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THE


WORKS OF JOHN RUSKIN,
HONORARY STUDENT OF CHRISTCHURCHl, AND HONORARY
FELLOW OF CORPUS CIHRISTI COLLEGE, OXFORD
VOLUME VI.


THE CROWN


OF WILD OLIVE.


GEORGE ALLEN,
SUNNYSIDE, ORPINGTON, KENT.
1882.




If
~7




THE
CROWN OF WILD OLIVE.
FOUR LECTURES
ON
INDUSTRY AND WAR.
lly
JOHN   RUSKIN, MI.A.
1lNO~RAY~ STUD'ENT OF' CHRISTCHUR CLH. AND II~IN~){:\RV FPLFI.( 0
OF C0I'Pk:S CHRISTI COLLEGE, OXFORI)


'And indeed it should have been of gold, had not Jupiter been so poor.'
ARISTOI'IIANES (I'iUlUs.)
SECOND     7ZIOUSAND.
GEORGE ALLEN,
SUNNYSIDE, ORPINGTON, KENT.
1882.
[AU/ rights rese, ved. I




I




CONTENTS.
PAGE
INTRODUCTORY................................................. 
LECTURE I.
WORK..........................................................................  21
LECTURE        II.
TRAFFIC..................................................................  62
LECTURE        III.
WAR.......................................................................  98
LECTURE IV.
THE FUTURE OF ENGLAND.............................................  146
APPENDIX.
NOTES ON THE ECONOMlES OF nTlE KINGS OF PRUSSIA...... 177




1.
I
I
I
a
I




THE


CROWN OF WILD OLIVE.
INTRODUCTION.*
I. TWENTY YEARS ago, there was no lovelier piece
of lowland scenery in South England, nor any more
pathetic, in the world, by its expression of sweet
human character and life, than that immediately
bordering on the sources of the Wandle, and including the low 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
* Called the 'Preface' in former editions; it is one of my bad habits
to put half my books into preface. Of this one, the only prefatory
thing I have to say is that most of the contents are stated more fully in
my other volumes; but here, are put in what, at least, I meant to be a
more popular form, all but this introduction, which was written very
carefully to be read, not spoken, and the last lecture on the Future of
England, with which, and the following notes on it, I have taken
extreme pains.
I




2


THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE.


from heaven;' no pastures ever lightened in spring.
time 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-confessed.  The place remains (I870) nearly
unchanged in its larger features; but, with deliberate mind I say, that I have never seen anything so ghastly 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
defiling 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 the 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,




INTRODUCTION.


3


and broken shreds of old metal, and rags of putrid
clothes; which, having neither energy to cart away,
nor decency enough to dig into the ground, they thus
shed into the stream, to diffuse what venom of it will
float and melt, far away, 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 for it by gentler
hands, lie scattered, each from each, under a ragged
bank of mortar, and scoria, and bricklayer's 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 accumulation of indolent
years.  Half-a-dozen  men, with one day's work,
could cleanse 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 only of angels,
from the porch of Bethesda. But that day's work is
never given, nor, I suppose, will be; nor will any joy
be possible to heart of man, for evermore, about
those wells of English waters.
2. When I last left them, I walked up slowly




4


THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE.


through the back streets of Croydon, from the 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 occupied 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 wayfarer).  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 spear-heads to the yard of it, and six feet
high; containing as much iron and iron-work, indeed,
as could well be put into the space; and by this
stately arrangement, the little piece of dead ground
within, between wall and street, became a protective
receptacle of refuse; cigar ends, and oyster-shells,
and the like, such as an open-handed English streetpopulace habitually scatters; and was thus left,
unsweepable by any ordinary methods. Now the
iron bars which, uselessly (or in great degree worse
than uselessly) enclosed this bit of ground, and
made it pestilent, represented a quantity of work




INTRODUCTION.


5


which would have cleansed the Carshalton pools three
times over; of work, partly cramped and perilous, in
the mine; partly grievous and horrible, at the furnace:
partly 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.
3. 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 water?
4. There is but one reason for it, and at present
a conclusive one,-that the capitalist can charge
* ' 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
contained 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 drinking, neglected their duty, and,
in the meantime, 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.'




6


THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE.


per-centage on the work in the one case, and cannot
in the other. If, having certain funds for supporting
labour at my disposal, 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, and work it, and sell it, I can charge
rent for the ground, and per-centage both on the
manufacture and the sale, and make my capital
profitable in these three bye-ways. The greater part
of the profitable investment of capital, in the present
day, is in operations of this kind, in which the public
is persuaded to buy something of no use to it, on
production or sale of which the capitalist may
charge' per-centage; the said public remaining all
the while under the persuasion that the per-centages
thus obtained are real national gains, whereas, they
are merely filchings out of light pockets, to swell
heavy ones.
5. Thus, the Croydon publican buys the iron
railing, to make himself more conspicuous to
drunkards.  The public-housekeeper on the other
side of the way presently buys another railing, to
out-rail him with.  Both are, as to their relative
attractiveness, just where they were before; but they
have both lost the price of the railings; which they
must either themselves finally lose, or make their
aforesaid customers, the amateurs of railings, pay,




INTRODUCTION.


7


by raising the price of their beer, or adulterating it.
Either the publicans, or their customers, are thus
poorer by precisely what the capitalist has gained;
and the value of the industry itself, meantime, has
been lost to the nation; the iron bars, in that form
and place being wholly useless.
6. It is this mode of taxation of the poor by
the rich which is referred to in the text (~ 34), in
comparing the modern 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 pedler; but the result, to the injured
person's pocket, is absolutely the same. Of course
many useful industries mingle with, and disguise the
useless ones; and in the habits of energy aroused by
the struggle, there is a certain direct good. It is
better to spend four thousand pounds in making a
gun, and then to blow it to pieces, than to pass life in
idleness. Only do not let the proceeding be called
-political economy.'
7. There is also a confused notion in the minds of
many persons, that the gathering of the property




8


THE, CROWN OF WILD OLIVE.


of the poor into the hands of the rich does no
ultimate harm; since, in whosesoever hands it may
te, it must be spent at last; and thus, they think,
return to the poor again. This fallacy has been
again and again exposed; but, granting the plea
true, the same apology may, of course, be made for
black mail, or any other form of robbery. It might
be (though practically it never is) as advantageous
for the nation that 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 endeavour
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 that they themselves should.' But if, instead of
out-facing them with a turnpike, I can only persuade
them to come in and buy stones, or old iron, or any
other useless thing, out of my ground, I may rob
them to the same extent, and be, moreover, thanked
as a public benefactor, and promoter of commercial
prosperity. And this main question for the poor of
England-for the poor of all countries-is wholly
omitted in every common treatise on the subject of
wealth.  Even by the labourers themselves, the




INTRODUCTION.


9


operation of capital is regarded only in its effect on
their immediate interests; never in the far more
terrific power of its appointment of the kind and the
object of labour. It matters little, ultimately, how
much a labourer is paid for making anything; but
it matters fearfully what the thing is, which he is
compelled to make. If his labour 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 produce 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 inconvenience.
8. 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 surprise that I have found myself
totally unable, as yet, by any repetition, or illustration, to force this plain thought into my readers'
heads,-that the wealth of nations, as of men, consists
in substance, not in ciphers; and that the real good
of all work, and of all commerce, depends on the
final intrinsic worth of the thing you make, or get by




IO


THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE.


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 intrinsic worth of
what you buy or sell, that it seems impossible to
gain so much as a patient hearing for any inquiry
respecting the substantial result of our eager modern
labour., 
9. I have never felt more checked by the sense
of this impossibility than in arranging the heads
of the following lectures, which, though delivered
at considerable intervals of time, and in different
places, were not prepared without reference to each
other. Their connection would, however, have been
made far more distinct, if I had not been prevented,
by what I feel to be another great difficulty in
addressing English audiences, from enforcing, with
any decision, the common, and to me the most
important, part of their subjects. I chiefly desired
to question 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
* Compare Preface to Munera Pulveris.
x tc,  t t




INTRODUCTION.


II


to. That appeared the first point needing determination before I could speak to them with any real
utility or effect. '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.'
10. But in order to put this question into any
terms, one had first of all to face a difficultyto 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 then
endeavour 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.' If, on the contrary, you
frankly address them as unbelievers in Eternal life,
and try to draw any consequences from that unbelief,
— they immediately hold you for an accursed person,
and shake off the dust from their feet at you.
I. 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 question. 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




I2


TIHE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE.


quantity of once living clay into a level line, as in
a brick-field; 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, unwillingly
released. It made all the difference, in speaking of
the possible range of commerce, whether one assumed
that all bargains related only to visible propertyor 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 itwhether one could confidently say to them, 'My
friends,-you have only to die, and all will be right;'
or whether one had any secret misgiving that such
advice was more blessed to him that gave than to
him that took it.
12. And therefore the 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 uncertainty
of my hearers' temper. For I do not speak, nor have
I ever spoken, since the time of first forward youth,
in any proselytizing temper, as desiring to persuade
any one to believe anything; but, whomsoever I




INTRODUCTION.


13


venture to address, I take, for the time, his creed as
I find it; and endeavour to push it into such 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 endeavour has been
uniformly to make them trust it more deeply than
they do; trust it, not in their own favourite verses
only, but in the sum of all; trust it, not as a fetish
or talisman, 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; from 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 raiment; and
these, it once seemed to me, I might ask, without
being accused of fanaticism, not merely in doctrine of
the lips, but in the bestowal of their heart's treasure,
to separate themselves from the crowd of whom it




14


THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE.


is written, ' After all these things do the Gentiles
seek.'
13. 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-called Christian, I desired to
plead for honest declaration and fulfilment of his
belief in life,-with the so-called Infidel, I desired
to plead for an honest declaration and fulfilment of
his belief in death.  The dilemma is inevitable.
Men must either hereafter live, or hereafter die;
fate may be bravely met, and conduct wisely
ordered, on either expectation; but never in hesitation between ungrasped hope, and unconfronted
fear. We usually believe in immortality, so far as
to avoid preparation for death; and in mortality, so
far as to avoid preparation for anything after death.
Whereas, a wise man will at least hold himself ready
for one or other of two events, of which one or other
is inevitable; and will have all things ended in order,
for his sleep, or left in order, for his awakening.
14. Nor have we any right to call it an ignoble
judgment, if he determine to end them in order, as
for sleep.  A brave belief in life is indeed an




INTRODUCTION.


tS


enviable state of mind, but. as far as I can discern,
an unusual one. I know few Christians so convinced of the splendour 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 has the Church's most ardent 'desire
to depart, and be with Christ,' ever cured it of the
singular habit of putting on mourning for every
person summoned   to such  departure.  On the
contrary, a brave belief in death has been assuredly
held 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 wasting 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 expediency of drunkenness to-day.
To teach that there is no device in the grave, may
indeed make the deviceless person more contented in his dullness; but it will make the
deviser only more earnest in devising: nor is human
conduct 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




16        THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE.
redeemed; and that the sigh of repentance, which
purges the guilt of the past, will waft the soul into
a felicity which forgets its pain,-than it may be
under the sterner, and to many not unwise minds,
more probable, 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.
I5. But to men for whom feebleness of sight, or
bitterness of soul, or the offence given by the conduct of those who claim higher hope, may have
rendered this painful creed the only possible one,
there is an appeal to be made, more secure than any
which can be addressed to happier persons.  Might
not a preacher, in comfortless, but faithful, zeal-from
the poor height of a grave-hillock for his Hill of
Mars, and with the Cave of the Eumenides at his
side,-say to them thus: Hear me, you dying men,
who will soon be deaf for ever. For these others, at
your right hand and your left, who look forward to a
state of infinite existence, in which all their errors
will be overruled, and all their faults forgiven;-for
these, who, stained and blackened in the battle
smoke of mortality, have but to dip themselves 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;- for these, indeed, it may




INTRODUCTION.


17


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 should tamper with sin which can only bring
forth fruit of righteousness, and profit by the iniquity
which, one day, will be remembered no more. In
them, it may be no sign of hardness of heart to
neglect the poor, over whom 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
no consolation, and on you no vengeance,-only the
question murmured above your grave: '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
more prompt to the injustice which can never be
2




I8


THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE.


redressed; and more niggardly of the mercy which
you can bestow but once, and which, refusing, you
refuse for ever?
16. I think better of you, even of the most selfish,
than that you would act thus, well understanding
your act. And for yourselves, it seems to me, the
question becomes not less grave when brought into
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 dawn, it might matter 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? are health and
heaven to come? Then 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, though
clutching at the black motes in the air with
your dying hands;-and yet, it may be well with
you. But if this life be no dream, and the world
no hospital, but your palace-inheritance;-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 still, throughout the puny
totality of your life, weary yourselves in the fire for
vanity? If there is no rest which remaineth for you,




INTRODUCTION.


19


is there none you might presently take? was this
grass of the earth made green for your shroud only,
not for your bed? and can you never lie down
upon it, but only under it?. The heathen, in their
saddest hours, thought not so. They knew that life
brought its contest, but they expected from it also
the crown of all contest: No proud one! 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 of gold, they thought;
but Jupiter was poor; this was the best the god could
give them. Seeking a better than this, they had
known it a mockery. Not in war, not in wealth, not
in tyranny, was there any happiness to be found for
them-only in kindly peace, fruitful and free. The
wreath was to be of wild 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 grey
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
grey honour, and sweet rest.* Free-heartedness, and
graciousness, and undisturbed trust, and requited
love, and the sight of the peace of others, and the


* IuAir6oava, WXAXwv 7y tIVetv.




20   -    THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE.
ministry to their pain; these, and the blue sky above
you, and the sweet waters and flowers of the earth
beneath; and mysteries and presences, innumerable,
of living things,- may yet be here your riches;
untormenting and divine: serviceable for the life that
now is; nor, it may be, without promise of that
which is to come.




I 
LEI
Delivered before the Working Men's Institute, at Camberwell.
17. MY FRIENDS,-I have not come among you
to-night to endeav6ur to give you an entertaining
lecture; but to tell you a few plain facts, and ask
you a few   plain questions.  I have seen and
known too much of the struggle for life among
our labouring population, to feel at ease, under any
circumstances, in inviting them to dwell on the
trivialities of my own studies; but, much more, as I
meet to-night, for the first time, the members of a
working 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 matters. I would fain tell you, with
what feelings, and with what hope, I regard this
Institute, as one of many such, now happily established throughout England, as well as in other




9i  II.DQVID OLIVE.
e way for a great
change in all the       ies of industrial life;
but of which the s         wholly depend upon
our clearly underst  ate' conditions, and above
all, the necessary oii' t  change. No teacher
can truly promote    i   e of education, until
he knows the mod,     lr which that education is to prepare; And the fact that
he is called upon t:!sd   you, nominally, as a
'Working Class,' must compel him, if he is in any
wise earnest or thoughtful, to enquire 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 understanding
from you, whether you think the distinction 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 th6
object of education is to efface it, and enable us
to forget it for ever?
I8. Let me make myself more distinctly understood. We call this-you and I-a 'Working Men's'
Institute, and our college in London, a 'Working
Men's' College. Now, how do you consider that these
several institutes differ, or ought to differ, from ' idle




I.-WORK.


23


men's' institutes, and 'idle mew's' colleges? Or by
what other word than 'idle' shall I distinguish those
whom the happiest and wisest of working men do
not object to call the 'Upper Classes?' Are there
necessarily upper classes? necessarily lower? How
much should those always be elevated, how much
these always depressed? And I pray those among
my audience who chance to occupy, at present, the
higher position, to forgive me what offence there may
be in what I am going to say. It is not I 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, as you well
know, is it to you specially that I say it. I am sure
that most now present know their duties of kindness,
and fulfil them, better perhaps than I do mine. But
I speak to you as representing your whole class,
which errs, I know, chiefly by thoughtlessness, but
not therefore the less terribly. Wilful error is limited
by the will, but what limit is there to that of which
we are unconscious?
I9. Bear with me, therefore, while I turn to
these workmen, and ask them, what they think
the ' upper classes' are, and ought to be, in relation
to them.  Answer, you workmen who are here, as
you would among yourselves, frankly; and tell
me how you would have me call your employers. Am




24


THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE.


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
subject honestly, or speaking from my heart, if I
proceeded in my lecture 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
elp it, or more than they can help.
20.* 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 man of large fortune is
busier than his errand-boy, and never would think
of stopping in the street to play marbles. So that,
in a large view, the distinction between workers and
idlers, as between knaves and honest men, runs
through the very heart and innermost nature of
men of all ranks and in all positions. 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
* Note this paragraph. I cannot enough wonder at the want of
common charity which blinds so many people to the quite simple truth
to which it refers.




I.-WORK.


25


two orders come of the unludky fact that the wise of
one class [how little wise in this!] habitually contemplate the foolish of the other. If the busy rich
people watched and rebuked the idle rich people, all
would be right among them: and if the busy poor
people watched and rebuked the idle poor people, all
would be right among them.   But each look for
the faults of the other.  A hardworking man of
property is particularly offended by an idle beggar;
and an orderly, but poor, workman is naturally
intolerant of the licentious 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 only. None but
the dissolute among the poor look upon the rich as
their natural enemies, or desire to pillage their houses
and divide their property. None but the dissolute
among the rich speak in opprobrious terms of the
vices and follies of the poor.
21. There is, then, no worldly 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
distinctions, which rise and fall to every degree in the




26


THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE.


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.
22. 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 purpose, or without. And these
distinctions are mainly four:
I. Between those who work, and those who play.
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;
III. Head to hand; and,
IV. Sense to nonsense.
23. 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,




1- WORK.


27


roughly, not with vain subtlety of definition, 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 form
of exercise, for health's sake, it would become work
directly. So, in like manner, 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 thing.  Play may
be usefl, in a secondary sense; (nothing is indeed
more useful or necessary); but the use of it depends
on its being spontaneous.
24. Let us, then, enquire 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 football, or any other roughest sport: and it is absolutely without purpose; no one who engages heartily
in that game ever knows why. Ask a great moneymaker what he wants to do with his money,-he


*




28


THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE.


never knows. He doesn't make it to do anything
with it. lie gets it only that he may 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!  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 the bottomless pit; but mainly a billiardtable, after all.
25. 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.




I.-WORK.                     29
26. Our next great English games, however, hunting and shooting, are costly altogether; and how much
we are fined for them annually in land, horses, gamekeepers, and game laws, and the resultant demoralization of ourselves, our children, and our retainers, I
will not endeavour 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; and
through game-preserving, you get also some curious
laying out of ground: that beautiful arrangement of
dwelling-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 angelic 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.*
* The subject is pursued at some length in Fors Clavigera for March,
1873; but I have not.yet properly stated the opposite side of the
question, nor insisted on the value of uncultivated land to the national
health of body and mind.




30


THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE.


27. Then, next to the gentlemen's game of hunting, we must put the ladies' game of dressing. It is
not the cheapest of games. 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 certain 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 itlead it thoroughly-lead it far enough. Dress yourselves nicely, and dress everybody else nicely. Lead
the fashions for the poor first; make them look well,
and you yourselves will look, in ways of which you
have now no conception, all the better. The fashions
you have set for some time among your peasantry
are not pretty ones; their doublets are too irregularly slashed, or as Chaucer calls it " all to-slittered,"
though not "for queintise," and the wind blows too
frankly through them.
28. 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 different, 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 pleasant to the imagination; we dress




I.-WORK.


31


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 colours:
of course we could fight better in grey, 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 which you know is paid for by hard
labourer's work in the furrow and furnace. A costly
game!-not to speak of its consequences; I will
say at present nothing of these. The mere immediate
cost of all these plays is what I want you to consider; they are all paid for in 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-forger, whose
breath fails before the furnace-they 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 as used in the black
country of Birmingham, and the red and black




32


TIHE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE.


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 eternally shall say to you, 'We
have mourned unto you, and ye have not lamented.'
29. This, then, is the first distinction between 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 jelly-fish; but
not for men: that neither days, nor lives, can be
made holy or noble 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 this much
of plain Christianity preached to us again, and cease
to translate the strict words, 'Son, go work to-day
in my vineyard,' into the dainty ones, 'Baby, go play




T.-WORK.                 33
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.
30. 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. Consider, for instance, what
the general tenor of such a paper as the Morning
Post implies of delicate luxury among the rich;
and then read this chance extract from it:'Yesterday morning, at eight o'clock, a woman,
passing a dung heap in the stone yard near the
recently-erected almshouses in 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 creature
appeared to have been dead several hours. He had
perished of cold arfd 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
3




34


THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE.


found in his pockets. The deceased was between
fifty and sixty years of age. Inspector Roberts, of
the K division, has given directions for inquiries to
be made at the lodging-houses respecting the
deceased, to ascertain his identity if possible.'Morning Post, November 25, I864.
Compare the statement of the finding bones in
his pocket with the following, from the Telegraph
of January I6 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 support nature; yet, within ten
years of the passing of the Poor Law Act, we heard
of the paupers 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 Lazarus
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.
3I. 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.  ThKe`~rful




L-WORK.


35


basis of wealth is, that a man who works should be
paid the fair value of his work; and that if he does
not choose to spend it to-day, he should have free
leave to keep it, and spend it to-morrow. Thus, an
industrious man working daily, and laying by daily,
attains at last the possession of an accumulated sum
of wealth, to which he has absolute 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 in
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 wellearned wealth, there is no more any motive for
saving, or any reward for good conduct; and all
society is thereupon dissolved, or exists only in
systems of rapine. Therefore the first necessity of
social life is the clearness of national conscience in
enforcing the law-that he should keep who has
JUSTLY EARNED.
32. That law, I say, is the proper basis of distinction between rich and poor. But there is also a
false basis of distinction; namely, the power held
over those who are earning wealth by those who
already possess it, and only use it to gain more.
There will be always a number of men who would
fain set themselves to the accumulation of wealth




36.THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE.


as the sole object of their lives. Necessarily, that
class of men is an uneducated class, inferior in
intellect, and, more or less, cowardly. It is physically
impossible for a well-educated, intellectual, or brave X
man to make money the chief object of his thoughts; 
just as it is for him to make his dinner the principal
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 moneyought 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 when you keep him ten years without itstill, his main notion of life is to win battles, not to
be paid for winning them. So of clergymen. They
like pew-rents, and baptismal fees, of course; but
yet, if they are brave and well educated, the pewrent is not the sole '"-ect 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 preac g. So of doctors.
They like fees no doubt, -ought to like them; yet if
they 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




I.-WORK.


37


the choice were fairly put to them-would rather
cure their patient, and lose their fee, than kill him,
and get it. And so with all other brave and rightlytrained men; their work is first, their fee secondvery 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 with brave people
the work is first, and the fee second.  And this
is no small distinction.  It is between life and
death in a man; between heaven and hell for him.
You cannot serve two masters;-you must serve 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 erected fiend that fell.'
So there you have it in brief terms; Work firstyou are God's servants; Fee first-you are the
Fiend's. And it makes a difference, now and ever,
believe me, whether you serve Him 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.




38       THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE.


33. 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 injustice to Iscariot,
in thinking him wicked above all common wickedness.  He was only a common money-lover, and,
like all money-lovers, did not understand Christ;could not make out the worth of Him, or meaning
of Him. He never thought He would be killed. He
was horror-struck when he found that Christ would be
killed; threw his money away instantly, and hanged
himself. How many of our present money-seekers,
think you, would have the grace to hang themselves,
whoever was killed? But Judas was a common,
selfish, muddle-headed, pilfering fellow; his hand
always in the bag of the poor, not caring for them.
Helpless to understand Christ, he yet believed in
Him, 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 bye-perquisites 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 doesn't hate Christ, but can't




I.-WORK.


39


understand Him-doesn't care for Him-sees no
good in that benevolent 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 bagmen -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
labour of the poor, so that the capitalist can take
all its produce to himself, except the labourer's
food. That is the modern Judas's way of 'carrying
the bag,' and 'bearing what is put therein.'
34. Nay, but (it is asked) how is that an unfair
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 over public roads were in old times.
The barons fought for them fairly:- 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 least, grant so much, though
it is more than we ought) for their money: but, once
having got it, the fortified millionaire can make
everybody who passes below pay toll to his million,




40       THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE.


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
just 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 remember this one
great principle-ydu will find it unfailing-that whenever money is the principal object of life with either
\nman 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, 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 befitting 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 himselfiand 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




I. —ORK.                 41
generally it is better for the maker to spend it, for
he will know best its value and use. And if a man
does not choose thus to spend his money, he must
either hoard it or lend it, and the worst thing he
can generally do is to lend it; for borrowers are
nearly always ill-spenders, and it is with lent money
that all evil is mainly done, and all unjust war
protracted.
35. 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 twice before you gave it him:
and you would have some idea that it was wasted,
when you saw it fly off in fireworks, even though
he did no mischief with it.   But the Russian
children, and Austrian children, come to you,
borrowing 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




42


THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE.


live on the produce of the theft, and the bribe for
the assassination! That is the broad fact-that 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! though every deliberate
act of your lives is a new defiance of its primary
orders.
36. III. I must pass, however, 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 distinction. There 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 done, and
gentlemen must do it; and it is physically impossible that one class should do, or divide, the work
of the 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 honourableness of manual labour,
and the dignity of humanity. Rough work, honourable or not, takes the life out of us; and the man
who has been heaving clay out of a ditch all day,
or driving an express train against the north wind all




I.-WORK.


43


night, or holding a collier's helm in a gale on a lee
shore, or whirling white-hot iron at a furnace mouth,
is not the same man 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 painting pictures.*
If it is any comfort to you to be told that the
rough work is the more honourable 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, foolish and false, as
well as fine, and therefore dishonourable; but when
-both kinds are equally well and worthily done, the i
head's is the noble work, and the hand's the ignoble.
Therefore, of all hand work whatsoever, necessary for the maintenance of life, those old 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
Aations have held their days honourable, or 'holy,'
and constituted them 'holydays,' or 'holidays,' by
making them days of rest; and the promise, which,
* Compare ~ 57.




44


THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE.


among all our distant hopes, seems to cast the chief
brightness over death, is that blessing of the dead
who die in the Lord, that 'they rest from their
labours, and their works do follow them.'
37. And thus the perpetual question and contest
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, laborious, friends, these
questions will take a little time to answer yet.
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 attempted in vain, before
anything decisive can be told you. Only note these
few particulars, which are already sure.
38. 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 in a dis



I.-WORK.


45


orderly, scrambling, doggish way, but in an ordered,
soldierly, human way-a lawful or 'loyal' way. Men
are enlisted for the labour that kills-the labour of
war: they are counted, trained, fed, dressed, and
praised for that. Let them be enlisted also for the
labour that feeds: let them be counted, trained, fed,
dressed, praised for that. Teach the plough exercise as carefully as you do the sword exercise, 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 accomplished-you can't even see
your way to it-unless, first of all, both servant and
master are resolved that, come what will of it, they
will do each other justice.
39. People are perpetually 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. That 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.




46       THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE.


You are told, indeed, to sing psalms when you are
merry, and to pray when you need anything; and,
by the perverseness of the evil Spirit in us, 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 its father for it-does it call that doing its father
a service? If it begs for a toy or a piece of cakedoes 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 much, 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 so-and-so o'clock.' Alas! unless
we perform Divine service in every willing act of life,
we never perform it at all. The one Divine workthe one ordered sacrifice-is to do justice; and it is
the last we are ever inclined to do. Anything rather




L-WORK.


47


than that! As much charity as you choose, but no
justice. 'Nay,' you will say, 'charity is greater than
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 brother (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 him.
40. 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 instance,
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 hats; and
you'll think, complacently and piously, how lovely
they look going to church in their best I 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 up also,it in its Sunday dress,-the dirtiest rags it has,-that




48


THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE.


it may beg the better: you will give it a penny, and
think how good you are, and how good God is to preferyour child to the crossing-sweeper, and bestow on
it a divine hat, feather, and boots, and the pleasure
of giving pence, instead of begging for them. 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 accounts 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 certainly be, 'Why
shouldn't that little crossing-sweeper have a feather
on its head, as well as your own child?' Then you
may ask Justice, in an amazed manner, 'How she
can possibly 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 (you think), what will she
say next! And you answer, of course, that 'you




I.-WORK.


49


don't, because everybody ought to remain content in
the 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 you?
You knock a man into a ditch, and then you tell him
to remain content in the 'position in which Providence has placed him.' That's modern Christianity.
You say-' We did not knock him into the ditch.'
We shall never know what you have done, or left
undone, until the question with us, every morning, is,
not how to do the gainful thing, but how to do the
just thing, during the day; nor until we are at least
so far on the way to being Christian, as to acknowledge that maxim of the poor half-way Mahometan,
' One hour in the execution of justice is worth seventy
years of prayer.'
41. 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 on the possible quantity
of pay; and the quantity of pay is not a matter
for consideration to hand-workers only, but to all
workers. Generally, good, useful work, whether of
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.4




5o


THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE.


L People, 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 f only
bitter bread and salt, and going up and down other
people's stairs. In science, the man who discovered
the telescope, and first saw heaven, was paid with
a dungeon; the man who invented the microscope,
and first saw earth, died of starvation, driven from
Khis home. 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 tbh Pharisees; nothing
but stones.  For indeed that is the world-father's
proper payment So surely as any of the world's
children work for 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 worldfather answers them, 'No, my children, not bread;
a stone, if you like, or as many as you need, to keep
you quiet, and tell to future ages, how unpleasant
you made yourself to the one you lived in.'




I.-WORK.


51


42. But the hand-workers 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, 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 somebody else; and that it shall be done
in an orderly, soldierly, well-guided, wholesome way,
under good captains and lieutenants of labour; and
that it shall have its appointed times of rest, and
enough of them; and that, in those 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, not 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




52


THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE.


to sit at as anybody else, when they've time to
sit at them.  This, I think, can be managed for
you, my laborious friends, in the good time.
43. IV. I must go on, however, to our last head,
concerning ourselves all, as workers.  What is
wise work, and what is foolish work? What the
difference between sense and nonsense, in daily
occupation?
There are three tests of wise work:-that it
must be honest, useful, and cheerful.
I. It is HONEST. I hardly know anything more
strange than that you 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.' In boxing, you must hit fair; in racing,
start fair.  Your English watchword is 'fair-play,'
your English hatred, foul-play. Did it never strike
you that you wanted another watchword also, 'fairwork,' and another and bitterer hatred,-foul-work 
Your prizefighter has some honour in him yet; andso have the men in the ring round him: they will
judge him to lose the match, by foul hitting. But
your prize-merchant gains his match by foul selling,
and no one cries out against that! You drive a
gambler out of the gambling-room who loads dice,
but you leave a tradesman in flourishing business,
who loads scales! For observe, all dishonest dealing




I.-WORK                  53
is loading scales. What difference does it make
whether I get short weight, adulterate substance,
or dishonest fabric-unless that flaw in the substance or fabric is the worse evil of the 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 honesty.  Get that, you
get all; without that, your suffrages, your reforms,
your free-trade measures, your institutions of science,
are all in vain. It is useless to put your heads
together, if you can't put your hearts together.
Shoulder to. shoulder, right hand to right hand,
among yourselves, and no wrong hand to anybody
else, and you'll win the world yet.
44. II. Then, secondly, wise work is USEFUL.
No man minds, or ought to mind, its being hard, if.only it comes to something; but when 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 or not?
We don't care to keep what has been nobly done;


4,/
I 1




54


THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE.


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 exert his life
indeed, but not to waste it.  Of all wastes, the
greatest waste that you can commit is the waste of
labour. If you went down in the morning into
your dairy, and found that your youngest child had
got down before you; and that he and the cat were
at play together, and that he had poured out all the
cream on the floor for the cat to lap up, you would
scold the child, and be sorry the cream was wasted.
But if, instead of wooden bowls with milk in them,
there are golden bowls with human life in them, and
instead of the cat to play with,-the devil to play
with; and you yourself the player; and instead of
leaving that golden bowl to be broken by God at the -
fountain, you break it in the dust yourself, and pour
the human life out on the ground for the fiend to
lick up-that. is no waste!
45. What! you perhaps think, 'to waste the
labour 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, seventh deaths,
hundredfold deaths?  It is the slightest way of
killing to stop a man's breath.  Nay, the hunger,
and the cold, and the whistling bullets-our
love messengers between nation and nation,-have




I.-WORK.


55


brought pleasant messages to many a man before now: orders of sweet release, and leave
at last to go where he will be most welcome and
most happy. At the worst you do but shorten
his life, you do not corrupt his life. But if you
put him to base labour, if you bind his thoughts,
if you blind his eyes, if you blunt his hopes, if
you steal his joys, if you stunt his body, and blast
his soul, and at last leave him not so much as strength
to reap the poor fruit of his degradation, but
gather that 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 labourer's
head), this you think is no waste, and no sin!
46. IV. 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 very 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't




THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE.


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 insult 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 our
hearts: '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 one curious 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




I.-WORK.


57


children to come unto me, and forbid them not,for
of such is the kingdom of heaven.'*
47. Of such, observe. - Not of children themselves, but of such   as children.    I believe 'most
mothers who read that text think that all heaven
or the earth-when it gets to be like heaven-is to be
full of babies.  But that's not so.  'Length of days
and long life and peace,' that is the blessing, not to
die, still less to live, in babyhood. 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 certainly it is sure that it does not.
And it. is always asking questions, and wanting to
know more. 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
* [I have referred oftener to the words of the English Bible in this
lecture than in any other of my addresses, because I was here speaking
to an audience which professed to accept its authority implicitly.]




58      THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE.


(Plato's, but I know not if his, first), and as wise
as old.
48. Then, the second character of right childhood is to be Faithful.  Perceiving that its father
knows best what 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 obedient
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, what he bids, they
must do; and without this trust and faith, without
this captainship and soldiership, no great deed, no
great salvation, is possible to man.
49. Then, the third character of right childhood is to be Loving.   Give a little love to a
child, and you get a great deal back.  It loves
everything near it, when it is a right kind of child;
would hurt nothing, would give the best it has away,
always, if you need it; does not lay plans for getting
everything in the house for itself: and, above all,




I.-WORK.


59


delights in helping people; you cannot please it so
much as by giving it a chance of being useful, in
ever so humble a way.
50. 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 in its play or its
duty. Well, that's the great 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
labour is, but not what sorrow is; and always ready
for play-beautiful play. For lovely human 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 jewels
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 the morning.
51. So then, you have the child's character in
these four things-Humility, Faith, Charity, and
Cheerfulness. That's what you have got to be converted to. 'Except ye be converted and become as
little children'-You hear much of conversion now-a



6o


THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE.


days: but people always seem to think they 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 delightsomeness.  You can't go into a conventicle but
you'll hear plenty of talk of backsliding.  Backsliding, indeed! I can 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 true wisdom for your
teaching.  There is poison in the counsels of the
men 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. 'Their
eyes are privily set against the poor: they are as
the uncharmable 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 in our steps like the lion
that is greedy of his prey, and the young lion
lurking in secret places;' but, in that kingdom, the




I.-WORK.


6I


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 are
-not set from us, but multiplied around us: the
Sun himself, think you he now 'rejoices' to run his
course, when he plunges westward to the horizon, so
widely red, not with clouds, but blood? And it will
be red more widely yet. Whatever drought of the
early and latter rain may be, there will be none of
that red rain.  You fortify yourselves, you arm
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 ordained, which shall 'still the
enemy and avenger.'




62


THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE.


LECTURE II.
TRAFFIC.
(Delivered in the Town Ziail, Bradford.)
52. MY good Yorkshire friends, you 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 willingly;-I could not deserve your pardon, if,
when you invited me to speak on one subject, I
wilfully spoke on another. But I cannot 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 invitation, I
had answered, 'I won't come, I don't care about




TRAFFIC.


63


the Exchange of Bradford,' you would have been
justly offended with me, not knowing the reasons of
so blunt a carelessness.  So I have come down,
hoping that you will patiently let me tell you why,
on this, and many other such occasions, I now
remain silent, when formerly I should have caught
at the opportunity of speaking to a gracious
audience.
53. In a word, then, I do not care about this
Exchange,-because you don't; and because you
know perfectly well I cannot make you. Look at
the essential conditions of the case, which you, as
business men, know perfectly well, though perhaps
you think I forget them. You are going to spend
30,0001ooo., which to you, collectively, is nothing; the
buying a new coat is, as to the cost of it, a much
more important matter 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 fashion; and
what is, in our shops, for the moment, the newest
and sweetest thing in pinnacles.
54. Now, pardon me for telling you frankly, you




64


THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE.


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 prevalent 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 another.
Tell us what is pretty: we shall be glad to know
that; but we need no sermons, even were you able to
preach them, which may be doubted.'
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 friend in the rags, with the unsteady gait, what
do you like?' 'A pipe, and a quartern of gin.' I
know you. 'You, good woman, with the quick step
and tidy bonnet, what do you like?' 'A swept
hearth, and a clean tea-table; and my husband




II.-TRAFFIC.


opposite me, and a baby at my breast.' Good, I
know you also.  'You, little girl with the golden
hair and the soft eyes, what do you like?' '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 we ask?
55. '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
the Sunday school.' Indeed, for a short time, and
in a provisional sense, this is 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 state
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
thinking of the bottle in the cupboard, though he
bravely bears his thirst; but the man who heartily
5




66


THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE.


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.
56. But you may answer or think,' Is the liking
for outside ornaments,-for pictures, or statues, 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 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 land.
scape, expresses delight in the perpetual contempla.




II.-TRAFFIC.


67


tion of a good and perfect thing. That is an entirely
moral quality-it is the taste of the angels.  And
all delight in fine art, and all love of it, resolve themselves into simple love of that which deserves love.
That deserving is the quality which we call 'loveliness'-(we ought to have an opposite word, hateliness, 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.
57. As I was thinking over this, in walking
up Fleet Street the other day, my eye caught the
title of a book standing open in a bookseller's
window. It was-' On the necessity of the diffusion
of taste among all classes.'  'Ah,' I thought to
myself, 'my classifying friend, when you have
diffused your taste, where will your classes be?
The man who likes what you like, belongs to the
same class with you, I think. Inevitably so. You
may put him to other work if you choose; but, by
the condition you have brought him into, he will
dislike the work as much as you would yourself
You get hold of a scavenger or a costermonger, who
enjoyed the Newgate Calendar for literature, and




68


THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE.


"Pop goes the Weasel" for music. You think you
can make him like Dante and 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.'
58. And so 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 for
ever, 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 produce. Take, for instance, your great
English virtue of enduring and patient courage.
You have at present in England only one art of
any consequence-that is iron-woring. 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 for ever,-not merely
with an iron pen, but on iron parchment? And
take also your great English vice-European vicevice of all the world-vice of all other worlds that
roll or shine in heaven, bearing with them yet the




II.-TRAFFIC.


69


atmosphere of hell-the vice of jealousy, which
brings competition into your commerce, treachery
into your councils, and dishonour into your wars
-that vice which has rendered for you, and for
your next neighbouring 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,-you
have realized for them all, I say, in 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 armour as the strength of the right
hands that forged it?
59. Friends, I know not whether this thing be \ k '
the more ludicrous or the more melancholy.   It
is quite unspeakably both.  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 fruitwall from his next door neighbour's; and lie had




70


THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE.


called me to consult with him on the furnishing
of his drawing-room. I begin looking about me, and
find the walls rather bare; I think such and such a
paper might be desirable-perhaps a little fresco
here and there on the ceiling-a damask curtain or
so at the windows.   'Ah,' says my employer,
'damask curtains, indeed! That's all very fine, but
you know I can't afford that kind of thing just now!'
'Yet the world credits you with a splendid income!'
'Ah, yes,' says my friend, 'but do you know, at
present, I am obliged to spend it nearly all in steeltraps?' 'Steel-traps! for whom?' 'Why, for that
fellow on the other side the wall, you know: we're
very good friends, capital 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 fellows enough; and there's never a
day passes that we don't find out a new trap, or a
new gun-barrel, or something; 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.
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




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71


the whole world turns clown, and paints itself red
with its own heart's blood instead of vermilion, it is
something else than comic, I think.
60. Mind, I know a great deal of this is play,
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 popguns when you were schoolboys, and rifles and Arm.
strongs are only the same things better made: but
then the worst of it is, that what 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.
6i. I must get back to the matter in hand, however. 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
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 in a more searching
manner.
I notice that among all the new buildings which




72      THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE.


cover your once wild hills, churches and schools
are mixed in due, that is to say, in large proportion, with your mills and mansions; and I
notice also that the churches and schools are almost
always Gothic, and the mansions and mills are
never Gothic. May I ask the meaning of this; for,
remember, it is peculiarly a modern 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 there is a Gothic spire to the cathedral
of Antwerp, there is a Gothic belfry to the H6tel de
Ville at Brussels; if Inigo Jones builds an Italian
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 experimentally, because it does not matter
what mistakes you make in a church?    Or am
I to understand that you consider Gothic a preeminently sacred and beautiful mode of building,
which you think, like the fine frankincense, should be
mixed for the tabernacle only, and reserved for your
religious services? For if this be the feeling, though
it may seem at first as if it were graceful and




II.-TRAFFIC.


73


reverent, at the root of the matter, it signifies neither
more nor less than that you have separated your
religion from your life.
62. 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 behaving 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 actually carved,
This is the house of God and this is the gate of
heaven.'  Now, note where that legend comes from,
and of what place it was 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 to visit an uncle 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 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 the earth, and the top of it reaches to heaven, and




74


THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE.


the angels of God are seen ascending and descending
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 the gate of heaven.'
This PLACE, 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
thisplace; this windy slope of Wharnside; this moorland hollow, torrent-bitten, snow-blighted; 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 as that lightning when it shines
from the east to the west.
63. But the perpetual and insolent warping of that
strong verse to serve a merely ecclesiastical purpose,
is only one of the thousand instances in which we
sink back into gross Judaism. We call our churches
'temples.' Now, you know perfectly well 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




II.-TRAFFIC.


75


mighty text-' Thou, when thou prayest, shalt not be
as the hypocrites are; for they love to pray standing
in the churches' [we should translate it], 'that they
may be seen of men. But thou, when 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 ' in secret.'
64. Now, you feel, as I say this to you-I know
you feel-as if I were trying to take away the honour
of your churches.  Not so; I am  trying to prove
to you the honour of your houses and your hills;
not that the Church is not sacred-but that the
whole Earth IS.   I would have you feel what
careless, what constant, what infectious sin there
is in all modes of thought, whereby, in calling
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 recognizing, in the places of
their many and feeble Lares, the presence of your
One and Mighty Lord and Lar.
65. 'But what has all this to do with our Exchange?' you ask me, impatiently.   My dear
friends, it has just everything to do with it; 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, because you had before been




76


THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE.


interested in anything 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, had 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 architecture had arisen out of, and in all its features
indicated, a -state of concealed.national infidelity, and
of domestic corruption. And now, you ask me what
style is best to build in; and how can I answer,
knowing the meaning of the two styles, but by
another question-do you mean to build as Christians
or as infidels? 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 importance
than this Exchange business; and if they can be at
once answered, the Exchange business settles itself
in a moment. But before I press them farther, I
must ask leave to explain one point clearly.
66. In all my past work, my endeavour has been to




II.-TRAFFIC.


show that good architecture is essentially religiousthe 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 are so apt to look
upon religion as the business of the clergy, not their
own, that the moment they hear of anything depending on 'religion,' they think it must also have depended
on the priesthood; and I have had to take what place
was to be occupied between these two errors, and
fight both, often with seeming contradiction.  Good
architecture is the work of good and believing men;
therefore, you say, at least some people say, 'Good
architecture must essentially have been the work of
the clergy, not of the laity.' No-a thousand times
no; good architecture " has always been the work of
the commonalty, not of the clergy. What, you say,
those glorious cathedrals-the pride of Europe-did
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 labouring citizens and warrior kings. By
the monk it was used as an instrument for the aid
of his superstition: when that superstition became a
* [And all other arts, for the most part; even of incredulous and
secularly-minded commonalties.]




78


THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE.


beautiful madness, and the best hearts of Europe
vainly dreamed and pined in the cloister, and vainly
raged and perished in the crusade,-through that
fury of perverted faith and wasted war, the Gothic
rose also to its loveliest, most fantastic, and finally,
most foolish dreams; and, in those dreams, was
lost.
67. I hope, now, that there is no risk of your misunderstanding 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 religion. You can't
have bits of it here, bits there-you must have it
everywhere, or nowhere. 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 initiated 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.
68. Now there have as yet been three distinct
schools of European architecture. I say, European,
because Asiatic and African architectures 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




II.-TRAFFIC.


79


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 Medieval, which
was the worship of the God of Judgment and Consolation; the 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 fourth religion, and a God of our own,
about which I want to ask you. But I must explain
these three old ones first.
69. I repeat, first, the Greeks essentially worshipped the God of Wisdom; so that whatever
contended against their religion, - to the Jews a
stumbling-block,-was, to the Greeks-Foolishness.
The first Greek idea of deity was that expressed
in the word, of which we keep the remnant in our
words 'Di-urnal' and 'Di-vine'-the god of Day,
Jupiter the revealer.  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 symbols: but
I may note rapidly, that her aegis, 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




8o


THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE.


representative mainly of the chilling horror and sadness (turning men to stone, as it were,) of the outmost
and superficial spheres of knowledge-that knowledge which separates, in bitterness, hardness, and
sorrow, the heart of 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 full-revealed
Athena, strength and peace, in sign of which she is
crowned with the olive spray, and bears the resistless
spear.
This, 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 ardent affection or ultimate
hope; but with a resolute and continent energy of
will, as knowing that for failure there was no consolation, and for sin there was no remission. And
* [It is an erroi to suppose that the Greek worship, or seeking, was
chiefly of Beauty.  It was essentially of rightness and strength,
founded on Forethought: the principal character of Greek art is not
beauty, but design: and the Dorian Apollo-worship and Athenian
Virgin-worship are both expressions of adoration of divine wisdom
and purity. Next to these great deities, rank, in power over the
national mind, Dionysius and Ceres, the givers of human strength and
life: then, for heroic example, Hercules. There is no Venus-worship
among the Greeks in the great times: and the Muses are essentially
teachers of Truth, and of its harmonies. Compare Aratra Pentelici,
~ 200.]




II.-TRAFFIC.


the Greek architecture rose unerring, bright, clearly
defined, and self-contained.
70. Next followed in 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 had to be
healed of, the more divine was the healing. The
practical 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 aspiration, 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 ourselves.
It is, of all architecture, the basest, when base people
build it-of all, the noblest, when built by the noble.
7I. And now note that both these religionsGreek and Mediaeval-perished by falsehood in their
own main purpose. The Greek religion of Wisdom
perished in a false philosophy —' Oppositions of
science, falsely so called.' The Mediaeval religion
of Consolation perished in false comfort; in remission of sins given lyingly. It was the selling of
absolution that ended the Mediaeval faith; and I
6




82


THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE.


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 compounding 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.
72. 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 in vast temple building. Your
Greek worshipped Wisdom, and built you the Parthenon-the Virgin's temple. The Mediaeval worshipped Consolation, and built you Virgin temples
also-but to our Lady of Salvation.   Then the
Revivalist worshipped beauty, of a sort, and built
you Versailles, and the Vatican. Now, lastly, will
you tell me what we worship, and what we build?
73. You know we are speaking always of the
real, active, continual, national worship; that by
which men act, while they live; not that which they
talk of, when they die. Now, we have, indeed, a
nominal religion, to which we pay tithes of property
and sevenths of time; but we have also a practical




II.-TRAFFIC.


% 83


and earnest religion, to which we devote nine-tenths
of our property, and six-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 Athena of
the Market; but she was a subordinate type 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: and how you would laugh at me
if I proposed building a cathedral on the top of one
of these hills of yours, to make it an Acropolis! But
your railroad mounds, vaster than the walls of Babylon; your railroad stations, vaster than the temple of
Ephesus, and innumerable; your chimneys, how much
more mighty and costly than cathedral spires! your
harbour-piers; your warehouses; your exchanges! —
all these are built to your great Goddess of' Gettingon;' and she has formed, and will continue to form,
your 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.
74. There might, indeed, on some theories, be a
conceivably good architecture for Exchanges-that is




84      THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE.


to say, if there were any heroism in the fact or deed
of exchange, which might be typically carved on the
outside of your building. 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 Bacchus slaying melancholy giants, and
earth-born despondencies.  On his temples, the
Greek put contests 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 direction of exchange here.  And the Master
of Christians nbt only left his followers without any
orders as to the sculpture of affairs of exchange
on the outside of buildings, but gave some strong
evidence of his dislike of affairs 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 impious. The wonder has
always been great to me, that heroism has never
been supposed to be in anywise consistent with the




IL.-TRAFFIC.


85


practice of supplying people with food, or clothes;
but rather with that of quartering one's self upon them
for food, and stripping them of their clothes. Spoiling
of armour is an heroic deed in all ages; but the
selling of clothes, old, or new, has never taken any
colour of magnanimity. Yet one does not see why
feeding the hungry and clothing the naked should
ever become base businesses, even when engaged in
on a large scale. If one could contrive to attach
the notion of conquest to them anyhow! so that,
supposing there were anywhere an obstinate race,
who refused to be comforted, one might take some
pride in giving them compulsory comfort I* and, as it
were, 'occupying a country' with one's gifts, instead
of one's armies? If one could only consider 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 serviceable 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
the elements to fight with, stronger than men; and
nearly as merciless.
* [Quite serious, all this, though it reads like jest]




86


THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE.


75. The only absolutely and unapproachably
heroic element in the soldier's work seems to bethat he is paid little for it-and regularly: while you
traffickers, and exchangers, and others occupied in
presumably benevolent business, like to be paid much
for it-and by chance. I never can make out how it
is that a knight-errant does not expect to be paid
for his trouble, but a pedlar-errant always does;that people are willing to take hard knocks for
nothing, but never to sell ribands cheap; that they
are ready to go on fervent crusades, to recover the
tomb of a buried God, but never on any travels to
fulfil the orders of a living one;-that they will 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.*
76. If you chose 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
* [Please think over this paragraph, too briefly and antithetically
put, but one of those which I am happiest in having written.]




IL-TRAFFIC.


87


base, for the sticking of bills. And in the innermost chamniersof it there might be a statue of
Britannia of the Market, who may have, perhaps
advisably, a partridge for her 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, 'Perdix fovit quae non
peperit.'* Then, for her spear, she might have a
weaver's beam; and on her shield, instead of St.
George's Cross, the Milanese boar, semi-fleeced, with
the town of Gennesaret proper, in the field; and the
legend,' In the best market,'t and her corslet, 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 goddess, with applause.
77. Nevertheless, I want to point out to you
certain strange characters in this goddess of yours.
She differs from the great Greek and Mediaval
deities essentially in two things —first, as to the
continuance of her presumed power; secondly, as to
the extent of it.
* Jerem. xviL II, (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'
t [Meaning, fully, ' We have brought our pigs to it.7




88


THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE.


1st, as to the Continuance.
The Greek Goddess of Wisdom gave continual
increase of wisdom, as the Christian Spirit of
Comfort (or Comforter) continual increase of comfort.
There was no question, with these, of any limit or
cessation of function. 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, I 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 business-the
study of spending. For spend you must, and as
much as you make, ultimately. You gather corn: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 way
of spending it. But if you keep it, that you 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




II.-TRAFFIC.


89


me what you'll do with it. You shall have thousands
of gold pieces;-thousands of thousands-millionsmountains, of gold: where will you keep them?
Will you put an Olympus of silver upon a golden
Pelion-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 whinstone? But it is not
gold that you want to gather! What is it? greenbacks? No; not those neither. What is it thenis it ciphers after a capital I? Cannot you practise
writing ciphers, and write as many as you Want?
Write ciphers for an hour every morning, 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 I? You will have to answer, after all,
'No; we want, somehow or other, money's worth.'
Well, what is that?    Let your Goddess of
Getting-on discover it, and let her learn to stay
therein.
78. II. But there is yet 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




90


THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE.


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 Goddess 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. Examine 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, when I was last here; *-you have
never told me. Now, shall I try to tell you?
79. Your ideal of human life then is, I think, that
it should be passed in a pleasant undulating world,
with iron and coal everywhere underneath It. On
each pleasant bank of this world is to be a beautiful
mansion, with two wings; and stables, and coachhouses; a moderately-sized park; a large garden and
hot-houses; and pleasant carriage drives through the
shrubberies. In this mansion are to live the favoured
votaries of the Goddess; the English gentleman,
with his gracious wife, and his beautiful family;
he 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
* 7wo Paths, p. 17.




II.-TRAFFIC.


9I


bank, is to be the mill; not less than a quarter of a
mile long, with one steam engine at each end, and
two in the middle, and a chimney three hundred
feet high.  In this mill are to be in constant
employment from eight hundred to a thousand
workers, who never drink, never strike, always go
to church on Sunday, and always express themselves
in respectful language.
80. Is not that, broadly, and in the main features,
the kind of thing you propose to yourselves? 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 Gettingon, to a thousand families she is the Goddess of not
Getting-on.  'Nay,' you say, 'they have all their
chance.' Yes, so has every one in a lottery, but there
must always be the same number of blanks. 'Ah!
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




92


THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE.


friends. Work must always be, and captains of work
must always be; and if you 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
always 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 not follow, because you are general of an army,
that you are to take all the treasure, or land, it wins;
(if it fight for treasure or land); 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 possible
quantity of the nation's work for themselves. There
is no test of real kinghood so infallible as that.
Does the crowned creature live simply, bravely,
unostentatiously? probably he is a King. Does he
cover his body with jewels, and his table with delicates? in all probability he is not a King. It is
possible he may be, as Solomon was; but that is
when the nation shares his splendour 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,




II:-TRAFFIC.              93
which are of royal labourers governing loyal
labourers; who, both leading rough lives, establish
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
maintenance-over field, or mill, or mine, are you to
take all the produce of that piece of the foundation
of national existence for yourself.
8I. 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. Even good things have
no abiding power —and shall these evil things persist
in victorious evil? 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 Parthenon 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,' butmills-go on for ever? Not so; out of these, better or
worse shall come; and it is for you to choose which.
82. I know that none of this wrong is done




94


THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE.


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 such benevolence
safely. I know that even all this wrong and misery
are brought about by a warped sense of duty, each
of you striving to do his best; but, unhappily, not
knowing for whom this best should be done. And
all our hearts have been betrayed by the plausible
impiety of the modern economist, telling us that,
' To do the best for ourselves, 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,-if not the last actually written (for
this we cannot know), yet assuredly in fact and
power his parting words-in which, endeavouring 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 for ever.
83. They are at the close of the dialogue called




IL-TRAFFIC.


95'


'Critias,' in which he describes, p.rtly from real
tradition, partly in ideal dream, the early state of
Athens; and the genesis, and order, and religion, of
the fabled isle of Atlantis; in which genesis he conceives the same first perfection and final degeneracy
of man, which in our own Scriptural 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 lovingly to all that had kindred
with them in divineness; for their uttermost spirit
was faithful 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 possessions; 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 material possession, would be to lose that first, and their virtue and.affection together with it. And by such reasoning,




96


THE GROWN OF WILD OLIVE.


and what of the divine nature remained in them,
they 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 became
unable to endure the courses of fortune; and fell into
shapelessness of life, and baseness in the sight of him
who could see, having lost everything that was fairest
of their honour; while to the blind hearts which
could not discern the true life, tending to happiness,
it seemed that they were then chiefly noble and
happy, being filled with all iniquity of inordinate
possession and power. Whereupon, the God of Gods,
whose Kinghood is in laws, beholding a once just
nationr thus cast intonisery, and desiring to lay such. t   punishment upon th{m as might make them repent
into restrainint, ghered together all the gods into
his dwelling place, which from heaven's centre overlooks whatever has part in creation; and having
assembled them, he said'84. The rest is silence. Last words 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
England are furnace-burnt into the likeness of the
plain of Dura: this idol, forbidden to us, first of




II.-TRAFFIC:


97


all idols, by our 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 withering into Hades. But if
you can fix some conception of a true human state of
life to be striven for-life, good for all men, as for yourselves; if you can determine some honest and simple
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 literature, your daily labours, your domestic
affection, and citizen's duty, will join and increase
into one magnificent harmony. You will know 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,
crimson-veined, is indeed eternal.
* [I imagine the Hebrev4 chant merely intends passionate repetition,
not a distinction of this somewhat fanciful kind; yet we may profitably
make it in reading the English. 


7




98


THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE.


LECTURE III.
WAR.
(Deliverd at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, 1865.)
85. 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
without immodesty, lecture younger painters upon
painting, 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 your's.  Nay, I knew that there ought to be no
such need, for the great veteran soldiers of England




III.-WAR.


99


are now men every way so thoughtful, so noble, and
so good, that no other teaching than their knightly
example, and their few words of grave and tried
counsel, should be either necessary for you, or even,
without assurance of due modesty in the offerer,
endured by you.
86. 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 remains at peace. Commerce
is barely consistent with fine art; but cannot produce
it. Manufacture not only is unable to produce it,
but invariably destroys whatever seeds of it exist.
There is no great art possible to a nation but that
which is based on battle.
87. Now, though I hope you love fighting for its
own sake, you must, I imagine, be surprised at my
assertion that there is any such good fruit of fighting.
You supposed, probably, that your office was to
defend the works of peace, but certainly not to found




I00


THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE.


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 the result of that enquiry
was my fixing upon one man as the greatest of all
Venetians, and therefore, as I believed, of all painters
whatsoever. I formed this faith (whether right or
wrong matters at present nothing) in the supremacy
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 shreds of ragged canvas,
mixed up with the laths of the roof, rent through by
three Austrian shells. Now, it is not every lecturer
who could tell you that he had seen three of his
favourite pictures torn to rags by bomb-shells. And
after such a sight, it is not every lecturer who would
tell you that, nevertheless, war was the foundation of
all great art.
88. Yet the conclusion is inevitable, from any
careful comparison of the states of great historic 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




IIL-WAR.


II0


is founded on the perpetual contemplation of death,
and of future judgment, by the mind of a nation of
which 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
splendour of the Egyptian 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, being
as nearly as possible correspondent to theirs.
89. All the rudiments of art then, and much more
than the rudiments of all science, are laid first by
this great warrior-nation, which held in contempt all
mechanical trades, and in absolute hatred the peaceful
life of shepherds. From Egypt art passes directly
into Greece, where all poetry, and all painting, are
nothing else than the description, praise, or dramatic
representation of war, or of the exercises which
prepare for it, in their connection with offices 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.
by the images of their guiding gods. Apollo is the
god of all wisdom of the intellect; he bears the




102


THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE.


arrow and the bow, before he bears the lyre. Again,
Athena is the goddess of all wisdom in conduct. Yet
it is by the helmet and the shield, oftener than by
the shuttle, that she is distinguished from  other
deities.
go. There were, however, two great differences
in principle between the Greek and the Egyptian
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 Egyptians, they did not make
the fatal mistake of despising agricultural and
pastoral life; but perfectly honoured both. These
two conditions of truer thought raise them quite
into the highest rank of wise manhood that has
yet been reached; for all our great arts, and nearly
all our great thoughts, have been borrowed or derived
from them.   Take away from us what they have
given; and we hardly can imagine how low the
modern* European would stand.
91. Now, you are to remember, in passing to the
next phase of history, that though you must have
war to produce art-you must also have much more
than war; namely, an art-instinct or genius in the
people; and that, though all the talent for painting
* [The modern, observe, because we have lost all inheritance from
Florence or Venice, and are now pensioners upon the Greeks only.]




III.-WAR.


103


in the world won't make painters of you, unless
you have a gift for fighting as well, you may have
the gift for fighting, and none for painting. Now,
in the next great dynasty 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
imponere 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




104       THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE.
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 extremity of his age.
92. 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 corruption, 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 all
live the lives, of soldiers.
93. '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
* [Henry Dandolo: the king of Bohemia at Crecy is very grand,
too, and in the issue, his knighthood is, to us, more memorable.]




III.-WAR.


Ios


must 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 foundation
of all the arts, I mean also that it is the foundation
of all the high virtues and faculties of men.
94. 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 together, 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 civilisation; 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
death.  I found, in brief, that all great nations
learned their truth of word, and strength 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.
95. 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.




Io6


THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE.


It is not the rage of a barbarian wolf-flock, as
under Genseric or Suwarrow; nor the habitual restlessness and rapine of mountaineers, as on the old
borders of Scotland; 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 which the natural restlessness
and love of contest 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 institutions, 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 out of 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.
96. I. And first, of war for exercise or play. I




III.-WAR.


107


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 a 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 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 subject 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 incipient civilization until now,
* [A wholesome calamity, observe; not to be shrunk from, though
not to be provoked. But see the opening of the notes on Prussia,
p. 177.]




1o8


THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE.


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 providing for the
necessities of life;-the other part proudly idle, and
continually therefore needing recreation, in which
they use the productive and laborious orders partly
as their cattle, and partly as their puppets or pieces
in the game of death.
97.* Now, remember, whatever virtue or goodliness there may be in this game of war, rightly played,
there is none when you thus play it with a multitude
of human pawns.
If you, the gentlemen of this or any other kingdom,
choose to make your pastime of contest, do so, and
welcome; but set not up these unhappy peasant-pieces
upon the chequer of forest and field. 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
* [I dislike more and more every day the declamatory forms in
which what I most desired to make impressive was arranged for oral
delivery; but these two paragraphs, 97 and 98, sacrifice no accuracy in
their endeavour to be pompous, arid are among the most importantly
true passages I have ever writte. ]




III.-WAR.


IC9


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, ought you to shrink
from the thought of sitting above a theatre pit in
which even a few condemned slaves were slaying each
other only for your delight! And do you not shrink
from the fact of sitting above a theatre pit, where,not condemned slaves,-but the 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 generations? 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 heartinterest of their own at peril in the contest-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
murmur as of the wind's sighing, when myriads of
souls expire. They shut out the death-cries; and
are happy, and talk wittily among themselves. That
is the utter literal fact, of what our ladies do in their
pleasant lives.
98. Nay, you might answer, speaking with them



I O


THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE.


'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 nations be settled otherwise
than by war?'
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 that, 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
this 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 neighbour, 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 spoil 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 arbitrement that one of you has a larger house



III.-WAR.


I II


hold than the other; so that, if the servants or tenants
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 honour, 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 thispublic 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 the
parchment of your treaties of peace are the deserted
hearth, and the fruitless field.
99. There is a ghastly ludicrousness in 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 unofficial language, is
the net purport and upshot of war? To my own
knowledge, for example, there dwell and toil, in the
British village of Dumdrudge, usually some fivehundred souls.  From  these, by certain "natural
enemies" of the French, there are successively
selected, during the French war, say thirty ablebodied men. Dumdrudge, at her own expense, has




I I2


THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE.


suckled and nursed them; she has, not without difficulty and sorrow, fed them up to manhood, and even
trained them to crafts, so that one can weave, another
build, another hammer, and the weakest can stand
under thirty stone avoirdupoise. 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 artizans, from a French
Dumdrudge, in like manner wending; till at length,
after infinite effort, the two parties come into actual
juxtaposition; and Thirty stands fronting Thirty,
each with a gun in his hand.
'Straightway the word " Fire!" 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! They lived far enough apart;
were the entirest strangers; nay, in so wide a universe,
there was even, unconsciously, by commerce, some
mutual helpfulness between them. How then? Simpleton! their governors had fallen out; and instead of
shooting one another, had the cunning to make these
poor blockheads shoot.'-Sartor Resartus.




III.-W-     AR.


II3


Ioo. Positively, then, gentlemen, the game of
battle 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 history 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 danger. This is a fixed instinct in the fine
race of them; and I cannot help fancying that fair
fight is the best play for them; and that a tournament was a better game than a steeple-chase.
The time may perhaps come, in France, as well as
here, for universal hurdle-races and cricketing: but
I- do not think universal cricket 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 design a monument for a dead knight,
in Westminster Abbey, with a carving of a bat atone end, and a ball at the other. It may be the
remains in me only of savage Gothic prejudice; 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 knight merely to have,
8




114


THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE.


ridden out occasionally to fight his neighbour for
exercise; assume him even a soldier of fortune, and
to 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 thrusting     than by
batting;-much rather than by betting.    Much
rather that he should ride war horses, than back
race horses; and-I say it sternly and deliberatelymuch rather would I have him slay his neighbour
than cheat him.
IoI. 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 is the highest bred, the most selfdenying, 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,




III.-WAR,


115


and 'any knavery that is in you may stay unchallenged 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 him
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 pre —
sence of death, always has had, and must have,
power both in the making and testing of honest
men. But for the final testing, observe, you must
make the issue of battle strictly dependent 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 the 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 those 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 besides, and to decide them rightly.*
I02. And the other reasons for this mode of
* Compare Fors Clavigera, Letter XIV. p. 9.




Il6


THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE.


decision of cause, are the diminution both of the
material destructiveness, 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
Council. Everything that can be urged against war
is there simply, exhaustively, and most graphically
stated. And all, there urged, is true. But the two
great counts of evil alleged against war by that
most thoughtful writer, hold only against modern
war. If you have to take away masses of men from
all industrial employment,-to feed them  by the
labour of others,-to 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 harbours;-and
if, finally, having brought masses of men, counted by
hundreds of thousands, face to face, you tear those
masses to pieces with jagged shbt, and leave the
living creatures, 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




III.-WAR.


II7


the cost of your work;-What book of judgment
sentence the guilt of it?
o13. That, I say, is modern war,-scientific war, — I 
chemical and mechanic war,-how much worse than
the savage's poisoned arrow! And yet you will tell
me, perhaps, that any other war than this is impossible now. It may be so; the progress of science
cannot, perhaps, be otherwise registered than by
new facilities of destruction; and the brotherly love
of our enlarging Christianity be only proved by
multiplication 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 J
in darkness, and join the heathen's practice to the
Christian's creed.  I read you this from a book
which probably most of you know well, and all
ought to know-Muller's ' Dorians; '*-but I have
put the points I wish you to remember in closer
connection than in his text.
I04. 'The chief characteristic of the warriors of
Sparta was great composure and a subdued strength;
the violence (A'aaa) of Aristodemus and Isadas
being considered as deserving rather of blame than
praise; and these qualities in general distinguished
the Greeks from the northern Barbarians, whose
boldness always consisted in noise and tumult For
* Vol. ii. Chap. 12, ~ 9.




I18


THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE.


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 occasion in Crete to the god of
love, as the confirmer 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 splendour 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 valour.
The conduct of the Spartans in battle denotes a
high and noble disposition, which rejected all the
extremes of brutal rage. The pursuit of the enemy
ceased when the victory was completed; and after
the signal for retreat had been given, all hostilities
ceased. The spoiling 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 considered as
ill-omened.'
105. 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




III.-WAR.


119


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; the victors at indecisive Gettysburg
confess to the loss of 30,000.
io6. 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 kingsthen in that of nations.
Now, mind you this first,-that I speak either
about kings, or masses of men, with a fxed convic- /
tion 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 when
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 those who 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




I20


THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE.


infinite fall; but 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.
I07. Take the faith in its utmost terms. When
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,-from
any hope of reward, or any fear of punishment; he
does it because he is a man. But when a mother,
living among the fair fields of merry 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; that I believe to be not
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,. —which 'natural' and which 'unnatural.' Choose
your creed at once, I beseech you:-choose it with
unshaken choice,-choose it for ever. Will you take,
for foundation of act and hope, the faith that this
man was such 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




III.-WAR.


121


it? Did the guardian who died in 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 or wolves, half beast, half
devil. Believe that, and indeed you may sink to
that. But refuse that, and have faith that God 'made
you upright,' though you have sought out many
inventions; 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.'
io8. 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 ascertainable. 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 falseness, as you get
deformity: and this so steadily and assuredly, that!




122


THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE.


the two great words which, in their first use, meant
only perfection of race, have come, by consequence of
the invariable connection of virtue with the fine
human nature, both to signify benevolence of disposition. The word 'generous,' and the word 'gentle,'
both, in their origin, meant only 'of pure race,' but
because charity and tenderness are inseparable from
this purity of blood, the words which once stood only
for pride, now stand as synonyms for virtue.
Io9. Now, this being the true power of out
inherent humanity, and seeing that all the aim of
education should be to develope 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 me 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 man 'right'-how these, I say,
throughout history, should so rarely pronounce themselves on the side of the poor and of justice, but
continually maintain themselves and their own
interests by oppression of the poor, and by wresting
of justice; and how this should be accepted as so
natural, that the word loyalty, which means faithfulness to law, is used as if it were only the duty of
a people to be loyal to their king, and not the duty




I1I.-WAR.


I23


of a king to be infinitely more loyal to his people.
How 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 less for, -his passengersthinks it rather incumbent on his passengers, in any/
number, to die for him 
I o. Think, I beseech you, of the wonder of this.
The sea captain, not captain by divine right, but only
by company's appointment;-not a man of royal
descent, but only a plebeian who can steer;-not
with the eyes of the world upon him, but with 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 for ever before unescapable eyes of men,your captain whose every thought and act are beneficent, or fatal, from sunrising to setting, blessing as
the sunshine, or shadowing as the night,-this captain,
as you find him in history, for the most part thinks




124


THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE.


only how he may tax his passengers, and sit at most
ease in his state cabin!
I II. For observe, if there had been indeed in the
hearts of the rulers of great multitudes of 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 never
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 complaints, 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 absolute 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 productive, and every
rock defensive, and every human being happy;
should we not have enough on our hands, think
you?
II2. But if the ruler has any other aim than this;
if, careless of the result of his interference, he desire
only the authority to interfere; and, regardless 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




III.-WAR.


125


miles' space of good, of course he will try to add to
his territory; and to add illimitably. 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 wanton,
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 prince,
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 body to infect a nation:-but which of you, the
most ambitious, would desire a drifting kinghood,
robed in consuming fire, or a poison-dipped sceptre
whose touch was mortal?  There is no true potency, 
remember, but that of help; nor true ambition, but
ambition to save.
II3. And then, observe farther, this true power,
the power of saving, depends neither on multitude of
men, nor on extent of territory. We are continually




I26


THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE.


assuming that nations become strong according to
their numbers.  They indeed 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, how 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 mihd, nor of
two minds, but can only be of no mind? Suppose
they are a mere helpless mob; tottering into precipitant catastrophe, like a waggon-load of stones when
the wheel comes off. Dangerous enough for their
neighbours, certainly, but not 'powerful.'
114. Neither does strength depend on extent of
J  territory, any more than upon number of 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
wise hearts is better than a wilderness full of fools;
and only that nation gains true territory, which gains
itself.
II5. And now for the brief practical outcome of
all this.  Remember, no government is ultimately




IIL-WAR.


127


strong, but in proportion to its kindness and justice 
and that a nation does not strengthen, by merely
multiplying and diffusing itself.  We have not
strengthened as yet, by multiplying into 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 fellowship
and brotherhood. And lastly, it does not strengthen
itself by seizing dominion over races whom it cannot
benefit. Austria is not 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, depends
wholly on the degree in which our influence on the j
native race shall be benevolent and exalting.
116. But, as it is at their own peril that any
race extends their dominion in mere desire of power,
so it is at their own still greater peril that they
refuse to undertake aggressive war, according to 
their force, whenever they are assured that their
authority would be helpful and protective.  Nor'
need you listen to any sophistical objection of the
impossibility of knowing when a people's help is




128


THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE.


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 in doubt
by whom, or in what cause, his aid is needed. I
hold it my duty to make no political statement
of any special bearing in this presence; but I tell
you broadly and boldly, that, within these last ten
years, we tEnglish have, as a knightly nation, lost
our spurs: we have fought where we should not
have fought, for 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 differs from it
only by being, not only malignant, but dastardly.
II7. 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 w;-war waed sim        defence
of the country in which we were born, and for the
maintenance and execution of her laws, by whomsoever threatened or defied. It is to this duty that
I suppose most men entering the army consider
themselves in reality to be bound, and I want
you now to reflect what the laws of mere defence


(.




III.-WAR.


I29


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 England. I want you to feel what
this vow of yours indeed means, or is gradually
coming to mean.
18. You take it upon you, first, while you are
sentimental schoolboys; you go into your military
convent, or barracks, just as a girl goes into her
convent while she is a sentimental 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 army?  Because, on the whole, it is the
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 that 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
raising harvests, than in burning them; more in
building houses, than in shelling them-more in
9




130


THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE.


winning money by your own work, wherewith 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, then, as for your own
honour, and the honour of your families, you choose
brave death in a red coat before brave life in a
black one, you are sentimental; 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 honoured 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.
1 9. 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




IIL-WAR.


13I


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 are 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 being
driven to your work without thought, at another's
bidding. Again, some slaves are bought with 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-works,
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.
I20. But, remember, in thus vowing ourselves to
be the slaves of any master, it ought to be some
subject of forethought with us, 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




132


THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE.


only to obey. But are you sure that you have left
all your country behind, or that the part of it you
have so left is indeed the best part of it? Supposeand, remember, it is quite conceivable-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 those who are the masters, ought
to have been the slaves! If it is a noble and wholehearted England, whose bidding you are bound to
do, it is well; but if you are yourselves the best of
her heart, and the England you have left be but
a half-hearted England, how  say you of your
obedience? You were too proud to become shopkeepers: are you satisfied, then, to become the
servants of shopkeepers?  You were too proud to
become merchants or farmers yourselves: will you
have merchants or farmers, then, for your fieldmarshals? 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 it? 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 Little Bethels?
121. It is not so yet, nor will be so, I trust, for
ever; but what I want you to see, and to be assured
of, is, that the ideal of soldiership is not mere




III.-WAR.


133




passive obedience and bravery; that, so far from this,
no country is in a healthy state which has separated, 1
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 involving 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
consequences,-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 cowardly, 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.
122. 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 to stand at a shop-door, to protect shopboys who are cheating inside. A soldier's vow to his
country is that he will die for the guardianship of her
domestic virtue, of her righteous laws, and of her
any-way challenged or endangered honour. A state


()V
'('




134


THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE.


without virtue, without laws, and without honour, he
' is bound    not to defend; nay, bound to         redress by
his own right hand that which he sees to be base
in her.
123. So sternly is this 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; that 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 also 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 leading now,
if ever! Do you know what, by this beautiful division
of labour (her brave men fighting, and her cowards
thinking), she has come at last to think? Here is a
paper in my hand,* a good one too, and an honest
* [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 sentence, I left the number containing
it on the table, when I gave 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 Ir, I866, summarily digests and presents
the maximum folly of moder thought in this respect. 'Civilization,'
says the Baron, 'is the economy of power, and English power is coal.'




III.-WAR. '


135


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 coolness of head,
or steadiness of will?    No: not to these.    To our
thinkers, or our statesmen, or our poets, or our
captains, or our martyrs, or the patient labour of
our poor?    No: not to these; or at least not to
these in any chief measure.    Nay, says the journal,
'more than any agency, it is the cheapness and I;
abundance of 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.
I24. 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:
Not altogether so, my chemical friend. Civilization is the making of
civil persons, which is a kind of distillation 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 lives.']




136       THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE.
you must teach her that all the true greatness she
ever had, she won while her fields were green and
her faces ruddy; and that greatness is still possible
for Englishmen, even though the ground be not
hollowunder their feet, nor the sky black over their
heads.
125. And bear with me, you soldier youths, who
are thus in all ways the hope of your country, or
must be, if she have any hope;-if I urge you with
rude earnestness to 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
indolent in his youth. Many a giddy and thoughtless boy has become a good bishop, or a good lawyer,
or a good merchant; but no such an one ever 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 of' the thoughtlessness
of youth' indulgently.  I had infinitely rather hear
of thoughtless old age, and the indulgence due to
that. When a man has done his work, and nothing
can any way be materially altered in his fate, let him
forget his toil, and jest with his fate, if he will; but
what excuse can you find for wilfulness of thought,
at the very time when every crisis of future fortune
hangs on your decisions?  A youth thoughtless l




III.-WAR.


137


when all the happiness of his home for ever depends
on the chances, or the passions, of an hour4 A youth
thoughtless! when the career of all his days depends
on the opportunity of a moment! A youth thoughtless! when his every act is as a torch to the laid
train of future conduct, and every imagination a
fountain of life or death! Be thoughtless in any after
years, rather than now-though, indeed, there is only
one place where a man may be nobly thoughtless,his death-bed. No thinking should ever be left to be
done there.
I26. Having, then, resolved that you will 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-industr,
and honour. I say, first, industry, for it is in this
that soldier youth are especially tempted to fail. Yet,
surely, there is no reason, because your life may
possibly dr 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 other
men; and while, for others, all knowledge is often




138


THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE.


little more than a means of amusement, there is no
form of science which a soldier may not at some time
or other find bearing on business of life and death.
A young mathematician may be excused for languor
in studying curves to be described only with a pencil;
but not in tracing those which are to be described
with a rocket. Your knowledge of a wholesome herb
may involve the feeding of an army; and acquaintance with an obscure point of geography, the success
of a campaign. Never waste an instant's time, 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 carelessly take for
play, you buy with blood.
127. 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 yourselves in the issues of
betting.  It unites nearly every condition of folly
and vice; you concentrate 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 forming, merely because they are your
own. All the insolence of egotism is in this; and-so




III.-WAR.


139


far as the love of excitement is complicated with the
hope of winning money, you turn yourselves into
the basest sort of tradesmen-those who live by
speculation. 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. Work
faithfully, and you will put yourselves in possession
of a glorious and enlarging happiness; not such as
can be won by the speed of a horse, or marred by
the obliquity of a ball.
128. 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 honour; /
not honour in the common 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 necessity for more ghastly
danger, but there is none for less worthiness of
character, than in olden time. You may be true|
knights yet, though perhaps not equites; you may
have to call yourselves 'canonry' instead of 'chivalry,'
but that is no reason why you should not call yourselves true men. So the first thing you have to see to




140


THE-CROWN OF WILD OLIVE.


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. Vow yourselves crusaders to redeem that
sacred sepulchre. And remember, before all things
-for no other memory will be so protective of youthat the highest law of this knightly truth is that
under which it is vowed to women. Whomsoever else
you deceive, whomsoever you injure, whomsoever you
leave unaided, 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-everence, to all womanhood.
I29. And now let me turn for a moment to you,
-wives ndn    idens, who are the souls of soldiers;
to 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




III.-WAR.


I41


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 labour 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 to suffer; to surrender and to mourn.
You know that you must not weaken the hearts of
your husbands and lovers, even by the one fear of
which those hearts are capable,-the fear of parting
from you, or of causing you grief. Through weary
years of separation; through fearful expectancies of
unknown fate; through the tenfold bitterness of the
sorrow which might so easily have been joy, and the
tenfold yearning for glorious life struck down in its
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 happiness; to bear yourselves gravely and righteously in
the dazzling of the sunshine of morning; not to forget




142


THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE.


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
own wayward wills; 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 in your hands: what you would have
them be, they shall be, if you not only desire to have
them so, but deserve to have them so; for they are
but mirrors in which 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 wil forget 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, they will be fools for you: such and so absolute is your rule over them. You fancy, perhaps, as




II. —WARt


143


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! the true rule is just the reverse of that; a
true wife, in her husband's house, is his servant; it is
in his heart that sle is queen. Whatever of best he
can conceive, it is her part to be; whatever of highest
he 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 clamour, he must win his
praise; in her, through all the world's warfare, he
must find his peace.
I30. 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 place among
us. And the real, final, reason for all the poverty,
misery, and rage of battle, throughout Europe, is
simply that fyou women, however good, however
religious, however self-sacrificing for those whom you
love, are to selfish and too thoughtless to take pains
for any creature out of your own immediate circles.
You fancy that you are sorry for the pain of others.




144


THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE.


Now I just tell you this, that if the usual course of
war, instead of unroofing peasants' houses, and ravaging peasants' fields, merely broke the china upon
your own drawing-room tables, no war in civilized
countries 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 conscience toward God, vow
that she will mourn, at least outwardly, for His killed
creatures. Your praying is useless, and your churchgoing 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 VQW 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 tellyouag
warwould last aweek.
13. And, lastly. You women.of England are
all now shrieking with one voice,-you and your
clergymen together,-because you hear of your Bibles
being attacked. If you choose to obey your Bibles,




III.-WAR.


145


you will never care who attacks them.  It is just
because you never fulfil a single downright precept of
the Book, that you are so careful for its credit: and
just because you don't care to 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 carriagewheels; the Bible tells you to do judgment and
justice,-and you do not know, nor care to know, so
much as what the Bible word 'justice' means. Do
but learn so much pf God's truth as that comes to;
know what He means when 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 is also written, 'In Righteousness
He doth judge, and make war.'


10




146


THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE.


LECTURE IV.
THE FUTURE OF ENGLAND.
(Delivered at the R.A. Institution, Woolwich, December I4, I869.)
132. I WOULD fain have left to the frank expression 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 the trials,
and free from the responsibilities of 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 hopeful of us, cannot but now be in




IV.-THE FUTURE OF ENGLAND.


147


many 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 apparently departing
power of feudalism; and another struggle, no less
imminent, and far more dangerous, between wealth
and pauperism. 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 millionaire with the noble, in
resistance to a multitude, crying, part of it for bread
and part of it for liberty.
I33. 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 himself.
I34. Thus the causes of wealth and noblesse are
not the same; but opposite. On the other hand,
the causes of anarchy and of the poor are not the "
same, but opposite.  Side by side, in the same
rank, are now indeed set the pride that revolts




148


THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE.


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 that, thus, it
has become impossible to give due support to the
cause of order, without seeming to countenance
injury; and impossible to plead justly the claims
of sorrow, without seeming to plead also for those of
license.
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.
I35. 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 governed; generally by
kings-always by single leaders of some kind.
But for the last fifty years they have begun to
suspect, and of late they have many of them
concluded, that they have been on the whole illgoverned, or misgoverned, by their kings.  Whereupon they say, more and more widely, 'let us
henceforth have no kings; and no government
at alL*




IV.-THE FUTURE OF ENGLAND.


I49


Now we said, we must face the full truth of the
matter, in order to see what we are to do. And the
truth is that the people have been misgoverned;- 
that very little is to be said, 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,-and as these classes are not wanting or
unimportant in any human society,-the experiment
is likely to be tried extensively. And the world
may be quite content to endure much suffering
with this fresh hope, and retain its faith in anarchy,
whatever comes of it, till it can endure no
more.
I36. Then, secondly. The people have begun
to suspect that one particular form of this past
misgovernment 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, meant only wearing fine clothes,
and living on good fare at their expense. And, I
am sorry to say, the people are quite right in thisjl
opinion also. If you enquire into the vital fact of
the matter, this you will find to be the constant
structure of European society for the thousand
years of the feudal system; it was divided into




I53


THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE.


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.
I37. Now, thirdly-and here is much the worst,
phase of the crisis. This past system of misgovernment, 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 the mischief. The deadly part of it was,
that the lower orders lost their habit, 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




IV.-THE FUTURE OF ENGLAND.


I5I


noble and bright they were, and the more you could
reverence their virtue, the happier you would be. On
the contrary, if you were 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 some- V
thing to reverence; and all the baseness and misery
of humanity, begin in a habit of disdain. Now, by
general misgovernment, 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 only in the
worship of itself-which can neither see anything
beautiful around it, nor conceive anything virtuous
above it; which has, towards all goodness and great- 
ness, no other feelings than those of the lowest
creatures-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 discipline, than you can the summer fly.
It is a crisis, gentlemen; and time to think of it.
I have roughly and broadly put it before you in its
darkness. Let us look what we may find of light.
138. Only the other day, in a journal which is a
* Compare Time and Tide, ~ I69, and Fors Clavigvera, Letter XIV.
page 9.


I




152


THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE.


fairly representative exponent of the Conservatism of
our day, and for the most part not at all in favour 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. Open or not-the debate is near.
What is to become of them? And the answer to
such question depends first on their being able to
answer another question —' What is the use of
them!' For some time back, 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 nation is getting impatient of
impediments to business; and certainly, sooner or
later, will think it needless to maintain these
expensive obstacles to its humours. And I have
not heard, either in public, or from any of themselves, a clear expression of their own conception of
their use. So that it seems thus to become 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 country. If they answer that use, the country




IV.-THE FUTURE OF ENGLAND.


153


will rejoice in keeping them; if not, that will become
of them which must of all things found to have lost
their serviceableness.
139. Here, therefore, is the one question, at this
crisis, for them, and for us. Will they be lords
indeed, and give us laws-dukes indeed, and give us
guiding-princes indeed, and give 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 them who can stand forward with open
English brows, and say,-So far as in me lies, I will
govern with my might, not for Dieu et mon Droit,
but for the first grand reading of the war cry, from
which that was corrupted, 'Dieu et Droit.' Amongle
them 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 England. How many
yet of you are there, knights errant now beyond all
former fields of danger-knights patient now beyond
all former endurance; who still retain the ancient
and eternal purpose of knighthood, to subdue thef
wicked, and aid the weak? To them, be they few
or many, we English people call for help to the




154


THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE.


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 the wicked as they will.'
140. 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.  Hitherto, soldiers have given their
livesfor 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 themhonourable 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; not 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.
I41. 'To live in it, as many as may!' How




IV.-THE FUTURE OF ENGLAND.         15 5
many do you think may? How many can       How
many do you want to live there? As masters,
your first object must be to increase 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 definitelyyour island has only so much standing room-but
*   you can increase the worth indefinitely.  It is but a
little island;-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.
142. To fill this little island with true friendsmen 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 white 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 they
not space enough for its pain? Must we remain
here also savage,-here at enmity with each other,here foodless, houseless, in rags, in dust, and without
hope, as thousands and tens of thousands of us are




156


THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE.


lying? Do not think it, gentlemen. The thought
that it is inevitable is the last infidelity; infidelity not
to God only, but to every creature and every law that
He 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 valour, and, according to
their understanding, their benevolence, are constant.
The Wars of the Roses, which are as a fearful crimson
shadow on our land, represent the normal condition
of other nations; while from the days of the
Heptarchy downwards we have had examples given
us, in all ranks, of the most varied and exalted
virtue; a heap of treasure that no moth can corrupt,
and which even our traitorship, if we are to become
traitors to it, cannot sully.




IV.-THE FUTURE OF ENGLAND.


I57


I43. And this is the race, then, that we know not
any more how to govern! and this the history which
we are to behold broken off 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 of English greenwood with ashes, and the
people die of cold; our harbours are a forest of
merchant ships, and the people die of hunger.
Whose fault is it? Yours, gentlemen; yours only.
You alone can feed them, and clothe, and bring into
their right minds, for you only can govern-that is to
say, you only can educate them.
I44. 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 'compulsory education' which the
people now ask of you is not catechism, but drill. It
is not teaching the youth of England the shapes of
letters and the tricks of numbers; and then leaving
them to turn their arithmetic to roguery, and their
literature to lust. It is, on the contrary, training




158


THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE.


themLnto the perfect exercise 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-by example.
145. Compulsory! Yes, by all means! ' 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
educated!' 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 his, except by becoming a good
man?-payment enough, I think, if we knew it.
Payment 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 profitable business, but
a costly one; nay, even the best attainments of it are
always unprofitable, in any terms of coin. No nation
*ever made its bread either by its great arts, or its
great wisdoms.  By its minor arts or manufactures,
by its practical knowledges, yes: but its noble




IV.-THE FUTURE OF ENGLAND.


I59


scholarship, its noble philosophy, and its noble art,
are always to be bought as a treasure, not sold for a
livelihood. You do not learn that you may live-you
live that you may learn.  You are to spend on
National 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 possible
number of good and brave Englishmen.  They are
to be your ' money's worth.'
But where is the money to come from? Yes, that
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 annually spend our money, and what we are
getting for it. Observe, I do not mean to enquire
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 national private
expenditure; and know what we spend altogether,
and how.
146. To begin with this matter of education. You
probably have nearly all seen the admirable lecture
lately given by Captain Maxse, at Southampton. It
contains a clear statement of the facts at present
ascertained as to our expenditure in that respect. It
appears that of our public moneys, for every pound
that we spend on education we spend twelve either




I60


THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE.


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 millions public money spent on crime and
want, a more or less conjectural sum of eight millions
for private charities. My impression 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 illconducted persons whom the general course of
misrule now leaves helpless, to be the burden of
the rest.
147. 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 educating
men, gratis. I want to know, as nearly as possible,
what we spend privately a year, in educating horses
gratis. Let us, at least, quit ourselves in this from the
taunt of Rabshakeh, 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 hundred thousand, which is




IV.-THE FUTURE OF ENGLAND.


161


certainly a great deal of money, in making rough
minds bright. I 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. Publicly set down. We must not be
ashamed of the way we spend our money. If our
right hand is not to know what our left does, it must
not be because it would be ashamed 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 in order to
frighten them from 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 them, because they spend them, you say,
unadvisedly. Render them, therefore, an account of
the wages which they give you; and show them, by
II




I62


THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE.


your example, how to spend theirs, to the last farthing
advisedly.
148. It is indeed time to make this an acknowledged subject of instruction to the working man,how to spend his wages. For, gentlemen, we must
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 in summer that came destitute to his door in
the winter. Destitute, and of riotous temper-for
their method of spending wages in their period of
prosperity was by sitting two days a week in the
tavern parlour, ladling port wine, not out of bowls,
but out of buckets.  Well, gentlemen, who taught
them that method of festivity? Thirty years ago,
I, a most inexperienced freshman, went to my first
college supper; at 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 as buckets; there
also, we helped ourselves with ladles. There (for this
beginning of college education was compulsory), I




IV.-THE FUTURE OF ENGLAND.


I63


choosing ladlefuls 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, down stairs and home.
149. Such things are no more; but the fruit of
them remains, and will for many a day to come. The
labourers whom you cannot now shut out of the alehouse 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
diminish their incomes; and, believe me, the way to
deal with your drunken workman is not to lower his
wages,-but to mend his wits.*
I50. And if indeed we do not yet see quite
clearly 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,


* See Appendix, 'Modem   Education,' and compare ~ 70 of
Time and Tide.




I64


THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE.


- and every.man fit for it. See that he holds that place
from Heaven's Providence; and not from his family's
Providence. Let the Lords Spiritual quit themselves
of simony, we laymen will look after the heretics for
them. Let the Lords Temporal 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 knowing, when any officer
is appointed to a new command,-what his former
services and successes have been,-whom he has
superseded,-and on what ground. It will be always a
satisfaction to us; it may sometimes be an advantage
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
honorary incomes.
I51. So much for the master's motto, 'Every
man in his place.'  Next for the labourer'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 honoured,
and aided, and advanced in such degree as may be




.IV.-THE FUTURE OF ENGLAND,


i65


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 punishment 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 problem
of national education, or in other words, of national
employment. For all education begins in work.
What we think, or what we know, or what we believe,
is in the end, of little consequence. The only thing
of consequence is what we do: and for man, woman,
or child, the first point of education is to make them
do their best. 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



i66


THE CROWN OF WILD' OLIVE.


strewn coast into a harbour; 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
education of the whole people, and for their future
happiness, they must have such consistent employment as shall develop all the powers of the fingers
and the limbs, and the brain; and that development
is only to be obtained by hand-labour, of which you
have these four great divisions-hand-labour on the
earth, hand-labour on the sea, hand-labour in art,
hand-labour in war.  Of the last two of these I
cannot speak to-night, and of the first two only with
extreme brevity.
152. I. Hand-labour on the earth, 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-the education always of
noblest lawgivers, kings and teachers; the education
of Hesiod, of Moses, of David, of all the true strength
of Rome; and all its tenderness: the pride of Cincinnatus, and the inspiration of Virgil. Hand-labour
on the earth, and the harvest of it brought forth with
singing:-not steam-piston labour on the earth, and
the harvest of it brought forth with steam-whistling.
You will have no prophet's voice accompanied by




IV.-THE FUTURE OF ENGLAND.


I67


that shepherd's pipe, and pastoral symphony. Do
you know that lately, in Cumberland, in the chief
pastoral district of England, —in Wordsworth's own
home,-a procession of villagers on their festa day
provided for themselves, by way of music, a steamplough whistling at the head of them.
I53. Give me patience while I put the principle
of machine labour before you, as clearly and in as
short compass as possible; it is one that should be
known at this juncture. Suppose a farming proprietor
needs to employ a hundred men on his estate, and
that the labour 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
labourers. He is obliged under such circumstances
to maintain all the men in moderate comfort, and
can only by economy accumulate much for himself.
But, suppose he contrive a machine 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
moment.




I68


THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE.


154. Nay, it is at first answered; no man can in
reality keep half the.produce of 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 which would save many lives. One of my
own great luxuries, for instance, is candlelight-and I
probably burn, for myself alone, as many candles
during the winter, as would comfort the old eyes, or
spare the young ones, of 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
exploding, about modern Arcadia. He has turned
off his fifty men to starve. Now, at some distance
from his own farm, there is another on which the
labourers were working for their bread in the same
way, by tilling the land. The machinist sends over
to these, saying-'I have got food enough for you
without your digging or ploughing any more. I can
maintain you in other occupations instead of ploughing that land; if you rake in its gravel you will find




IV.-THE FUTURE OF ENGLAND.


I69


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
will 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 carriageand you shall Broom them, and some of you ride
behind the carriage with staves in your hands, and I
will keep you much fatter for doing that than you
can keep yourselves by digging.'
155. 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 in this country.
And observe its effect on the national strength.
Without machines, you have a hundred and fifty
yeomen ready to join for defence of the land. You
get your machine, starve fifty of them, make diamondcutters or footmen of as many more, and for your
national defence against an enemy, you have now,
and can have, 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.
* [They were deserting, I am informed, in the early part of this
year, I873, at the rate of a regiment a week.J




THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE.


I70


156. That is one effect of machinery; but at all
events, if we have thus lost in men, we have gained
in riches; instead of 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 become 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, then you attain the real outcome of modern
wisdom and ingenuity. You had your hundred men
honestly at country work; but 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 thieving.
157. By hand-labour, therefore, and that alone,
we are to till the ground. By hand-labour also to
plough the sea; both for food, and in commerce, and
in war: not with floating kettles there neither, but
with hempen bridle, and the winds of heaven in




IV.-THE FUTURE OF ENGLAND.


I71


harness. That is the way the power of Greece rose
on her Egean, the power of Venice on her Adria, of
Amalfi 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 machinery 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
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 habitation, 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 comforter.
I58. 'How impossible?' I know, you     are
thinking. Ah! So far from impossible, it is easy,




I72


THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE.


it is natural, it is necessar, and I declare to you
that, sooner or later, it must be 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 labour;then indeed there will be princes again in the midst
of us, worthy of the island throne,
'This royal throne of kings-this sceptred isleThis fortress built by nature for herself
Against infection, and the hand of war;
This precious stone set in the silver sea;
This happy breed of men-this little world;
This other Eden-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.
159. 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 foreign service, founding new seats of autho



IV.-THE FUTURE OF ENGLAND.


173


rity, and centres of thought, in uncultivated and
unconquered 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 labour no less than in battle;
aiding them with free hand in the prosecution of
discovery, and the victory 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.
I60. And then you may make England itself the
centre of the learning, of the arts, of the courtesies
and felicities of the world. You may cover her
mountains with pasture; her plains with corn, her
valleys with the lily, and her gardens with the 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




174


THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE.


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 bye-word of fools-these, all, have told us with
one voice what we should strive to attain; they not
hopeless of it, but for our follies forced, as it seems,
by heaven, to tell us only partly and in parables,
lest we should hear them and obey.
Shall we never listen to the words of 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 morning, 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.
NOTES ON THE POLITICAL ECONOMY
OF PRUSSIA.
I AM often accused of inconsistency; but believe
myself defensible against the charge with respect
to what I have said on nearly every subject except
that of war. It is impossible 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 silent, till I can choose my conclusion: but, with
respect to war, I am forced to speak, by the necessities
of the 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
12
0 F M




178


APPENDIX.


certainly that the most beautiful characters yet
developed among men have been formed in war;that all great nations have been warrior nations, and
that 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 last lecture, in this volume, addressed to young
soldiers, had for its object to strengthen their trust in
the virtue of their profession. It is inconsistent with
itself, in its closing appeal to women, praying them to
use their influence to bring wars to an end. And
I have been hindered from completing my long
intended notes on the economy of the Kings of
Prussia by continually increasing doubt how far the
machinery and discipline of war, under which they
learned the art of government, was essential for such
lesson; and what the honesty and sagacity of the
Friedrich who so nobly repaired his ruined Prussia,
might have done for the happiness of his Prussia,
unruined.
In war, however, or in 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, is his constant purpose to use
every power entrusted 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.




POLITICAL ECONOMY OF PRUSSIA.


I79


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 mind, and warp it this way
or that; but they are never principal with him. He
believes that war 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 inflicting it, seems to me not
at present determinable.  The historical facts are
that, broadly speaking, none but soldiers, or persons
with a soldierly faculty, have ever yet shown themselves 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 meaning 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
* The late Sir Herbert Edwardes.




i8o


APPENDIX.


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
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's
showing of this, to any careful reader of Friedrich.
But careful readers are but one in the thousand; 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 current and method of thought,
may yet be useful in enabling readers, unaccustomed
to books involving so vast a range of conception, to
discern what, on this one subject only, may be gathered
fron) that history. On any other subject of importance, similar gatherings might be made of other passages. The historian 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,




POLITICAL ECONOMY OF PRUSSIA.


1'81


finding them fitter for examination in connection with
the subject of that book than of this.
I assume, that the reader will take down his first
volume of Carlyle, and read attentively 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 in 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.
Year 928 to 936.-Dawn of Order in Christian
Germany.
Book II. Chap. i. p. 67 (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 protection of men.
Read page 72 with utmost care (5I), '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




182


APPENDIX.


the building of baronial castles for the security of
robbers: and of a standing army consisting of every
nihth man, called a 'burgher' ('townsman')-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,
measuredly, learning it by heart, if it may be. (5 -2.)
II.
936-Iooo.-History 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 the 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 BorRussia, or Prussia proper; (B) the history of Henry
the Fowler's Eastern and Western Marches; asserting




POLITICAL ECONOMY OF PRUSSIA.


183


themselves gradually as Austria and the Netherlands; and (c) the history of this inconsiderable
fortress of Brandenburg, gradually becoming considerable, and the capital city of increasing district between
them. That last history, however, 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 IOOO.
III.
936-0oo0.-State of the Outer Sea.
READ now Chapter II. beginning at page 76 (54),
wherein you will get account of the beginning of
vigorous missionary 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




I84


APPENDIX.


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 the scales; it did not weigh
so much as a web of gossamer. 'Had such excellent
odour, 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 conduct of the angels
on the occasion. Evangelicalism 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 precious; nevertheless,
the missionary work itself you find is wholly vain.
The difference 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 civilising power, as you
will immediately see.
IV.
1000-1030.-History of Brandenburg in Trouble.
Book II. Chap. iii. p. 83 (59).
THE adventures of Brandenburg in contest with
Pagan Prussia, irritated, rather than amended, by St.




POLITICAL ECONOMY OF PRUSSIA.


I85


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 mostly butchered, especially the
priests; and the Wend's 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! 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 idolshape of Him, rude as a triangular log, as a trefoil
grass. I do not find how long Triglaph held his state
on St. Mary's Hill. 'For a time,' says Carlyle,' the
priests all slain or fled,-shadowy Markgraves the
like-church and state lay in ashes, and Triglaph,
like a triple porpoise under the influence of 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.'




I86


APPENDIX.


V.
1030-I I 30.-Brandenburg under the Ditmarsch Markgraves, or Ditmarsch-Stade Markgraves.
Book II. Chap. iii. p. 85 (60).
OF Anglish, or Saxon breed. They attack Brandenburg, under its Triglyphic protector, take it-dethrone
him, and hold the town for a hundred years, their
history 'stamped beneficially on the face of things,
Markgraf after Markgraf getting killed in the business.
"Erschlagen," "slain," fighting with the Heathen
-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  130.
VI.
I 130-1170.-Brandenburg under Albert the Bear.
Book II. Chap iv. p. 9I (64).
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.'
There had been no soldier or king of note among
the Ditmarsch Markgraves, so that you will do well to
fix in your mind successively the three men, Henry




POLITICAL ECONOMY OF PRUSSIA.


I87


the Fowler, St. Adalbert, and 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 Brandenburg.' Read
page 93 (66) carefully, and note this of his economies.
Nothing better is known to me of 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 themselves-either to
become German, and grow milk and cheese in the Dutch
manner, or to disappear from the world.
a                    *      *      *
Aftertwo-hundred and fifty years of barking 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, managing 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 1170, age about
sixty-five.
Now, note in all this the steady gain of soldiership
enforcing order and agriculture, with St. Adalbert




x88


APPENDIX.


giving higher strain to the imagination. Henry the
Fowler establishes walled towns, fighting for mere
peace. Albert the Bear plants the country with
cabbages, fighting for his cabbage-fields. And the
disciples of St. Adalbert, generally, have succeeded 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 dies so peacefully. Mephistopheles, and all his ministers, inhabit there, commanding mephitic clouds and earth-born dreams.
VII.
I 170-1320.-Brandenburg I 5oyears underthieAscanien
Markgraves.
VOL. I. Book II. Chap. viii. p. I35 (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 flowing by, 'in which you
catch various fish;' while trade over the flats and by




POLITICAL ECONOMY OF PRUSSIA.


I89


the dull streams, is widely possible. Of the Ascanien
race, the notablest is Otto with the Arrow, whose story
see, pp. 138-141 (98-Ioo), 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 farther
ransom, rides back with his own price in his hand;
holding himself thereat cheaply bought, though no
angelic legerdemain happens to the 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
no 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 (I319 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 arrangements had been in progress;
but observe first how far we have got.




I90o


APPENDIX.


The Fowler, St. Adalbert, and the Bear have established order, and some sort of Christianity; but the
established persons begin to think somewhat too well of
themselves. On quite honest terms, a dead saint or a
living knight ought to be 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 I
VIII.
1210-I 320.-Civil work, aiding military, during
the Ascanien period.
VOL. I. Book II. Chap. vi. p. IO9 (77).
IN the year I 190, 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 Lubeck,




POLITICAL ECONOMY OF PRUSSIA.


I9r


one Walpot von Bassenheim taking the lead, formed
themselves into an union for succour of the sick and
the dying, set up canvas tents from the Libeck ship
stores, and did what utmost was in them silently in
the name of mercy and heaven. Finding its work
prosper, the little medicinal and weather-fending
company took vows on itself, strict chivalry forms,
and decided to become 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, Hospitallers, 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, ' geliibde,'
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 12IO. 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




I92


APPENDIX.


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 upon him for the sake of his oil, would
not you? The Teutsch Ritters, fighting him for
charity, are they so much inferior to you?
They built, and burnt, innumerable stockades 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 head-quarter. 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; trickling in, or at times streaming. Victorious
Ritterdom 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 crusade to
them. Ottocar, King of Bohemia, with his extensive farshining chivalry, 'conquered Samland in a month;' tore up
the Romova where Adalbert had been massacred, and burnt
it from the face of the earth. A certain fortress was founded
at that time, in Ottocar's presence; and in honour of him




POLITICAL ECONOMY.


193


they named it King's Fortress, 'K6nigsberg.' 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
Hapsburg a little, if he lives.
Conversion, and complete conquest once come, there was
a happy time for Prussia; ploughshare instead of sword;
busy sea-havens, German towns, getting built; churches
everywhere rising; grass growing, and peaceable cows, where
formerly had been quagmire 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,
we perceive, it was the rallying place of all brave men 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 stumporatory, 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 gift), such as it may be,
in building the lofty rhyme, the lofty review article, for a
discerning public that has sixpence to spare I Times alter
greatly.*
We must pause here again for a moment to think
* I would much rather print these passages of Carlyle in large
golden letters than small black ones; but they are only here at all for
unlucky people who can't read them with the context.
I3




194


APPENDIX.


where we are, and who is with us. The Teutsch Ritters have been fighting, independently 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 manufacturing 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 Christian than its longer-converted
neighbours.
Towns are built, Konigsberg (King Ottocar'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 Liibeck law; and all was ploughing and trading.
But Brandenburg itself, what of it?
The Ascanien Markgraves rule it on the whole
prosperously down to  320, when their line expires,
and it falls into the power of Imperial Austria.




POLITICAL ECONOMY OF PRUSSIA.


195


IX.
I320-14I 5.-Brandenburg under the Austrians.
A CENTURY-the fourteenth-of miserable anarchy
and decline for Brandenburg, its Kurfursts, in deadly
succession, making what they can out of it for their
own pockets. The city itself and its territory utterly
~helpless. Read pp. I8o, ISI (I29, 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 pedlars made
for but to be robbed?'
X.
1415-I440.-Brandenburg under Friedrich of
Niiremberg.
THIS is the fourth of the men whom you are to
remember as creators of the Prussian monarchy,
Henry the Fowler, St. Adalbert, Albert the Bear, of
Ascanien, and Friedrich of Niremberg; (of Hohenzollern, by name, and 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 200,000oo. of our money,
worth perhaps a million in that day; still, with its




I96


APPENDIX.


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 again 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 Kurfirst, begins to
be cosmic again.' The story of Heavy Peg, pages
I95-I98 (138, I40), is one of the most brilliant and
important passages of the first volume; page I99, 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 justice, clearness, valour,
and patience needed for that. A man of sterling probity,
for one thing.  Which indeed is the first requisite in said
art:-if you will have your 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 Brandenburg;' looking
into everything with his own eyes; making, I can well fancy,
innumerable crooked things straight; reducing more and
more that famishing dog-kennel of a Brandenburm into a




POLITICAL ECONOMY OF PRUSSIA.


197


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 Sigismund and the Reich, in which no man
could prosper, he may be defined as constantly prosperous.
To Brandenburg he was, very literally, the blessing of
blessings; redemption out of death into life. In the ruins
of that old Friesack Castle, battered down by Heavy Peg,
antiquarian science (if it had any eyes) might look for the
taproot 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 Friedrich the Great, the twelfth.
XI.
1415-1701.-Brandenburg under the Hohenzollern
Kurfursts.
Book III.
WHO the Hohenzollerns 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 momentary convenience, here:




198


APPENDIX.


Friedrich ist of Brandenburg (6th of Niremberg), 1412-1440


Friedrich II., called 'Iron Teeth,'
Albert,......
Johann,... 
Joachim  I.,.....
Joachim  II.,......
Johann George,.....
Joachim Friedrich,...
Johann Sigismund, 
George Wilhelm, 
Friedrich Wilhelm (the Great Elector),. 1440-I472
~  472-1486
1486-1499
~    1499-1535
* I535-1571
I571-1598
I 598-1608
1608-1619
I6i9-I640
640-I688


Friedrich, first King; crowned i8th January,.  1701
Of this line of princes we have to say they followed generally in their ancestor's steps, and had success of the like
kind, more or less; Hohenzollerns all of them, by character
and behaviour as well as by descent. No lack of quiet
energy, of thrift, sound sense. There was likewise solid fairplay in general, no founding of yourself on ground that will
not carry, and there wlas instant, gentle, but inexorable
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; of special
matters note the following:II. Friedrich, called 'Iron-teeth,' from his firmness,
proves a notable manager and governor. 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




POLITICAL ECONOMY OF PRUSSIA.


199


the Achilles of Germany in his day; has half-acentury of fighting with his own Nirembergers, with
Bavaria, France, Burgundy, and its fiety 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 sutures.'
IV:. John, the orator of his race; (but the orations
unrecorded). His second son, Archbishop of Maintz,
for whose piece of memorable work see page 223 (I43)
and read in connection with that the history of Margraf
George, pp. 237-241 (152-I54), and the 8th chapter
of the third book.
V. Joachim I., of little note; thinks there has
been enough Reformation, and checks proceedings
in a dull stubbornness, causing him at least grave
domestic difficulties.-Page 271 (173).
VI. Joachim II. Again active in the Reformation, and staunch,
though generally in a cautious, weighty, never in a rash,
swift way, to the great cause of Protestantism, and to all
good causes. He was himself a solemnly devout man;
deep, awe-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); Luther
and the Bible were his chief reading. Fond of profane
learning, too, and of the useful or ornamental arts; given to




200


APPENDIX.


music, and 'would himself sing aloud' when he had a melodious leisure hour.
VII. Johann George, a prudent thrifty Herr; no
mistresses, no luxuries allowed; at the sight of a newfashioned 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 country'Grant me justice, Durchlaucht, against so and so; I am
your Highness's born subject.' ' Thou shouldst have it, man,
wert thou a born Turk I' 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 -Iohenzollern 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 indeed all the following were and are.


VIII. Joachim Friedrich. Gets hold of Prussia,




POLITICAL ECONOMY OF PRUSSIA.


'201


which hitherto, you observe, has always been spoken
of as a separate country from Brandenburg. March I I,
1605-' Squeezed his way into the actual guardianship
of Preussen and its imbecile Duke, which was his 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
everything and every place about you in as good
order as you can-Prussia, Poland, or what else. I
should much like, for instance, just now, to he'ar
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 hold of Prussia;
and means to keep it.
IX. Johann Sigismund.  Only notable for 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
etiquettes 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 of Cleve,
specially, concerning which legal dispute begins in




202


APPENDIX.


Sigismund's time. And it is well worth the lawyers'
trouble, it seems.
It amounted, perhaps, to two Yorkshires in 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 Protestant
refugees, it was getting filled with ingenious industries, and
rising to be what it still is, the busiest quarter of Germany.
A country lowing with kine; the hum of the flax-spindle
heard in its cottages in those old days-' much of the linen
called HIollands is made in Jiilich, and only bleached,
stamped, and sold by the Dutch,' says Biisching. A country
in our days which is shrouded at short intervals with
the due canopy of coal-smoke, and loud 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 I609 was
actually handed over to Johann Sigismund's descendant in the seventh   generation.  'These litigated
duchies are now the Prussian provinces, Jilich, 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 Protestantism, now
fallen cold, 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




POLITICAL ECONOMY OF PRUSSIA.


203


of a country depend upon its prince, not on its council,
read this, of Gustavus Adolphus demanding the
cession of Spandau and Kiistrin:
Which cession Kurfirst George Wilhelm, though giving
all his prayers to the good cause, could by no means grant.
Gustav had to insist, with more and more emphasis, advancing at last with military menace upon Berlin itself. He
was met by George Wilhelm and his Council, 'in the woods
of Copenick,' short way to the east of that city; there George
Wilhelm and his Council wandered about, sending messages,
hopelessly consulting, saying among each other, ' Quefaire?
ils ont des canons.' For many hours so, round the inflexible
Gustav, who was there like a fixed milestone, and to all
questions and comers had only one answer.
On our special question of war and its consequences, read this of the Thirty years' one:
But, on the whole, the grand weapon in it 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 the country, or, at any rate,'to
leave nothing eatable in it; what that will mean for the
country we may consider. As the armies too frequently, and
the Kaiser's armies habitually, lived without commissariat,
often enough without pay, all horrors 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 horrible to read.
Germany, in all eatable quarters of it, had to undergo the
process; tortured, torn to pieces, wrecked, and brayed as in a
mortar, under the iron mace of war. Brandenburg saw its
towns seized and sacked, its country populations driven to




204


APPENDIX.


despair by the one party and the other. Three times-first
in the Wallenstein-Mecklenburg times, while fire and sword
were the weapons, and again, twice over, in the ultimate
stages of the struggle, when starvation had become the
method-Brandenburg fell to be the principal theatre of
conflict, where all forms of the dismal were at their height
In I638, 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 Kurfirsts 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 prosperity of dynasties.
A republican historian would think of this development only, and suppose it to be possible 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




POLITICAL ECONOMY OF PRUSSIA.


205


necessary manner, form, in Sweden, in Bavaria, in the
Tyrol, in the Scottish border, and on the French seacoast, races of noble peasants; pacific, poetic, heroic,
Christian-hearted in the deepest sense, 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 significance Brandenburg had none; a
mere Protestant 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,
Commandant of Spandau more especially, refused to obey




206


APPENDIX.


Friedrich Wilhelm on his accession; 'were bound to obey
the Kaiser in the first place.'
For twenty years past Brandenburg had been scoured by
hostile armies, which, especially the Kaiser's part of which,
committed outrages new in human history. In a year or two
hence, Brandenburg became again the theatre of business,
Austrian Gallas advancing thither again (1644) with intent
'to shut up Torstenson 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 Briider (beautiful inventors of
the 'marauding' 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 dyilig, 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 walk very warily, Sweden on one hand of
him, suspicious Kaiser on the other; he had to wear semblances, to be ready with evasive words, and advance noiselessly by many circuits. 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 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 him



POLITICAL ECONOMY OF PRUSSIA.


207


self, 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, manceuvre, 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 evasive
words, how is this, Mr. Carlyle? thinks 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? Perhaps not, O reader! perhaps a man advancing
'in circuits,' the only way he has; spirally, face now to east,
now to west, with his own reasonable private aim sun-clear
to him all the while?
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 Polish chivalry and their ways,
abdicated-retired to Paris and, 'lived much with Ninon
de l'Enclos and her circle,' for the rest of his life. He used




208


APPENDIX.


to complain of his Polish chivalry, that there was no solidity
in them; nothing but outside glitter, with tumult and
anarchic noise; fatal want of one essential talent, the talent
of obeying; and has been heard to prophesy that a glorious
Republic, persisting in such courses, would 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 character, 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 dominions, cuts canals; unweariedly
encourages trade and work. The Friedrich Wilhelm's 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-ofNantes affair, he was like an express benefit of Heaven;
one helper appointed to whom the help itself was profitable.
He munificently welcomed them to Brandenburg; showed
really a noble piety and human pity, as well as judgment; 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 Brandenburg, 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 battle of Fehrbellin,
'the Marathon of Brandenburg,' p. 354 (225); and of
the winter campaign of I679, p. 356 (227), beginning




POLITICAL ECONOMY OF PRUSSIA.


209


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 type, potherb gardens, training-schools
for young girls, and the like, a favourite abode of hers when
she was at liberty for recreation. But her life was busy and
earnest; she was helpmate, not in name only, to an ever
busy man. They were married young; a marriage of love
withal. Young Friedrich Wilhelm's courtship; wedding in
Holland; the honest, trustful walk and conversation of the
two sovereign spouses, their journeyings together, their
mutual hopes, fears, and manifold vicissitudes, till death,
with stem beauty, shut it in; all is human, true, and wholesome in it, interesting to look upon, and rare among sovereign persons.
Louisa died in I667, twenty-one years before her
husband, who married again-(little to his contentment)-died in I688; and Louisa's second son,
Friedrich, ten years old at his mother's death, and
now therefore thirty-one, succeeds, becoming afterwards Friedrich I. 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
I4




210


APPENDIX.


their country, but never themselves? Is this somewhat expensive and ambitious Herr, Friedrich I.,
buttoned in diamonds, indeed the best that Protestantism can produce, as against Fowlers, Bears,
and Red Beards? Much more, Friedrich Wilhelm,
orthodox on predestination; most of all his less orthodox son;-have we, in these, the highest results which
Dr. Martin 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 intelligence 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
coronation will be with Wild olive, not with gold.












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