niture of antique phrases, titles, and dignities, gathered from wide ranges of history, to be revived for modern use; in the midst of which the master's-i.e., Mr. Ruskin's-accounts, household and other, and Messrs. Tarrant and Mackrell, solic itors', letter conveying the information that "the Companions of St. George will indeed be capable of holding land, but not as the St. George's Company, that is, not as a corporation," and giving warning of various legal and other dangers, come in as passages of quite unilluminated prose. But there was no number of the series which did not contain passages of great beauty and sterling value, and over and

affair. Mr. Ruskin himself was unfortu- | dress and ornament; all in the most picnately unable to be present, and the ad- turesque and quaintly-worded way. In fact dress from him, which was read, was a many a page is, as it were, stiff with garpoor substitute for his voice and presence; but even if he had been there, however much greater the interest of the meeting would have been, he would have had no very astonishing marvel to tell; nothing wherewith to strike the imagination, like the acquisition of some bold outlying island in which the experiment might be, as the public would think, fairly tried; nothing except, indeed, his own eloquent words to lessen the sense of disproportion which could not but attend the first actual setting to work of a society with so lofty an aim, and such vague, imagined possibilities of all-embracing growth, as are involved in the design of St. George's Guild. The aim is high, and the framework capa-over again, Mr. Ruskin stated in a clear ble, in its author's hope, of indefinite ex- and direct manner, the objects of the soci pansion; but the lines are so laid that the ety, and what he proposed should be its world will, perhaps, be the better for the methods of action. Every one knows experiment, if only a small measure of how, in his opinion, and in some other peosuccess, such as it is within reason to hope ple's also, the world is in a very bad way, for, be obtained. The public has heard - selfishness, vanity, and practical atheism less of the essential than of the minor and having wholly undermined the framework somewhat fantastic details of the scheme. of social order, degraded labor, and deThey have been used to regard Mr. Rus-stroyed art. Those, to whom acquiescence kin (when they thought of him as anything in such a state of things is intolerable, are else than a great art-critic, the greatest, asked to form a guild, "the object of which perhaps, that ever lived), as one who had is to be the health, wealth, and long life of lost all patience with the world, and who the British nation," or, as he puts it elsehad gone utterly wrong in his views about where," to buy, or obtain by gift, land in the currency; he was childish about rail- England, and thereon to train into the ways, machinery, and the sacred right of healthiest and most refined life possible, getting the best interest you could for your as many English men, English women, and money; he was a hater of liberty and English children, as the land so possessed progress, yet positively no better than a can maintain in comfort; to establish for Communist, if all that was said of this them and their descendants a national new brotherhood of his were true. Un- store of continually augmenting wealth; doubtedly "Fors Clavigera," or the pam- and to organize the government of the phlet of that name which he gave to the persons, and administration of the propworld, or to those who took the trouble to erties, under laws which shall be just to write to Mr. George Allen for it, month by all, and secure in their inviolable foundamonth for eight years, until his untoward tion on the law of God." "The rents of illness, was, to say the very least, most such land, though they will be required varied and delightful reading. In its pages from the tenants as strictly as those of any Mr. Ruskin has used to the full the license other estates, will differ from common which clearly belongs to founders of imag-rents primarily in being lowered, instead of inary republics, and has given his mind to a great variety of details in the economy of his own. He has told us what the national store in place of the national debt shall consist of; has fixed his standard of value; chosen his coinage, a most lovely one, of course the ducat and half-ducat, | with the archangel Michael on one side and a branch of Alpine rose on the other, in gold the florin and penny, with its English daisy, and divisions of the penny, in silver; has meditated laws regulating

raised, in proportion to every improvement made by the tenant; secondly, in that they will be entirely used for the benefit of the tenantry themselves, or better culture of the estates, no money being ever taken by the landlords, unless they earn it by their own personal labor." So much for the difficult subject of rent, regarded from the landlord's side. The unselfishness which is thus largely counted on in the matter of gifts of land, to begin with, and the surrender of rents in perpetuity, is, after all,

thing he touched. Many are the hints that some of our first physicists and chemists have received from his fertile brain.

But it is not only as a scientist that Professor Clifford is known, and that his memory will llve; he was also well recognized as a moral philosopher, and whether at a meeting of that most select of all select societies the Metaphysical- or among less distinguished friends, his arguments bore the genuine stamp of deep thought, and when he ridiculed and he could do so in the most scathing manner - it was done for the sake of truth, and with a firm conviction that the subject in hand deserved it. It will interest many to know that he held the strongest anti-Russian views, and often regretted the inactivity of England and Europe during the late war. Shortly before he left England he wrote two letters to a journal known for its strong opposition to Russia, which were published, though not with his signature. He greatly deplored the attitude of the Liberal Opposition in this country.

fulness of its mercy, and the joy of its | love." Nor can we give here any sketch of the constitution of the society, and the conditions of companionship. We had intended to convey to our readers a notion of what we take to be the essential objects of Mr. Ruskin's design, keeping aside much which represented only the indulgence on the founder's part of his own brilliant fancies in State-making, as well as the wide-sweeping arrangements which, as he himself says, 66 are thought out in the scale of European work." Some very small bits of various parishes being all the society has to begin with, we wished to give only such extracts from "Fors" as would fit this modest scale, and be capable assuming a certain amount of unselfishof being put in practice within it; but the temptation to quote some sentences at length which go beyond this, and show how much that is noble is contained in the author's ideal of education and life, has been too much for us now and then. The society, however, exists, and we may possibly one day give some account of the Few are aware that at one period of his meeting, presided over by an ex-mayor of life he was an ardent believer in what are no mean city, and attended by real, hard-called High Church views, and that he working companions, with which its public be said to have commenced.

ness

life may

From The Examiner.
PROFESSOR CLIFFORD.

It is with the deepest feelings of regret that we record the death, at the early age of thirty-four years, of Professor W. Kingdon Clifford, F.R.S., late fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, and professor of applied mathematics and mechanics at University College, London. In power of original mathematical investigation it is not too much to say that he showed genius of the very highest order, and the value of his contributions to the most abstruse branches of mathematical science will be appreciated even more than it is now by future workers; for he was a pioneer with whom few could keep pace. Professor Clifford's powers of exposition were al most marvellous, and he was absolutely unrivalled in the facility with which he would explain the results of the most abstruse calculations so as to make them intelligible to the meanest capacity. It is seldom that these two faculties are found in one individual; but Professor Clifford was also a thinker in many branches of science, and threw some new light on every

then studied theology with that zeal which characterized all he did. His knowledge of the Fathers was perhaps unequalled by that of any bishop on the Bench. It was this which gave him such power in his attacks on superstition. He knew his own strength and the weak points of the enemy's fortress, while his honesty of purpose and his love of truth made him a difficult foe to encounter. What rank he would have taken, had he lived ten years longer, among the philosophers whose thoughts influence men for all time we cannot say, but it is certain that he gave every promise that his more matured productions would take their place side by side with those of the first thinkers of any age. But it is as a man that his friends will remember him; they will think of that charming gentle manner, of that pleasant smile, of that face that was never seen in anger, of those cheering words always at command, of his consideration for others, of all his lovable qualities, and they will find a blank left which can never be filled.

For him we can do nothing, but profit by the example he has left us. But for those nearest and dearest to him, from whom he has been snatched, it is our duty as well as our privilege to make that provision which his short life and slender means prevented him from insuring.

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