lxxxiv INTRODUCTION

“I made the limit of age 70, for I believe many men in very active life have hardly time to think till they are past 50. I have myself never yet seen any decline in powers of mind, but always increase, in men under 70, unless such a decline as might as well have taken place at 16, from idleness or dissipation. Turner was exactly at his zenith at 70, and not till then. I believe, the mind is never meant to fail under the Seven Weeks¹ appointed for man’s proper life, and that all its best and most useful powers will remain if it be properly treated, as long as the body holds together.”

“(April 2.)-... I am very glad indeed the education letter gave you pleasure, and I quite concur in all you say of hitting slightly in order to do the work, not too hard at first. One gets this practical lesson every time one drives a nail into a deal board. At first the great thing is to hit lightly-in the right direction-and to take care of one’s own fingers. The least to one side or the other, or the least too hard and the nail will never go in. But once well entered, one may hit harder every minute-get one’s finger out of the way-and at last clench the matter with all the swing of one’s arm. I consider the public may be very fitly represented by a deal board, and all men who make anything of them may be considered as clever carpenters. It is likely there will be more typical lessons in carpentering than in any other trade, as it was appointed to be St. Joseph’s. So keep the letters till we can look them over.”

A letter from Ruskin’s father (dated Lancaster, 30th March 1852) states his general view on the question, in terms which other and less partial critics have often adopted, and which must have caused no little chagrin and disappointment to a son whose filial affections were now beginning to be separated from complete intellectual sympathy:-

“I shall see to letters for Times on my return, as you so wish it. My feelings of attacks on your books and on your newspaper writing differ from yours in this way. I think all attacks on your books are only as the waves beating on Eddystone Lighthouse, whereas your politics are Slum Buildings liable to be knocked down; and no man to whom authority is a useful engine should expose himself to frequent defeat by slender forces.

“Your sneer at the age making a clever novelist Chancellor of Exchequer would already have pained yourself. D’Israeli may end weakly, but at present he commands the House, and is a match for Lord John or any man in it, and his adroitness and information are astonishing.”

Here, for the time, the matter rested. Ruskin did not press his

¹ A reference, presumably, to the much disputed passage in Daniel ix. 24, 25.

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