With this generous tribute to and appreciation of Ruskin, despite the economic vagaries into which the great critic and teacher of his time fell, we may more confidently approach the busy era of his later and self-sacrificing labors, and with less apology take space to deal--as compactly and intelligently as we can--with some of the more notable of the many books and _brochures_ of the period. Difficult as would be the task, fortunately there is little need to epitomize these works, as many of them are better known, and perhaps more attentively read, than his earlier, bulkier, and more ambitious writings. A few of them lie outside the economic gospel of their apostolic author, and these we will first and briefly deal with. A number of them are instructive and inspiring lay sermons on the mystical union between nature and art, beauty and utility, and their reflex in the reverential homage for the beautiful and the worthy in the mind and character of the English-speaking race. The whole form a great body of fine and thoughtful work, which is as enchaining as its meaning is often profound. The best-known of these lay sermons is: "The Queen of the Air" (1869), a splendid blending of his fancy with the Greek nature-myths of cloud and storm, represented by Athena, goddess of the heavens, of the earth, and of the heart. The parable drawn is that "the air is given us for our life, the rain for our thirst and baptism, the fire for our warmth, the sun for our light, and the earth for our meat and rest." Related to the work is "Ethics of the Dust" (1865), lectures to little housewives on mineralogy and crystallography, nature's work in crystallization being the text for a diatribe against sordid living. "Sesame and Lilies," which belongs also to this period of the writer's work, consists of three addresses, delivered at Manchester and at Dublin, designed specially for young girls, and treating in the main of good and improving literature. The first of them, "Of Kings' Treasuries," deals with the treasures hidden in books, the writings of the world's great men; its sequel, "Of Queens' Gardens," deals with the function and sphere of woman, and, by way of application, with the how and the what to read; the third lecture, on "The Mystery of Life and its Arts," is a discursive but inspiring consideration of what life is and how most successfully to battle with it in the way of our work and of our appointed duty. All three lectures, observes a commentator, "tell men and women of the ideals they should set before them; how to read and to build character under the inspiration of the nobility of the past, fitting one's self for such great society; how to develop noble womanhood; how to bear one's self toward the wonder of life, toward one's work in the world, and toward one's duty to others."