelling in his view of 
 this universe. Most serious, though with a 
 jocose dialect, commonly having a cheerful 
 wit in speaking to men, Luther's books he 
 called his Seelenschatz (soul's treasure); 
 Luthet and the Bible were his chief reading. 
 Fond of profane learning, too, and of the use- 
 ful or ornamental arts; given to ^ music, and 
 * would hirnself sing aloud ' when he had a 
 melodious leisure hour." 
 
 VII. Johann George, aprudent thrifty Herr ; 
 no mistresses, no luxuries allowed ; at the sight 
 of a new-fashioned coat he would fly out on 
 an unhappy youth and pack him from his 
 presence. Very strict in point of justice ; a 
 peasant once appealing to him in one of his 
 inspection journeys through the countiv—i 
 
APTENDTX. 24J 
 
 '"tirant me justice, Durchlaucht, against so 
 and so ; I am your Highness's born subject.' 
 — ' Thou shouldst have it, man, wert thou a 
 born Turk 1 ' answered Johann George." 
 
 Thus, generally, we find this line of Electors 
 representing in Europe the Puritan mind of 
 England in a somewhat duller, but less 
 dangerous, form ; receiving what Protestantism 
 could teach of honesty and common sense, but 
 not its anti-Catholic fury, or its selfish spiritual 
 anxiety. Pardon of sins is not to be had from 
 Tetzel; neither, the HohenzoUern mind 
 advises with itself, from even Tetzel's master, 
 for either the buying or the asking. On the 
 whole, we had better commit as few as possible, 
 and live just lives and plain ones. 
 
 "A conspicuous thrift, veracity, modest 
 solidity, looks through the conduct of this 
 Herr ; a determined Protestant he too, as in- 
 deed all the following were and are." 
 
 VIII. Joachim Friedrich. Gets hold of 
 Prussia, which hitherto, you observe, has always 
 been spoken of as a separate country from 
 Brandenburg. March 11, 1605 — "Squeezed 
 his way into the actual guardianship of 
 Preussen and its imbecile Duke, which was 
 Jiis by right." 
 
 For my own part, I do not trouble myself 
 
 much about these rights, never being able to 
 
 make out any single one, to begin with, except 
 
 the right to keep eveiything and every plac9 
 
 1$ 
 
542 ttlE CROWN OF WlLD OLIVE. 
 
 about you in as good order as you cmv-* 
 Prussia, Poland, or what else. I shoujdmucb 
 like, ,or instance, just now, to hear of any 
 honest Cornish gentleman of the old Drake 
 breed taking a fancy to land in Spain, and 
 trying what he could make of his rights as far 
 round Gibraltar as he could enforce them. At 
 all events, Master Joachim has somehow got 
 bold of Prussia ; and means to keep it 
 
 IX. Johann Sigismund. Only notable fot 
 our economical purposes, as "getting the 
 " guardianship " of Prussia confirmed to him. 
 The story at page 317 (226), " a strong flame 
 of choler," indicates a new order of things 
 among the knights of Europe — " princely eti- 
 quettes melting all into smoke." Too literally 
 so, that being one of the calamitous functions 
 of the plain lives we are living, and of the busy 
 life our country is living. In the Duchy o£ 
 Cleve, especially, concerning which legal dis- 
 pute begins in Sigismund's time. And it is 
 well worth the lawyers' trouble, it seems. 
 
 " It amounted, perhaps, to two Yorkshires 10 
 extent. A naturally opulent country of fertile 
 meadows, shipping capabilities, metalliferous 
 hills, and at this time, in consequence of the 
 Dutch-Spanish war, and the multitude of Prot- 
 estant refugees, it was getting filled with in- 
 genious adustries, and rising to be what it 
 still is, the busiest quarter of Germany. A 
 country lowing with kine ; the hum of the flax- 
 fypindle heard in its cottages ia those old days 
 
APPENDIX. 243 
 
 —^ much of the linen called Hollands is made 
 in Jiilich, and only bleached, stamped, and sold 
 b> the Dutch,' says Busching. A country ia 
 our days which is shrouded at short intervals 
 vritb the due canopy of coal-smoke, and lou(j 
 ■with sounds of the anvil and the loom." 
 
 The lawyers took two hundred and six years to 
 settle the question concerning this Duchy, and 
 the thing Johann Sigismund had claimed 
 legally in 1609 was actually handed over to 
 Johann Sigismund's descendant in the seventh 
 generation. " These litigated duchies are now 
 the Prussian provinces, Jiilich, Berg, Cleve, 
 and the nucleus of Prussia's possessions in the 
 Rhine country." 
 
 X. George Wilhelm, Read pp. 325 to 327 
 (231, 333) on this Elector and German Prot- 
 estantism, now fallen old, and somewhat too 
 little dangerous. But George Wilhelm is the 
 only weak prince of all the twelve. For another 
 example how the heart and life of a country 
 depend upon its prince, not on its council, read 
 this, Gustavus Adolphus, demanding the 
 cession of Spandau and Kustrin : 
 
 " Which cession Kiirfurst George Wilhelm, 
 though giving all his prayers to the good cause, 
 could by no means grant. Gustav had to in- 
 sist, with more and more emphasis, advancing 
 at last with military menace upon Berlin itself. 
 He was met by George Wilhelm and his Coun- 
 cil, * iij Jbe woods of Copenick,' short way to thq 
 
244. ^■«2' Ci^OWN OF WILD OLIVR. 
 
 east of that city ,- there George'Wilhelm and his 
 Council wandered about, sending messages, 
 hopelessly consulting, saying among each other, 
 ' Que faire ? ils ont des canons.' For many 
 hours so, round the inflexible Gustav, who was 
 there like a fixed milestone, and to all ques- 
 tions and comers had only one answer." 
 
 On our special question of war and its cons6 
 quences, read this of the Thirty Years' one : 
 
 " But on the whole, the grand weapon in i^ 
 and towards the latter times the exclusive one, 
 was hunger. The opposing armies tried to 
 starve one another ; at' lowest, tried each not to 
 starve. Each trying to eat ihs country or, at 
 any rate, to leave nothing eatable in it ; what 
 that will mean for the country we may con- 
 sider. As the armies too frequently, and tlie 
 Kaiser's armies habitually, lived without com- 
 missariat, often enough without pay, all hor- 
 rors of war and of being a seat of war, that 
 have been since heard of, are poor to those 
 then practised, the detail of which is still horri- 
 ble to read. Germany, in all eatable quarters 
 of it, had to undergo the process ; tortured, torn 
 to pieces, wrecked, and brayed as in mortar, 
 under the iron mace of war. Brandenburg 
 saw its towns seized and sacked, its country 
 populations driven to despair by the one party 
 and the other. Three times — first in the 
 Wallenstein-Mecklenburg times, while fire and 
 ^word were the weapons, and again, twice over, 
 
APPE^hlX. 
 
 84! 
 
 in the ultimate stages of the struggle, -when 
 starvation had become the method — Branden- 
 burg fell to be the principal theatre of conflict, 
 where all forms of the dismal were at their 
 height. I n 1 638, three years after that precious 
 ' Peace of Prag,' . . , the ravages of the 
 starving Gallas and his Imperialists excelled 
 all precedent, . . . men ate human flesh, nay, 
 human creatures ate their own children.' ' Que 
 faire ? ils ont des canons ! ' " 
 
 " We have now arrived at the lowest nadir 
 point " (says Carlyle) " of the history of 
 Brandenburg under the Hohenzollerns." Is 
 this then all that Heavy Peg and our nine 
 Kiirfursts have done for us ? 
 
 Carlyle does not mean that : but even he, 
 greatest of historians since Tacitus, is not 
 enough careful to mark for us the growth of 
 national character, as distinct from the pros- 
 perity of dynasties. 
 
 A republican historian would think of thifc 
 jjevelopment only, and suppose it to be possi* 
 ble without any dynasties. 
 
 Which is indeed in a measure so, and the 
 work now chiefly needed in moral philosophy, 
 as well as history, is an analysis of the constant 
 and prevalent, yet unthought of, influences, 
 •which, without any external help from kings, 
 and in a silent and entirely necessary manner, 
 form, in Sweden, in Bavaria, in the Tyrol, in 
 the Scottish border, and on the French sea- 
 coast, races of noble peasants ; pacific, poetic^ 
 
246 tiiE cRor^i^op WILD dtiirk. 
 
 heroic, Christian-hearted in the deepest senses 
 who may indeed perish by sword or famine in 
 any cruel thirty years ' war, or ignoble thirty 
 years' peace, and yet leave such strength to 
 their children that the country, apparently 
 , ravaged into hopeless ruin, revives, under any 
 prudent king, as the cultivated fields do under 
 the spring rain. How the rock to which no 
 seed can cling, and which no rain can soften, 
 is subdued into the good ground which can 
 bring forth its hundredfold, we forget to watch, 
 while we follow the footsteps of the sower, or 
 mourn the catastrophes of storm. All this 
 ■while, the Prussian earth, — ^the Prussian soul, 
 — ^has been thus dealt upon by successive fate ; 
 and now, though laid, as it seems, utterly 
 desolate, it can be revived by a few years of 
 wisdom and of peace. 
 
 Vol. I. Book III. Chap, xviii.— The Great 
 Elector, Friedrich Wilhelm. Eleventh of the 
 dynasty : — 
 
 " There hardly ever came to sovereign power 
 a young man of twenty under more distressing, 
 hopeless-looking circumstances. Political sig- 
 nificance Brandenburg had none ; a mere Prot- 
 estant appendage, dragged about by a Papist 
 Kaiser, his father's Prime Minister, as we have 
 seen, was in the interest of his enemies ; not 
 Brandenburg's servant, but Austria's. The 
 very commandants of his fortresses, Com- 
 mandant of Spandau more especially, refused 
 to obey Friedrich Wilhelm oa his accessiooj 
 
APPENDIX. 247 
 
 'were bound to obey the Kaiser in the first 
 place.' 
 
 " For twenty years past Brandenburg had 
 been scoured by hostile armies, which, espe- 
 cially the Kaiser's part of which, committed out- 
 rages new in human history. In a year or two 
 hence, Brandenburg became again the theatre 
 of business. Austrian Gallas advancing tliither 
 again (1644) with intent 'to shut up Torsten- 
 son and his Swedes in Jutland.' Gallas could 
 by no means do what he intended ; on the 
 contrary, he had to run from-Torstenson — what 
 feet could do ; was hunted, he and his Merode 
 Bruder (beautiful inventors of the 'maraud- 
 ing' art), till they pretty much all died 
 (crepirten) says Kohler. No great loss to 
 society, the death of these artists, but we can 
 fancy what their life, and especially what the 
 process of their dying, may have cost poor 
 Brandenburg again ! 
 
 " Friedrich Wilhelm's aim, in this as in other 
 emergencies, was sun-clear to himself, but for 
 most part dim to everybody else. He had to 
 'vralk very warily, Sweden on one hand of 
 him, suspicious Kaiser on the other : he ha,d 
 to wear semblances, to be ready with evasive 
 words, and advance noiselessly by many cir- 
 cuits. More delicate operation could not be 
 imagined. But advance he did ; advance and 
 arrive. With extraordinary talent, diligence, 
 and felicity the young man wound himself out 
 of this first fatal position, got those foreign 
 armies pushed out of his country, and kept 
 
S4S THE CROWN OP WILD OLIVE. 
 
 them out. His first concern had been to find 
 some vestige of revenue, to put that upon a 
 clear footing, and by loans or otherwise to 
 scrape a little ready-money together. On the 
 strength of which a small body of soldiers could 
 be collected about him, and drilled into real ability 
 to fight and obey. This as a basis : on this 
 followed all manner of things, freedom from 
 Swedish-Austrian invasions, as the first thing. 
 He was himself; as appeared by-and-by, a 
 fighter of the first quality, when it came to that ; 
 but never was willing to fight if he could help 
 it. Preferred rather to shift, manoeuvre, and 
 negotiate, which he did in most vigilant, adroit, 
 and masterly manner. But by degrees he had 
 grown to have, and could maintain it, an army 
 of 24,000 men, among the best troops then 
 in being." 
 
 To wear semblances, to be ready with eva- 
 sive words, how is this, Mr. Carlyle? tliinks 
 perhaps, the rightly thoughtful reader. 
 
 Yes, such things have to be. There are lies 
 and lies, and there are .truths and truths. 
 Ulysses cannot ride on the ram's back, like 
 Phryxus; but must ride under his belly. Read 
 also this, presently following : 
 
 " Shortly after which, Friedrich Wilhelm who 
 had shone much in the battle of Warsaw, into 
 which he was dragged against his will, changed 
 sides. An inconsistent, treacherous man? 
 f erhaps not, O reader ) perhaps a man advan(^ 
 
APPENDIX, 249 
 
 Ing * in circuits,' the only way he has j spirally, 
 face now to east, now to west, with his own 
 reasonable private aim sun-clear to him all the 
 whUe?" 
 
 The battle of Warsaw, three days long, fought 
 with Gustavus, the grandfather of Charles XII., 
 against the Poles, virtually ends the Polish 
 power : 
 
 " Old Johann Casimir, not long after that 
 peace of Oliva, getting tired of his unruly Pol- 
 ish chivalry and their ways, abdicated — retired 
 to Paris, and « lived much with Ninon de 
 I'Enclos and her circle,' for the rest of his life. 
 He used to complain of his Polish chivalry, that 
 there was no solidity in them ; nothing but out- 
 side glitter, with tumult and anarchic noise ; 
 fatal want of one essential talent, the talent of 
 theying; and has been heard to prophesy that 
 a glorious Hepublic, persisting in such courses 
 ~ould arrive at results which would surprise it. 
 
 " Onward from this time, Friedrich Wilhelm 
 figures in the world ; public men watching his 
 procedure ; kings anxious to secure him — Dutch 
 print-sellers sticking up his portraits for a hero- 
 worshipping public. Fighting hero, had the 
 public known it, was not his essential charac- 
 ter, though he had to fight a great deal. He 
 -was essentially an industrial man; great in 
 organizing, regulating, in constraining chaotic 
 heaps to become cosmic for him. He drains 
 bogs, settles colonies in the waste places of his 
 dcmunions, cuts canals; unweariedly encouc- 
 
iSO THE CROtVir OP WILD OLIVE. 
 
 ages trade and work. The Friedrich Wilhelm'a 
 Canal, ■which still carries tonnage from the Oder 
 to the Spree, is a monument of his zeal in this 
 ■way ;, creditable with the means he had. To 
 the poor French Protestants in the Edict-of- 
 Nantes affair, he was like, an express benefit of 
 Heaven ; one helper appointed to whom tlie 
 help itself was profitable. He munificently wel- 
 comed them to Brandenburg ; showed really z 
 noble piety and human pity, as well as judg- 
 ment ; nor did Brandenburg and he want their 
 reward. Some 20,000 nimble French souls, 
 evidently of the best French quality, found a 
 home there ; made '■waste sands about Berlin 
 into potherb gardens ; ' and in spiritual Bran- 
 denburg, too, did something of horticulture 
 which is still noticeable." 
 
 Now read carefully the description of the 
 man, p. 352 (224-5) ; the story of the batde of 
 Fehrbellin, "the Marathon of Brandenburg," 
 P- 354 (225) ; and of the winter campai^ of 
 1679, p. 356 (227), beginning with its week's 
 marches at sixty miles a day; his wife, as 
 always, being with him : 
 
 " Louisa, honest and loving Dutch girl, aunt 
 to our William of Orange, who trimmed up her 
 own 'Orange-burg' (country-house), twenty 
 miles north of Berlin, into a little jewel of the 
 Dutch tj'pe, potherb gardens, training-schools 
 for yonng girls, and the like, a favorite abode 
 of hers when she was at liberty for recreation. 
 But her life was busy and earnest ; she waa 
 
ApPkifBiii. 251 
 
 lelpmate, not in name only, to an ever busy 
 man. They were married y(Jung ; a marriage 
 of love withal. Young Friedrich Wilhelm'^ 
 courtship; wedding in Holland; the honest, 
 trustful walk and conversation of the two sov- 
 eteign spouses, theif journeyings together, 
 their mutual hopes, fears, and manifold vicissi- 
 tudes, till death, with stem beauty, shut it in ; 
 aU is human, true, and wholesome in it, inters 
 esting to look upon, and rare among sovereign 
 persons." 
 
 Louisa died in 1667, twenty-one years before 
 her husliand, who married again — (little to his 
 contentment) — died in 1688 ; and Louisa's 
 second son, Friedrich, ten years old at his 
 mother's death, and now therefore thirty-one, 
 succeeds, becoming afterwards Friedrich L of 
 Prussia. 
 
 And here we pause on two great questions. 
 Prussia is assuredly at this point a happier and 
 better country than it was when inhabited by 
 Wends. But is Friedrich I. a happier and 
 better man than Henry the Fowler? Have 
 all these kings thus improved their country, 
 but never themselves ? Is this somewhat ex- 
 pensive and ambitious Herr, Friedrich I., but- 
 toned in diamonds, indeed the best that Prot- 
 estantism can produce, as against Fovvrlers, 
 Pears, and Red Beards ? Much more, Fried- 
 rich Wilhelm, orthodox on predestination ; 
 most of ^11, his less orthodox son ; — have we, 
 jn these, the highest results which Dr. Martia 
 
8S2 THE CroWn 6l^ Wih OLiV'k 
 
 Luther can produce for the present, in the first 
 circles of society ? And if not, how is it that 
 the country, having gained so much in intelli- 
 gence and strength, lies more passively in their 
 power than the baser country did under that 
 of nobler men ? 
 
 These, and collateral questions, I mean to 
 work out as I can, with Carlyle's good help ; 
 — ^but must pause for this time ; in doubt, as 
 heretofore. Only of this one thing I doubt 
 not, that the name of all great kings, set over 
 Christian nations, must at last be, in fulfilment, 
 the hereditary one of these German princes, 
 " Rich in Peace ; " and that their coronatioa 
 wU be with Wildolive^ not with goldi