lxxx INTRODUCTION

to have his vote, but votes were to be weighed as well as counted; weight being attached more especially to property and education. This latter test brought him to the subject of a third Letter, in which he discussed the Principles of Education. This letter, as already stated, was ultimately embodied in the last volume of The Stones of Venice; to complete his perusal of Ruskin’s first scheme of political reform, the reader should, therefore, after reading the Letters now under discussion, refer to that volume (Vol. XI. p. 258). He will there find that Ruskin pleads, in the subject-matter of education, that it should include Natural History, Religion, and the elements of Politics; and, with regard to its scope, that it should be National.

This scheme was set forth by Ruskin two years after Carlyle had published his Latter-Day Pamphlets, to which work it doubtless owed something of inspiration; it is, however, worth noticing that the disciple’s treatment of the theme, if similar in spirit, was more precise and definite than his stormy teacher’s. Ruskin’s political writings, now and afterwards, may have been practicable or impracticable-there will be a word to say on that subject presently, and in a later volume; but at any rate they were directed to practical ends; they may have looked towards the sky, but they trod the earth.

Ruskin’s father was a Tory of the old school, and an admirer of Disraeli, whose process of educating his Party had as yet hardly begun. The very Radical pill, which, with some Tory gilding, Ruskin proposed to apply to the body politic, was naturally unacceptable at the domestic headquarters; the Letters, to which the son attached great importance, and which he particularly desired to publish in the then year of grace, 1852, were put on the paternal Index, and now see the light of publicity for the first time. The correspondence between father and son is interesting, and, in telling its own story, supplies such further commentary as is necessary on Part IV. of this volume:-

“March 6.-These news from England are really too ridiculous, and I can stand it no longer. I am going for three days to give the usual time I set aside for your letter to writing one to the Times-on Corn Laws, Election, and Education. George shall copy it. If you like to send it, you can; if not, you can consider it all as written to you, but you must have short letters for a day or two.”

“March 14.-I don’t know whether you have found my Times letters worth sending, or whether the Times will put them in, but I rather hope so-not in the hope of their doing any good at present, but because I want to be able to refer to them in future. I was a mere boy when the present design for the Houses of Parliament was chosen-but I

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