NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE.

I. Affairs of the Company.

The new purchases of land round our little museum at Sheffield have been made at rather under than over the market price of land in the district; and they will enable me, as I get more funds, to extend the rooms of the museum under skylight as far as I wish. I did not want to buy so soon; but Fors giving me the opportunity, I must take it at her hand. Our cash accounts will in future be drawn up as on p. 254, by our companion, Mr. Rydings, to whom all questions, corrections, etc., are to be sent, and all subscriptions under fifty pounds. [For Cash Account, see next page (254).]

The following letter from Messrs. Tarrant will be seen to be in reply to mine of the 6th June, printed in last Fors. From the tone of it, as well as from careful examination of my legal friends, I perceive that it is out of my power to give the Company a legal status, according to the present law of England, unless it be permitted to gather dividends for itself, instead of store for the nation, and to put its affairs in the hands of a number of persons who know nothing about them, instead of in the hands of one person who is acquainted with them.

Under these circumstances, I consider it to be best that the Companions should settle their own legal status with the lawyers; and this the more, as I do not choose to run the Society into farther expense by the continuance of correspondence between these legal gentlemen and me without the slightest chance of either party ever understanding the other. Accordingly, I hereby authorize Mr. Robert Somervell, of Hazelthwaite, Windermere, to collect the opinions of the other Companions, (a list of whom I have put in his hands,) and to act in their name, as they shall direct him, respecting the tenure of the Company's lands and property, now and in future. And I hereby hold myself quit of all responsibility touching such tenure, maintaining simply the right of the Master of the Company to direct their current expenditures.

"Re ST. GEORGE'S COMPANY.

"2, BOND COURT, WALBROOK, LONDON, "31st May, 1876.

"Dear Sir,-We have carefully considered the points raised in your letter to us of the 6th inst.. and have also consulted Mr. Barber upon them, and with reference thereto we advise you that the law stands shortly thus-by the 13th Eliz., c. 5, a voluntary settlement of real or

CASH ACCOUNT OF ST. GEORGE'S COMPANY (From March 15th to June 15th, 1876).

Cr.

50 0 0

26.

"Benjamin Bagshawe (on comple

20 0 0

tion of purchase at Sheffield) 300 0 0

"No. 50, G.

10 10 0

personal estate will be void and may be set aside by a creditor of the settlor, upon his showing an intent on the part of the settlor to defraud his creditors; and such an intent may be inferred from the circumstances. The Bankruptcy Act 1869 (32 and 33 Vict., c. 71) contains a still more stringent provision where the voluntary settlor is a trader. These are liabilities and risks which your association cannot avoid; but they are more imaginary than real, as the donors of land to the Company are not likely to make a voluntary gift for the purpose of defeating their creditors. By the 27th Eliz., c. 4, a voluntary gift or settlement of real estate, unless it be in favour of a charity, will be avoided by a subsequent bona fide sale for value, even though the purchaser have notice of the voluntary settlement. This, too, is an ordinary risk from which you cannot escape, unless you are willing to submit to the jurisdiction of the Charity Commissioners. It does not often happen that a person who has made a voluntary settlement of real estate seeks to stultify his own act by a subsequent sale of the same estate, but the payment of a small consideration, or even matter ex post facto, would prevent the deed being voluntary, and the risk is not a very serious one.

"We do not recollect Mr. Baker's name, and we find no mention of it in any of your letters to us: we think you must have meant Mr. Talbot, with whose solicitors we were in communication as to some cottages and land, and it was arranged that that matter should stand over until the St. George's Company was constituted.

"As to the writing out of the memorandum and rules for signature of the Companions-the case is this: you receive donations from people who give them to you on the faith of a certain scheme of yours being duly carried out; it is therefore necessary that the leading features of that scheme should be reduced to writing, in order that there may be no misunderstanding between the givers and receivers of these donations as to the objects to which they are devoted. The signatures of the Companions are a feature of your published scheme, and in addition will be useful to show who are the acknowledged Companions having a direct interest in it-the right to elect and control the action of the Master, elect Trustees, etc., etc.; and the signatures will be the evidence of the deliberate submission of the Companions to be bound by the rules to which they subscribe their names.

"But all this will not make the St. George's Company other than a voluntary association of persons which the law will not recognize as a corporation.

The Companions of St. George will be capable of holding land, but not as the St. George's Company,-that is, not as a corporation. Land must be held by or for them as individuals. You may have a piece of land conveyed to, say two hundred Companions; naming each of them; but for the sake of convenience you would have it conveyed to two or three who should hold it upon trust for the Companions generally.

"You can only obtain the countenance and supervision of the law for your Company on certain conditions, and when you came to us we were careful to explain this to you. You at once told us the conditions would not do for your Company, therefore we have had to do the best we could for you, treating your Company as an association without the countenance and supervision of the law.

"Forgive us for quoting from a letter of yours to us of the 27th May, 1875. Mr. Barber's notion is the popular one of a Mob of Directors.

But St. George's Company must have only one Master. They may dismiss him at their pleasure, but they must not bother him. I am going to draw up a form myself, and submit it to Mr. Barber for criticism and completion.' We think you may rest satisfied with matters as they are. We remain, dear Sir,

"John Ruskin, Esq.

..

Yours very truly,

"TARRANT & MACKRELL.

a and b. The first of these bills is for a sealskin jacket; the second for a gold and pearl frame to a miniature. Respecting my need for these articles, I have more to say when my lecture on Jewels can be got published; it is fine weather just now, and I can't see to it.

c. In 1871, in one of my walks at Abingdon, see Fors, Letters IV. and VI.,) I saw some ragged children playing by the roadside on the bank of a ditch, and gathering what buttercups they could find. Watching them a little while, I at last asked what they were doing. This is my garden,' answered a little girl about nine years old. 'Well, but gardens ought to be of use; this is only full of buttercups. Why don't you plant some strawberries in it?' 'I have none to plant.' 'If you had a little garden of your own, and some to plant, would you take care of them?' That I would:' Thereupon I told her to come and ask for me at the Crown and Thistle, and with my good landlady, Mrs. Wonnacott's help, rented a tiny piece of ground for her. Her father and mother have since died; and her brothers and sisters (four, in all,) are in the Union, at Abingdon. I did not like to let this child go there too; so I've sent her to learn shepherding at a kindly shepherd's; close to Arundel, on the farm of the friend whose son (with perhaps a little help from his sister) took me out foxhunting; and examined the snail.

shells for me. This ten pounds is for her board, etc., till she can be made useful.

d. I had settled my servant Crawley, with his wife and his three children, in a good house here at my gate. He spent his savings in furnishing it, in a much more costly manner than I thought quite proper; but that, (as I then supposed,) was his affair, more than mine. His wife died last year and now both he and I think he will be more useful to me at Oxford than Coniston. So I send him to Oxford,-but have to pay him for his house-furniture, which is very provoking and tiresome, and the kind of expense one does not calculate on. The curious troublesomeness of Fors to me in all business matters has always been one of the most grotesque conditions of my life. The names of Warren and Jones appear for the last time in my accounts, for I have had to give up my tea-shop, owing to the (too surely mortal) illness of my active old servant, Harriet Tovey,-a great grief to me, no less than an utter stop to my plans in London.

III. I somewhat regret, for my friend's sake, that he desires me to print the subjoined letter in its entirety, if at all. I must print his answer to my question about Usury, for which I am heartily grateful to him, for reference in next Fors; and can only therefore do as he bids me with the rest, which he has written more hastily than is his habit. What answer it seems to me to need will be found in the attached notes.

"Dear Mr. Ruskin,-It did not need your kind letters by the post to assure me that the rebuke pronounced on me by Fors in June was meant in the most friendly spirit-for my good and that of all men. Fors set me thinking, and, as you urged me to say what I thought, I began to write you a letter, partly to show that I am not so repulsive a person as you paint, (a) or at least that it is not the fault of Comte if I am; partly to show that, whilst agreeing with you very much about modern life, I find other reasons for trusting that the world as a whole improves. I owe you, and the age owes you, profound gratitude for much noble teaching; and it is very sad to me to find you reviling (b) other teachers to whom we owe much, and who know a thousand things about which you have told us nothing. And indiscriminate abuse of all that the human race has now become, wounds my ear as if I heard one cursing our own fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters. If you believe that the entire system of modern life is corrupted with the ghastliest forms of injustice and untruth,' I wonder that you believe in God, or any future, in effort at all, or in anything but despair. (c)

"But my letter to you grew at last to such a length that I must find for it another place, and you or any reader of Fors who may take the trouble to look, may see what I wish to put to you in the Fortnightly Review. I wanted especially to point out that the impression you have conveyed about Comte and his teaching is almost exactly the contrary of the truth. You speak as if Comte were a physiologist, (d) mostly occupied with frogs and lice, whereas he is mostly occupied with VOL. III.-17