NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE.

Sir,— Tipton, 8th April, 1872.

You have written a many letters to workmen, and seem to have suffered from a many replies by clerks, manufacturers, and others, to whom your letters were not addressed; and as you have noticed some of their performances, I am encouraged to expect you will kindly read one written by a man belonging to the class that you have chosen to write to,—one who is emphatically a workman, labouring many hours daily with hands and head in the wilderness known to people living in pleasanter places as the Black Country.

This letter is not, however, sent to invite you to sympathise with me on account of the sooty residence I endure, for it is not so unpleasant a place to a man with a healthy mind, as gentle-folks with exaggerated sensibilities are apt to consider it. We do see the sky, and sometimes the green fields, and those who always live among the latter don’t seem to be more refined, more elevated, or more use in the world than we are. But it is written very respectfully to remonstrate with you on account of your peculiar method of publication. You write books and letters, therefore I suppose you wish them to be read; but did it never occur to you that in order to be read, they must be made known to those whom you desire to read them? and how can that be done unless their publication is advertised? You object to do that, but do not substitute any other method—if, indeed, there is any other—of informing us of the letters and books that you have written. Booksellers do not offer your volumes, because your conditions of sale do not allow them to make a fair profit. Their customers can purchase the books as cheap as the book-dealer, and with as little trouble as an application to him would give them2—supposing they have accidentally heard of the books. Like many thousands more in this country of black faces and horny hands, I am imperfectly educated, but desirous to learn, and able, without much self-denial or any inconvenience, to purchase your volumes at a doctor’s fee, or two fees each if you fix it so. Some of your books I possess, and the advantages I have received from the study of them makes me desirous that they should be more widely known and read. Commerce is too often a dishonest selfish scramble: employers and employed are at variance when their interests are identical. Daily toil does not obliterate our taste for art, and is it not desirable that those who have the means to gratify that taste should be able to know the right and the wrong in it, and recognise noble art when they see it? Upon all this you have written much in your books, but if the books are not known, it is as if unwritten, of even worse, because it is needful work not doing the good it might do.

Your ‘Fors’ series of letters are almost unknown to those to whom you have addressed them. I heard of them six months after their commencement, because some “able editor” was short of copy, and endeavoured to be clever at your expense. Sir, I hope you will reconsider this matter,—what possible harm could it do to simply announce the publication of a volume or a letter in a few newspapers or magazines? It is certainly a mistake that the knowledge of a newly-issued volume should depend upon the exigences of foolish editors or the popular relish for their highly-spiced rubbish.

I hate anonymous letters, and you can have my address if you want it. I read the other day if any one dared to expostulate with you that you would gibbet him. What that means, I know not. Something awful, no doubt. So I merely subscribe myself,

Sir,
Your very humble servant,
———

THE MOUNT OF COMPASSION, And Coronation of its Builder.

THE MOUNT OF COMPASSION, And Coronation of its Builder.

Drawn thus by Sandro Botticelli.

1 The “Mount” is the heap of money in store for lending without interest. You shall have a picture of it in next number, as drawn by a brave landscape painter four hundred years ago; and it will ultimately be one of the crags of our own Mont Rose; and well should be, for it was first raised among the rocks of Italy by a Franciscan monk, for refuge to the poor against the usury of the Lombard merchants who gave name to our Lombard Street, and perished by their usury, as their successors are like enough to do also. But the story goes back to Friedrich II. of Germany again, and is too long for this letter. ↑

2 [If that be so, booksellers are of no use in the world, and ought to be abolished. Am I to give my buyers unnecessary trouble that booksellers may live?] ↑

FORS CLAVIGERA.