The Pleasures of England

The Pleasures of England

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Title: The Pleasures of England Lectures given in Oxford
Author: John Ruskin
Release Date: May 30, 2005 [EBook #15947]
Language: English
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THE PLEASURES OF ENGLAND.
LECTURES GIVEN IN OXFORD.
BY
JOHN RUSKIN, D.C.L., LL.D.,
HONORARY STUDENT OF CHRIST CHURCH, AND
HONORARY FELLOW OF CORPUS-CHRISTI COLLEGE.
DURING HIS
_SECOND TENURE OF THE SLADE PROFESSORSHIP._

NEW YORK: JOHN WILEY AND SONS. 1888.

* * * * *

CONTENTS
LECTURE I.
THE PLEASURES OF LEARNING. Bertha to Osburga 5
LECTURE II.
THE PLEASURES OF FAITH. Alfred to the Confessor 31
LECTURE III.
THE PLEASURES OF DEED. Alfred to Coeur de Lion 61
LECTURE IV.
THE PLEASURES OF FANCY. Coeur de Lion to Elizabeth 91
* * * * *

LECTURE I.
THE PLEASURES OF LEARNING.
_BERTHA TO OSBURGA._
In the short review of the present state of English Art, given you last
year, I left necessarily many points untouched, and others unexplained.
The seventh lecture, which I did not think it necessary to read aloud,
furnished you with some of the corrective statements of which, whether
spoken or not, it was extremely desirable that you should estimate the
balancing weight. These I propose in the present course farther to
illustrate, and to arrive with you at, I hope, a just--you would not wish
it to be a flattering--estimate of the conditions of our English artistic
life, past and present, in order that with due allowance for them we may
determine, with some security, what those of us who have faculty ought
to do, and those who have sensibility, to admire.
2. In thus rightly doing and feeling, you will find summed a wider duty,
and granted a greater power, than the moral philosophy at this moment
current with you has ever conceived; and a prospect opened to you
besides, of such a Future for England as you may both hopefully and
proudly labour for with your hands, and those of you who are spared to
the ordinary term of human life, even see with your eyes, when all this
tumult of vain avarice and idle pleasure, into which you have been
plunged at birth, shall have passed into its appointed perdition.
3. I wish that you would read for introduction to the lectures I have this

year arranged for you, that on the Future of England, which I gave to
the cadets at Woolwich in the first year of my Professorship here, 1869;
and which is now placed as the main conclusion of the "Crown of Wild
Olive": and with it, very attentively, the close of my inaugural lecture
given here; for the matter, no less than the tenor of which, I was
reproved by all my friends, as irrelevant and ill-judged;--which,
nevertheless, is of all the pieces of teaching I have ever given from this
chair, the most pregnant and essential to whatever studies, whether of
Art or Science, you may pursue, in this place or elsewhere, during your
lives.
The opening words of that passage I will take leave to read to you
again,--for they must still be the ground of whatever help I can give
you, worth your acceptance.
"There is a destiny now possible to us--the highest ever set before a
nation to be accepted or refused. We are still undegenerate in race: a
race mingled of the best northern blood. We are not yet dissolute in
temper, but still have the firmness to govern, and the grace to obey. We
have been taught a religion of pure mercy, which we must either now
finally betray, or learn to defend by fulfilling. And we are rich in an
inheritance of honour, bequeathed to us through a thousand years of
noble history, which it should be our daily thirst to increase with
splendid avarice; so that Englishmen, if it be a sin to covet honour,
should be the most offending souls alive. Within the last few years we
have had the laws of natural science opened to us with a rapidity which
has been blinding by its brightness; and means of transit and
communication given to us, which have made but one kingdom of the
habitable globe.
"One kingdom;--but who is to be its king? Is there to be no king in it,
think you, and every man