his pipe, as he wended towards looking after his flock; and seeing the sleeper on his stone pillow, the thoughtless Czech mischievously blew louder.' Adalbert awoke, and shrieked in his fury, 'Deafness on thee, man cruel to the human sense of hearing!'-or words to that effect. The curse was punctually fulfilled, and the fellow was deaf for the rest of his life. What a pity,' said Mr. Ruskin, that you have no Bishop Adalbert in Oxford! You think yourselves very musical, with your twiddlings and fiddlings of organs after service, but you allow "that beastly hooter" to wake me every morning, and so to make life among you intolerable in these days.""

The letter from Francesca referred to above will be found in Fors Clavigers, Letter 96 (Vol. XXIX. p. 526). The studies (by Signor Alessandri) from the Paradise are at Sheffield (Vol. XXX. p. 199). For other references to the Giorgione, see above, p. 407; Vol. XI. p. 240 n.; and Vol. XXXII. p. 307 m. For the passage from Carlyle, see Friedrich, Book ii. ch. ii.]

LECTURE V

PROTESTANTISM: THE PLEASURES OF TRUTH

(Delivered November 15 and 17, 1884)

[This lecture was not published by Ruskin. The following report of it (pp. 505-510) is mainly reprinted from the Pall Mall Gazette (and E. T. Cook's Studies in Ruskin, pp. 252-263)—“ mainly," because Ruskin's MS. notes have been found and are here substituted for parts of the first passages in the report.]

111. THE space of history in Christendom, represented by the changes in the temper of England which I propose to illustrate in this lecture, is not, as in the four previous ones, definable by reigns of Kings, because it takes place in different parts of England, Scotland, and Germany, at different times. I therefore can only define it by its character, calling it the Period of Protestantism, that is to say, the bearing witness for spiritual truth against either manifest spiritual falsehood, or the danger of falsehood; and the bearing witness for justice against manifest iniquity, or the danger of it, so fortifying the certainly known truths of religion against the fancies or fictions of past Priests, and securing the liberties-so calledof the subject against the cruelties or insolences of past Kings.

112. These two Protests are absolutely distinct, and merely by chance coincident.

The first Protest, for the Truth of Religion, is in all countries that properly termed the Reformation.

The second Protest, that for the Rights of the Subject, is that properly called and known in all countries as the Revolution.

The Reformation means in the sum of it-John Knox; the Revolution, John Hampden.1

John Knox says, I will not be cheated in religion. John Hampden, I will not be taxed in pocket. It indeed happens continually that the Protestant is fighting at once against lies and taxation, and then he becomes a Protestant to the second power, just as it happens also that a Catholic may be fighting at once for lies and taxation, and then he is a Catholic to the second power. But the quarrels are totally distinct always. The Religion of Jeanie Deans against that of Catherine Seyton means the

1 [In the report, "John Knox, or if you will, Luther; but I like Knox better."] 2 [The first draft of the MS. has "a Protestant squared" (instead of "to the second power"), and this must have been the word used by Ruskin, which appears as "a Protestant squire" in the report.]

3 [For other references to Jeanie Deans, see above, p. 488; to Catherine Seyton (Abbot), Fiction, Fair and Foul, § 109 (Vol. XXXIV.).]

Reformation; the Action of Major Bridgenorth against Peveril of the Peak means the Revolution. The Reformers and Revolutionists think they have at present got it all their own way. But we Catholics-I call myself one for simplicity's sake, being on their side-believe that a day will yet come when we shall again see visions of things that are not as though they were, and be able, with Edward the Confessor, to tax the whole Kingdom at a blow one tenth of its property 2 to build a Church with a weathercock on the top of it, emergent into the sky from the filth of London.

113. Now all the beauty of Protestantism you will find embodied by two great masters of historical symbol: namely, by Scott in the character of Jeanie Deans, standing for the truth, against far more than her own life, against her sister's, and in Continental literature by Gotthelf in the character of Freneli in Ulric the Farmer,3 compelling against her husband's avarice the restitution of the money unjustly possessed by him. All the beauty of Protestantism is in these, and I leave you to study it in them. My intention to-day is to show you the limits of Protestantism, and the narrowness of the truth it possesses as compared with the infinitude and beauty of the Spectral pleasures of Catholicism.

[Here Ruskin's MS. breaks off with "So much for plan-the execution only as I have time." Then follow a few notes for the remainder of the lecture; from this point, therefore, the report is used.]

114. Leaving the beauty of Protestantism, the pleasures of truth, to the description of them in these two novels, Mr. Ruskin himself turned to the other side of the question, and proposed to show rather the narrowness of its rigid truth in comparison with the beauty of the spectral phenomena in which Catholicism delights. For this purpose he had brought with him two pictures-one by Turner, the other a copy from Carpaccio. The Turner was a large water-colour drawing, measuring somewhere about 20 inches by 15 inches, in his early or brown period, of a stream and a grove. "There," said Mr. Ruskin, pointing to it, "is a spectral grove for you, the very edwλov of a grove. There never was such a grove or such a stream. You may photograph every grove in the world, and never will you get so ghostly a one as this. I cannot tell you where it is; I can only swear to you that it never existed anywhere except in Turner's head. It is the very best Turner drawing I ever saw of this heroic period, the period in which he painted the 'Garden of the Hesperides' and 'Apollo Killing the Python.' I picked it up by pure chance, the other day, in

1

[The report has :

4

"I refer to Scott, now and always, for historical illustration, because he is far and away the best writer of history we have. Our only historians (ordinarily so called) are Carlyle, Froude, and Helps, but none of them can see all round a thing as Scott does. Froude does not even know whether he is a Catholic or a Protestant; Carlyle is first the one, and then the other; while Helps is deficient because he never understands Catholicism at all."

Compare § 124 (p. 512).]

[See Stanley's Memorials of Westminster Abbey, p. 22.]

The continuation of Ulric the Farm Servant: see Vol. XXXII. p. xxxv.] 4 [Nos. 477 and 488 in the National Gallery: see Vol. XIII. pp. 113, 122.]

the shop of my friend Mr. Sewening, of Duke Street, St. James's, to whose excellent judgment, by the way, I now refer any pictures which are sent to me to verify. He thought it might be a Turner, and asked me £40 for it. I was sure it was, and gave him 50 guineas, and I now present it to your gallery at Oxford, to be an idol to you, I hope, for evermore.'

one.

"2

115. "And here," added Mr. Ruskin, turning to the other picture, "is a Spectral Girl-an idol of a girl-never was such a girl. Ask the sweetest you can find to your college gardens, show your Phyllis the "Dream of St. Ursula," brightest flowers qua crines religata fulget, she will not look like this "4 This was a copy of the head in Carpaccio's the picture of which Mr. Ruskin has written so much in Fors Clavigera and his Venetian guide-books,5 and which was largely referred to, by the way, by Mr. Wingfield, in the recent revival of Romeo and Juliet at the "Never was twisted hair Lyceum, for the details of a Venetian interior. like hers-twisted, like that of all Venetian girls, in memory of the time when they first made their hair into ropes for the fugitive ships at Aquileia. You will never see such hair, nor such peace beneath it on the brow-Pax Vobiscum-the peace of heaven, of infancy, and of death. No one knows who she is or where she lived. She is Persephone at rest below the earth; she is Proserpine at play above the ground. She is Ursula, the gentlest yet the rudest of little bears; a type in that, perhaps, of the moss rose, or of the rose spinosissima, with its rough little buds. She is in England, in Cologne, in Venice, in Rome, in eternity, living everywhere, dying everywhere, the most intangible yet the most practical of all saints,-queen, for one thing, of female education, when once her legend is rightly understood. This sketch of her head is the best drawing I ever made. Carpaccio's picture is hung, like all good pictures, out of sight, seven feet above the ground; but the Venetian Academy had it taken down for me, and I traced every detail in it accurately to a hair's breadth. It took me a day's hard work to get that spray of silver hair loosening itself rightly from the coil, and twelve times over had I to try the mouth. And to-day, assuming Miss Shaw Lefevre's 8 indulgence, I present it to the girls of Somerville Hall. Perhaps the picture of a princess's room, of which it is a part, may teach the young ladies there too pretty to remember that they come to not to make their rooms Oxford to be uncomfortable and to suffer a little-to learn whatever can be learnt in Oxford, which is not much, and even to live as little Ursulas, in rough gardens, not on lawns made smooth for tennis.

116. "Such is the lesson of the legend of St. Ursula; and now," continued Mr. Ruskin, "I must tell you somewhat of a Doge of Venice who

1 [For a circular to this effect, issued by Ruskin at the time, see Vol. XXXIV.]
The drawing was, however, afterwards withdrawn, and is now at Brantwood:
For another reference to it, see below, p. 534.]

see Vol. XXX. p. 82 and n.

3 [Horace, Odes, iv. 11, 5: quoted also in Vol. XVIII. p. lxxii.]
[The report has here been slightly corrected from Ruskin's MS. notes.]

5 See the references given in Vol. XXIV. p. li.]

Mr. Lewis Wingfield, who assisted Irving in the scenery for this revival.]
[Now placed on the line: see Vol. XXIV. pp. liii.-liv.]

[Then Principal of Somerville Hall.]

to perfection, but never a pretty lady." Mr. Ruskin then passed on to the hypocritical Protestant, and produced as the type of him a sketch in black and white of a truly repulsive Mr. Stiggins with a concertina.

119. These two sketches were to illustrate the religious ghostly ideal. The heroic ideal was illustrated from poetry. The faith in human honour, taking the place of the faith in religion, which is the groundwork of this ideal, passes into the noble pride of the true knight; and it is when this noble pride passes into malignant pride that the Revolution comes. Of the true knight, the perfect type is Douglas in The Lady of the Lake." "No one reads Scott now," Mr. Ruskin here parenthetically remarked, "and I am going to send his poems and novels by the gross to classes in our elementary schools-not for prizes to be awarded by competition, but to be given to any boy or girl who is good and likes to read poetry. I should like to see the children draw lots for the books, and the one who wins not keep the book, but have the right of giving it away-a very subtle little moral lesson." 3 Mr. Ruskin then read some stanzas from the fifth canto of The Lady of the Lake, describing the burghers' sports before King James at Stirling, the classical passage in Scott corresponding to the games in Virgil. The passage is typical, too, of that association with his dog, his horse, and his falcon which is a mark of the knight, the clown being one who cannot keep these animals, or does not know how to use them. "It was very bad of Douglas, you may think, to knock a man down for the sake of a dog-a creature that we should think nothing of torturing nowadays for a month to find out the cause of a pimple on our own red noses.' Mr. Ruskin then went on to the stanzas which he wished all who cared to please him at once to learn by heart, the stanzas in which

and bade them hear

"With grief the noble Douglas saw
The commons rise against the law;"

"Ere yet for me

Ye break the bands of fealty.'

[Among Ruskin's MSS. of notes, etc., for The Pleasures of England there are, in addition to the Notes above mentioned and used (p. 505), two fragments headed "Protestantism." They were either first drafts for the lecture, or alternative beginnings of a revised lecture as he intended to print it. These fragments now follow (pp. 510-520).]

120. All the youth of England, but chiefly the students in her universities, have of late been sorely troubled by a series of Protestant Historians of the type of Thomas Babington Macaulay, who assume for the

[For this remark in connexion with Bewick, see Art of England, § 196 (above, p. 396).]

2

[Compare Præterita, i. § 7.]

A lesson used by Ruskin in his May Day Festival: see Vol. XXX, p. 38] [See stanzas 27, 28.]

[See above, p. 444.]