MR. RUSKIN'S SOCIETY.
TR. RUSKIN'S Address, read at the first meeting of his 111. Society, was as near an approach to the style of an ordinary chairman of an ordinary Limited Liability Company as could well be expected. Some of the opening sentences, however, had the old ring. "The radical cause," he said, "of the general resistance to the St. George's Guild effort was the doctrine, preached for the last fifty years as the true Gospel of the kingdom, that you served your neighbour best by letting him alone, except in the one particular of endeavouring to cheat him of his money. But the hurrahing and flinging-up of caps which had hitherto attended the promulgation of this method of temporal and eternal salvation were beginning slightly to abate, in the presence of such unpleasant commercial, incidents as the stoppage of the Glasgow Bank, and of the social discomforts—not to say distresses—which were beginning to manifest themselves as the results of plethoric wealth in England, and of military triumph in Germany." St. George's Guildsmen might perhaps be listened to, when "they drew at- tention to the possibility of more honourable conditions of trade for the future." But Mr. Ruskin went to the root of the matter a little further on. "The work of his little Company was prim- arily educational rather than economical, and while engaging in every kind of honest effort to put wholesome food into the stomachs of the poor, they, the Companions, were bound to make every gracious effort to put wholesome thoughts into their heads ;" and after again explaining St. George's method of operation as "simply the purchase of land in healthy dis- tricts, and the employment of labourers on that land under carefullest supervision, and with every proper means of mental instruction," he said "that the members of the Guild should recognise themselves as founding an Agricultural University, in which true religion and useful learning might for ever flourish and abound." The University Education which they proposed to give would not be in accordance with the notion generally entertained by the British middle-classes, a thing by means of which all their children might become distinguished or rich, but an education "wide as the fields, true as the laws, and fruitful as the roots of the earth, offered to all without distinction who desired to enjoy the happiness proper to men." The present Master "trusted that one or two at least, before his death, might be found in England to whom he might entrust the tasks of enclosing and managing the land which was to be the base of the scheme, he himself being entirely precluded by his state of health from undertaking duties which required vexatious and minutely-divided attention (and the law of England, he com- plained, was especially thorny to those who sought to acquire land for benevolent purposes only) ; he begged, therefore, that all legal powers for acquisition and management of lands might be vested in trustees only. Nor was it part of the Master's duty to undertake the personal direction of any farming operations, or management of any of the retainers of the Guild in residence on their lands. His duties were of a different kind. They con- sisted in the maintenance of the principles of the Guild in- violate, on occasions when any questions of their extent or force might present themselves, and in directing or authorising the employment of its resources in any particular manner. The existing Master, however, supposing himself qualified to direct usefully the method of the schooling and arrangement of the Museums of the Guild, had set himself, with what time he could spare, to carry out these objects, and he trusted that the expense which he had permitted in the establishment of the Museum at Sheffield might not be considered unjustifiable. The landed property of the Guild consisted of the following plots :—The Sheffield Estate, consisting of eight plots of land, together con- taining one acre, or 4,850 superficial square yards, with a sub- stantial stone dwelling-house thereon, in which the nascent collection of the Museum is temporarily placed ; the Bewdley Estate, consisting of twenty acres and six perches of land in the Borough of Bewdley ; the Cloughton Estate, consisting of two pieces of land ; the Mickley Estate, consisting of about thirteen acres of land at Mickley, in the County of Derby ; the Barmouth Estate, consisting of three roods ten and a half perches of land at Barmouth. The first of these estates was the only one to which the Master had been able hitherto to give any personal attention, and he was disposed to recommend that its lands should be devoted wholly to educational purposes He proposed, as soon as the enlarging funds of the Guild might enable him, to place a building properly adapted for the pur- pose of a museum, with attached library and reading-rooms, on the ground at Walkley ; and to put the estate at Mickley under cultivation, with the object of showing the best methods of managing fruit-trees in the climate of Northern England, with attached greenhouses and botanic garden, for the orderly dis- play of all interesting European plants. The second of the estates of the Guild, at Bewdley, was in a beautiful part of England, and the Master, for his own part, would be well con- tent that this should remain, for the present, in pasture or wood, a part of the healthy and lovely landscape of which so little re- mained now undestroyed in the English Midlands. But he was well content to leave it to the option of one of their now suc- ceeding Trustees—Mr. George Baker, of Birmingham, to whose kindness the Guild owed the possession of this ground—to un- dertake any operations upon it which in his judgment seemed desirable for the furtherance of the objects of the Guild. In addition to these parcels of land, the Guild had at that time 25,000 vested in Consols ; and the Master sincerely hoped that the public, when once convinced that the purposes of the Guild were not visionary, might be disposed to consider with itself whether, in the present condition and prospects of commerce, it -would not be wiser to strengthen the hands of honest workers than to enlarge the sphere of speculation, andprovoke the ever- increasing horror of its catastrophes."
Then followed the financial statement, read by the Chair- man, Mr. George Baker, which showed that a total sum of 27,271 15s. 7d. had been received, and after making all payments there was a balance in hand of £669 6s. 6d. ; then came talk about the Bewdley Estate, of which five acres had been converted into a fine garden, and fruit-trees, it was hoped, would be ,planted over the whole of the twenty acres. Then Mr. Guy stited the result of his farming operations on some very stony land indeed near Scarborough (the Cloughton Estate), at an elevation of 650 feet above the sea. He had made the land pro- ductive enough to maintain himself and family amply. Mr. Swann, Curator of the Sheffield Museum, told of the " Verroc- ,ehio," which the Master had bought for three hundred guineas, and presented to the Museum, and of its safe arrival and un- packing. Mr. Ruskin has told us in Fors of the thirteenth. century Bible, and of the opals, beryls, emeralds, and moss-gold which he has given to Sheffield, and also of the splendid Missal of his which went there by mistake, and which he had not the -heart to take away again. A question was put to Mr. Mackrell, the Guild's solicitor, by a Companion who, we may presume, did not wish to incur indefinite risk, about the limitation of liability, the extent of which, in the worst case, was declared to be limited to 25 to each member. This limitation, however, would cease to hold, in case the Company took profit to itself from its operations. A Companion might receive pay for work done, but the Master's liability in some cases, and any individual Companion's in others, would become unlimited if a penny of profit or dividend were taken. The Report was then adopted, and after that, Mr. Ruskin was re-elected Master, a few well- spoken words from Mr. J. H. Chamberlain at this point being, perhaps, the only expression of enthusiasm which the meeting ever allowed itself.
We remember how a friend of ours once, at a country auction, bought a clock of a highly decorative kind, conveyed it homeby cross-ways and junctions with much difficulty, simply for the sake of its facial charms, and with no thought of works within, and surprised us, after toying with the key just for form's sake, by the exclamation, "Why, it goes !" So, St. George's Society, the public will say, has actually got machinery which can be set to work ! We hold that it deserves, at least, our good- wishes. A model farm, a model museum, a model school,—if it gives us any one of these things, especially the last,—if a part of any one generation of Englishmen can be trained under the influ- ence of Mr. Ruskin, or of those whom we may expect to be his successors in the Mastership, we shall have a variety in education, at least, and that, in the main, a wholesome one. If the Brother- hood only continue to exist as such, we shall not be displeased. An ardent patriot during the Reign of Terror asked for the arrest of all cowards and rogues. Mr. Ruskin is content with a good deal less than this, but he does enjoin upon his followers, as a con- dition of Companionship, that they should not only be honest themselves, but have no felloivship with those who are not ; and society would not be the worse, if a strong body of his followers acted out this principle. We have known the extreme view held that a manufacturer or tradesman has nothing to do with the quality of what he makes or sells, except just so far as it is capable of luring purchasers—nay, that the best tradesman, qua tradesman, is the man who can sell the worst article at the best price. Society will be all the better for the war which St. George will assuredly wage against this class of doctrines. No Such explanation of what is meant by your " betters " will be
ever given on St. George's land as one which we have heard of, as having been given by a curate to a pupil who was being pre- pared for confirmation :—" Your betters ? Well, who are they ? Well, practically those who have more money than you have." Nor need there be any fear of St. George's peasantry turning out either Revolutionists or Communists. The terms of the Com- panion's vow, and the whole strain of teaching in any school which St. George may build, will be a sufficient security against this danger. "We hope to establish these laws of St. George," the Master writes, " by obeying them ourselves to the extent of which circumstances admit, and so gradually showing the advantage of them, and making them acceptable to others. We hold it short- sighted and ruinous policy to form separate institutions, or attempt the sudden establishment of new systems of labour." "Every one of us must use the advantages he now possesses, whatever they may be, and contend with the difficulties arising out of his present position, gradually modifying it, as he can, into conformity with the laws which the Society desires may be ultimately observed by all its members." On the whole, we venture to maintain that Mr Ruskin's Utopia (and in times of social change and growth, Utopias have served for delight, for refuge, and sometimes for fulfilled expression of thought, to some of the greatest of men) will compare favourably in point of moderation and practicability with most of its predecessors.
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