APPENDIX, 25 473

but the kind which ought to be the best-the noblest born, the best taught, the richest in time and money, having more leisure, knowledge, and power than any other portion of the nation. These, we might suppose, beholding, as they travelled, the condition of the States in which the Papal religion is professed, and being, at the same time, the most enlightened section of a great Protestant nation, would have been animated with some desire to dissipate the Romanist errors, and to communicate to others the better knowledge which they possessed themselves. I doubt not but that He who gave peace upon the earth, and gave it by the hand of England, expected this much of her, and has watched every one of the millions of her travellers as they crossed the sea,¹ and kept count for him of his travelling expenses, and of their distribution, in a manner of which neither the traveller nor his courier was at all informed. I doubt not, I say, but that such accounts have been literally kept for all of us, and that a day will come when they will be made clearly legible to us, and when we shall see added together, on one side of the account-book, a great sum, the certain portion, whatever it may be, of this thirty-five years’ spendings of the rich English, accounted for in this manner:-

To wooden-spoons, nut-crackers, and jewellery, bought at Geneva and elsewhere among the Alps, so much; to shell cameos and bits of mosaic bought at Rome, so much; to coral horns and lava brooches bought at Naples, so much; to glass beads at Venice, and gold filigree at Genoa, so much; to pictures, and statues, and ornaments, everywhere, so much; to avant-couriers and extra post-horses, for show and magnificence, so much; to great entertainments and good places for seeing sights, so much; to balldresses, and general vanities, so much. This, I say, will be the sum on one side of the book; and on the other will be written,

To the struggling Protestant Churches of France, Switzerland, and Piedmont, so much.

Had we not better do this piece of statistics for ourselves, in time?

¹ [Ruskin is referring, of course, to the impetus given to continental travel by the long peace after Waterloo.]

END OF VOLUME IX

[Version 0.04: March 2008]