Letter 20.

Of Improvidence in Marriage in the Middle Classes; and of the advisable Restrictions of it

April 12, 1867.

Ir is quite as well, whatever irregularity it may introduce in the arrangement of the general subject, that yonder sad letter warped me away from the broad inquiry, to this speciality, respecting the present distress of the middle classes. For the immediate cause of that distress, in their own imprudence, of which I have to speak to you to-day, is only to be finally vanquished by strict laws, which, though they have been many a year in my mind, I was glad to have a quiet hour of sunshine for the thinking over again, this morning. Sunshine which happily rose cloudless; and allowed me to meditate my tyrannies before breakfast, under the just-opened blossoms of my orchard, and assisted by much melodious advice from the birds; who (my gardener having positive orders never to trouble any of them in anything, or object to their eating even my best pease if they like their flavour) rather now get into my way, than out of it, when

they see me about the walks; and take me into most of their counsels in nest-building.

The letter from Mr. Shields, which interrupted ns, reached me, as you see, on the evening of the 9th instant. On the morning of the 10th, I received another, which I herewith forward to you, for verification. It is―characteristically enough-dateless, so you must take the time of its arrival on my word. And substituting M. N. for the name of the boy referred to, and withholding only the address and name of the writer, you see that it may be printed word for word-as follows:

SIR-- May I beg for the favour of your presentation to Christ's Hospital for my youngest son, M. N. I have nine children, and no means to educate them. I ventured to address you, believing that my husband's name is not unknown to you as an artist.

To John Ruskin, Esq.

Believe me to remain faithfully yours,

Now this letter is only a typical example of the entire class of those which, being a governor of Christ's Hospital, I receive, in common with all the other governors, at a rate of about three a day, for a month or six weeks from the date of our names appearing in the printed list of the governors who have presentations for the current year. Having been a governor now some twenty-five years, I have documentary evidence enough to found

some general statistics upon: from which there have resulted two impressions on my mind, which I wish here specially to note to you, and I do not doubt but that all the other governors, if you could ask them, would at once confirm what I say. My first impression is, a heavy and sorrowful sense of the general feebleness of intellect of that portion of the British public which stands in need of presentations to Christ's Hospital. This feebleness of intellect is mainly shown in the nearly total unconsciousness of the writers that anybody else may want a presentation, beside themselves. With the exception here and there, of a soldier's or a sailor's widow, hardly one of them seems to have perceived the existence of any distress in the world but their own; none know what they are asking for, or imagine, unless as a remote contingency, the possibility of its having been promised at a prior date. The second most distinct impression on my mind i, that the portion of the British public which is in need of presentations to Christ's Hospital, considers it a merit to have large families, with or without the means of Bupporting them!

Now it happened also (and remember, all this is strictly true, nor in the slightest particular represented otherwise than as it chanced; though the said chance brought thus together exactly the evidence I wanted for

ay letter to you' it happened, I say, that on this same morning of the 19th April, I became accidentally acquainted with a case of quite a different kind: that of a nikle girl, wha, engaged at sixteen, and having re-. ceived several advantageous offers since, has remained for ten years faithful to her equally faithful lover; while, their circumstances rendering it, as they rightly considered, unjustifiable in them to think of marriage, each of them simply and happily, aided and cheered by the other's love, discharged the duties of their own separate positions in life.

In the nature of things, instances of this kind of noble life remain more or less concealed (while imprudence and error proclaim themselves by misfortune), but they are assuredly not unfrequent in our English homes. Let us next observe the political and national result of these arrangements. You leave your marriages to be settled by "supply and demand," instead of wholesome law. And thus among your youths and maidens, the improvident, incontinent, selfish, and foolish ones marry whether you will or not; and beget families of children, necessarily inheritors in a great degree of these parental dispositions and for whom supposing they had the best dispositions ir the world, you have thus provided, by way of educators, the foolishest fathers and mothers you could find (the only

rational sentence in their letters, usually, is the invariable one, in which they declare themselves "incapable of providing for their children's education"). On the other hand, whosoever is wise, patient, unselfish, and pure, among your youth, you keep maid or bachelor; wasting their best days of natural life in painful sacrifice, forbidding them their best help and best reward, and carefully excluding their prudence and tenderness from any offices of parental duty.

Is this not a beatific and beautifully sagacious system for a Celestial Empire, such as that of these British Isles?

I will not here enter into any statement of the physical laws which it is the province of our physicians to explain; and which are indeed at last so far beginning to be understood, that there is hope of the nation's giving some of the attention to the conditions affecting the race of man, which it has hitherto bestowed only on those which may better its races of cattle.

It is enough, I think, to say here that the beginning of all sanitary and moral law is in the regulation of marriage, and that, ugly and fatal as is every form and agency of license, no licentiousness is so mortal as licentiousness in marriage.

Briefly, then, and in main points, subject in minor ones