The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1884-11-08 00:00:00

PROFESSOR RUSKIN ON THE
PLEASURES OF DEED.

On Saturday Mr. Ruskin gave eie third of his
course of seven lectures on "The Pleasures of
England " in the lecture room at the museum of the
Oxford University. The special subject was "The
Confessor to Cceur de Lion," and was entitled "The
Pleasures of Deed." A crowded audience, as usual,
gave the professor an enthusiastic reception. Mr.
Ruskin commenced by dissenting from Dean Stanley's
statement that the Norman invasion was in every way
a salutary, moral, and intellectual blessing to England,
and that the arrow by which Harold met his death
was the arrow of the Lord's deliverance. The Saxon
religion Mr. Ruskin described as practical and imagi-
native, and their divine image, as holding in her right
hand a red rose insteid of a sword, and in her left the
balance of retribution. This Saxon rose, the professor
remarked, was a symbol of heavenly beauty and
peace, but they, in their madness, had in the white
and red introduced the pale and crimson forms of
death. Mr. Ruskin then reminded his audience that
he had told them a week ago that they would be
taught in the schools to draw a map of England,
marking only these eight plaees—London, Edinburgh,
Canterbury, York, Lancaster, Winchester, Holy
Island, and Melrose. The signification of the name
of St. Cuthbert's birthplace might, he thought, un-
doubtedly be found in the abundance of wild roses
which every summer clothes the landscape. The
Professor went on to remark that the faith of our
Saxon ancestors was one of the purest and most intel-
lectual, but it was never rightly understood. It is not
engraved on the records of architecture, and was in
its intellectual characteristics childlike. At the
moment when this faith had reached its culminating
point came the Norman invaders with their didactic
and disciplinarian barons-men who neither were, nor
could be, Christians, and at their best were but enemies
to the Saracen. Mr. Ruskin here reminded his
audience that the very highest authority on the work
of the Normans is M. Violet-le-Due, whose acutest
sagacity and frankest candour make him worthy of
their most grateful attention. The Normans raised
impregnable military and sublime religious walls,
but cared nothing for the sentiments and promises,
of their religion; they were men of the world—men
of deed to their death—soldiers before and after every-
thing. People now-a-days value religion rather with a
view to future bliss than to present duty, the Norman
obeyed its injunctions to do and to govern and so be-
came a blunt soldier-servant of God, and as His knight
tried his all to establish • Christianity throughout the
world. "Nor must I omit," proceeded the professor,
"to vindicate these men from the charge which the
extreme probity of the 19th century will bring against
them, that they lived by thieving. Without referrine
to the raison d'être of the French and English stock
exchanges, let me ask you what you mean by your
Indian possessions; and is it not a fact that we live
on the loot of India ?" In conclusion, Mr. Ruskin
ironically remarked that it was all very well to build
new schools, used also for ball-rooms, and leave him-
self still compelled to lecture to them in a "black ,
hole "like the present. The lecture next Saturday I
will have for its special subject "Coeur de Lion to
Elizabeth," "The Pleasures of Fancy."