enemy, only by loans from capitalists, these loans are repaid by subsequent taxation1 of the people, who appear to have no will in the matter, the capitalists' will being the primary root of the war; but its real root is the covetousness of the whole nation, rendering it incapable of faith, frankness, or justice, and bringing about, therefore, in due time, his own separate loss and punishment to each person.

"2

France and England literally, observe, buy panic of each other; they pay, each of them, for ten thousand thousand pounds' worth of terror, a year. Now suppose, instead of buying these ten millions' worth of panic annually, they made up their minds to be at peace with each other, and buy ten millions' worth of knowledge annually; and that each nation spent its ten thousand thousand pounds a year in founding royal libraries, royal museums, royal gardens, and places of rest. Might it not be better somewhat for both French and English?

It will be long, yet, before that comes to pass. Nevertheless, I hope it will not be long before royal or national libraries will be founded in every considerable city, with a royal series of books in them; the same series in every one of them, chosen books, the best in every kind, prepared for that national series in the most perfect way possible; their text printed all on leaves of equal size, broad of margin, and divided into pleasant volumes, light in the

1 Taxation about seventy-five cents out of every dollar of taxes levied in England is spent either in paying the interest of old war debts or in making preparation for future wars. The enormous expense of the great standing armies of Europe, says Professor Atkinson, is draining the very life-blood of the people. Eventually, as he says, the countries of the old world must "disarm or starve."

2 Ruskin's "Unto this Last" (Ad Valorem).

hand, beautiful, and strong, and thorough as examples of binders' work; and that these great libraries will be accessible to all clean and orderly persons at all times of the day and evening; strict law being enforced for this cleanliness and quietness.

I could shape for you other plans, for art-galleries, and for natural history galleries, and for many precious, many, it seems to me, needful, things; but this book plan is the easiest and needfulest, and would prove a considerable tonic to what we call our British constitution, which has fallen dropsical of late, and has an evil thirst, and evil hunger, and wants healthier feeding. You have got its corn laws1 repealed for it; try if you cannot get corn laws established for it, dealing in a better bread; - bread made of that old enchanted Arabian grain, the Sesame,2 which opens doors; - doors, not of robbers', but of Kings' Treasuries.

Friends, the treasuries of true kings are the streets of their cities; and the gold they gather, which for others is as the mire of the streets, changes itself, for them and their people, into a crystalline pavement for evermore.

1 Corn laws: laws which imposed a heavy duty on all grain ("corn") imported into England, thus keeping up the price of bread, and causing great distress among the laboring classes. These laws were modified between 1846 -1849, and finally repealed in 1869.

2 Sesame: a kind of grain used for food in Eastern countries. In the story of the Forty Thieves in the Arabian Nights, "Sesame " is the magic word which would open or shut the door of the robbers' cave.

BOOKS AND READING.1

SECOND LECTURE.

T will, perhaps, be well, as this lecture is the sequel of one previously given, that I should shortly state to you my general intention in both. The questions specially proposed to you in the first, namely, How and What to Read, rose out of a far deeper one, which it was my endeavor to make you propose earnestly to yourselves, namely, Why to Read. I want you to feel, with me, that whatever advantages we possess in the present day in the diffusion of education and of literature, can only be rightly used by any of us when we have apprehended clearly what education is to lead to, and literature to teach. I wish you to see that both well-directed moral training and wellchosen reading lead to the possession of a power over the ill-guided and illiterate, which is, according to the measure of it, in the truest sense, kingly; conferring indeed the purest kingship that can exist among men: too many other kingships (however distinguished by visible insignia2 or material power) being either spectral, or tyrannous;Spectral- that is to say, aspects and shadows only of royalty, hollow as death, and which only the "Likeness of a kingly crown have on "; or else tyrannous that is to say, substituting their own will for the law of justice and love by which all true kings rule.

1 From "Sesame and Lilies" (Lilies-Queens' Gardens).

2 Insignia: badges or distinguishing marks of honor and rank.

- and as I want to leave this

There is, then, I repeat idea with you, I begin with it, and shall end with it - only one pure kind of kingship; an inevitable and eternal kind, crowned or not: the kingship, namely, which consists in a stronger moral state, and a truer thoughtful state, than that of others; enabling you, therefore, to guide, or to raise them. Observe that word "State"; we have got into a loose way of using it. It means literally the standing and stability of a thing; and you have the full force of it in the derived word "statue' "the immovable thing." A king's majesty or "state," then, and the right of his kingdom to be called a state, depends on the movelessness of both without tremor, without quiver of balance; established and enthroned upon a foundation of eternal law which nothing can alter nor overthrow.

Believing that all literature and all education are only useful so far as they tend to confirm this calm, beneficent, and therefore kingly, power-first, over ourselves, and, through ourselves, over all around us, I am now going to ask you to consider with me farther, what special portion or kind of this royal authority, arising out of noble education, may rightly be possessed by women; and how far they also are called to a true queenly power. Not in their households merely, but over all within their sphere. And in what sense, if they rightly understood and exercised this royal or gracious influence, the order and beauty induced by such benignant power would justify us in speaking of the territories over which each of them reigned, as Queens' Gardens."

And here, in the very outset, we are met by a far deeper question, which-strange though this may seem-remains among many of us yet quite undecided, in spite of its infinite importance.

We cannot determine what the queenly power of women should be, until we are agreed what their ordinary power should be. We cannot consider how education may fit them for any widely extending duty, until we are agreed what is their true constant duty. And there never was a time when wilder words were spoken, or more vain imagination permitted, respecting this question — quite vital to all social happiness. The relations of the womanly to the manly nature, their different capacities of intellect or of virtue, seem never to have been yet measured with entire consent. We hear of the mission and of the rights of Woman, as if these could ever be separate from the mission and the rights of Man; as if she and her lord were creatures of independent kind and of irreconcilable claim. This, at least, is wrong. And not less wrongperhaps even more foolishly wrong (for I will anticipate thus far what I hope to prove) — is the idea that woman is only the shadow and attendant image of her lord, owing him a thoughtless and servile obedience, and supported altogether in her weakness by the pre-eminence of his fortitude.

This, I say, is the most foolish of all errors respecting her who was made to be the helpmate of man. As if he could be helped effectively by a shadow, or worthily by a slave!

Let us try, then, whether we cannot get at some clear and harmonious idea (it must be harmonious if it is true) of what womanly mind and virtue are in power and office, with respect to man's; and how their relations, rightly accepted, aid, and increase, the vigor, and honor, and authority of both.

And now I must repeat one thing I said in the last lecture: namely, that the first use of education was to