Fors Clavigera

If would not you

you will not get it, unless you pray for it. be fed with stones, by a Father Devil, you must ask for bread from your Father, God. In a word, you must understand the Lord's Prayer-and pray it; knowing, and desiring, the Good you ask; knowing also, and abhorring, the Evil you ask to be delivered from. Knowing and obeying your Father who is in Heaven; knowing and wrestling with your Destroyer' who is come down to Earth; and praying and striving also, that your Father's will may be done there, not his; and your Father's kingdom come there, and not his.

And finally, therefore, in St. George's name, I tell you, you cannot know God, unless also you know His and your adversary, and have no fellowship with the works of that Living Darkness, and put upon you the armour of that Living Light.

Phrases, still phrases,' think you? My friends, the Evil spirit indeed exists; and in so exact contrary power to God's, that as men go straight to God by believing in Him, they go straight to the Devil by disbelieving in him. Do but fairly rise to fight him, and you will feel him fast enough, and have as much on your hands as you are good for. Act, then. Act-yourselves, waiting for no one. Feed the hungry, clothe the naked, to the last farthing in your own power. Whatever the State does with its money, do you that with yours. Bring order into your own accounts, whatever disorder there is in the Chancellor of the Exchequer's; then, when you have got the Devil well under foot in Sheffield, you may begin to stop him from persuading my Lords of the Admiralty that they want a new grant, etc., etc., to make his machines with; and from illuminating Parliament with new and ingenious suggestions concerning the liquor laws. For observe, as the outcome of all that is told you in this Fors, all taxes put by the rich on the meat or drink of the poor, are precise Devil's laws. That is why they are so loud in their talk of national prosperity, indicated by the Excise, because the fiend, who blinds them, sees that he can also blind you, through your lust for drink,

into quietly allowing yourselves to pay fifty millions a year, that the rich may make their machines of blood with, and play at shedding blood.*

But patience, my good fellows. Everything must be confirmed by the last, as founded on the first, of the three resolutions I asked of you in the beginning,-" Be sure you can obey good laws before you seek to alter bad ones. No rattening, if you please; no pulling down of park railings; no rioting in the streets. It is the Devil who sets you on that sort of work. Your Father's Servant does not strive, nor cry, nor lift up his voice in the streets. But He will bring forth judgment unto victory; and, doing as He bids you do, you may pray as He bids you pray, sure of answer, because in His Father's gift are all order, strength, and honour, from age to age, for ever.

Of the Eastern question, these four little myths contain all I am able yet to say :

I. St. George of England and Venice does not bear his sword for his own interests; nor in vain.

II. St. George of Christendom becomes the Captain of her Knights in putting off his armour.

III. When armour is put off, pebbles serve.

IV. Read the psalm 'In Exitu.'

* See third article in Correspondence, showing how the game of our nobles becomes the gain of our usurers.

NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE.

I. Affairs of the Company.

Our accounts I leave wholly in the hands of our Companion, Mr. Rydings, and our kind helper, Mr. Walker. I believe their statement will be ready for publication in this article.

[For accounts of the St. George's Fund and Sheffield Museum see five following pages.]

Our legal affairs are in the hands of our Companion, Mr. Somervell, and in the claws of the English faculty of Law: we must wait the result of the contest patiently.

I have given directions for the design of a library for study connected with the St. George's Museum at Sheffield, and am gradually sending down books and drawings for it, which will be specified in Fors from time to time, with my reasons for choosing them. I have just presented the library with another thirteenth-century Bible,-that from which the letter R was engraved at page 215 of vol. L.; and two drawings from Filippo Lippi and Carpaccio, by Mr. C. F. Murray.

II. Affairs of the Master.

I am bound to state, in the first place,-now beginning a new and very important year, in which I still propose myself for the Master of the St. George's Company,-that my head certainly does not serve me as it did once, in many respects. The other day, for instance, in a frosty morning at Verona, I put on my dressing-gown (which is of bright Indian shawl stuff) by mistake for my great coat; and walked through the full market-place, and half-way down the principal street, in that costume, proceeding in perfect tranquillity until the repeated glances of unusual admiration bestowed on me by the passengers led me to investigation of the possible cause. And I begin to find it no longer in my power to keep my attention fixed on things that have little interest for me, so as to avoid mechanical mistakes. It is assuredly true, as I have said in the December Fors, that I can keep accounts; but, it seems, not of my own revenues, while I am busy with the history of those of Venice. In page 359, vol. III., the November expenses were deducted from the sum in the first column instead of from that in the third, and the balance in that page should have been £670 98. 4d.; and in last Fors, £275 98. 4d. My Greenwich pottery usually brings me in £60; but I remitted most of the rent, this year, to the tenant, who has been forced into expenses by the Street Commissioners. He pays me £24 168. 9d., bringing my resources for Christmas to the total of £300 68. 1d.

Dr.

JOHN RUSKIN, Esq., IN ACCOUNT WITH THE ST. GEORGE'S FUND.

Cr.

1876.

£ 8. d.

1876.

£ 8. d.

Subscription to March 14th, see April Fors.. 1023 11 10

Paid to Bankers, see April Fors

977 12 1