only kept their canals clear by turning the river south to Malamocco with embankments which have unhealthily checked the drainage of all the flat country about Padua. And this constant mischief takes place, be it observed, irrespective of inundation. All that Florence, Pisa, and Rome have suffered and suffer periodically from floods is so much mischief added to that of increasing maremmas, spoiled harbourages, and lost mountain-ground. There is yet one further evil. The snow on the bared rock slips lower and melts faster; snows which in mossy or grass ground would have lain long, and furnished steadily flowing streams far on into summer, fall or melt from the bare rock in avalanche and flood, and spend in desolation in a few days what would have been nourishment for half the year. And against all this there are no remedies possible in any sudden or external action. It is the law of the Heaven which sends flood and food, that national prosperity can only be achieved by national forethought and unity of purpose. In the year 1858 I was staying the greater part of the summer at Bellinzona, during a drought as harmful as the storms of ten years later. The Ticino sank into a green rivulet; and not having seen the right way to deal with the matter, I had many a talk with the parroco of a little church whose tower I was drawing, as to the possibility of setting his peasants to work to repair the embankment while the river was low. But the good old priest said, sorrowfully, the peasants were too jealous of each other, that no one would build anything or protect his own ground for fear his work might also benefit his neighbours.1 But the people of Bellinzona are Swiss, not Italians. I believe the Roman and Sienese races, in different ways, possess qualities of strength and gentleness far more precious than the sunshine and rain upon their mountains, and, hitherto, as cruelly lost. It is in them that all the real power of Italy still lives; it is only by them, and by what care, and providence, and accordant good will ever be found in them, that the work is to be done, not by money; though, if money were all that is needed, do we in England owe so little to Italy of delight that we cannot so much as lend her spades and pickaxes at her need? Would she trust us? Would her government let us send over some engineer officers and a few sappers and miners, and bear, for a time, with an English instead of a French "occupation" of her barrenest hills ? ? But she does not need us. Good engineers she has, and has had many since Leonardo designed the canals of Lombardy. Agriculturists she has had, I think, among her gentlemen a little before there were gentlemen farmers in England; something she has told us of agriculture, also, pleasantly by the reeds of Mincio and among the apple blossoms wet with Anio. Her streams have learned obedience before now: Fonte Branda and the Fountain of Joy flow at Siena still; the rivulets that make 1 [See above, p. 97 n.] 3 [The reference is to the French occupation of Rome, which had come to an end, owing to the war with Prussia, in August 1870.] [For Fonte Branda at Siena, see Præterita, iii. § 86 (where the reference is to Inferno, xxx. 78); and for Fonte Gaia (so called from the joy caused by the arrival of water in the interior of the city in 1343), see The Fountain of Siena: an Episode "Where green the slopes of Casentino may yet satisfy true men's thirst. is the money to come from?" Let Italy keep her souls pure, and she will not need to alloy her florins. The only question for her is whether still the mossy rock and the "rivus aquæ" are "in votis" or rather the racecourse and the boulevard-the curses of England and of France. At all events, if any one of the Princes of Rome will lead, help enough will follow to set the work on foot, and show the peasants, in some narrow district, what can be done. Take any arid piece of Apennine towards the sources of the Tiber; let the drainage be carried along the hill-sides away from the existing water-courses; let cisterns, as of old in Palestine, and larger reservoirs, such as we now can build, be established at every point convenient for arrest of the streams; let channels of regulated flow be established from these over the tracts that are driest in summer; let ramparts be carried, not along the river banks, but round the heads of the ravines, throwing the water aside into lateral canals; then terrace and support the looser soil on all the steeper slopes; and the entire mountain side may be made one garden of orange and vine and olive beneath; and a wide blossoming orchard above; and a green highest pasture for cattle, and flowers for bees-up to the edge of the snows of spring. I am, Sir, your faithful servant, OXFORD, Feb. 3. JOHN RUSKIN. in the Life of John Ruskin, by A. A. Isaacs, 1900 (the letters by Ruskin there included are reprinted in a later volume of this edition). In the preceding sentence Ruskin refers to Virgil (Georgics, iii. 13–15) : : "Et viridi in campo templum de marmore ponam and Horace (Odes, i. 7, 13) :- "Et præceps Anio ac Tiburni lucus et uda "Anio" (the river of Tivoli) has hitherto been misprinted "Arno." In the follow- Ne'er lack'd me of what most I coveted; One drop of water now, alas! I crave. The rills, that glitter down the grassy slopes Of Casentino . . .”] 1 [Here, again, there has hitherto been a misprint-namely, "rotis" for "votis.” Ruskin clearly referred (saying, however, rivus instead of fons) to Horace, Satires, ii. 6, 1, 2: "Hoc erat in votis: modus agri non ita magnus, X LETTERS ON "HOW THE RICH SIR,-Here, among the hills, I read little, and withstand, sometimes for a fortnight together, even the attractions of my Pall Mall Gazette. A friend, however, sent me, two days ago, your article signed W. R. G., on spending of money (January 13), which, as I happened to have over-eaten myself the day before, and taken perhaps a glass too much besides of quite priceless port (Quarles Harris, twenty years in bottle), would have been a great comfort to my mind, showing me that if I had done some harm to myself, I had at least conferred benefit upon the poor by these excesses, had I not been left in some painful doubt, even at the end of W. R. G.'s most intelligent illustrations, whether I ought not to have exerted myself further in the cause of humanity, and by the use of some cathartic process, such as appears to have been without inconvenience practised by the ancients, enabled myself to eat two dinners instead of one. But I write to you to-day, because if I were a poor man, instead of a (moderately) rich one, I am nearly certain that W. R. G.'s paper would suggest to me a question, which I am sure he will kindly answer in your 1 [From the Pall Mall Gazette, January 24, 1873, where the letter appeared under the heading "How the Rich Spend their Money." Reprinted in Arrows of the Chace, 1880, vol. ii. pp. 98, 99.] [The article, or rather letter, dealt with a paper on "The Labour Movement" by Mr. Goldwin Smith in the Contemporary Review of December 1872, and especially with the following sentences in it: "When did wealth rear such enchanted palaces of luxury as it is rearing in England at the present day? Well do I remember one of those palaces, the most conspicuous object for miles round. Its lord was, I dare say, consuming the income of some hundreds of the poor labouring families around him. The thought that you are spending on yourself annually the income of six hundred labouring families seems to me as much as a man with a heart and a brain can bear." W. R. G.'s letter argued that this "heartless expenditure all goes into the pockets" of the poor families, who are thus benefited by the selfish luxuries of the lord in his palace. For another reference to Mr. Goldwin Smith, see Time and Tide, Appendix viii. (above, p. 478). "W. R. G." was W. R. Greg (see below, p. 559 for an allusion to his Creed of Christendom, see Vol. XVI. p. 169).] columns, namely, "These means of living, which this generous and useful gentleman is so fortunately disposed to bestow on me-where does he get them himself?" I am, Sir, your faithful servant, BRANTWOOD, CONISTON, Jan. 23. 2 J. RUSKIN. To the Editor of the "Pall Mall Gazette SIR,-I am disappointed of my Gazette to-day, and shall be grievously busy to-morrow. I think it better, therefore, to follow up my own letter, if you will permit me, with a simple and brief statement of the facts, than to wait till I see your correspondent W. R. G.'s reply, if he has vouchsafed me one.2 These are the facts. The laborious poor produce "the means of life" by their labour. Rich persons possess themselves by various expedients of a right to dispense these "means of life," and keeping as much means as they want of it for themselves, and rather more, dispense the rest, usually only in return for more labour from the poor, expended in producing various delights for the rich dispenser. The idea is now gradually entering poor men's minds, that they may as well keep in their own hands the right of distributing "the means of life" they produce; and employ themselves, so far as they need extra occupation, for their own entertainment or benefit, rather than that of other people. There is something to be said, nevertheless, in favour of the present arrangement, but it cannot be defended in disguise; and it is impossible to do more harm to the cause of order, or the rights of property, than by endeavours, such as that of your correspondent, to revive the absurd and, among all vigorous thinkers, long since exploded notion of the dependence of the poor upon the rich. I am, Sir, your obedient servant, J. RUSKIN. January 28. 3 To the Editor of the "Pall Mall Gazette" 3 SIR, I have my Pall Mall Gazette of the 28th to-day, and must at once, with your permission, solemnly deny the insidiosity of my question, "Where does the rich man get his means of living?" I don't myself see how a more straightforward question could be put! So straightforward indeed that I particularly dislike making a martyr of myself in answering it, as I must this blessed day-a martyr, at least, in the way of witness; 1 [From the Pall Mall Gazette, January 29, 1873, where the letter appeared under the same heading. Reprinted in Arrows of the Chace, 1880, vol. ii. pp. 100, 101.] 2 [W. R. G. had replied in a letter published on January 28 to "Mr. Ruskin's insidious question," which he characterised as lacking "relevancy to the point at issue."] 3 [From the Pall Mall Gazette, January 31, 1873, where the letter appeared under the same heading. Reprinted in Arrows of the Chace, 1880, vol. ii. pp. 102-104.] for if we rich people don't begin to speak honestly with our tongues, we shall, some day soon, lose them and our heads together, having for some time back, most of us, made false use of the one and none of the other. Well, for the point in question then, as to means of living: the most exemplary manner of answer is simply to state how I got my own, or rather how my father got them for me. He and his partners entered into what your correspondent mellifluously styles "a mutually beneficent partnership," with certain labourers in Spain. These labourers produced from the earth annually a certain number of bottles of wine. These productions were sold by my father and his partners, who kept ninetenths, or thereabouts, of the price themselves, and gave one-tenth, or thereabouts, to the labourers.2 In which state of mutual beneficence my father and his partners naturally became rich, and the labourers as naturally remained poor. Then my good father gave all his money to me (who never did a stroke of work in my life worth my salt, not to mention my dinner), and so far from finding his money "grow in my hands, I never try to buy anything with it, but people tell me money isn't what it was in your father's time, everything is so much dearer." 3 I should be heartily glad to learn from your correspondent as much pecuniary botany as will enable me to set my money a-growing; and in the meantime, as I have thus given a quite indubitable instance of my notions of the way money is made, will he be so kind as to give us, not an heraldic example in the dark ages (though I suspect I know more of the pedigree of money, if it comes to that, than he does), but a living example of a rich gentleman who has made his money by saving an equal portion of profit in some mutually beneficent partnership with his labourers? I am, Sir, your obedient servant, BRANTWOOD, CONISTON, " J. RUSKIN. King Charles the Martyr, 1873. P.S.-I see by Christie and Manson's advertisement that some of the best bits of work of a good labourer I once knew, J. M. W. Turner (the original plates, namely, of the "Liber Studiorum"), are just going to be destroyed by some of his affectionate relations. May I beg your correspondent to explain, for your readers' benefit, this charming case of hereditary accumulation ? 5 1 [W. R. G. had declared that the rich man (or his ancestors) got the money "by co-operation with the poor... by, in fact, entering into a mutually beneficent partnership with them, and advancing them their share of the joint profits paying them beforehand, in a word."] See above, p. 514.] 3 [See Ruskin's account of his fortune in Fors Clavigera, Letter 76 (Notes and Correspondence).] 4 [W. R. G. had written: "In nine cases out of ten, in the case of acquired wealth, we should probably find, were the pedigree traced fairly and far back enough, that the original difference between the now rich man and the now poor man was, that the latter habitually spent all his earnings, and the former habitually saved a portion of his in order that it might accumulate and fructify."] 5 [There was, however, justification for the action of the next-of-kin in destroying the plates. They were quite worn out, and their destruction prevented their being bought by some unscrupulous dealer and used to the detriment of Turner's reputation.] |