Note 8 — LETTER IX.

But it is evidently necessary for the right working of the scheme that the Trustees should not, except only in that office, be at present concerned with or involved in it; and that no ambiguous responsibility should fall on them. I know too much of the manner of law to hope that I can get the arrangement put into proper form before the end of the year; but, I hope, at latest, on the eve of Christmas Day (the day I named first) to publish the December number of Fors with the legal terms all clear: until then, whatever sums or land I may receive will be simply paid to the Trustees, or secured in their name, for the St. George’s Fund; what I may attempt afterwards will be, in any case, scarcely noticeable for some time; for I shall only work with the interest of the fund;8 and as I have strength and leisure:—I have little enough of the one; and am like to have little of the other, for years to come, if these drawing-schools become useful, as I hope. But what I may do myself is of small consequence. Long before it can come to any convincing result, I believe some of the gentlemen of England will have taken up the matter, and seen that, for their own sake, no less than the country’s, they must now live on their estates, not in shooting-time only, but all the year; and be themselves farmers, or “shepherd lords,” and make the field gain on the street, not the street on the field; and bid the light break into the smoke-clouds, and bear in their hands, up to those loathsome city walls, the gifts of Giotto’s Charity, corn and flowers.