(“I use the word ‘value’ for the strength or ‘availing of a thing towards life.’ See Munera Pulveris, p. 10.”) IV. With respect to the next following letter—one which I am heartily glad to receive—I must beg my readers henceforward, and conclusively, to understand, that whether I print my correspondence in large type, or small, and with praise of it, or dispraise, I give absolutely no sanction or ratification whatever to any correspondent’s statements of fact, unless by express indication. I am responsible for my own assertions, and for none other; but I hold myself bound to hear, and no less bound to publish, all complaints and accusations made by persons supposing themselves injured, of those who injure them, which I have no definite reason for supposing to be false or malicious, and which relate to circumstances affecting St. George’s work. I have no other means of determining their truth, than by permitting the parties principally concerned to hear them, and contradict them, according to their ability; and the wish with which my present correspondent’s letter closes, to be delivered from evil speaking and slandering, (she seems not quite clearly to understand that the prayer in the Litany is to be delivered from the guilt of these,—not from their effects,) may, so far as these affect her own family, be much more perfectly accomplished by her own statement of their true history, than by any investigation possible to me of the facts in question. But, as far as respects the appeal made by her to myself, my answer is simply, that, whether made by patents, ingenuities, or forges, all fortunes whatever, rapidly acquired, are, necessarily, ill acquired; and exemplary of universal ill to all men. No man is ever paid largely for ingenuity; he can only be paid largely by a tax on the promulgation of that ingenuity. Of actual ingenuities, now active in Europe, none are so utterly deadly, and destructive to all the beauty of nature and the art of man, as that of the engineer. And with respect to what my correspondent too truly urges—the shame of our ancient races in leaving their houses abandoned—it does not make me look with more comfort or complacency on their inhabitation by men of other names, that there will soon be left few homes in England whose splendour will not be a monument at once of the guilt of her nobles, and the misery of her people.