The rest is silence.  Last words of the chief wisdom of the heathen, spoken of this idol of riches; this idol of yours; this golden image, high by measureless cubits, set up where your green fields of England are furnace-burnt into the likeness of the plain of Dura:[227] this idol, forbidden to us, first of all idols, by our own Master and faith; forbidden to us also by every human lip that has ever, in any age or people, been accounted of as able to speak according to the purposes of God.  Continue to make that forbidden deity your principal one, and soon no more art, no more science, no more pleasure will be possible.  Catastrophe will come; or, worse than catastrophe, slow mouldering and withering into Hades.  But if you can fix some conception of a true human state of life to be striven for—­life, good for all men, as for yourselves; if you can determine some honest and simple order of existence; following those trodden ways of wisdom, which are pleasantness,[228] and seeking her quiet and withdrawn paths, which are peace;—­then, and so sanctifying wealth into “commonwealth,” all your art, your literature, your daily labours, your domestic affection, and citizen’s duty, will join and increase into one magnificent harmony.  You will know then how to build, well enough; you will build with stone well, but with flesh better; temples not made with hands,[229] but riveted of hearts; and that kind of marble, crimson-veined, is indeed eternal.

  [202] Delivered in the Town Hall, Bradford, April 21, 1864.

  [203] Matthew v, 6.

  [204] Scott’s Lay of the Last Minstrel, canto 1, stanza 4.

  [205] The reference was to the reluctance of this country to take
  arms in defence of Denmark against Prussia and Austria. [Cook and
  Wedderburn.]

  [206] See, e.g., pp. 167 ff. and 270 ff.

  [207] Inigo Jones [1573-1652] and Sir Christopher Wren [1632-1723]
  were the best known architects of their respective generations.

  [208] Genesis xxviii, 17.

  [209] Matthew xxiv, 27.

  [210] Matthew vi, 6.

  [211] And all other arts, for the most part; even of incredulous
  and secularly-minded commonalties. [Ruskin.]

  [212] 1 Corinthians i, 23.

  [213] For further interpretation of Greek mythology see Ruskin’s
  Queen of the Air.

[214] It is an error to suppose that the Greek worship, or seeking, was chiefly of Beauty.  It was essentially of Rightness and Strength, founded on Forethought:  the principal character of Greek art is not beauty, but design:  and the Dorian Apollo-worship and Athenian Virgin-worship are both expressions of adoration of divine wisdom and purity.  Next to these great deities, rank, in power over the national mind, Dionysus and Ceres, the givers of human strength and life; then, for heroic example, Hercules.  There is no Venus-worship among the Greeks in the great times:  and the Muses are essentially teachers of Truth, and of its harmonies. [Ruskin.]

  [215] Tetzel’s trading in Papal indulgences aroused Luther to the
  protest which ended in the Reformation.