THE USE OF UGLINESS! critic once to Turner, "That's a fine painting of yours, but why have you got that ugly bit of building in the corner?" "Oh!" replied Turner, "that's to give value to the rest of the composition by way of contrast; I made it ugly on purpose!" and Turner was right. Who enjoys the country so much as the dweller in the unbeautiful smoke-stained streets of our huge modern towns?
Shortly after this we reached the little village of Benington, which boasted a large church having a fine old tower, a tower, however, that ended abruptly without any architectural finish; presumably the ambition of the early builders was greater than their means. Nowadays we have improved upon the old ways—we build and complete without the means, then we set to work to beg for the money, though the begging is not always successful, as the following characteristic letter of Mr. Ruskin shows, which he wrote in reply to a circular asking him to subscribe to help to pay off some of the debt on a certain iron church:—
Brantwood, Coniston, Lancashire,
19th May 1886.
Sir—I am scornfully amused at your appeal to me, of all people in the world the precisely least likely to give you a farthing! My first word to all men and boys who care to hear me is—Don't get into debt. Starve and go to heaven, but don't borrow. . . . Don't buy things you can't pay for! And of all manner of debtors, pious people building churches they can't pay for are the most detestable nonsense to me. Can't you preach and pray behind the hedges, or in a sandpit, or in a coalhole first? And of all manner of churches thus idiotically built, iron churches are the damnablest to me. . . . Ever, nevertheless, and in all this saying, your faithful servant,
John Ruskin.
