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 satire with the charm of poetical ingenuity, his discourses sometimes make admirable literature. The very titles of his books, the Sesame and Lilies and Love's Meinie, and so forth, are promises that his moralising shall be transfigured into the most poetical forms. I do not know that the promise is always kept: the fancies become too palpably arbitrary, and aggravate the strange discursiveness. But the little book which seems to be his most popular, the Sesame and Lilies, deserved its success. His style, I think, was at its best. He can still be as eloquent as of old, though less ornate; and, though the argument wanders a little, he manages to give a regular and concentrated expression of his real convictions. The last section in that volume, 'The Mystery of Life and its Arts,' is, to my mind, the most perfect of his essays. Perhaps I am a little prejudiced by its confession, franker than usual, of the melancholy conviction that, after all, life is a mystery: and no solution really satisfactory. It is a good bit of pessimism, especially if you omit the moral at the end.

To most admirers, however, this would hardly be a recommendation. Rather they were drawn to Ruskin because, in spite of the gloomy views