Further, it is easy to ascertain the uses of words by the best scholars--[Nothing is more difficult. To ascertain what Locke meant by an "idea," or Sir W. Hamilton by the word "inconceivable," is no easy task.]--and well to adopt them, because they are sure to be founded on the feelings of gentlemen.--[Different gentlemen feel and think in very different ways. Though we differ from Mr. Ruskin, we hope he will not deny this.] Thus, when Horace couples his _tenacem propositi_ with _justum_, he means to assert that the tenacity is only noble which is justified by uprightness, and shows itself by insuffer-ance of the _jussa_ "_prava jubentium_" And although Portia does indeed accept your definition of justice from the lips of Shylock, changing the divine, "who sweareth to his own hurt, and changeth not" into the somewhat less divine "who sweareth to his neighbor's hurt and changeth not;" and though she carries out his and your conception of such justice to the uttermost, the result is not, even in Shylock's view of it, "for the interest of both parties." IV. To your two final questions "exhausting" (by no means, my dear Sir, I assure you) "the points at issue,"[52] I reply in both cases, "No." And to your plaintive "why should they do so?" while, observe, I do not admit it to be a monstrous requirement of men that they should sometimes sacrifice their own interests, I would for the present merely answer that I have never found my own interests seriously compromised by my practice, which is, when I cannot get the fair price of a thing, not to sell it, and when I cannot give the fair price of a thing, not to buy it. The other day, a dealer in want of money offered me a series of Hartz minerals for two-thirds of their value. I knew their value, but did not care to spend the entire sum which would have covered it. I therefore chose forty specimens out of the seventy, and gave the dealer what he asked for the whole. In the example you give, it is _not_ the interest of the guide to take his fifty francs rather than nothing; because all future travellers, though they could afford the hundred, would then say, "You went for fifty; we will give you no more." [Does a man say to a broker, "You sold stock yesterday at 90; I will pay no more to-day"?] And for me, if I am not able to pay my hundred francs, I either forego Mont Blanc, or climb alone; and keep my fifty francs to pay at another time, for a less service, some man who also would have got nothing otherwise, and who will be honestly paid by what I give him, for what I ask of him. I am, Sir, your obliged servant, JOHN RUSKIN. SATURDAY, _29th April_, 1865. FOOTNOTES: