At a distribution of prizes to the Art classes at
Chesterfield on Thursday night, a letter was read from Mr. John Ruskin, in answer to a request that he would come to deliver a lecture. _Mr. Ruskin said, " I could not if I would go to Chesterfield, and doubt whether I would if I could. I do mot hire myself out, like brainless, long-tongued puppies, for •filthy ducats. You want me to make money for you ; then you will tolerate advice. Rath not Chesterfield a steeple abomination, and is it not the home of that arch-abomination-creator, Stephenson P To him we are indebted for the screeching, howling, shrieking fiends, fit for Pandemonium, called locomotives, that disfigure the loveliest spots of God's land." After giving the students some advice, Mr. Ruskin continued, "My good young people, this is pre-eminently the foolishest notion you can get into your empty little egg-shells of heads, that you can -be a Titian, a Raphael, or a Phidias. But because you cannot be great, that is no reason why you should not aspire to greatness. Don't study art because it will pay, and don't ask for pay because you study art. Art will make you all wiser and happier, and is-worth paying for. This advice is better than money." In the latter part of this letter, Mr. Ruskin, though grotesquely savage, after his favourite mannerism of the moment, is -at least rational. But in the earlier part he is both irrational and, as we think, impious too. Who ever heard of dogs, long-tongued or other- wise, hiring themselves out? And why is it worse-to take money, if a man finds it needful to do so, for deliveringa lecture, than for writing in the Nineteenth Century ? If George Stephenson is an _enemyof mankind for-discovering the l000motive,-whatshall.we call Providence for giving us George Stephenson? ,Mr. Ruskin should cultivate sobriety of mind.
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