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SESAME AND LILIES

THREE LECTURES

JOHN RUSKIN

EDITED BY

CHARLES ROBERT GASTON, Ph.D.

TEACHER OF ENGLISH IN THE RICHMOND HILL
HIGH SCHOOL, NEW YORK CITY

BOSTON, U.S.A.
D. C. HEATH & CO., PUBLISHERS
' . f - ■ 1909

LIBRARY of CONGRESS
Two CoDies Heceived

^ Ccuyriijnt Entry ^

1 u r Li Qc

CONTENTS

PAGE

Introduction 5

Author's Preface 23

SESAME AND LILIES

I. Of Kings' Treasuries 53

11. Of Queens' Gardens no

III. The Mystery of Life and its Arts . . . 148

Notes 189

INTRODUCTION

PROFESSOR JOHN RUSKIN (i8i 9-1900)

The most characteristic thing about Ruskin was that his
attitude throughout his Hfe was that of a teacher. To be
sure, he did not hold official position as professor for a pro-
tracted period, but even when not engaged in actual teaching
he went by the title of Professor, for he taught by his books
as well as by his lectures. He had certain definite ideas about
the truths of art and architecture, education and religion,
natural science and political economy ; he gave his energies
freely for years as author and teacher to bring these ideas
home to the English people. As a useful member of society,
too, he taught good lessons. He had clear conceptions re-
garding the duties of men to their fellows ; to carry out these
ideas he spent his whole fortune of over _;^ 150,000 in various
projects for the improvement of his fellow-men. As professor,
as writer, and as citizen he was always doing what he could
to make the world better. He was always teaching by word
and by deed. This preeminent characteristic may be seen
very clearly in a simple narrative of his early life, his years of
maturity, and his old age, each from the point of view of man
and writer.

I. Youth

In his early years Ruskin had many advantages that pre-
pared the way for his active life as one of the great teachers
of the nineteenth century. Born February 8, 18 19, in London,
England, he was the only child of well-to-do parents who loved

6 INTRODUCTION

him devotedly yet did not spoil him. They brought him up
with a sense of order and self-reliance. Mrs. Ruskin did not
approve of coddling children with heaps of toys ; she would not
permit her son to have a costly Punch and Judy which an
aunt wished him to add to his slight store of playthings.
The boy had only a bunch of keys to play with for several
years, then a cart and a ball ; at five or six he was allowed
two boxes of well-cut bricks made of lignum vitas. Since he
had few toys and was punished if he cried, if he did not come
when called, or if he tumbled on the stairs, he learned to
amuse himself by inspecting his surroundings closely, watch-
ing the water cart in the street, counting bricks in the walls,
looking sharply at patterns in the carpet, and enjoying com-
binations of colors.

For reading, he had principally the Bible, twenty-seven
chapters of which he learned by heart and recited to his
mother. His father used to read good books aloud evenings.
In this way, Ruskin heard the Waverley novels of Scott, all
the Shakespeare comedies and historical plays, and all of
Do7i Quixote.

Neither of his parents ever promised him anything without
giving it to him ; ever said, " I'll whip you, John, if — " without
carrying out the threat when the boy did not obey ; or ever
lied to him. Such training as this, in Ruskin's case, made
an orderly, truthful boy, who was nevertheless high-spirited
and self-reliant.

Two elements in the childhood of Ruskin need special
mention. His father, John James Ruskin, a wine merchant,
every summer drove with Mrs. Ruskin and John through
several counties of England, taking orders along the way.
While the carriage was moving, the son would often make
rough sketches, and then at night he would fill in the outlines.
It was at this early period that Ruskin learned to love nature
and to cultivate minute accuracy of observation. His sum-
mer tours so interested him in drawing that when, on his
thirteenth birthday, he received a copy of the poet Rogers's

JOHN RUSKIN : YOUTH 7

Italy^ illustrated by Turner, he became completely enamored
of Turner. The boy spent hours in making copies of Turner's
sketches. This Turner infatuation, together with the summer
tours in the family post-chaise, profoundly influenced Ruskin's
later years.

Further details of his childhood, readers will find set forth
in Ruskin's own recollections in his autobiography entitled
FrcEterita, Volume I ; in W. G. Collingwood's authoritative
and fascinating life of Ruskin ; and in Frederic Harrison's
shorter, but interesting narrative in the English Men of
■Letters series.

Ruskin's education lasted from the age of four, when he
taught himself to read, until 1845, when he returned to the
family home on Denmark Hill, London, on the completion of
the travels of his youth. It was an irregular, unusual kind of
education. He was taught by his mother at home until he
was ten. Then he had private tutors in Latin, Greek, French,
geometr}^, and drawing until he was fifteen. After that, he
went for a little less than two years to a day school in London.
In 1835 his studies were interrupted by an attack of pleurisy.
While he was going to school in London, he spent much time
in the British Museum, studying the collection of minerals ;
he was interested because he was making a collection him-
self.

In 1836 Ruskin matriculated at Christ Church College,
Oxford. Being a gentleman-commoner at the most fashion-
able college in Oxford, he had the opportunity of associating
with young men of refinement and scholarly attainments, as
well as with sporting youths of the nobility. Some of the
quieter men of his set used to go to his rooms and look at his
sketches, and talk over with him the art of Raphael and other
old masters of painting. In 1839 he won the Newdigate prize
for a poem. In the spring of 1840 he learned that Adele
Domecq, whose father was a partner of his father, had married
a Frenchman. In a timid, unavailing manner young Ruskin
had been trying for some years to win the affection of the

8 INTRODUCTION

charming young French lady. Partly as a result of the news
of her marriage, and partly as a result of his studying daily
for a month from six in the morning until twelve at night,
with no exercise outdoors, he began to cough and spit blood.
He was pronounced consumptive by the doctors, had to give
up college, and start traveling. In Italy he caught the Roman
fever, but finally, by being in the open air most of the time,
regained his health and returned to college.

On his twenty-first birthday his father gave him an allow-
ance of about ^200 a year. As soon as the young collegian
received his allowance the first year, he expended a third of
it for a Turner water color. In 1842 he took his degree of
B.A. The next year he took his M.A. Having received his
degree at Oxford, he traveled for some years. Again he jour-
neyed to Switzerland as in his boyhood. Again he visited
great art galleries in France and Italy ; in 1844 he studied the
old masters in the Louvre, Paris; in 1845 he gave special
study to the paintings of Tintoretto in Venice. In the second
volume of PrcEterita, he says that by 1845, ^^^i" ^^^ studies
in Rouen, Geneva, and Pisa, he had fixed in his mind the fun-
damental principles of art and architecture to which he held
ever after.

Now he was prepared for his teaching career. But, as will
be shown presently, he was so impatient to begin impressing
his opinions on the public that he had already done some
didactic writing.

As a writer, during his early life, Ruskin established his
reputation as one of the notable teachers of his time. Renown
came early to him. It was in 1842, the year he took his B.A.
at Oxford, that, at the age of twenty-three, he set to work on
the first volume of his famous book published the next year —
Modern Painters.

As a mere child Ruskin had dabbled in composition. He
wrote verses before he was seven, and when he reached seven
he began to print a book in imitation of book print. He
called it Harry afid Liccy, or Early Lessons. It contained

JOHN RUSKIN : YOUTH 9

six poems and some prose composition on subjects suggested
by Miss Edgeworth's stories and by Joyce's Scietitific Dia-
logues. Similar juvenile poetry Ruskin wrote to record his
impressions of the long, rambling carriage journeys which the
family took, his model in this poetic diary being Byron.

In 1834 and in 1836 he contributed a series of geological
articles, illustrated by himself, to Loudon's Magazine of
Natural History. In November, 1837, there appeared in
Loudon's Architectural Magazine a Ruskin article signed by
the nom-de-plume Kataphusin, and entitled " Introduction to
the Poetry of Architecture: or. The Architecture of the
Nations of Europe considered in its Association with Natural
Scenery and National Character." In this, as in his other
early essays, Ruskin deliberately imitated Johnson in style.
Salsette and Elephanta^ 1839, ^''is college prize poem, was not
of particular poetic value, though it deluded the father for a
time into thinking that his son was destined to be a great
poet. Other poems by Ruskin written during his college
days were published in the London Monthly Miscellany, and
in 1850 were gathered into a volume. In 1841 Ruskin wrote
the fairy story. The King of the Golden River ^ for a Scotch
maiden of whom he was fond.

Next, he set to work on his great art book, the first volume
of which appeared in April, 1843, under the signature "A
Graduate of Oxford." The book was published with the full
descriptive title, Modern Painters: their Superiority in the
Art of Landscape Painting to all the Ancient Masters, proved
by Exa7nples of the True, the Beautiful and the Intellectual,
from the Works of Modern Artists, especially from those of
/. M. W. Turner, Esq.,R.A.

Modern Painters was such a glorification of the painting
of a contemporary artist. Turner, and such a depreciation of
established masters of landscape painting — like Salvator
Rosa, Caspar Poussin, and Claude — that it was attacked
fiercely by the critics. It attracted much favorable attention,
however, by its form, if not by its substance. Such brilliant

10 INTRODUCTION

style and such eloquent description had rarely been seen in
the history of English prose.

Thus, during his early years, Ruskin experimented much
with his pen, and produced one didactic book that gained him
instant recognition as a writer whose words of instruction
must thereafter be received with attention.

II. Midlife

The next period of Professor Ruskin's life, his maturity,
dates roughly from 1845 to 1884. By 1845 ^e was well pre-
pared for his life work ; as he says in Prceterita (Vol. II, Ch. 8),
" the industry of midlife " had begun for him. In 1884, when
he completed his letters on the problems of life, Fors Clavi-
gera, and resigned as art lecturer at Oxford, he felt that his
message to the world was ended, and he hoped to have rest.
These years, then, about forty in number, may be considered
his mature, working period as a teacher of the whole English
nation.

The incidents during the first half of the period may be
chronicled in a few paragraphs. In 1846 Ruskin visited, with
his father and mother, the places where he had studied alone
the year before ; at Pisa he found that he and his father were
no longer in sympathy in their points of view about works of
art. In 1847 he made a tour through Scotland. During part
of the year he took treatment for the consumptive tendency
which had interrupted his college course, but after this year he
was not again similarly troubled. On April 10, 1848, at Perth,
he married Euphemia Chalmers Gray, the Scotch beauty for
whom he had written The King of the Golde?i River. In the
summer of 1849 ^^^ was at Chamouni, taking " heavenly walks,"
as he says, and enjoying ''heavenly Alpine mornings."

The events which Ruskin considered most important in his
life from 1850 to i860 are given in the first chapter of the third
volume of Prcsterita. For several years now Ruskin cham-
pioned in letters to the press and in magazine articles the
ideas of the group of artists known as the Preraphaelites.

JOHN ruskin: midlife 11

These artists wished to establish a school of painting, the
foundation of which was to be absolute truth to nature in all
things,. especially in respect to detail. The summer of 1853
Ruskin and his friend Millais, the Preraphaelite painter,
spent in Scotland. In the autumn Ruskin gave a much-dis-
cussed course of art lectures before the Philosophical Society
of Edinburgh. While he was on the way to Edinburgh, he met
Dr. John Brown, author of Rab and his Friends ; Ruskin calls
Dr. Brown '"'the best and truest friend^' of all his life. In 1854
Ruskin's wife left him, and the marriage was legally annulled.
This year Ruskin took charge of drawing classes at theWork-
ingmen's College, London ; two of his associates in the
teaching were the poet and painter D. G. Rossetti, and the
artist Burne-Jones, leading members of the Preraphaelite
group.

The next year, 1855, Ruskin studied shipping at Deal, in
order to treat intelligently the subject of navigation in a book
he was writing. The Harbours of England. In a letter to Car-
lyle he says that during this year he had to make in his books
remarks on " German Metaphysics, Poetry, Political Economy,
Cookery, Music, Geology, Dress, Agriculture, Horticulture, and
Navigation," and that he had to '• read up " on nearly all these
subjects.

This year, 1855, ^^ ^^^ friendly letters from Robert and
Elizabeth Barrett Browning. In 1857 he gave lectures on
art and on political economy in Manchester and London.
Six months of the year he worked in the National Gallery,
arranging the Turner drawings. On October 29, 1858, Rus-
kin gave the inaugural address at the opening of the Cam-
bridge School of Art for workmen. Early in 1859 he met
Mrs. Gaskell, author of Cranford. Later in the year, he made
his last tour with his parents, this time in Germany, to see the
pictures at Berlin, Dresden, and Munich. After hard work
all the winter of 1859 and the spring of i860, he went off to
Chamouni to rest and meditate.

This decade, from 1850 to i860, as Professor Ruskin realized

12 INTRODUCTION

after, was very important in his life, for in these years he made
a number of friends among distinguished people, and he be-
gan actual instruction to classes.

In 1861 Ruskin presented a series of Turner drawings to
Oxford University and another set of twenty-five to Cam-
bridge. The two years following he spent mainly in the study
of geology and in geologizing excursions in the Alps. In
1864 his father died. To cheer the loneliness of Ruskin's
aging mother, a cousin, Joanna Agnew, came on a visit to the
Ruskin home. Since Ruskin's mother immediately took a
liking for her, she remained as guest for seven years, when
she was married to Arthur Severn, an artist. Not long after
her marriage, she and her family took charge of Ruskin's
home, and continued affectionately to watch over him the rest
of his life, as one may read in the last chapter of Praterita.

When the estate left by his 'father was settled, John Ruskin
made model tenements out of several old buildings in the
poorer quarter of London. By this means he reduced the
annual income from the property from twelve to five per cent.
Though he did not keep the tenements many years, it was
practical philanthropy like this — to help those who were
somewhat able to help themselves — that Ruskin zealously
advocated. His practice gained many adherents among the
rich who were inclined to do good with their property.

Even as early as 1864, a year before the completion of his
first score of mature, working years, Ruskin had established
a considerable reputation for deeds of philanthropy. During
this period of about twenty years, he had become recognized
not only as a philanthropist, but as a penetrating student
of the Middle Age and Renaissance civihzation, as a master
in "seeing the beauty and meaning of the work of other
minds" ; in short, as the leading teacher of art criticism of
his generation.

In the second half of this long working period. Professor
Ruskin deepened the impression he had already made on his
generation. On December 6 and December 14, 1864, he

JOHN ruskin: midlife 13

delivered at Manchester two lectures which later became his
most popular book, Sesame and Lilies. The incidents of
chief importance for half a dozen years after this have to do
with his lectures in different cities. In a lecture to the Royal
Military Academy at Woolwich, in 1865, he showed that he
had been keeping track of events in America; he said in-
cidentally that, though most wars stimulate the arts and bring
out the highest human faculties, the war just ended in
America, being a civil war, could have no such effect. In
1867 Ruskin received the honorary degree of LL.D. from
Cambridge University, and lectured there on the relation of
national ethics to national arts. In 1868 his most important
public address was "The Mystery of Life and its Arts,"
delivered in the theater of the Royal College of Science,
Dublin ; it is usually now printed as a third essay in the
volume, Sesame and Lilies.

In 1869 Ruskin was elected Professor of Fine Arts, at Ox-
ford University, filling the chair founded the preceding year
by Felix Slade. The audience for his first lecture, February
8, 1870, was so great that it had to adjourn from the small
lecture room provided for the professor to the spacious Shel-
donian Theater of the University.

Ruskin must have been a fascinating lecturer. Here is a
description of him as a university lecturer by Collingwood,
his secretary and biographer : " It was not strictly academic,
the way he used to come in, with a little following of familiars
and assistants, — exchange recognition with friends in the
audience, arrange the objects he had brought to show, — fling
oflf his long-sleeved Master's gown, and plunge into his dis-
course. ... He used to begin by reading, in his curious
intonation, the carefully written passages of rhetoric, which
usually occupied only about the half of his hour.

"By and by he would break off, and whh quite another air
extemporize the liveliest interpolations, describing his diagrams
or specimens, restating his arguments, reenforcing his appeal.
His voice, till then artificially cadenced, suddenly became

14 INTRODUCTION

vivacious ; his gestures, at first constrained, became dramatic.
He used to act his subject, apparently without premeditated
art, in the liveliest pantomime. He had no power of voice-
mimicry, and none of the ordinary gifts of the actor.

" A tall and slim figure, not yet shortened from its five feet
ten or eleven by the habitual stoop which ten years later
brought him down to less than middle height ; a stiff, blue
frock-coat; prominent, half-starched wristbands, and tall
collars of the Gladstonian type ; . • . bright blue stock . . .
no rings or gewgaws ... a plain old-English gentleman."

In his lectures Ruskin was entirely sincere and so enthu-
siastic that he forgot himself completely in his interest in the
subject and the audience. This was his facial appearance as
remembered by Collingwood : —

" There was his face, still young-looking and beardless ;
made for expression, and sensitive to every change of emotion.
A long head with enormous capacity of brain, veiled by thick
wavy hair, not affectedly lengthy but as abundant as ever, and
darkened into a deep brown without a trace of grey ; and
short light whiskers growing high over his cheeks. ... A
big nose, aquiline, and broad at the base, with great thorough-
bred nostrils. . . . Scotch in original type, and suggesting
a side to his character not all milk and roses. And under
shaggy eyebrows . . . the fieriest blue eyes, that changed
with changing expression, from grave to gay, from lively to
severe, that riveted you, magnetised you, seemed to look you
through and read your soul."

Such was Ruskin the lecturer at Oxford, a few years after
the time when he first delivered his Sesa?ne and Lilies lectures.

The year 1871 proved eventful. When Paris was besieged
by the Germans, early in the year, Ruskin, with Professor
Huxley and others, formed a Paris Food Fund to bring relief
to the sufferers. In the summer, while painting a spray of
wild roses one morning before breakfast, Ruskin took a chill
that was followed by a serious illness. This year, 1871, Rus-
kin bought the country cottage, Brantwood, in the beautiful

JOHN RUSKIN : MIDLIFE 15

lake region of northern England ; from this house could be
seen perhaps the finest view in Cumberland or Lancashire.
Brantwood, with the Severns in charge, was his principal
home thereafter. This year, too, Raskin gave ^5000 to en-
dow a mastership of drawing at Oxford University, and he
gave ^15,000 to start a relative in business. In 1871, also,
Ruskin himself, independent of regular publishers, undertook
the publication of one of his works, Fors Clavigera. In this
memorable year Ruskin started the St. George's Company
with ^7000, a tenth of the fortune then remaining to him after
his many public and private philanthropic acts. Lastly, in
December, 1871, his mother died, ninety years old. Ruskin,
in the words of Mr. Collingwood, " had loved her truly, obeyed
her strictly, and tended her faithfully." In a life for the
most part uneventful, the year 1871 stands out as character-
ized by numerous important incidents in Professor Ruskin's
career.

In 1872 Ruskin said that he was always unhappy. The
reason was that he had his fourth disappointment in love ;
the young lady, Miss Rose La Touche, a firm believer in the
evangelical creed, decided that she could not be unequally
yoked with an unbeliever. Even if unhappy himself, Ruskin
carried on his beneficent work as a helper of the poor. In
1872 he established a tea shop, where one of his old servants
sold the best teas at a fair price. Another of his social proj-
ects was that of keeping a street clean near the British Mu-
seum. He himself took a broom and started the sweeping,
afterwards putting several servants at the task, in order to
teach Londoners the principle of cleanliness. In 1S73 ^^^ was
reelected Slade Professor at Oxford, and in 1876 he was
elected for a third term of three years. In 1875 he took les-
sons in stone breaking and induced a band of enthusiastic
students of his at Oxford to spend their recreation hours in
repairing a bad bit of road leading into Oxford. In his rooms
at Corpus Christi College he would talk humorously with his
students on all sorts of subjects.

16 INTRODUCTION

By the end of 1876, the St. George's Company, started in
1 87 1, had developed into St. George's Guild, the objects of
which were agricultural, industrial, and educational : to buy
land which should be worked principally by hand instead of
by machinery by members paying rent to the company ; to
buy mills and factories which should be operated by water
power rather than by steam by members receiving fair wages,
having healthful work, and living in comfortable homes ; to
maintain libraries and museums where working men might
receive instruction and recreation. As a matter of fact the
plan did not work out very well ; a company of Communists
who, assisted by the Guild, tried to farm thirteen acres,
made a miserable failure. More success, however, came to
the industrial and educational experiments of the Guild. At
Keswick and Ambleside thriving linen industries were started
on the Guild principles. The Museum established at Shef-
field has grown in size and popularity.

This general plan was so attractive in theory that Ruskin
societies sprang up in many places in England and America
to discuss Ruskin's ideas. Much good resulted from the
widening recognition of the broad principles underlying all
Ruskin's projects : the desire to introduce higher aims into
ordinary life, to give true refinement to the lower classes and
true simplicity to the upper.

Ruskin's course of twelve lectures at Oxford in the autumn
of 1877 was popular as usual, but was an unusual drain on
his time and strength. In December he wrote that he had a
hoarseness and wheezing and sneezing and coughing and
choking; the plain truth was that this zealous teacher had
about worked himself out. Early in 1878 came his first
serious mental breakdown, an inflammation of the brain.
For some time he felt that every day would be his last. Bul-
letins from Brantwood announcing his condition were read
with sorrow all over England and America. Even in Italy
prayers were offered for his recovery. Newspapers on both
continents recorded his recovery. When his mind became

JOHN ruskin: midlife 17

clear again, there was general rejoicing, but the intimate
friends knew that this illness was likely to be followed by
similar attacks.

The next year, 1879, at the expiration of his third term as
Slade Professor, Ruskin resigned on account of his poor
health. In 1880 he- traveled through the cathedral towns of
northern France. Late that year he lectured on Amiens at
Eton ; he especially enjoyed lecturing before boys' schools.
An address to over three hundred Coniston children to whom
he gave a dinner early in 1881 reveals the simple, serious
religious views he had come to hold after his years of uncer-
tainty and doubt. An interesting incident of 18S2 was his
attempt to copy a Turner picture in the National Gallery.
People stared at him and bothered him so much by trying to
sketch him that he went away disgusted.

In both 1 88 1 and 1882 he had brain attacks like that of
1878, so that it was feared for a time that he would lose his
mind. In January, 1883, he was reelected Slade Professor.
Again he gave a course of lectures in a packed lecture room,
some of the undergraduates listening from seats in the win-
dows and on the cupboards. At the close of 1884 he resigned
his Oxford professorship because the University established
a physiological laboratory where vivisection was to be prac-
ticed. Feeling out of touch with the trend of thought of his
time, Ruskin considered it best to retire from his professor-
ship. This event ended his real working years.

Such is a bare skeleton of an active forty years spent in
travel, in lecturing on art and architecture, in helping the
workingman to improve his condition, and in diverse attempts
to do good — a life almost entirely given to the public. In all
the chronicle there has been little mention of domestic life,
because Ruskin was essentially a lonely man, except for the
companionship so long maintained with his father and mother
and with a few chosen friends. Throughout these working
years of his middle life, Ruskin, the purposeful teacher,
obviously kept in mind when in health the motto he adopted

18 INTRODUCTION

on his seal, ^^ To-day," with interpretation, " The night cometh,
when no man can work."

Of his writings during this forty-year period much might be
related. It will be sufficient here to tell something of the
writings on art and architecture that naturally resulted from
the studies and influences of his youth ; of his miscellaneous
writings, principally on education and on natural science ;
and of the writings on social subjects that more and more
engrossed his thought as he grew older. For summaries of
most of Ruskin's books, the reader should consult /(c/^;^ Riiskin,
by Mrs. Meynell, or John Riiskin : His Life and Teaching, by
J. Marshall Mather.

In art, Ruskin continued the Modern Painters, publishing
the second volume in 1846. In ten years, two more volumes
appeared, and in i860 the last volume, the fifth, was published.
By the time the last volume appeared, the nature of the work
had changed until it was now really Ruskin's philosophy of
landscape painting. The Two Paths, a book on art as applied
to manufactures and decoration, was published in 1859.

In the course of his journeying for art material, Ruskin
became so much interested in reforming domestic architecture
that he brought out a number of books on architecture : Seven
Lamps of Architecture, 1849 5 Stones of Venice (3 vol.), 1851-
1853; Lectures on Architecture and Painting, 1854; Study
of Architecture in our Schools, 1865. The first two of these
were illustrated by engravings made from his own drawings.

It is surprising how wide a range Ruskin covers in what
may be called his miscellaneous writings. His didactic pur-
pose appears in every volume. Exemplifying as well as any
of his other work his intense desire to teach, are the two lec-
tures on educational subjects, published in 1865, under the
title Sesame and Lilies. In 1871 he republished this book as
the first volume of his collected works, including three lectures
instead of two. These three essays are discussed more fully
in another section of the Introduction (pages 24-27).

The didactic nature of Elements of Drawing and Eleinenti

JOHN ruskin: midlife 19

of Perspective is apparent from the very titles. Another text-
book by Ruskin is Elements of English Prosody for Use in St.
George's Schools, a 62-page booklet with as many more blank
leaves for annotation.

In Ethics of the Dust, called by a subtitle Lectures to Little
Housewives on the Elements of Crystallization, Ruskin teaches
the science of crystallization. In Aratra Pentelici he teaches
the rudiments of sculpture ; in The Eagle'' s Nest he treats of
the wisdom that presides over science, hterature, and art ; in
Ariadne Florentina he discusses engraving. In Val d'' Arno
he presents a historical study of Tuscan art for five years in the
middle of the thirteenth century ; and in Mornings in Florence
he provides a guidebook for travelers in Florence.

Ethics of the Dust was pronounced by Carlyle supreme in
power of expression and expository clearness ; the others also
are remarkable books of their kind. In still other strangely
labeled works Ruskin teaches about geology and flowers and
birds.

Arrows of the Chace, 1880, is the heading for a collection
of newspaper letters contributed by Ruskin to The Ti?nes, The
Daily Telegraph, and The Pall Mall Gazette. These, with
others which he contributed later to London and Manchester
papers, make a series extending through fifty years. He always
interested the newspaper reading public by his vivacious man-
ner, even when his views were entirely antagonistic to the views
generally prevailing.

As the years went by, Ruskin's thoughts turned from art
and architecture and science directly to social subjects. His
writings on art had from the beginning insisted on the relation-
ship between art and life ; he believed that there was great art
in a nation when the nation was healthy, happy, and brave,
but that art was poor when national life was impure. As
signifying this belief, he wrote, in 1857, The Political Ecoiiomy
of Art.

Thence he drifted into a number of books that might serve
as treatises on political economy. Some of these books telling

20 INTRODUCTION

people how to live are: Unto this Last, i860; Miinera Piil-
veris, 1 862-1 863 ; The Crown of Wild Olive, 1866 ; Time and
Tide by Weave and Tyne, 1867; Fors Clavigera, 1 871-1884.
Several of these vi^ere series of letters addressed to the work-
ingmen of England. Fors Clavigera, for instance, appeared
every month for eighty-four months, and then irregularly for
twelve numbers more. These Fors Clavigera letters preached
Ruskin's industrial doctrine that if men would be just and
moral, do good work well, help others, harm none, obey law,
without struggling for worldly success, there would be a change
for the better in England. All these political economy books
breathed the spirit of a passionate prophet urging men to
right ideals of life.

It must not be inferred that Professor Ruskin wrote first
about art and architecture and then about political economy.
One of his last works during the period of his maturity was
The Art of England, 1883, and he began treating subjects
related to political economy almost as soon as he began to
write.

The forty years of Ruskin's mature, creative authorship pro-
duced a whole library of vivid, soul-expressing books on a wide
selection of topics, nearly all expository or descriptive, and
nearly all dealing with the subjects that had appealed to him
as a child and young man ; all aglow with the living fire of
personality that makes true literature ; all inspired by a desire
to give instruction to as many persons as could be reached.

III. Old Age

In 1884 Professor Ruskin was sixty-five years old — he
had reached the period of his old age {^Prceterita, II, Ch. 5).
From 1884 until 1900, when he died, he entered upon no large
new enterprises in either philanthropy or literature, and he
gave few lectures. The hard tasks he had set himself for
half a century began to show their effects on him. Though
he still lectured occasionally in university extension classes,

JOHN ruskin: old age 21

he could not work so hard as he had been accustomed to do.
His mind was not so clear, his body not so strong. He
gradually became content to stay quietly at his home, Brant-
wood, in Coniston. Yet he sometimes sallied forth by carriage
with post horses, stopping from time to time at inns along the
way. In 1888 he made a journey to Berne in Switzerland,
and to Venice in Italy ; much of the tour was with horses,
for he had a lifelong objection to railroads on account of their
defacing a picturesque country and fouling the air.

He still ventured to take some slight hold of his manifold
benevolent interests. His eccentricity appeared plainer now
than in earlier days. He had trouble with the Oxford draw-
ing school in 1886, and withdrew the pictures he had loaned ;
but the next year he planned to give ^5000 to the school.
His plan fell through because he found that he had given
away all his capital and was now dependent on the income
from his books. However, this carelessness in money matters
is not necessarily a sign of senility, for Ruskin''s custom since
he inherited his father's fortune had been consistently to live
on the income and give away the capital wherever he saw a
chance to do good. One year he gathered together some of
his sketches and sent them to aid in building a recreation room,
library, and museum at Coniston. The sale of his signed
sketches brought a considerable sum for the benefit of the
enterprise.

During this period of his life when he had ceased writing,
he lived in quiet and happy repose among his books in com-
pany with his cousins, the Severns, and occasional visitors.
Yet sometimes during these years, Ruskin, " the greatest glad-
iator of the age," able formerly to take the hard knocks of the
critics with indifference, sank into moods of gloom. The
attacks of mental disease came oftener, making life a series of
tempests broken by seasons of calm. Conscious that his
working days were over, he simply waited for the end of life.

In January, 1900, influenza made its rounds in Coniston.
Ruskin's household feared for him, since for some months,

22 INTRODUCTION

being feeble, he had had to content himself with going about
in a bath chair instead of walking. In spite of precautions,
he was attacked by the influenza. On the morning of the
2oth of January in 1900 he suddenly became unconscious from
heart failure brought on by the influenza. That afternoon
he died, still unconscious, suffering no pain, in the room lined
with his beloved Turner landscapes.

The offer of a grave in Westminster Abbey was declined.
As Ruskin had resided for nearly thirty years at Coniston,
endearing himself to his neighbors by many generous acts,
and as he had often expressed a wish to be buried at Coniston
if he should die there, it seemed fitting that the supreme honor
of being buried with the great in Westminster should be de-
clined. Therefore, on the 25th of January, in the presence of
a multitude of friends, the funeral services were held in Conis-
ton churchyard. Two years later, on his birthday, there
was unveiled a bronze medallion of Ruskin, near the bust of
Scott, in the Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey.

In his intervals of health after 1884 until 1889, Ruskin did
as much writing as he could, mainly in the way of autobiog-
raphy and critical prefaces. After 1889 he wrote no more.
The writing of an autobiography had been suggested to him
some time before by his American friend, Professor Charles
Eliot Norton of Harvard. In 1885 Ruskin took up this work,
selecting a title which is characteristic of him — Prceterita :
Oiitlmes of Scenes and Thoughts perhaps Worthy of Memory
in My Past Life. In June, 1889, he ceased work on the
autobiography. The last piece of writing that his growing in-
firmity permitted him to do was the chapter in Volume III,
entitled " Joanna's Care," giving an account of the care that
his cousin, Mrs. Arthur Severn, took of him after the death of
his father and mother.

From the narrative of Ruskin's life and literary work it
plainly appears that he was never so happy as when teaching
somebody. As a boy he began it, by playing preacher. As a
young man in college he continued it by teaching his com-

JOHN ruskin: old age 23

panions about principles of painting and drawing. As a man
of maturity he carried still further the didacticism of his earlier
days. In lectures he explained his novel ideas on all kinds of
subjects; in books he advocated principles that many thought
heretical ; in newspaper letters he tried to turn people's
thoughts his way. In private conversation he advocated his
own beliefs determinedly. In drawings and paintings he illus-
trated his tenets on art. In acts of philanthropy he always
aimed to lead others in paths of helpfulness ; and in relations
with workingmen he preached just compensation and practiced
as he preached. In actual class-room teaching in the drawing
school he upheld the principles of truth and sincerity in the
use of pencil and brush. Even in his old age, when he had
stopped working, he dictated a slashing letter to The Times
regarding a matter in which he thought the public needed a
lesson. Always he lived a purposeful life of instruction.

Ruskin says himself in Prceterita (Vol. II, Ch. 12), ''All
my faculty was merely in showing that such and such things
were so." What happiness he had in life came almost entirely
from his endeavor to impress certain ideas on his day and
generation. His happiness consisted in his struggle to teach
by word of mouth, by writing, and by beneficent action.

QUESTIONS ON THE BIOGRAPHY

1. Give a brief narrative of Ruskin's achievements.

2. In Ruskin's life, what aim or purpose of his stands out most promi-
nently ?

3. What were his principal wntings during his early days; his
maturity ; and his old age ?

4. In what controversies did he engage ?

5. Who were some of his friends ?

6. What have you learned about his home life ?

7. What training prepared him for his life work ?

8. What was his appearance as a lecturer ?

9. What good did he do in the world ?

24 INTRODUCTION

THE MEANING OF SESAME AND LILIES

Sesame and Lilies consists of three lectures. The first
lecture, " Sesame, Of Kings' Treasuries," was delivered Decem-
ber 6, 1864, at Rusholme Town Hall near Manchester, in
aid of a library fund for Rusholme Institute. Hence, very
appropriately, the theme is the gaining of treasures from books,
or, as the author himself puts it, the treasures hidden in
books — how to find these treasures and how to lose them.
During the year 1864 Ruskin's mind was turned to this subject
often in the evenings, as he talked with Carlyle, founder of
the London Library.

In the first paragraph of his second lecture, he states the
theme of the first lecture as How and What to Read, both
questions rising out of the far deeper question. Why to Read.
In " Of Kings' Treasuries," he develops the idea of what to
read by saying that of the two kinds of books, books of the
hour and books of all time, we should especially give our at-
tention to the books of all time, books which contain the best
thoughts of their authors on truly important subjects, books
which say something that the authors perceive "to be true
and useful, or helpfully beautiful."

Ruskin tries to show that we should waste none of the
precious hours in reading valueless books. We should, if
possible, found Kings' Treasuries of our own by collecting
good home libraries which will solve for us the question of
what to read. Then he explains that there are two ways of
readirfg good books, namely, entering into the thoughts of the
authors by patient word by word study, and entering into
the souls or hearts of the authors by becoming like them in
high and noble aspirations, in fi,neness of sensation.

Sesame, the word. in the old Arabian Nights'" Tales for
opening the cave where riches were stored, is used by Ruskin
figuratively to indicate that he will try to teach the magic way
to open the best treasuries of the past, that is, books.

But tlie most vital question about reading is why to read at

THE MEANING OF SESAME AND LILIES 25

all. We should read in order that we may become noble-
minded, filled with true feehng or sensation ; in order, also,
that we may in the best sense advance in life. This idea
about reading, Ruskin says over and over, is most important.

He states that his real theme in " Of Kings' Treasuries'' is
the majesty of the influence of good books — how to have the
companionship of great authors, the true kings of this world ;
how to open the treasuries of thought stored by these kingly
minds and thus to become also kingly. The lecture "is
intended to show somewhat the use and preciousness " of the
treasures of libraries.

The second lecture, " Lilies, Of Queens' Gardens," was de-
livered December 14, 1864, in Manchester, in aid of girls'
schools. It was first printed alone in 1864 as a pamphlet to
aid the St. Andrew's Schools Fund, and the next year was
put out in a volume with " Of Kings' Treasuries."

In the third section of the second lecture, Ruskin explains
his purpose in " Of Queens' Gardens." He aims in this essay
to show the true queenly power of women arising out of noble
education. " Lilies," then, seems an appropriate title for an
essay which deals with the true place and power of women
inside and outside the home. Since women are everywhere to
exercise a queenly and gracious influence, the places over
which they rule may figuratively be called Queens' Gardens.
The lecture, as Ruskin says, dwells on the majesty of the in-
fluence of good women.

The two lectures together form Ruskin's explanation of
how people must be developed in mind and soul if society is
to be conducted according to his ideals. He taught that " the
happy life of the workman should be led and the gracious laws
of beauty and labor recognized dy the iipper no less than the
lower classes of England." Sesatne and Lilies^ he said, was
written chiefly for young people belonging to the upper middle
classes. Real kingship and real queenliness could result only
from the presence of beauty and truth in their everyday lives.
In these lectures Ruskin indicated how the best in human

26 INTRODUCTION

nature can be brought out, and he explained what should be
the standards toward which education and legislation should
immediately point the public mind.

These two essays, infused with lofty ideals of literature and
education, and containing the chief truths which Ruskin
endeavored all his life to display, have proved to be the author's
most popular message. Through the aid of his own explana-
tions they become easily intelligible to the earnest and
thoughtful reader.

On the other hand, the third lecture, ^'The Mystery of Life
and Its Arts," usually proves difficult for young students. It
was first delivered in Dublin in 1868 in the theater of the
Royal College of Science as one of a series of lectures on Art.
Three years later it appeared as the third lecture of the vol-
ume Sesame and Lilies. Ruskin afterward had doubts about
keeping it in a volume with " Of Kings' Treasuries " and " Of
Queens' Gardens," because he felt that it disturbed the sim-
plicity with which the two original lectures dwell on their
themes. Consequently he eliminated it from the edition of
1882. Later, however, his publishers restored it to the volume,
and now it is usually so printed.

In this third lecture, the author tells his thoughts on the
true nature of our life and its powers and responsibilities,
especially in connection with art. The great mystery of life
is the apathy of artists and all other people to the discovery
of the real motive of life. If men engaged in the fine arts
show apathy about the true meaning of life, from whom might
one expect to find light on the question ? Can we learn the
motive of life from the poets Milton and Dante, wise religious
men as they are ? Will the wise' contemplative men, Shake-
speare and Homer, explain to us ? Do the wise practical men
show us how to live in this world ?

If we ask all these in vain concerning the real ends of life,
let us ask still another group, the " workers in wood, and in
marble, and in iron." From these last we receive great and
constant lessons (§§ 127-129). The greatest lesson of all is

THE VICTORIAN AGE 27

that we are to do the work of men while life lasts. The true
work of men is to do good in " feeding people/' in " dressing
people," in "lodging people," and lastly in "rightly pleasing
people, with arts, or sciences, or any other subject of thought."

RUSKIN AS A REPRESENTATIVE OF THE
VICTORIAN AGE

The Victorian age, which includes the last sixty years of the
nineteenth century, was different in literary spirit from the
preceding fifty years. The reader who knows Coleridge's
mystical manner in The Ancient Mariner, or Scott's romantic
tone in Ivatihoe, does not need to be told that the end of the
eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth was a
time of free literary activity. In those days the writers pushed
boldly into new lines of thought and into new forms of ex-
pression. Literature was natural and romantic. In fact, the
age of Coleridge and Scott has been called the era of Natu-
ralism or Romanticism. But after the death of Scott there
came gradually into literature a different spirit. It is this new
Victorian spirit that Ruskin mainly represents. Beginning his
college study the year in which Victoria ascended the throne
of England, he became stamped with the characteristics which
distinguish the writers of Queen Victoria's reign. The sci-
entific, critical, and humanitarian aspects of Victorian writers
all show themselves in the substance of his writings.

The scientific spirit of Ruskin is shown in his love of truth.
In his descriptions of nature he was intent on truth, while the
romanticists were intent on expression of their feelings. His
plea was for faithful and earnest as well as loving study of
nature. He could not understand how the romantic poets
could be so moved by nature as to scorn scientific accuracy.
Yet he had such a sense for beauty in natural objects that he
was at a loss to understand how Wordsworth could find any-
thing poetical in the ugly yellow color of the celandine. Rus-

28 INTRODUCTION

kin's scientific spirit, it must be admitted, was sometimes
marred a little by his unaccountable prejudices.

How his attitude to nature differs from that of writers in the
preceding period may be seen best from an anecdote he re-
lates in PrcBterita. He has been telling about the first con-
tinental journey of the family. The father and mother and
son have reached Schaffhausen, and there, high above the
Rhine, they behold the Alps in the distance, clear as crystal,
sharp on the pure horizon sky, and already tinged with rose
by the sinking sun. This is how Ruskin goes on to give his
impressions : '' It is not possible to imagine, in any time of
the world, a more blessed entrance into life, for a child of such
temperament as mine. True, the temperament belonged to the
age: a very few years, — within the hundred, — before that,
no child could have been born to care for mountains, or for
the men that Hved in them, in that way. . . . For me the Alps
and their people were alike beautiful in their snow and their
humanity. . . . Thus, in perfect health of life and fire of heart,
not wanting to be anything but the boy I was, not wanting to
have anything more than I had ; knowing of sorrow only just
so much as to make life serious to me, not enough to slacken
in the least its sinews ; and with so much of science mixedwith
feeling as to make the sight of the Alps not only the revela-
tion of the beauty of the earth, but the opening of the first
page of its volume, — I went down that evening from the gar-
den-terrace of Schaffhausen with my destiny fixed in all of it
that was to be sacred and useful."

In Prceterita, also, Ruskin says that in May, 1842, he
sketched a tree stem with ivy upon it, for the first time trying
to express the charm of the natural arrangement precisely as
he saw it. That sincerity, that truthfulness, that presentation
of exact facts was one of the main characteristics of the Victo-
rian age. It became Ruskin's gospel of life and art. It was
the fundamental canon of the physical scientists of the nine-
teenth century, like Darwin and Huxley. These scholars
were substituting observation and experiment for generaliza-

THE VICTORIAN AGE 29

tion and a priori theories. It was the foundation for the new
logicians like John Stuart Mill. It was the war cry of the
historian and essayist, Thomas Carlyle. It was the method
of the poet Tennyson in his nature descriptions.

In his youth, Ruskin became imbued with this new spirit
of the new age, the spirit of sincere observation of nature.
In his study of nature, science was always mixed with feeling.
Thus Ruskin, though loving nature as reverently as did the
writers of the age before his, thoroughly represents his own
time in one of its principal characteristics, a passion for facts,
a scientific love of truth.

A second way in which he represents his age is in his
critical spirit. He was prone to criticise almost everything.
He felt that the standards for judging art works in his day
were wrong ; he fought for a different standard of criticism,
and became recognized as the greatest art critic of the age.
He criticised mercilessly the materialism, the commercialism
of his day. Other writers of the time were making critical
examinations of methods of education and systems of reli-
gious belief. Great essayists were in a state of unrest about
problems of immortality and the nature of God. Ruskin at-
tempted to formulate a philosophy of the relations of art to
life. This critical, speculative tendency, then, was character-
istic of Ruskin, as of the Victorian age.

The third leading way in which he represents his own
age is that he has an extraordinary regard for the welfare of
humanity. Even in looking at the beautiful Alps, he thought
of the people living there as much as he thought of the Alpine
sublimity. His contemporaries, too, in various ways, showed
this humanitarian attitude. Matthew Arnold, in his piquant
essays, tried to improve the taste of the English people.
Tennyson and Browning were profoundly concerned with the
highest interests of mankind. Dickens caricatured the faulty
manners 'and customs of the period. Ruskin continuously
preached the gospel of doing what could be done to improve
the life of the time. To the full limit of his strength he

30 INTRODUCTION

strove to raise the ideals of the rank and file. Thus he repre-
sents his era in his humanity, his love for his fellow-men.

The fourth leading characteristic in which Ruskin repre-
sents his age has to do with form, not with subject, like the
other three. In form, Ruskin represents the spirit of his
time in what Saintsbury calls flamboyant prose {History of
Nineteenth Centitry Literature), or in what less vigorous
critics call ornate or picturesque language. The tendency to
lavishness, to heaping up of phrases, to unusual forming of
phrases was shown earlier in the century by the essayists
Lamb and Landor and De Quincey. But Ruskin is the great
master of the ornate style characteristic of nineteenth-century
essayists. Some few readers find an element of unpleasant-
ness in this kind of writing, for anything approaching the
flamboyant is repellent to them ; but many relish it above all
other styles.

Though some critics say that Ruskin's prose rhythm grows
tiresome, and though they also point out the over-familiarity
of his conversational manner, noticeable, for instance, in the
opening of Sesame, they all acknowledge the essential richness
of his prose. From his very wealth of ideas and his abun-
dance of language, there results a certain largeness of effect
that charms the most hostile critic ; the rich imagination and
the earnest manner disarm criticism. Impulsive and wayward
as he is in his manner of writing, he atones for all sins of
style by his extraordinary mastery of language. Nobody
better than Ruskin exhibited in the nineteenth century the
characteristic Victorian prose style.

In summing up the characteristics of Ruskin as a repre-
sentative of his age, it should be noted that he has the true
scientific temperament of writers of his time, modified by his
sometimes unreasoning love of the beautiful ; that he is even
more critical than his contemporaries ; that he has a constant
eye to the welfare of society ; and that in style he is the great
exemplar of a distinctive Victorian manner.

SESAME AND LILIES

I. OF KINGS' TREASURIES
II. OF QUEENS' GARDENS
III. THE MYSTERY OF LIFE AND ITS ARTS

AUTHOR'S PREFACE, 1871

I. Being now fifty-one years old, and little likely to
change my mind hereafter on any important subject of
thought (unless through weakness of age), I wish to pub-
lish a connected series of such parts of my works as now
seem to me right, and likely to be of permanent use.
Ill doing so I shall omit much, but not attempt to mend
what I think worth reprinting. A young man necessarily
writes otherwise than an old one, and it would be worse
than wasted time to try to recast the juvenile language :
nor is it to be thought that I am ashamed even of what
I cancel ; for great part of my earlier work was rapidly
written for temporary purposes, and is now unnecessary,
though true, even to truism. What I wrote about reli-
gion was, on the contrary, painstaking, and, I think,
forcible, as compared with most religious writing ; es-
pecially in its frankness and fearlessness : but it was
wholly mistaken ; for I had been educated in the doc-
trines of a narrow sect, and had read history as obliquely
as sectarians necessarily must.

Mingled among these either unnecessary or erroneous
statements, I find, indeed, some that might be still of
value ; but these, in my earlier books, disfigured by
affected language, pardy through the desire to be thought
a fine writer, and partly, as in the second volume of
Modern Paiiiters, in the notion of returning as far as I
could to what I thought the better style of old English

34 SESAME AND LILIES

literature, especially to that of my then favorite, in prose
Richard Hooker.

2. For these reasons, — though, as respects either art,
policy, or morality, as distinct from rehgion, I not only
still hold, but would even wish strongly to reaffirm the
substance of what I said in my earhest books, — I shall
reprint scarcely anything in this series out of the first
and second volumes of Modern Painters ; and shall omit
much of the Seven Lamps and Stones of Venice : but all
my books written within the last fifteen years will be re-
published without change, as new editions of them are
called for, with here and there perhaps an additional
note, and having their text divided, for convenient refer-
ence, into paragraphs consecutive through each volume.
I shall also throw together the shorter fragments that
bear on each other, and fill in with such unprinted
lectures or studies as seem to me worth preserving, so
as to keep the volumes, on an average, composed of
about a hundred leaves each.

3. The first book of which a new edition is required
chances to be Sesame and Lilies^ from which I now de-
tach the old preface, about the Alps, for use elsewhere ;
and to which I add a lecture given in Ireland on a sub-
ject closely connected with that of the book itself. I
am glad that it should be the first of the complete series,
for many reasons ; though in now looking over these two
lectures, I am painfully struck by the waste of good work
in them. They cost me much thought, and much strong
emotion ; but it was foolish to suppose that I could rouse
my audiences in a little while to any sympathy with the
temper into which I had brought myself by years of think-
ing over subjects full of pain ; while, if I missed my purpose

author's preface 35

at the time, it was little to be hoped I could attain it
afterwards ; since phrases written for oral delivery become
ineffective when quietly read. Yet I should only take
away what good is in them if I tried to translate them
into the language of books ; nor, indeed, could I at all.
have done so at the time of their delivery, my thoughts
then habitually and impatiently putting themselves into
forms fit only for emphatic speech : and thus I am
startled, in my review of them, to find that, though there
is much, (forgive me the impertinence) which seems to
me accurately and energetically said, there is scarcely
anything put in a form to be generally convincing, or
even easily intelligible ; and I can well imagine a reader
laying down the book without being at all moved by it,
still less guided, to any definite course of action.

I think, however, if I now say briefly and clearly what
I meant my hearers to understand, and what I wanted,
and still would fain have, them to do, there may after-
wards be found some better service in the passionately
written text.

4. The first Lecture says, or tries to say, that, life
being very short, and the quiet hours of it few, we ought
to waste none of them in reading valueless books ; and
that valuable books should, in a civilized country, be
within the reach of every one, printed in excellent form,
for a just price ; but not in any vile, vulgar, or, by reason
of smallness of type, physically injurious form, at a vile
price. For we none of us need many books, and those
which we need ought to be clearly printed, on the best
paper, and strongly bound. And though we are, indeed,
now, a wretched and poverty-struck nation, and hardly
able to keep soul and body together, still, as no person

36 SESAME AND LILIES

ill decent circumstances would put on his table con-
fessedly bad wine, or bad meat, without being ashamed,
so he need not have on his shelves ill-printed or loosely
and wretchedly stitched books ; for, though few can be
rich, yet every man who honestly exerts himself may, I
think, still provide for himself and his family good shoes,
good gloves, strong harness for his cart or carriage horses,
and stout leather binding for his books. And I would
urge upon every young man, as the beginning of his due
and wise provision for his household, to obtain as soon as
he can, by the severest economy, a restricted, serviceable
and steadily — however slowly — increasing series of books
for use through life ; making his little library, of all the
furniture in his room, the most studied and decorative
piece ; every volume having its assigned place, like a
Httle statue in its niche, and one of the earliest and
strictest lessons to the children of the house being how
to turn the pages of their own literary possessions lightly
and deliberately, with no chance of tearing or dogs' ears.

That is my notion of the founding of Kings' Treasuries ;
and the first Lecture is intended to show somewhat the
use and preciousness of their treasures : but the two fol-
lowing ones have wider scope, being written in the hope
of awakening the youth of England, so far as my poor
words might have any power with them, to take some
thought of the purposes of the Hfe into which they are
entering, and the nature of the world they have to conquer.

5. These two lectures are fragmentary and ill-arranged,
but not, I think, diffuse or much compressible. The en-
tire gist and conclusion of them, however, is in the last
six paragraphs, 135 to the end, of the third lecture, which
I would beg the reader to look over not once nor twice

author's preface 37

(rather than any other part of the book), for they con-
tain the best expression I have yet been able to put in
words of what, so far as is within my power, I mean
henceforward both to do myself, and to plead with all
over whom I have any influence, to do also according to
their means : the letters begun on the first day of this
year, to the workmen of England, having the object of
originating, if possible, this movement among them, in
true alliance with whatever trustworthy element of help
they can find in the higher classes. After these para-
graphs, let me ask you to read, by the fiery light of re-
cent events, the fable at p. 165 (§ 117), and then §§ 129-
131 ; and observe, my statement respecting the famine
at Orissa is not rhetorical, but certified by official docu-
ments as within the truth. Five hundred thousand per-
sons, at least, died by starvation in our British dominions,
wholly in consequence of carelessness and want of fore-
thought. Keep that well in your memory ; and note it
as the best possible illustration of modern political econ-
omy in true practice, and of the relations it has accom-
phshed between Supply and Demand. Then begin the
second lecture, and all will read clear enough, I think,
to the end ; only, since that second lecture was written,
questions have arisen respecting the education and claims
of women which have greatly troubled simple minds and
excited restless ones. I am sometimes asked my thoughts
on this matter, and I suppose that some girl readers of the
second lecture may at the end of it desire to be told sum-
marily what I would have them do and desire in the pres-
ent state of things. This, then, is what I would say to
any girl who had confidence enough in me to beheve what
I told her, or do what I ask her.

38 SESAME AND LILIES

6. First, be quite sure of one thing, that, however much
you may know, and whatever advantages you may pos-
sess, and however good you may be, you have not been
singled out, by the God who made you, from all the other
girls in the world, to be especially informed respecting
His own nature and character. You have not been born
in a luminous point upon the surface of the globe, where
a perfect theology might be expounded to you from your
youth up, and where everything you were taught would
be true, and everything that was enforced upon you,
right. Of all the insolent, all the foolish persuasions that
by any chance could enter and hold your empty little
heart, this is the proudest and foolishest, — that you have
been so much the darling of the Heavens, and favorite of
the Fates, as to be born in the very nick of time, and in
the punctual place, when and where pure Divine truth
had been sifted from the errors of the Nations ; and that
your papa had been providentially disposed to buy a
house in the convenient neighborhood of the steeple
under which that Immaculate and final verity would be
beautifully proclaimed. Do not think it, child ; it is not
so. This, on the contrary, is the fact, — unpleasant you
may think it ; pleasant, it seems to me, — that you, with all
your pretty dresses, and dainty looks, and kindly thoughts,
and saintly aspirations, are not one whit more thought of
or loved by the great Maker and Master than any poor
little red, black, or blue savage, running wild in the pesti-
lent woods, or naked on the hot sands of the earth : and
that, of the two, you probably know less about God than
she does ; the only difference being that she thinks little
of Him that is right, and you much that is wrong.

That, then, is the first thing to make sure of; — that you

are not yet perfectly well informed on the most abstruse of
all possible subjects, and that if you care to behave with
modesty or propriety, you had better be silent about it.

7. The second thing which you make sure of is, that
however good you may be, you have faults ; that however
dull you may be, you can find out what some of them
are ; and that however slight they may be, you had better
make some — not too painful, but patient — effort to get
quit of them. And so far as you have confidence in me
at all, trust me for this, that how many soever you may
find or fancy your faults to be, there are only two that
are of real consequence, — Idleness and Cruelty. Per-
haps you may be proud. Well, we can get much good
out of pride, if only it be not religious. Perhaps you
may be vain : it is highly probable ; and v^ry pleasant
for the people who like to praise you. Perhaps you are
a Httle envious : that is really very shocking ; but then —
so is everybody else. Perhaps, also, you are a little mali-
cious, which I am truly concerned to hear, but should
probably only the more, if I knew you, enjoy your con-
versation. But whatever else you may be, you must not
be useless, and you must not be cruel. If there is any
one point which, in six thousand years of thinking about
right and wrong, wise and good men have agreed upon,
or successively by experience discovered, it is that God
dislikes idle and cruel people more than any other ; that
His first order is, " Work while you have light ; " and His
second, " Be merciful while you have mercy."

8. " Work while you have hght," especially while you
have the light of morning. There are few things more
wonderful to me than that old people never tell .young
ones how precious their youth is. They sometimes sen-

40 SESAME AND LILIES

timentally regret their own earlier days ; sometimes pru-
dently forget them ; often foolishly rebuke the young,
often more fooHshly indulge, often most fooHshly thwart
and restrain ; but scarcely ever warn or watch them. Re-
member, then, that I, at least, have warned you, that the
happiness of your life, and its power, and its part and rank
in earth or in heaven, depend on the way you pass your
days now. They are not to be sad days ; far from that,
the first duty of young people is to be dehghted and de-
lightful ; but they are to be in the deepest sense solemn
days. There is no solemnity so deep, to a rightly think-
ing creature, as that of dawn. But not only in that beau-
tiful sense, but in all their character and method, they
are to be solemn days. Take your Latin dictionary, and
look out " solemnis," and fix the sense of the word well
in your mind, and remember that every day of your early
life is ordaining irrevocably, for good or evil, the custom
and practice of your soul ; ordaining either sacred customs
of dear and lovely recurrence, or trenching deeper and
deeper the furrows for seed of sorrow. Now, therefore,
see that no day passes in which you do not make your-
self a somewhat better creature ; and in order to do that,
find out, first, what you are now. Do not think vaguely
about it ; take pen and paper, and write down as accurate
a description of yourself as you can, with the date to it.
If you dare not do so, find out why you dare not, and try
to get strength of heart enough to look yourself fairly in
the face, in mind as well as body. I do not doubt but
that the mind is a less pleasant thing to look at than the
face, and for that very reason it needs more looking at ;
so always have two mirrors on your toilet table, and see
that with proper care you dress body and mind before them

author's preface 41

daily. After the dressing is once over for the day, think
no more about it : as your hair will blow about your ears,
so your temper and thoughts will get ruffled with the day's
work, and may need, sometimes, twice dressing ; but I
don't want you to carry about a mental pocket-comb ;
only to be smooth braided always in the morning.

9. Write down, then, frankly, what you are, or, at least,
what you think yourself, not dwelHng upon those inevi-
table faults which I have just told you are of little conse-
quence, and which the action of a right life will shake or
smooth away ; but that you may determine to the best of
your intelligence what you are good for, and can be made
into. You will find that the mere resolve not to be use-
less, and the honest desire to help other people, will, in
the quickest and dehcatest ways, improve yourself. Thus,
from the beginning, consider all your. accomplishments as
means of assistance to others ; read attentively, in this
volume, paragraphs 74, 75, 19, and 79, and you will un-
derstand what I mean, with respect to languages and
music. In music especially you will soon find what per-
sonal benefit there is in being serviceable : it is probable
that, however limited your powers, you have voice and
ear enough to sustain a note of moderate compass in a
concerted piece ; — that, then, is the first thing to make
sure you can do. Get your voice disciplined and clear,
and think only of accuracy ; never of effect or expression :
if you have any soul worth expressing, it will show itself
in your singing ; but most likely there are very few feel-
ings in you, at present, needing any particular expression ;
and the one thing you have to do is to make a clear-
voiced Httle instrument of yourself, which other people
can entirely depend upon for the note wanted. So, in

42 SESAME AND LILIES

drawing, as soon as you can set down the right shape of
anything, and thereby explain its character to another
person, or make the look of it clear and interesting to a
child, you will begin to enjoy the art vividly for its own
sake, and all your habits of mind and powers of memory
will gain precision : but if you only try to make showy
drawings for praise, or pretty ones for amusement, your
drawing will have little of real interest for you, and no
educational power whatever.

10. Then, besides this more delicate work, resolve to
do every day some that is useful in the vulgar sense.
Learn first thoroughly the economy of the kitchen ; the
good and bad qualities of every common article of food,
and the simplest and best modes of their preparation :
when you have time, go and help in the cooking of poorer
famihes, and show them how to make as much of every
thing as possible, and how to make little, nice ; coaxing
and tempting them into tidy and pretty ways, and plead-
ing for well-folded table-cloths, however coarse, and for a
flower or two out of the garden to strew on them. If you
manage to get a clean table-cloth, bright plates on it, and
a good dish in the middle, of your own cooking, you m.ay
ask leave to say a short grace ; and let your religious
ministries be confined to that much for the present.

11. Again, let a certain part of your day (as little as
you choose, but not to be broken in upon) be set apart
for making strong and pretty dresses for the poor. Learn
the sound qualities of all useful stuffs, and make every-
thing of the best you can get, whatever its price. I have
many reasons for desiring you to do this, — too many to
be told just now, — trust me, and be sure you get every-
thing as good as can be ; and if, in the villainous state of

author's preface 43

modern trade, you cannot get it good at any price, buy
its raw material, and set some of the poor women about
you to spin and weave, till you have got stuff that can be
trusted : and then, every day, make some little piece of
useful clothing, sewn with your own fingers as strongly as
it can be stitched ; and embroider it or otherwise beautify
it moderately with fine needlework, such as a girl may be
proud of having done. And accumulate these things by
you until you hear of some honest persons in need of
clothing, which may often too sorrowfully be ; and, even
though you should be deceived, and give them to the dis-
honest, and hear of their being at once taken to the
pawnbroker's, never mind that, for the pawnbroker must
sell them to some one who has need of them. That is
no business of yours ; what concerns you is only that when
you see a half-naked child, you should have good and
fresh clothes to give it, if its parents will let it be taught
to wear them. If they will not, consider how they came
to be of such a mind, which it will be wholesome for you
beyond most subjects of inquiry to ascertain. And after
you have gone on doing this a little while, you will begin
to understand the meaning of at least one chapter of your
Bible, Proverbs xxxi., without need of any labored com-
ment, sermon, or meditation.

In these, then (and of course in all minor ways besides,
that you can discover in your own household), you must
be to the best of your strength usefully employed during
the greater part of the day, so that you may be able at
the end of it to say, as proudly as any peasant, that you
have not eaten the bread of idleness.

12. Then, secondly, I said, you are not to be cruel.
Perhaps you think there is no chance of your being so ;

44 SESAME AND LILIES

and indeed I hope it is not likely that you should be
deliberately unkind to any creature ; but unless you are
deliberately kind to every creature, you will often be cruel
to many. Cruel, partly through want of imagination (a
far rarer and weaker faculty in women than men), and yet
more, at the present day, through the subtle encourage-
ment of your selfishness by the religious doctrine that all
which we now suppose to be evil will be brought to a good
end ; doctrine practically issuing, not in less earnest efforts
that the immediate unpleasantness may be averted from
ourselves, but in our remaining satisfied in the contempla-
tion of its ultimate objects, when it is inflicted on others.
13. It is not likely that the more accurate methods
of recent mental education will now long permit young
people to grow up in the persuasion that, in any danger
or distress, they may expect to be themselves saved by the
Providence of God, while those around them are lost by
His improvidence : but they may be yet long restrained
from rightly kind action, and long accustomed to endure
both their own pain occasionally, and the pain of others
always, with an unwise patience, by misconception of the
eternal and incurable nature of real evil. Observe, there-
fore, carefully in this matter : there are degrees of pain as
degrees of faultfulness, which are altogether conquerable,
and which seem to be merely forms of wholesome trial or
discipline. Your fingers tingle when you go out on a frosty
morning, and are all the warmer afterwards ; your limbs
are weary with wholesome work, and lie down in the pleas-
anter rest ; you are tried for a little while by having to wait
for some promised good, and it is all the sweeter when it
comes. But you cannot carry the trial past a certain
point. Let the cold fasten on your hand in an extreme

degree, and your fingers will moulder from their sockets.
Fatigue yourself, but once, to utter exhaustion, and to
the end of life you shall not recover the former vigor of
your frame. Let heart-sickness pass beyond a certain
bitter point, and the heart loses its life forever.

14. Now, the very definition of evil is in this irre-
mediableness. It means sorrow, or sin, which end in
death ; and assuredly, as far as we know, or can con-
ceive, there are many conditions both of pain and sin
which cannot but so end. Of course we are ignorant
and blind creatures, and we cannot know what seeds of
good may be in present suffering, or present crime ; but
with what we cannot know, we are not concerned. It is
conceivable that murderers and liars may in some dis-
tant world be exalted into a higher humanity than they
could have reached without homicide or falsehood ;
but the contingency is not one by which our actions
should be guided. There is, indeed, a better hope that
the beggar, who lies at our gates in misery, may, within
gates of pearl, be comforted ; but the Master, whose
words are our only authority for thinking so, never Him-
self inflicted disease as a blessing, nor sent away the hun-
gry unfed, or the wounded unhealed.

15. Believe me, then, the only right principle of action
here, is to consider good and evil as defined by our natu-
ral sense of both ; and to strive to promote the one, and
to conquer the other, with as hearty endeavor as if there
were, indeed, no other world than this. Above all, get
quit of the absurd idea that Heaven will interfere to
correct great errors, while allowing its laws to take their
course in punishing small ones. If you prepare a dish of
food carelessly, you do not expect Providence to make it

46 SESAME AND LILIES

palatable ; neither if, through years of folly, you misguide
your own life, need you expect Divine interference to
bring round everything at last for the best. I tell you,
positively, the world is not so constituted : the conse-
quences of great mistakes are just as sure as those of
small ones, and the happiness of your whole life, and of
all the lives over which you have power, depends as lit-
erally on your own common sense and discretion as the
excellence and order of the feast of a day.

1 6. Think carefully and bravely over these things, and
you will find them true : having found them so, think also
carefully over your own position in life. I assume that
you belong to the middle or upper classes, and that you
would shrink from descending into a lower sphere. You
may fancy you would not : nay, if you are very good,
strong-hearted, and romantic, perhaps you really would
not ; but it is not wrong that you should. You have then,
I suppose, good food, pretty rooms to live in, pretty
dresses to wear, power of obtaining every rational and
wholesome pleasure ; you are, moreover, probably gentle
and grateful, and in the habit of every day thanking God
for these things. But why do you thank Him? Is it be-
cause, in these matters, as well as in your religious knowl-
edge, you think He has made a favorite of you? Is
the essential meaning of your thanksgiving, " Lord, I
thank Thee that I am not as other girls are, not in that I
fast twice in the week while they feast, but in that I feast
seven times a week while they fast," and are you quite
sure this is a pleasing form of thanksgiving to your
Heavenly Father? Suppose you saw one of your own
true earthly sisters, Lucy or Emily, cast out of your
mortal father's house, starving, helpless, heartbroken ; and

author's preface 47

that every morning when you went into your father's room
you said to him, " How good you are, father, to give me
what you don't give Lucy," are you sure that, whatever
anger your parent might have just cause for, against your
sister, he would be pleased by that thanksgiving, or flat-
tered by that praise ? Nay, are you even sure that you
ai-e so much the favorite : — suppose that, all this while,
he loves poor Lucy just as well as you, and is only trying
you through her pain, and perhaps not angry with her*
in any wise, but deeply angry with you, and all the more
for your thanksgivings ? Would it not be well that you
should think, and earnestly too, over this standing of
yours : and all the more if you wish to believe that text,
which clergymen so much dislike preaching on, " How
hardly shall they that have riches enter into the Kingdom
of God?" You do not beheve it now, or you would be
less complacent in your state ; and you cannot believe it
at all, until you know that the Kingdom of God means —
'' not meat and drink, but justice, peace, and joy in the
Holy Ghost," nor until you know also that such joy is not
by any means, necessarily, in going to church, or in singing
hymns ; but may be joy in a dance, or joy in a jest, or
joy in anything you have deserved to possess, or that you
are willing to give ; but joy in nothing that separates you,
as by any strange favor, from your fellow-creatures, that
exalts you through their degradation — exempts you from
their toil — or indulges you in time of their distress.

17. Think, then, and some day, I believe, you will
feel also — no morbid passion of pity such as would
turn you into a black Sister of Charity, but the steady
fire of perpetual kindness which will make you a bright
one. I speak in no disparagement of them ; I know well

48 SESAME AND LILIES

how good the Sisters of Charity are, and how much we
owe to them ; but all these professional pieties (except so
far as distinction or association may be necessary for
effectiveness of work) are in their spirit wrong ; and in
practice merely plaster the sores of disease that ought
never to have been permitted to exist ; encouraging at
the same time the herd of less excellent women in frivol-
ity, by leading them to think that they must either be
'good up to the black standard, or cannot be good for
anything. Wear a costume, by all means, if you like ;
but let it be a cheerful and becoming one ; and be in
your heart a Sister of Charity always, without either
veiled or voluble declaration of it.

1 8. As I pause, before ending my preface — thinking
of one or two more points that are difficult to write of —
I find a letter in The Times, from a French lady, which
says all I want so beautifully, that I will print it just as it
stands :

Sir, — It is often said that one example is worth many sermons.
Shall I be judged presumptuous if I point out one, which seems to
me so striking just now, that, however painful, I cannot help dwell-
ing upon it?

It is the share, the sad and large share, that French society
and its recent habits of luxury, of expenses, of dress, of indul-
gence in every kind of extravagant dissipation, has to lay to its
own door in its actual crisis of ruin, misery, and humiliation.
If our menageres can be cited as an example to English house-
wives, so, alas ! can other classes of our society be set up as an
example — not to be followed.

Bitter must be the feelings of many a Frenchwoman whose days
of luxury and expensive habits are at an end : and whose bills of
bygone splendor lie with a heavy weight on her conscience, if not
on her purse !
• With us the evil has spread high and low. Everywhere have

author's preface 49

the examples given by the highest ladies in the land been followed
but too successfully.

Every year did dress become more extravagant, entertainments
more costly, expenses of every kind more considerable. Lower
and lower became the tone of society, its good breeding, its
delicacy. More and more were monde and demi-monde associated
in newspaper accounts of fashionable doings, in scandalous gossip,
on racecourses, in premieres represeniationsy in imitation of each
other's costumes, mobiliers and slang.

Living beyond one's means became habitual — almost necessary
— for every one to keep up with, if not to go beyond, every one
else.

What the result of all this has been we now see in the wreck
of our prosperity, in the downfall of all that seemed brightest and
highest.

Deeply and fearfully impressed by what my own country has
incurred and is suffering, I cannot help feeling sorrowful when
I see in England signs of our besetting sins appearing also. Paint
and chignons, slang and vaudevilles, knowing Anonymas by name,
and reading doubtfully moral novels, are in themselves small
offences, although not many years ago they would have appeared
very heinous ones, yet they are quick and tempting conveyances
on a very dangerous high-road.

I would that all Englishwomen knew how they are looked up
to from abroad — what a high opinion, what honor and reverence
we foreigners have for their principles, their truthfulness, the fresh
and pure innocence of their daughters, the healthy youthfulness of
their lovely children.

May I illustrate this by a short example which happened
very near me? During the days of the emeutes of 1848, all the
houses in Paris were being searched for firearms by the mob.
The one I was living in contained none, as the master of the
house repeatedly assured the furious and incredulous Republi-
cans. They were going to lay violent hands on him when his
wife, an English lady, hearing the loud discussion, came bravely
forward and assured them that no arms were concealed. *' Vous
etes anglaise, nous vous croyons ; les anglaises disent toujours la
verite," was the immediate answer, and the rioters quietly left.

50 . SESAME AND LILIES

Now, Sir, shall I be accused of unjustified criticism if, loving
and admiring your country, as these lines will prove, certain
new features strike me as painful discrepancies in English life?

Far be it from me to preach the contempt of all that can make
life lovable and wholesomely pleasant. I can love nothing better
than to see a woman nice, neat, elegant, looking her best in the
prettiest dress that her taste and purse can afford, or your bright,
fresh young girls fearlessly and perfectly sitting their horses, or
adorning their houses as pretty \_sic ; it is not quite grammar, but it
is better than if it were] as care, trouble, and refinement can make
them.

It is the degree beyond that which to us has proved so fatal, and
that I would our example could warn you from as a small repayment
for your hospitality and friendliness to us in our days of trouble.

May Englishwomen accept this in a kindly spirit as a Newyear's
wish from A French Lady.

Dec. 29.

19. That, then, is the substance of what I would
fain say convincingly, if it might be, to my girl friends ;
at all events with certainty in my own mind that I was
thus far a safe guide to them.

For other and older readers it is needful I should
write a few words more, respecting what opportunity
I have had to judge, or right I have to speak, of such
things ; for, indeed, too much of what I have said
about women has been said in faith only. A wise and
lovely English lady told me, when Sesame and Lilies
first appeared, that she was sure the Sesame would be
useful, but that in the Lilies I had been writing of what
I knew nothing about. Which was in a measure too true,
and also that it is more partial than my writings are

usually : for as Ellesmere spoke his speech on the

intervention, not, indeed, otherwise than he felt, but yet
altogether for the sake of Gretchen, so I wrote the Lilies

author's preface 51

to please one girl ; and were it not for what I remember
of her, and of few besides, should now perhaps recast
some of the sentences in the Lilies in a very different
tone : for as years have gone by, it has chanced to me,
untowardly in some respects, fortunately in others (be-
cause it enables me to read history more clearly), to
see the utmost evil that is in women, while I have
had but to beHeve the utmost good. The best women
are indeed necessarily the most difficult to know ; they
are recognized chiefly in the happiness of their hus-
bands and the nobleness of their children ; they are only
to be divined, not discerned, by the stranger ; and, some-
times, seem almost helpless except in their homes ; yet
without the help of one of them,^ to whom this book is
dedicated, the day would probably have come before now,
when I should have written and thought no more.

20. On the other hand, the fashion of the time
renders whatever is forward, coarse, or senseless, in
feminine nature, too palpable to all men : — the weak
picturesqueness of my earlier writings brought me ac-
quainted with much of their emptiest enthusiasm ; and
the chances of later life gave me opportunites of watch-
ing women in states of degradation and vindictiveness
which opened to me the gloomiest secrets of Greek and
Syrian tragedy. I have seen them betray their house-
hold charities to lust, their pledged love to devotion ; I
have seen mothers dutiful to their children, as Medea ;
and children dutiful to their parents, as the daughter of
Herodias : but my trust is still unmoved in the precious-
ness of the natures that are so fatal in their error, and I
leave the words of the Lilies unchanged ; believing, yet,

1 0^77.

52 SESAME AND LILIES

that no man ever lived a right life who had not been
chastened by a woman's love, strengthened by her cour-
age, and guided by her discretion.

21. What I might myself have been, so helped, I
rarely indulge in the idleness of thinking ; but what I am,
since I take on me the function of a teacher, it is well
that the reader should know, as far as I can tell him.

Not an unjust person ; not an unkind one ; not a false
one ; a lover of order, labor, and peace. That, it seems
to me, is enough to give me right to say all I care to say
on ethical subjects ; more, I could only tell definitely
through details of autobiography such as none but pros-
perous and (in the simple sense of the word) faultless
lives could justify ; — and mine has been neither. Yet,
if any one, skilled in reading the torn manuscripts of the
human soul, cares for more intimate knowledge of me,
he may have it by knowing with what persons in past
history I have most sympathy.

I will name three.

In all that is strongest and deepest in me, that fits me
for my work, and gives light or shadow to my being, I
have sympathy with Guido Guinicelli.

In my constant natural temper, and thoughts of things
and of people, with Marmontel.

In my enforced and accidental temper, and thoughts
of things and of people, with Dean Swift.

Any one who can understand the natures of those
three men, can understand mine ; and having said so
much, I am content to leave both life and work to be
remembered or forgotten, as their uses may deserve.

Denmark Hill,

\st January, 1871.

SESAME AND LILIES^

LECTURE ,|1 — SESAME

OF KINGS TREASURIES

"You shall each have a cake of sesame, — and ten pound."
— LuciAN : The Fisherman.

I. My first duty this evening is to ask° your pardon
for the ambiguity of title under which the subject of
lecture has been announced : for indeed I am not going
to talk of kings," known as regnant, nor of treasuries,
understood to contain wealth ; but of quite another
order of royalty, and another material of riches, than
those usually acknowledged. I had even intended to
ask your attention for a little while on trust, and (as
sometimes one contrives, in taking a friend to see a
favorite piece of scenery) to hide what I wanted most
to show, with such imperfect cunning as I might, until
we unexpectedly reached the best point of view by
winding paths. But — and as also I have heard it said,

1 The first edition of Sesame and Lilies, published in 1865 by Smith,
Elder, and Company, London, contained only the first two lectures,
viz., " Of Kings' Treasuries" and " Of Queens' Gardens." That same
year, 1865, the second edition was published. In 1871 appeared the
third edition, also published by Smith, Elder, and Company. This
edition of 187 1 was the first volume of a collected series of Ruskin's
works. As it included all three lectures, and was thus the first complete
edition of Sesame and Lilies, the text of it is followed in the present
edition.

54 SESAME AND LILIES

by men practised in public address, that hearers are
never so much fatigued as by the endeavor to follow
a speaker who gives them no clue to his purpose, — I
will take the slight mask off at once, and tell you plainly
that I want to speak to you about the treasures hidden
in books ; and about the way we find them, and the
way we lose them. A grave subject, you will say; and
a wide one ! Yes ; so wide that I shall make no effort
to touch the compass of it. I will try only to bring
before you a few simple thoughts ° about reading, which
press themselves upon me every day more deeply, as
I watch the course of the public mind with respect to
our daily enlarging means of education ; and the answer-
ingly wider spreading on the levels, of the irrigation of
literature.

2. It happens that I have practically some connexion"
with schools for different classes of youth ; and I receive
many letters from parents respecting the education of
their children. In the mass of these letters I am always
struck by the precedence which the idea of "a position °
in life " takes above all other thoughts in the parents' —
more especially in the mothers' — minds. "The educa-
tion befitting such and such a station in life " — this is
the phrase, this the object, always. They never seek,
as far as I can make out, an education good in itself;
even the conception of abstract Tightness in training
rarely seems reached by the writers. But, an education
"which shall keep a good coat on my son's back; —
which shall enable him to ring with confidence the
visitors' bell° at double-belled doors; which shall result
ultimately in the estabhshment of a double-belled door
to his own house ; — in a word, which shall lead to

advancement in life ; — this we pray for on bent knees —
and this is all we pray for." It never seems to occur
to the parents that there may be an education which,
in itself, is advancement in Life ; — that any other than
that may perhaps be advancement in Death ; and that
this essential education might be more easily got, or
given, than they fancy, if they set about it in the right
way ; while it is for no price, and by no favor, to be got,
if they set about it in the wrong.

3. Indeed, among the ideas most prevalent and effec-
tive in the mind of this busiest of» countries, I sup-
pose the first — at least that which is confessed with
the greatest frankness, and put forward as the fittest
stimulus to youthful exertion — is this of "Advancement
in Life." May I ask you to consider with me, what this
idea practically includes, and what it should include.

Practically, then, at present, " advancement in hfe "
means, becoming conspicuous in life ; — obtaining a posi-
tion which shall be acknowledged by others to be re-
spectable or honorable. We do not understand by this
advancement, in general, the mere making of money,
but the being known to have made it ; not the accom-
plishment of any great aim, but the being seen to have
accomplished it. In a word, we mean the gratification
of our thirst for applause. That thirst, if the last in-
firmity ° of noble minds, is also the first infirmity of weak
ones ; and, on the whole, the strongest impulsive in-
fluence of average humanity : the greatest efforts of the
race hav^ always been traceable to the love of praise,
as its greatest catastrophes to the love of pleasure.

4. I am not about to attack or defend this impulse.
I want you only to feel how it lies at the root of effort ;

56 SESAME AND LILIES

especially of all modern effort. It is the gratification
of vanity which is, with us, the stimulus of toil, and
balm of repose ; so closely does it touch the very springs
of life that the wounding of our vanity is always spoken
of (and truly) as in its measure mo7'tal ; we call it " mor-
tification," ° using the same expression which we should
apply to a gangrenous and incurable bodily hurt. And
although few of us may be physicians enough to recognize
the various effect of this passion upon health and energy,
I believe most honest men know, and would at once
acknowledge, its kading power with them as a motive.
The seaman does not commonly desire to be made cap-
tain only because he knows he can manage the ship
better than any other sailor on board. He wants to be
made captain that he may be called captain. The clergy-
man does not usually want to be made a bishop only be-
cause he believes no other hand can, as firmly as his,
direct the diocese through its difficultieSi He wants to
be made bishop primarily that he may be called " My
Lord." ° And a prince does not usually desire to enlarge,
or a subject to gain, a kingdom, because he believes that
no one else can as well serve the State, upon its throne ;
but, briefly, because he wishes to be addressed as "Your
Majesty," by as many lips as may be brought to such
utterance.

5. This, then, being the main idea of " advancement
in life," ° the force of it applies, for all of us, according to
our station, particularly to that secondary result of such
advancement which we call " getting into good society."
We want to get into good society not that we may have
it, but that we may be seen in it ; and our notion of its
goodness depends primarily on its conspicuousness.

OF kings' treasuries 57

Will you pardon me if I pause for a moment to put
what I fear you may think an impertinent question ? I
never can go on with an address unless I feel, or know,
that my audience are either'with me or against me : I do
not much care which, in beginning; but I must know
where they are ; and I would fain find out, at this in-
stant, whether you think I am putting the motives of
popular action too low. I am resolved, to-night, to
state them low enough to be admitted as probable ; for
whenever, in my writings ° on Political Economy, I assume
that a little honesty, or generosity, — or what used to be
called " virtue " — may be calculated upon as a human
motive of action, people always answer me, saying, " You
must not calculate on that : that is not in human nature :
you must not assume anything to be common to men but
acquisitiveness and jealousy ; no other feeling ever has
influence on them, except accidentally, and in matters
out of the way of business." I begin, accordingly, to-
night low in the scale of motives ; but I must know if
you think me right in doing so. Therefore, let me ask
those who admit the love of praise to be usually the
strongest motive in men's minds in seeking advancement
and the honest desire of doing any kind of duty to be an
entirely secondary one, to hold up their hands. (^About
a dozen of hands held up — the audience, partly, not being
sure the lecturer is serious, and, partly, shy of expressing
opinion.) I am quite serious — I really do want to know
what you think; however, I can judge by putting the
reverse question. Will those who think that duty is
generally the first, and love of praise the second, motive,
hold up their hands ? ( One hand reported to have been
held up, behind the lecturer.) Very good : I see you

58 SESAME AND LILIES

are with me, and that you think I have not begun too
near the ground. Now, without teasing you by putting
farther question, I venture to assume that you will admit
duty as at least a secondary or tertiary ° motive. You
think that the desire of doing something useful, or obtain-
ing some real good, is indeed an existent collateral ° idea,
though a secondary one, in most men's desire of advance-
ment. You will grant that moderately honest men desire
place and office, at least in some measure, for the sake
of beneficent power ; and would wish to associate rather
with sensible and well-informed persons than with fools and
ignorant persons, whether they are seen in the company
of the sensible ones or not. And finally, without being
troubled by repetition of any common truisms ° about the
preciousness of friends, and the influence of companions,
you will admit, doubtless, that according to the sincerity
of our desire that our friends may be true, and our com-
panions wise, — and in proportion to the earnestness and
discretion with which we choose both, will be the general
chances of our happiness and usefulness.

6. But, granting that we had both the will and the
sense to choose our friends well, how few of us have the
power ! or, at least, how limited, for most, is the sphere
of choice ! Nearly all our associations are determined
by chance, or necessity ; and restricted within a narrow
circle. We cannot know whom we would ; and those
whom we know, we cannot have at our side when we
most need them. All the higher circles of human intel-
ligence are, to those beneath, only momentarily and
partially open. We may, by good fortune, obtain a
glimpse of a great poet, and hear the sound of his voice ;
or put a question to a man of science, and be answered

OF kings' treasuries 59

good-humoredly. We may intrude ten minutes' talk on
a cabinet minister," answered probably with words worse
than silence, being deceptive ; or snatch, once or twice
in our lives, the privilege of throwing a bouquet in the path
of a Princess, or arresting the kind glance of a Queen.
And yet these momentary chances we covet ; and spend
our years, and passions, and powers in pursuit of Httle
more than these ; while, meantime, there is a society °
continually open to us, of people who will talk to us as
long as we like, whatever our rank or occupation ; —
talk to us in the best words they can choose, and of the
things nearest their hearts. And this society, because it
is so numerous and so gentle, and can be kept waiting
round us all daylong, — kings and statesmen lingering
patiently, not to grant audience, but to gain it! — in
those plainly furnished and narrow ante-rooms, our book-
case shelves, — we make no account of that company,
— perhaps never listen to a word they would say, all day
long !

7. You may tell me, perhaps, or think within your-
selves, that the apathy with which we regard this com-
pany of the noble, who are praying us to listen to them ;
and the passion with which we pursue the company,
probably of the ignoble, who despise us, or who have
nothing to teach us, are grounded in this, — that we can
see the faces of the living men, and it is themselves, and
not their sayings, with which we desire to become fa-
miliar. But it is not so. Suppose you never were to
see their faces : — suppose you could be put behind a
screen in the statesman's cabinet, or the prince's cham-
ber, would you not be glad to listen to their words,
though you were forbidden to advance beyond the

60 SESAME AND LILIES

screen ? And when the screen is only a little less, folded
in two instead of four, and you can be hidden behind
the cover of the two boards that bind a book, and listen
all day long, not to the casual talk, but to the studied,
determined, chosen addresses of the wisest of men ; —
this station of audience, and honorable privy council,
you despise !

8. But perhaps you will say that it is because the
living people talk of things that are passing, and are of
immediate interest to youy that you desire to hear them/
Nay ; that cannot be so, for the living people will them-
selves tell you about passing matters, much better in
their writings than in their careless talk. But I admit
that this motive does influence you, so far as you prefer
those rapid and ephemeral ° writings to slow and endur-
ing writings — books, properly so called. For all books
are divisible ° into two classes, the books of the hour, and
the books of all time. Mark this distinction — it is not
one of quality only. It is not merely the bad book that
does not last, and the good one that does. It is a dis-
tinction of species. There are good books for the hour,
and good ones for all time ; bad books for the hour, and
bad ones for all time. I must define the two kinds
before I go farther.

9. The good book of the hour, then, — I do not speak
of the bad ones, — is simply the useful or pleasant talk
of some person whom you cannot otherwise converse
with, printed for you. Very useful often, telling you
what you need to know ; very pleasant often, as a sensi-
ble friend's present talk would be. These bright ac-
counts of travels ; good-humored and witty discussions
of question; lively or pathetic story-teUing in the form

OF kings' treasuries 61

of novel ; firm fact-telling, by the real agents concerned
in the events of passing history ; — all these books of the
hour, multiplying among us as education becomes more
general, are a peculiar possession of the present age ;
we ought to be entirely thankful for them, and entirely
ashamed of ourselves if we make no good use of them.
But we make the worst possible use if we allow them to
usurp the place of true books : for, strictly speaking, they
are not books at all, but merely letters or newspapers
in good print. Our friend's letter may be delightful, or
necessary, to-day : whether worth keeping or not, is to
be considered. The newspaper may be entirely proper
at breakfast-time, but assuredly it is not reading for all
day. So, though bound up in a volume, the long letter
which gives you so pleasant an account of the inns, and
roads, and weather last year at such a place, or which
tells you that amusing story, or gives you the real cir-
cumstances of such and such events, however valuable
for occasional reference, may not be, in the real sense
of the word, a " book " at all, nor, in the real sense, to
be " read." A book is essentially not a talked thing,
but a written thing ; and written, not with a view of mere
communication, but of permanence. The book of talk
is printed only because its author cannot speak to thou-
sands of people at once ; if he could, he would — the
volume is mere multiplication of his voice. You cannot
talk to your friend in India ; if you could, you would ;
you write instead : that is mere conveyance of voice.
But a book is written, not to multiply the voice merely,
not to carry it merely, but to perpetuate it. The au-
thor has something to say which he perceives to be true
and useful, or helpfully beautiful. So far as he knows,

62 SESAME AND LILIES

no one has yet said it ; so far as he knows, no one else
can say it. He is bound to say it, clearly and melodi-
ously if he may ; clearly, at all events. In the sum of
his life he finds this to be the thing, or group of things,
manifest to him; — this, the piece of true knowledge, or
sight, which his share of sunshine and earth has per-
mitted him to seize. He would fain set it down for
ever : engrave it on rock, if he could ; saying, " This is
the best of me ; for the rest, I ate, and drank, and slept,
loved, and hated, like another ; my life ° was as the vapor,
and is not ; but this I saw and knew : this, if anything of
mine, is worth your memory." That is his "writing" ;
it is, in his small human way, and with whatever degree
of true inspiration is in him, his inscription, or scripture.
That is a "Book."

10. Perhaps you think no books were ever so written ?
But, again, I ask you, do you at all believe in honesty,

or at all in kindness? or do you think there is never any
honesty or benevolence in wise people? None of us, I
hope, are so unhappy as to think that. Well, whatever
bit of a wise man's work is honestly and benevolently
done, that bit is his book,° or his piece of art.^ It is
mixed always with evil fragments — ill-done, redundant,
affected work. But if you read rightly, you will easily
discover the true bits, and those are the book.

11. Now books of this kind have been written in all
ages by their greatest men; — by great readers, great
statesmen, and great thinkers. These are all at your
choice ; and Life is short. You have heard as much be-
fore ; — yet have you measured and mapped out this

iNote this sentence carefully, and compare the Queeii of the Air^
§ 106.

OF kings' treasuries 63

short life and its possibilities ? Do you know, if you
read this, that you cannot read that — that what you
lose to-day you cannot gain to-morrow? Will you go
and gossip with your housemaid, or your stable-boy,
when you may talk with queens and kings ; or flatter
yourselves that it is with any worthy consciousness of
your own claims to respect that you jostle with the
hungry and common crowd for entree'^ here, and audi-
ence there, when all the while this eternal court is open
to you, with its society, wide as the world, multitudinous
as its days, the chosen, and the mighty, of every place
and time? Into that you may enter always; in that
you may take fellowship and rank according to your
wish ; from that, once entered into it, you can never be
outcast but by your own fault; by your aristocracy of
companionship there, your own inherent ° aristocracy
will be assuredly tested, and the motives with which
you strive to take high place in the society of the living,
measured, as to all the truth and sincerity that are in
them, by the place you desire to take in this company
of the Dead.

12. "The place you desire," and the place ° j'^// yf/
yourself for^ I must also say; because, observe, this
court of the past differs from all living aristocracy in
this : — it is open to labor and to merit, but to nothing
else. No wealth will bribe, no name overawe, no artifice
deceive, the guardian of those Elysian° gates. In the
deep sense, no vile or vulgar person ever enters there.
At the portieres ° of that silent Faubourg St. Germain,"
there is but brief question, "Do you deserve to enter?
Pass. Do you ask to be the companion of nobles?
Make yourself noble, and you shall be. Do you long

64 SESAME AND LILIES

for the conversation of the wise ? Learn to understand
it, and you shall hear it. But on other terms? — no. If
you will not rise to us, we cannot stoop to you. The
living lord may assume courtesy, the living philosopher
explain his thought to you with considerate pain ; but
here we neither feign nor interpret ; you must rise tg the
level of our thoughts if you would be gladdened by
them, and share our feelings if you would recognize our

__^^^^^presence."

— -^"^ 13. This, then, is what you have to do, and I admit
that it is much. You must, in a word, love° these peo-
ple, if you are to be among them. No ambition is of
any use. They scorn your ambition. You must love
them, and show your love in these two following ways.
I. First, by a true desire to be taught by them, and
to enter into their thoughts. To enter into theirs, ob-
serve ; not to find your own expressed by them. If the
person who wrote the book is not wiser than you, you
need not read it ; if he be, he will think differently from
you in many respects.

Very ready we are to say of a book, " How good this
is — that's exactly what I think ! " But the right feeling
is, " How strange that is ! I never thought of that be-
fore, and yet I see it is true ; or if I do not now, I hope
I shall, some day." But whether thus submissively or
not, at least be sure that you go to the author to get at
his meaning, not to find yours. Judge it afterwards if
you think yourself qualified to do so ; but ascertain it
first. And be sure also, if the author is worth anything,
that you will not get at his meaning all at once ; — nay,
that at his whole meaning you will not for a long time
arrive in any wise. Not that he does not say what he

OF kings' treasuries 65

means, and in strong words too; but he cannot say it
all ; and what is more strange, will not, but in a hidden
way and in parables, in order that he may be sure you
want it. I cannot quite see the reason of this, nor ana-
lyze that cruel reticence ° in the breasts of wise men
which makes them always hide their deeper thought.
They do not give it you by way of help, but of reward ;
and will make themselves sure that you deserve it before
they allow you to reach it. But it is the same with the
physical ° type of wisdom, gold. There seems, to you
and me, no reason why the electric forces of the earth
should not carry whatever there is of gold within it at
once to the mountain tops, so that kings and people
might know that all the gold they could get was there ;
and without any trouble of digging, or anxiety, or chance,
or waste of time, cut it away, and coin as much as they
needed. But Nature does not manage it so. She puts
it in little fissures in the earth, nobody knows where :
you may dig long and find none ; you must dig painfully
to find any.

14. And it is just the same with men's best wisdom.
When you come to a good book, you must ask yourself,
*' Am I inclined to work as an Australian ° miner would?
Are my pickaxes and shovels in good order, and am I in
good trim myself, my sleeves well up to the elbow, and
my breath good, and my temper?" And, keeping the
figure a Httle longer, even at cost of tiresomeness, for it
is a thoroughly useful one, the metal you are in search of
being the author's mind or meaning, his words are as the
rock which you have to crush and smelt in order to get
at it. And your pickaxes are your own care, wit, and
learning; your smelting-furnace is your own thoughtful

66 SESAME AND LILIES

soul. Do not hope to get at any good author's meaning
without those tools and that fire ; often you will need
sharpest, finest chiselling, and patientest° fusing, before
you can gather one grain of the metal.

15. And, therefore, first of all, I tell you, earnestly and
authoritatively, (I know I am right in this,) you must
get into the habit of looking intensely at words, and assur-
ing yourself of their meaning, syllable by syllable — nay,
letter by letter. For though it is only by reason of the
opposition of letters in the function of signs, to sounds in
the function of signs, that the study of books is called
" literature," ° and that a man versed in it is called, by the
consent of nations, a man of letters instead of a man of
books, or of words, you may yet connect with that acci-
dental nomenclature this real fact, — that you might read
all the books in the British Museum ° (if you could live
long enough), and remain an utterly "illiterate," unedu-
cated person ; but that if you read ten pages of a good
book, letter by letter, — that is to say, with real accuracy,
— you are for evermore in some measure an educated
person. The entire difference between education and
non-education (as regards the merely intellectual part of
it), consists in this accuracy. Ja well-educated gentleman
may not know many languages, — may not be able to
speak any but his own, — may have read very few books.
But whatever language he knows, he knows precisely ;
whatever word he pronounces, he pronounces rightly ;
above all, he is learned in the peerage of words ; knows
the words of true descent and ancient blood, at a glance,
from words of modern canaille ° ; remembers all their
ancestry, their intermarriages, distant relationships, and
the extent to which they were admitted, and ofiices they

OF kings' treasuries 67

held, among the national noblesse ° of words at any time
and in any country. ) But an uneducated person may
know, by memory, many languages, and talk them all,
and yet truly not know a word of any, — not a word even
of his own. An ordinary clever and sensible seaman will
be able to make his way ashore at most ports ; yet he has
only to speak a sentence of any language to be known for
an illiterate person : so also the accent, or turn of expres-
sion of a single sentence, will at once mark a scholar.
And this is so strongly felt, so conclusively admitted, by
educated persons, that a false accent or a mistaken sylla-
ble is enough, in the parliament of any civilized nation, to
assign to a man a certain degree of inferior standing for
ever.

1 6. And this is right ; but it- is a pity that the accuracy
insisted on is not greater, and required to a serious pur-
pose. It is right that a false ° Latin quantity should ex-
cite a smile in the House of Commons ; but it is wrong
that a false EngHsh meaning should not excite a frown
there. Let the accent of words be watched ; and closely :
let their meaning be watched more closely still, and fewer
will do the work. A few words, well chosen and distin-
guished, will do work that a thousand cannot, when every
one is acting, equivocally, in the function of another.
Yes ; and words, if they are not watched, will do deadly
work sometimes. There are masked ° words droning and
skulking about us in Europe just now, — (there never
were so many, owing to the spread of a shallow, blotching,
blundering, infectious " information," or rather deforma-
tion, everywhere, and to the teaching of catechisms and
phrases at schools instead of human meanings) — there
are masked words abroad, I say, which nobody under-

68 SESAME AND LILIES

Stands, but which everybody uses, and most people will
also fight for, live for, or even die for, fancying they mean
this or that, or the other, of things dear to them : for
such words wear chamaeleon cloaks — " ground-lion "
cloaks,° of the color of the ground of any man's fancy :
on that ground they lie in wait, and rend him with a
spring from it. There never were creatures of prey so
mischievous, never diplomatists so cunning, never poi-
soners so deadly, as these masked words ; they are the
unjust stewards ° of all men's ideas : whatever fancy or
favorite instinct a man most cherishes, he gives to his
favorite masked word to take care of for him ; the word
at last comes to have an infinite power over him, — you
cannot get at him but by its ministry.

1 7. And in languages so mongrel ° in breed as the Eng-
lish, there is a fatal power of equivocation put into men's
hands, almost whether they will or no, in being able to
use Greek or Latin words for an idea when they want it
to be awful ; and Saxon or otherwise common words when
they want it to be vulgar. What a singular and salutary
effect, for instance, would be produced on the minds of
people who are in the habit of taking the Form of the
*' Word " they live by, for the Power of which that Word
tells them, if we always either retained, or refused, the
Greek form " biblos," or ''biblion," as the right expres-
sion for "book" — instead of employing it only in the
one instance in which we wish to give dignity to the idea,
and translating it into English everywhere else. How
wholesome it would be for many simple persons if, in
such places (for instance) as Acts xix. 19, we retained the
Greek expression, instead of translating it, and they had
to read — " Many of them also which used curious arts,

OF kings' treasuries 69

brought their Bibles together, and burnt them before all
men ; and they counted the price of them, and found it
fifty thousand pieces of silver " ! Or if, on the other hand,
we translated where we retain it, and always spoke of
*'the Holy Book,"° instead of " Holy Bible," ° it might
come into more heads than it does at present, that the
Word of God, by which the heavens were, of old, and by
which they are now kept in store,^ cannot be made a
present of to anybody in morocco binding ; nor sown ° on
any wayside by help either of steam plough ° or steam
press ; but is nevertheless being offered to us daily, and
by us with contumely refused ; and sown in us daily, and
by us, as instantly as may be, choked,

1 8. So, again, consider what effect has been produced
on the English vulgar ° mind by the use of the sonorous
Latin form " damno,'|^ in translating the Greek KaraKpiVd),)
when people charitably wish to make it forcible ; and the
substitution of the temperate " condemn " for it, when
they choose to keep it gentle ; and what notable sermons
have been preached by illiterate clergymen on — " He that
believeth not shall be damned ; " though they would shrink
with horror from translating Heb. xi. 7, " The saving of
his house, by which he damned the world ; " or John viii.
lo-ii, "Woman, hath no man damned thee? Shesaith,
No man, Lord. Jesus answered her, Neither do I damn
thee ; go, and sin no more." And divisions in the mind
of Europe, which have cost seas° of blood, and in the de-
fence of which the noblest souls of men have been cast
away in frantic desolation, countless as forest-leaves —
though, in the heart of them, founded on deeper causes
— have nevertheless been rendered practically possible,

1 2 Peter iii. 5-7.

70 SESAME AND LILIES

mainly, by the European adoption of the Greek word for
a public meeting, '^ecclesia," to give peculiar respecta-
bility to such meetings, when held for religious purposes ;
and other collateral equivocations, such as the vulgar
English one of using the word " priest " as a contraction
for " presbyter."

19. Now, in order to deal with words rightly, this is
the habit ° you must form. Nearly every word in your
language has been first a word of some other language —
of Saxon, German, French, Latin, or Greek (not to speak
of eastern and primitive dialects). And many words
have been all these ; — that is to say, have been Greek
first, Latin next, French or German next, and English last :
undergoing a certain change of sense and use on the hps
of each nation ; but retaining a deep vital meaning, which
all good scholars feel in employing them, even at this day.
If you do not know the Greek alphabet, learn it ; young
or old — girl or boy — whoever you may be, if you think
of reading seriously (which, of course, implies that you
have some leisure at command), learn your Greek alpha-
bet; then get good dictionaries of all these languages,
and whenever you are in doubt about a word, hunt it
down patiently. Read MaxMiiller's lectures ° thoroughly,
to begin with ; and, after that, never let a word escape
you that looks suspicious. It is severe work ; but you
will find it, even at first, interesting, and at last, endlessly
amusing. And the general gain to your character, in
power and precision, will be quite incalculable.

Mind, this does not imply knowing, or trying to know,
Greek, or Latin, or French. It takes a whole life to learn
any language perfectly. But you can easily ascertain the
meanings through which the English word has passed ;

OF kings' treasuries 71

and those which in a good writer's work it must still
bear.

20. And now, merely for example's sake, I will, with
your permission, read a few lines of a true ° book with
you, carefully ; and see what will come out of them. I
will take a book perfectly known to you all. No EngHsh
words ° are more famiUar to us, yet few perhaps have been
read with less sincerity. I will take these few following
lines of " Lycidas " :

"Last came, and last did go,
The pilot of the Galilean lake.
Two massy keys he bore of metals twain,
[The golden opes, the iron shuts amain,]
He shook his mitred locks, and stern bespake.
' How well could I have spared for thee, young swain,
Enow of such as for their bellies' sake
Creep, and intrude, and climb into the fold !
Of other care they little reckoning make.
Than how to scramble at the shearers' feast,'
And shove away the worthy bidden guest;
Blind mouths ! that scarce themselves know how to hold
A sheep-hook, or have learned aught else, the least
That to the faithful herdsman's art belongs !
What recks it them? What need they? They are sped;
And when they list, their lean and flashy songs
Grate on their scrannel pipes of wretched straw;
The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed.
But, swoln with wind, and the rank mist they draw,
Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread ;
Besides what the grim wolf with privy paw
Daily devours apace, and nothing said.' "

Let US think over this passage, and examine its words.

First, is it not singular to find Milton assigning to St.
Peter, not only his full episcopal function, but the very

72 SESAME AND LILIES

types of it which Protestants usually refuse most passion-
ately? His "mitred" locks! Milton was no Bishop-
lover ; how comes St. Peter to be " mitred " ? " Two
massy keys he bore." Is this, then, the power of the keys
claimed by the Bishops of Rome, and is it acknowledged
here by Milton only in a poetical license, for the sake of
its picturesqueness, that he may get the gleam of the
golden keys to help his effect?

Do not think it. Great men do not play stage tricks
with the doctrines of life and death : only little men do
that. Milton means what he says ; and means it with his
might too — is going to put the whole strength of his
spirit presently into the saying of it. For though not a
lover of false bishops, he was a lover of true ones ; and the
Lake-pilot is here, in his thoughts, the type and head of
true episcopal power. For Milton reads that text, " I
will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of Heaven "
quite honestly. Puritan though he be, he would not blot
it out of the book because there have been bad bishops ;
nay, in order to understand hi7n, we must understand
that verse first ; it will not do to eye it askance, or whisper
it under our breath, as if it were a weapon of an adverse
sect. It is a solemn, universal assertion, deeply to be
kept in mind by all sects. But perhaps we shall be better
able to reason on it if we go on a little farther, and come
back to it. For clearly this marked insistence on the
power of the true episcopate is to make us feel more
weightily what is to be charged against the false claim-
ants of episcopate ; or generally, against false claimants
of power and rank in the body of the clergy ; they who,
"for their belUes' sake, creep, and intrude, and cHmb
into the fold."

21. Do not think Milton uses those three words ° to fill
up his verse, as a loose writer would. He needs all the
three ; — specially those three, and no more than those —
" creep," and "intrude," and " cHmb" ; no other words
would or could serve the turn, and no more could be
added. For they exhaustively comprehend the three
classes, correspondent to the three characters, of men
who dishonestly seek ecclesiastical power. First, those
who " creep " into the fold; who do not care for office,
nor name, but for secret influence, and do all things
occultly and cunningly, consenting to any servility of
office or conduct, so only that they may intimately dis-
cern, and unawares direct, the minds of men. Then
those who " intrude " (thrust, that is) themselves into
the fold, who by natural insolence of heart, and stout
eloquence of tongue, and fearlessly perseverant self-
assertion, obtain hearing and authority with the common
crowd. Lastly, those who " climb," who, by labor and
learning, both stout and sound, but selfishly exerted in
the cause of their own ambition, gain high dignities and
authorities, and become " lords over the heritage," ° though
not " ensamples to the flock."

22. Now go on :

" Of other care they little reckoning make.
Than how to scramble at the shearers' feast.
Blind mouths "

I pause again, for this is a strange expression : a broken
metaphor,° one might think, careless and unscholarly.

Not so ; its very audacity and pithiness are intended to
make us look close at the phrase and remember it. Those
two monosyllables express the precisely accurate con-

74 SESAME AND LILIES

traries of right character, in the two great offices of the
Church — those of bishop and pastor.

A " Bishop " means " a person who sees."
A " Pastor " means " a person who feeds."
The most unbishoply character a man can have is
therefore to be BHnd.

The most unpastoral is, instead of feeding, to want to
be fed, — to be a Mouth.

Take the two reverses together, and you have " bhnd
mouths." We may advisably follow out this idea a little.
Nearly all the evils in the Church have arisen from
bishops desiring poiver more than light They want au-
thority, not outlook. Whereas their real office is not to
rule ; though it may be vigorously to exhort and rebuke ;
it is the king's office to rule ; the bishop's office is to
oversee the flock ; to number it, sheep by sheep ; to be
ready always to give full account of it. Now, it is clear
he cannot give account of the souls, if he has not so much
as numbered the bodies of his flock. The first thing,
therefore, that a bishop has to do is at least to put him-
self in a position in which, at any moment, he can obtain
the history, from childhood, of every living soul in his
diocese, and of its present state. Down in that back
street, Bin,° and Nancy, knocking each other's teeth out !
— Does the bishop know all about it? Has he his eye
upon them? Has he had\\\^ eye upon them? Can he
circumstantially explain to us how Bill got into the habit
of beating Nancy about the head ? If he cannot, he is
no bishop, though he had a mitre as high as SaHsbury °
steeple ; he is no bishop, — he has sought to be at the helm
instead of the masthead ; he has no sight of things.
" Nay," you say, " it is not his duty to look after BUI in

OF kings' treasuries 75

the back street." What ! the fat sheep that have full
fleeces — you think it is only those he should look after,
while (go back to your Milton) " the hungry sheep look
up, and are not fed, besides what the grim wolf, with
privy paw " (bishops knowing nothing about it) " daily
devours apace, and nothing said " ?

" But that's not our idea of a bishop."^ Perhaps not ;
but it was St. Paul's ; and it was Milton's. They may be
right, or we may be ; but we must not think we are read-
ing either one or the other by putting our meaning into
their words.

23. I go on.°

" But, swoln with wind, and the rank mist they draw."

This is to meet the vulgar answer that " if the poor are
not looked after in their bodies, they are in their souls ;
they have spiritual food."

And Milton says, " They have no such thing as spirit-
ual food ; they are only swollen with wind." At first you
may think that is a coarse type, and an obscure one. But
again, it is a quite literally accurate one. Take up your
Latin and Greek dictionaries, and find out the meaning
of " Spirit." It is only a contraction of the Latin ° word
" breath," and an indistinct translation of the Greek word
for " wind." The same word is used in writing, " The wind
bloweth where it listeth ; and in writing, " So is every one
that is born of the Spirit; " born of the breath, that is ;
for it means the breath of God, in soul and body. We
have the true sense of it in our words " inspiration " ° and
" expire." Now, there are two kinds of breath with which
the flock may be filled ; God's breath and man's. The
1 Compare the 13th Letter in Time and Tide.

76 SESAME AND LILIES

breath of God is health, and life, and peace to them, a?
the air of heaven is to the flocks on the hills ; but man's
breath — the word which he calls spiritual — is disease
and contagion to them, as the fog ° of the fen. They rot
inwardly with it ; they are puffed up by it, as a dead body
by the vapors of its own decomposition. This is hterally
true of all false religious teaching ; the first, and last, and
fatalest sign of it is that " puffing up." Your converted
children, who teach their parents ; your converted con-
victs, who teach honest men ; your converted dunces,
who, having lived in cretinous ° stupefaction half their
lives, suddenly awaking to the fact of there being a God,
fancy themselves therefore His peculiar people and mes-
sengers ; your sectarians of every species, small and great.
Catholic or Protestant, of high church or low, in so far as
they think themselves exclusively in the right and others
wrong ; and pre-eminently, in every sect, those who hold
that men can be saved by thinking rightly instead of
doing rightly, by word instead of act, and wish instead of
work : — these are the true fog children ° — clouds, these,
without water; bodies, these, of putrescent vapor and
skin, without blood or flesh: blown bag-pipes for the
fiends to pipe with — corrupt, and corrupting, — " Swoln
with wind, and the rank mist they draw."

24. Lastly, let us return to the lines respecting the
power of the keys, for now we can understand them.
Note the difference between Milton and Dante in their
interpretation of this power : for once, the latter° is weaker
in thought ; he supposes both the keys to be of the gate
of heaven ; one is of gold, the other of silver : they are
given by St. Peter to the sentinel angel ; and it is not easy
to determine the meaning either of the substances of the

OF kings' treasuries 77

three steps of the gate, or of the two keys. But Milton
makes one, of gold, the key of heaven ; the other, of iron,
the key of the prison in which the wicked teachers are
to be bound who " have taken away the key of knowledge,
yet entered not in themselves."

We have seen that the duties of bishop and pastor are
to see, and feed ; and of all who do so it is said, " He that
watereth, shall be watered also himself." But the re-
verse ° is truth also. He that watereth not, shall be
withered himself, and he that seeth not, shall himself be
shut out of sight — shut into the perpetual prison-house.
And that prison opens here, as well as hereafter : he who
is to be bound in heaven must first be bound on earth.
That command to the strong angels, of which the rock-
apostle is the image, "Take him, and bind him hand and
foot, and cast him out," issues, in its measure, against
the teacher, for every help withheld, and for every truth
refused, and for every falsehood enforced ; so that he is
more strictly fettered the more he fetters, and farther
outcast, as he more and more misleads, till at last the
bars of the iron cage close upon him, and as " the golden
opes, the iron shuts amain."

25. We have got something out of the lines, I think,
and much more ° is yet to be found in them ; but we have
done enough by way of example of the kind of word-by-
word examination of your author which is rightly called
" reading " ° ; watching every accent and expression, and
putting ourselves always in the author's place, annihilat-
ing our own personality, and seeking to enter into his,
so as to be able assuredly to say, " Thus Milton thought,"
not " Thus / thought, in mis-reading Milton." And by
this process you will gradually come to attach less weight

78 SESAME AND LILIES

to your own " Thus I thought " at other times. You will
begin to perceive that what you thought was a matter of
no serious importance ; — that your thoughts on any sub-
ject are not perhaps the clearest and wisest that could
be arrived at thereupon : — in fact, that unless you are
a very singular person, you cannot be said to have any
" thoughts " at all ; that you have no materials for them,
in any serious matters ; ^ — no right to " think," but only
to try to learn more of the facts. Nay, most probably
all your life (unless, as I said, you are a singular person)
you will have no legitimate right to an " opinion " on any
business, except that instantly under your hand. What
must of necessity be done, you can always find out, be-
yond question, how to do. Have you a house to keep
in order, a commodity to sell, a field to plough, a ditch
to cleanse? There need be no two opinions about the
proceedings ; it is at your peril if you have not much
more than an " opinion " on the way to manage such
matters. And also, outside of your own business, there
are one or two subjects on which you are bound to have
but one opinion. That roguery and lying are objection-
able, and are instantly to be flogged out of the way
whenever discovered ; — that covetousness and love of
quarrelling are dangerous dispositions even in children,
and deafdly dispositions in men and nations ; — that in
the end, the God of heaven and earth loves active, modest,
and kind people, and hates idle, proud, greedy, and cruel
ones ; — on these general facts you are bound to have
but one, and that a very strong, opinion. For the rest,

1 Modern " education " for the most part signifies giving people the
faculty of thinking wrong on every conceivable subject of importance to
them.

OF kings' treasuries 79

respecting religions, governments, sciences, arts, you will
find that, on the whole, you can know nothing, — judge
nothing ; that the best you can do, even though you may
be a well-educated person, is to be silent, and strive to
be wiser every day, and to understand a htde more of
the thoughts of others, which so soon as you try to do
honestly, you will discover that the thoughts even of the
wisest are very little more than pertinent questions. To
put the difficulty into a clear shape, and exhibit to you
the grounds for /^decision, that is all they can generally
do for you ! — and well for them and for us, if indeed they
are able " to mix ° the music with our thoughts, and sad-
den us with heavenly doubts." This writer," from whom
I have been reading to you, is not among the first ° or
wisest : he sees shrewdly as far as he sees, and therefore
it is easy to find out his full meaning ; but with the greater
men, you cannot fathom their meaning ; they do not even
wholly measure it themselves, — it is so wide. Suppose
I had asked you, for instance, to seek for Shakespeare's
opinion, instead of Milton's, on this matter of Church
authority? — or of Dante's? Have any of you, at this
instant, the least idea what either thought about it?
Have you ever balanced the scene with the bishops in
Richard III against the character of Cranmer ? ° the de-
scription of St. Francis and St. Dominic against that of
him who made Virgil ° wonder to gaze upon him, — " dis-
teso,° tanto vilmente, nell' eterno esilio " ; or of him whom
Dante stood beside, "come° ' 1 frate che confessa lo perfido
assassin"?^ Shakespeare and Alighieri° knew men bet-
ter than most of us, I presume ! They were both in the
midst of the main struggle between the temporal and

^/n/. xxiii. 125, 126; xix. 49, 50.

80 SESAME AND LILIES

spiritual powers. They had an opinion, we may guess.
But where is it? Bring it into court ! Put Shakespeare's
or Dante's creed into articles," and send that up into
the Ecclesiastical Courts !

26. You will not be able, I tell you again, for many
and many a day, to come at the real purposes and teach-
ing of these great men ; but a very little honest study of
them will enable you to perceive that what you took for
your own "judgment" was mere chance prejudice, and
drifted, helpless, entangled weed of castaway thought :
nay, you will see that most men's minds are indeed little
better than rough ° heath wilderness, neglected and stub-
born, partly barren, partly overgrown with pestilent
brakes, and venomous, wind-sown herbage of evil sur-
mise ; that the first thing you have to do for them, and
yourself, is eagerly and scornfully to set fire to ^/u's ; burn
all the jungle into wholesome ash-heaps, and then plough
and sow. All the true literary work before you, for life,
must begin with obedience to that order, '' Break ° up your
fallow ground, and sow not among thorns.'"

27. 11.^ Having then faithfully listened ° to the great
teachers, that you may enter into their Thoughts, you
have yet this higher advance to make; — you have to
enter into their Hearts. As you go to them first for clear
sight, so you must stay with them, that you may share
at last their just and mighty Passion. Passion,° or "sen-
sation." I am not afraid of the word ; still less of the
thing. You have heard many outcries against sensation
lately; but, I can tell you, it is not less sensation we
want, but more. The ennobling difference between one
man and another, — between one animal and another,

1 Compare § 13 above.

OF kings' treasuries 81

— is precisely in this, that one feels more than another.,
If we were sponges, perhaps sensation might not be
easily got for us ; if we were earth-worms, liable at every
instant to be cut in two by the spade, perhaps too much
sensation might not be good for us. But, being human
creatures, it is good for us • nay, we are only human in so
far as we are sensitive, and our honor is precisely in pro-
portion to our passion.

28. You know I said of that great and pure society
of the Dead, that it would allow " no vain or vulgar per-
son to enter there." What do you think I meant by a
"vulgar " person? What do you yourselves mean by "vul-
garity "? You will find it a fruitful subject of thought;
but, briefly, the essence of all vulgarity lies in want of sen-
sation. Simple and innocent vulgarity is merely an un-
trained and undeveloped bluntness of body and mind ;
but in true inbred vulgarity, there is a dreadful callous-
ness, which, in extremity, becomes capable of every sort
of bestial habit and crime, without fear, without pleasure,
without horror, and without pity. It is in the blunt hand
and the dead heart, in the diseased habit, in the hard-
ened conscience, that men become vulgar ; they are for
ever vulgar, precisely in proportion as they are incapable
of sympathy, — of quick understanding, — of all that, in
deep insistence on the common, but most accurate term,
may be called the " tact " ° or " touch-faculty," of body
and soul ; that tact which the Mimosa ° has in trees, which
the pure woman has above all creatures; — fineness aitd
fulness of sensation, beyond reason; — the guide and
sanctifier of reason itself. Reason can but determine
what is true : — it is the God-given passion of humanity
which alone can recognize what God has made good.

82 SESAME AND LILIES

29. We come then to the great concourse of the Dead,
not merely to know° from them what is True, but chiefly
to feel with them what is Righteous. Now, to feel with
them, we must be like them; and none of us can become
that without pains. As the true knowledge ° is disciplined
and tested knowledge, — not the first thought that comes,
— so the true passion is disciphned and tested passion, —
not the first passion that comes. The first that come are
the vain, the false, the treacherous ; if you yield to them
they will lead you wildly and far in vain pursuit, in hollow
enthusiasm, till you have no true purpose and no true
passion left. Not that any feeling possible to humanity
is in itself wrong, but only wrong when undisciplined.
Its nobility is in its force and justice ; it is wrong when
it is weak, and felt for paltry cause. There is a mean
wonder, as of a child who sees a juggler tossing golden
balls, and this is base, if you will. But do you think
that the wonder is ignoble, or the sensation less, with
which every human soul is called to watch the golden
balls ° of heaven tossed through the night by the Hand
that made them? There is a mean curiosity, as of a
child opening a forbidden door, or a servant prying into
her master's business ; — and a noble curiosity, question-
ing, in the front of danger, the source ° of the great river
beyond the sand, — the place of the great continents °
beyond the sea ; — a nobler curiosity still, which questions
of the source of the River ° of Life, and of the space of
the Continent of Heaven, — things which '' the angels °
desire to look into." So the anxiety is ignoble, with
which you linger over the course and catastrophe of an
idle tale ; but do you think the anxiety is less, or greater,
with which you watch, or oi/g/if to watch, the deahngs of

OF kings' treasuries 83

fate and destiny with tlie life of an agonized ° nation?
Alas ! it is the narrowness, selfishness, minuteness, of
your sensation that you have to deplore in England at
this day; — sensation which spends itself in bouquets and
speeches ; in revelHngs and junketings ; in sham fights
and gay puppet shows, while you can look on and see
noble nations ° murdered, man by man, without an effort
or a tear.

30. I said " minuteness" and "selfishness" of sensa-
tion, but I ought to have said " injustice " or " unrighteous-
ness " of sensation. For as in nothing is a gentleman
better to be discerned from a vulgar person, so in nothing
is a gende nation (such nations have been) better to be
discerned from a mob, than in this, — that their feelings
are constant and just, results of due contemplation, and
of equal thought. You can talk a mob into anything ;
its feelings may be — usually are — on the whole, gener-
ous and right ; but it has no foundation for them, no
hold of them ; you may tease or tickle it into any, at
your pleasure ; it thinks by infection, for the most part,
catching an opinion like a cold, and there is nothing so
little that it will not roar itself wild about, when the fit is
on ; — nothing so great but it will forget in an hour, when
the fit is past. But a gentleman's or a gentle nation's,
passions are just, measured and continuous. A great
nation, for instance, does not spend its entire national
wits for a couple of months in weighing evidence of a
single ruffian's having done a single murder; and for a
couple of years, see its own children ° murder each other
by their thousands or tens of thousands a day, consider-
ing only what the effect is likely to be on the price of
cotton, and caring nowise to determine which side of

84 SESAME AND LILIES

battle is in the wrong. Neither does a great nation send
its poor little boys to jail for stealing six walnuts, and
allow its bankrupts to steal their hundreds of thousands
with a bow, and its bankers, rich with poor men's savings,
to close their doors "under circumstances over which
they have no control," with a " by your leave " ; and
large landed estates ° to be bought by men who have
made their money by going with armed steamers up and
down the China Seas, selling opium ° at the cannon's
mouth and altering, for the benefit of the foreign nation,
the common highwayman's demand of " your money or
your life," into that of "your money an(/ your life."
Neither does a great nation allow the lives of its innocent
poor to be parched out of them by fog fever, and rotted
out of them by dunghill plague, for the sake of sixpence
a life extra per week to its landlords ; ^ and then debate,

1 See the evidence in the Medical ofificer's report to the Privy Council,
just published. There are suggestions in its preface which will make some
stir among us, I fancy, respecting which let me note these points following :

There are two theories on the subject of land now abroad, and in
contention ; both false.

The first is that, by Heavenly law, there have always existed, and
must continue to exist, a certain number of hereditarily sacred persons
to whom the earth, air, and water of the world belong, as personal prop-
erty ; of which earth, air, and water, these persons may, at their pleasure,
permit, or forbid the rest of the human race to eat, to breathe, or to
drink. This theory is not for many years longer tenable. The adverse
theory is that a division of the land of the world among the ipob of the
world would immediately elevate the said mob into sacred personages;
that houses would then build themselves, and corn grow of itself; and
that everybody would be able to live, without doing any work for his
living. This theory would also be found highly untenable in practice.

It will, however, require some rough experiments, and rougher catas-
trophes, before the generality of persons will be convinced that no law
concerning anything — least of all concerning land, for either holding or
dividing it, or renting it high, or renting it low — would be of the small-

OF kings' treasuries 85

with drivelling tears, and diabolical sympathies, whether
it ought not piously to save, and nursingly cherish, the
lives of its murderers. Also, a great nation having made
up its mind that hanging is quite the wholesomest process
for its homicides in general, can yet with mercy distin-
guish between the degrees of guilt in homicides ; and
does not yelp like a pack of frost-pinched wolf-cubs on
the blood-track of an unhappy crazed boy, or grey-haired
clodpate Othello, " perplexed ° i' the extreme," at the
very moment that it is sending a Minister of the Crown
to make polite speeches to a man who is bayoneting
young girls in their fathers' sight, and killing noble youths

est ultimate use to the people, so long as the general contest for life,
and for the means of life, remains one of mere brutal competition. That
contest, in an unprincipled nation, will take one deadly form or another,
whatever laws you make against it. For instance, it would be an entirely
wholesome law for England, if it could be carried, that maximum limits
should be assigned to incomes according to classes ; and that every
nobleman's income should be paid to him as a fixed salary or pension
by the nation ; and not squeezed by him in variable sums, at discretion,
out of the tenants of his land. But if you could get such a law passed
to-morrow, and if, which would be farther necessary, you could fix the
value of the assigned incomes by making a given weight of pure bread
for a given sum, a twelve-month would not pass before another currency
would have been tacitly established, and the power of accumulated
wealth would have re-asserted itself in some other article, or some other
imaginary sign. There is only one cure for public distress — and that
is public education, directed to make men thoughtful, merciful, and just.
There are, indeed, many laws conceivable which would gradually bet-
ter and strengthen the national temper ; but, for the most part, they are
such as the national temper must be much bettered before it would bear.
A nation in its youth may be helped by laws, as a weak child by back-
boards, but when it is old it cannot that way strengthen its crooked spine.
And besides ; the problem of land, at its worst, is a bye one ; distrib-
ute the earth as you will, the principal question remains inexorable, —
Who is to dig it ? Which of us, in brief word, is to do the hard and
dirty work for the rest — and for what pay ? Who is to do the pleasant and

8b SESAME AND LILIES

in cool biftod, faster than a country butcher kills lambs
in spring. And, lastly, a great nation ° does not mock
Heaven and its Powers, by pretending belief in a revela-
tion which asserts the love ° of money to be the root of
a// evil, and declaring, at the same time, that it is
actuated, and intends to be actuated, in all chief national
deeds and measures, by no other love.

31. My friends, I do not know why any of us should
talk about reading. We want some sharper discipline
than that of reading ; but, at all events, be assured, we
cannot read. No reading is possible for a people with

clean work, and for what pay ? Who is to do no work, and for what
pay ? And there are curious moral and religious questions connected
with these. How far is it lawful to suck a portion of the soul out of a
great many persons, in order to put the abstracted psychical quantities
together and make one very beautiful or ideal soul ? If we had to
deal with mere blood, instead of spirit, (and the thing might literally be
done — as it has been done with infants before now) — so that it were
possible by taking a certain quantity of blood from the arms of a given
number of the mob, and putting it all into one person, to make a more
azure-blooded gentleman of him, the thing would of course be managed ;
but secretly, I should conceive. But now, because it is brain and soul
that we abstract, not visible blood, it can be done quite openly, and we
live, we gentlemen, on delicatest prey, after the manner of weasels; that
is to say, we keep a certain number of clowns ° digging and ditching,
and generally stupefied, in order that we, being fed gratis, may have all
the thinking and feeling to ourselves. Yet there is a great deal to be
said for this. A highly-bred and trained English, French, Austrian, or
Italian gentleman (much more a lady), is a great production, — a better
production than most statues; being beautifully colored as well as
shaped, and plus all the brains ; a glorious thing to look at, a wonder-
ful thing to talk to ; and you cannot have it, any more than a pyramid
-or a church, but by sacrifice of much contributed life. And it is, per-
haps, better to build a beautiful human creature than a beautiful dome
or steeple — and more delightful to look up reverently to a creature far
above us, than to a wall ; only the beautiful human creature will have
some duties to do in return — duties of living belfry and rampart — of
which presently.

OF kings' treasuries 87

its mind in this state. No sentence of any great writer
is intelligible to them. It is simply and sternly impos-
sible for the English pubHc, at this moment, to under-
stand [any thoughtful writing, — so incapable of thought
has it become in its insanity ° of avarice. Happily, our
disease is, as yet, little worse than this incapacity of
thought ; it is not corruption of the inner nature ; we ring
true still, when anything strikes home to us ; and though
the idea that everything should " pay " has infected our
every purpose so deeply, that even when we would play
the good Samaritan,^ we never take out our twopence
and give them to the host, without saying, " When I
come again, thou shalt give me fourpence," there is a
capacity of noble passion left in our heart's core. We
show it in our work, — in our war, — even in those un-
just domestic affections which make us furious at a small
private wrong, while we are polite to a boundless public
one : we are still industrious to the last hour of the
day, though we add the gambler's fury to the laborer's
patience ; we are still brave to the death, though in-
capable of discerning true cause for battle ; and are still
true in affection to our own flesh, to the death, as the
sea-monsters are, and the rock-eagles. And there is
hope ° for a nation while this can be still said of it. As
long as it holds its life in its hand, ready to give it for its
honor (though a foolish honor), for its love (though a
selfish love), and for its business (though a base business),
there is hope for it. But hope only ; for this instinctive,
reckless virtue cannot last. No nation can last, which
has made a mob of itself, however generous at heart. It
must discipline its passions,' and direct them, or they
will discipline //, one day, with scorpion-whips.° Above

88 SESAME AND LILIES

all, a nation cannot last as a money-making mob : it can-
not with impunity, — it cannot with existence, — go on
despising literature, despising science, despising art, de-
spising nature, despising compassion, and concentrating
its soul on Pence. Do you think these are harsh or wild
words? Have patience with me but a little longer. I
will prove their truth to you, clause by clause."

32. I. I say first we have despised literature. What
do we, as a nation, care about books? How much do
you think we spend altogether on our libraries, public
or private, as compared with what we spend on our
horses? If a man spends lavishly on his library, you
call him mad — a bibliomaniac." But you never call any
one a horse-maniac, though men ruin themselves every
day by their horses, and you do not hear of people ruin-
ing themselves by their books. Or, to go lower still,
how much do you think the contents of the book-shelves
of the United Kingdom, public and private, would fetch,
as compared with the contents of its wine-cellars ? What
position would its expenditure on hterature take, as com-
pared with its expenditure on luxurious eating? We
talk of food for the mind, as of food for the body : now a
good book contains such food inexhaustibly ; it is a pro-
vision for life, and for the best part of us ; yet how long
most people would look at the best book before they
would give the price of a large turbot for it ! Though
there have been men who have pinched their stomachs
and bared their backs to buy a book, whose libraries were
cheaper to them, I think, in the end, than most men's
dinners are. We are few of us put to such trial, and more
the pity ; for, indeed, a precious thing is all the more
precious to us if it has been won by work or economy ;

OF kings' treasuries 89

and if public libraries were half as costly as public din-
ners, or books cost the tenth part of what bracelets do,
even foolish men and women might sometimes suspect
there was good in reading, as well as in munching and
sparkhng; whereas the very cheapness of literature is
making even wise people forget that if a book is worth
reading, it is worth buying. No book° is worth anything
which is not worth much; nor is it serviceable, until it
has been read, and re-read, and loved, and loved again ;
and marked, so that you can refer to the passages you
want in it, as a soldier can seize the weapon he needs
in an armory, or a housewife bring the spice she needs
from her store. Bread of flour is good : but there is
bread, sweet ° as honey, if we would eat it, in a good
book ; and the family must be poor indeed which, once
in their lives, cannot, for such multipHable barley-loaves,°
pay their baker's bill. We call ourselves a rich nation,
and we are filthy and foolish enough to thumb each
other's books out of circulating libraries !

33. II. I say we have despised science. " What ! "
you exclaim, " are we not foremost in all discovery, and
is not the whole world giddy by reason, or unreason, of
our inventions?" Yes; but do you suppose that is na-
tional work ? That work is all done in spite of the nation ;
by private people's zeal and money. We "are glad
enough, indeed, to make our profit of science ; we snap
up anything in the way of a scientific bone ° that has meat
on it, eagerly enough ; but if the scientific man comes
for a bone or a criist to us, that is another story. What
have we pubhcly done for science ? We are obliged to
know what o'clock it is, for the safety of our ships, and
therefore we pay for an Observatory ° ; and we allow our-

90 SESAME AND LILIES

selves, in the person of our Parliament, to be annually
tormented into doing something, in a slovenly way, for
the British Museum ; sullenly apprehending that to be a
place for keeping stuffed birds ° in, to amuse our children.
If anybody will pay for their ° own telescope, and resolve °
another nebula,° we cackle over the discernment as if it
were our own ; if one in ten thousand of our hunting
squires suddenly perceives that the earth was indeed
made to be something else than a portion for foxes, and
burrows in it himself, and tells us where the gold is, and
where the coals, we understand that there is some use in
that ; and very properly knight him : but is the accident
of his having found out how to employ himself usefully
any credit to lis ? (The negation of such discovery
among his brother squires may perhaps be some ^//Vcredit
to us, if we would consider of it.) But if you doubt these
generalities, here is one fact for us all to meditate upon,
illustrative of our love of science. Two years ago ° there
was a collection of the fossils of Solenhofen to be sold in
Bavaria ; the best in existence, containing many speci-
mens unique for perfectness, and one, unique as an ex-
ample of a species (a whole kingdom of unknown living
creatures being announced by that fossil). This collec-
tion, of which the mere market worth, among private
buyers, would probably have been some thousand or
twelve hundred pounds, was offered to the English nation
for seven hundred : but we would not give seven hundred,
and the whole series would have been in the Munich
museum at this moment, if Professor Ovven^ had not,

1 1 state this fact without Professor Owen's permission, which of
course he could not with propriety have granted, had I asked it ; but I
consider it so important that the public should be aware of the fact, that
I do what seems to be right, though rude.

OF kings' treasuries 91

with loss of his own time, and patient tormenting of the
British public in person of its representatives, got leave
to give four hundred pounds at once, and himself become
answerable for the other three ! which the said public
will doubtless pay him eventually, but sulkily, and caring
nothing about the matter all the while ; only always
ready to cackle if any credit comes of it. Consider, I
beg of you, arithmetically, what this fact means. Your
annual expenditure for public purposes (a third of it for
military apparatus °), is at least fifty millions. Now
;£7oo is to ^50,000,000, roughly, as seven-pence to
two thousand pounds. Suppose, then, a gentleman of un-
known income, but whose wealth was to be conjectured
from the fact that he spent two thousand a year on his
park- walls and footmen only, professes himself fond of
science ; and that one of his servants comes eagerly to
tell him that an unique collection of fossils, giving clue to
a new era of creation, is to be had for the sum of seven-
pence sterling ; and that the gentleman, who is fond of
science, and spends two thousand a year on his park,
answers, after keeping his servant waiting several months,
" Well ! I'll give you four-pence for them, if you will be
answerable for the extra three-pence yourself, till next
year ! "

34. III. I say you have despised Art! "What!"
you again answer, "have we not Art exhibitions, miles
long? and do not we pay thousands of pounds for single
pictures ? and have we not Art schools and institutions,
more than ever nation had before?" Yes, truly, but all
that is for the sake of the shop. You would fain sell
canvas as well as coals, and crockery as well as iron ; you
would take every other nation's bread out of its mouth

92 SESAME AND LILIES

if you could ; ^ not being able to do that, your ideal of
life is to stand in the thoroughfares of the world, like
Ludgate ° apprentices, screaming to every passer-by,
*' What d'ye lack ? " You know nothing of your own
faculties or circumstances ; you fancy that, among your
damp, flat fields of clay, you can have as quick art-fancy
as the Frenchman among his bronzed vines, or the
Italian under his volcanic cliffs ; — that Art may be
learned as book-keeping ° is, and when learned, will give
you more books to keep. You care for pictures, abso-
lutely, no more than you do for the bills pasted on your
dead walls. There is always room on the wall for the
bills to be read, — never for the pictures to be seen. You
do not know what pictures you have (by repute) in the
country, nor whether they are false or true, nor whether
they are taken care of or not; in foreign countries, you
calmly see the noblest existing pictures in the world rot-
ting in abandoned wreck — (in Venice you saw the
Austrian ° guns deliberately pointed at the palaces con-
taining them), and if you heard that all the fine pictures
in Europe were made into sandbags to-morrow on the
Austrian forts, it would not trouble you so much as the
chance of a brace or two of game less in your own bags,
in a day's shooting. That is your national love of Art.

35. IV. You have despised nature; that is to say, all
the deep and sacred sensations of natural scenery. The
French revolutionists made stables of the cathedrals of
France ; you have made racecourses of the cathedrals of

1 That was our real idea of " Free Trade " — " All the trade to my-
self." You find now that by " competition " other people can manage
to sell something as well as you — and now we call for Protection again.
Wretches !

OF kings' treasuries 93

the earth. Your one conception of pleasure is to drive
in railroad carriages round their aisles, and eat off their
altars.^ You have put a railroad-bridge ° over the falls of
Schaffhausen. You have tunnelled ° the cliffs of Lucerne
by Tell's chapel ; you have destroyed the Clarens shore
of the Lake of Geneva; there is not a quiet valley in
England that you have not filled with bellowing fire ;
there is no particle left of English land which you have
not trampled ° coal ashes into — nor any foreign city in
which the spread of your presence is not marked among
its fair old streets and happy gardens by a consuming
white leprosy of new hotels and perfumers' shops : the
Alps themselves, which your own poets ° used to love so
reverently, you look upon as soaped poles in a bear-garden,
which you set yourselves to climb and slide down
again, with " shrieks of delight." When you are past
shrieking, having no human articulate voice to say you
are glad with, you fill the quietude of their valleys with
gunpowder blasts, and rush home, red with cutaneous
eruption of conceit, and voluble with convulsive hic-
cough of self-satisfaction. I think nearly the two sorrow-
fullest spectacles I have ever seen in humanity, taking
the deep inner significance of them, are the English mobs
in the valley ° of Chamouni, amusing themselves with firing
rusty howitzers ; and the Swiss vintagers of Zurich express-
ing their Christian thanks for the gift of the vine, by as-
sembhng in knots in the " towers ° of the vineyards," and
slowly loading and firing horse-pistols from morning till

1 I meant that the beautiful places of the world — Switzerland, Ttaly,
South Germany, and so on — are, indeed, the truest cathedrals — places
to be reverent in, and to worship in ; and that we only care to drive
through them ; and to eat and drink at their most sacred places.

94 SESAME AND LILIES

evening. It is pitiful to have dim conceptions of duty ;
more pitiful, it seems to me, to have conceptions Hke these,
of mirth.

^6. Lastly. You despise compassion. ° There is no
need of words of mine for proof of this. I will merely
print one of the newspaper paragraphs which I am in the
habit of cutting out and throwing into my store-drawer ; °
here is one from a Daily Telegraph of an early date ° this
year ; date which, though by me carelessly left unmarked,
is easily discoverable, for on the back of the slip there is
the announcement that *' yesterday the seventh of the
special services of this year was performed by the Bishop
of Ripon in St. Paul's " ; and there is a pretty piece
of modern political economy besides, worth preserving
note of, I think, so I print it in the note below.^ But my
business is with the main paragraph relating one of such
facts as happen now daily, which by chance has taken a
form in which it came before the coroner. I will print
the paragraph in red. Be sure, the facts themselves
are written in that color, in a book ° which we shall all
of us, literate or illiterate, have to read our page of,
some day.

"An inquiry was held on Friday by Mr. Richards, dep-
uty coroner, at the White Horse tavern, Christ Church,
Spitalfields,° respecting the death of Michael ColUns,

1 It is announced that an arrangement has been concluded between
the Ministry of Finance and the Bank of Credit for the payment of the
eleven millions which the State has to pay to the National Bank by the
14th inst. This sum will be raised as follows : — The eleven commercial
members of the committee of the Bank of Credit will each borrow a
million of florins for three months of this bank, which will accept theii
bills, which again will be discounted by the National Bank. By this,
arrangement the National Dank will itself furnish the funds with which
it will be paid.

OF kings' treasuries 95

aged 58 years. Mary Collins, a miserable-looking woman,
said that she lived with the deceased and his son in
a room at 2, Cobb's Court, Christ Church. Deceased
was a 'translator' of boots. Witness went out and
bought old boots ; deceased and his son made them into
good ones, and then witness sold them for what she
could get at the shops, which was very little indeed.
Deceased and his son used to work night and day to try
and get a little bread and tea, and pay for the room (2^.
a week), so as to keep the home together. On Friday
night week deceased got up from his bench and began to
shiver. He threw down the boots, saying, ' Somebody else
must finish them when I am gone, for I can do no more.'
There was no fire, and he said, ' I would be better if I
was warm.' Witness therefore took two pairs of trans-
lated boots ^ to sell at the shop, but she could only get 14^.
for the two pairs, for the people at the shop said, ' We
must have our profit.' Witness got 14 lb. of coal, and a
little tea and bread. Her son sat up the whole night to
make the ' translations,' to get money, but deceased died on
Saturday morning. The family never had enough to eat. —
Coroner : ' It seems to me deplorable that you did not
go into the workhouse.' Witness : * We wanted the com-
forts of our little home.' A juror asked what the comforts
were, for he only saw a little straw in the corner of the
room, the windows of which were broken. The witness
began to cry, and said that they had a quilt and other
little things. The deceased said he never would go into
the workhouse. In summer, when the season was good,

1 One of the things which we must very resolutely enforce, for the
good of all classes, in our future arrangements, must be that they wear
no " translated " article of dress.

96 SESAME AND LILIES

they sometimes made as much as loi-. profit in the week.
They then always saved towards the next week, which
was generally a bad one. In winter they made not half
so much. For three years they had been getting from
bad to worse. — Cornelius Collins said that he had assisted
his father since 1847. They used to work so far into the
night that both nearly lost their eyesight. Witness now
had a film over his eyes. Five years ago deceased
applied to the parish for aid. The relieving officer
gave him a 4 lb. loaf, and told him if he came again
he should ' get the stones.' ° ^ That disgusted deceased,

1 This abbreviation of the penalty of useless labor is curiously coinci-
dent in verbal form with a certain passage which some of us may remem-
ber. It may perhaps be well to preserve beside this paragraph another
cutting out of my store-drawer from the Morning Post, of about a paral-
lel date, Friday, March loth, 1865 : — " The salons of Mme. C , who

did the honors with clever imitative grace and elegance, were crowded
with princes, dukes, marquises, and counts — in fact, with the same i?iale
company as one meets at the parties of the Princess Metternich and Ma-
dame Drouyn de Lhuys. Some English peers and members of Parlia-
ment were present, and appeared to enjoy the animated and dazzling im-
proper scene. On the second floor the supper tables were loaded with
every delicacy of the season. That your readers may form some idea of
the dainty fare of the Parisian demi-monde, I copy the menu of the sup-
per, which was served to all the guests (about 200) seated at four o'clock.
Choice Yquem, Johannisberg, Laffitte, Tokay, and champagne of the
finest vintages were served most lavishly throughout the morning. After
supper dancing was resumed with increased animation, and the ball ter-
minated with a chame dlaboUque and a cancan d^enfer at seven in the
morning. (Morning service — ' Ere the fresh lawns appeared, under the
opening eyelids of the Morn.') Here is the menu : — ' Consomme de vo-
laille k la Bagration : 16 hors-d'oeuvres varies. Bouchees k la Talleyrand.
Saumons froids, sauce Ravigote. Filets de boeuf en Bellevue, timbales
milanaises, chaudfroid de gibier. Dindes truffees. Pates de foies gras,
buissons d'ecrevisses, salades venetiennes, gelees blanches aux fruits,
gateaux mancini, parisiens et parisiennes. Fromages glaces. Ananas.
Dessert.' "

and he would have nothing to do with them since.
They got worse and worse until last Friday week, when
they had not even a halfpenny to buy a candle. De-
ceased then lay down on the straw, and said he could
not live till morning. — A juror : ' You are dying of star-
vation yourself, and you ought to go into the house ° un-
til the summer.' — Witness : ' If we went in, we should die.
When we come out in the summer, we should be like
people dropped from the sky. No one would know us,
and we would not have even a room. I could work now
if I had food, for my sight would get better.' Dr. G. P.
Walker said deceased died from syncope, from exhaus-
tion from want of food. The deceased had had no
bedclothes. For four months he had had nothing but
bread to eat. There was not a particle of fat in the body.
There was no disease, but if there had been medical at-
tendance, he might have survived the syncope or fainting.
The coroner having remarked upon the painful nature of
the case, the jury returned the following verdict, ' That
deceased died from exhaustion from want of food and
the common necessaries of life ; also through want of
medical aid.' "

37. " Why would witness not go into the workhouse? "
you ask. Well, the poor seem to have a prejudice against
the workhouse which the rich have not ; for of course
every one who takes a pension from Government goes
into the workhouse on a grand scale : only the work-
houses for the rich do not involve the idea of work, and
should be called playhouses. But the poor hke to die
independently, it appears ; perhaps if we made the play-
houses for them pretty and pleasant enough, or gave
them their pensions ° at home, and allowed them a little

98 SESAME AND LILIES

introductory peculation with the public money, their
minds might be reconciled to the conditions. Mean-
time, here are the facts : we make our relief either so
insulting to them, or so painful, that they rather die than
take it at our hands; or, for third alternative, we leave
them so untaught and foolish that they starve like brute
creatures, wild and dumb, not knowing what to do, or
what to ask. I say, you despise compassion ; if you did
not, such a newspaper paragraph would be as impossible
in a Christian country as a dehberate assassination per-
mitted in its public streets.^ "Christian" did I say?

1 I am heartily glad to see such a paper as the Pall Mall Gazette estab-
lished; for the power of the press in the hands of highly educated men,
in independent position, and of honest purpose, may indeed become all
that it has been hitherto vainly vaunted to be. Its editor w^ill therefore, I
doubt not, pardon me, in that, by very reason of my respect for the jour-
nal, I do not let pass unnoticed an article in its third number, page 5,
which was wrong in every word of it, with the intense wrongness which
only an honest man can achieve who has taken a false turn of thought in
the outset, and is following it, regardless of consequences. It contained
at the end this notable passage : —

" The bread of affliction, and the water of affliction — aye, and the bed-
stead and blankets of affliction, are the very utmost that the law ought
to give to outcasts merely as outcasts." I merely put beside this expres-
sion of the gentlemanly mind of England in 1865, a part of the message
which Isaiah was ordered to " lift up his voice like a trumpet " in declar-
ing to the gentlemen of his day : " Ye fast for strife, and to smite with
the fist of wickedness. Is not this the fast that I have chosen, to deal
thy bread to the hungry, and that thou bring the poor that are cast out
(margin, ' afflicted ') to thy house? " The falsehood on which the writer
had mentally founded himself, as previously stated by him, was this:
" To confound the functions of the dispensers of the poor rates with those
of the dispensers of a charitable institution is a great and pernicious
error." This sentence is so accurately and exquisitely wrong, that its
substance must be thus reversed in our minds before we can deal with
any existing problem of national distress. " To understand that the dis-
pensers of the poor-rates are the almoners of the nation, and should dis-
tribute its alms with a gentleness and freedom of hand as much greater

Alas, if we were but wholesomely un-Christian, it would
be impossible : it is our imaginary Christianity that helps
us to commit these crimes, for we revel and luxuriate in
our faith, for the lewd sensation of it ; dressing // up, hke
everything else, in fiction. The dramatic Christianity of
the organ and aisle, of dawn-service and twilight- revival

— the Christianity which we do not fear to mix the mock-
ery of, pictorially, with our play about the devil, in our Sa-
tanellas,° — Roberts, — Fausts ; chanting ° hymns through
traceried windows for back-ground effect, and artistically
modulating the " Dio " through variation on variation
of mimicked prayer : (while we distribute tracts, next
day, for the benefit of uncultivated swearers, upon what
we suppose to be the signification of the Third Command-
ment) ; — this gas-lighted, and gas-inspired, Christianity
we are triumphant in, and draw back the hem of our
robes from the touch of the heretics who dispute it.
But to do a piece of common Christian righteousness in
a plain English word or deed ; to make Christian law any
rule of life, and found one National act or hope thereon,

— we know too well what our faith comes to for that !
You might sooner get lightning out of incense smoke than
true action or passion out of your modern English re-
ligion. You had better get rid of the smoke, and the
organ pipes, both : leave them, and the Gothic windows,
and the painted glass, to the property man ; give up
your carburetted ° hydrogen ghost in one healthy expira-
tion,° and look after Lazarus ° at the doorstep. For there
is a true Church wherever one hand meets another help-

and franker than that possible to individual charity, as the collective
national wisdom and power may be supposed greater than those of any
single person, is the foundation of all law respecting pauperism."

100 SESAME AND LILIES

fully, and that is the only holy or Mother Church which
ever was, or ever shall be.

^S. All these pleasures," then, and all these virtues,
I repeat, you nationally despise. You have, indeed,
men among you who do not ; by whose work, by whose
strength, by whose life, by whose death, you live, and
never thank them. Your wealth, your amusement, your
pride, would all be ahke impossible, but for those whom
you scorn or forget. The policeman, who is walking up
and down the black lane all night to watch the guilt
you have created there ; and may have his brains beaten
out, and be maimed for life, at any moment, and never
be thanked ; the sailor wrestling with the sea's rage ; the
quiet student poring over his book or his vial ; the com-
mon worker, without praise, and nearly without bread,
fulfilling his task as your horses drag your carts, hope-
less, and spurned of all : these are the men by whom
England lives ; but they are not the nation ; they are
only the body and nervous force of it, acting still from
old habit in a convulsive perseverance, while the mind
is gone. Our National mind and purpose are to be
amused ; our National religion, the performance of
church ceremonies, and preaching of soporific truths (or
untruths) to keep the mob quietly at work, while we
amuse ourselves ; and the necessity for this amusement
is fastening on us as a feverish disease of parched throat
and wandering eyes — senseless, dissolute, merciless.

39. When men are rightly occupied, their amusement
grows out of their work, as the color-petals out of a
fruitful flower; — when they are faithfully helpful and
compassionate, all their emotions become steady, deep,
perpetual, and vivifying to the soul as the natural pulse

OF kings' treasuries 101

to the body. But now, having no true business, we
pour our whole masculine energy into the false business
of money-making ; and having no true emotion," we must
have false emotions dressed up for us to play with, not
innocently, as children with dolls, but guiltily and darkly,
as the idolatrous Jews ° with their pictures on cavern
walls, which men had to dig to detect. The justice we
do not execute, we mimic in the novel and on the stage ;
for the beauty we destroy in nature, we substitute the
metamorphosis of the pantomime, and (the human nature
of us imperatively requiring awe and sorrow of some
kind) for the noble grief we should have borne with our
fellows, and the pure tears we should have wept with
them, we gloat over the pathos of the police court, and
gather the night-dew of the grave.

40. It is difficult to estimate the true significance of
these things ; the facts are frightful enough ; — the meas-
ure ° of national fault involved in them is perhaps not as
great as it would at first seem. We permit, or cause,
thousands of deaths daily, but we mean no harm ; we set
fire to houses, and ravage peasants' fields ; yet we should
be sorry to find we had injured anybody. We are still
kind at heart ; still capable of virtue, but only as children
are. Chalmers," at the end of his long life, having had
much power with the public, being plagued in some se-
rious matter by a reference to "public opinion," uttered
the impatient exclamation, " The public is just a great
baby ! " And the reason that I have allowed all these
graver subjects of thought to mix themselves up with
an inquiry ° into methods of reading, is that, the more I
see of our national faults or miseries, the more they re-
solve themselves into conditions of childish illiterateness

102 SESAME AND LILIES

and want of education in the most ordinary habits of
thought. It is, I repeat, not vice, not selfishness, not
dulness of brain, which we have to lament ; but an un-
reachable schoolboy's recklessness, only differing from
the true schoolboy's in its incapacity of being helped,
because it acknowledges no master.

41. There is a curious type of us given in one of the
lovely, neglected works of the last of our great painters.°
It is a drawing of Kirkby Lonsdale churchyard, and of
its brook, and valley, and hills, and folded morning sky
beyond. And unmindful alike of these, and of the dead
who have left these for other valleys and for other skies,
a group of schoolboys have piled their little books upon
a grave, to strike them off with stones. So, also, we play °
with the words of the dead that would teach us, and
strike them far from us with our bitter, reckless will,
little thinking that those leaves which the wind scatters
had been piled, not only upon a gravestone, but upon the
seal of an enchanted vault — nay, the gate of a great city
of sleeping kings, who would awake for us, and walk with
us, if we knew but how to call them by their names. How
often, even if we lift the marble entrance gate, do we but
wander among those old kings in their repose, and finger
the robes they lie in, and stir the crowns on their fore-
heads ; and still they are silent to us, and seem but a
dusty imagery ; because we know not the incantation ° of
the heart that would wake them ; — which, if they once
heard, they would start up to meet us in their power of
long ago, narrowly to look upon us, and consider us ; and,
as the fallen kings of Hades meet the newly fallen, saying,
" Art thou also become weak as we — art thou also be-
come one of us?" so would these kings,° with their un-

OF kings' treasuries 103

dimmed, unshaken diadems, meet us, saying, " Art thou
also become pure° and mighty of heart as we? art thou
also become one of us? "

42. Mighty of heart, mighty of mind — "magnani-
mous""— to be this, is indeed to be great in life; to
become this increasingly, is, indeed, to " advance ° in hfe,"
— in life itself — not in the trappings of it. My friends,
do you remember that old Scythian ° custom, when the
head of a house died? How he was dressed in his finest
dress, and set in his chariot, and carried about to his
friends' houses; and each of them placed him at his
table's head, and all feasted in his presence? Suppose it
were offered to you, in plain words, as it is offered to you
in dire facts, that you should gain this Scythian honor,
gradually, while you yet thought yourself alive. Suppose
the offer were this : You shall die slowly ; your blood
shall daily grow cold, your flesh petrify, your heart beat
at last only as a rusted group of iron valves. Your hfe
shall fade from you, and sink through the earth into the
ice ° of Caina ; but, day by day, your body shall be dressed
more gaily, and set in higher chariots, and have more
orders on its breast — crowns on its head, if you will.
Men shall bow before it, stare and shout round it, crowd
after it up and down the streets; build palaces for it,
feast with it at their tables' heads all the night long ; your
soul shall stay enough within it to know what they do,
and feel the weight of the golden dress on its shoulders,
and the furrow of the crown-edge on the skull ; — no
more. Would you take the offer, verbally made by the
death-angel ? Would the meanest among us take it, think
you ? Yet practically and verily we grasp at it, every one
of us, in a measure ; many of us grasp at it in its fulness

104 SESAME AND LILIES

of horror. Every man accepts it, who desires to advance
in hfe without knowing what Hfe is ; who means only
that he is to get more horses, and more footmen, and
more fortune, and more pubUc honor, and — not more
personal soul. He only is advancing in life, whose heart
is getting softer, whose blood warmer, whose brain quicker,
whose spirit is entering into Living^ peace.° And the
men who have this life in them are the true lords ° or
kings of the earth — they, and they only. All other
kingships, so far as they are true, are only the practical
issue and expression of theirs ; if less thani this, they are
either dramatic royalties, — costly shows, set off, indeed,
with real jewels instead of tinsel — but still only the toys
of nations ; or else, they are no royalties at all, but tyran-
nies, or the mere active and practical issue of national
folly ; for which reason I have said of them elsewhere,"
" Visible governments are the toys of some nations, the
diseases of others, the harness of some, the burdens of
more."

43. But I have no words for the wonder with which
I hear Kinghood° still spoken of, even among thoughtful
men, as if governed nations were a personal property, and
might be bought and sold, or otherwise acquired, as sheep,
of whose flesh their king was to feed, and whose fleece he
was to gather; as if Achilles' indignant epithet ° of base
kings, " people- eating," were the constant and proper
title of all monarchs ; and enlargement of a king's do-
minion meant the same thing as the increase of a private
man's estate ! Kings who think so, however powerful,
can no more be the true kings of the nation than gad-
flies are the kings of a horse ; they suck it, and may drive

^ "to 6e (jtpofqixa rov nvivixaros ^<«jij nal eiprjvr]."

OF kings' treasuries* 105

it wild, but do not guide it. They, and their courts, and
their armies are, if one could see clearly, only a large
species of, marsh mosquito, with bayonet proboscis and
melodious, band-mastered trumpeting, in the summer air ;
the twihght being, perhaps, sometimes fairer, but hardly
more wholesome, for its glittering mists of midge com-
panies. The true kings, meanwhile, rule quietly, if at all,
and hate ruhng; too many of tliem make "il gran
rifiuto " ;° and if they do not, the mob, as soon as they
are likely to become useful to it, is pretty sure to make its
" gran rifiuto " of them.

44. Yet the visible ° king may also be a true one, some
day, if ever day comes when he will estimate his do-
minion by \k\Q force of it, — not the geographical bounda-
ries. It matters very little whether Trent ° cuts you a
cantel out here, or Rhine rounds you a castle less there.
But it does matter to you, king of men, whether you can
verily say to this man, " Go,"° and he goeth ; and to an-
other, " Come," and he cometh. Whether you can turn
your people, as you can Trent — and where it is that you
bid them come, and where go. It matters to you, king
of men, whether your people hate you, and die by you,
or love you, and live by you. You may measure your
dominion by multitudes better than by miles ; and count
degrees of love-latitude, not from, but to, a wonderfully
warm and infinite equator.

45. Measure ! — nay, you cannot measure. Who shall
measure the difference ° between the power of those who
"do and teach," ° and who are greatest in the kingdoms
of earth, as of heaven — and the power of those who
undo, and consume — whose power, at the fullest, is only
the power of the moth and the rust ? Strange ! to think

106 * SESAME AND LILIES

how the Moth-kings lay up treasures for the moth ; and
the Rust-kings, who are to their people's strength as
rust to armor, lay up treasures for the rust ; and the
Robber-kings, treasures for the robber; but how few
kings have ever laid up treasures that needed no guard-
ing— treasures of which, the more thieves there were,
the better ! Broidered robe, only to be rent ; helm and
sword, only to be dimmed ; jewel and gold, only to be
scattered ; — there have been three kinds of kings who
have gathered these. Suppose there ever should arise
a Fourth order of kings, who had read, in some obscure
writing of long ago, that there was a Fourth ° kind of
treasure, which the jewel and gold could not equal,
neither should it be valued with pure gold. A web made
fair in the weaving, by Athena's shutde ; an armor,
forged in divine fire by Vulcanian ° force ; a gold to be
mined in the sun's red heart, where he sets over
the Delphian ° cliffs ; — deep-pictured tissue, — impenetra-
ble armor, — potable gold ! — the three great Angels of
Conduct, Toil, and Thought, still calling to us, and wait-
ing at the posts of our doors, to lead us, with their winged
power, and guide us, with their unerring eyes, by the
path ° which no fowl knoweth, and which the vulture's
eye has not seen ! Suppose kings should ever arise, who
heard and believed this word, and at last gathered and
brought forth treasures of — Wisdom — for their people ?
46. Think what an amazing business //laf would be !
How inconceivable, in the state of our present national
wisdom ! That we should bring up our peasants to a
book exercise instead of a bayonet exercise ! — organize,
drill, maintain with pay, and good generalship, armies
of thinkers, instead of armies of stabbers ! — find national

OF kings' treasuries 107

amusement ° in reading-rooms as well as rifle-grounds;
give prizes for a fair shot at a fact, as well as for a leaden
splash on a target. What an absurd idea it seems, put
fairly in words, that the wealth of the capitalists of
civilized nations should ever come to support literature
instead of war !

47. Have yet patience with me, while I read you a
single sentence out of the only ° book, properly to be
called a book, that I have yet written myself, the one
that will stand, (if anything stand,) surest and longest of
all work of mine.

" It is one very awful form of the operation of wealth in Europe
that it is entirely capitalists' wealth which supports unjust wars.
Just wars do not need so much money to support them; for most
of the men who wage such, wage them gratis; but for an unjust
war, men's bodies and souls have both to be bought; and the best
tools of war for them besides, which makes such war costly to the
maximum; not to speak of the cost of base fear, and angry sus-
picion, between nations which have not grace nor honesty enough-
in all their multitudes to buy an hour's peace of mind with; as, at
present, France and England, purchasing of each other ten mil-
lions sterling worth of consternation, annually (a remarkably light
crop, half thorns and half aspen leaves, sown, reaped, and grana-
ried by the * science ' of the modern political economist, teaching
covetousness instead of truth). And, all unjust war being sup-
portable, if not by pillage of the enemy, only by loans from capi-
talists, these loans are repaid by subsequent taxation of the people,
who appear to have no will in the matter, the capitalists' will being
the primary root of the war; but its real root is the covetousness of
the whole nation, rendering it incapable of faith, frankness, or
justice, and bringing about, therefore, in due time, his own separate
loss and punishment to each person."

48. France and England literally, observe, buy panic
of each other ; they pay, each of them, for ten thousand-

108 SESAME AND LILIES

thousand pounds' worth of terror, a year. Now sup-
pose, instead of buying these ten miUions' worth of panic
annually, they made up their minds to be at peace with
each other, and buy ten milHons' worth ° of knowledge
annually ; and that each nation spent its ten thousand-
thousand pounds a year in founding royal libraries, royal
art galleries, royal museums, royal gardens, and places of
rest. Might it not be better somewhat for both French
and English?

49. It will be long, yet, before that comes to pass.
Nevertheless, I hope it will not be long before royal or
national ° libraries will be founded in every considerable
city, with a royal series of books in them ; the same
series in every one of them, chosen books, the best in
every kind, prepared for that national series in the most
perfect way possible ; their text printed all on leaves of
equal size, broad of margin, and divided into pleasant
volumes, light in the hand, beautiful, and strong, and
thorough as examples of binders' work; and that these
great libraries will be accessible to all clean and orderly
persons at all times of the day and evening ; strict law
being enforced for this cleanliness and quietness.

50. I could shape for you other plans, for art galleries,
and for natural history galleries, and for many precious
— many, it seems to me, needful — things ; but this book°
plan is the easiest and needfullest,° and would prove a
considerable tonic to what we call our British Constitu-
tion, which has fallen dropsical of late, and has an evil
thirst, and evil hunger, and wants healthier feeding.
You have got its corn laws repealed for it ; try if you
cannot get corn laws established for it, dealing in a bet-
ter bread ; — bread made of that old enchanted Arabian

OF kings' treasuries 109

grain, the Sesame, which opens doors ; — doors, not of
robbers', but of Kings' Treasuries.

Friends, the treasuries ° of, true kings are the streets of
their cities ; and the gold they gather, which for others is
as the mire of the streets, changes itself, for them and
their people, into a crystalline pavement for evermore.

LECTURE II. — LILIES
OF queens' gardens

"Be thou glad, oh thirsting Desert; let the desert be made
cheerful, and bloom as the lily; and the barren places of Jordan
shall run wild with wood." — ISAIAH XXXV. i. (Septuagint.)

51. It will, perhaps, be well, as this Lecture is the
sequel of one previously given, that I should shortly-
state to you my general intention in both. The ques-
tions specially proposed to you in the first, namely,
How and What to Read,° rose out of a far deeper one,
which it was my endeavor to make you propose ear-
nestly to yourselves, namely, W/iy to Read. I want you
to feel, with me, that whatever advantages we possess
in the present day in the diffusion of education and of
literature, can only be rightly used by any of us when
we have apprehended clearly what education is to lead
to, and literature to teach. I wish you to see that both
well-directed moral training and well-chosen reading lead
to the possession of a power over the ill-guided and
illiterate, which is, according to the measure of it, in
the truest sense, kingly; conferring indeed the purest
kingship that can exist among men : too many other
kingships (however distinguished by visible insignia or
material power) being either spectral, or tyrannous ; —
spectral — that is to say, aspects and shadows only of
royalty, hollow as death, and which only the " likeness °

OF queens' gardens 111

of a kingly crown have on ; " or else tyrannous — that is
to say, substituting their own will for the law of justice and
love by which all true kings rule.

52. There is, then, I repeat ° — and as I want to leave
this idea with you, I begin with it, and shall end with
it — only one pure kind of kingship ; an inevitable and
eternal kind, crowned or not : the kingship, namely,
which consists in a stronger moral state, and a truer
thoughtful state, than that of others ; enabling you,
therefore, to guide, or to raise them. Observe that
word " State " ; we have got into a loose way of using
it. It means Hterally the standing and stabiHty of a
thing ; and you have the full force of it in the derived
word " statue " — " the immovable thing." A king's maj-
esty or " state," then, and the right of his kingdom to
be called a state, depends on the movelessness of both :
— without tremor, without quiver of balance ; established
and enthroned upon a foundation of eternal law which
nothing can alter nor overthrow.

53. Believing that all literature and all education are
only useful so far as they tend to confirm this calm,
beneficent, and therefore kingly, power — first, over our-
selves, and, through ourselves, over all around us, I
am now going to ask you to consider with me farther,
what special portion or kind of this royal authority,
arising out of noble education, may rightly be possessed
by women ; and how far they also are called to a true
queenly power. Not in their households merely, but
over all within their sphere. And in what sense, if they
rightly understood and exercised this royal or gracious
influence, the order and beauty induced by such benig-
nant power would justify us in speaking of the terri-

112 SESAME AND LILIES

tories over which each of them reigned, as " Queens'
Gardens."

54. I. And here, in the very outset, we are met by a
far deeper question, which — strange though this may
seem — remains among many of us yet quite undecided,
in spite of its infinite importance.

We cannot determine what the queenly power of
women should be, until we are agreed what their ordi-
nary power ° should be. We cannot consider how edu-
cation may fit them for any widely extending duty,
until we are agreed what is their true constant duty.
And there never was a time when wilder words were
spoken, or more vain imagination permitted, respect-
ing this question — quite vital to all social happiness.
The relations of the womanly to the manly nature, their
different capacities of intellect or of virtue, seem never
to have been yet estimated with entire consent. We
hear of the mission and of the rights of Woman, as
if these could ever be separate from the mission and
the rights of Man ; — as if she and her lord were creatures
of independent kind, and of irreconcileable claim. This,
at least, is wrong. And not less wrong — perhaps even
more foolishly wrong (for I will anticipate thus far what
I hope to prove) — is the idea that woman is only the
shadow and attendant image of her lord, owing him a
thoughtless and servile obedience, and supported al-
together in her weakness by the pre-eminence of his
fortitude.

This, I say, is the most fooHsh of all errors respecting
her who was made to be the helpmate of man. As if
he could be helped effectively by a shadow, or worthily
by a slave !

OF queens' gardens 113

55. Let us try, then, whether we cannot get at some
clear and harmonious idea (it must be harmonious if it
is true) of what womanly mind and virtue are in power
and office, with respect to man's ; and how their rela-
tions, rightly accepted, aid, and increase, the vigor, and
honor, and authority of both.

And now I must repeat ° one thing I said in the last
lecture : namely, that the first use of education was to
enable us to consult with the wisest and the greatest
men on all points of earnest difficulty. That to use
books rightly, was to go to them for help : to appeal to
them when our own knowledge and power of thought
failed; to be led by them into wider sight, purer con-
ception, than our own, and receive from them the
united sentence of the judges and councils of all time,
against our solitary and unstable opinion.

Let us do this now. Let us see whether the greatest,
the wisest, the purest-hearted of all ages are agreed in
any wise on this point : let us hear the testimony° they
have left respecting what they held to be the true dignity
of woman, and her mode of help to man.

56. And first let us take Shakespeare.

Note broadly in the outset, Shakespeare ° has no heroes ;
— he has only heroines. There is not one entirely heroic
figure in all his plays, except the slight sketch of Henry
the Fifth, exaggerated for the purposes of the stage ;
and the still slighter Valentine in The Two Gentlemen
of Verona. In his labored and perfect plays you have
no hero. Othello would have been one, if his simphcity
had not been so great as to leave him the prey of every
base practice round him ; but he is the only example
even approximating to the heroic type. Coriolanus —

114 SESAME AND LILIES

Caesar — Antony stand in flawed strength, and fall by
their vanities ; — Hamlet is indolent, and drowsily specu-
lative ; Romeo an impatient boy ; the Merchant of Venice
languidly submissive to adverse fortune ; Kent, in King
Lear, is entirely noble at heart, but too rough and un-
polished to be of true use at the critical time, and he
sinks into the office of a servant only. Orlando, no less
noble, is yet the despairing toy of chance, followed, com-
forted, saved, by Rosalind. Whereas there is hardly a
play that has not a perfect woman in it, steadfast in
grave hope, and errorless purpose ; Cordelia, Desdemona,
Isabella, Hermione, Imogen, Queen Catherine, Perdita,
Sylvia, Viola, Rosalind, Helena, and last, and perhaps
loveliest, Virgilia, are all faultless ; conceived in the high-
est heroic type of humanity.

57. Then observe, secondly.

The catastrophe of every play is caused always by the
folly or fault of a man ; the redemption, if there be any,
is by the wisdom and virtue of a woman, and failing that,
there is none. The catastrophe of King Lear is owing
to his own want of judgment, his impatient vanity, his
misunderstanding of his children ; the virtue of his one
true daughter would have saved him from all the injuries
of the others, unless he had cast her away from him ; as
it is, she all but saves him.

Of Othello I need not trace the tale ; nor the one
weakness of his so mighty love ; nor the inferiority of his
perceptive intellect to that even of the second woman
character in the play, the Emilia who dies in wild testi-
mony against his error : —

Oh murderous coxcomb ! what should such a fool
Do with so good a wife ?

OF queens' gardens 115

In Romeo and Juliet, the wise and brave stratagem
of tlie wife is brought to ruinous issue by the reckless
impatience of her husband. In Winter's Tale, and in
Cymbeline, the happiness and existence of two princely
households, lost through long years, and imperilled to the
death by the folly and obstinacy of the husbands, are re-
deemed at last by the queenly patience and wisdom of
the wives. In Measure for Measure, the injustice of the
judges, and the corrupt cowardice of the brother, are op-
posed to the victorious truth and adamantine purity of a
woman. In Coriolanus, the mother's counsel, acted upon in
time, would have saved her son from all evil; his momentary
forgetfulness of it is his ruin ; her prayer at last granted,
saves him — not, indeed, from death, but from the curse
of living as the destroyer of his country.

And what shall I say of Julia, constant against the fic-
kleness of a lover who is a mere wicked child ? — of Helena,
against the petulance and insult of a careless youth? —
of the patience of Hero, the passion of Beatrice, and the
calmly devoted wisdom of the "unlessoned° girl," who ap-
pears among the helplessness, the blindness, and the vin-
dictive passions of men as a gentle angel, to save merely
by her presence, and defeat the worst intensities of crime
by her smile ?

58. Observe, further, among all the principal figures
in Shakespeare's plays, there is only one weak woman —
Ophelia ; and it is because she fails Hamlet at the critical
moment, and is not, and cannot in her nature be, a guide
to him when he needs her most, that all the bitter catas-
trophe follows. Finally, though there are three wicked
women among the principal figures. Lady Macbeth, Re-
gan, and Goneril, they are felt at once to be frightful

116 SESAME AND LILIES

exceptions to the ordinary laws of life; fatal in their
influence also in proportion to the^ power for good which
they have abandoned.

Such, in broad light, is Shakespeare's testimony to the
position and character of women in human life. He
represents them as infallibly faithful and wise counsellors,

— incorruptibly just and pure examples — strong always
to sanctify, even when they cannot save.

59. Not as in any wise comparable in knowledge of
the nature of man, — still less in his understanding of the
causes and courses of fate, — but only as the writer who
has given us the broadest view of the conditions and
modes of ordinary thought in modern society, I ask you
next to receive the witness of Walter Scott.

I put aside his merely romantic prose writings as of
no value ;° and though the early romantic poetry is very
beautiful, its testimony is of no weight, other than that
of a boy's ideal. But his true works, studied from Scot-
tish Hfe, bear a true witness, and, in the whole range of
these, there are but three men who reach the heroic
type ^ — Dandie Dinmont, Rob Roy, and Claverhouse :
of these, one is a border farmer ; another a freebooter ;
the third a soldier in a bad cause. And these touch the
ideal of heroism only in their courage and faith, together

I I ought, in order to make this assertion fully understood, to have
noted the various weaknesses which lower the ideal of other great char-
acters of men in the Waverley novels — the selfishness and narrowness of
thought in Redgauntlet, the weak religious enthusiasm in Edward Glen-
dinning, and the like ; and I ought to have noticed that there are several
quite perfect characters sketched sometimes in the backgrounds ; three

— let us accept joyously this courtesy to England and her soldiers —
are English officers : Colonel Gardiner, Colonel Talbot, and Colonel
Mannering.

OF queens' gardens 117

with a strong, but uncultivated, or mistakenly applied,
intellectual power ; while his younger men are the gen-
tlemanly playthings of fantastic fortune, and only by aid
(or accident) of that fortune, survive, not vanquish, the
trials they involuntarily sustain. Of any disciplined, or
consistent character, earnest in a purpose wisely con-
ceived, or deahng with forms of hostile evil, definitely
challenged, and resolutely subdued, there is no trace in
his conceptions of men. Whereas in his imaginations of
women, — in the characters of Ellen Douglas, of Flora
Maclvor, Rose Bradwardine, Catherine Seyton, Diana
Vernon, Lilias Redgauntlet, AHce Bridgenorth, Alice
Lee, and Jeanie Deans, — with endless varieties of grace,
tenderness, and intellectual power we find in all a quite
infalHble and inevitable sense of dignity and justice ; a
fearless, instant, and untiring self-sacrifice, to even the
appearance of duty, much more to its real claims ; and,
finally, a patient wisdom of deeply-restrained affection,
which does infinitely more than protect its objects from
a momentary error; it gradually forms, animates, and
exalts the characters of the unworthy lovers, until, at
the close of the tale, we are just able, and no more, to
take patience in hearing of their unmerited success.

So that in all cases, with Scott as with Shakespeare,
it is the woman who watches over, teaches, and guides
the youth ; it is never, by any chance, the youth who
watches over, or educates, his mistress.

60. Next, take, though more briefly, graver and deeper
testimony — that of the great Italians and Greeks. You
know well the plan of Dante's great poem° — that it is a
love-poem to his dead lady ; a song of praise for her
watch over his soul. Stooping only to pity, never to

118 SESAME AND LILIES

love, she yet saves him from destruction — saves him
from hell. He is going eternally astray in despair ; she
comes down from heaven to his help, and throughout
the ascents of Paradise is his teacher, interpreting for
him the most difficult truths, divine and human ; and
leading him, with rebuke upon rebuke, from star to
star.

I do not insist upon Dante's conception ; if I began
I could not cease : besides, you might think this a wild
imagination of one poet's heart. So I will rather read
to you a few verses of the deliberate writing of a knight
of Pisa to his living lady, wholly characteristic of the
feeling of all the noblest men of the thirteenth century,
preserved among many other such records of knightly
honor and love, which Dante Rossetti° has gathered for
us from among the early Italian poets.

For lo ! thy law is passed
That this my love should manifestly be

To serve and honor thee :
And so I do; and my delight is full,
Accepted for the servant of thy rule.

Without almost, I am all rapturous,

Since thus my vi'ill was set :
To serve, thou flower of joy, thine excellence:
Nor ever seems it anything could rouse

A pain or a regret.
But on thee dwells mine every thought and sense:
Considering that from thee all virtues spread

As from a fountain head, —
That in thy gift is wisdom'' s best avails

And honor without fail ;
With whom each sovereign good dwells separate.
Fulfilling the perfection of thy state.

OF queens' gardens 119

Lady, since I conceived
Thy pleasurable aspect in my heart,

My life has been apart
In shining brightness and the place of truth ;

Which till that time, good sooth.
Groped among shadows in a darken'd place,

Where many hours and days
It hardly ever had remember'd good.

But now my servitude
Is thine, and I am full of joy and rest.

A man from a wild beast
Thou madest me, since for thy love I lived.

6i. You may think, perhaps, a Greek knight would
have had a lower estimate of women than this Christian
lover. His own spiritual subjection to them was indeed
not so absolute ; but as regards their own personal char-
acter, it was only because you could not have followed
me so easily, that I did not take the Greek women in-
stead of Shakespeare's ; and instance, for chief ideal types
of human beauty and faith, the simple mother's and wife's
heart of Andromache ;° the divine, yet rejected wisdom
of Cassandra ;° the playful kindness and simple princess-
life of happy Nausicaa ;° the housewifely calm of that of
Penelope,° with its watch upon the sea ; the ever patient,
fearless, hopelessly devoted piety of the sister, and daugh-
ter, in Antigone f the bowing down of Iphigenia,° lamb-
like and silent; and, finally, the expectation of the resur-
rection, made clear to the soul of the Greeks in the return
from her grave of that Alcestis,° who, to save her hus-
band, had passed calmly through the bitterness of death.

62. Now I could multiply witness upon witness of this
kind upon you if I had time. I would take Chaucer,
and show you why he wrote a Legend of Good Women ;

120 SESAME AND LILIES

but no Legend of Good Men. I would take Spenser,
and show you how all his fairy knights are sometimes
deceived and sometimes vanquished ; but the soul of
Una is never darkened, and the spear of Britomart is
never broken. Nay, I could go back into the mythical
teaching of the most ancient times, and show you how
the great people, — by one of whose princesses it was
appointed that the Lawgiver ° of all the earth should be
educated, rather than by his own kindred; — how that
great Egyptian people, wisest then of nations, gave to
their Spirit of Wisdom the form of a woman ; and into
her hand, for a symbol, the weaver's shuttle : and how
the name and the form of that spirit, adopted, beUeved,
and obeyed by the Greeks, became that Athena ° of the
olive-helm, and cloudy shield, to faith in whom you
owe, down to this date, whatever you hold most precious
in art, in Hterature, or in types of national virtue.

6^. But I will not wander into this distant and mythi-
cal element ; I will only ask you to give its legitimate
value to the testimony of these great poets and men of
the world, — consistent as you see it is on . this head. I
will ask you whether it can be supposed that these men,
in the main work of their lives, are amusing themselves
with a fictitious and idle view of the relations between
man and woman ; — nay, worse than fictitious or idle ;
for a thing may be imaginary, yet desirable, if it were
possible ; but this, their ideal of woman, is, according
to our common idea of the marriage relation, wholly un-
desirable. The woman, we say, is not to guide, nor even
to think for herself. The man is always to be the wiser ;
he is to be the thinker, the ruler, the superior in knowl-
edge and discretion, as in power.

OF queens' gardens 121

64. Is it not somewhat important to make up our
minds on this matter ? Are all these great men mistaken,
or are we? Are Shakespeare and ^Eschylus, Dante and
Homer, merely dressing dolls for us ; or, worse than dolls,
uni^atural visions, the realization of which, were it pos-
sible, would bring anarchy into all households and ruin
into all affections ? Nay, if you could suppose this, take
lastly the evidence of facts,° given by the human heart
itself. In all Christian ages which have been remarkable
for their purity of progress, there has been absolute yield-
ing of obedient devotion, by the lover, to his mistress.
I say obediettt; — not merely enthusiastic and worshipping
in imagination, but entirely subject, receiving from the
beloved woman, however young, not only the encourage-
ment, the praise, and the reward of all toil, but, so far as
any choice is open, or any question difficult of decision,
the direction of all toil. That chivalry, to the abuse and
dishonor of which are attributable primarily whatever is
cruel in war, unjust in peace, or corrupt and ignoble in
domestic relations ; and to the original purity and power
of which we owe the defence ahke of faith, of law, and of
love ; — that chivalry, I say, in its very first conception
of honorable life, assumes the subjection of the young
knight to the command — should it even be the com-
mand in caprice — of his lady. It assumes this, because
its masters knew that the first and necessary impulse of
every truly taught and knightly heart is this of blind ser-
vice to its lady ; that where that true faith and captivity
are not, all wayward and wicked passions must be ; and
that in this rapturous obedience to the single love of his
youth, is the sanctification of all man's strength, and the
continuance of all his purposes. And this, not because

122 SESAME AND LILIES

such obedience would be safe, or honorable, were it ever
rendered to the unworthy ; but because it ought to be
impossible for every noble youth — it is impossible for
every one rightly trained — to love any one whose gentle
counsel he cannot trust, or whose prayerful command he
can hesitate to obey.

65. I do not insist by any farther argument ° on this,
for I think it should commend itself at once to your
knowledge of what has been and to your feelings of what
should be. You cannot think that the buckling on of
the knight's armor by his lady's hand was a mere caprice
of romantic fashion. It is the type of an eternal truth —
that the soul's armor is never well set to the heart unless
a woman's hand has braced it ; and it is only when she
braces it loosely that the honor of manhood fails. Know
you not those lovely lines — I would they were learned
by all youthful ladies of England : —

Ah, wasteful woman ! ° — she who may
On her sweet self set her own price,
Knowing he cannot choose but pay —
How has she cheapen'd Paradise !
How given for nought her priceless gift.
How spoil'd the bread and spill'd the wine,
Which, spent with due, respective thrift.
Had made brutes men, and men divine !

66. Thus much, then, respecting the relations of lovers
I believe you will accept. But what we too often doubt is
the fitness of the continuance of such a relation through-
out the whole of human life. We think it right in the
lover and mistress, not in the husband and wife. That
is to say, we think that a reverent and tender duty is due
to one whose affection we still doubt, and whose charac-

OF queens' gardens 123

ter we as yet do but partially and distantly discern ; and
that this reverence and duty are to be withdrawn when
the affection has become wholly and limitlessly our own,
and the character has been so sifted and tried that we
fear not to entrust it with the happiness of our lives. Do
you not see how ignoble this is, as well as how unrea-
sonable ? Do you not feel that marriage, — when it is
marriage at all, — is only the seal which marks the vowed
transition of temporary into untiring service, and of fitful
into eternal love ?

67. But how, you will ask, is the idea of this guiding
function of the woman reconcileable with a true wifely
subjection? Simply in that it is a guiding, not a deter-
mining, function. Let me try to show you briefly how
these powers seem to be rightly distinguishable. °

We are foolish, and without excuse foolish, in speak-
ing of the "superiority" of one sex to the other, as if
they could be compared in similar things. Each has
what the other has not : each completes the other, and
is completed by the other : they are in nothing alike,
and the happiness and perfection of both depends on each
asking and receiving from the other what the other only
can give.

68. Now their separate characters are briefly these.
The man's power is active, progressive, defensive. He
is eminently the doer, the creator, the discoverer, the
defender. His intellect is for speculation and inven-
tion ; his energy for adventure, for war, and for conquest,
wherever war is just, wherever conquest necessary. But °
the woman's power is for rule, not for battle, — and her
intellect is not for invention or creation, but for sweet
ordering, arrangement, and decision. She sees the quali-

124 SESAME AND LILIES

ties of things, their claims and their places. Her great
function is Praise : she enters into no contest, but in-
fallibly adjudges the crown of contest. By her office,
and place, she is protected from all danger and tempta-
tion. The man, in his rough work in open world, must
encounter all peril and trial : — to him, therefore, the
failure, the offence, the inevitable error : often he must
be wounded, or subdued ; often misled ; and always
hardened. But he guards the woman from all this ;
within his house, as ruled by her, unless she herself has
sought it, need enter no danger, no temptation, no cause
of error or offence. This is the true nature of home —
it is the place of Peace ; the shelter, not only from all
injury, but from all terror, doubt, and division. In so
far as it is not this, it is not home ; so far as the anxieties
of the outer life penetrate into it, and the inconsistently-
minded, unknown, unloved, or hostile society of the
outer world is allowed by either husband or wife to cross
the thi-eshold, it ceases to be home ; it is then only a
part of that outer world which you have roofed over, and
lighted fire in. But so far as it is a sacred place,° a vestal
temple, a temple of the hearth watched over by House-
hold Gods, before whose faces none may come but those
whom they can receive with love, — so far as it is this,
and roof and fire are types only of a nobler shade and
light, — shade as of the rock in a weary land, arid hght as
of the Pharos in the stormy sea; — so far it vindicates
the name, and fulfils the praise, of Home.

And wherever ° a true wife comes, this home is always
round her. The stars only may be over her head ; the
glow-worm in the night-cold grass may be the only fire
at her foot : but home is yet wherever she is ; and

OF queens' gardens 125

for a noble woman it stretches far round her, better
than ceiled ° with cedar, or painted with vermiHon,
shedding its quiet light far, for those who else were
homeless.

69. This, then, I believe to be, — will you not admit
it to be? — the woman's true place and power. But do
not you see that, to fulfil this, she must — as far as one
can use such terms of a human creature — be incapable of
error? So far as she rules, all must be right, or nothing
is. She must be enduringly, incorruptibly good ; instinc-
tively, infallibly wise — wise, not for self-development,
but for self-renunciation : wise, not that she may set
herself above her husband, but that she may never fail
from his side : wise, not with the narrowness of insolent
and loveless pride, but with the passionate gentleness
of an infinitely variable, because infinitely applicable,
modesty of service — the true changefulness of woman.
In that great sense — " La donna ° e mobile," not " Qual°
pium' al vento " ; no, nor yet " Variable ° as the shade,
by the light quivering aspen made " ; but variable as the
/ig/i^, manifold in fair and serene division, that it may
take the color of all that it falls upon, and exalt it.

70. 11. I have been trying, thus far, to show you
what should be the place, and what the power of woman.
Now, secondly, we ask. What kind of education is to fit
her for these?

And if you indeed think this a true conception of her
office and dignity, it will not be difficult to trace the
course of education which would fit her for the one, and
raise her to the other.

The first of our duties to her — no thoughtful persons
now doubt this, — is to secure for her such physical train-

126 SESAME AND LILIES

ing and exercise as may confirm her health, and perfect
her beauty, the highest refinement of that beauty being
unattainable without splendor of activity and of dehcate
strength. To perfect her beauty, I say, and increase its
power; it cannot be too powerful, nor shed its sacred
light too far : only remember that all physical freedom
is vain to produce beauty without a corresponding free-
dom of heart. There are two passages of that poet ° who
is distinguished, it seems to me, from all others — not by
power, but by exquisite rig/i/ness — which point you to
the source, and describe to you, in a few syllables, the
completion of womanly beauty. I will read the intro-
ductory stanzas, but the last is the one I wish you spe-
cially to notice : —

Three years she grew in sun and shower,
Then Nature said, " A lovelier flower

On earth was never sown ;
This child I to myself will take ;
She shall be mine and I will make

A lady of my own.

" Myself will to my darling be
Both law and impulse; and with me

The girl, in rock and plain.
In earth and heaven, in glade and bower,
Shall feel an overseeing power

To kindle, or restrain.

"The floating clouds their state shall lend
To her, for her the willow bend ;

Nor shall she fail to see
Even in the motions of the storm,
Grace that shall mould the maiden's form

By silent sympathy.

OF queens' gardens 127

**And vital feelings of delight
Shall rear her form to stately height, —

Her virgin bosom swell.
Such thoughts to Lucy I will give,
While she and I together live,

Here in this happy dell."

" Vital feelings of delight," observe. There are deadly
feelings of dehght ; but the natural ones are vital, nec-
essary to very life.

And they must be feelings of delight, if they are to be
vital. Do not think you can make a girl lovely, if you do
not make her happy. There is not one restraint you put
on a good girl's nature — there is not one check you give
to her instincts of affection or of effort — which will not
be indelibly written on her features, with a hardness which
is all the more painful because it takes away the bright-
ness from the eyes of innocence, and the charm from the
brow of virtue.

71. This for the means: now note the end. Take
from the same poet, in two lines, a perfect description
of womanly beauty —

A countenance in which did meet
Sweet records, promises as sweet.

The perfect loveliness of a woman's countenance can
only consist in that majestic peace, which is founded in
memory of happy and useful years, — full of sweet rec-
ords; and from the joining of this with that yet more
majestic childishness, which is still full of change and
promise ; — opening always — modest at once, and bright,
with hope of better things to be won, and to be be-
stowed. There is no old age where there is still that
promise — it is eternal youth.

128 SESAME AND LILIES

72. Thus,° then, you have first to mould her physical
frame, and then, as the strength she gains will permit
you, to fill and temper her mind with all knowledge and
thoughts which tend to confirm its natural instincts of
justice, and refine its natural tact of love.

All such knowledge should be given her as may en-
able her to understand, and even to aid, the work of
men : and yet it should be given, not as knowledge, —
not as if it were, or could be, for her an object to know;
but only to feel, and to judge. It is of no moment, as a
matter of pride or perfectness in herself, whether she
knows many languages ° or one; but it is of the utmost,
that she should be able to show kindness to a stranger,
and to understand the sweetness of a stranger's tongue.
It is of no moment to her own worth or dignity that she
should be acquainted with this science or that ; but it is
of the highest that she should be trained in habits of
accurate thought ; that she should understand the mean-
ing, the inevitableness, and the loveliness of natural
laws, and follow at least some one path of scientific at-
tainment, as far as to the threshold of that bitter Valley °
of Humiliation, into which only the wisest and bravest of
men can descend, owning themselves for ever children,
gathering pebbles on a boundless shore. It is of little
consequence how many positions of cities she knows, or
how many dates of events, or how many names of cele-
brated persons — it is not the object of education to turn
the woman into a dictionary ; but it is deeply necessary
that she should be taught to enter with her whole per-
sonality into the history she reads ; to picture the pas-
sages of it vitally in her own bright imagination ; to
apprehend, with her fine instincts, the pathetic circum-

OF queens' gardens 129

stances and dramatic relations, which the historian too
often only eclipses by his reasoning, and disconnects by
his arrangement : it is for her to trace the hidden equities
of divine reward, and catch sight, through the darkness,
of the fateful threads of woven fire that connect error
with its retribution. But, chiefly of all, she is to be taught
to extend the limits of her sympathy with respect to
that history which is being for her determined as the mo-
ments pass in which she draws her peaceful breath : and
to the contemporary calamity which, were it but rightly
mourned by her, would recur no more hereafter. She
is to exercise herself in imagining what would be the
effects upon her mind and conduct, if she were daily
brought into the presence of the suffering which is not
the less real because shut from her sight. She is to be
taught somewhat to understand the nothingness ° of the
proportion which that little world in which she lives
and loves, bears to the world in which God lives and
loves; — and solemnly she is to be taught to strive that
her thoughts of piety may not be feeble in proportion to
the number they embrace, nor her prayer more languid
than it is for the momentary relief from pain of her hus-
band or her child, when it is uttered for the multitudes
of those who have none to love them, — and is, " for all
who are desolate and oppressed." °

73. Thus far, I think, I have had your concurrence ;
perhaps you will not be with me in what I believe is
most needful for me to say. There is one dangerous
science for women — one which let them indeed beware
how they profanely touch — that of theology. Strange,
and miserably strange, that while they are modest enough
to doubt their powers, and pause at the threshold of

130 SESAME AND LILIES

sciences where every step is demonstrable and sure, they
will plunge headlong, and without one thought of in-
competency, into that science in which the greatest men
have trembled, and the wisest erred. Strange, that they
will complacently and pridefully bind up whatever vice
or folly there is in them, whatever arrogance, petulance,
or bhnd incomprehensiveness, into one bitter bundle of
consecrated myrrh. Strange, in creatures born to be
Love visible, that where they can know least, they will
condemn first, and think to recommend themselves to
their Master, by scrambling up the steps of His judgment-
throne, to divide it with Him. Most strange, that they
should think they were led by the Spirit ° of the Com-
forter into habits of mind which have become in them
the unmixed elements of home discomfort ; and that they
dare to turn the Household Gods of Christianity into ugly
idols of their own — spiritual dolls, for them to dress ac-
cording to their caprice ; and from which their husbands
must turn away in grieved contempt, lest they should be
shrieked at for breaking them.

74. I believe, then, with this exception, that a girl's
education should be nearly, in its course and material of
study, the same as a boy's ; but quite differently di-
rected.° A woman, in any rank of life, ought to know
whatever her husband is likely to know, but to know
it in a different way. His command of it should be
foundational and progressive ; hers, general and accom-
plished for daily and helpful use. Not but that it would
often be wiser in men to learn things in a womanly sort
of way, for present use, and to seek for the discipline
and training of their mental powers in such branches of
study as will be afterwards fitted for social service; but,

OF queens' gardens 131

speaking broadly, a man ought to know any language
or science he learns, thoroughly, while a woman ought
to know the same language, or science, only so far as
may enable her to sympathize in her husband's pleasures,
and in those of his best friends.

75. Yet, observe, with exquisite accuracy as far as
she reaches. There is a wide difference between ele-
mentary knowledge and superficial knowledge — between
a firm beginning, and a feeble smattering. A woman
may always help her husband by what she knows, how-
ever little ; by what she half-knows, or mis-knows, she
will only teaze him.

And, indeed, if there were to be any difference between
a girl's education and a boy's, I should say that of the
two the girl should be earlier led, as her intellect ripens
faster, into deep and serious subjects ; and that her range
of Hterature should be, not more, but less frivolous,
calculated to add the qualities of patience and serious-
ness to her natural poignancy of thought and quick-
ness of wit ; and also to keep her in a lofty and pure
element of thought. I enter not now into any question
of choice of books; only be sure that her books are
not heaped up in her lap as they fall out of the pack-
age of the circulating ° library, wet with the last and
lightest spray of the fountain of folly.

76. Or even of the fountain of wit ; for with respect
to that sore temptation ° of novel reading, it is not the
badness of a novel that we should dread, but its over-
wrought interest. The weakest romance is not so
stupefying as the lower forms of religious exciting lit-
erature, and the worst romance is not so corrupting as
false history, false philosophy, or false political essays.

132 SESAME AND LILIES

But the best romance becomes dangerous, if, by its ex-
citement, it renders the ordinary course of Hfe unin-
teresting, and increases the morbid thirst for useless
acquaintance with scenes in which we shall never be
called upon to act.

77. I speak therefore of good novels only ; and our
modern literature is particularly rich in types of such.
Well read, indeed, these books have serious use, being
nothing less than treatises on. moral anatomy and chem-
istry ; studies of human nature in the elements of it.
But I attach little weight to this function : they are
hardly ever read with earnestness enough to permit
them to fulfil it. The utmost they usually do is to en-
large somewhat the charity of a kind reader, or the
bitterness of a maUcious one ; for each will gather, from
the novel, food for her own disposition. Those who are
naturally proud and envious will learn from Thackeray
to despise humanity ; those who are naturally gentle, to
pity it ; those who are naturally shallow, to laugh at it.
So, also, there might be a serviceable power in novels to
bring before us, in vividness, a human truth which we
had before dimly conceived ; but the temptation to
picturesqueness of statement is so great, that often the
best writers of fiction cannot resist it ; and our views are
rendered so violent and one-sided, that their vitality is
rather a harm than good.

78. Without, however, venturing here on any attempt
at decision how much novel reading should be allowed,
let me at least clearly assert this, that whether novels, or
poetry, or history be read, they should be chosen, not for
what is out of them, but for what is in them. The chance
and scattered evil that may here and there haunt, or hide

OF queens' gardens 133

itself in, a powerful book, never does any harm to a noble
girl ; but the emptiness of an author oppresses her, and
his amiable folly degrades her. And if she can have access
to a good library of old and classical books, there need be
no choosing at all. Keep the modern magazine and novel
out of your girl's way : turn her loose into the old library
every wet day, and let her alone. She will find what is
good for her ; you cannot : for there is just this difference
between the making of a girl's character and a boy's —
you may chisel a boy into shape, as you would a rock, or
hammer him into it, if he be of a better kind, as you would
a piece of bronze. But you cannot hammer a girl into
anything. She grows as a flower does, — she will wither
without sun ; she will decay in her sheath, as the narcissus
will, if you do not give her air enough ; she may fall, and
defile her head in dust, if you leave her without help at
some moments of her life ; but you cannot fetter her ;
she must take her own fair form and way, if she take any,
and in mind as in body, must have always

Her° household motions light and free,
And steps of virgin liberty.

Let her loose in the library, I say, as you do a fawn in
the field. It knows the bad weeds twenty times better
than you ; and the good ones too, and will eat some bitter
and prickly ones, good for it, which you had not the
slightest thought were good.

79. Then, in art, keep the finest models before her,
and let her practice in all accomplishments be accurate
and thorough, so as to enable her to understand more
than she accomplishes. I say the finest models — that
is to say, the truest, simplest, usefullest. Note those

134 SESAME AND LILIES

epithets ; they will range through all the arts. Try them
in music, where you might think them the least applica-
ble. I say the truest, that in which the notes most
closely and faithfully express the meaning of the words,
or the character of intended emotion ; again, the simplest,
that in which the meaning and melody are attained with
the fewest knd most significant notes possible ; and,
finally, the usefullest, that music which makes the best
words most beautiful, which enchants them in our mem-
ories each with its own glory of sound, and which ap-
plies them closest to the heart at the moment we need
them.

80. And not only in the material and in the course,
but yet more earnestly in the spirit of it, let a girl's
education be as serious as a boy's. You bring up your
girls as if they were meant for sideboard ornament,
and then complain of their frivolity. Give them the
same advantages that you give their brothers — appeal to
the same grand instincts of virtue in them ; teach them
also that courage and truth are the pillars of their being :
do you think that they would not answer that appeal,
brave and true as they are even now, when you know
that there is hardly a girls' school in this Christian king-
dom where the children's courage or sincerity would be
thought of half so much importance as their way of com-
ing in at a door ; and when the whole system of society,
as respects the mode of estabhshing them in life, is one
rotten plague of cowardice and imposture — cowardice,
in not daring to let them live, or love, except as their
neighbors choose ; and imposture, in bringing, for the
purpose of our own pride, the full glow of the world's
worst vanity upon a girl's eyes, at the very period when

OF queens' gardens 135

the whole happiness of her future existence depends upon
her remaining undazzled?

8i. And give them, lastly, not only noble teachings,
but noble teachers. You consider somewhat, before you
send your boy to school, what kind of a man the master
is j — whatsoever kind of a man he is, you at least give
him full authority over your son, and show some respect
for him yourself; if he comes to dine with you, you do
not put him at a side table ; you know also that, at his
college, your child's immediate tutor will be under the
direction of some still higher tutor, for whom you have
absolute reverence. You do not treat the Dean° of
Christ Church or the Master of Trinity as your inferiors.

But what teachers do you give your girls, and what
reverence do you show to the teachers you have chosen?
Is a girl hkely to think her own conduct, or her own
intellect, of much importance, when you trust the entire
formation of her character, moral and intellectual, to a per-
son whom you let your servants treat with less respect than
they do your housekeeper (as if the soul of your child
were a less charge than jams and groceries), and whom
you yourself think you confer an honor upon by letting
her sometimes sit in the drawing-room in the evening?

82. Thus,° then, of literature as her help, and thus of
art. There is one more help which she cannot do with-
out — one which, alone, has sometimes done more than
all other influences besides, — the help of wild and fair
nature. Hear this of the education of Joan of Arc : —

"The education of this poor girl was mean according to the
present standard; was ineffably grand, according to a purer philo-
sophic standard; and only not good for our age, because for us it
would be unattainable. . . .

136 SESAME AND LILIES

"Next after her spiritual advantages, she owed most to the
advantages of her situation. The fountain of Domremy vi^as on
the brink of a boundless forest; and it was haunted to that degree
by fairies, that the parish priest {cure) was obhged to read mass
there once a year, in order to keep them in decent bounds. . . .

" But the forests of Domremy — those were the glories of the
land, for in them abode mysterious powers and ancient secrets
that towered into tragic strength. * Abbeys there were, and abbey
windows,' — 'like Moorish temples of the Hindoos,' — that exer-
cised even princely power both in Touraine and in the German
Diets. These had their sweet bells that pierced the forests for many
a league at matins or vespers, and each its own dreamy legend.
Few enough, and scattered enough, were these abbeys, so as in
no degree to disturb the deep solitude of the region; yet many
enough to spread a network or awning of Christian sanctity over
what else might have seemed a heathen wilderness." ^

Now, you cannot, indeed, have here m England, woods
eighteen miles deep to the centre ; but you can, perhaps,
keep a fairy or two for your children yet, if you wish to
keep them. But do you wish it? Suppose you had each,
at the back of your houses, a garden, large enough for
your children to play in, with just as much lawn as would
give them room to run, — no more — and that you could
not change your abode ; but that, if you chose., you
could double your income, or quadruple it, by digging a
coal shaft in the middle of the lawn, and turning the
fiower-bed into heaps of coke. Would you do it? I
think not. I can tell you, you would be wrong if you did,
though it gave you income sixty-fold instead of four-fold.

d)T,. Yet this is what you are doing with all England.
The whole country is but a little garden, not more than
enough for your children to' run on the lawns of, if you

^ Joan of Arc : in reference to M. Michelet's History of France. — De
Quincey's Works, vol. ill., p. 217.

OF queens' gardens 137

would let them all run there. And this little garden
you will turn into furnace-ground, and fill ° with heaps of
cinders, if you can ; and those children of yours, not you,
will suffer for it. For the fairies will not be all banished ;
there are fairies of the furnace as of the wood, and their
first gifts seem to be " sharp ° arrows of the mighty";
but their last gifts are " coals ° of juniper."

84. And yet I cannot — though there is no part of my
subject that I feel more — press this upon you ; for we
made so little use of the power of nature while we had
it that we shall hardly feel what we have lost. Just on
the other side of the Mersey you have your Snowdon,
and your Menai Straits, and that mighty granite rock
beyond the moors of Anglesea, splendid in its heathery
crest, and foot planted in the deep sea, once thought of
as sacred — a divine promontory, looking westward ; the
Holy Head or Headland, still not without awe when its
red light glares first through storm. These are the hills,
and these the bays and blue inlets, which, among the
Greeks, would have been always loved, always fateful in
influence on the national mind. That Snowdon ° is your
Parnassus; but where are its Muses? That Holyhead
mountain is your Island of ^gina ; but where is its
Temple to Minerva?

85. Shall I read you what the Christian Minerva ° had
achieved under the shadow of our Parnassus, up to the
year 1848? — Here is a litde account of a Welsh school,
from page 261 of the Report on Wales, pubhshed by the
Committee of Council on Education. This is a school
close to a town containing 5,000 persons : —

"I then called up a larger class, most of whom had recently come
to the school. Three girls repeatedly declared they had never

138 SESAME AND LILIES

heard of Christ, and two that they had never heard of God. Two
out of six thought Christ was on earth now " (they might have had
a worse thought perhaps) ; " three knew nothing about the Cruci-
fixion. Four out of seven did not know the names of the months,
nor the number of days in a year. They had no notion of addi-
tion beyond two and two, or three and three; their minds were
perfect blanks."

Oh, ye women of England ! from the Princess of that
Wales to the simplest of you, do not think your own
children can be brought into their true fold of rest, while
these are scattered on the hills, as sheep ° having no
shepherd. And do not think your daughters can be
trained to the truth of their own human beauty, while
the pleasant places, which God made at once for their
school-room and their play-ground, he desolate and de-
filed. You cannot baptize them rightly in those inch-
deep fonts of yours, unless you baptize them also in the
sweet waters ° which the great Lawgiver strikes forth for
ever from the rocks of your native land — waters which
a Pagan would have worshipped in their purity, and you
worship only with pollution. You cannot lead your chil-
dren faithfully to those narrow axe-hewn church altars
of yours, while the dark azure altars in heaven — the
mountains that sustain your island throne, — mountains
on which a Pagan would have seen the powers of heaven
rest in every wreathed cloud — remain for you without
inscription ; altars built, not to, but by an Unknown God.°

86. III. Thus far,° then, of the nature, thus far of the
teaching, of woman, and thus of her household office,
and queenhness. We come now to our last, our widest
question, — What is her queenly office with respect to
the state ?

OF queens' gardens 139

Generally we are under an impression that a man's duties
are public, and a woman's private. But this is not alto-
gether so. A man has a personal work or duty, relating
to his own home, and a public work or duty, which is the
expansion of the other, relating to the state. So a woman
has a personal work or duty, relating to her own home, and
a public work or duty, which is also the expansion of that.

Now the man's work for his own home is, as has been
said, to secure its maintenance, progress, and defence ;
the woman's to secure its order, comfort, and loveliness.

Expand both these functions. The man's duty, as a
member of a commonwealth, is to assist in the mainte-
nance, in the advance, in the defence of the state. The
woman's duty, as a member of the commonwealth, is to
assist in the ordering, in the comforting, and in the beau-
tiful adornment of the state.

What the man is at his own gate, defending it, if need
be, against insult and spoil, that also, not in a less, but in
a more devoted measure, he is to be at the gate of his
country, leaving his home, if need be, even to the spoiler,
to do his more incumbent work there.

And, in like manner, what the woman is to be within
her gates, as the centre of order, the balm of distress, and
the mirror of beauty : that she is also to be without her
gates, where order is more difficult, distress more immi-
nent, loveliness more rare.

And as within the human heart there is always set an
instinct for all its real duties, — an instinct which you
cannot quench, but only warp and corrupt if you with-
draw it from its true purpose; — as there is the intense
instinct of love, which, rightly disciplined, maintains all
the sanctities ofhfe, and, misdirected, undermines them;

140 SESAME AND LILIES

and must do either the one or the other ; — so there is in
the human heart an inextinguishable instinct, the love of
power, which, rightly directed, maintains all the majesty
of law and Hfe, and misdirected, wrecks them.

87. Deep rooted in the innermost life of the heart of
man, and of the heart of woman, God set it there, and God
keeps it there. Vainly, as falsely, you blame or rebuke
the desire of power ! — For Heaven's sake, and for Man's
sake, desire it all you can. But what power? That is .all
the question. Power to destroy ? the lion's Hmb, and the
dragon's breath? Not so. Power to heal, to redeem, to
guide, 'and to guard, Power of the sceptre and shield;
the power of the royal hand that heals in touching, —
that binds the fiend and looses the captive ; the throne
that is founded on the rock of Justice, and descended
from only by steps of Mercy. Will you not covet such
power as this, and seek such throne as this, and be no
more housewives, but queens ?

88. It is now long since the women of England arro-
gated, universally, a title which once belonged to nobility
only, and, having once been in the habit of accepting the
simple title of gentlewoman, as correspondent to that of
gentleman, insisted on the privilege of assuming the title
of " Lady," ^ which properly corresponds only to the title
of " Lord."

1 I wish there were a true order of chivalry instituted for our English
youth of certain ranks, in which both boy and girl should receive, at a
given age, their knighthood and ladyhood by true title ; attainable only
by certain probation and trial both of character and accomplishment ;
and to be forfeited, on conviction, by their peers, of any dishonorable act.
Such an institution would be entirely, and with all noble results, possible,
in a nation which loved honor. That it would not be possible among
us is not to the discredit of the scheme.

OF queens' gardens 141

I do not blame them for this ; but only for their narrow-
motive in this. I would have them desire and claim the
title of Lady, provided they claim, not merely the title
but the office and duty signified by it. Lady° means
^'bread-giver" or "loaf-giver," and Lord means " main-
tainer of laws," and both titles have reference, not to the
law which is maintained in the house, nor to the bread
which is given to the household ; but to law maintained
for the multitude, and to bread broken among the multi-
tude. So that a Lord has legal claim only to his title in so
far as he is the maintainer of the justice of the Lord of
Lords ; and a Lady has legal claim to her title, only so
far as she communicates that help to the poor representa-
tives of her Master, which women once, ministering ° to
Him of their substance, were permitted to extend to that
Master Himself; and when she is known, as He Himself
once was, in breaking ° of bread.

89. And this beneficent and legal dominion, this power
of the Dominus, or House-Lord, and of the Domina, or
House-Lady, is great and venerable, not in the number
of those through whom it has lineally descended, but in
the number of those whom it grasps within its sway ; it
is alw^ays regarded with reverent worship wherever its
dynasty is founded on its duty, and its ambition correla-
tive with its beneficence. Your fancy is pleased with the
thought of being noble ladies, with a train of vassals. Be
it so : you cannot be too noble, and your train cannot be
too great ; but see to it that your train is of vassals whom
you serve and feed, not merely of slaves who serve and
feed yoi/; and that the multitude which obeys you is of
those whom you have comforted, not oppressed, — whom
you have redeemed, not led into captivity.

142 SESAME AND LILIES

90. And this, which is true of the lower or household
dominion, is equally true of the queenly dominion ; — that
highest dignity is open to you, if you will also accept that
highest duty. Rex ° et Regina — Roi ° et Reine — " /^ig/U-
doers; " they differ but from the Lady and Lord, in that
their power is supreme over the mind as over the person
— that they not only feed and clothe, but direct and
teach. And whether consciously or not, you must be, in
many a heart, enthroned : there is no putting by that
crown ; queens you must always be ; queens to your
lovers ; queens to your husbands and your sons ; queens
of higher mystery to the world beyond, which bows itself,
and will for ever bow, before the myrtle ° crown, and the
stainless sceptre, of womanhood. But, alas ! you are too
often idle and careless queens, grasping at majesty in the
least things, while you abdicate it in the greatest ; and
leaving misrule and violence to work their will among
men, in defiance of the power, which, holding straight in
gift from the Prince ° of all Peace, the wicked among you
betray, and the good forget.

91. *' Prince of Peace." Note that name. When
kings rule in that name, and nobles, and the judges of
the earth, they also, in their narrow place, and mortal
measure, receive the power of it. There are no other
rulers than they : other rule than theirs is but misTule ;
they who govern verily ° " Dei gratia " are all princes, yes,
or princesses, of peace. There is not a war in the world,
no, nor an injustice, but you women are answerable for
it ; not in that you have provoked, but in that you have
not hindered. Men, by their nature, are prone to fight ;
they will fight for any cause, or for none. It is for you
to choose their cause for them, and to forbid them when

OF queens' gardens 143

there is no cause. There is no suffering, no injustice, no
misery in the earth, but the guilt of it Hes lastly with you.
Men can bear the sight of it, but you should not be able
to bear it. Men may tread it down without sympathy in
their own struggle ; but men are feeble in sympathy, and
contracted in hope ; it is you only who can feel the depths
of pain, and conceive the way of its heaUng. Instead ° of
trying to do this, you turn away from it ; you shut your-
selves within your park walls and garden gates ; and you
are content to know that there is beyond them a whole
world in wilderness — a world of secrets which you dare not
penetrate ; and of suffering which you dare not conceive.
92. I tell you that this is to me quite the most amaz-
ing among the phenomena of humanity. I am surprised
at no depths to which, when once warped from its honor,
that humanity can be degraded. I do not wonder ° at
the miser's death, with his hands, as they relax, dropping
gold. I do not wonder at the sensualist's life, with the
shroud wrapped about his feet. I do not wonder at the
single-handed murder of a single victim, done by the
assassin in the darkness of the railway, or reed-shadow
of the marsh. I do not even wonder at the myriad-
handed ° murder of multitudes, done boastfully in the
daylight, by the frenzy of nations, and the immeasurable,
unimaginable guilt, heaped up from hell to heaven, of
their priests, and kings. But this is wonderful to me
— oh, how wonderful ! — to see the tender and dehcate
woman among you, with her child at her breast, and a
power, if she would wield it, over it, and over its father,
purer than the air of heaven, and stronger than the seas
of earth — nay, a magnitude of blessing which her hus-
band would not part with for all that earth itself, though

144 SESAME AND LILIES

it were made of one entire and perfect chrysolite : — to
see her abdicate this majesty to play at precedence with
her next-door neighbor ! This is wonderful — oh, won-
derful ! — to see her, with every innocent feehng fresh
within her, go out in the morning into her garden to play
with the fringes of its guarded flowers, and lift their
heads when they are drooping, with her happy smile
upon her face, and no cloud upon her brow, because
there is a little wall around her place of peace : and yet
she knows, in her heart, if she would only look for its
knowledge, that, outside of that little rose-covered wall,
the wild grass, to the horizon, is torn up by the agony of
men, and beat level by the drift of their life-blood.

93. Have you ever considered what a deep under
meaning there lies, or at least may be read, if we choose,
in our custom of strewing flowers before those whom we
think most happy ? Do you suppose it is merely to de-
ceive them into the hope that happiness is always to fall
thus in showers at their feet ? — that wherever they pass
they will tread on herbs of sweet scent, and that the
rough ground will be made smooth for them by depth
of roses? So surely as they believe that, they will have,
instead, to walk on bitter herbs and thorns; and the
only softness to their feet will be of snow. But it is not
thus intended they should believe ; there is a better mean-
ing in that old custom. The path of a good woman is in-
deed strewn with flowers : but they rise behind her steps,
not before them. " Her feet ° have touched the meadows,
and left the daisies rosy."

94. You think that, only a lover's fancy; — false and
vain! How if it could be true? You think this also,
perhaps, only a poet's fancy —

OF queens' gardens 145

Even" the light harebell raised its head
Elastic from her airy tread.

But it is little to say of a woman, that she only does not
destroy where she passes. She should revive ; the hare-
bells should bloom, not stoop, as she passes. You think
I am going into wild hyperbole? Pardon me, not a whit
— I mean what I say in calm English, spoken in reso-
lute truth. You have heard it said — (and I believe
there is more than fancy even in that saying, but let it
pass for a fanciful one) — that flowers only flourish rightly
in the garden of some one who loves them. I know you
would like that to be true ; you would think it a pleasant
magic if you could flush your flowers into brighter bloom
by a kind look upon them : nay, more, if your look had
the power, not only to cheer, but to guard them — if
you could bid° the black bhght turn away, and the
knotted caterpillar spare — if you could bid the dew fall
upon them in the drought, and say to the south wind, in
frost — "Come,°thou south, and breathe upon my gar-
den, that the spices of it may flow out." This you would
think a great thing? And do you think it not a greater
thing, that all this, (and how much more than this !) you
call do, for fairer flowers than these — flowers that could
bless you for having blessed them, and will love you for
having loved them ; — flowers that have eyes like yours,
and thoughts like yours, and lives hke yours; which,
once saved, you save for ever? Is this only a little
power? Far among the moorlands and the rocks, —
far in the darkness of the terrible streets, — these feeble
florets are lying, with all their fresh leaves torn, and their
stems broken — will you never go down to them, nor set
them in order in their little fragrant beds, nor fence

146 SESAME AND LILIES

them in their shuddering from the fierce wind? Shall
morning follow morning, for you, but not for them ; and
the dawn rise to watch, far away, those frantic Dances of
Death ; but no dawn rise to breathe upon these living
banks of wild violet, and woodbine, and rose ; nor call to
you, through your casement, — call, (not giving you the
name of the English poet's lady, but the name of Dante's
great Matilda,° who on the edge of happy Lethe, stood,
wreathing flowers with flowers), saying: —

Come into the garden Maud,

For the black bat, night, has flown,

And the woodbine spices are wafted abroad

And the musk of the roses blown?

Will you not go down among them? — among those
sweet living things, whose new courage, sprung from the
earth with the deep color of heaven upon it, is starting
up in strength of goodly spire ; and whose purity, washed
from the dust, is opening, bud by bud, into the flower of
promise ; — and stiU they turn to you and for you, " The
Larkspur ° listens — I hear, I hear ! And the Lily whis-
pers— I wait."

95. Did you notice that I missed two lines when I read
you that first stanza ; and think that I had forgotten them?
Hear them now : —

Come into the garden, Maud,
For the black bat, night, has flown.
Come into the garden, Maud,
I am here at the gate alone.

Who is it, think you, who stands at the gate of this
sweeter garden, alone, waiting for you? Did you ever
hear, not of a Maud, but a Madeleine," who went down to

OF queens' gardens 147

her garden in the dawn, and found One waiting at the
gate, whom she supposed to be the gardener? Have
you not sought Him often ; sought Him in vain, all
through the night ; ° sought Him in vain at the gate of
that old garden ° where the fiery sword is set ? He is
never there ; but at the gate of ^/lis garden ° He is waiting
always — waiting to take your hand — ready to go down
to see the fruits of the valley, to see whether the vine ° has
flourished, and the pomegranate budded. There you shall
see with Him the little tendrils of the vines that His hand
is guiding — there you shall see the pomegranate spring-
ing where His hand cast the sanguine seed ; — more : you
shall see the troops of the angel keepers, that, with their
wings, wave away the hungry birds from the pathsides
where He has sown, and call to each other between the
vineyard rows, " Take ° us the foxes, the httle foxes, that
spoil the vines, for our vines have tender grapes." Oh
— you queens ° — you queens ! among the hills and happy
greenwood of this land of yours, shall the foxes ° have
holes, and the birds of the air have nests ; and in your
cities, shall the stones cry out against you, that they are
the only pillows where the Son of Man can lay His
head?

LECTURE III

THE MYSTERY OF LIFE AND ITS ARTS

Lecture delivered in the theatre of the Royal College of Science,
Dublin, 1868

96. When I accepted the privilege of addressing you
to-day, I was not aware of a restriction with respect to
the topics of discussion which may be brought before this
Society ^ — a restriction which, though entirely wise and
right under the circumstances contemplated in its intro-
duction, would necessarily have disabled me, thinking as
I think, from preparing any lecture for you on the sub-
ject of art in a form which might be permanently useful.
Pardon me, therefore, in so far as I must transgress such
limitation ; for indeed my infringement will be of the let-
ter — not of the spirit — of your commands. In whatever
I may say touching the religion which has been the foun-
dation of art, or the policy which has contributed to its
power, if I offend one, I shall offend all ; for I shall take
no note of any separations in creeds, or antagonisms in
parties : neither do I fear that ultimately I shall offend
any, by proving — or at least stating as capable of posi-
tive proof — the connection of all that is best in the crafts
and arts of man, with the simplicity of his faith, and the
sincerity of his patriotism.

1 That no reference should be made to religious questions.
148

THE MYSTERY OF LIFE 149

97. But I speak to you under'another disadvantage, by
which I am checked in frankness of utterance, not here
only, but everywhere ; namely, that I am never fully aware
how far my audiences are disposed to give me credit for
real knowledge of my subject, or how far they grant me
attention only because I have been sometimes thought
an ingenious or pleasant essayist ° upon it. For I have had
what, in many respects, I boldly call the misfortune, to
set my words sometimes prettily together; not without
a foolish vanity in the poor knack that I had of doing so ;
until I was heavily punished for this pride, by finding
that many people thought of the words only, and cared
nothing for their meaning. Happily, therefore, the power
of using such pleasant language — if indeed it ever were
mine — is passing away from me ; and whatever I am now
able to say at all, I find myself forced to say with great
plainness. For my thoughts have changed also, as my
words have ; and whereas in earlier life, what little influ-
ence I obtained was due perhaps chiefly to the enthusi-
asm with which I was able to dwell on the beauty of the
physical clouds, and of their colors in the sky ; so all the in-
fluence I now desire to retain must be due to the earnest-
ness with which I am endeavoring to trace the form and
beauty of another kind of cloud than those ; the bright
cloud, of which it is written —

" What° is your life? It is even as a vapor that ap-
peareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away."

98. I suppose few people reach the middle or latter
period of their age, without having, at some moment of
change or disappointment, felt the truth of those bitter
words ; and been startled by the fading of the sunshine
from the cloud of their life, into the sudden agony of the

150 SESAME AND LILIES

knowledge that the fabric of it was as fragile as a dream,
and the endurance of it as transient as the dew. But it
is not always that, even at such times of melancholy sur-
prise, we can enter into any true perception that this
human hfe shares, in the nature of it, not only the evanes-
cence, but the mystery ° of the cloud ; that its avenues are
wreathed in darkness, and its forms and courses no less
fantastic, than spectral and obscure ; so that not only in
the vanity which we cannot grasp, but in the shadow
which we cannot pierce, it is true of this cloudy life of
ours, that " man walketh in a vain shadow, and disquiet-
eth himself in vain."

99. And least of all, whatever may have been the eager-
ness of our passions, or the height of our pride, are we
able to understand in its depth the third ° and most solemn
character in which our life is like those clouds of heaven ;
that to it belongs not only their transience, not only
their mystery, but also their power; that in the cloud of
the human soul there is a fire stronger than the lightning,
and a grace more precious than the rain ; and that though
of the good and evil it shall one day be said alike, that
the place that knew them knows them no more, there is
an infinite separation between those whose brief presence
had there been a blessing, like the mist of Eden that went
up from the earth to water the garden, and those whose
place knew them only as a drifting and changeful shade,
of whom the heavenly sentence is, that they are " wells
without water ; clouds that are carried with a tempest, to
whom the mist of darkness is reserved for ever."

100. To those among us, however, who have lived long
enough to form some just estimate of the rate of the
changes which are, hour by hour in accelerating catas-

THE MYSTERY OF LIFE 151

trophe, manifesting themselves in the laws, the arts, and
the creeds of men, it seems to me, that now at least, if
never at any former time, the thoughts of the true nature °
of our Hfe, and of its powers and responsibilities, should
present themselves with absolute sadness and sternness.
And although I know that this feeling is much deepened
in my own mind by disappointment," which, by chance,
has attended the greater number of my cherished purposes,
I do not for that reason distrust the feeling itself, though
I am on my guard against an exaggerated degree of it :
nay, I rather beHeve that in periods of new effort and vio-
lent change, disappointment is a wholesome medicine ;
and that in the secret of it, as in the twilight so beloved
by Titian,° we may see the colors of things with deeper
truth than in the most dazzling sunshine. And because
these truths about the works of men, which I want to
bring to-day before you, are most of them sad ones, though
at the same time helpful ; and because also I believe that
your kind Irish hearts will answer more gladly to the
truthful expression of a personal feeling, than to the ex-
position of an abstract principle, I will permit myself so
much unreserved speaking of my own causes of regret,
as may enable you to make just allowance for what, ac-
cording to your sympathies, you will call either the bit-
terness, or the insight, of a mind which has surrendered
its best hopes, and been foiled in its favorite aims.

loi. I spent the ten strongest years of my life, (from
twenty to thirty,) in endeavoring to show the excellence
of the work of the man whom I believed, and rightly
believed, to be the greatest painter of the schools of
England since Reynolds. I had then perfect faith in the
power of every great truth or beauty to prevail ultimately,

152 SESAME AND LILIES

and take its right place in usefulness and honor ; and I
strove to bring the painter's work into this due place,
while the painter was yet alive.° But he knew, better
than I, the uselessness of talking about what people could
not see for themselves. He always discouraged me scorn-
fully, even when he thanked me — and he died before even
the superficial effect of my work was visible. I went on,
however, thinking I could at least be of use to the public,
if not to him, in proving his power. My books got talked
about a little. The prices of modern pictures, generally,
rose, and I was beginning to take some pleasure in a sense
of gradual victory, when, fortunately or unfortunately,
an opportunity of perfect trial undeceived me at once,
and for ever. The Trustees of the National Gallery com-
missioned me to arrange the Turner drawings there, and
permitted me to prepare three hundred examples of his
studies from nature, for exhibition at Kensington. At
Kensington they were and are, placed for exhibition ; but
they are not exhibited, for the room in which they hang
is always empty.

102. Well — this showed me at once, that those ten
years of my life had been, in their chief purpose, lost.
For that, I did not so much care ; I had, at least, learned
ray own business thoroughly, and should be able, as I
fondly supposed, after such a lesson, now to use my knowl-
edge with better effect. But what I did care for was the
— to me frightful — discovery, that the most splendid
genius in the arts might be permitted by Providence to
labor and perish uselessly ; that in the very fineness of it
there, might be something rendering it invisible to ordinary
eyes ; but, that with this strange excellence, faults might
be mingled which would be as deadly as its virtues were

THE MYSTERY OF LIFE 153

vain ; that the glory of it was perishable, as well as invis-
ible, and the gift and grace of it might be to us as snow
in summer, and as rain in harvest.

103. That was the first mystery ° of life to me. But,
while my best energy was given to the study of painting,
I had put collateral effort, more prudent if less enthusi-
astic, into that of architecture ; and in this I could not
complain of meeting with no sympathy. Among several
personal reasons which caused me to desire that I might
give this, my closing lecture on the subject of art here, in
Ireland, one of the chief was, that in reading it, I should
stand near the beautiful building, — the engineers' school
of your college, — which was the first realization I had the
joy to see, of the principles I had, until then, been endeav-
oring to teach ; but which alas, is now, to me, no more
than the richly canopied monument of one of the most
earnest souls that ever gave itself to the arts, and one of
my truest and most loving friends, Benjamin Woodward.
Nor was it here in Ireland only that I received the help
of Irish sympathy and genius. When, to another friend.
Sir Thomas Deane, with Mr. Woodward, was entrusted
the building of the museum at Oxford, the best details
of the work were executed by sculptors who had been
born and trained here ; and the first window of the facade
of the building, in which was inaugurated the study of
natural science in England, in true fellowship with litera-
ture, was carved from my design by an Irish sculptor.

104. You may perhaps think that no man ought to
speak of disappointment, to whom, even in one branch of
labor, so much success was granted. Had Mr, Wood-
ward now been beside me, I had not so spoken ; but his
gentle and passionate spirit was cut off from the fulfilment

154 SESAME AND LILIES

of its purpQses, and the work we did together is now be-
come vain. It may not be so in future ; but the archi-
tecture we endeavored to introduce is inconsistent alike
with the reckless luxury, the deforming mechanism, and
the squaUd misery of modern cities ; among the formative
fashions of the day, aided, especially in England, by eccle-
siastical sentiment, it indeed obtained notoriety ; and
sometimes behind an engine furnace, or a railroad bank,
you may detect the pathetic discord of its momentary
grace, and, with toil, decipher its floral carvings choked °
with soot. I felt answerable to the schools I loved, only
for their injury. I perceived that this new portion of my
strength had also been spent in vain ; and from amidst
streets of iron, and palaces of crystal, shrank back at last
to the carving of the mountain and color of the flower.

105. And still I could tell of failure, and failure re-
peated as years went on ; but I have trespassed enough
on your patience to show you, in part, the causes of my
discouragement. Now let me more deliberately tell you
its results. You know there is a tendency in the minds
of many men, when they are heavily disappointed in the
main purposes of their life, to feel, and perhaps in warn-
ing, perhaps in mockery, to declare, that life itself is a
vanity. Because it has disappointed them, they think its
nature is of disappointment always, or at best, of pleasure
that can be grasped by imagination only ; that the cloud
of it has no strength nor fire within ; but is a painted
cloud only, to be dehghted in, yet despised. You know
how beautifully Pope ° has expressed this particular phase
of thought : —

Meanwhile opinion gilds, with varying rays,
These painted clouds that beautify our days;

THE MYSTERY OF LIFE 155

Each want of happiness by hope supplied,
And each vacuity of sense, by pride.
Hope builds as fast as Knowledge can destroy;
In Folly's cup, still laughs the bubble joy.
One pleasure past, another still we gain,
And not a vanity is given in vain.

But the effect of failure upon my own mind has been just
the reverse of this. The more that my Hfe disappointed
me, the more solemn and wonderful it became to me. It
seemed, contrarily to Pope's saying, that the vanity of it
was indeed given in vain ; but that there was something
behind the veil of it, which was not vanity. It became
to me not a painted cloud, but a terrible and impenetrable
one : not a mirage, which vanished as I drew near, but a
pillar ° of darkness, to which I was forbidden to draw
near. For I saw that both my own failure, and such suc-
cess in petty things as in its poor triumph seemed to me
worse than failure, came from the want of sufficiently
earnest effort to understand the whole law and meaning
of existence, and to bring it to noble and due end ; as,
on the other hand, I saw more and more clearly that all
enduring success in the arts, or in any other occupation,
had come from the ruling of lower purposes, not by a
conviction of their nothingness, but by a solemn faith in
the advancing power of human nature, or in the promise,
however dimly apprehended, that the mortal part of it
would one day be swallowed up in immortality ; and that,
indeed, the arts themselves never had reached any vital
strength or honor but in the effort to proclaim this immor-
tality, and in the service either of great and just religion,
or of some unselfish patriotism, and law of such national
life as must be the foundation of religion.

156 SESAME AND LILIES

io6. Nothing that I have ever said is more true or
necessary — nothing has been more misunderstood or
misapphed — than my strong assertion that the arts can
never be right themselves, unless their motive is right.
It is misunderstood this way : weak painters, who have
never learned their business, and cannot lay a true hne,
continually come to me, crying out — " Look at this picture
of mine ; it must be good, I had such a lovely motive. I
have put my whole heart into it, and taken years to think
over its treatment." Well, the only answer for these
people is — if one had the cruelty to make it — ''Sir,
you cannot think over any'&vmg in any number of years,
— you haven't the head to do it; and though you had
fine motives, strong enough to make you burn yourself in
a slow fire, if only first you could paint a picture, you
can't paint one, nor half an inch of one; you haven't the
hand to do it."

But, far more decisively we have to say to the men who
do know their business, or may know it if they choose —
" Sir, you have this gift, and a mighty one ; see that you
serve your nation faithfully with it. It is a greater trust
than ships and armies : you might cast them away, if you
were their captain, with less treason to your people than
in casting your own glorious power away, and serving the
devil with it instead of men. Ships and armies you may
replace if they are lost, but a great intellect, once abused,
is a curse to the earth for ever."

107. This,° then, I meant by saying that the arts must
have noble motive. This also I said respecting them,
that they never had prospered, nor could prosper, but
when they had such true purpose, and were devoted to
the proclamation of divine truth or law. And yet I saw

• THE MYSTERY OF LIFE 157

also that they had ahvays failed in this proclamation —
that poetry, and sculpture, and painting, though only
great when they strove to teach us something about the
gods, never had taught us anything trustworthy about the
gods, but had always betrayed their trust in the crisis of
it, and, with their powers at the full reach, became minis-
ters to pride and to lust. And I felt also, with increasing
amazement, the unconquerable apathy in ourselves the
hearers, no less than in these the teachers; and that,
while the wisdom and rightness of every act and art of
Hfe could only be consistent with a right understanding
of the ends of life, we were all plunged as in a languid
dream — our heart fat,° and our eyes heavy, and our ears
closed, lest the inspiration of hand or voice should reach
us — lest° we should see with our eyes, and understand
with our hearts, and be healed.

io8. This intense apathy in all of us is the first great
mystery ° of Hfe ; it stands in the way of every perception,
every virtue. There is no making ourselves feel enough
astonishment at it. That the occupations or pastimes of
life should have no motive, is understandable ; but —
That Hfe itself should have no motive — that we neither
care to find out what it may lead to, nor to guard against
its being for ever taken away from us — here is a mystery
indeed. For, just suppose I were able to call at this mo-
ment to any one in this audience by name, and to tell
him positively that I knew a large estate had been lately
left to him on some curious conditions ; but that though I
knew it was large, I did not know how large, nor even
where it was — whether in the East Indies or the West, or
in England, or at the Antipodes. I only knew it was a
vast estate, and that there was a chance of his losing it

158 SESAME AND LILIES *

altogether if he did not soon find out on what terms it
had been left to him. Suppose I were able to say this
positively to any single man in this audience, and he knew
that I did not speak without warrant, do you think that
he would rest content with that vague knowledge, if it
were anywise possible to obtain more? Would he not
give every energy to find some trace of the facts, and
never rest till he had ascertained where this place was,
and what it was like ? And suppose he were a young man,
and all he could discover by his best endeavor was, that
the estate was never to be his at all, unless he persevered,
during certain years of probation, in an orderly and in-
dustrious life ; but that, according to the rightness of his
conduct, the portion of the estate assigned to him would
be greater or less, so that it literally depended on his be-
havior from day to day whether he got ten thousand a
year, or thirty thousand a year, or nothing whatever —
would you not think it strange if the youth never troubled
himself to satisfy the conditions in any way, nor even to
know what was required of him, but lived exactly as he
chose, and never inquired whether his chances of the es-
tate were increasing or passing away ? Well, you know that
this is actually and literally so with the greater number of
the educated persons now living in Christian countries.
Nearly every man and woman in any company such as
this, outwardly professes to believe — and a large number
unquestionably think they believe — much more than
this ; not only that a quite unlimited estate is in prospect
for them if they please the Holder of it, but that the
infinite contrary of such a possession — an estate of per-
petual misery, is in store for them if they displease this
great Land-Holder, this great Heaven- Holder. And yet

THE MYSTERY OF LIFE 159

there is not one in a thousand of these human souls that
cares to think, for ten minutes of the day, where this
estate is, or how beautiful it is, or what kind of Hfe they
are to lead in it, or what kind of life they must lead to
obtain it.

109. You fancy that you care to know this : so little do
you care that, probably, at this moment many of you are
displeased with me for talking of the matter ! You came
to hear about the Art ° of this world, not about the Life
of the next, and you are provoked with me for talking of
what you can hear any Sunday in church. But do not
be afraid. I will tell ° you something before you go about
pictures, and carvings, and pottery, and what else you
would like better to hear of than the other world. Nay,
perhaps you say, " We want you to talk of pictures and
pottery, because we are sure that you know something of
them, and you know nothing of the other world." Well
— I don't. That is quite true. But the very strangeness
and mystery of which I urge you to take notice is in this —
that I do not ; — nor you either. Can you answer a single
bold question unflinchingly about that other world? — Are
you sure there is a heaven? Sure there is a hell? Sure
that men are dropping before your faces through the
pavements of these streets into eternal fire, or sure that
they are not? Sure that at your own death you are going
to be delivered from all sorrow, to be endowed with all
virtue, to be gifted with all felicity and raised into per-
petual companionship with a King, compared to whom
the kings of the earth ° are as grasshoppers, and the nations
as the dust of His feet? Are you sure of this? or, if not
sure, do any of us so much as care to make it sure? and,
if not, how can anything that we do be right — how can

160 SESAME AND LILIES

anything we think be wise ; what honor can there be in
the arts that amuse us, or what profit in the possessions
that please ?

Is not this a mystery of Hfe ?

no. But farther, you may, perhaps, think it a benefi-
cent ordinance for the generahty of men that they do not,
with earnestness or anxiety, dwell on such questions of
the future : because the business of the day could not be
done if this kind of thought were taken by all of us for the
morfow. Be it so : but at least we might anticipate that
the greatest and wisest of us, who were evidently the ap-
pointed teachers ° of the rest, would set themselves apart
to seek out whatever could be surely known of the future
destinies of their race ; and to teach this in no rhetorical
or ambiguous manner, but in the plainest and most se-
verely earnest words.

Now, the highest representatives of men who have thus
endeavored, during the Christian era, to search out these
deep things, and relate them, are Dante and Milton. There
are none who for earnestness of thought, for mastery of
word, can be classed with these. I am not at present,
mind you, speaking of persons set apart in any priestly or
pastoral office, to deliver creeds to us, or doctrines ; but
of men who try to discover and set forth, as far as by
human intellect is possible, the facts of the other world.
Divines may perhaps teach us how to arrive there, but
only these two poets have in any powerful manner striven
to discover, or in any definite words professed to tell, what
we shall see and become there ; or how those upper and
nether worlds are, and have been, inhabited.

III. And what have they told us? Milton's account
of the most important event in his whole system of the

THE MYSTERY OF LIFE 161

universe, the fall of the angels, is evidently unbehevable
to himself; and the more so, that it is wholly founded on,
and in a great part spoiled and degraded from, Hesiod's
account ° of the decisive war of the younger gods with the
Titans. The rest of his poem is a picturesque drama, in
which every artifice of invention is visibly and consciously
employed ; not a single fact being, for an instant, con-
ceived as tenable by any living faith. Dante's conception °
is far more intense, and, by himself, for the time, not to
be escaped from ; it is indeed a vision, but a vision only,
and that one of the wildest that ever entranced a soul —
a dream in which every grotesque type or phantasy of
heathen tradition is renewed, and adorned ; and the des-
tinies of the Christian Church, under their most sacred
symbols, become literally subordinate to the praise, and
are only to be understood by the aid, of one dear Floren-
tine maiden.

112. I tell you truly that, as I strive more with this
strange lethargy and trance in myself, and awake to the
meaning and power of life, it seems daily more amazing
to me that men such as these should dare to play with
the most precious truths, (or the most deadly untruths),
by which the whole human race listening to them could
be informed, or deceived ; — all the world their audiences
for ever, with pleased ear, and passionate heart ; — and yet,
to this submissive infinitude of souls, and evermore suc-
ceeding and succeeding multitude, hungry for bread of
Hfe, they do but play upon sweetly modulated pipes ; with
pompous nomenclature adorn the councils of hell ; touch
a troubadour's guitar to the courses of the suns ; and fill
the openings of eternity, before which prophets have veiled
their faces, and which angels desire to look into, with idle

162 SESAME AND LILIES

puppets of their scholastic imagination, and melancholy
lights of frantic faith in their lost mortal love.

Is not this a mystery of life?

113. But more. We have to remember that these two
great teachers were both of them warped in their temper,
and thwarted in their search for truth. They were men
of intellectual war, unable, through darkness of contro-
versy,° or stress of personal grief,° to discern where their
own ambition modified their utterances of the moral law;
or their own agony mingled with their anger at its viola-
tion. But greater men than these have been — innocent-
hearted — too great for contest. Men, like Homer and
Shakespeare, of so unrecognized personality, that it dis-
appears in future ages, and becomes ghostly, like the tra-
dition of a lost heathen god. Men, therefore, to whose
unoffended, uncondemning sight, the whole of human
nature reveals itself in a pathetic weakness, with which
they will not strive ; or in mournful and transitory
strength, which they dare not praise. And all pagan
and Christian civilization thus becomes subject to them.
It does not matter how little, or how much, any of us
have read, either of Homer or Shakespeare : everything
round us, in substance, or in thought, has been moulded
by them. All Greek gentlemen were educated under
Homer. All Roman gentlemen, by Greek literature.
All Italian, and French, and English gentlemen, by Ro-
man literature, and by its principles. Of the scope of
Shakespeare, I will say only, that the intellectual meas-
ure of every man since born, in the domains of creative
thought, may be assigned to him, according to the degree
in which he has been taught by Shakespeare. Well, what
do these two men, centres of mortal intelligence, deliver

THE MYSTERY OF LIFE 163

to US of conviction respecting what it most behooves that
intelligence to grasp ? What is their hope ; their crown
of rejoicing? what manner of exhortation have they for
us, or of rebuke ? what lies next their own hearts, and
dictates their undying words? Have they any peace to
promise to our unrest — any redemption to our misery?

114. Take Homer first, and think if there is any sad-
der image of human fate than the great Homeric story.
The main features in the character of Achilles are its
intense desire of justice, and its tenderness of affection.
And in that bitter song of the " Iliad," this man, though
aided continually by the wisest of the gods, and burning
with the desire of justice in his heart, becomes yet,
through ill-governed passion, the most unjust of men :
and, full of the deepest tenderness in his heart, becomes
yet, through ill-governed passion, the most cruel of men.
Intense alike in love and in friendship, he loses, first his
mistress, and then his friend ; for the sake of the one, he
surrenders to death the armies of his own land ; for the
sake of the other, he surrenders all. Will a man lay down
his life for his friend? Yea — even for his dead friend
this Achilles, though goddess-born, and goddess-taught,
gives up his kingdom, his country, and his hfe — casts
alike the innocent and guilty, with himself, into one gulf
of slaughter, and dies at last by the hand of the basest
of his adversaries.

Is not this a mystery of life ?

115. But what, then, is the message to us of our own
poet, and searcher if hearts, after fifteen hundred years °
of Christian faith hr*^/e been numbered over the graves of
men ? Are his words more cheerful than the Heathen's
— is his hope more near — his trust more sure — his read-

164 SESAME AND LILIES

ing of fate more happy ? Ah, no ! He differs from the
Heathen poet chiefly in this — that he recognizes, for
dehverance, no gods nigh at hand ; and that, by petty
chance — by momentary folly — by broken message —
by fool's tyranny — or traitor's snare, the strongest and
most righteous are brought to their ruin, and perish with-
out word of hope. He indeed, as part of his rendering
of character, ascribes the power and modesty of habitual
devotion to the gentle and the just. The death-bed of
Katherine ° is bright with visions of angels ; and the great
soldier-king,° standing by his few dead, acknowledges the
presence of the Hand that can save alike by many or by
few. But observe that from those who with deepest
spirit, meditate, and with deepest passion, mourn, there
are no such words as these ; nor in their hearts are any
such consolations. Instead of the perpetual sense of the
helpful presence of the Deity, which, through all heathen
tradition, is the source of heroic strength, in batde, in
exile, and in the valley of the shadow of death, we find
only in the great Christian poet, the consciousness of a
moral law, through which " the gods ° are just, and of our
pleasant vices make instruments to scourge us " ; and of
the resolved arbitration of the destinies, that conclude
into precision of doom what we feebly and blindly began ;
and force us, when our indiscretion serves us, and our
deepest plots do pall, to the confession, that " there's ° a
divinity that shapes our ends, rough hew them how we
will."

Is not this a mystery of hfe?

ii6. Be it so then. About this aman life that is to
be, or that is, the wise religious men tell us nothing that
we can trust ; and the wise contemplative men, nothing

THE MYSTERY OF LIFE 165

that can give us peace. But there is yet a third class," to
whom we may turn — the wise practical men. We have
sat at the feet of the poets who sang of heaven, and they
have told us their dreams. We have Hstened to the poets
who sang of earth, and they have chanted to us dirges,
and words of despair. But there is one class of men
more : — men, not capable of vision, nor sensitive to
sorrow, but firm of purpose — practised in business :
learned in all that can be, (by handling,) known. Men
whose hearts and hopes are wholly in this present world,
from whom, therefore, we may surely learn, at least, how,
at present, conveniently to live in it. What will they say
to us, or show us by example? These kings — these
councillors — these statesmen and builders of kingdoms
— these capitalists and men of business, who weigh the
earth, and the dust of it, in a balance. They know the
world, surely ; and what is the mystery of life to us, is
none to them. They can surely show us how to live,
while we live, and to gather out of the present world
what is best.

117. I think I can best tell you their answer, by telHng
you a dream I had once. For though I am no poet, I
have dreams sometimes : — I dreamed ° I was at a child's
May-day party, in which every means of entertainment
had been provided for them, by a wise and kind host. It
was in a stately house, with beautiful gardens attached to
it ; and the children had been set free in the rooms and
gardens, with no care whatever but how to pass their after-
noon rejoicingly. They did not, indeed, know much about
what was to happen next day ; and some of them, I
thought, were a little frightened, because there was a
chance of their beinor sent to a new school where there

166 SESAME AND LILIES

were examinations ; but they kept the thoughts of that
out of their heads as well as they could, and resolved to
enjoy themselves. The house, I said, was in a beautiful
garden, and in the garden were all kinds of flowers ; sweet
grassy banks for rest ; and smooth lawns for play ; and
pleasant streams and woods ; and rocky places for climb-
ing. And the children were happy for a little while, but
presently they separated themselves into parties ; and then
each party declared, it would have a piece of the garden
for its own, and that none of the others should have any-
thing to do with that piece. Next, they quarrelled vio-
lently, which pieces they would have ; and at last the boys
took up the thing, as boys should do, " practically," and
fought in the flower-beds till there was hardly a flower
left standing ; then they trampled down each other's bits
of the garden out of spite ; and the girls cried till they
could cry no more ; and so they all lay down at last breath-
less in the ruin, and waited for the time when they were
to be taken home in the evening.^

1 1 8. Meanwhile, the children in the house had been
making themselves happy also in their manner. For
them, there had been provided every kind of in-doors
pleasure : there was music for them to dance to ; and the
library was open, with all manner of amusing books ; and
there was a museum full of the most curious shells, and
animals and birds ; and there was a workshop, with lathes
and carpenter's tools, for the ingenious boys ; and there
were pretty fantastic dresses, for the girls to dress in ; and
there were microscopes, and kaleidoscopes ; and whatever

1 1 have sometimes been asked what this means. I intended it
to set forth the wisdom of men in war contending for kingdoms, and
what follows to set forth their wisdom in peace, contending for wealth.

THE MYSTERY OF LIFE 167

toys a child could fancy ; and a table, in the dining-room,
loaded with everything nice to eat.

But, in the midst of all this, it struck two or three of
the more " practical " children, that they would like some
of the brass-headed nails that studded the chairs ; and so
they set to work to pull them out. Presently, the others,
who were reading, or looking at shells, took a fancy to do
the like ; and, in a little while, all the children, nearly,
were spraining their fingers, in pulling out brass-headed
nails. With all that they could pull out, they were not
satisfied ; and then, everybody wanted some of somebody
else's. And at last the really practical and sensible ones
declared, that nothing was of any real consequence, that
afternoon, except to get plenty of brass-headed nails ; and
that the books, and the cakes, and the microscopes were
of no use at all in themselves, but only, if they could be
exchanged for nail-heads. And, at last, they began to
fight for nail-heads, as the others fought for the bits of
garden. Only here and there, a despised one shrank
away into a corner, and tried to get a Httle quiet with a
book, in the midst of the noise ; but all the practical ones
thought of nothing else but counting nail-heads all the
afternoon — even though they knew they would not be
allowed to carry so much as one brass knob away with them.
But no — it was — "Who has most nails? I have a hun-
dred, and you have fifty ; or, I have a thousand, and you
have two. I must have as many as you before I leave
the house, or I cannot possibly go home in peace." At
last, they made so much noise that I awoke, and thought
to myself, " What a false dream that is, of children! "
The child is the father of the man ; and wiser. Children
never do such foolish things. Only men do.

168 SESAME AND LILIES

119. But there is yet one last class of persons to be in-
terrogated. The wise religious men we have asked in vain ;
the wise contemplative men, in vain ; the wise worldly
men, in vain. But there is another group yet. In the
midst of this vanity of empty religion — of tragic contem-
plation — of wrathful and wretched ambition, and dispute
for dust, there is yet one great group of persons, by whom
all these disputers live — the persons who have determined,
or have had it by a beneficent Providence determined for
them, that they will do something useful ; that whatever
may be prepared for them hereafter, or happen to them
here, they will, at least, deserve the food that God gives
them by winning it honorably ; and that, however fallen
from the purity, or far from the peace, of Eden, they will
carry out the duty of human dominion, though they have
lost its felicity ; and dress and keep the wilderness, though
they no more can dress or keep the garden.

These, — hewers of wood,° and drawers of water — these
bent under burdens, or torn of scourges — these, that dig
and weave — that plant and build ; workers in wood, and
in marble, and in iron — by whom all food, clothing, habi-
tation, furniture, and means of delight are produced, for
themselves, and for all men beside ; men, whose deeds are
good, though their words may be few ; men, whose lives
are serviceable, be they never so short, and worthy of
honor, be they never so humble ; — from these, surely, at
least, we may receive some clear message of teaching ; and
pierce, for an instant, into the mystery of life, and of its
arts.

120. Yes ; from these, at last,° we do receive a lesson. °
But I grieve to say, or rather — for that is the deeper
truth of the matter — I rejoice to say — this message of

THE MYSTERY OF LIFE 169

theirs can only be received by joining them — not by think-
ing about them.

You sent for me to talk to you of art; and I have
obeyed you in coming. But the main thing I have to tell
you is, — that art must not be talked about. The fact
that there is talk about it at all, signifies that it is ill done,
or cannot be done. No true painter ever speaks, or ever
has spoken, much of his art. The greatest speak nothing.
Even Reynolds is no exception, for he wrote of all that he
could not himself do, and was utterly silent respecting all
that he himself did.

The moment a man can really do his work he becomes
speechless about it. All words become idle to him — all
theories.

121. Does a bird need° to theorize about building its
nest, or boast of it when built ? All good work is essen-
tially done that way — without hesitation, without diffi-
culty, without boasting ; and in the doers of the best,
there is an inner and involuntary power which approxi-
mates Uterally to the instinct of an animal — nay, I am
certain that in the most perfect human artists, reason does
not supersede instinct, but is added to an instinct as much
more divine than that of the lower animals as the human
body is more beautiful than theirs ; that a great singer
sings not with less instinct than the nightingale, but with
more — only more various, applicable, and governable ;
that a great architect does not build with less instinct than
the beaver or the bee, but with more — with an innate
cunning of proportion that embraces all beauty, and a
divine ingenuity of skill that improvises all construction.
But be that as it may — be the instinct less or more than
that of inferior animals — like or unlike theirs, still the

170 SESAME AND LILIES

human art is dependent on that first, and then upon an
amount of practice, of science, — and of imagination dis-
cipHned by thought, which the true possessor of it knows to
be incommunicable, and the true critic of it, inexpUcable,
except through long process of laborious years. That jour-
ney of life's conquest, in which hills over hills, and Alps on
Alps arose, and sank, — do you think you can make an-
other trace it painlessly, by talking? Why, you cannot
even carry us up an Alp, by talking. You can guide us
up it, step by step, no otherwise — even so, best silently.
You girls, who have been among the hills, know how the
bad guide chatters and gesticulates, and it is '^ put your
foot here," and " mind how you balance yourself there " ;
but the good guide walks on quietly, without a word, only
with his eyes on you when need is, and his arm like an
iron bar, if need be.

122. In that slow way, also, art can be taught — if you
have faith in your guide, and will let his arm be to you as
an iron bar when need is. But in what teacher of art
have you such faith? Certainly not in me ; for, as I told
you at first, I know well enough it is only because you
think I can talk, not because you think I know my
business, that you let me speak to you at all. If I were to
tell you anything that seemed to you strange you would
not believe it, and yet it would only be in telling you strange
things that I could be of use to you. I could be of great
use to you — infinite use — with brief saying, if you would
believe it ; but you would not, just because the thing that
would be of real use would displease you. You are all
wild, for instance, with admiration of Gustave Dor^.
Well, suppose I were to tell you in the strongest terms I
could use, that Gustave Dora's art ° was bad — bad, not in

THE MYSTERY OF LIFE 171

weakness, — not in failure, — but bad with dreadful power
— the power of the Furies and the Harpies mingled, en-
raging, and polluting ; that so long as you looked at it, no
perception of pure or beautiful art was possible for you.
Suppose I were to tell you that ! What would be the use ?
Would you look at Gustave Dor^ less ? Rather, more, I
fancy. On the other hand, I could soon put you into
good humor with me, if I chose. I know well enough
what you like, and how to praise it to your better liking.
I could talk to you about moonhght, and twihght, and
spring flowers, and autumn leaves, and the Madonnas of
Raphael — how motherly ! and the Sibyls of Michael An-
gelo — how majestic ! and the Saints of Angehco — how
pious! and the Cherubs of Correggio — how delicious!
Old as I am, I could play a tune on the harp yet, that you
would dance to. But neither you nor I should be a bit the
better or wiser; or, if we were, our increased wisdom
could be of no practical effect. For, indeed, the arts, as
regards teachableness, differ from the sciences also in this,
that their power is founded not merely on facts which can
be communicated, but on dispositions which require to
be created. Art is neither to be achieved by effort of
thinking, nor explained by accuracy of speaking. It is
the instinctive and necessary result of powers, which can
only be developed through the mind of successive genera-
tions, and which finally burst into hfe under social con-
ditions as slow of growth as the faculties they regulate.
Whole Eeras of mighty history are summed, and the pas-
sions of dead myriads are concentrated, in the existence
of a noble art ; and if that noble art were among us, we
should feel it and rejoice ; not caring in the least to hear
lectures on it ; and since it is not among us, be assured

172 SESAME AND LILIES

we have to go back to the root of it, or, at least, to the
place where the stock of it is yet alive, and the branches
began to die.

123. And now, may I have your pardon for pointing
out, pardy with reference to matters which are at this
time of greater moment than the arts — that if we under-
took such recession to the vital germ of national arts that
have decayed, we should find a more singular arrest ° of
their power in Ireland than in any other European coun-
try. For in the eighth century, Ireland possessed a school
of art in her manuscripts and sculpture, which, in many
of its quaUties — apparently in all essential quahties of
decorative invention — was quite without rival ; seeming
as if it might have advanced to the highest triumphs in ar-
chitecture and in painting. But there was one fatal flaw
in its nature, by which it was stayed, and stayed with a
conspicuousness of pause to which there is no parallel :
so that, long ago, in tracing the progress of European
schools from infancy to strength, I chose for the students
of Kensington, in a lecture since published, two charac-
teristic examples of early art, of equal skill ; but in the
one case, skill which was progressive — in the other, skill
which was at pause. In the one case, it was work recep-
tive of correction — hungry for correction — and in the
other, work which inherently rejected correction. I
chose for them a corrigible Eve, and an incorrigible
Angel, and I grieve to say that the incorrigible Angel
was also an Irish Angel ! ^

124. And the fatal difference lay wholly in this. In
both pieces of art there was an equal falling short of the
needs of fact ; but the Lombardic Eve knew she was in

1 See The Two Paths, ^^ 28 et seq.

THE MYSTERY OF LIFE 173

the wrong, and the Irish Angel thought himself all right.
The eager Lombardic sculptor, though firmly insisting on
his childish idea, yet showed in the irregular broken
touches of the features, and the imperfect struggle for
softer lines in the form, a perception of beauty and law
that he could not render ; there was the strain of effort,
under conscious imperfection, in every line. But the
Irish missal-painter had drawn his angel with no sense
of failure, in happy complacency, and put red dots into
the palm of each hand, and rounded the eyes into perfect
circles, and, I regret to say, left the mouth out altogether,
with perfect satisfaction to himself.

125. May I without offence ask you to consider whether
this mode of arrest in ancient Irish art may not be indic-
ative of points of character ° which even yet, in iome
measure, arrest your national power ? I have seen much
of Irish character, and have watched it closely, for I have
also much loved it. And I think the form of failure to
which it is most Hable is this, that being generous-hearted,
and wholly intending always to do right, it does not attend
to the external laws of right, but thinks it must necessarily
do right because it means to do so, and therefore does
wrong without finding it out ; and then when the conse-
quences of its wrong come upon it, or upon others con-
nected with it, it cannot conceive that the wrong is in
anywise of its causing or of its doing, but flies into wrath,
and a strange agony of desire for justice, as feeling itself
wholly innocent, which leads it farther astray, until there
is nothing that it is not capable of doing with a good
conscience.

126. But mind, I do not mean to say that, in past or
present relations between Ireland and England, you have

174 ^ SESAME AND LILIES

been wrong, and we right. Far from that, I beheve that
in all great questions of principle, and in all details of
administration of law, you have been usually right, and
we wrong ; sometimes in misunderstanding you, some-
times in resolute iniquity to you. Nevertheless, in all
disputes between states, though the stronger is nearly al-
ways mainly in the wrong, the weaker ■ is often so in a
minor degree ; and I think we sometimes admit the pos-
sibiHty of our being in error, and you never do.

127. And now, returning to the broader question what
these arts and labors of hfe have to teach us of its mys-
tery, this is the first of their lessons ° — that the more beau-
tiful the art, the more it is essentially the work of people
who fee/ themselves wrong; — who are striving for the
fulfl^Tient of a law, and the grasp of a lovehness, which
they have not yet attained, which they feel even farther
and farther from attaining, the more they strive for it.
And yet, in still deeper sense, it is the work of people
who know also that they are right. The very sense of
inevitable error from their purpose marks the perfectness
of that purpose, and the continued sense of failure arises
from the continued opening of the eyes more clearly to
all the sacredest laws of truth.

128. This is one lesson. The second is a very plain,
and greatly precious one, namely : — that whenever the
arts and labors of Hfe are fulfilled in this spirit of striv-
ing against misrule, and doing whatever we have to do,
honorably and perfectly, they invariably bring happiness^
as much as seems possible to the nature of man. In al)
other paths, by which that happiness ° is pursued, there
is disappointment, or destruction : for ambition and fo/
passion there is no rest — no fruition ; the fairest plea?

THE MYSTERY OF LIFE 175

ures of youth perish in a darkness greater than their past
Hght ; and the loftiest and purest love too often does but
inflame the cloud of life with endless fire of pain. But,
ascending from lowest to highest, through every scale of
human industry, that industry worthily followed, gives
peace. Ask the laborer in the field, at the forge, or in
the mine ; ask the patient, delicate-fingered artisan, or
the strong-armed, fiery-hearted worker in bronze, and
in marble, and with the colors of light; and none of
these,, who are true workmen, will ever tell you, that they
have found the law of heaven an unkind one — that in
the sweat ° of their face they should eat bread, till they
return to the ground ; nor that they ever found it an un-
rewarded obedience, if, indeed, it was rendered faithfully
to the command — " Whatsoever ° thy hand findeth to
do — do it with thy might."

129. These are the two great and constant lessons
which our laborers teach us of the mystery of hfe. But
there is another, and a sadder one, which they cannot
teach us, which we must read on their tombstones.

"Do it with thy might." There have been myriads
upon myriads of human creatures who have obeyed this
law — who have put every breath and nerve of their being
into its toil — who have devoted every hour, and ex-
hausted every faculty — who have bequeathed their un-
accomplished thoughts at death — who, being dead, have
yet spoken, by majesty of memory, and strength of ex-
ample. And, at last, what has all this " Might " of hu-
manity accomplished, in six thousand years of labor and
sorrow? What has it done ? Take the three chief occu-
pations and arts of men, one by one, and count their
achievements. Begin with the first — the lord of them

176 SESAME AND LILIES

all — Agriculture. Six thousand years have passed since
we were set to till the ground, from which we were taken.
How much of it is tilled ? How much of that which is,
wisely or well? In the very centre and chief garden of
Europe — where the two forms of parent Christianity
have had their fortresses — where the noble Catholics
of the Forest Cantons, and the noble Protestants of the
Vaudois valleys, have maintained, for dateless ages, their
faiths and liberties — there the unchecked Alpine rivers
yet run wild in devastation ; and the marches, which a
few hundred men could redeem with a year's labor, still
blast their helpless inhabitants into fevered idiotism.°
That is so, in the centre of Europe ! While, on the near
coast of Africa, once the Garden of the Hesperides, an
Arab woman, but a few sunsets since, ate her child, for
famine. And, with all the treasures of the East at our
feet, we, in our own dominion," could not find a few
grains of rice, for a people that asked of us no more ;
but stood by, and saw five hundred thousand of them
perish of hunger.

130. Then, after agriculture, the art of kings, take the
next head of human arts — Weaving; the art of queens,
honored of all noble Heathen women, in the person of
their virgin goddess — honored of all Hebrew women, by
the word of their wisest king° — " She layeth° her hands
to the spindle, and her hands hold the distaff; she
stretcheth out her hand to the poor. She is not afraid
of the snow for her household, for all her household are
clothed with scarlet. She maketh herself covering of
tapestry, her clothing is silk and purple. She maketh fine
linen, and selleth it, and delivereth girdles to the mer-
chant." What have we done in all these thousands of

THE MYSTERY OF LIFE 177

years with this bright art of Greek maid and Christian
matron? Six thousand years of weaving, and have we
learned to weave ? Might not every naked wall have
been purple with tapestry, and every feeble breast fenced
with sweet colors ° from the cold? What have we done?
Our fingers are too few, it seems, to twist together some
poor covering for our bodies. We set our streams to
work for us, and choke the air with fire, to turn our
spinning-wheels — and, — are we yet clothed? Are not
the streets of the capitals of Europe foul with sale of cast
clouts and rotten rags? Is not the beauty of your sweet
children left in wretchedness of disgrace, while, with bet-
ter honor, nature clothes the brood of the bird in its nest,
and the suckling of the wolf in her den? And does not
every winter's snow robe ° what you have not robed, and
shroud what you have not shrouded ; and every winter's
wind bear up to heaven its wasted souls, to witness againsi
you hereafter, by the voice of their Christ, — "I was
naked,° and ye clothed me not " ?

131. Lastly — take the Art of Building — the strongest
— proudest — most orderly — most enduring of the arts
of man ; that of which the produce is in the surest manner
accumulative, and need not perish, or be replaced ; but
if once well done, will stand more strongly than the un-
balanced rocks — more prevalently than the crumbling
hills. The art which is associated with all civic pride and
sacred principle ; with which men record their power —
satisfy their enthusiasm — make sure their defence — de-
fine and make dear their habitation. And in six thousand
years of building, what have we done? Of the greater
part of all that skill and strength, no vestige is left, but
fallen stones, that encumber the fields and impede the

178 SESAME AND LILIES

Streams. But, from this waste of disorder, and of time,
and of rage, what is left to us ? Constructive and pro-
gressive creatures, that we are, with ruHng brains, and
forming hands, capable of fellowship, and thirsting for
fame, can we not contend, in comfort, with the insects
of the forest, or, in achievement, with the worm of the
sea? The white surf rages in vain against the ramparts
built by poor atoms of scarcely nascent life ; but only
ridges of formless ruin mark the places where once dwelt
our noblest multitudes. The ant and the moth have cells
for each of their young, but our little ones lie in festering
heaps, in homes that consume them like graves ; and night
by night, from the corners of our streets, rises up the cry
of the homeless — "I was a stranger,° and ye took me
not in."

132. Must it be always thus? Is our life for ever to be
without profit — without possession? Shall ° the strength
of its generations be as barren as death ; or cast away
their labor, as the wild fig-tree ° casts her untimely figs?
Is it all a dream then — the desire of the eyes and the
pride of fife — or, if it be, might we not live in nobler
dream than this? The poets and prophets, the wise men,
and the scribes, though they have told us nothing about
a life to come, have told us much about the hfe that is
now. They have had — they also, — their dreams, and
we have laughed at them. They have dreamed ° of mercy,
and of justice ; they have dreamed of peace and good-
will ; they have dreamed of labor undisappointed, and
of rest undisturbed ; they have dreamed of fulness in
harvest, and overflowing in store ; they have dreamed of
wisdom in council, and of providence in law ; of gladness
of parents, and strength of children, and glory of grey

THE MYSTERY OF LIFE 179

hairs. And at these visions of theirs we have mocked,
and held them for idle and vain, unreal and unaccom-
plishable. What have we accomplished with our reali-
ties? Is this what has come of our worldly wisdom, tried
against their folly? this, our mightiest possible, against
their impotent ideal ? or have we only wandered among
the spectra of a baser felicity, and chased phantoms of
the tombs, instead of visions of the Almighty ; and walked
after the imaginations of our evil hearts, instead of after
the counsels of Eternity, until our lives — not in the like-
ness of the cloud of heaven, but of the smoke of hell —
have become " as a vapor,° that appeareth for a httle
time, and then vanisheth away " ?

133. Does it vanish then? Are you sure of that? —
sure, that the nothingness of the grave will be a rest from
this troubled nothingness ; and that the coiling shadow,
which disquiets itself in vain, cannot change into the
smoke of the torment that ascends for ever? Will any
answer that they are sure of it, and that there is no fear,
nor hope, nor desire, nor labor, whither they go ? Be it
so ; will you not, then, make as sure of the Life that now
is, as you are of the Death that is to come ? Your hearts
are wholly in this world — will you not give them to it
wisely, as well as perfectly ? And see, first of all, that you
have hearts, and sound hearts, too, to give. Because you
have no heaven to look for, is that any reason that you
should remain ignorant of this wonderful and infinite
earth, which is firmly and instantly given you in posses-
sion ? Although your days are numbered, and the follow-
ing darkness sure, is it necessary that you should share
the degradation of the brute, because you are con-
demned to its mortahty; or live the Hfe of the moth,

180 SESAME AND LILIES

and of the worm, because you are to companion them
in the dust? Not so; we may have but a few thousands
of days to spend, perhaps hundreds only — perhaps tens ;
nay, the longest of our time and best, looked back on,
will be but as a moment, as the twinkling ° of an eye ; still
we are men, not insects ; we are living spirits, not passing
clouds. "He maketh° the winds His messengers; the
momentary fire. His minister ; " and shall we do less than
these ? Let us do the work of men while we bear the
form of them ; and, as we snatch our narrow portion of
time out of Eternity, snatch also our narrow inheritance
of passion out of Immortahty — even though our lives be
as a vapor, that appeareth for a little time, and then van-
isheth away.

134. But there are some of you who believe not this —
who think this cloud of hfe has no such close — that it is
to float, revealed and illumined, upon the floor of heaven,
in the day when He cometh with clouds, and every eye
shall see Him. Some day, you believe, within these five,
or ten, or twenty years, for every one of us the judgment
will be set, and the books opened. If that be true, far
more than that must be true. Is there but one day of
judgment? Why, for us every day is a day of judg-
ment — every day is a Dies Irse, and writes its irrevocable
verdict in the flame of its West. Think you that judg-
ment waits till the doors of the grave are opened ? It
waits at the doors of your houses — it waits at the corners
of your streets; we are in the midst of judgment — the
insects that we crush are our judges — the moments
we fret away are our judges — the elements that
feed us, judge, as they minister — and the pleasures
that deceive us, judge, as they indulge. Let us, for our

THE MYSTERY OF LIFE 181

lives, do the work of Men while we bear the Form of
them, if indeed those lives are Not as a vapor, and do
Not vanish away.

135. " The work of men ' ' — and what is that ? Well,
we may any of us know very quickly, on the condition of
being wholly ready to do it. But many of us are for the
most part thinking, not of what we are to do, but of what
we are to get ; and the best of us are sunk into the sin of
Ananias,^ and it is a mortal one — we want to keep back
part of the price ; and we continually talk of taking up
our cross, as if the only harm in a cross was the weight of
it — as if it was only a thing to be carried, instead of to
be — crucified upon. " They ° that are His have crucified
the flesh, with the affections and lusts." Does that mean,
think you, that in time of national distress, of religious
trial, of crisis for every interest and hope of humanity —
none of us will cease jesting, none cease idling, none put
themselves to any wholesome work, none take so much
as a tag of lace off their footmen's coats, to save the world?
Or does it rather mean, that they are ready to leave houses,
lands, and kindreds — yes, and hfe, if need be ? Life ! —
some of us are ready enough to throw that away, joyless
as we have made it. But " station ° in Life " — how many
of us are ready to quit t/iat ? Is it not always the great
objection, where there is a question of finding something
useful to do — " We cannot leave our stations in Life " ?

Those of us who really cannot — that is to say, who can
only maintain themselves by continuing in some business
or salaried office, have already something to do ; and all
that they have to see to, is that they do it honestly and with
all their might. But with most people who use that apol-
ogy, " remaining in the station of Hfe to which Providence

182 SESAME AND LILIES

has called them " means keepmg all the carriages, and all
the footmen and large houses they can possibly pay for ;
and, once for all, I say that if ever Providence did put
them into stations of that sort — which is not at all a mat-
ter of certainty — Providence is just now very distinctly
caUing them out again. Levi's ° station in life was the re-
ceipt of custom ; and Peter's,° the shore of Galilee ; and
Paul's," the antechambers of the High Priest, — which
" station in life " each had to leave, with brief notice.

And, whatever our station in hfe may be, at this crisis,
those of us who mean to fulfil our duty ought, first, to five
on as little as we can ; and, secondly, to do all the whole-
some work for it we can, and to spend all we can spare
in doing all the sure good we can.

And sure good° is, first in feeding people, then in dress-
ing people, then in lodging people, and lastly in rightly
pleasing people, with arts, or sciences, or any other sub-
ject of thought.

136. I say first in feeding ; and, once for all, do not let
yourselves be deceived by any of the common talk of " in-
discriminate charity." The order to us is not to feed the
deserving hungry, nor the industrious hungry, nor the
amiable and well-intentioned hungry, but simply to feed
the hungry. It is quite true, infalHbly true, that if any
man will not work, neither should he eat — think of that,
and every time you sit down to your dinner, ladies and
gentlemen, say solemnly, before you ask a blessing, >' How
much work have I done to-day for my dinner? '' But the
proper way to enforce that order on those below you, as
well as on yourselves, is not to leave vagabonds and hon-
est people to starve together, but very distinctly to dis-
cern and seize your vagabond ; and shut your vagabond

THE MYSTERY OF LIFE 183

Up out of honest people's way, and very sternly then see
that, until he has worked, he does not^ eat. But the first
thing is to be sure you have the food to give ; and, there-
fore to enforce the organization of vast activities in agri-
culture and in commerce, for the production of the whole-
somest food, and proper storing and distribution of it, so
that no famine shall any more be possible among civilized
beings. There is plenty of work in this business alone,
and at once, for any number of people who like to engage
in it.

137. Secondly, dressing people — that is to say, urging
every one within reach of your influence to be always neat
and clean, and giving them means of being so. In so far
as they absolutely refuse, you must give up the effort with
respect to them, only taking care that no children within
your sphere of influence shall any more be brought, up
with such habits ; and that every person who is willing to
dress with propriety shall have encouragement to do so.
And the first absolutely necessary step towards this is the
gradual adoption of a consistent dress for diff"erent ranks
of persons, so that their rank shall be known by their
dress ; and the restriction of the changes of fashion within
certain limits. All which appears for the present quite
impossible ; but it is only so far even difficult as it is dif-
ficult to conquer our vanity, frivolity, and desire to appear
what we are not. And it is not, nor ever shall be, creed
of mine, that these mean and shallow vices are uncon-
querable by Christian women.

138. And then, thirdly, lodging people, which you may
think should have been put first, but I put it third, be-
cause we must feed and clothe people where we find them,
and lodge them afterwards. And providing lodgment for

184 SESAME AND LILIES

them means a great deal of vigorous legislature, and cut-
ting down of vested interests that stand in the way, and
after that, or before that, so far as we can get it, thorough
sanitary and remedial action ° in the houses that we have ;
and then the building of more, strongly, beautifully, and
in groups of limited extent, kept in proportion to their
streams, and walled round, so that there may be no fes-
tering and wretched suburb anywhere, but clean and busy
street within, and the open country without, with a belt
of beautiful garden and orchard round the walls, so that
from any part of the city perfectly fresh air and grass, and
sight of far horizon, might be reachable in a few minutes'
walk. This the final aim ; but in immediate action every
minor and possible good to be instantly done, when, and
as, we can ; roofs mended that have holes in them — fences
patched that have gaps in them — walls buttressed that
totter — and floors propped that shake ; cleanliness and
order enforced with our own hands and eyes, till we are
breathless, every day. And all the fine arts will healthily
follow. I myself have washed a flight of stone stairs all
down, with bucket and broom, in a Savoy inn, where they
hadn't washed their stairs since they first went up them ;
and I never made a better sketch than that afternoon.

139. These, then, are the three first needs of civilized
life ; and the law for every Christian man and woman is,
that they shall be in direct service towards one of these
three needs, as far as is consistent with their own special
occupation, and if they have no special business, then
wholly in one of these services. And out of such exertion
in plain duty all other good will come ; for in this direct
contention with material evil, you will find out the real
nature of all evil ; you will discern by the various kinds

THE MYSTERY OF LIFE 185

of resistance, what is really the fault and main antagonism
to good ; also you will find the most unexpected helps and
profound lessons given, and truths will come thus down
to us which the speculation of all our lives would never
have raised us up to. You will find nearly every educa-
tional problem solved, as soon as you truly want to do
something ; everybody will become of use in their own fit-
test way, and will learn what is best for them to know in
that use. Competitive examination will then, and not till
then, be wholesome, because it will be daily, and calm,
and in practice ; and on these famiUar arts, and minute,
but certain and serviceable knowledges, will be surely edi-
fied and sustained the greater arts and splendid theoreti-
cal sciences.

140. But much more than this. On such holy and
simple practice will be founded, indeed, at last, an infal-
lible religion. The greatest ° of all the mysteries of life,
and the most terrible, is the corruption of even the sin-
cerest religion, which is not daily founded on rational,
effective, humble, and helpful action. Helpful action, ob-
serve ! for there is just one law, which, obeyed, keeps all
religions pure — forgotten, makes them all false. When-
ever in any religious faith, dark or bright, we allow our
minds to dwell upon the points in which we differ from
other people, we are wrong, and in the devil's power. That
is the essence of the Pharisee's thanksgiving — " Lord,°
I thank Thee, that I am not as other men are." At every
moment of our lives we should be trying to find out, not
in what we differ with other people, but in what we agree
with them ; and the moment we find we can agree as to
anything that should be done, kind or good, (and who but
fools couldn't ?) then do it ; push at it together : you can't

186 SESAME AND LILIES

quarrel in a side-by-side push ; but the moment that even
the best men stop pushing, and begin talking, they mis-
take their pugnacity for piety, and it's all over. I will
not speak of the crimes which in past times have been
committed in the name of Christ, nor of the follies which
are at this hour held to be consistent with obedience to
Him ; but I a////speak of the morbid corruption and waste
of vital power in religious sentiment, by which the pure
strength of that which should be the guiding soul of every
nation, the splendor of its youthful manhood, and spot-
less light of its maidenhood, is averted or cast away. You
may see continually girls who have never been taught to
do a single useful thing thoroughly ; who cannot sew, who
cannot ° cook, who cannot cast an account, nor prepare a
medicine, whose whole Hfe has been passed either in play
or in pride ; you will find girls like these, when they are
earnest-hearted, cast all their innate passion of religious
spirit, which was meant by God to support them through
the irksomeness of daily toil, into grievous and vain medi-
tation over the meaning of the great Book,° of which no
syllable was ever yet to be understood but through a deed ;
all the instinctive wisdom and mercy of their womanhood
made vain, and the glory of their pure consciences warped
into fruitless agony concerning questions which the laws
of common serviceable life would have either solved for
them in an instant, or kept out of their way. Give such
a girl any true work that will make her active in the dawn,
and weary at night, with the consciousness that her fellow-
creatures have indeed been the better for her day, and
the powerless sorrow of her enthusiasm will transform
itself into a majesty of radiant and beneficent peace.
So with our youths. We once taught them to make

THE MYSTERY OF LIFE 187

Latin verses, and called them educated ; now we teach
them to leap and to row, to hit a ball with a bat, and call
them educated. Can they plough, can they sow, can they
plant at the right time, or build with a steady hand ? Is
it the effort of their lives to be chaste, knightly, faithful,
holy in thought, lovely in word and deed? Indeed it is,
with some, nay, with many, and the strength of England
is in them, and the hope ; but we have to turn their cour-
age from the toil of war to the toil of mercy ; and their
intellect from dispute of words to discernment of things ;
and their knighthood from the errantry of adventure to
the state and fidehty of a kingly power. And then, in-
deed, shall abide, for them and for us an incorruptible
felicity, and an infallible religion ; shall abide for us Faith,
no more to be assailed by temptation, no more to be de-
fended by wrath and by fear ; — shall abide with us Hope,
no more to be quenched by the years that overwhelm, or
made ashamed by the shadows that betray ; — shall abide
for us, and with us, the greatest of these ; the abiding will,
the abiding name, of our Father. For the greatest ° of
these is Charity.

NOTES

OF KINGS' TREASURIES

[The numbers below correspond with the numbered sections of the
essays.]

1. Ask your pardon. At the outset one feels Ruskin's easy,
colloquial style. Being taken into the author's confidence, the
reader is put at once into a receptive mood to understand the
thoughts conveyed. In the preface to the edition of 1871, Ruskin
says that he could not at all express himself in the language of
books at the time he delivered the lectures, for then his thoughts
habitually put themselves into forms fit only for emphatic speech.
He says, too, that even though phrases written for oral delivery be-
come ineffective when quietly read, he could not translate them
into the language of books without taking away the good that was
in them.

Kings known as regnant. In § 42, Ruskin tells what kind of
kings he has in mind throughout this essay.

Thoughts about reading. Compare § 40, and consult pages
24-25 for a discussion of the theme of the essay.

2. Connection with schools. The most important connection
was with the drawing classes of the Working Men's College, Lon-
don. Through the charities of his father, Ruskin was honorary
governor in other schools.

" Position in life." Compare § 135. Class distinctions are much
more strongly marked in England than in the United States.

The visitors' bell. Doors in England sometimes have two bells,
one for visitors, and one for servants and tradespeople.

3. The last infirmity of noble minds. An inaccurate quota-
tion from Milton's Lycidas, line 71.

4. " Mortification." Look up the origin of this word as given
in an unabridged dictionary. The following words derived from
Latin or Greek are also used in this essay in a way not to be under-

180

190 SESAME AND LILIES

stood without a knowledge of their derivation : § 5, tertiary ; § 8,
ephemeral; % 1\^ inherent aristocracy ; ^ it,, reticence ; ^ 1^, litera-
ture ; § I'j, Bible ; §§ 18 and 28, vulgar; § 23, inspiration; § 27,
sensation; §§ 27 and t,1, passion ; § 28, /ar// § 32, bibliomaniac ;
§ 33, resolve ; § 37, expiration; § 42, magnanimous.

"My Lord." English bishops, as members of the House of
Lords, are addressed by the title, Lord.

5. Advancement in life. Compare § 42.

My writings on political economy. Consult page 20.

Tertiary. See note on § 4, 7nortiJication.

Collateral = subordinately connected, secondary. Could the
idea of the sentence containing this word be expressed more
briefly?

Truisms. Such as, "A man is known by the company he
keeps." 4

6. A cabinet minister . . . deceptive. Observe Ruskin's
pessimism regarding the sincerity of men who have been raised to
the high political rank of member of the English cabinet. See
§ 30, "sending a Minister of the Crown to make polite speeches."

There is a society. One of the delights in reading a Ruskin
essay is to notice his graceful approach to his theme. He may not
have any very logical connection between his preliminary matter
and the main point, but he always makes an obvious verbal connec-
tion. To discover the thought connection between the first five
sections and the sixth, look particularly at the next to the last
sentence in the fifth section.

8. Ephemeral. See note on § 4, mortification.

Divisible into two classes. What bearing has this distinction
en the general thought of the essay? Which class does the author
mainly discuss? What does he say regarding the method of read-
ing books of this class?

g. My life was as the vapor. Compare §97. The phraseol-
ogy is adapted from the Bible. In his early days Ruskin com-
mitted to memory the following chapters from the Bible : Exodus
15 and 20; Deuteronomy -^^-y 2 Satnuel i; i Kings ?>; Psal?ns 2-^,
32, 90, 91, 103, 112, 119, 139; Proverbs 2, 3, 8, 12; Isaiah ^S;
Matthexv 5, 6, 7; Acts 26; i Corinthians 13, 15; James ^\ Reve-
lation 5, 6.

NOTES 191

Other direct and indirect Biblical references in this essay are:
§ i6, unjust stewards, Luke i6: 1-8; §17, sown on any wayside,
Matthew 13 : 3-8 ; § 21, lords over the heritage, / Peter 5:3; § 26,
Break up your fallow ground, Jet'emiah 4:3; §29, River of Life,
Revelation 22: I-2, the angels desire to look into, / Peter I : 12 ;
§ 30, the love of money, i Ti?nothy 6:10; § 31, the good Samaritan,
Luke 10:30-35, scorpion whips, i Kings 12: 11-14; §32, sweet
as honey, Revelation 10 : 9-10, barley loaves, Matthe^v 14 ; § 35,
towers of the vineyards, Lsaiah 5:2; §37, Lazarus, Luke 16 : 20 ;
§ 39, idolatrous Jews, Ezekiel 8 : 7-12 ; §41, Art thou also become,
Isaiah 14: 9-10 ; §44, Go, Luke 7:8; §45, Do and teach, Mat-
thew 5:19, the path which no fowl knoweth, Job 28 : 7.

10. Book. V>y book Ruskin here means book for all time. Two
other words that he uses in senses of his own are reading, §25;
clowns, footnote §30.

Queen of the air, § 106 (in footnote) : "Thus far of Abbeville
building. Now I have here asserted two things, — first, the
foundation of art in moral character; next, the foundation of
moral character in war. I must make both assertions clearer and
prove them.

" First of the foundation of art in moral character. Of course
the art gift and amiability of disposition are two different things;
a good man is not necessarily a painter, nor does an eye for color
necessarily imply an honest mind. But great art implies the union
of both powers : it is the expression, by an art gift, of a pure soul.
If the gift is not there, we can have no art at all ; and if the soul —
and a right soul, too — is not there, the art is bad, however dex-
terous." For a shorter statement of his art theory, see page 19.

11. Entree = entrance ; the privilege of entering as a visitor.
How many other French words appear in the essay ?

Inherent aristocracy. See note on § 4, mortijication.

12. The place you fit yourself for. The contents of §§ 12-40
might be reduced to this : Show love for kingly authors in two
ways if you hope to be their companion.

Elysian gates. Gates to the fields where, according to old
belief, the good who have died abide in bliss. What is the connec-
tion of this allusion with the subject in hand?

portieres = gates.

192 SESAME AND LILIES

Faubourg St. Germain. This district of Paris, on the left bank
of the Seine, was formerly occupied by the aristocracy of the city.

13. Love these people. Study the general structure of the
essay. Sections 13-26 develop the first way of showing love for the
true aristocracy, the great authors. Sections 27-40 develop the
second way of showing love for authors. What are the two ways ?

Reticence. See note on § 4, mortification.
Physical type of wisdom, gold. Here is a slight hint suggest-
ing how Ruskin came to choose his title, " Of Kings' Treasuries."

14. Australian miner. The comparison in this paragraph is
usually found by readers to be one of the most interesting bits in
the essay.

patientest. Ruskin sometimes takes liberties by forming super-
latives of his own. See needfullest in § 50, and use/idlest in § 79.

15. "Literature." See note on § 4, mortification.

British Museum. The British Museum in London contains
great collections of books, in addition to Prints and Drawings, An-
tiquities, Coins, and Medals. The contents are truly vast.

Canaille = common people.

Noblesse = nobility.

i6. False Latin quantity. It is not so true now as it was in
Ruskin's time that members of the House of Commons would
smile at a false quantity in a Latin quotation. Yet the English
system of education continues to place most emphasis on the
classics.

Masked words. The following are examples of words which
some persons fancy mean one thing and other persons fancy mean
something different: economy, competition, personal liberty.

*' Ground-lion " cloaks. A pun on the word chameleon, which
literally means ground-lion. A chameleon changes its color to be
like the object it is near; so masked words take their color or
meaning from the conceptions of the people using the words.

Unjust stewards. See note on § 9.

17. Mongrel in breed. Mention six foreign languages from
which the English language has taken words, and give an example
of a word adopted into English from each of the languages you
mention. In his discussion of the English language, Ruskin does
not sufficiently recognize the essentially English character of the

NOTES 193

great bulk of the words in common use. The percentage of words
of native origin in the writings of the best-known authors shows the
preponderance of the native stock : Shakespeare, 90 % ; Milton,
81 % ; Tennyson, 88 %. Consult Emerson's The History of the
English Language.

" The Holy Book." Compare § 140.

Bible. See note on § 4, mortification.

Sown. See note on § 9.

Steam plough or steam press. For Ruskin's antipathy to
steam see page 21, and also § 130. The seventeenth and eigh-
teenth sections are a characteristic digression from the main theme.
Ruskin takes the opportunity to express his notions about the
proper use of the words Bible, datnn, ecclesiastic, and priest.

18. Vulgar. See note on § 4, mortification.

Seas of blood. A reference to the shedding of blood in Ger-
many and Scotland in the time of the Reformation. The author
holds that differences of opinion regarding the meaning of words
such as ecclesiastic and priest and Presbyterian caused religious
wars. Yet, in the phrase " though in the heart of them founded
on deeper causes," Ruskin seems to recognize that the mere differ-
ence of opinion about words was not the fundamental cause of the
religious wars.

19. The habit you must form. The didactic tone of the
author in this section proves rather attractive to most readers.
The directness of appeal holds the attention.

Max Miiller's lectures. Professor Max M filler, of Oxford, de-
livered his " Lectures on the Science of Language " during the
three years preceding Ruskin's " Sesame " lecture.

20. A true book. Compare the end of the ninth section.

No English words are more familiar to us. In § 61 Ruskin
shows some caution, about assuming too much knowledge in his
readers, but he is certainly wrong in assuming that all his hearers
would be perfectly familiar with Milton's Lycidas.

21. Those three words, i.e., creep and intrude and climb.
Lords over the heritage. See note on § 9.

22. A broken metaphor. A curious example of broken or
mixed metaphor appears in Mr. Dooley on Oratory : " Th' hand iv
time marches with stately steps acrost th' face iv histhry."

194 SESAME AND LILIES

Bill and Nancy. The author gains force by saying specifically
"Bill and Nancy" instead of " two persons."

Salisbury steeple. According to Baedeker's Great Britain^
the steeple of Salisbury cathedral, 404 ft. high, is the loftiest in
England.

23. I go on. Study the variation of sentence length in this
essay. What effect does the author gain by such a short sentence
as this ?

The Latin word, viz. spb-itus, which literally means breath.
The Greek word referred to is Trvevfia (pneuma), familiar in the
derivative form pneumatic, as pneumatic tires, tires filled with wind
or air.

Inspiration. See note on §4, mortification.

Fog of the fen. One of the characteristics of Ruskin's style is
his frequent use of alliteration. Be on the lookout for such embel-
lishment elsewhere in the three lectures.

Cretinous stupefaction. Compare fevered idiotism in §129.
From his long residence in Switzerland, Ruskin no doubt became
much impressed by the prevalence of cretinism, a form of idiocy
combined with physical deformity.

These are the true fog children. The sentence containing
these words needs study because of the involved phraseology.
Similarly involved sentences occur not infrequently in Ruskin's
writing. In fact, this feature of his style is decidedly characteristic.

24. The latter is weaker. Compare the twenty-fifth section,
where Dante is ranked higher than Milton. See also §§60 and
III.

Reverse. Distinguish between reverse and opposite. In a close
reading of Sesatne and Lilies much can be learned regarding shades
of meaning of words.

25. Much more is yet to be found. Very likely the average
student will be unable to find anything more in the lines.

"Reading." See note on § 10, book.

" To mix the music." A reference to lines in R. W. Emerson's
To Rhea : —

" He mixes music with her thoughts,
And saddens her with heavenly doubts."
This writer, i.e., Milton.

NOTES 195

Not among the first. Literary critics now rank Milton as
among the first or leading writers in any language.

Character of Cranmer. In Shakespeare's Henry VIII, Act V.

Virgil. The Latin epic poet, Virgil, who died in 19 B.C., is
represented by Dante in The Divine Comedy as guiding him in
his imaginary and poetical visit to Hell.

" Disteso," etc. = " stretched out, so abjectly, in eternal exile."
Dante's "Inferno," Canto 23, lines 126-129.

"Come '1 frate," etc. = "like the friar who listens to the con-
fession of sins of the perfidious murderer." Dante's " Inferno,"
Canto 19, hnes 51-53.

Alighieri. That is, Dante, the great Italian poet, who died in
1321. The last half of § 25 contains several allusions to Shake-
speare and Dante. To understand fully Ruskin's references, one
must know well Shakespeare's plays Richard III and Henry VIII
and Dante's poem. The Divine Comedy. This poem is divided
into three parts, " Inferno," " Purgatory," and " Paradise." See
Cary's translation of this greatest of Italian epics, Ruskin asks the
reader to contrast Dante's description of the noble and upright St.
Francis and St. Dominic in "Paradise," Canto II, lines 27-39,
with the description of Caiaphas, the wicked high priest, in
" Inferno," Canto 23, or with the description of the evil-doing Pope
Nicholas III in " Inferno," Canto 19. The main point of the allu-
sions is that by them Ruskin hopes to show Dante's and Shake-
speare's true power of painting men as they are, no matter what
may be their position in life.

Articles. Statements of belief, such as the Thirty-nine Articles
of the Church of England.

26. Rough heath wilderness. Notice how the words chosen
convey by their very sound something of the idea of harshness.

Break up, etc. See note on § 9.

27. Having then faithfully listened. Consider the structural
coherence of the essay. By this participial phrase the writer links
together two main divisions.

Passion or " sensation." See note on § 4, mortification.

28. Tact. See note on § 4, mortification.

The Mimosa. A large genus of tropical American herbs, shrubs,
or trees of the bean family, with sensitive leaves that close at a touch.

196 SESAME AND LILIES

29. Not merely to know. Another instance of a cohering
clause introduced at the beginning of a division of thought to join
it closely to the next division.

True knowledge. Every little vi^hile one sees an example of
Ruskin's analytic mind. He is always making distinctions in the
use of words. Sometimes he refines needlessly.

Golden balls of heaven, i.e., the stars.

The source of the great river. Doubtless a reference to the
explorations in 1858-59 of David Livingstone toward the source of
the Zambesi. Livingstone returned to England in 1864 from an
exploring expedition in Africa. The allusion, like that to Max
Miiller's lectures, is simply another illustration of Ruskin's alert
mind, open to impressions gained by his current reading and mak-
ing use of the impressions when the occasion arises in his writings.

The place of the great continents. A reference to Columbus's
voyages.

River of Life, and the angels desire, etc. See note on § 9.

An agonized nation. The United States, then engaged in the
Civil War. Compare page 13 of Introduction.

Noble nations murdered. Poland by Russia, or the minor
provinces by Turkey. England also refused to interfere in the
Italian struggle for independence then going on under Garibaldi.

30. See its own children murder each other. An allusion to
the American Civil War. English people, Ruskin says, worried at
the effect of the war in stopping the exportation of cotton.

Estates. What is the syntax?

Selling opium. A reference to the Opium War between Eng-
land and China a score of years before the essay was written.
China objected to the importation of opium from India, but Eng-
land forced China to receive the opium, thus causing incalculable
harm to the Chinese. *

Clowns (in footnote). See note on § 10, book.

" Perplexed in the extreme." From the fifth act of Shake-
speare's tragedy, Othello.

A great nation does not. What effect does the writer gain by
repeating "great nation" as the subject of so many successive
sentences ?

Love of money. See note on § 9.

NOTES 197

31. Insanity of avarice. Note Ruskin's own explanation in
the next sentence, " the idea that everything should ' pay.' " See
also § 39 for another of his explanations, " the false business of
money-making." Experience shows that pupils are likely to use
the phrase "insanity of avarice" glibly without understanding what
the author means.

The good Samaritan and scorpion whips. See note on § 9.

Hope for a nation. Balance the good and the evil tendencies
of British national life as explained in §§31-37.

Clause by clause. The systematic structure in the sections fol-
lowing helps to make the idea clear.

32. Bibliomaniac. See note on §4, 7nortification.

No book is worth anything which is not worth much. Rus-
kin carried out this idea consistently in the price put upon his own
books. They were sold at a high price until near the end of his life.

Sweet as honey and barley-loaves. See note on §9.

33. Scientific bone. If you enjoy making collections, such as
stamps or post-cards, try your hand at making a collection of Rus-
kin's figures of speech in this essay. You will find some remarkably
beautiful and some very homely, but all excellently calculated to
make the idea intelligible.

An observatory. England maintains the Royal Observatory at
Greenwich to fix at i p.m. every day the correct time for the whole
of England.

Stuffed birds. As in the reference to Greenwich Observatoryy
Ruskin exaggerates the English indifference. Only six years before
the lecture was delivered, anew reading-room costing ;^ 150,000
was opened as part of the British Museum.

Their. Strict style would require his instead of their.

Resolve. See note on §4, mortijicadon.

Nebula = any luminous cloud-like object in the sky, as a star-
cluster (Standard Dictionary).

Two years ago. Another example of Ruskin's alertness to
current happenings in the field of science. See the Introduction
(page 19) for an account of the author's own scientific studies and
writings. The fossil referred to is the archaeopteryx.

For military apparatus. Just as in Ruskin's time, people are
still inveighing against the disproportionate expenditures for mill-

198 SESAME AND LILIES

tary armament. In a current newspaper an American proposes
that half the sum being spent for the navy be applied to the found-
ing of agricultural high schools throughout the country.

34. Ludgate apprentices. See Baedeker's Zow^icw for explana-
tion of Ludgate. On Ludgate Hill, a street leading to St. Paul's
Cathedral, were small shops, at the doors of which young salesmen
stood, trying to allure customers.

As book-keeping is. Ruskin was constantly fighting against
the commerciaUzation of art. Modern business methods, he
thought, interfered with true art appreciation. From his many
journeys to France and Italy he came to feel that in those coun-
tries there was a keener regard for things of the spirit than in Eng-
land, absorbed as that country was in " business."

Austrian guns. In the war between Austria and Venice some
of the paintings of the Venetian artist Tintoretto were slashed by
Austrian shells during the siege of Venice in August, 1849 (cf.
Ploetz's Epitome of Ancient, Medieval, and Modern History and
Ruskin's Croiun of PVild Olive).

35. A railroad bridge over the falls of Schaffhausen. How
Ruskin would feel about such a desecration as this can be seen by
a reference to page 21. The falls were in the Rhine in Switzer-
land.

Tunnelled the cliffs of Lucerne. A reference to the Axen-
strasse, a road cut in the rock above Lake Lucerne near Tell's
chapel, Switzerland.

Trampled coal ashes into. Compare §§ ?>i and 104 for a simi-
lar protest.

Your own poets used to love, e.g., Wordsworth in his Swiss
sonnet and Shelley in his " Lines Written in the Vale of Cha-
mouni." Ruskin contrasts the love that the poets had for the
Alps with the attitude of the tourist mountain climbers who ascend
the highest peaks merely for the sake of being able to say they
reached the top, like people who climb soaped poles in uncouth
sport.

The valley of Chamouni. Near Mont Blanc. Ruskin grows
sarcastic in his denunciation of tourists who fire cannon in this
Swiss valley to hear the echo.

Towers of the vineyards. See note on § 9.

NOTES 199

36. You despise compassion. Perhaps the most touching chap-
ter in literature to be read in connection with compassion despised
is Victor Hugo's Les Miserables, Chapter 6 of Book II. The tenth
chapter of Book VII is also harrowing.

Store-drawer. Place for storing clippings from newspapers.
See preceding comments on this custom of the author.

An early date this year (1865). It would appear that the ex-
tract from the Daily Telegraph was not part of the original lecture,
but was inserted in the printed edition. In the footnote beginning,
"This abbreviation of the penalty," there is also inserted a date
later than the date of the lecture. See § 2 of Ruskin's Preface,
also the footnote to § 37.

A book. The Book of Judgment.

Spitalfields. A manufacturing district of London, where boot-
making is now one of the chief industries.

Get the "stones." Be made to work at breaking stone for
roads.

" You ought to go into the house," i.e., the workhouse. Com-
pare the second sentence of § 37.

37. Gave them their pensions at home. Recent legislation
by the English Parliament provides old age pensions. Ruskin is
ahead of his time.

Satanellas, — Roberts, — Fausts. The idea is that the chant-
ing of hymns on a stage by opera singers in the presentation of the
operas Satanella by Balfe, Robert le Diable, by Meyerbeer, and
Faust by Gounod is worse than the swearing forbidden by the
Biblical third commandment.

Chanting. "What is the syntax ? Another illustration of the
author's tendency to write involved sentences that are difficult to
comprehend structurally at the first glance.

Carburetted hydrogen = illuminating gas. In the last six sen-
tences of § 37, Ruskin is scornfully exposing what he considers the
sham, formal religion of his time, when worshippers gave more
thought to fine surroundings and music and ceremonies than to true
Christian charity. The reference to gaslights seems to lead the
author whimsically to play on words and speak about giving up
the ghost of false, gas-inspired Christianity; he would let such
Christianity die and be replaced by helpful acts of charity.

200 SESAME AND LILIES

Expiration. See note on § 4.
Lazarus. See note on § 9.

38. All these pleasures, then, and all these virtues. The

author appears to distinguish between the pleasures and virtues,
but does not really. Enumerate Ruskin's reasons why the English
cannot understand any thoughtful reading.

39. Having no true emotion. A summarizing phrase covering
the contents of §§ 32-38.

Idolatrous Jews. See note on § 9.

40. The measure of national fault. Also a summary, with
added explanation of the reason for the fault.

Chalmers. Thomas Chalmers died in 1847 ^^ ^^^ ^S^ o^ sixty-
seven. He was a Scotch minister.

Inquiry into methods of reading. Compare the statement of
the theme in the first section.

41. The last of our great painters. Turner. See the Intro-
duction, page 9, and also § loi.

Play with the words of the dead. In the sentence containing
these words and in the next sentence, there is a statement of the
theme of the essay, along with a fanciful figure of speech that sug-
gested the title " Of Kings' Treasuries."

41. Incantation = magic song to enchant. Compare the word
" Sesame," § 50.

These kings. Note that the word ^ings appears four times in
this section.

Become pure and mighty of heart. A summary of the second
way of reading, viz. entering into the hearts and souls of authors.
See Isaiah 14 : 9-10.

42. Magnanimous. See note on § 4, mortification.
" Advance in life." Compare § 3.

Scythian custom. The customs of the people of Scythia, an
ancient country northeast of the Black Sea, early impressed Ruskin
from his reading of them in the history written by the Greek
Herodotus. One of Ruskin's early poems is " The Scythian Guest."

Ice of Caina. Dante in Canto 32 of " Inferno " makes Caina a
circle in hell where traitors and murderers dwell submerged, except
for their heads, in ice. The Dante description is grewsomely pic-
turesque as translated by Gary.

NOTES 201

Living peace. The footnote in Greek is from the Greek New
Testament translated in Romans 8 : 6, as follows : " But to be spir-
itually minded is life and peace." A literal translation would be :
The mind of the spirit is life and peace.

True lords or kings of the earth. From here to §46 the
author digresses from his main theme of the kingship which all
may attain by entering into the thoughts and souls of great authors,
to the kingship of actual earthly rulers.

Elsewhere. Munera Pulveris, § 1 22.

43. Kinghood. The substance of the paragraph is: Visible
kings are grasping and callous. In the early part of Pra:terita
Ruskin tells what he thinks of kings.

Achilles' indignant epithet. In Iliad, Book I, line 231,
Achilles describes King Agamemnon as "people-eating."

"II gran rifiiito, i.e., the great refusal or abdication. See
Dante's " Inferno," Canto 3, line 56.

44. Visible king. The substance of the paragraph is : Visible
kings may attain true kingship of heart.

Trent cuts you a cantel. A reference to Shakespeare's
Henry IV, I, Act III, Scene I. Trent is a river in the north central
part of England.

"Go." See note on §9.

45. The difference. The first part of the paragraph explains
what visible kings are and the second part what they may be.

"Do and teach" and the path which no fowl knoweth. See
note on § 9.

Fourth kind of treasure, i.e., Wisdom. See Job 28: 12-19 and
Proverbs 3: 13-18.

Vulcanian force. A reference to Vulcan, the god of fire.

Delphian cliffs. At Delphi, on the southern slope of Mount
Parnassus, was the celebrated oracle of Apollo, god of the sun and
of light. (See Lippincott's Pronouncing Gazetteer of the World.^

46. National amusement in reading-rooms. Observe the
verbal return to the theme and the graceful ending of the essay.
For Ruskin's practical belief in reading-rooms, see page 21.

47. The only book. Unto this Last.

48. Ten millions' worth of knowledge annually. Compare
§ T^i and note.

202 SESAME AND LILIES

49. National libraries. Observe how Ruskin keeps the idea
of reading to the front by repeating the words reading-rooms and
libraries.

50. This book plan. The closing idea of the essay is that
England needs to tone up its system by giving more attention to
spiritual than to corporal vv^ants. By establishing more libraries
and becoming kingly in soul so as to be able to read the books,
the English people will, Ruskin says, provide for themselves better
spiritual food. Bread is cheaper now, he says, because of the
repeal, in 1846, of the corn laws which kept the price of corn, or
wheat, high. Still more should be the care at present, he con-
cludes, to provide also for spiritual bread at the high price that
must be paid, purity of heart.

Needfullest. See note on § 14, patientest.

The treasuries of true kings. The last few words of this essay,
like the final words of the other essays in the volume, preach Rus-
kin's message concerning true helpfulness.

OF QUEENS' GARDENS

51. What to read. Does the author anywhere in the first fifty
sections (that is, in "Of Kings' Treasuries") answer this question?

"Likeness of a kingly crown have on." Milton's Paradise
Lost, II, 673.

52. There is, then, I repeat. What is the central thought of
this complicated sentence? Observe how well §§51 and 52 sum
up the first essay.

54. Their ordinary power. By reference at once to the open-
ing sentences of §§ 70 and 86, the general structure of the essay will
become clear. Sections 55 through 69 treat of woman's ordinary
power, that is, her function in the household. Sections 70 through
85 treat of the education which best fits her to exercise her
powers. Sections 86 through 95 (the end) treat of her power and
influence outside the home, as a member of the state or nation.

55. I must repeat. Many readers find Ruskin hard to follow,
because of his luxuriance of thought, because of the agile working
of his mind. Apparently he follows always the straight path of
simple, direct exposition; in reality he often starts on a track, then

NOTES 203

covers up his track with related ideas so that the reader is lost.
Note carefully here the connection between the discussion of
woman's ordinary power and the appeal to great writers for
testimony.

The testimony. What testimony is given by what writers?

56. Shakespeare has no heroes. In the discussion that fol-
lows weigh every statement of Ruskin. From your reading of
Shakespeare, do you reach the same conclusions that Ruskin
reaches?

57. The "unlessoned girl." Portia, in Shakespeare's The
Merchant of Venice.

59. As of no value. It is such curiously dogmatic statements
as these that prejudice some readers against Ruskin. When he
became seized with an idea, it was his custom to think that there
could be no possible basis for any other idea. Do you consider
Ivanhoe of no value?

60. Dante's great poem. Compare §§ 24, 25, and iii.
Dante Rossetti. See page 11.

61. Andromache. For the story of Andromache, the M'ife of
Hector, see the sixth book of Homer's Iliad. No doubt you have
read of Andromache in Addison's De Coverley essay entitled " Sir
Roger at the Play."

Cassandra. The prophecies of Cassandra, daughter of Priam,
king of Troy, were disbelieved by the Trojans.

Nausicaa. In Lippincott's Pronouncing Biographical Diction-
ary you will find that the princess Nausicaa, daughter of the king
of the Phaeacians, showed kindness to Ulysses when he was wrecked
on the island of Phoeacia or Corfu, where her father was king.

Penelope. . Faithful to her husband, Ulysses, during his long
voyage, Penelope watched for him daily, and kept busy weaving,
though insistent suitors wished her hand. Ruskin says that Nausi-
caa's life showed kindness and simplicity, while the life of Penelope
showed calmness.

Antigone. A play by Sophocles. In this play the heroine,
contrary to the king's orders, buried the body of her brother, who
died fighting against Thebes. In consequence of her disobedience
of the orders of the king of Thebes, the heroine was to be buried
alive, but she killed herself.

204 SESAME AND LILIES

Iphigenia. When the Greeks proposed to appease the of-
fended goddess Diana, during the Trojan War, by the sacrifice of
the daughter of King Agamemnon, she submitted silently ; but she
was rescued by Diana.

Alcestis. According to fable, she gave up her life to save her
husband, and then was rescued from the realms of death by the
mighty Hercules.

62. Lawgiver of all the earth. Moses, educated among the
Egyptians by a princess, daughter of King Pharaoh. See Exodus
2 : 9, 10, "And the woman took the child, and nursed it. And the
child grew, and she brought him unto Pharaoh's daughter, and he
became her son. And she called his name Moses." For the way
in which Moses gave the law to the people of Israel, read chapters
31-34 of Exodus. Other direct and indirect Biblical references in
this essay are as follows : § 68, shade as of the rock, Isaiah 32 : 2,
ceiled with ce^dox, Jeremiah 22: 14; § 73, Spirit of the Comforter,
John 16: 7 and 14: 26; § 83, sharp arrows, coals of juniper. Psalms
120:3-4; §85, as sheep having no shepherd, Matthew 9:36,
waters . . . from the rocks. Exodus 17:6, an unknown God, ^<r^'5
17: 23; § 88, ministering to Him of their substance, Luke 8: 3, in
breaking of bread, Mark 14: 22; § 90, Prince of all Peace, Isaiah
9:6; § 94, Come, thou south, and breathe upon my garden. Song
of Solomon 4: 16; § 95, a Madeleine, Matthew 28: i, all through
the night, Sotig of Solomon 3:1, that old garden. Genesis 3 : 24, the
vine has flourished, Song of Solomon 6: ii, take us the. foxes. Song
of Solomon 2:15, the foxes have holes, Matthew 8 : 20.

Athena. Goddess of Wisdom. She was the national divinity
of the Athenians, whose capital, Athens, is named from the god-
dess. For the symbolic significance of the worship of Athena, con-
sult Ruskin's Queen of the Air.

64. The evidence of facts. Of all Ruskin's testimony concern-
ing woman's household dignity, which evidence do you consider of
most value?

65. Farther argument. What are this author's merits and de-
fects in method of argument ? In the use of the word farther, purists
are agreed that Ruskin has blundered. Strictly /zr/Z^^r is used to
indicate distance ; further is the word for mere addition.

" Ah, wasteful woman ! " Quotation from Coventry Patmore,

NOTES 205

a nineteenth-century English poet who was for years assistant libra-
rian at the British Museum. Ruskin speaks of Patmore's poem,
The Angel in the House, as " the sweetest analysis we possess of
quiet, modern domestic feeling."

67. Rightly distinguishable. See note on true knozuledge, § 29.

68. But. Observe the effectiveness of this transition word
separating the discussion of the power of man and woman.

A sacred place. Study the beautiful ideal of home life pre-
sented in this complicated sentence. The allusions make the
meaning hard to grasp. First, the author speaks of the home as a
sacred place. Then he calls it a vestal temple or a temple of the
hearth. The allusion here is to Vesta, the Roman goddess of the
hearth or home. Then he speaks of the Household Gods watching
over it; these were the gods kept in Roman homes and worshipped
by those who loved their home life. Then he alludes to the Bible
by saying that the roof of the home is like the shade of the rock in
a weary land (^Isaiah 32:2); and he alludes to the famous light-
house of Pharos outside the harbor of Alexandria by saying that
the fire of the home is like the light of the lighthouse. In short,
he says that if the home is a place of purity and seclusion and love
and rest and light, it is truly a home.

And wherever a true wife comes. This is a representative
paragraph of Ruskin at his best in emotional eloquence. Com-
pare it with the still more beautiful closing paragraph of the essay.

Ceiled with cedar. Com^d^xQ Jeremiah 22 : 14.

69. "La donna h mobile." These Italian words from the
libretto of Verdi's opera, Rigoletto, mean, " Woman is changeable,
fickle." The following Italian phrase means " as a feather in the
wind." The quotation beginning " Variable as the shade " is from
Scott's Marmion. Paraphrase the last sentence of § 69, using
only English words, but bringing out all of the meaning.

70. That poet. Wordsworth.

72. Thus, then . . . frame. As usual, there is a skillful transi-
tion from one division of thought to the next. Ruskin makes his
main divisions stand out distinctly, and also takes pains to show the
transition from point to point within the main divisions. In §§ 70
and 71, he discusses woman's physical education; in §§ 72 through
81, the mental education; in §§ 82 through 85, the imaginative.

206 SESAME AND LILIES

Languages. The elements of woman's mental education,
according to this author's plan, are to be language, science, history,
current events, and religion. Note the omissions. Is the proposed
course of study a good one for girls?

Valley of Humiliation. A reference to Christian's journey in
Bunyan's Pilgriui's Progress.

The nothingness of the proportion. Meditate long on this
sentence when everything seems to be going wrong in school.

" For all who are desolate." From the English Book of Com-
mon Prayer : " That it may please thee to defend and provide for
the fatherless children and widows and all who are desolate and
oppressed."

73. Spirit of the Comforter. Compare John 16: 'j and
14 : 26.

74. Quite differently directed. In §§ 74-Si, the points of
difference in direction between a girl's and a boy's education are
developed: I. The girl's is to be not so thorough. 2. It is to
be just as accurate. 3. She is to enter earlier into deep subjects.
4. She is to select freely from classical books. 5. She is to use the
finest models in art. 6. Her education is to be just as serious as a
boy's. 7. She is to have just as noble teachers.

75. Circulating library. Compare § 49.

76. The sore temptation of novel reading. The four points
discussed are : I. The danger in novel reading. 2. The serious
uses of novels. 3. The determining factor in the choice of novels.
4. The free choice of novels in a library of classical books.

78. "Her household motions." From Wordsworth's poem,
" She was a phantom of delight."

81. Dean of Christ Church. Consult page 7.

82. Thus, then, of literature. Transition phrase.

83. Fill with heaps of cinders. Compare § 35. Sections S3
through 85 are a digressive tirade about Ruskin's pet aversion.

Sharp arrows and coals of juniper. Compare Psalms 120:

3-4.

84. Snowdon is your Parnassus. Snowdon, a lofty and beau-
tiful mountain of Wales, is compared with Parnassus, the mountain
in Greece sacred to the Muses. The idea is that no spirit of poetry
and music and art hovers over the mountain of Wales as it did

NOTES 207

according to legend over the mountain of Greece. Similarly, Holy-
head Mountain, splendid as it is, commanding the sea, lacks the
associations which have kept the name of the island of ^gina
famous. On this island was a temple to Minerva, goddess of wis-
dom or learning or education. At the beginning of the next sec-
tion, the author means Christian education when he says Christian
Minerva.

85. As sheep having no shepherd. For the Biblical refer-
ences in this section, see note on § 62, Lawgiver.

86, Thus far, then. Would Ruskin have improved the order of
his three main sections by discussing woman's education first; next,
her home queenliness; and, lastly, her queenliness in the state?

88. Lady means "bread-giver." The word lady means not
bread-giver, but bread-/^«^<'?^i?r (Kluge and Lutz, English Etymol-
ogy). Zt>rc/ means bread-keeper.

Ministering to Him. For the Biblical references, see note on
§ 62, Laivgiver.

90. Rex et Regina — Roi et Reine. Latin and French for
king and queen.

Myrtle crown. The myrtle was sacred to Venus. Venus was
the goddess of beauty. " Myrtle crown " thus stands for crown of
beauty.

Prince of all Peace. Compare Isaiah 9 : 6.

91. Verily " Dei gratia " = truly by the grace of God.
Instead of trying to do this. Another of Ruskin's bursts of

sermonic eloquence.

92. I do not wonder. The repetition of the words " I do not
wonder " at the beginning of four successive sentences gives force
to the idea.

Myriad-handed murder of multitudes. These words are part
of a sentence that admirably illustrates Ruskin's flamboyancy of
style. See the Introduction, page 30.

93. "Her feet have touched." From Tennyson's Maud.

94. "Even the light harebell." See the first canto of Scott's
Lady of the Lake.

Bid the black blight. Notice the other alliterations in this
wonderfully beautiful section.

Come, thou south, etc. See note on § 62.

208 SESAME AND LILIES

Dante's great Matilda. In "Purgatory," Canto 28, Dante
speaks of meeting a lady, Matilda, who went singing, culling flower
from flower, and who drew the visitor through the river Lethe, in
which are left all remembrances of wrong, and in which are brought
to mind all good deeds. Note that Matilda, Maud, and Madeleine,
of §§ 94 and 95, are all related proper names; Maud is a diminu-
tive form of both Matilda and Madeleine.

" The Larkspur listens." This quotation is from Tennyson's
Maud, Part I, 22, stanza 10; the preceding quotation from Maud
is from Part I, 22, stanza I.

95. A Madeleine. For the six Biblical references in this sec-
tion, see note on § 62, Latvgiver.

At the gate of this garden. A garden, that is, where human
hearts are thirsting for waters of comfort.

You queens. In a flight of eloquence, the essayist pleads for
true helpfulness. Compare with the endings of the first and third
essays.

THE MYSTERY OF LIFE AND ITS ARTS

97. Ingenious or pleasant essayist. Beside the points enu-
merated by Ruskin in this frank criticism of his style as an essB,yist,
what other characteristics are mentioned in the notes on the first
two essays and in the Introduction ?

" What is your life ?" Compare §§ 9 and 132.

98. The mystery. Observe how gracefully the writer draws
near his theme, as in the two preceding essays.

99. The third and most solemn character. Compare the
enumeration of items in §§ 135-139.

100. The true nature of our life. Is this the theme of the
whole essay ?

Disappointment. Here, as often in personal remarks made
by men of sensitive nature, Ruskin is probably exaggerating his
disappointments. Consult again the introductory biography of this
author.

Titian. In § 122 there are references to four other famous
Italian artists. Have you seen paintings by any of them, or repro-
ductions of any of their great paintings ?

NOTES 209

loi. While the painter was yet alive. Compare §41, and
see the Introduction (page 9) for references to what Ruskin did
for J, M. W.Turner. If there are any of Turner's works where you
can see them (the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York con-
tains some), study them and make up your mind in what respects
Turner is superior to other English artists since the time of
Reynolds. If you do not find anywhere any Turner paintings, your
town or city library may contain reproductions of some of his most
celebrated works, such as " Slave Ship " and " Fighting Temeraire."
Turner's " Mortlake " was recently sold to an American for
^75,000. The Turner water-colors which Ruskin arranged in the
basement of the National Gallery (London) are still there.
Several summers when the present editor has been there to see
them, they were attracting many other visitors. Ruskin may perhaps
justly have felt in 1864 that his work for Turner was in vain, but
time has brought full recognition to the principles that underlie
Turner's work and full honor to the painter.

103. The first mystery of life. Compare § 108.

104. Choked with soot. Compare § 35.

105. Pope has expressed. In his Essay on Man.

Pillar of darkness. The sentence containing this metaphor is
adapted from Exodus 13 : 22. In most of the particularly beautiful
rhetorical passages, Ruskin rises to Scriptural heights of eloquence,
notably so, for instance, in §119. Other passages in this third
essay having a distinct Biblical tinge or directly quoted from the
Bible are: § 107, our heart fat. Psalms 119: 70, lest we should see
with our eyes, John 12:40; §109, the kings of the earth, Isaiah
40: 22; § 119, hewers of wood, Joshua 9: 21; § 128, in the sweat
of their face. Genesis 3:19, whatsoever thy hand findeth to do,
Ecclesiastes 9 : 10; § 130, she layeth her hands to the spindle, Prov-
erbs 31 : 19, I was naked, Matthew 25 : 36; § 131, I was a stranger,
Matthew 25 :35; §132, the wild fig-tree, Revelation 6: 13, as a
vapor, Jai7ies 4: 14; § 133, The twinkling of an eye, i Corinthians
15: 52; §135, They that are His, Galatians 5:24; §140, Lord,
I thank Thee, Luke 18: ii, For the greatest of these is Charity,
I Corinthians 13: 13.

107. This, then, I meant. Compare § 103, which also opens
with a sentence looking back to the preceding section.

210 SESAME AND LILIES

Our heart fat. For the Biblical references in this section, see
note on § 105.

108. The first great mystery of life. Criticise the following
as a summary of the first mystery : the apathy of artists and all
other people regarding the ends or motives of life.

109. The Art of this world. .See § 96.

I will tell you something. Where does he carry out his
promise?

The kings of the earth. See note on § 105.

no. The appointed teachers of the rest. In § 9 is found
Ruskin's idea of the mission of great writers. Note that in " Of
Kings' Treasuries" the same writers, Milton and Dante, are spe-
cially discussed.

III. Hesiod's account. In a poem called Theogony, said to
have been written by Hesiod, a Greek poet of the eighth cen-
tury, B.C.

Dante's conception. Compare §§ 24, 25, and 60.

113. Darkness of controversy. Referring to the political con-
troversies engaged in by Milton in the middle of the seventeenth
century.

Stress of personal grief. Dante's poem was written while he
was in exile as a tribute to his " lost mortal love," Beatrice Porti-
nari, the "dear Florentine maiden" referred to in § in.

115. After fifteen hundred years. Shakespeare was born in
1564.

Death-bed of Katharine. Henry VIII, Act IV, Scene 2.

The great soldier-king. Henry V, Act IV, Scene 8.

" The gods are just." King Lear, Act V, Scene 3.

" There's a divinity." Hamlet, Act V, Scene 2.

n6. A third class. Study the structure. Having discussed
the first mystery of life, viz. that men engaged in the arts have
no noble motive, no sense of the real ends of life, the author shows
the same to be true of the great teachers, Milton and Dante, whom
he calls " wise religious men," and Homer and Shakespeare, whom
he calls "wise contemplative men." Now he is to show in §§ 116-
118 that wise practical or worldly men also lack the noble motive.
In § 119, he begins to discuss still another group, the hand workers.

117. I dreamed. In §§ 117 and 118, Ruskin, under the guise

NOTES 211

of a dream, rails against modern commercialism. See the Intro-
duction (page 1 6) for statements concerning his industrial ideals,
and consider what faults he finds in this dream. See too Ruskin's
own note on § 117, at the bottom of page 166.

119. Hewers of wood. See note on § 105.

120. At last. Ruskin's abundant connectives furnish an in-
teresting study. Make a collection of the connectives for the pur-
pose of adding to your own store.

A lesson. What is the lesson taught by the workers ? What
mystery of life is discussed in §§ 120-139 ?

121. Does a bird need? Argument by analogy. Having
grasped Ruskin's ideas in §§ 120 and 121, challenge them to find
whether they are true.

122. Gustave Dor6's art was bad. Possibly you have seen
Dore's illustrations for The Ancient Mariner or Dante's Divine
Comedy or Milton's Paradise Lost, and have your own opinion
about the art of this nineteenth-century French engraver.

123. Arrest of their power. Notice the equivalent expression
later in this section, *' skill which was at pause." The trouble with
the painter of the picture of the angel in the Irish prayer book was,
according to this criticism, that he drew with perfect symmetry and
assurance. On the other hand, the eager sculptor of Lombardy,
one of the Italian provinces, depicted Eve in such a way that one
felt that there was a struggle toward something better; there was
some hope for art that had this strain of effort.

125. Points of character. For Ruskin's belief that national
art and character always were closely joined, see page 19 and the
note on § 10.

127. First of their lessons. Observe the method used in
§§ 1 19-127 in explaining the first lesson received from the toilers
concerning the mystery of life and its arts.

128. Happiness is pursued. The author himself sought hap-
piness by work, as is explained on pages 18 and 23.

In the sweat of their face. For the two Biblical references in
this section see note on § 10^, pillar of darkness.

129. Fevered idiotism. Compare § 23 and the note.

In our own dominion. India. One of the worst famines in
India was in Orissa in 1866.

212 SESAME AND LILIES

130. Their wisest 'king. Solomon. 'Bi^^ Proverbs \:\.
Sweet colors. Ruskin had prejudices in favor of certain colors

and against others. See page 28, for what he thought of yellow.

Robe. What part of speech is this ?

She layeth, etc., and I was naked, etc. See note on § 105,
pillar of darkness.

131. I was a stranger. See note on § 105.

132. Shall the strength of their generations . . . cast away
their labor? Ruskin would answer his rhetorical question by say-
ing, "No. Take up the work of men and do what can be done."
Sections 132-140 show what can be done.

The wild fig-tree. Compare Revelation 6: 13.
They have dreamed. Observe the repeated structure in the
sentence beginning thus.

"As a vapor." Compare § 97. See a.\so /ames 4: 14.

133. The twinkling of an eye. See note on § 105.
He maketh the winds, etc. Compare Psalms 104 : 4.

135. Sin of Ananias. " But a certain man named Ananias,
with Sapphira his wife, sold a possession and kept back part of the
price, his wife also being privy to it, and brought a certain part,
and laid it at the apostles' feet. But Peter said, Ananias, why
hath Satan filled thine heart to lie to the Holy Ghost, and to keep
back part of the price of the land? " Acts 5 : 1-3.

They that are His. Compare Galatians 5 : 24.

"Station in life." Compare § 2.

Levi's station in life. Read about Levi in the second chapter
of Matthew^ about Peter in the fourth chapter of Matthew, and
about Paul in the ninth chapter of The Acts of the Apostles.

And sure good is. For Ruskin's estimate of the importance of
the subject-matter in §§ 135-140, see page 36.

138. Remedial action in the houses. How the author
practiced this preaching is told on page 12.

140. The greatest of all the mysteries of life. Name the
mysteries discussed in this essay. Consult structural notes on §§ 116
and 120.

"Lord, I thank thee," etc. Compare Luke 18 : 11.

Cannot cook, etc. Alliteration.

The great book. The Bible. Compare § 17.

NOTES 213

The greatest of these is Charity. Compare / Corinthians
13 : 13. The closing idea of this lecture is about the same as that of
the two preceding lectures. Thus the main teaching of the author
is the same in all three essays, and the three essays naturally form
one book.

TOPICS FOR STUDY AND WRITING

1. Show that the most valuable work in the high school course
in literature is Sesame arid Lilies.

2. Outline an argument to prove or disprove the proposition :
Novel reading is a waste of time.

3. Construct a simple argument to prove or disprove the propo-
sition : The education of girls should be different from the educa-
tion of boys.

4. Write a brief for an argument on one of the following state-
ments : —

a. Shakespeare has no heroes.

b. The novel is more effective than the essay for depicting man-
ners and customs.

c. The noble minds of the past are the best teachers.

5. Explain as fully and as clearly as you can the proper way to
read books.

6. Make a topical outline for an exposition of the manner in
which Ruskin represents the spirit or tendency of the literary era
to which he belongs.

7. Give briefly Ruskin's explanation of the difference between
the books of the hour and the books of all time.

8. Give an outline of the history of English essays up to the
time of Ruskin.

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