n the cathedral, the
house, or the joyful thoroughfare, of nations which enter their gates
with thanksgiving, and their courts with praise.

"Their" courts--or "His" courts;--in the mind of such races, the
expressions are synonymous: and the habits of life which recognise the
delightfulness, confess also the sacredness, of homes nested round the
seat of a worship unshaken by insolent theory: themselves founded on an
abiding affection for the past, and care for the future; and approached
by paths open only to the activities of honesty, and traversed only by
the footsteps of peace.

The exposition of these truths, to which I have given the chief energy
of my life, will be found in the following pages first undertaken
systematically and in logical sequence; and what I have since written on
the political influence of the Arts has been little more than the
expansion of these first lectures, in the reprint of which not a
sentence is omitted or changed.

The supplementary papers added contain, in briefest form, the aphorisms
respecting principles of art-teaching of which the attention I gave to
this subject during the continuance of my Professorship at Oxford
confirms me in the earnest and contented re-assertion.

JOHN RUSKIN,

BRANTWOOD,

_April 29th, 1880._

PREFACE

TO THE 1857 EDITION.

The greater part of the following treatise remains in the exact form in
which it was read at Manchester; but the more familiar passages of it,
which were trusted to extempore delivery, have been written with greater
explicitness and fulness than I could give them in speaking; and a
considerable number of notes are added, to explain the points which
could not be sufficiently considered in the time I had at my disposal in
the lecture room.

Some apology may be thought due to the reader, for an endeavour to
engage his attention on a subject of which no profound study seems
compatible with the work in which I am usually employed. But profound
study is not, in this case, necessary either to writer or readers,
while accurate study, up to a certain point, is necessary for us all.
Political economy means, in plain English, nothing more than "citizen's
economy"; and its first principles ought, therefore, to be understood by
all who mean to take the responsibility of citizens, as those of
household economy by all who take the responsibility of householders.
Nor are its first principles in the least obscure: they are, many of
th