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.. meta::
   :PG.Id: 45913
   :PG.Title: Of Vulgarity
   :PG.Released: 2014-06-07
   :PG.Rights: Public Domain
   :PG.Producer: Al Haines
   :DC.Creator: John Ruskin
   :DC.Title: Of Vulgarity
   :DC.Language: en
   :DC.Created: 1906
   :coverpage: images/img-cover.jpg

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OF VULGARITY
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      Ruskin Treasuries

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      OF VULGARITY

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      London: George Allen
      1906

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   *What do you mean by
   "vulgarity"?  You will find it a
   fruitful subject of thought; but,
   briefly, the essence of all vulgarity
   lies in want of sensation.*

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   Sesame and Lilies, § 28.

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   *All rights reserved*

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   RUSKIN TREASURIES

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   OF VULGARITY

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1.  Two great errors, colouring, or
rather discolouring, severally, the
minds of the higher and lower classes,
have sown wide dissension, and wider
misfortune, through the society of
modern days.  These errors are in
our modes of interpreting the word
"gentleman."

Its primal, literal, and perpetual
meaning is "a man of pure race;"[#]
well bred, in the sense that a horse
or dog is well bred.

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[#] See below, pp. `39-47`_.

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The so-called higher classes, being
generally of purer race than the lower,
have retained the true idea, and the
convictions associated with it; but are
afraid to speak it out, and equivocate
about it in public; this equivocation
mainly proceeding from their desire
to connect another meaning with it,
and a false one;—that of "a man
living in idleness on other people's
labour;"—with which idea the term
has nothing whatever to do.

The lower classes, denying vigorously,
and with reason, the notion that
a gentleman means an idler, and
rightly feeling that the more any one
works, the more of a gentleman he
becomes, and is likely to become,—have
nevertheless got little of the
good they otherwise might, from the
truth, because, with it, they wanted to
hold a falsehood,—namely, that race
was of no consequence.  It being
precisely of as much consequence in
man as it is in any other animal.

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2.  The nation cannot truly prosper
till both these errors are finally got
quit of.  Gentlemen have to learn that
it is no part of their duty or privilege
to live on other people's toil.  They
have to learn that there is no
degradation in the hardest manual, or the
humblest servile, labour, when it is
honest.  But that there is degradation,
and that deep, in extravagance,
in bribery, in indolence, in pride, in
taking places they are not fit for, or in
coining places for which there is no
need.  It does not disgrace a gentleman
to become an errand boy, or a
day labourer; but it disgraces him
much to become a knave, or a thief.
And knavery is not the less knavery
because it involves large interests,
nor theft the less theft because it is
countenanced by usage, or accompanied
by failure in undertaken duty.
It is an incomparably less guilty form
of robbery to cut a purse out of a man's
pocket, than to take it out of his hand
on the understanding that you are to
steer his ship up channel, when you
do not know the soundings.

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3.  On the other hand, the lower
orders, and all orders, have to learn
that every vicious habit and chronic
disease communicates itself by
descent; and that by purity of birth
the entire system of the human
body and soul may be gradually
elevated, or, by recklessness of birth,
degraded; until there shall be as
much difference between the
well-bred and ill-bred human creature
(whatever pains be taken with their
education) as between a wolf-hound
and the vilest mongrel cur.  And the
knowledge of this great fact ought to
regulate the education of our youth,
and the entire conduct of the nation.[#]

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[#] See below, pp. `41-42`_.

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4.  Gentlemanliness, however, in
ordinary parlance, must be taken
to signify those qualities which are
usually the evidence of high breeding,
and which, so far as they can be
acquired, it should be every man's
effort to acquire; or, if he has them
by nature, to preserve and exalt.
Vulgarity, on the other hand, will signify
qualities usually characteristic of
ill-breeding, which, according to his
power, it becomes every person's duty
to subdue.  We have briefly to note
what these are.

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5.  A gentleman's first characteristic
is that fineness of structure in the body,
which renders it capable of the most
delicate sensation; and of structure
in the mind which renders it capable
of the most delicate sympathies—one
may say, simply, "fineness of nature."  This
is, of course, compatible with
heroic bodily strength and mental
firmness; in fact, heroic strength is
not conceivable without such delicacy.
Elephantine strength may drive its
way through a forest and feel no touch
of the boughs; but the white skin of
Homer's Atrides would have felt a
bent rose-leaf, yet subdue its feeling
in glow of battle, and behave itself
like iron.  I do not mean to call an
elephant a vulgar animal; but if you
think about him carefully, you will
find that his non-vulgarity consists in
such gentleness as is possible to
elephantine nature; not in his insensitive
hide, nor in his clumsy foot; but in the
way he will lift his foot if a child lies
in his way; and in his sensitive trunk,
and still more sensitive mind, and
capability of pique on points of honour.

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6.  And, though rightness of moral
conduct is ultimately the great purifier
of race, the sign of nobleness is not in
this rightness of moral conduct, but in
sensitiveness.  When the make of the
creature is fine, its temptations are
strong, as well as its perceptions; it
is liable to all kinds of impressions
from without in their most violent
form; liable therefore to be abused
and hurt by all kinds of rough things
which would do a coarser creature little
harm, and thus to fall into frightful
wrong if its fate will have it so.  Thus
David, coming of gentlest as well as
royalest race, of Ruth as well as of
Judah, is sensitiveness through all
flesh and spirit; not that his
compassion will restrain him from murder
when his terror urges him to it; nay,
he is driven to the murder all the
more by his sensitiveness to the
shame which otherwise threatens him.
But when his own story is told under
a disguise, though only a lamb is now
concerned, his passion about it leaves
him no time for thought.  "The man
shall die"—note the reason—"because
he had no pity."  He is so eager
and indignant that it never occurs to
him as strange that Nathan hides the
name.  This is true gentleman.  A
vulgar man would assuredly have been
cautious, and asked who it was.

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7.  Hence it will follow that one of
the probable signs of high-breeding
in men generally, will be their
kindness and mercifulness; these always
indicating more or less fineness of
make in the mind; and miserliness
and cruelty the contrary; hence that
of Isaiah: "The vile person shall no
more be called liberal, nor the churl
said to be bountiful."  But a thousand
things may prevent this kindness from
displaying or continuing itself; the
mind of the man may be warped so
as to bear mainly on his own interests,
and then all his sensibilities will take
the form of pride, or fastidiousness, or
revengefulness; and other wicked,
but not ungentlemanly tempers; or,
farther, they may run into utter
sensuality and covetousness, if he is
bent on pleasure, accompanied with
quite infinite cruelty when the pride is
wounded or the passions are thwarted;—until
your gentleman becomes Ezzelin,
and your lady, the deadly Lucrece;
yet still gentleman and lady, quite
incapable of making anything else of
themselves, being so born.[#]

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[#] See below, p. `44`_.

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8.  A truer sign of breeding than mere
kindness is therefore sympathy;—a
vulgar man may often be kind in a
hard way, on principle, and because
he thinks he ought to be; whereas, a
highly-bred man, even when cruel, will
be cruel in a softer way, understanding
and feeling what he inflicts, and
pitying his victim.  Only we must carefully
remember that the quantity of
sympathy a gentleman feels can never be
judged of by its outward expression,
for another of his chief characteristics
is apparent reserve.  I say "apparent"
reserve; for the sympathy is real, but
the reserve not: a perfect gentleman
is never reserved, but sweetly and
entirely open, so far as it is good for
others, or possible, that he should
be.  In a great many respects it is
impossible that he should be open
except to men of his own kind.  To them,
he can open himself, by a word or
syllable, or a glance; but to men not
of his kind he cannot open himself,
though he tried it through an eternity
of clear grammatical speech.  By the
very acuteness of his sympathy he
knows how much of himself he can
give to anybody; and he gives that
much frankly;—would always be glad
to give more if he could, but is obliged,
nevertheless, in his general
intercourse with the world, to be a
somewhat silent person; silence is to most
people, he finds, less reserve than
speech.  Whatever he said, a vulgar
man would misinterpret: no words
that he could use would bear the
same sense to the vulgar man that
they do to him; if he used any, the
vulgar man would go away saying,
"He had said so and so, and meant
so and so" (something assuredly
he never meant): but he keeps
silence, and the vulgar man goes away
saying, "He didn't know what to
make of him."  Which is precisely
the fact, and the only fact which he
is anywise able to announce to the
vulgar man concerning himself.

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9.  There is yet another quite as
efficient cause of the apparent reserve of
a gentleman.  His sensibility being
constant and intelligent, it will be
seldom that a feeling touches him,
however acutely, but it has touched
him in the same way often before, and
in some sort is touching him always.
It is not that he feels little, but that
he feels habitually; a vulgar man
having some heart at the bottom of
him, if you can by talk or by sight
fairly force the pathos of anything
down to his heart, will be excited
about it and demonstrative; the
sensation of pity being strange to him
and wonderful.  But your gentleman
has walked in pity all day long; the
tears have never been out of his eyes;
you thought the eyes were bright
only; but they were wet.  You tell
him a sorrowful story, and his
countenance does not change; the eyes
can but be wet still: he does not
speak neither, there being, in fact,
nothing to be said, only something to
be done; some vulgar person, beside
you both, goes away saying, "How
hard he is!"  Next day he hears that
the hard person has put good end to
the sorrow he said nothing about;—and
then he changes his wonder, and
exclaims, "How reserved he is!"

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10.  Self-command is often thought
a characteristic of high-breeding; and
to a certain extent it is so, at least it
is one of the means of forming and
strengthening character; but it is
rather a way of imitating a gentleman
than a characteristic of him; a true
gentleman has no need of self-command;
he simply feels rightly on all
occasions; and desiring to express
only so much of his feeling as it is
right to express, does not need to
command himself.  Hence perfect
ease is indeed characteristic of him;
but perfect ease is inconsistent with
self-restraint.  Nevertheless gentlemen,
so far as they fail of their own
ideal, need to command themselves,
and do so; while, on the contrary, to
feel unwisely, and to be unable to
restrain the expression of the unwise
feeling, is vulgarity; and yet even
then, the vulgarity, at its root, is not
in the mistimed expression, but in the
unseemly feeling; and when we find
fault with a vulgar person for
"exposing himself," it is not his openness,
but clumsiness, and yet more the
want of sensibility to his own failure,
which we blame; so that still the
vulgarity resolves itself into want of
sensibility.  Also, it is to be noted
that great powers of self-restraint
may be attained by very vulgar
persons when it suits their purposes.

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11.  Closely, but strangely, connected
with this openness is that form of
truthfulness which is opposed to
cunning, yet not opposed to falsity
absolute.  And herein is a distinction
of great importance.

Cunning signifies especially a habit
or gift of over-reaching, accompanied
with enjoyment and a sense of superiority.
It is associated with small and
dull conceit, and with an absolute
want of sympathy or affection.  Its
essential connection with vulgarity
may be at once exemplified by the
expression of the butcher's dog in
Landseer's "Low Life."  Cruikshank's
"Noah Claypole," in the illustrations
to *Oliver Twist*, in the interview with
the Jew, is, however, still more
characteristic.  It is the intensest rendering
of vulgarity absolute and utter with
which I am acquainted.

The truthfulness which is opposed
to cunning ought, perhaps, rather to
be called the desire of truthfulness;
it consists more in unwillingness to
deceive than in not deceiving,—an
unwillingness implying sympathy with
and respect for the person deceived;
and a fond observance of truth up to
the possible point, as in a good soldier's
mode of retaining his honour through
a *ruse-de-guerre*.  A cunning person
seeks for opportunities to deceive; a
gentleman shuns them.  A cunning
person triumphs in deceiving; a
gentleman is humiliated by his
success, or at least by so much of the
success as is dependent merely on
the falsehood, and not on his
intellectual superiority.

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12.  The absolute disdain of all lying
belongs rather to Christian chivalry
than to mere high-breeding; as
connected merely with this latter, and
with general refinement and courage,
the exact relations of truthfulness
may be best studied in the well-trained
Greek mind.  The Greeks believed
that mercy and truth were co-relative
virtues—cruelty and falsehood,
co-relative vices.  But they did not call
necessary severity, cruelty; nor
necessary deception, falsehood.  It was
needful sometimes to slay men, and
sometimes to deceive them.  When
this had to be done, it should be done
well and thoroughly; so that to direct
a spear well to its mark, or a lie well
to its end, was equally the accomplishment
of a perfect gentleman.  Hence,
in the pretty diamond-cut-diamond
scene between Pallas and Ulysses,
when she receives him on the coast of
Ithaca, the goddess laughs delightedly
at her hero's good lying, and gives him
her hand upon it;—showing herself
then in her woman's form, as just a
little more than his match.[#]  "Subtle
would he be, and stealthy, who should
go beyond thee in deceit, even were
he a god, thou many-witted!  What! here
in thine own land, too, wilt thou
not cease from cheating?  Knowest
thou not me, Pallas Athena, maid of
Jove, who am with thee in all thy
labours, and gave thee favour with the
Phæacians, and keep thee, and have
come now to weave cunning with
thee?"  But how completely this kind
of cunning was looked upon as a
part of a man's power, and not as a
diminution of faithfulness, is perhaps
best shown by the single line of praise
in which the high qualities of his
servant are summed up by Chremulus in
the *Plutus*—"Of all my house
servants, I hold you to be the faithfullest,
and the greatest cheat (or thief)."[#]

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[#] Homer, *Od.*, xiii. 291 *seq.*

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[#] Aristophanes, *Plutus*, 26-27.

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13.  Thus, the primal difference
between honourable and base lying in
the Greek mind lay in honourable
purpose.  A man who used his strength
wantonly to hurt others was a monster;
so, also, a man who used his cunning
wantonly to hurt others.  Strength
and cunning were to be used only in
self-defence, or to save the weak, and
then were alike admirable.  This was
their first idea.  Then the second, and
perhaps the more essential, difference
between noble and ignoble lying in the
Greek mind, was that the honourable
lie—or, if we may use the strange,
yet just, expression, the true lie—knew
and confessed itself for such—was
ready to take the full responsibility of
what it did.  As the sword answered
for its blow, so the lie for its snare.
But what the Greeks hated with all
their heart was the false lie;—the lie
that did not know itself, feared to
confess itself, which slunk to its aim under
a cloak of truth, and sought to do liars'
work, and yet not take liars' pay,
excusing itself to the conscience by
quibble and quirk.  Hence the great
expression of Jesuit principle by
Euripides, "The tongue has sworn, but
not the heart,"[#] was a subject of
execration throughout Greece, and the
satirists exhausted their arrows on
it—no audience was ever tired of
hearing ([Greek: tò Euripídeion ekeîno]) "that
Euripidean thing" brought to shame.

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[#] Hippolytus, 612.

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14.  And this is especially to be
insisted on in the early education of young
people.  It should be pointed out to
them with continual earnestness that
the essence of lying is in deception,
not in words: a lie may be told by
silence, by equivocation, by the accent
on a syllable, by a glance of the eye
attaching a peculiar significance to
a sentence; and all these kinds of
lies are worse and baser by many
degrees than a lie plainly worded;
so that no form of blinded
conscience is so far sunk as that which
comforts itself for having deceived,
because the deception was by gesture
or silence, instead of utterance; and,
finally, according to Tennyson's deep
and trenchant line, "A lie which is
half a truth is ever the worst of
lies."[#]

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[#] *The Grandmother*.

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15.  Although, however, ungenerous
cunning is usually so distinct an
outward manifestation of vulgarity,
that I name it separately from
insensibility, it is in truth only an
effect of insensibility, producing want
of affection to others, and blindness
to the beauty of truth.  The degree
in which political subtlety in men
such as Richelieu, Machiavel, or
Metternich, will efface the
gentleman, depends on the selfishness of
political purpose to which the
cunning is directed, and on the base
delight taken in its use.  The
command, "Be ye wise as serpents,
harmless as doves," is the ultimate
expression of this principle,
misunderstood usually because the word
"wise" is referred to the intellectual
power instead of the subtlety of the
serpent.  The serpent has very little
intellectual power, but according to
that which it has, it is yet, as of
old, the subtlest of the beasts of the
field.

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16.  Another great sign of vulgarity is
also, when traced to its root, another
phase of insensibility, namely, the
undue regard to appearances and
manners, as in the households of
vulgar persons, of all stations, and the
assumption of behaviour, language,
or dress unsuited to them, by persons
in inferior stations of life.  I say
"undue" regard to appearances,
because in the undueness consists, of
course, the vulgarity.  It is due and
wise in some sort to care for
appearances, in another sort undue and
unwise.  Wherein lies the difference?

At first one is apt to answer quickly:
the vulgarity is simply in pretending
to be what you are not.  But that
answer will not stand.  A queen may
dress like a waiting-maid,—perhaps
succeed, if she chooses, in passing for
one; but she will not, therefore, be
vulgar; nay, a waiting-maid may
dress like a queen, and pretend to be
one, and yet need not be vulgar,
unless there is inherent vulgarity in
her.  In Scribe's very absurd but
very amusing *Reine d'un jour*, a
milliner's girl sustains the part of a
queen for a day.  She several times
amazes and disgusts her courtiers by
her straightforwardness; and once or
twice very nearly betrays herself to
her maids of honour by an unqueenly
knowledge of sewing; but she is not
in the least vulgar, for she is sensitive,
simple, and generous, and a queen
could be no more.

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17.  Is the vulgarity, then, only in
trying to play a part you cannot play, so
as to be continually detected?  No; a
bad amateur actor may be continually
detected in his part, but yet
continually detected to be a gentleman:
a vulgar regard to appearances has
nothing in it necessarily of hypocrisy.
You shall know a man not to be a
gentleman by the perfect and neat
pronunciation of his words: but he
does not pretend to pronounce
accurately; he *does* pronounce accurately,
the vulgarity is in the real (not
assumed) scrupulousness.

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18.  It will be found on farther thought,
that a vulgar regard for appearances
is, primarily, a selfish one, resulting
not out of a wish to give pleasure (as
a wife's wish to make herself beautiful
for her husband), but out of an
endeavour to mortify others, or attract
for pride's sake;—the common
"keeping up appearances" of society, being
a mere selfish struggle of the vain with
the vain.  But the deepest stain of
the vulgarity depends on this being
done, not selfishly only, but stupidly,
without understanding the impression
which is really produced, nor the
relations of importance between oneself
and others, so as to suppose that their
attention is fixed upon us, when we
are in reality ciphers in their eyes—all
which comes of insensibility.  Hence
pride simple is not vulgar (the looking
down on others because of their true
inferiority to us), nor vanity simple
(the desire of praise), but conceit
simple (the attribution to ourselves
of qualities we have not) is always so.
In cases of over-studied pronunciation,
etc., there is insensibility, first,
in the person's thinking more of
himself than of what he is saying; and,
secondly, in his not having musical
fineness of ear enough to feel that his
talking is uneasy and strained.

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19.  Finally, vulgarity is indicated by
coarseness of language or manners,
only so far as this coarseness has been
contracted under circumstances not
necessarily producing it.  The illiterateness
of a Spanish or Calabrian peasant
is not vulgar, because they had never
an opportunity of acquiring letters;
but the illiterateness of an English
school-boy is.  So again, provincial
dialect is not vulgar; but cockney
dialect, the corruption, by blunted
sense, of a finer language continually
heard, is so in a deep degree; and
again, of this corrupted dialect, that is
the worst which consists, not in the
direct or expressive alteration of the
form of a word, but in an unmusical
destruction of it by dead utterance
and bad or swollen formation of lip.
There is no vulgarity in—

   |  "Blythe, blythe, blythe was she,
   |    Blythe was she, but and ben,
   |  And weel she liked a Hawick gill,
   |    And leugh to see a tappit hen;"

but much in Mrs. Gamp's inarticulate
"bottle on the chimley-piece, and let
me put my lips to it when I am so
dispoged."

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20.  So also of personal defects, those
only are vulgar which imply insensibility
or dissipation.

There is no vulgarity in the emaciation
of Don Quixote, the deformity of
the Black Dwarf, or the corpulence
of Falstaff; but much in the same
personal characters, as they are seen
in Uriah Heep, Quilp, and Chadband.

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21.  One of the most curious minor
questions in this matter is respecting
the vulgarity of excessive neatness,
complicating itself with inquiries into
the distinction between base neatness,
and the perfectness of good execution
in the fine arts.  It will be found on
final thought that precision and
exquisiteness of arrangement are always
noble; but become vulgar only when
they arise from an equality
(insensibility) of temperament, which is
incapable of fine passion, and is set
ignobly, and with a dullard mechanism,
on accuracy in vile things.  In the
finest Greek coins, the letters of the
inscriptions are purposely coarse and
rude, while the relievi are wrought
with inestimable care.  But in an
English coin, the letters are the best
done, and the whole is unredeemably
vulgar.  In a picture of Titian's, an
inserted inscription will be complete
in the lettering, as all the rest is;
because it costs Titian very little
more trouble to draw rightly than
wrongly, and in him, therefore,
impatience with the letters would be
vulgar, as in the Greek sculptor of the
coin, patience would have been.  For
the engraving of a letter accurately
is difficult work, and his time must
have been unworthily thrown away.

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22.  All the different impressions
connected with negligence or foulness
depend, in like manner, on the degree
of insensibility implied.  Disorder in
a drawing-room is vulgar, in an
antiquary's study, not; the black
battle-stain on a soldier's face is not vulgar,
but the dirty face of a housemaid is.

And lastly, courage, so far as it is a
sign of race, is peculiarly the mark of
a gentleman or a lady: but it becomes
vulgar if rude or insensitive, while
timidity is not vulgar, if it be a
characteristic of race or fineness of make.
A fawn is not vulgar in being timid,
nor a crocodile "gentle" because
courageous.

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23.  Without following the inquiry
into farther detail, we may conclude that
vulgarity consists in a deadness of the
heart and body, resulting from
prolonged, and especially from inherited
conditions of "degeneracy," or literally
"un-racing;"—gentlemanliness being
another word for an intense humanity.
And vulgarity shows itself primarily in
dulness of heart, not in rage or cruelty,
but in inability to feel or conceive
noble character or emotion.  This is
its essential, pure, and most fatal form.
Dulness of bodily sense and general
stupidity, with such forms of crime as
peculiarly issue from stupidity, are its
material manifestation.

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24.  Two years ago, when I was first
beginning to work out the subject,
and chatting with one of my keenest-minded
friends (Mr. Brett, the painter
of the Val d'Aosta in the Exhibition
of 1859), I casually asked him, "What
is vulgarity?" merely to see what he
would say, not supposing it possible
to get a sudden answer.  He thought
for about a minute, then answered
quietly, "It is merely one of the forms
of Death."  I did not see the meaning
of the reply at the time; but on testing
it, found that it met every phase of
the difficulties connected with the
inquiry, and summed the true conclusion.
Yet, in order to be complete, it
ought to be made a distinctive as well
as conclusive definition; showing *what*
form of death vulgarity is; for death
itself is not vulgar, but only death
mingled with life.  I cannot, however,
construct a short-worded definition
which will include all the minor
conditions of bodily degeneracy; but the
term "deathful selfishness" will
embrace all the most fatal and essential
forms of mental vulgarity.

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   *Modern Painters,*
       *vol. v. pt. ix. ch. vii.*

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.. _`39-47`:

We ought always in pure English to
use the term "good breeding" literally;
and to say "good nurture" for what we
usually mean by good breeding.  Given
the race and make of the animal, you
may turn it to good or bad account;
you may spoil your good dog or colt,
and make him as vicious as you choose,
or break his back at once by ill-usage;
and you may, on the other hand, make
something serviceable and respectable
out of your poor cur and colt if you
educate them carefully; but ill-bred
they will both of them be to their
lives' end; and the best you will ever
be able to say of them is, that they
are useful, and decently behaved,
ill-bred creatures.

An error, which is associated with
the truth, and which makes it always
look weak and disputable, is the
confusion of race with name; and the
supposition that the blood of a family
must still be good, if its genealogy
be unbroken and its name not lost,
though sire and son have been
indulging age after age in habits
involving perpetual degeneracy of
race.  Of course it is equally an error
to suppose that, because a man's
name is common, his blood must be
base; since his family may have been
ennobling it by pureness of moral
habit for many generations, and yet
may not have got any title, or other
sign of nobleness, attached to their
names.  Nevertheless, the probability
is always in favour of the race which
has had acknowledged supremacy,
and in which every motive leads to
the endeavour to preserve its true
nobility.

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*Modern Painters,*
    *vol. v. pt. ix. ch. vii.* § 3 *n.*

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.. _`41-42`:

The old English rough proverb is
irrevocably true,—you can make no
silk purse of a sow's ear.  And this
great truth also holds—though it is
a disagreeable one to look full in the
face—that, named or nameless, no
man can make himself a gentleman
who was not born one.  If he lives
a right life, and cultivates all the
powers, and yet more all the sensibilities,
he is born with, and chooses
his wife well, his own son will be
more a gentleman than he is, and
he may see yet better blood than his
son's in his grandchild's cheeks, but
he must be content to remain a clown
himself—if he was born a clown.

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*Modern Painters,*
    *vol. v. pt. ix. ch. vii.* § 3 *n.*

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The two great words which, in their
first use, meant only perfection of
race, have come, by consequence of
the invariable connection of virtue
with the fine human nature, both to
signify benevolence of disposition.
The word "generous" and the word
"gentle" both, in their origin, meant
only "of pure race," but because
charity and tenderness are inseparable
from this purity of blood, the
words which once stood only for
pride, now stand as synonymous for
virtue.

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*The Crown of Wild Olive,* § 108.

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.. _`44`:

What vulgarity is, whether in
manners, acts, or conceptions, most
well-educated persons understand;
but what it consists in, or arises from,
is a more difficult question.  I believe
that on strict analysis it will be found
definable as "the habit of mind and
act resulting from the prolonged
combination of insensibility with insincerity."

It would be more accurate to
say, "constitutional insensibility";
for people are born vulgar, or not
vulgar, irrevocably.  An apparent
insensibility may often be caused by
one strong feeling quenching or
conquering another; and this to the
extent of involving the person in all
kinds of cruelty and crime: yet,
Borgia or Ezzelin, lady and knight
still; while the born clown is dead
in all sensation and capacity of
thought, whatever his acts or life
may be.

Cloten, in *Cymbeline*, is the most
perfect study of pure vulgarity, which
I know in literature; Perdita, in
*Winter's Tale*, the most perfect study
of its opposite (irrespective of such
higher virtue or intellect as we have
in Desdemona or Portia).  Perdita's
exquisite openness, joined with as
exquisite sensitiveness, constitute the
precise opposite of the apathetic
insincerity which is, I believe, the
essence of vulgarity.

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*Academy Notes*, 1859.

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Gentlemanliness in a limited sense
[may mean] only the effect of careful
education, good society, and refined
habits of life, on average temper and
character.  Deep and true
gentlemanliness [is] based on intense
sensibility and sincerity, perfected by
courage and other qualities of race,
[as opposed to] that union of
insensibility with cunning, which is the
essence of vulgarity.

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*Sir Joshua and Holbein*, § 6 *n.*

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There is, indeed, perhaps, no greater
sign of innate and real vulgarity of
mind or defective education than the
want of power to understand the
universality of the ideal truth; the
absence of sympathy with the colossal
grasp of those intellects, which have
in them so much of divine, that nothing
is small to them, nothing large; but
with equal and unoffended vision they
take in the sum of the world,—Straw
Street[#] and the seventh heaven,—in
the same instant.

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[#] Dante, *Paradiso*, x. 133-34.

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A certain portion of this divine spirit
is visible even in the lower examples
of all the true men; it is, indeed,
perhaps, the clearest test of their
belonging to the true and great group, that
they are continually touching what to
the multitude appear vulgarities.  The
higher a man stands, the more the
word "vulgar" becomes unintelligible
to him.  Vulgar? what, that poor
farmer's girl of William Hunt's, bred
in the stable, putting on her Sunday
gown, and pinning her best cap, out
of the green and red pin-cushion!
Not so; she may be straight on the
road to those high heavens, and may
shine hereafter as one of the stars in
the firmament for ever.  Nay, even
that lady in the satin bodice, with her
arm laid over a balustrade to show it,
and her eyes turned up to heaven to
show them; and the sportsman waving
his rifle for the terror of beasts, and
displaying his perfect dress for the
delight of men, are kept, by the very
misery and vanity of them, in the
thoughts of a great painter, at a
sorrowful level, somewhat above
vulgarity.  It is only when the minor
painter takes them on his easel, that
they become things for the universe to
be ashamed of.

We may dismiss this matter of
vulgarity in plain and few words, at
least as far as regards art.  There is
never vulgarity in a *whole* truth,
however commonplace.  It may be
unimportant or painful.  It cannot
be vulgar.  Vulgarity is only in
concealment of truth, or in affectation.

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*Modern Painters,*
    *vol. iii. pt. iv. ch. vii.* § 9.

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The first thing then that he has to
do, if unhappily his parents or masters
have not done it for him, is to find out
what he is fit for.  In which inquiry
a man may be safely guided by his
likings, if he be not also guided by
his pride.  People usually reason in
some such fashion as this: "I don't
seem quite fit for a head-manager in
the firm of —— & Co., therefore, in
all probability, I am fit to be Chancellor
of the Exchequer."  Whereas, they
ought rather to reason thus: "I don't
seem quite fit to be head-manager in
the firm of —— & Co., but I dare say
I might do something in a small
greengrocery business; I used to be
a good judge of pease;" that is to
say, always trying lower instead of
trying higher, until they find bottom:
once well set on the ground, a man
may build up by degrees, safely,
instead of disturbing every one in his
neighbourhood by perpetual catastrophes.
But this kind of humility is
rendered especially difficult in these
days, by the contumely thrown on
men in humble employments.  The
very removal of the massy bars which
once separated one class of society
from another, has rendered it tenfold
more shameful in foolish people's, *i.e.*,
in most people's eyes, to remain in
the lower grades of it, than ever it
was before.  When a man born of an
artisan was looked upon as an entirely
different species of animal from a man
born of a noble, it made him no more
uncomfortable or ashamed to remain
that different species of animal, than
it makes a horse ashamed to remain
a horse, and not to become a giraffe.
But now that a man may make money,
and rise in the world, and associate
himself, unreproached, with people
once far above him, not only is the
natural discontentedness of humanity
developed to an unheard-of extent,
whatever a man's position, but it
becomes a veritable shame to him to
remain in the state he was born in,
and everybody thinks it his *duty* to
try to be a "gentleman."  Persons
who have any influence in the management
of public institutions for charitable
education know how common
this feeling has become.  Hardly a
day passes but they receive letters
from mothers who want all their six
or eight sons to go to college, and
make the grand tour in the long
vacation, and who think there is something
wrong in the foundations of society
because this is not possible.  Out of
every ten letters of this kind, nine will
allege, as the reason of the writers'
importunity, their desire to keep their
families in such and such a "station
of life."  There is no real desire for
the safety, the discipline, or the moral
good of the children, only a panic
horror of the inexpressibly pitiable
calamity of their living a ledge or two
lower on the molehill of the world—a
calamity to be averted at any cost
whatever, of struggle, anxiety, and
shortening of life itself.  I do not
believe that any greater good could
be achieved for the country, than the
change in public feeling on this head,
which might be brought about by a
few benevolent men, undeniably in
the class of "gentlemen," who would,
on principle, enter into some of our
commonest trades, and make them
honourable; showing that it was
possible for a man to retain his dignity,
and remain, in the best sense, a
gentleman, though part of his time
was every day occupied in manual
labour, or even in serving customers
over a counter.  I do not in the least
see why courtesy, and gravity, and
sympathy with the feelings of others,
and courage, and truth, and piety,
and what else goes to make up a
gentleman's character, should not be
found behind a counter as well as
elsewhere, if they were demanded, or
even hoped for, there.

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*Pre-Raphaelitism*, § 2.

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As in nothing is a gentleman better
to be discerned from a vulgar person,
so in nothing is a gentle nation (such
nations have been) better to be
discerned from a mob, than in this,—that
their feelings are constant and
just, results of due contemplation, and
of equal thought.  You can talk a mob
into anything; its feelings may
be—usually are—on the whole, generous
and right; but it has no foundation
for them, no hold of them; you may
tease or tickle it into any, at your
pleasure; it thinks by infection, for
the most part, catching an opinion
like a cold, and there is nothing so
little that it will not roar itself wild
about, when the fit is on;—nothing
so great but it will forget in an hour,
when the fit is past.  But a gentleman's,
or a gentle nation's, passions
are just, measured, and continuous.

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*Sesame and Lilies*, § 30.

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Whether it is indeed the gods who
have given any gentleman the grace
to despise the rabble depends wholly
on whether it is indeed the rabble, or
he, who are the malignant persons.

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*Fiction, Fair and Foul*, § 46.

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I have summed the needful virtue
of men under the terms of gentleness
and justice; gentleness being the
virtue which distinguishes gentlemen
from churls, and justice that which
distinguishes honest men from rogues.
Now gentleness may be defined as the
Habit or State of Love, and ungentleness
or clownishness as the State or
Habit of Lust.

Now there are three great loves
that rule the souls of men: the love
of what is lovely in creatures, and of
what is lovely in things, and what is
lovely in report.  And these three
loves have each their relative corruption,
a lust—the lust of the flesh, the
lust of the eyes, and the pride of life.

And, as I have just said, a gentleman
is distinguished from a churl by
the purity of sentiment he can reach
in all these three passions; by his
imaginative love, as opposed to lust;
his imaginative possession of wealth
as opposed to avarice; his imaginative
desire of honour as opposed to pride.

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*Fors Clavigera, Letter* 41.

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Of all essential things in a gentleman's
bodily and moral training, this
is really the beginning—that he should
have close companionship with the
horse, the dog, and the eagle.  Of
all birthrights and bookrights—this is
his first.  He needn't be a Christian,—there
have been millions of Pagan
gentlemen; he needn't be kind—there
have been millions of cruel gentlemen;
he needn't be honest,—there have
been millions of crafty gentlemen.
He needn't know how to read, or to
write his own name.  But he *must*
have horse, dog, and eagle for friends.
If then he has also Man for his friend,
he is a noble gentleman; and if God
for his Friend, a king.  And if, being
honest, being kind, and having God
and Man for his friends, he *then* gets
these three brutal friends, besides his
angelic ones, he is perfect in earth, as
for heaven.  For, to be his friends,
these must be brought up with him,
and he with them.  Falcon on fist,
hound at foot, and horse part of
himself—Eques, Ritter, Cavalier,
Chevalier.

Yes;—horse and dog you understand
the good of; but what's the
good of the falcon, think you?

To be friends with the falcon must
mean that you love to see it soar;
that is to say, you love fresh air and
the fields.  Farther, when the Law of
God is understood, you will like better
to see the eagle free than the jessed
hawk.  And to preserve your eagles'
nests, is to be a great nation.  It
means keeping everything that is
noble; mountains and floods, and
forests, and the glory and honour of
them, and all the birds that haunt them.

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*Fors Clavigera, Letter* 75.

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BALLANTYNE PRESS, EDINBURGH

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   *These are published in various forms:—*

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\1.  The Library Edition, now in
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   *NOW READY*

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SESAME AND LILIES.
   Three Lectures and Long Preface.

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: noindent white-space-pre-line

THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE.
   Essays on Work, Traffic, War, and
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.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: noindent white-space-pre-line

THE TWO PATHS.
   On Decoration and Manufacture.

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: noindent white-space-pre-line

TIME AND TIDE.
   On Laws of Work.

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: noindent white-space-pre-line

LECTURES ON ART.
   Delivered at Oxford in 1870.

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: noindent white-space-pre-line

A JOY FOR EVER.
   On the Political Economy of Art.

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: noindent white-space-pre-line

THE QUEEN OF THE AIR.
   A Study of Greek Myths.

.. vspace:: 1

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THE ETHICS OF THE DUST.
   On the Elements of Crystallisation.

.. vspace:: 1

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THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING.
   With 50 Woodcuts.

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THE EAGLE'S NEST.
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MUNERA PULVERIS.
   On the Elements of Political Economy

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FRONDES AGRESTES.
   Readings in "Modern Painters."

.. vspace:: 1

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MORNINGS IN FLORENCE.
   Studies of Christian Art.

.. vspace:: 1

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ST. MARK'S REST.
   The History of Venice.

.. vspace:: 1

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THE STONES OF VENICE.
   Vol. I.  Selections for Travellers.

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THE STONES OF VENICE.
   Vol. II.  Selections for Travellers.



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