It is very painful to be told this by you, of whom some of us have learned so much. I have been reading your words to my conscience, but—is it my unconscious hypocrisy, my self-conceit, or my sentiment overpowering intellect which hinders me from hearing the word ‘Guilty’? The gospel I endeavour with all my might to preach and embody is this—Believe on, be persuaded by, the Lord Jesus Christ; let His life rule your lives, and you shall be ‘safe and sound’ now and everlastingly. Is this ‘a false gospel preached for hire’? If not, what other gospel do you refer to? “I am very faithfully yours, “John Ruskin, Esq. Edward Z. Lyttel.” The gospel which my correspondent preaches (or, at the least, desires to preach)—namely, “Let His life rule your lives,” is eternally true and salutary. The “other gospel which I refer to” is the far more widely preached one, “Let His life be in the stead of your lives,” which is eternally false and damnatory. The rest of my correspondent’s letter needs, I think, no other reply than the expression of my regret that a man of his amiable character should be entangled in a profession, respecting which the subtle questions of conscience which he proposes can be answered by none but himself; nor by himself with security. I do not know if, in modern schools of literature, the name of Henry Fielding is ever mentioned; but it was of repute in my early days, and I think it right, during the discussion of the subjects to which Fors is now approaching, to refer my readers to a work of his which gives one of the most beautiful types I know of the character of English clergymen, (the ‘Vicar of Wakefield’ not excepted). His hero is thus introduced: “He was a perfect master of the Greek and Latin languages, to which he added a great share of knowledge in the Oriental tongues, and could read and translate French, Italian, and Spanish. He had applied many years to the most severe study, and had treasured up a fund of learning rarely to be met with in a university. [12] He was besides a man of good sense, good parts, and good-nature;—his virtue, and his other qualifications, as they rendered him equal to his office, so they made him an agreeable and valuable companion, and had so much endeared and well recommended him to a Bishop, that, at the age of fifty, he was provided with a handsome income of twenty-three pounds a year, which, however, he could not make any great figure with; because he lived in a dear country, and was a little encumbered with a wife and six children.” Of course, in our present estimate of the good Bishop’s benevolence, we must allow for the greater value of money in those times:—nevertheless, it was even then to be obtained in considerable sums, as it is now, by persons who knew the right channels and proper methods of its accumulation, as our author immediately afterwards shows us by the following account of part of the economy of an English gentleman’s estate:—