A man he was “great in saving common sense and in simplicity sublime.” What think you, friends, was the secret of William Edward Forster’s character, but this?—that “doing nothing through strife or vain glory; in lowliness of mind esteeming others better than himself … he made himself of no reputation;” cared nothing, as he once told me, for mere position, and less, if that were possible, for what men thought about him as far as his public acts were concerned, though he was as sensitive as a woman to a true praise or a true blame of his countrymen; but was determined to be in very truth a Minister of State, and thought no task too difficult, no employ too hazardous, if only in it or by it he could be a servant—first of Christ and then of his country and his time. Truly did that brave man carry himself through storms of insult and winds of rebuke, as though he looked ever unto Jesus the author and finisher of his faith, and could still steer straight onward. If ever in modern times a statesman became obedient unto death it was he who bore the cross of Irish administration – ay, and died upon it. Blameless and harmless (though, doubtless, of not infallible human judgment), a son of God without rebuke in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation, that simple, rugged, manly character shone as a light in a dark world. … Now as we look back upon the past of the mind that was also in Jesus Christ, which this good life of upright perseverance and honest purpose had mirrored forth in the nation’s council and his private home alike, what think you was it that was most noticeable? I answer: fearlessness of what man could do unto him; the courage of his opinions. Friends, the mind as it is in Christ has this same characteristic, and may be known by it. … It is that same part of the mind as it was and is in Christ that, as we follow the Saviour in his ministry, shines out with such a dazzling brightness—the courage to think and act in scorn of all tradition, in the face of public and private opinion of his day to the contrary. A courage that brings no trembling to the lip as the saviour begins to tell his disciples of the decease he must shortly accomplish at Jerusalem. A fearlessness that allows of no half-heartedness in the tone as the word “hypocrites!” flames from his godlike lips upon the Priests and Pharisees. A calm that allows him to say calmly and unflinchingly, in Pilate’s judgment hall to Pilate’s question, the little sentence that wrought the doom of the cross, “Thou sayest that I am a king.” My friends, if to-day, in any community of professing Christians, who, when appealed to, do the right in scorn of consequences, there assuredly the mind that was in Christ Jesus may be known and seen. But, on the other hand, if in any congregation or community, such public spirit is at a low ebb, it may be taken for a sign that there the Christ the fearless one, the Christ with the courage of his convictions, is but dimly known amongst men, but faintly recognised as being “a very present help in time of trouble.”    

(English Lakes Visitor and Keswick Guardian, 24 April 1886, p. 5)

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(In Memoriam : William Greenip (rural postman), a close observer of nature: obiit, November 1st at Keswick.)

GOD sometimes fills a poor man’s patient heart
    With his own reverent love and constant care
    For all the things He hath created fair,—
Birds, flowers, the wings that fly, the fins that dart,—
And therewithal by Nature’s winsome art 
    Leads him to heights of philosophic air
    Where clamour dies, Heaven’s ether is so rare,
And bids him walk with gentleness apart.
Friend! such wert thou: the Newlands valley dew,
    The star o’er Grisedale’s purple head that shone,
        Were not more silent, but each stream and glade,
Each bird that flashed, all dusky moths that flew,
    All flowers held commune with thee.  Thou art gone:
        And Nature mourns the tender heart she made.

(English Lakes Visitor and Keswick Guardian, 22 November 1890, p. 4)

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St. Beatenberg

The daylight fell, and vast o’ershadowings
        Filled with their purple dark the valleys under,
        When swift as thought Heaven’s veil was rent
            asunder,
And gave us vision of the mountain kings;
Their thrones—carved ivory, unsubstantial things,
        Such as men only dream of—seemed a wonder
        Of palpitating fire, and grey with thunder
A huge cloud bore them up on plumy wings.

Then forth on Eiger’s topmost peak out-stepped
    The full orbed moon, and swift away she drew
        Death-pale—her envy could not brook the sight,
For while beneath her feet earth’s darkness crept,
    These mountain kings in power and glory grew
        To stay the sun, and to delay the night.

(Sonnets in Switzerland and Italy, p. 111)

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The monument that we unveil to-day consists of a simple monolithic block of Borrowdale stone, rough and unhewn as it came from the quarry.  It is of the type of the standing stones of Galloway, which are the earliest Christian monuments of the Celtic people now extant.  This form has been chosen as linking us here with that land across the Solway, whence Ruskin’s fore-elders came.  Upon one side is incised a simple Chi-Rho, enclosed in a circle after the fashion of those earliest crosses, with the following inscription beneath from Deucalion, Lecture xii., par. 40:—'The Spirit of God is around you in the air you breathe—His Glory in the light that you see, and in the fruitfulness of the earth and the joy of His creatures, He has written for you day by day His revelation, as He has granted you day by day your daily bread.’ (p. 215)

It may serve to perpetuate to passers by one of the messages of the Teacher, and the cross above it may strike a keynote which, at any rate, I find ringing up from so much that Ruskin wrote, and from all of his daily life I knew or have heard of. (p. 216)

On the other side of the monolith, facing the lake and the scene which Ruskin once described to a friend of mine “as one of the three most beautiful scenes in Europe,” we have a medallion in bronze, the careful work of Signor Lucchesi, representing Ruskin not as the old man and invalid of later days, but as he was in his prime, at the time I knew him best, at Oxford, in the early seventies.  The head is in profile; a crown of wild olive is seen in the background of the panel, which is dished or hollowed to give the profile high relief, and Ruskin’s favourite motto, “To-day,” is introduced among the olive leaves in the background over the head.  Above the portrait is the name “John Ruskin,” beneath are his dates 1819 to 1900.  Beneath these again is incised the inscription, ‘The first thing that I remember as an event in life was being taken by my nurse to the brow of Friar’s Crag, Derwentwater.’ (p. 216)

The lettering has been designed and drawn by Ruskin’s biographer, Mr. Collingwood, and was so designed to indicate that particular dot and dash style of drawing which was a favourite method with the Master.  We have to thank Mr. Bromley, the stone cutter, for his care in selecting the block, and his nephew for his cutting of the letters as well. (p. 217)

The monument in its simplicity and sincerity has at any rate the merit of telling its own story, and of being devoid of any unnecessary ornament.  It is of the stone of the country, and placed here on this grassy knoll among the trees, seems to be a natural part of the surroundings, and can in no way, either by colour or by scale, incur the charge of being vulgar or intrusive or a blot upon the scene.  It grows out of the ground. (p. 217)

It is erected by leave of the Lord of the Manor here, in the neighbourhood of a scene so dear and memorable to John Ruskin, in entire accordance with his teaching.  He has told us that ‘whenever the conduct or writings of any individual have been directed or inspired by Nature, Nature should be entrusted with their monument’; and again, ‘that since all monuments to individuals are to a certain extant triumphant, they must not be placed where Nature has no elevation of character.’ (p. 217)

The elevated nature of this scene will not be called in question.  And this simple memorial has been placed by friends and lovers of John Ruskin here to shew our gratitude for that servant of God and of the people whose eyes were opened here first to the wonder of creation and the beauty of God’s handiwork; and in the full belief that the scene will lose nothing of natural dignity and power to impress by the memory of how it was able, in the year 1824, to impress and inspire John Ruskin. (pp. 217-218)

(Ruskin and the English Lakes, pp. 207-218)

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