MR RUSKIN'S LETTER TO YOUNG GIRLS.

Thames Star, Volume VII, Issue 2617, 29 May 1877, Page 2

MR RUSKIN'S LETTER TO YOUNG GIRLS.

(fbom thb spectatob.)

Mr Buskin has reprinted from a recent number of his curious Fora Clavigera a very striking little letter to young girls, which deserves attention on' many- accounts. In the first place* it is fall of that delicate mixed playfulness and sava indignato against the world as it is. which has always characterised those who have tried to combine the gospel of righteous* ness with an attempt to interpret the claims of beauty on the human heart. It characterised Socrates. There never was .a more delicate mixture of payful iron; with a passionate sense of the interior clingingness of moral evil, than in the Socrates of Plato. Mr Matthew Arnold, who, in our day, has been the great spokesman of the duty of . combining ■ the Greek teaching as to perfection and wholeness of- purpose and' action, with the Hebrew teaching as to righteous* ness of life, has shown precisely the tame tendency to combine playfulness of man* ncr with a deep belief in the value of self-renunciation or, as he calls it, " the Secret of Jesus;" and here we have Mr Buskin inculcating in the same breath on young girls the duty of accepting even joyfully their disappointments and troubles, as trials coming straight from the hand of Christ—teaching them that they must be literally ready to forsake all they' baye to be Christ's discipTes-*aud yet enjoining upon them to open their minds to the fullest degree to all the play and humour in life, "to charish without straining the natural power of jest in others and yourselves;" and even inculcating on them that if their parents permit it,- they are to dress in bright colours (if becoming) though in plain materials. His style too, is full of irony.. Mr Buskin, for instance, not perhaps in the best taste, calls his young friends " little monkeys " when, he bids them, whatever they, do, not | dream of preaching to the poor, of whom 1 he says, the chances are that they are j without knowing it, infinitely, truer Christians than their young lady patrons; and he evidently has a very graphic picture in his mind's eye of the naturally didactic redundancy of school-girl virtue, when girding itself up to da the work of God. He quizzes, too, not without point, those who go about " with white crossed " " in an offensively celestial uniform, as if it were more their business or privilege than it is everybody's to be God's servants/ And in general, it may be saii^" that Mr Buskin puts his advice to these young girls into a somewhat playfully parabolic form, calling his letter "a splinter of the lance of St. George,"—the society which Mr Buskin has founded is called the " St, George's Society,"-i--and inveighing against- " the present basilisk power of society,"—all.which, we suppose, he intends his young friends to accept spiritually, and not in its most literal seme. In a word, the first characteristic of Mr Buskin's teaching may be said to be that it unites' with a very high doctrine of self-renunciation, a strong desire to recommend the constant and very_aptlve enjoyment of the brighter side of life of its 'glowing colors, its quaint conceits, .its in- ' eradicable an 4 sometimes pathetic illusions, its grotesque contrasts. Indeed, the preacher earnestly represents this enjoining spirit as not only perfectly consistent with righteous zeal, but in some sense, of positive obligation, if only by way of.using reverently a divine gift which, instead of diminishing $he earnestness of |ife, helps, to. renew' anq inoica^o it, by interrupting that perpetual^train after a single purpose, for which assuredly human nature—at least aa we know, it—,was never intended.

In the next place, it is remarkable that Mr Buskin, though you might have r expected him to be more of a disciple of the beautiful and less of a purely spiritual teacher than Mr M. Arnold, yet, unlike Mr Arnold, has the religious instinct to

see that in pressing self-renunciation ~- •what Mr Arnold calls " the secret of Jesus " —on his young friends he must rest it on the same sure foundation on which it was based originally by the Saviour of mankind ; that he cannot ask the human conscience to surrender itself to a fate or destiny, or " a stream of tendency not ourselves " with any prospect, of turning a habit of surrender directed to such blind agencies as these into a source of peace and serenity of spirity. Mr Ruskin " makes no such hopeless attempt. : "Keep," he says, " absolute calm of temper under all chances, receiving everything that is provoking or disagreeable to you as coming directly from Christ's hand, and the more it is like to provoke you thank Him for it the more, as a young soldier would his general'for trusting him with a hard place to hold on the rampart. And remember, it does not in the least matter what happens to you— whether a clumsy school-fellow tears your I dress, or a shrewd one laughs at you,, or the governess doesn't understand you. The one thing needful is that none of these things should vex you. For your mind at at this time of your youth is crystallising like sugar-candy, and the least jar to it thaws the crystal, and that permanently. Say to yourselves every morning just after your prayers, ' Whoso forsaketh not all that he hath cannot be

te^Jßy disciple:' That is exactly and comIF pletely true, meaning that you are to give all you have to Christ to take care for you. Then if He dosen't take care of it* of course you know it wasn't worth anything. And if he takes anything from you you know you are better witho.ut it. You will not, indeed, at your age, have to give up houses, or lands, or boats, or nets, but you may, perhaps, break your favorite tea-cup, or lose your favorite thimble, and might be vexed about it but for this second St. George's precept." It is striking enough to see that Mr Euskin's insight into moral beauty is so deep that he perceives at once that the whole serenity and joy which accompanies the abandoning of what is precious, however trifling or however priceless, can only come of the faith that it is abandoned to One who knows exactly what is needful, and what is hurtful to those . whom Jle thus asks to abandon it. Without profound conviction there might be wisdom, there might be the highest triumph of self-control, there might be the truest economy^ in quietly accepting an inevitable loss ; but there could not be inward happiness, there could not be the ■erenity which comes of following implicity the guidance of an inexhaustible love in such an act.

Finally, it is curious to perceive how, even in advise "to young girls" Mr .Raskin's partly, no doubt, doctrinaire abhorrence of great cities breaks out. Nothing can be better than his advice as to their dress. He encourages them to be gay, he allows them to be swayed by the fluctuating flow and ebb of social taste, though he prohibits their beiug expensive or disposed to follow fashion into its wasteful caprices. But then he teaches even these young girls, so far as he can, te abhor London, as the Jewish prophet taught the women of his people to abhor the Moabitish or Amoritish women: —

" Dress as plainly as your parents will allow you, but in bright colours (if they become you), and in best materials —that is to say, in those which will wear longest. When you are really in want of a new dress, buy it or make it in the fashion ; but never quit an old one merely because it has become unfashionable. And if the fashion be costly you must not follow it. You may wear broad stripes or narrow, bright colours or dark, short petticoats or long—in moderation —as the public wish you, but you must not buy yards of useless stuff to make a knot or & flounce of, nor drag them behind you over the ground; and your walking dress must never toach the ground at all. I have lost much of the faith I once had in the common-sense and even in the personal delicacy of the present race of average Englishwomen, by seeing how they will allow their dresses to sweep the streets, if it is the fashion to be scavengers. If you can afford it get your dresses made by a good dressmaker, with utmost attainable precision and perfection, but let this good dressmaker be a poor person living in the country, not a rich person living in a large house in London. ' There are no good dressmakers in the country P' No; but there soon will be if you obey St. George's orders, which are yery strict indeed about never buying dresses in London. 'You bought one there the other day for your own pet!' Yes; but that was because she was a wild Amorite who had wild Amoritesto please, not a Companion of St. George."