Richmond dispatch. [volume] (Richmond, Va.) 1884-1903, 1885-08-18
oalish Ground beautIfal, peaceful. and

English ground beautiful, peaceful ana
fruitful. We will have no steamer,
gines upon It and no railroads we wii
have no untended or unthought-of crea-
lures upon IL; none wretched put tne
sick. none idle bat the dead. We Will
have no liberty upon it, but instead
obedience TO known law and appointed
persons no equality upon il, but recog-
milton Of every BITTERNESS that we can
find and reprobation Of every worse
ness. When we want to 90 anywhere
we will 20 there quietly and safely
not at forty miles an hour, in the risk
Of our lives; when we want to carry
anything anywhere we will carry II
either on the backs Of beasts or on our
own or in carts or boats; we will have
plenty Of flowers and vegetables in our
garden, plenty Of corn and grass in our
felds-snd few bricks. We will have
some music and poetry; the children
shall learn 10 dance to il and sing 1t
perhaps some Of the old people, in time,
may also. Little by little, some higher
art and imagination may manifest them
selves among US, and feeble rays OF
science may dawn for us. Botany,
though too dull to dispute the existence
of flowers; and history, though too
simple to question the nativity Of men
nay, even perhaps en- uncalculating and
uncoyetous wisdom, as Of rude magi,
presenting, at such nativity, gifts OF
gold and frankincense."
Later along, as to the work that had
been done by the st. Georges Guild,
Mr.. Ruskin. in November, 1875, said /:
during these five years very signal
distress has visited me. Everything /
have set hand to has been unprosper-
Gus, much Of it even calamitous; dis
appointment, coupled with heavy
money loss, happening in almost every
quarter to me and casting discredit on
all attempt; under which conditions
I proceed in my endeavor to remodel
the world, with more zeal by much
than at the beginning Of the year 1871"
Apparent failure on all sides. His
devotion to truth in art and to the de-
mands Of love lost him his wife, evil
IDENTIFY then the most beautiful living
object in the world to him. His devo-
ton to natural beauty and the health
and virtue Of English society as opposed
to the unnatural make-believes we take
for beauty in our smoky, machine
made cities and machine-driven lives
lost him a good deal of his small
fortune. But, nothing daunted, this
earnest, seeing, logged, splendid old
man kept his face toward the sun and
the stars, and persisted that the nine
teenth century was wrong and that he
himself would remodel the world. So
he was broken, as all true men ever
have broken, with their burdens on
their backs simply too heavy to be
borne. Whether Dir. Ruskin's mild
yielding up Of his wife to the man who
seemed TO love her better than himself
led to and twisted more humorous and
exalted development Of his own powers
is hard to say. But that such an act
did deeply affect all his after years is
plainly seen, and find much Of his APP
parent crankiness and want of har-
mony with the age are due to the lonely,
unnatural existence. The prophet of
nature has himself found it may be diff
ficult to trace, but somewhere in this
mystery of heart-loneliness is the Sc
cret Of what will eventually be deter
mined as the supremest victory or the
saddest failure of his splendid being.