ly amused at your appeal to me, of all people in the
world the precisely least likely to give you a farthing. My first
word to all men and boys who care to hear me is, 'Don't get into
debt. Starve, and go to heaven; but don't borrow. Try, first,
begging. I don't mind, if it's really needful, stealing. But don't
buy things you can't pay for.' And of all manner of debtors, pious
people building churches they can't pay for are the most detestable
nonsense to me. Can't you preach and pray behind the hedges, or in
a sandpit, or in a coal-hole, first? And of all manner of churches
thus idiotically built, iron churches are the damnablest to me. And
of all the sects and believers in any ruling spirit--Hindoos,
Turks, Feather Idolaters, and Mumbo Jumbo Log and Fire
Worshippers--who want churches, your modern English Evangelical
sect is the most absurd and objectionable and unendurable to me.
All of which you might very easily have found out from my books.
Any other sort of sect would, before bothering me to write it to
them."

Ruskin is the poet and the high-priest of Nature. To him she reveals her
mysteries, and he interprets them to a dull and commonplace world in
language as glowing and impassioned as that of the prophets and priests
of the olden time. No man, apparently, has seen the sea as Ruskin has
seen it,--not even Byron, who wrote so majestic a hymn to it; no man has
so seen the mountains, with his very soul transfixed in solemn awe; no
one has felt as he the holy stillness of the forest aisles, or so
described even the tiny wild flowers of the fields. And he has not only
seen their outward glories, but he has interpreted their hidden
meanings. He has carried the symbolism of Nature on into the moral
world. There is no greater moralist than he. He is stern in his demands
for right, and truth, and sincerity in life and in work. This has been
the keynote of his teachings throughout life. He hates a falsehood or a
sham as much as Browning or Carlyle. He has taught his countrymen many
things. No people love Nature better than the English of the present
day, and John Ruskin has opened the eyes of many of them to the beauties
that lie everywhere about them. Then his long agitation for a better
architecture has not been wholly in vain. Though the architects all
laughed at him when his lectures were given, many of his ideas slowly
made their way, a