APPENDIX, 8 263

nature of their knowledge ought to be at a given time or in a given case, is a totally different question; the main thing to be understood is, that a man is not educated, in any sense whatsoever, because he can read Latin, or write English, or can behave well in a drawing-room; but that he is only educated if he is happy, busy, beneficent, and effective in the world; that millions of peasants are therefore at this moment better educated than most of those who call themselves gentlemen; and that the means taken to “educate” the lower classes in any other sense may very often be productive of a precisely opposite result.

Observe, I do not say, nor do I believe, that the lower classes ought not to be better educated, in millions of ways, than they are. I believe every man in a Christian kingdom ought to be equally well educated. But I would have it education to purpose; stern, practical, irresistible, in moral habits, in bodily strength and beauty, in all faculties of mind capable of being developed under the circumstances of the individual, and especially in the technical knowledge of his own business; but yet, infinitely various in its effort, directed to make one youth humble, and another confident; to tranquillize this mind, to put some spark of ambition into that; now to urge, and now to restrain: and in the doing of all this, considering knowledge as one only out of myriads of means in his hands, or myriads of gifts at its disposal; and giving it or withholding it as a good husbandman waters his garden, giving the full shower only to the thirsty plants, and at times when they are thirsty; whereas at present we pour it upon the heads of our youth as the snow falls on the Alps, on one and another alike, till they can bear no more, and then take honour to ourselves because here and there a river descends from their crests into the valleys, not observing that we have made the loaded hills themselves barren for ever.

Finally, I hold it for indisputable, that the first duty of a state is to see that every child born therein shall be well housed, clothed, fed, and educated, till it attain years of discretion. But in order to the effecting this, the government must have an authority over the people of which we now do not so much as dream; and I cannot in this place pursue the subject farther.¹

8. [p. 138.] EARLY VENETIAN MARRIAGES

Galliciolli, lib. ii. § 1757, insinuates a doubt of the general custom, saying, “It would be more reasonable to suppose that only twelve maidens were married in public on St. Mark’s Day;” and Sandi also speaks of twelve only. All evidence, however, is clearly in favour of the popular tradition; the most curious fact connected with the subject being the mention, by Herodotus, of the mode of marriage practised among the Illyrian “Veneti” of his time,² who

¹ [The train of thought here foreshadowed was afterwards developed in Unto this Last and Time and Tide; see especially § 70 of the latter work, where the words above are quoted and confirmed.]

² [The reference is to the passage (i. 196) in which Herodotus describes the marriage customs of the Babylonians, “the wisest being this which I am informed that the Enetoi in Illyria also have.” The custom is described and discussed by Ruskin in a critique of Edwin Long’s picture, “The Babylonian Marriage Market” (Academy Notes, 1875, No. 482).]

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