He might say, “The use of railways is to transport merchandise and passengers quickly and cheaply. They favour human intercourse by enabling people to meet in spite of distance, and to exchange letters without delay. They are sometimes, to a limited extent, injurious to beautiful scenery. Railway travelling is sometimes injurious to health; and railway accidents occasionally cause loss of life.” This is exactly just and true; but it has the fatal defect of being commonplace. It is also quite destitute of sublimity. Now listen to Mr. Ruskin on the same subject. [Sidenote: A Powerful Description of Railways.] “They are to me the loathsomest form of devilry now extant, animated and deliberate earthquakes, destructive of all wise social habits and possible natural beauty, carriages of damned souls on the ridges of their own graves.” [Sidenote: Analysis of Mr. Ruskin’s Description.] These lines have several most valuable literary qualities. They give a shock of surprise, they captivate attention, they entirely avoid the quagmire of the commonplace. They introduce very sublime elements, the Miltonic elements of devilry, earthquakes, and lost spirits. There is, too, a mysterious grandeur about the damned souls who take railway tickets and travel over their own corpses buried in the embankments. But is this account of railways accurate and true? Is it just to the memory of George Stephenson? CHAPTER III PURITY [Sidenote: Difficulty of the Subject.] [Sidenote: Conventionalisms.] [Sidenote: Tacit Tolerations.] Of all subjects this is the most difficult to treat satisfactorily; because there is, and must be, an inevitable reticence that is sure to weaken the argument at the most important points. Besides this, the subject, more than any other, is steeped in conventionalisms, some of which it is considered right or pardonable to act upon, but not pardonable to express. There are tacit tolerations which it is an offence to avow, as if the avowal incurred a new and personal responsibility. And even the most frank and courageous of writers might well shrink from a subject that cannot be fully discussed, at least in an English book. There is, however, one point of great importance which has never, so far as I know, been frankly touched upon before, and which may help us to understand the varieties and inconsistencies of public opinion. [Sidenote: Partiality of our Conventionalism.] [Sidenote: Two Weights and Two Measures.] [Sidenote: Opposite Views of the Marriage of Ecclesiastics.] [Sidenote: Marriage of a Bishop.] [Sidenote: Catholic Horror.]