MY DEAR SIR: What in the devil's name have _you_ to do with either Mr. D'Israeli or Mr. Gladstone? You are students at the University, and have no more business with politics than you have with rat-catching. Had you ever read ten words of mine [with understanding] you would have known that I care no more [either] for Mr. D'Israeli or Mr. Gladstone than for two old bagpipes with the drones going by steam, but that I hate all Liberalism as I do Beelzebub, and that, with Carlyle, I stand, we two alone now in England, for God and the Queen. Ever faithfully yours, J. RUSKIN. ALEX. MITCHELL, ESQ., Avoch, by Inverness. P.S.--You had better, however, ask the Conservatives for a copy of my _entire_ letters to them. FOOTNOTES: [178] Of these letters it should be noted that the first was written to the President of the Conservative Club upon his requesting Mr. Ruskin to stand for the Lord Rectorship; the second in answer to a hope that Mr. Ruskin would reconsider the decision he had expressed in his reply; and the third upon the receipt of a letter explaining what the duties of the office were. The fourth letter refers to one which dealt with some reflections made by the Liberal Club upon the former conduct of their opponents. [179] Upon the terms of this letter, which was written in answer to a question whether Mr. Ruskin sympathized with Lord Beaconsfield or with Mr. Gladstone, the reader is referred to the Epilogue. The bracketed words were omitted in the _Glasgow Herald_. EPILOGUE. EPILOGUE. I find my immitigable Editor insists on epilogue as well as prologue from his submissive Author; which would have fretted me a little, since the last letter of the series appears to me a very pretty and comprehensive sum of the matters in the book, had not the day on which, as Fors would have it, I am to write its last line, brought to my mind something of importance which I forgot to say in the preface; nor will it perhaps be right to leave wholly without explanation the short closing letter to which I have just referred. It should be observed that it was written to the President of the _Liberal_ party of the Glasgow students, in answer to the question which I felt to be wholly irrelevant to the business in hand, and which could not have been answered in anything like official terms with anything short of a forenoon's work. I gave the answer, therefore, in my own terms, not in the least petulant, but chosen to convey as much information as I could in the smallest compass; and carrying it accurately faceted and polished on the angles.