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THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE
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Twenty years ago, there was no lovelier piece of lowland scenery in South England, nor any more pathetic in the world,
by its expression of sweet human character and life, than that immediately bordering on the sources of the Wandle, and
including the lower moors of Addington, and the villages of Beddington and Carshalton, with all their pools and streams.
No clearer or diviner waters ever sang with constant lips of the hand which 'giveth rain from heaven;' no pastures ever
lightened in spring time with more passionate blossoming; no sweeter homes ever hallowed the heart of the passer-by
with their pride of peaceful gladness—fain-hidden—yet full-confessed. The place remains, or, until a few months ago,
remained, nearly unchanged in its larger features; but, with deliberate mind I say, that I have never seen anything so
ghastly in its inner tragic meaning,—not in Pisan Maremma—not by Campagna tomb,—not by the sand-isles of the
Torcellan shore,—as the slow stealing of aspects of reckless, indolent, animal neglect, over the delicate sweetness of
that English scene: nor is any blasphemy or impiety—any frantic saying or godless thought—more appalling to me, using
the best power of judgment I have to discern its sense and scope, than the insolent defilings of those springs by the
human herds that drink of them. Just where the welling of stainless water, trembling and pure, like a body of light, enters
the pool of Carshalton, cutting itself a radiant channel down to the gravel, through warp of feathery weeds, all waving,
which it traverses with its deep threads of clearness, like the chalcedony in moss-agate, starred here and there with
white grenouillette; just in the very rush and murmur of the first spreading currents, the human wretches of the place cast
their street and house foulness; heaps of dust and slime, and broken shreds of old metal, and rags of putrid clothes; they
having neither energy to cart it away, nor decency enough to dig it into the ground, thus shed into the stream, to diffuse
what venom of it will float and melt, far away, in all places where God meant those waters to bring joy and health. And, in
a little pool, behind some houses farther in the village, where another spring rises, the shattered stones of the well, and
of the little fretted channel which was long ago built and traced for it by gentler hands, lie scattered, each from each,
under a ragged bank of mortar, and scoria; and brick-layers' refuse, on one side, which the clean water nevertheless
chastises to purity; but it cannot conquer the dead earth beyond; and there, circled and coiled under festering scum, the
stagnant edge of the pool effaces itself into a slope of black slime, the accumulation of indolent years
JOHN RUSKIN - Personal Name
1st Edition
NONE
THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE
Communication
English
COLONIAL PRESS COMPANY
1957
1-355
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