Page:Studies of a Biographer 3.djvu/128

 too clearly—that we shall not develop wings just yet. Both classes, I take it, are useful, but there can be no doubt which is most beloved. With all Ruskin's waywardness and dogmatism, and hopeless collisions with common-sense, he attracts people who lean to the ideal side—little as he could himself hope to fight victoriously against the great brutal forces of the world. It is tolerably clear that machinery will be made and coal-mines worked, and even that men will take interest for money, for some time to come. But we may hope that steam-engines are not really in deadly antagonism to all virtue and purity and simplicity of life; and that the leaven of Ruskin's teaching may further the desirable reconciliation.

Such problems are beyond me. The real charm of Ruskin will perhaps be most perceptible to the future reader in a region less disturbed by controversy. Ruskin's distaste for the actual world led him often to look fondly to the days of his infancy, when there were still honest merchants and unpolluted fields even at Dulwich, and some people—especially his father and mother—who could lead simple lives of reasonable happiness. People, I observe, have lately acquired a habit