lxxxii INTRODUCTION

mischief; and what is England, when compared with the vast tracts of populous and in some sort civilized territory, which are now falling to decay. But I am very glad the new Government is getting on pretty well. In case you should not yet have sent my letters to Times, and should be intending to send them, I wish, as my father likes D’Israeli, that he should put his pen through the sentence about him. The passage will read connectedly without it, better perhaps than with it.”

Meanwhile Ruskin’s father was reading the letters and lamenting at his son’s lapse, as it seemed, from his hereditary Toryism into red Radicalism, or worse. Ruskin replied, defending himself, but acquiescing, though reluctantly, in the suppression, or, at any rate, in the holding back of the letters:-

“March 29.-I had yesterday your nice long letter from Leeds, but was sorry to hear from my mother that you were annoying yourself because you did not agree with me, and I am sorry that in the midst of your labour in travelling I have caused you the additional work of these long letters. Keep mine until I get home, and then we will talk about them, but do not vex yourself because you think I am turning republican. I am, I believe, just what I was ten years ago, in all respects but one, that I have not the Jacobite respect for the Stuarts which I had then; when I was at College I used to stand up for James II. I have certainly changed no opinion since I wrote the passage in the Seven Lamps about loyalty.¹ I meant the word to signify what it really does in the long run signify-loy-alty, respect for loy or law; for the King as long as he observes and represents law; and a love, not merely of established laws at a particular time, but of the principles of law and obedience in general. As for the universal suffrage in my letter, if you look over it carefully you will see that I am just as far from universal suffrage as you are-and that by my measure, one man of parts and rank would outweigh in voting a whole shoal of the mob, so that the mob would be no more worth canvassing, and the whole system of bribery would go to the ground at least in its £5 note form. Cabal would take its place, but might be in various ways prevented; into which I do not enter, for my three letters are merely statements of general theses, not endeavours to support them. I have purposely not made any specification as to number of votes to be given by property or education, because in order to do that it would be necessary for me to study the average distribution of property and education in order to give it a proper preponderance over the mob. But I hold it a gratuitous and useless

¹ See Vol. VIII. p. 250.

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