Of course the idea of regulating dress generally will be looked upon by the existing British public as ridiculous. But it has become ridiculous because masters and mistresses attempt it solely for their own pride. Even with that entirely. selfish end, the natural instinct of human creatures for obedience, when in any wholesome relations with their superiors, has enabled the masters to powder their coachmen's wigs, and polish their footmen's legs with silk stockings, and the mistresses to limit their lady's maids, when in attendance, to certain styles of cap.

ment.

Now as the dress regulations of the St. George's Company will be quite as much for the pride of the maid as the mistress, and of the man as the master, I have no fear but they will be found acceptable, and require no strictness of enforceThe children of peasants, though able to maintain their own families, will be required to be as clean as if they were charity-boys or girls; nobody will be allowed to wear the cast clothes of other people, to sell or pawn their own, or to appear on duty, agricultural or whatever other it may be, in rags, any more than the Horse Guards or the Queen's dairymaids are now; also on certain occasions, and within such limits as are needful for good fellowship, they will be urged to as much various splendour as they can contrive. The wealth of the peasant women will be chiefly in hereditary golden ornaments of the finest workmanship; and in jewellery of uncut gems,-agates only, or other stones of magnitude, being allowed to be cut, and gems of large size, which are worth the pains, for their beauty; but these will be chiefly used in decorative architecture or furniture, not in dress. The dress of the officers of the company will be on all occasions plainer than that of its peasants; but hereditary nobles will retain all the insignia of their rank, the one only condition of change required on their entering the St. George's Company being the use of uncut jewels, and therefore-seldom of diamonds.*

I never saw a rough diamond worth setting, until the Bishop of Natal gave me a sharply crystallized one from the African fields. Perhaps a star or two of cut ones may be permitted to the house-mistresses on great occasions.

The next main staple of the Company's store will be its literature.

A chosen series of classical books will be placed in every village library, in number of copies enough to supply all readers; these classics will be perfectly printed and perfectly bound, and all in one size of volume, unless where engravings need larger space: besides these village libraries, there will be a museum in every district, containing all good ancient books obtainable: gradually, as the design expands itself, and as time passes on, absorbing, by gift, or purchase, the contents of private libraries, and connecting themselves with similarly expanding museums of natural history. In all schools, the books necessary for their work will be given to the pupils; and one of their earliest lessons will be the keeping them clean and orderly.

By ordering of Fors, I went only this last month to see the school in which Wordsworth was educated. It remains, as it was then, a school for peasant lads only; and the doors of its little library, therefore, hang loose on their decayed hinges; and one side of the schoolroom is utterly dark-the window on that side having been long ago walled up, either 'because of the window-tax, or perhaps it had got broken,' suggested the guardian of the place.

Now it is true that this state of things cannot last long; but the cure will be worse than the disease. A fit of reactionary vanity and folly is sure to seize the village authorities; that old schoolroom, with its sacred associations, will be swept from the hillside, and a grand piece of Birmingham Gothic put up, with a master from Kensington, and enforced weekly competitive examination in Sanscrit, and the Binomial Theorem.

All that the school wants is, hinges to its library doors as good as every shop in the street has to its shutters; the window knocked through again where it was originally; the books whose bindings are worn out, rebound, and a few given (in addition to those on the subjects of arithmetic and grammar), which the boys may rather ask leave to read, than take opportunity to throw into corners.

But the ten or twenty pounds needed for this simple ref ormation could, I suppose, at present, by no persuasion nor argument be extracted from the united pockets of the gentlemen of the neighbourhood. Meantime, while the library doors flap useless on their hinges, the old country churchyard is grim with parallelograms of iron palisade, enforced partly to get some sacred market for the wares of the rich ironmongers who are buying up the country; and partly to protect their valuable carcases in their putrifying pride. Of such iron stores the men of St. George's Company, dead, will need none, and living, permit none. But they will strictly enforce the proper complement of hinges to their school-library doors.

The resuscitation of the, at present extinct, art of writing being insisted upon in the school exercises of the higher classes, the libraries will be gradually enriched with manuscripts of extreme preciousness. A well-written book is as much pleasanter and more beautiful than a printed one as a picture is than an engraving; and there are many forms of the art of illumination which were only in their infancy at the time when the wooden blocks of Germany abolished the art of scripture, and of which the revival will be a necessary result of a proper study of natural history.

In next Fors, I shall occupy myself wholly with the subject of our Art education and property; and in that for December, I hope to publish the legal form of our constitution revised and complete. The terminal clauses respecting the Companions' right of possession in the lands will be found modified, or in great part omitted, in the recast deed; but I am neither careful nor fearful respecting the terms of this instrument, which is to be regarded merely as a mechanical means of presently getting to work and having land legally secured to us. The ultimate success or failure of the design will not in the least depend on the terms of our constitution, but on the quantity of living honesty and pity which can be found, to be constituted. If there is not material enough out of which to choose Companions, or energy enough in the Companions chosen to fill the chain

mail of all terms and forms with living power, the scheme will be choked by its first practical difficulties; and it matters little what becomes of the very small property its promoters are ever likely to handle. If, on the contrary, as I believe, there be yet honesty and sense enough left in England to nourish the effort, from its narrow source there will soon develop itself a vast Policy, of which neither I nor any one else can foresee the issue, far less verbally or legally limit it; but in which, broadly, by the carrying out of the primally accepted laws of Obedience and Economy, the Master and Marshals will become the Ministry of the State, answerable for the employment of its revenues, for its relations with external powers, and for such change of its laws as from time to time may be found needful: the Landlords will be, the resident administrators of its lands, and immediate directors of all labour,-its captains in war, and magistrates in peace: the tenants will constitute its agricultural and military force, having such domestic and acquisitive independence as may be consistent with patriotic. and kindly fellowship: and the artists, schoolmen, tradesmen, and inferior labourers, will form a body of honourably paid retainers, undisturbed in their duty by any chance or care relating to their means of subsistence.

NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE.

Mem. for Professor Ruskin.

The following is taken from the Edinburgh Courant of 2nd inst.:"The Nautical Magazine leads off with a bold and original article, the second of a series, on the somewhat startling subject of The Commercial Value of Human Life,' in which it states that human life has its commercial value, and that those who bring forward its sacredness as a plea for protective legislation of any and every kind are assuming not only a false position, but a position that is likely to work a serious injury upon the country at large.' An elaborate discussion of 'The Plimsoll Protest,' and a description of the Inman Line' of steamers, with the usual technical matter, make up an unusually interesting number."

"What can this mean? Does it point to something still more brutal than the carnivorous teeth theory?

"Submitted, with much respect, to Mr. Ruskin, for the Notes and Correspondence in Fors-if deemed admissible. "4th September, 1875.

J. M."

A peculiarly sad instance of death from lead-poisoning was investigated this week before Dr. Hardwicke, at an inquest held in London. The deceased, Mary Ann Wilson, only three weeks ago went to work at a white-lead factory. After being there two or three days she felt the effects of lead-poisoning, which turned her lips blue. Subsequently the neighbours found her lying on the floor in convulsions, and in a dying state; and the next day she died from congestion of the brain, and disease of the chest organs, consequent on the evil effects of her employment. The coroner recommended that persons who followed this employment should drink diluted sulphuric acid, to counteract the action of the poison. - Birmingham Daily Post, Sept. 2, 1875.

Yes, certainly. It points to teeth which shall have no meat to eat, but only the lead of coffins, and to tongues which shall have no water to drink, but only the burnt sulphur of hell. See, for example, succeeding article.