RURAL ENGLAND

Evening Post, Volume CXXVII, Issue 1, 3 January 1939, Page 7

RURAL ENGLAND

RUSKIN AS A CHAMPION

A further example of Ruskin's unconquerable aversion to railways is to he found in his preface to "A Protest Against the Extension of Railways in the Lake District," says the "Manchester Guardian." It is as follows: ; "When the frenzy of avarice is daily drowning our sailors, suffocating our miners, poisoning our children, and blasting the cultivable surface of England into a treeless waste of ashes, what does it really matter whether a flock of sheep, more or less, be driven from the slopes of Helvellyn, or the little pool of Thirlmere filled with shale, or a few wild blossoms of St. John's Vale lost to the coronal of English spring? Little to anyone; and nothing to me."

But though "they may drain Loch Katrine, drink Loch Lomond, and blow all Wales and Cumberland into a heap of stale shingle," he decides that "the world is wide enough yet to find me some refuge during the days appointed me to stay in it." And he finds it to be his duty "in the cause of those to whom the sweet landscapes of England are yet precious ... to plead with what earnestness I may that these sacred sibylline books may be, redeemed from perishing." In thus condemning the activities of the railway companies Ruskin took care to include most of the other despoilers of the countryside, and the Council for the Preservation of Rural England should find his writings an armoury of powerful weapons for the defence of the objects it has at heart.