Seven years later, August 23, 1773, his journal holds this record:

Fitchett says that Wesley's voice must have far outranged Gladstone's. The people all stood closely packed together. At Bristol, after the audience had gone, one man measured the ground from Wesley's stand to the outskirts of the audience and found it to be 420 feet. For this reason his biographers say that Wesley preached more sermons, rode more miles, worked more hours, printed more books, and influenced more lives than any Englishman of his age, or any age. In 1773 he writes, "I am seventy-three years old, and far abler to preach than I was at twenty-three." Ten years later, the old man writes, "I have entered into the eighty-third year of my age. I am never tired, either with preaching, writing or travelling." And yet his emotions had tremendous intensity. He held thousands of miners in breathless silence for an hour and a half at a time. When he was ill, he exclaimed that if he could only go into the pulpit for two hours, and have a good sweat he thought he might recover. His secret of health was "a little more work." That was the tonic that cured worry and dissipated all clouds.

The moral courage of John Wesley is one of the wonderful spectacles of history. He lived in a brutal, cruel century. The crowds did not stop with jeers, oaths, vulgar epithets. It was a time when disputes were marked by all the savagery of a Spanish bull-fight. Wesley gives the details of these persecutions and without complaint. The period between June 1743, and February 1744, was particularly trying. An organized movement was carried on to intimidate the people from following Wesley. In several cities the Methodists were beaten and plundered by a rabble that broke into their houses, destroyed their victuals and goods, threatened their lives, and abused their women. During that winter Wesley received many blows, occasionally lost part of his clothing and was often covered with dirt. Meanwhile, enemies went on in advance to sow the towns with wild scandals, and stir up strife and storm, but Wesley went on building churches, developing schools, training lay preachers, organizing his people to take care of the class during his absence.

Wesley was a scholar, and prepared his sermons with the greatest care. He was also a flaming evangelist, and therefore was freed from what Robertson of Brighton describes as "the treadmill necessity of being always ready twice a week with earnest thoughts on solemn themes." Like Beecher, Wesley was not afraid of repeating his sermons. Like Wendell Phillips, he thought a lecturer was never in shape until he had one hundred nights of delivery back of him. Having heard a good man say, "Once in seven years I burn all my sermons," Wesley answered, "I cannot write a better sermon on the Good Steward than I did seven years ago; I cannot write a better on the Great Assize than I did twenty years ago; I cannot write a better on the use of money than I did thirty years ago."

As an orator, Wesley had many wonderful gifts. Not a large man, he was compact and strong, with nerves of silk and sinews of steel. In moments of impassioned speech he seemed to tower and take on the dimensions of a giant. His portraits show him to have been a man of fine figure, and beautiful face, with firm lips, mobile and sensitive, eyes bright and kindly. His complexion was very beautiful, fair, clear and somewhat ruddy. His forehead was broad, and beautifully curved. His voice was called the finest instrument of its kind in England, always saving that of Whitefield. During his college days he made a reputation as an accurate scholar, and a keen and skillful logician. All his life long he retained his analytic method, and was always working upon his sermons. He was a master of keen, arrowy sentences. His sermons abound in short paragraphs. His illustrations are simple, but so perfectly related to his thought, that they become a part of the argument itself. The chief characteristic of his style is its clearness. He excelled in the searching force of the application, and tested the result of each address by the number of hearers whom he had persuaded to change their lives at a given moment.

Little by little he developed a kingly authority. He carried the atmosphere of gentle supremacy. "How did you know that Theseus was a god?" The answer was: "I recognized Apollo by his speech; Mars by his thunderbolts; Minerva by her wisdom, but I knew that Theseus was a god, because whatsoever he did, whether he sat, or whether he walked or whatsoever he did, he conquered." John Wesley was a natural king, ruling men by the divine right of moral supremacy. One day a mob threatened to tear him in pieces. "I called," Wesley writes, "for a chair. Suddenly the winds were hushed, and all was calm and still; my heart was filled with love; my eyes with tears; my mouth with arguments. The leaders were amazed; they were ashamed; they were melted down; they devoured every word." At the end of the sermon the leader, who held a stone in his hand, with which to strike Wesley, seemed transformed. He turned to his followers and shouted, "If any man dares to lift a hand against Mr. Wesley he will have to reckon with me first!" Those who came to curse remained to pray.

Wesley has had scores of biographers, and every one of them seems to have emphasized the happiness and the serene cheerfulness of his daily life. If there ever lived a man who dwelt in constant sunshine, and maintained unbroken tranquillity and peace amidst endless storm and tumult, that man was John Wesley. He cared nothing about a great house, servants, equipage, money. It is said that the profits of his various publications were about $150,000, but he gave this money away as fast as it came in. He discovered the simple life long before Pastor Wagner. He ate sparingly, cared nothing for rich foods or costly raiment. He loved the temperate zone, far removed alike from luxury and poverty. He never wrote a creed. In welcoming a member into his company he asked two questions, "Is thine heart right? If it be, give me thine hand. Dost thou love and serve God? It is enough. I give thee the right hand of fellowship." In that spirit, when members of other churches came to him he bade them keep their own creed if only "they did love and serve God, and desired to save souls."

And so his work spread into every land. Asbury, the great pioneer, rode his horse to and fro over the Alleghany Mountains, preaching in hundreds of settlements between the Atlantic Coast and the Mississippi River. Simpson, with his unrivalled eloquence, travelled from state to state for forty years, founding churches, charging class leaders, consecrating lay preachers, placing the torch in the hand of some gifted youth, and sending him out to light a thousand other tapers. Taylor made his way across India with its three hundred millions, and in every cannibal island in the South Seas and along the path through the jungles of Africa, went the followers of Wesley. It is a wonderful story. For the man who counted himself the friend of all the churches and the enemy of none "has liberalized, broadened and sweetened every Christian faith."

The year 1741 brought the beginning of Wesley's plan of world evangelization. He saw that the millions of the human race would never be reached by a handful of preachers. He tells us that it was as if a veil had fallen from his eyes, after which he saw clearly that Jesus used lay disciples, both men and women, for the spread of His life and teaching. Holding a candle in his hand, Wesley lighted another candle, and watched the flame leap from taper to taper. He organized each group of one hundred converts into a class and pledged them to come together in a meeting, when each disciple was to tell the story of what the living Christ had done for him. He saw that merchants advertised their cotton and their woollen goods; that manufacturers went everywhither telling other men the advantages of the new loom, or locomotive; and instead of having one minister to confess Christ before five hundred dumb hearers, Wesley conceived the idea of dedicating each of the five hundred hearers, not to dumbness but to full speech, and to send them forth, from house to house, and mine to mine, and school to school.

Scientists tell us that the Gulf Stream, made up of individual drops of water, each of which has been warmed by the tropic sun, bathes England and turns a land that is as far north as Labrador into a land of fruit and flowers. And from that hour, if other churches had one minister, to five hundred disciples, Wesley dedicated laymen and laywomen to the task of going forth into all the world to tell the story of the love of God to sinful men.

The movement he started is still advancing in the world. It was Wesley who gave the impulse to Wilberforce, the emancipator, to Howard, the prison reformer, to Livingstone, the missionary, to the Booths with their work for the submerged classes. Above any other man in modern times he made it plain to the miner, the peasant, and the criminal, that they must achieve eminence through penitence and obedience, love and self-sacrificing service. Having turned multitudes to righteousness, his name now shines like the brightness of the firmament, and will continue to shine like the stars for ever and ever.

John Wesley mastered another secret—he knew how to die gloriously. In his last hours, Moody, the evangelist, turned with smiles to a friend, and whispered, "They were all wrong. There is no valley, and no shadow." Wesley died with that memorable word upon his lips, "The best of all is, God is with us." He preached his last sermon on February 23, 1791. His last letter was addressed to Wilberforce, and was a protest against the horrors of slavery. A few weeks before, he had given the first five days of the new year to the task of walking through the streets of London, soliciting alms for the relief of the poor. In those days his appearance in the street was the signal for all passers-by to uncover. Men revered him as a noble saint. He died singing, in the spirit of serene happiness and outbreaking joy:

Great was the power of the soldier, Napoleon; wonderful the genius of his opponent Wellington, the victor; marvellous the influence of Pitt, with his vision of the expansion of England as a world power; but more wonderful, a thousand times, the influence of John Wesley, carried to his grave by six very poor men, but whose work is memorable, whose influence is immortal, and whose spirit is inshrined in the hearts of millions of his grateful followers.

VII
GARIBALDI
(1807–1882)

The Idol of the New Italy

Among the builders of the New Italy, history has made a large place for Mazzini, the agitator and author, and for Cavour, the statesman, but the common people have kept the first place in their heart for Garibaldi, the soldier, and hero. Mazzini was the John the Baptist of the movement, who descended upon the political ills and wrongs of his time, carrying a torch in one hand and a sword in the other. Cavour was the statesman of the movement, a most skillful diplomat, who organized political and moral forces against the foul wrongs found in the prisons of Naples and the palaces of Rome. But it was Garibaldi who captured the imagination of the Italian people, who turned mobs into regiments, overthrew the citadels of iniquity, and made possible the realization of the visions of Mazzini and the reforms of Cavour.

Unlike the other great men whose stories fill the pages of this little book, Garibaldi was not a man of universal genius; he wrote no enduring history nor philosophy, he created no body of laws. In terms of intellect his gifts were modest. No pamphlet, no great speech survives his death. He was one of the common people. But he was born with the gift of surrender, and he knew how to dedicate himself to a great cause. Early in his career Garibaldi allied himself with an unpopular movement, in the interests of the poor and the oppressed, and thereby opened the doors of hope to all men of modest gifts, who are ambitious to serve their fellows.

The career of this soldier, Garibaldi, forms one of the most dramatic and fascinating tales in history. It is a story so unique and unexplainable that many Italians speak of the miraculous note in it, the note of mystery. Garibaldi's mother was a remarkable woman, who believed that her son had a call from God to do a great piece of work, and she filled the soul of the child with the firm belief that he could not be killed by any sword or bullet or cannon-ball. This supreme conviction explains, in part, deliverances that his biographers tell us were "miraculous." With words of matchless simplicity, the apostle Paul tells us the number of times he was stoned and mobbed, flogged and imprisoned; but the perils of Garibaldi in the wilderness, in the city and the sea were scarcely less dramatic. In his boyhood his father was the captain of a sailing vessel, who owned and commanded his own ship and made the ports between Nice and Constantinople. At fifteen years of age the boy went to sea; learned to build a sailing-vessel, to rig the masts, to sail the boat against opposing winds, and to fight the pirates who were still occasionally found upon the seas. And he was barely twenty when, under the influence of Mazzini, he surrendered his soul to the spirit of Washington and Hamilton and dreamed the dream of a second republic. From that moment, when, heart and soul, he threw himself into the cause of liberty, his life was one long chapter of thrilling adventures and miraculous escapes.

His biography teems with striking incidents. Once, after enlisting on the side of the revolutionists, he was on a small vessel going up the La Plata River. Rounding a bend in the stream, Garibaldi's little boat was attacked by two large vessels, that opened fire, cut down the masts, carried away the sails, and covered the decks with killed and wounded. As captain of the boat, Garibaldi wore his red shirt, and so became the target of the gunners. When several of his men tried to drag him below, he answered, "I can't be killed!" A few minutes later a shot struck his neck and cut a part of the jugular vein. Now, many surgeons say that if the jugular vein be severed it cannot be healed, because it is always throbbing and throbbing with each pulse beat, just as it is said that a shot through the heart is fatal. A little later the boat struck a sandbar, and the battle swept to another part of the river. The physician told Garibaldi that his wound was fatal, and asked what word he wished to send home. Garibaldi answered, "Tell my mother I shall live to be seventy-six."

On another occasion, his place of hiding was surrounded by a company of soldiers, who opened fire upon the house. Garibaldi awakened, flung open the door, took his sword in one hand and his dagger in the other—his ammunition was exhausted—and rushed forth against the enemy. From their ambush these enemies saw his red shirt. They had heard that no bullet could kill him, and armed as they were, they fled in every direction, across fields and into the woods.

At the very outset of his career, Garibaldi's life was threatened by the State and a price put upon his head. Under the influence of Mazzini, he had joined a secret society and been made acquainted with the plans for a revolution in Italy. The plot was betrayed by a spy, and in the disguise of a peasant trying to buy sheep, Garibaldi was forced to flee across the line into France. Once on French territory, he abandoned caution and entered a village inn. "I must have something to eat," he told the landlord, "I am starving." His host was suspicious and asked Garibaldi if he was not a fugitive, to which the youth replied with open truthfulness, "Yes, I am an Italian! I fled from soldiers who would have shot or hung me, had they been quick enough." . . . "What have you done?" asked the landlord. Garibaldi answered: "I met Mazzini. He told me about the republic in the United States. He said that the American colonists threw off the yoke of a tyrant and made a constitution for themselves, and asked whether the people of Italy could not break their own fetters. I answered that Italy should become a republic."

After that bold statement, the landlord signalled to one of his men, who put his hand upon Garibaldi's shoulder, saying, "I am an officer of the French government. Under the treaty with Italy I am sworn to arrest all those accused of treason who flee across the frontier." . . . "Very well," said Garibaldi. "And now that is settled, give me something to eat!"

When the servant asked Garibaldi whether he had money for his dinner, the youth pulled out his purse. "Since I am going to be either hung or shot, I may as well have one good meal before I die!" He then asked two or three strangers who were in the inn to join him in his last dinner, and extended that invitation until there were fifteen or twenty about the table, singing, telling stories, and relating incidents of adventure. When Garibaldi saw that the time had come for his arrest, since a group of soldiers had appeared at the door, he arose, and looking out upon his new friends, said, "Well, the landlord, who is an officer of the government, has sent for these soldiers to arrest me. It seems I have committed treason. I wanted to have a republic in Italy. So I joined Mazzini's society." One by one the inmates of the inn rose. One looked toward the landlord and said, "Is this true? Are you going to imprison and shoot this man? Why, this Garibaldi is a great man, and a good man; I never saw him before to-night, but before you arrest him you will have to arrest me." Another shouted, "Before you shoot Garibaldi, you will have to shoot me!" A moment later, the whole company had joined to form a bodyguard around the brave young stranger. They lifted Garibaldi to their shoulders. They dared the officers to arrest him. They carried him out to the stable behind the inn, filled his pockets with copper and silver, and paid the driver to set him twenty miles beyond the frontier. Four of them rode with him as a guard to protect him. . . .

Condemned to death, he escaped to South America, where he plunged at once into the struggle for liberty there. The story of the happiness and prosperity of the people of the United States under a free government had spread all over the Southern continent. Unfortunately there were still many men who believed in autocracy and in the absolutism of an hereditary despot. Garibaldi at once took sides. He fought on the sea. He began as a private sailor, but soon became commander of the fleet. He fought on the land. He began as a private soldier, but he ended as a general. Once he was captured and beaten within an inch of his life. Once he was taken from a prison and hung by his hands from a beam. During those two hours, he tells us, he suffered the anguish of a hundred deaths.

Then came the dramatic meeting with Anita. One of his soldiers told Garibaldi about the beauty, bravery and self-sacrifice of a daughter of a certain rich man. Hearing that this girl, Anita, had gone to visit a friend in the village, Garibaldi, with several of his men, rode to the little store. Drawing rein before the door of the shop, he sent one of his men into the store to buy some trifle. In the upper window stood Anita. Garibaldi turned his horse and rode close to the door. Looking up, he met the eyes of Anita, and for a full minute, without saying a word, the two looked each into the soul of the other. Suddenly Garibaldi said, "Señorita! I have never seen you before. I do not know your name, but you belong to me! Sooner or later you will come to me." Anita arose. She leaned out of the window. In a low voice she said, "Shall I come now?" And Garibaldi answered, "I will ride up the street and return within a moment. Be ready at this spot." There was just time for Anita to grasp a cloak and a few articles of clothing. A moment later, down the street on a gallop came Garibaldi, followed by his soldiers. Anita was standing on the stone step. As Garibaldi dashed by, he put out his right arm, swept her against his horse and up to the front of the saddle and dashed away for a ten mile gallop to a little church whose frightened priest refused to perform the marriage ceremony without publishing the banns for the next two Sundays. Anita's father was of the other political party and the soldier knew that the consent would never be given. Garibaldi laid two revolvers upon the altar and said quietly, "Father, the service will proceed immediately."

So they were married. Anita was well educated as well as brave and very beautiful. In a fit of anger and hate, her father organized a group of conspirators who were to receive a rich reward for killing Garibaldi. It was Anita who discovered the plot and fired the pistol that led the conspirators to believe that they had been discovered. Later, a drunken mob discovered that she was alone in a little house. The leader of the despot organized a group at midnight, all of them crazed with liquor. They set fire to the house and then rushed in, only to find that Garibaldi had not yet returned home. And when these drunken brigands had beaten Anita down and knocked her into unconsciousness Garibaldi returned unarmed save for his dagger. One by one he took these eight men who were standing about the unconscious girl, and one by one they went down before him.

His life in South America, extending over a period of fourteen years, was one long struggle against tyranny and oppression. Fighting first in the revolt against Brazil, then joining the patriots of Uruguay, he formed the Italian Legion, and in the spring of 1846 won the battles of Cerro and Sant'Antonio, assuring the freedom of Uruguay. Refusing all honours and recompense he returned to Italy, having heard of the incipient struggle for liberty at home. He landed at Nice in 1848 and, forming a volunteer army of 3,000, plunged at once into the struggle against the French. His troops were largely students, mere lads, many of them never before under fire, and the troops of the enemy included the legions of France, Austria and Spain. The climax of the struggle came with his wonderful retreat through central Italy toward Venice, pursued by four armies. Only his consummate generalship and the matchless loyalty of his men saved them all from annihilation. During this retreat, Garibaldi was accompanied by his wife, Anita, who had cut off her hair and mounted a horse, and who wore men's clothing to avoid observation. Realizing at length that the struggle was hopeless, Garibaldi issued an order, releasing his soldiers, and bidding them return to their homes. And leaving Anita hidden at the house of a friend, he himself took refuge in a cave in the hills, after the fashion of David the Fugitive and Robert Bruce—a hiding-place from which he continued to send forth his military orders.

Among the many wonder tales of this period, many of which are traditional and perhaps untrustworthy, there is one that bears the stamp of reality. One night Garibaldi was asleep in the cave. A faithful soldier was on guard. Suddenly the soldier saw a torch waving in the blackness of the valley below. The torch was spelling a signal, but the guard was ignorant of its significance. He hurried into the cave and wakened his leader. Garibaldi knew the signal—it told of the approaching death of Anita. With instant decision, he started down the mountainside; made his way to the house of a peasant, and, despatching a man in advance, found and mounted a horse for the long ride to the village where Anita lay dying. Ahead of him, the galloping rider warned the countryside, shouting that Garibaldi was coming and commanding every man to go into his house and close the door, that no man might see the face of the fugitive, for whose person a reward had long been offered. The hurrying hero changed horses, and when the day was nearly done, rode into the village to the house where his beloved wife lay dying. In the night, wrestling with the death angel, Garibaldi was defeated, and left desolate. When the morning came, he wrapped Anita's body in the flag of the new republic, and buried her in the corner of the garden. That night he rode back to his handful of fugitives, hidden in a defile of the mountains.

It was about the year 1850 that, once more a fugitive, Garibaldi sailed for America, and coming to New York, settled as a chandler on Staten Island. He had a brother living in New York, and the brother had never tired of writing letters about the wonderful opportunities in the United States. It was an era of candles. Kerosene oil was but little used, while gas and electricity were unknown. As a cattle drover in the Argentine Republic, Garibaldi had seen the great herds on the ranches, the tanneries filled with hides, the great stores of tallow in the warehouses. He entered into an agreement with a friend in South America to keep him supplied with tallow, and over at St. George he started his little candle factory. Later, he became a trading skipper and in 1854 was able to return to Italy with funds sufficient to purchase the tiny island of Caprera, and build the house which thenceforth was to be his home.

Throughout the four years in America and on the sea, he had never once ceased to dream his dream of liberty and a republic to be set up in Italy. In 1851, while he was living here, Louis Kossuth, the Hungarian patriot, had landed in New York and received an ovation. While here, Kossuth had perfected the constitution for the republic he proposed to set up in Hungary, and had announced his plans for the overthrow of the royal family, and the enthronement of a president. Garibaldi kept in touch with every such new movement. He read the daily papers of New York; met the political leaders of the city and everywhere heard discussions as to Washington and Franklin, Hamilton and Webster. The fire burned ever more fiercely in his heart. He wrote a friend saying: "Whenever they are ready, the people of Italy can shake off the old tyranny that has come down from the middle ages, just as a peasant in the forest shakes the fallen leaves from his coat."

And during his trading days, while on a voyage to Hong Kong, he dreamed another dream, of a different kind. Half-way across the ocean, he dreamed that he saw his mother kneeling at the foot of a white cross. He fell upon his knees beside it and heard her say: "Fight only for liberty, my son! Fight only for liberty!" It was his birthday, the fifth of May. Months later, he discovered that on that very night his mother had passed away in the little house in Nice. From that hour he dedicated the remainder of his life to the liberation of his native land.

One day, while he was following the plow on his little island farm near the coast of Sardinia, a messenger brought word that an Austrian regiment had landed on the shore of Sardinia and seized the island for Austria. Once more, Garibaldi plunged into the struggle. For a year he fought at the head of Italian volunteers under Victor Emmanuel, against the Austrians, liberating the Alpine territory as far as the frontier of Tyrol. Then, in retirement at Genoa, came another summons—a letter telling the story of the sufferings of the liberal leaders in Naples. King Francis, the tyrant of Naples, had been arresting by wholesale men suspected of sympathy with free institutions. The despot filled the dungeons, crowded the upper cells, packed the corridors between the rows of cells, until there was not room for men even to lie down upon the floor. Without any warning whatsoever, the soldiers would appear at the home of some citizen. Without any hearing, much less a trial, men were sent to the royal prison and jammed into corridors already filled to suffocation with murderers, brigands, thieves, forgers. The under-cells dripped with filth. There was no sanitation. Vermin, rats, every form of vice and uncleanliness were there. In the stifling heat some smothered to death.

Gladstone was at this time in Italy. One day he reached Naples, en route for Pompeii and Herculaneum. Calling upon the British Consul, he was told about these prisons, that were death-traps. He hurried back to London. He used his official position as a statesman under Queen Victoria to address a letter to the civilized peoples of the world. A wave of indignation and horror swept over the capitals of Europe. The hour had struck for Italy. Garibaldi headed a tiny army and started south to the attack. Naples was besieged. After weeks of fighting, and oft wounded, one day with clothes covered with blood he addressed a handful of citizens: "Soldiers, what I have to offer you is this—hunger, thirst, cold, heat, no pay, no barracks, no rations, frequent alarms, forced marches, charges at the point of the bayonet. Whoever loves honour and fatherland, follow me!" Ah, Garibaldi knew that there is a latent instinct of heroism in every human heart. Why are there few boys going into the ministry to-day? Because the task has become too easy. Here are the young fisherman, John; the young physician, Luke; the young rabbi, Paul;—offer them stones, scourges, blows, fagot-fires, martyrdom, and they will leap into the breach. After that appeal of Garibaldi four thousand men followed their leader to battle. Soon the bloody tyrant of Naples was driven from his city.

Then came the long campaigns in the south, with Garibaldi's entrance into the city of Palermo; the struggle in Sicily, the siege of the fortress at Massina, the triumphal march through Calabria, his victory at Naples, culminating with that great day, September 7th, 1860, when he handed over a fleet and an army to Victor Emmanuel. Having endured every form of peril, hunger, and cold, with loss of blood through many wounds, the citizens of Naples, after the expulsion of their recreant King, turned with one heart and offered him the throne for his leverage, and the palace for his home. But Garibaldi refused the throne, because he believed in the republic, and no bribe nor blandishment could swerve him a hair's breadth from his conviction that the fairest, stablest form of government was self-government.

On the day of his entrance, the people went out and carried him into the city upon their shoulders. All along the central street he was welcomed with the words, "Secundo Washington"—"Second Washington." For what Lincoln did for the three million slaves, and what Washington did for the three million colonists, Garibaldi had wrought for three million downtrodden Italian peasants. But having freed the people from cruel oppression, he sent for Victor Emmanuel, the ruler who had insulted him, and said, looking toward his army and the captains of his navy, "I have not been trained for civil government! I therefore abdicate my position as commander-in-chief of the army and navy, and I turn these instruments of defense and offense over to you." History holds the story of no sublimer act of disinterested patriotism. That deed insured a united Italy, the chief aim of Garibaldi's life.

From that hour his fame, his place in the history of Italy were fully established. During the next few years many honours and offices were offered Garibaldi, all of which he consistently declined. He was the last hero of the heroic age of the new Italy, the most popular, the most legendary, in the sense that he resembled a hero of old romance. A faithful soldier, who might have been a king; a hero always a hero, even to his own servants and amid sordid circumstances; unspoiled by the admiration of the world and the adulation of his friends; a warrior with hands unstained by plunder, cruelty or the useless shedding of blood, he remained to the end one of the few characters for whom neither wealth nor rank ever offered temptation. Michelet, the French historian, wrote of him, "There is one hero in all Europe—one! I do not know a second. All his life is a romance; and since he had the greatest reasons for hatred to France, who had stolen his Nice, caused him to be fired upon at Aspromonte, fought against him at Mentana, you guess that it was this man who flew (during the Franco-German War) to immolate himself for France. And how modestly, withal! Nothing mattered it to him that he was placed in obscure posts quite unworthy of him. Grand man, my Garibaldi! My single hero! Always loftier than fortune! How sublimely does his memory rise and swell toward the future!"

In retrospect, strategists tell us that Garibaldi knew little and cared less about the usual military tactics, or the plans of organization and transport taught in military schools. His wonderful career, with its many and brilliant victories, is explained by the supreme influence which his person exercised. Knowing neither danger nor fear, rushing into the most perilous spots, his very daring fascinated and inspired his followers. "He had all the instincts of the lion; not merely the headlong courage, but the far nobler qualities of magnanimity, placability, self-denial. His impulses were all generous, his motives invariably upright, his conscience unerring." The most loving among great leaders, the least hating among great soldiers, he was devoid of all personal ambition, as he was devoid of all rancour and malice. He was one of the most picturesque leaders, one of the most dramatic figures in all history. "None could fail to admire or be inspired by the sight of him on the field of battle, as with clear, ringing silver voice, his lion-like face, his plain red shirt and grey trousers, he sat his horse with perfect ease and calm, guiding his soldiers by plunging into the thick of the enemy and trusting his troops to follow."

Garibaldi's moral courage was always the equal of his physical bravery. During the siege of Rome, when he was defending the city against the forces of Austria and of France, the enemy located the house from which he was directing the defense. Cannonball, smashing through the roof, carried away his flag; bullets aimed with unerring accuracy entered the windows, and buried themselves in the walls. While the others ran to the cellar, Garibaldi walked out the front door, stood on the steps, and calmly supervised the carrying to a place of safety of all the important military papers. That night the Roman leaders sent messengers to Garibaldi, and insisted upon surrender. At last Garibaldi exclaimed, "Is it not enough that I must fight our enemies? Has it come to this, that with equal strength I must oppose my friends?" And then, he lifted his broken sword, and exclaimed: "On my monument write these words, 'A man who never surrendered to the enemies of human freedom!'"

Where were the hidings of this man's power? History tells of no leader who was so idolized. For Garibaldi men braved martyrdom. For him, women endured starvation. Priests risked the anathema of their masters. Boys, wearing the red shirt, flung themselves upon the bayonets of Austria and France. Captured, they were tortured by the enemy, but died smiling rather than betray Garibaldi. There is a tradition not mentioned by his best biographer, that many Italians claim is absolutely true. Once when he was in hiding, he appeared at midnight in the public square of Naples. The city was completely controlled by the King, who had set a price upon Garibaldi's head. But many of the people were secret followers of Garibaldi, who wished to confer with one of his friends in the prison. Recognizing a policeman who was his friend, Garibaldi put his fingers upon his lips and drew his cloak the closer about his face. After a whispered word the soldier led Garibaldi to the entrance of the prison. Another whispered word and the great iron gate swung open. A second whispered conversation and the inner gate opened. Within, another guard stooped while Garibaldi whispered in his ear. A little later, out of a cell, came that captured friend of Garibaldi. The hero asked and obtained the information he desired. Putting his two fingers upon his lips, Garibaldi saluted, and was led to the inner gate. Having passed through he put those two fingers upon his lips, saluted, and was led to the outer gate. Putting his fingers upon his lips he saluted again, and with an officer who had become his guide, walked hurriedly to an alley, where he stepped into his carriage, where he saluted and disappeared in the darkness—whether cellar or attic no man knows unto this day. The following morning Garibaldi led his troops into battle. Now tell me, where is there in history of human heroism a chapter more thrilling than this story of Garibaldi?

The truism that men without fault are generally men without force, is well illustrated in the life of Garibaldi. It is the strongest, most adventurous, romantic and troublous career in history. There are many blots upon his scutcheon, just as there are many yellow spots upon the front columns of the Parthenon, and nothing is gained by calling the roll of faults rehearsed by his critics and enemies. "The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones." Remember the story of the farmer in Sardinia who came home at night, sick because he had lost a favourite lamb, and how the next morning Garibaldi returned with the little dumb creature wrapped in his blanket and lying upon his bosom. Remember, how at Palermo, Garibaldi came out of the battlefield unshaken, but at sight of the little orphans in the asylum crying for food the great soldier burst into tears. Even when they led him to the palace and called him "Your Excellency," he frowned and moved to the lighthouse, where, the idol of his people, he lived in a tiny room with no furniture but a couch and a stool. Once he was offered great riches if he would go out to China and lead a regiment and ship slaves to South America, but he answered that "Not all the wealth of the Indies could induce him to buy and sell human flesh." After his long campaigns and victories for the people of Uruguay the new government sent him a title deed to an enormous tract of land and thousands of heads of cattle, but he tore up the deeds because he had fought for liberty. In time of plague he became a nurse, in time of shipwreck he risked his life to save his comrades.

It is true that for some years, under the influence of two friends who were foreigners, he passed under the influence of their own materialism and doubt, and he tells us that from that hour it seemed as if the spirit of his mother and of Anita had both deserted him. During the last years of his life he became almost a hermit and seemed to be confused by the problems of the world in which he lived. But he had been starved, imprisoned, tortured, betrayed and shot down. The real Garibaldi speaks in this message that he addressed to the people of Italy:

"I am a Christian and I speak to Christians.

"I love and venerate the religion of Christ.

"Christ came into the world to deliver humanity from slavery.

"You who are here have the duty to educate the people.

"Educate them to be Christians.

"Education gives liberty.

"On a strong and wholesome education for the people depend the liberty and greatness of Italy!

"Viva Victor Emmanuel!

"Viva Italia!

"Viva Christianity!"

VIII
JOHN RUSKIN
(1819–1900)

And the Diffusion of the Beautiful

The genius of John Ruskin's message is in a single sentence: "Life without industry is guilt, and industry without art and education is brutality." He held that all the doing that makes commerce is born of the thinking that makes scholars, and that all the flying of looms and the whirling of spindles begins with the quiet thought of some scholar, hidden in a closet, or sequestered in a cloister. He never made the mistake of supposing that education would change a ten-cent boy into a thousand-dollar-a-year man, but he did know that there is some power in Nature that will transform a seed into a sheaf, an acorn into an oak, and that the truth will change a child into a sage, a statesman, a seer, a man with a message for his century.

Ruskin wrote many volumes to prove that wealth is not in raw material;—not in iron, not in wood, not in stone, not in cotton, not in wool. Wealth is largely in the intelligence put into the raw material. Pig-iron is worth twenty dollars a ton, but intelligence turns that ton of iron into a ton of tempered hair-springs, and it is worth perhaps ten thousand dollars a ton. The clay in Rodin's Thinker represents a value of a few francs, but the idea in the Thinker brought 150,000 francs. On the sixtieth anniversary of the coronation of Queen Victoria, an editor offered Rudyard Kipling $1,000 for a Commemoration poem. The paper, ink and the pen stand for a few pennies; all the rest of the $1,000 was for a trained intellect. The average income of a family in the United States to-day is not far from $2,000. That income could be carried up to $4,000 if our workers would only double the intelligence, efficiency and loyalty put into the raw material they handle!

The career of Edison illustrates the industrial value of one informed intellect to the nation. In 1910, business men in the United States had invested in the expired patents of Thomas Edison six billion seven hundred millions of dollars. These factories brought in an annual income of a billion and seventy millions of dollars. To-day, half-a-dozen Edisons, the one showing us how to burn the coal in the ground, the other taking nitrogen out of the air, another showing us how to transmute metals, another attacking the enemies of the cotton, the fruits and the grains, with a teacher who would show the parents of the country how successfully to assault intellectual and moral illiteracy, would easily double our annual income. What our country—what every country—needs is an invasion of knowledge and sound sense. Therefore Ruskin's message, "the first business of the nation is the manufacture of souls of a good quality."

During his lifetime John Ruskin wrote some forty volumes. Between the ages of twenty and thirty he wrote Modern Painters, dealing with the claims of cloud, sun, shower, wave, shrub and flower, land, sea, and sky upon man's intellectual and moral life. He held that the open-air world is man's best college and the forces of the winter and the summer his best teachers. From thirty to forty he wrote the Lectures on Architecture, and Stones of Venice, with many studies of the galleries, towers, and cathedrals of Florence and Rome. In these books his thought is that the soul of the people within determines the painting, architecture and civilization of the state without. From forty to fifty he wrote many books on the claim of the beautiful upon man's spiritual life, and insisted that those claims were binding not less upon the working people and the peasants in factory and field, than upon the scholar in his library and the artist in his studio.

From fifty to sixty he wrote his Fors Clavigera, his Time and Tide, Munera Pulveris, and Unto This Last, studies of the problems of wealth and poverty, of labour and capital. He tells us that men, to-day, are charmed with the glitter of gold and silver as young birds are charmed with the glitter of snakes' eyes; that the business man is divinely called to serve through property; that there is, however, such a thing as a despotism of wealth; that the property of some millionaires represents the breaking of the strength and the will of competitors and the paralysis of the forces of the people, so that what seems to be wealth, in verity is only "the gilded index of far-reaching ruin, a wreckers' handful of coin, gleaned from the beach to which he has beguiled an argosy; the camp follower's bundle of rags, unwrapped from the breasts of goodly soldiers dead, the purchase pieces of potter's fields, wherein shall be buried together the citizen and the stranger."

And then Ruskin bent himself to what he believed to be the real task of his life, the writing of a series of books on the problems of labour and capital, in the hope that he might save the State from trampled cornfields and from bloody streets. But just at the supreme moment in his career his health gave way, and he never completed his studies of the Robber King, the Rust Kings, the Moth King and the Hero Kings. John Ruskin died believing himself to be an unfulfilled prophecy, in that he was unable to complete these books for which he believed all his life had been one long preparation. But in reality he was a prophet who gave forth a message that is slowly transforming the institutions of mankind.

A full understanding of Ruskin's life-work begins with an outlook upon his contribution to modern social reform. Biographers often identify a great reform with one man's name, as if this man, single handed, had wrought the social transformation. Thus they speak of Howard as the reformer of prisons; of Shaftesbury as the author of the Poor Acts; of Cobden as the author of the Corn Laws; of Lincoln, as the emancipator of slaves; of Booth as the founder of the City Colony, the Home Colony, the Farm Colony. But strictly speaking, thousands of leaders of the movement for the abolition of slavery stood behind the forces of Wilberforce in England, and Lincoln in the United States. Not otherwise many biographers have claimed too much for the influence of Ruskin, certainly more than the master would have claimed for himself.

At the beginning of his career Ruskin started a movement to diffuse the beautiful in the life of the people. For centuries the beautiful had been concentrated in the temples of Athens, the palaces and galleries of Italy, the museums of Paris and London, in the manor houses of the landed gentry. Meanwhile the poor people of Athens, Venice and Florence lived in huts, wore leather garments, ate crusts, dwelt amid ugliness, squalor and filth. Ruskin dreamed a dream of the beautiful put into the life of the common people. He found that Sheffield, with its smoking chimneys and grimy streets, had been spoken of as the ugliest factory town in England. Therefore Ruskin went to Sheffield, hired a building, installed therein his paintings, etchings, and illuminated missals, and hired a few instructors to help him diffuse the beautiful in the daily life of the people. He brought in men who made the implements of the dining-room, and showed them how to make the knife, the fork, the spoon, the table linen, minister to the sentiment of taste and refinement. He brought in men who made wall-papers for the poor man's house, and showed the craftsmen how to make the colours soft and warm, delicate and beautiful. He interested himself in beautiful furniture. He wrought with William Morris for a more beautiful type of illustrations in books and magazines. He denounced the ugliness of the houses and clothing and bridges and railways. He insisted that women should have beautiful garments, the youth read beautiful books, the men ride in beautiful cars, the families live in beautiful little houses, the children play upon beautiful carpets and look upon walls that had one or two beautiful pictures. John Ruskin laboured, and others wrought with him, and now at last we have entered into the fruit of their labours. To-day the beautiful, once concentrated in temples, palaces, and cathedrals, is diffused in the life of the common people.

In the same fashion Ruskin started a movement among the working men for a diffusion of sound learning. The St. George Guild represents the first University Extension Course and the first Chautauqua system our world ever knew. More than fifty years ago he worked out his plan to carry the knowledge given to rich men's sons in their lecture halls and libraries to the working people, who were to carry on their studies in the evening after the day's labour was over. He laid out a course of studies for these working men, planned the organization of lecture centers, gave us the outline of the University Extension Course of lectures, induced many men in England to go from one working man's guild and club to another, and after Ruskin's health broke down, the men in the faculty of Oxford University took Ruskin's mother-idea, and developed it into the University Extension Course of lectures. Brought to our country that idea has spread through these lecture courses carried on in great halls in the winter, in tents and open-air assemblies in the summer.

We say much of our Social Settlement Work, and trace these thousands of settlements in the tenement-house region of great cities back to Arnold Toynbee's work, and that of Canon Barnett, in the East End of London. But we must remember that when Ruskin was lecturing in Oxford to some of the richest boys in Great Britain he told them that every boy who consumed more than he produced was a pauper and that the more the youth received from his ancestors and the State, the larger his debt to those who were less fortunate. He believed that every gifted boy should keep in touch, not only with his own class, but with all classes, and that every youth would do well to do some physical work every day. Ruskin and his students built a road outside of Oxford, and the foreman of the gang of students was young Arnold Toynbee. Toynbee admired and loved Ruskin, as a young pupil and disciple loves a noble teacher and a great master.

After his health broke down, Ruskin gave up his work in Whitechapel Road and urged Arnold Toynbee to give himself to the problems of the poor, and when Ruskin's health gave way completely, it was Toynbee who rewrote his lectures on labour and capital and gave them a new form in his Industrial Revolution in Great Britain. The time came when Arnold Toynbee broke down with overwork and brain fever, as his master had broken before him, and his friend Canon Barnett raised the money to make Toynbee Hall a permanent institution. But the seed of the Social Settlement movement was John Ruskin's brief career in the tenement region of the East End, and the first full fruit was in his disciple's Toynbee Hall and in Canon Barnett's noble work at St. Jude's. Little by little the Social Settlement Idea spread, until in the tenement regions of Manchester, Birmingham, New York, Boston, Chicago and San Francisco, gifted men and women of wealth, leisure and patrician position, began to give their lives to the neglected poor.

Not less striking, the influence of Ruskin upon the plans of General Booth. Long before the book called In Darkest England and the Way Out was published, Ruskin founded his coöperative printing press in a little colony outside of London. One of his biographers has told the story of Ruskin's plan to make the men and women in the poorhouses self-supporting, happy and useful. This biographer has never fully established the connection between that first coöperative colony of Ruskin, and Booth's plans for the City Colony, the Farm Colony and the Foreign Colony. But one thing is certain:—Ruskin had a pioneer mind. Instead of his chief interest being in mountains and clouds, in wave and flower, cathedrals, pictures, marbles, illuminated missals, the overmastering enthusiasm of his life was people, and his real message was a message of social reform. When long time has passed, Ruskin's fame will rest upon his work as a social reformer, a man who loved the poor and weak.

Not less significant, his views of education, that have leavened all modern schools whatsoever. Matthew Arnold defined culture as "a familiarity with the best that has ever been done in literature." Ruskin insisted that there were thousands of scholars living in their libraries, surrounded by books, who were perfectly familiar with the best that has ever been thought or done, but whose knowledge was all but worthless, because it was selfish. He looked upon the informed man as a sower, going forth to sow the seed of truth over the wide land. All selfish culture is like salt in a barrel; the salt has no power to save unless it is scattered. Selfish culture is like seed corn in the granary, important for a harvest. Under Ruskin's influence many of his friends gave an evening or two a week to lectures before his working men's clubs, his art groups, and his classes for the improvement of the handicrafts.

No modern author has made so much of vision, or tried so hard to teach people how to see. Many teachers think that education is stuffing the pocket of memory with a mass of facts. When the mind is filled so that it cannot hold another truth, the youth receives a diploma. Ruskin held that education was teaching the child how to see everything true and beautiful in land and sea and sky. "For a thousand great speakers, there is only one great thinker; for a thousand great thinkers, there is only one great see-er; we cut out one 'e' and leave it seer, but the true poet and sage is simply the see-er." The millions are blind to the signals hanged out from the battlements of cloud. Isaac Newton was a see-er,—he saw an apple falling from the tree; saw a moon falling through space, and gave us the law of gravity. Columbus was a see-er. In a crevice in a bit of driftwood, tossed upon the shore of Spain, he saw a strange pebble, and his imagination leaped from the driftwood to the unknown forest from whence it came, from that bright piece of stone to the mountain range of which it was a part. Columbus had the seeing eye, and discovered the continent hidden behind the clouds.

Not otherwise the geologist sees the handwriting of God upon the rock-pages; the astronomer sees His writing upon the pages of the sky; the physiologist reads His writing on the pages of the human body; the moralist deciphers the writing on the tablets of the mind and the heart. The beginning of Wordsworth's fame was the hour when his eyes were opened, and he saw man appearing upon the horizon, and like a bright spirit trailing clouds of glory, coming from God who is man's home. It was the inner sight of Wordsworth's soul that was "the bliss of solitude." It was his power of vision that enabled him to look out upon the field, yellow as gold, a vision that lingered long in his memory when he said, "and then my heart with rapture thrills, and dances with the daffodils."

It is useless for people who are colour-blind to look at Rembrandt's portrait. It is folly for people who cannot follow a tune to buy a ticket for a symphony concert. Men who by neglect atrophy the spiritual faculty, or by sin cut gashes in the nerve of conscience, will soon exclaim, in the spirit of the fool, "There is no God," just as the blind man is certain that there is no sun. The old black ex-slave, Sojourner Truth, once illustrated this principle. In those days excitement ran high. Northern merchants, fearful of losing their trade with Southern cities, frowned upon any one who dared criticize "the peculiar institution" of the South. One day, in New York, Sojourner Truth, just escaped from slavery, went to an Abolition Meeting, hoping for an opportunity of making a plea for the emancipation of her race. When the black woman, with her gnarled hands, and face seamed with pain and sorrow, arose to speak, a young newspaper reporter slammed his book upon the table, and stamped his way down the aisle toward the door. Just before he reached the door, Sojourner Truth stretched out her long black finger and said, "Wait a minute, honey! You goin' 'way 'cause of me? Listen, honey—I would give you some ideas to take home with you to your newspaper, but I see you ain't got nothing to carry 'em in!" . . . Homely but forceful illustration of an old truth. The angel of truth and the angel of beauty, leaning from the battlements of heaven, oft whispers, "Oh, my children! I would fain give you a new tool, a new painting, a new science, but you have no eyes to see the vision, and no ears to hear the sweetest music that ever fell from heaven's battlements." It is the man of vision who founds the new school of painting, or the new reform or the new liberty. The visions of the idealist to-day become the laws and institutions of to-morrow.

In this power of the open eye, Ruskin found the secret of daily happiness, and mental growth. No one knew better than John Ruskin that the millions of working men and women would never be able to make their way to the galleries of Paris and Madrid, of Florence and Venice, to St. Peter's or the Parthenon, much less have time, leisure and money for travel unto the far-off ends of the earth. Therefore he taught the people how to see the wonders of God, in every fluted blade of grass, in every bush that blazed with beauty, and blazing, was not consumed. He proved that he who knows how to see will find the common clod to be a casket filled with gems, and that the sky that looks down upon all workers, spreads out scenes of such loveliness and beauty as to make travel to distant lands unnecessary!

And yet, for the most part, men turn their eyes toward the sky only in moments of utter idleness and insipidity. "One says it has been wet, and another, it has been windy, and another, it has been warm. But who, among the whole chattering crowd, can tell me of the forms and precipices of the chain of tall white mountains that girded the horizon at noon yesterday? Who saw the narrow sunbeam that came out of the south, and smote upon their summits, until they melted and mouldered away in a dust of blue rain? Who saw the dance of the dead clouds, when the sunlight left them last night, and the west wind blew them before it like withered leaves? All has passed, unregretted, and unseen. Not in the clash of the hail nor the drift of the whirlwind, are the highest characters developed. God is not in the earthquake, nor in the fire, but in the still small voice. Blunt and low those faculties of our nature, which can only be addressed through lamp-black and lightning."

The whole world owes Ruskin an immeasurable debt for this: that he taught us how to see the beauty in the great imperial palace in which man hath his home.

In his defense of Turner, the world's greatest landscape painter, Ruskin advanced his theory of first seeing accurately, and then, through the creative imagination, carrying up to ideal perfection flowers, faces and landscapes often marred by the storms and upheavals of life. It is altogether probable that John Ruskin saw as accurately the scene of loveliness as Turner himself. It seems quite certain that Ruskin was altogether unique in his capacity for enjoyment. It was not simply that his eyes saw accurately, and his intellect registered his impressions without flaw, but that his imagination and his emotions were sensitive to the last degree, as sensitive as the silken threads of an Æolian harp that responds to the lightest wind that blows. Many people know the intense flavour of a strawberry, but Ruskin's soul was pierced with an intense and tumultuous pleasure at the sight of the clouds piled up upon the mountains. He loved Nature with all the passion with which Dante loved Beatrice. In Ruskin's forty odd volumes the scholar can find registered a hundred experiences in the presence of the mountain glory and the mountain gloom, in which this delight and happiness sent his whole body shivering with the piercing intensity that shook the soul of Romeo during his passionate interview with Juliet. Coarse natures, gluttonous, avaricious, full of hate, can no more understand the happiness of Ruskin's life than a deaf man can understand Mozart's rapture, when he listened to the music in the cathedral. Not even a tornado can make a crowbar vibrate, but the flutter of a lark's wing can set a silken thread vibrating and singing.

Ruskin has spread out, like a rich map, the story of the people who educated him. The overmastering influence in his life was that of his mother. He tells us that he received from his home in childhood the priceless gift of peace, in that he had never seen a "moment's trouble or disorder in any household matter, or anything whatever done in a hurry or undone in due time." To this gift was added the gift of obedience. "I obeyed word, or lifted finger, of father or mother, simply as a ship her helm; not only without idea of resistance but as necessary to me in every moral action as the law of gravity in leaping. To the gifts of peace and obedience my parents added the gift of Faith, in that nothing was ever promised me that was not given; nothing ever threatened me that was not inflicted, and nothing ever told me that was not true." And to these was added the habit of fixed attention with both eyes and mind—this being the main practical faculty of his life, causing Mazzini to say of Ruskin that he had "the most analytic mind in Europe."

The books from which Ruskin had his style in childhood were Walter Scott's novels, Pope's translation of the Iliad, Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, and above all, the Bible. "My mother forced me, by steady and daily toil, to learn long chapters of the Bible by heart; as well as to read it every syllable through aloud, hard names and all, from Genesis to the Apocalypse, about once a year; and to that discipline, patient, accurate, and resolute, I owe much of my general power of taking pains, and the best part of my taste in literature." The great chapters of the Bible from which Ruskin says he had his style included the fifteenth and twentieth of Exodus; the twenty-third Psalm, and also the thirty-second, ninetieth, ninety-first, one hundred and third, one hundred and twelfth, one hundred and nineteenth, one hundred and thirty-ninth, the Sermon on the Mount, the conversion of Paul, his vision on the road to Damascus, Paul's Ode to Love and Immortality. "These chapters of the Bible," Ruskin says, "were the most precious, and, on the whole, the one essential part of my education."

Ruskin's message upon education is of vital importance to the people of our republic. Strictly speaking, education should teach each citizen to think aright upon every subject of importance, and to live a life that is worthy, making the most out of the gifts received from God and one's ancestors. Ruskin traced the national faults and miseries of England, to illiteracy and the lack of education in the art of living. The inevitable result of this illiteracy was that England "despises literature, despises compassion, and concentrates the soul on silver." From this illiteracy came physical ugliness, envy, cowardice, and selfishness, instead of physical beauty, courage and affection. To the dry facts taught, therefore, he proposed to add inspiration, and the art of seeing.

Above all, he feared the results of uniformity and the manufacture of men by machinery, until all youths coming out of the same school, having studied the same facts, in the same way, became as uniform as crackers, and also as dry. The important man, he thinks, is the occasional boy, who has received a gift and can open up new realms for the rest. "Genius? You can't manufacture a great man, any more than you can manufacture gold. You find gold, and mint it. You uncover diamonds, but do not produce them. You find genius, but you cannot create it." Getting on, therefore, does not mean "more horses, more footmen, more fortune, more public honour,—it means more personal soul. He only is advancing in life whose heart is getting softer, whose blood warmer, whose brain quicker, whose spirit is entering into living peace." Education is a preparation for complete living; therefore Ruskin adopts Milton's definition of the complete and generous education as, "that which fits a man to perform justly, skillfully, and magnanimously, all the duties of all the offices of life."

Frederic Harrison gives Ruskin's Unto This Last first place as the most original book in modern English literature. He ranks it as a masterpiece of pure, incisive, brilliant, imaginative writing, "a book glowing with wit and fire and passion." The heart of the message is that every man is born with a gift appointed by his fathers, and that happiness begins with grasping the handle of one's own being. The greatest and most enduring work is done for love, and not for wage. The soldier's task is to keep the state in liberty, and when the second or third battle of Gettysburg or Ypres comes, he does not go on a strike, but puts death and duty in front of him and keeps his face to the front; in like manner the physician is appointed to keep the state in health and in time of yellow fever or the Black Death he works as hard for nothing as for a large fee, even as a father, in time of famine, shipwreck or battle, will sacrifice himself for his son.

Ruskin held that the commercial text, "Buy in the cheapest market and sell in the dearest," was part truth, and part falsehood. "Buy in the cheapest market? Yes; but what made your market cheap? Charcoal may be cheap among the roof timbers after a fire, and bricks may be cheap in your streets after an earthquake, but fire and earthquake may not be, therefore, national benefits. Sell in the dearest market? Yes; but what made your market dear? Was it to a dying man who gave his last coin rather than starve, or to a soldier on his way to pillage the bank, that you put your fortune? The final consummation of wealth is in full-breathed, bright-eyed and happy-hearted human creatures." Therefore, said Ruskin, "I can imagine that England may cast all thoughts of possessive wealth back to the barbaric nations among whom they first arose; and that, while the sand of the Indias and adamant of Golconda may yet stiffen the housings of the charger, and flash from the turban of the slave, she at last may be able to lead forth her sons, saying, 'These are my jewels!'"

Whether, therefore, property shall be a curse or a blessing depends upon man's administrative intelligence. "For centuries great districts of the world, rich in soil, and favoured in climate, have lain desert, under the rage of their own rivers, not only desert, but plague-struck. The stream which, rightly directed, would have flowed in soft irrigation from field to field,—would have purified the air, given food to man and beast, and carried their burdens for them on its bosom—now overwhelms the plain, and poisons the wind, its breath pestilence, and its work famine. In like manner, wealth may become water of life, the riches of the hand and wisdom, or wealth may be the last and deadliest of national plagues, water of Marah, the water of which feeds the roots of all evil." Man's body alone is related to factory and mine. No amount of ingenuity will ever make iron and steel digestible. Neither the avarice nor the rage of men will ever feed them. And however the apple of Sodom and the grape of Gomorrah may spread the table with dainties of ashes and nectar of asps,—so long as men live by bread, the far-away valleys laugh only as they are covered with the gold of God, and echo the shouts of His happy multitudes.

During the closing and most fruitful period of his career, Ruskin's supreme thought had to do with the manufacture of souls of good quality. Quite beyond the influence of some hero or statesman was the influence, hidden, constant, but immeasurable, of the spirit of the invisible God. "If you ask me for the sum of my life-work, the answer is this,—whatever Jesus saith unto you, do that." Daniel Webster himself never made a more powerful plea for the Christian Church and preacher than Ruskin's statement on the importance of the hour on Sunday, after the people have been exposed for six days to the full weight of the world's temptation. That hour when men and women come in, breathless and weary with the week's labour and "a man sent with a message, which is a matter of life or death, has but thirty minutes to get at the separate hearts of a thousand men, to convince them of all their weaknesses, to shame them for all their sins, to warn them of all their dangers, to try by this way and that to stir the hard fastenings of those doors, where the Master Himself has stood and knocked, yet none opened, and to call at the openings of those dark streets, where Wisdom herself has stretched forth her hands and no man hath regarded,—thirty minutes to raise the dead in!—let us but once understand and feel this, and the pulpit shall become a throne like unto a marble rock in the desert, about which the people gather to slake their thirst."

And in the very fullness of his power, when his bow was in full strength, and every sentence and arrow tipped with fire, Ruskin gathered his strength for a final study of the obligations of wealth to poverty, of wisdom to ignorance,—the opportunity of rich men to serve their generation, and make the world once more an Eden garden of happiness and delight. Just as men sweep together an acre of red roses, and condense the blossoms into a little vial filled with the precious attar, we may condense several volumes of Ruskin into a single parable. Why has one man ten-talent power? Why have ninety-nine men only one-talent power? Why is one boy ten years of age and strong, while in the same orphan asylum are ninety-nine little boys one year old? And what if some kind hand hath spread the table with orange, date, and plum, with every sweet fruit and nutritious grain? Has the ten-year-old boy, answering to the ten-talent man, a right to dash up to the table, and with one hand sweep together all the fruits, and with the other hand, all the cereals, milk and cream, while he shouts to the ninety-nine little one-year-old children, "Every fellow for himself! Get all you can! Keep all you can! The devil take the hindmost!" This, says Ruskin, is the fashion of certain rust-kings, and moth-kings. Why is that one boy ten years of age? Is his strength not for the sole purpose of carrying these foods to the little one-year-old children, scarcely able to provide for themselves? It is said of the Master and Lord of us all, that "being rich, for our sakes He made Himself poor." And the kings in the realm of art, or song, of industry or finance, have been ordained by God, not to loot the world of its blossoms, not to squeeze men, like so many purple clusters, into their own cups. In the vegetable world the expert pinches off ninety-nine roses, and forces the rich and vital currents into one great rose at the end of the stock. But what if a ten-talent man should pinch out ninety-nine lesser men as competitors, and force the vital elements of all their separate factories and stores, that were intended to be distributed among many men, of lesser gifts, into his one treasure house?