The next paragraph is more bitter still; but happily for the cause of sober truth, it is satire again; and nothing can be more obvious than the fact that prayer, to be Common Prayer, cannot at the same time suit every condition of mind, the calm and the agitated, the strained and the relaxed, the rejoicing and the sorrowful. But we are not dependent upon public worship for the satisfaction of our spiritual wants, as long as we can resort to private prayer and family prayer. And, indeed, it requires no wonderful stretch of our powers of adaptation to use the most strenuous private prayer in the midst of the congregation; and the "remorseful publican" and the "timid sinner" are not bound to the words before them, or if they do follow these words, I am sure there is enough depth in them to satisfy the views of the most conscience-stricken. Common Prayer is calm to the calm, and passionate to the passionate. It is all things to all men, just according to their frame of mind at the time. But alas for my good kind friend! as we get nearer to the end of the letter, the satire waxes fiercer, and the adherence to the truth of nature grows fainter. Does Mr. Ruskin seriously, or only sarcastically, tell us that the assaults upon the divine power of prayer gain any force from the circumstance that we are constrained to pray daily for forgiveness, never getting so far as to need it no longer? From the first day that we lisped at our mother's knee, "Forgive us our trespasses," until, bowed with age, we _still_ say, "Forgive us our trespasses," we have never stood, and never will stand, one day less in need of forgiveness than another day--or our Lord would have provided a thanksgiving and a prayer for the perfected. I believe everywhere else I recognize, even in the most startling passages, an element of truth. But in the latter half of this letter, not even the large amount of acrimony and severity allowed to the mode of address called satire can quite reconcile us to its marvellous asperity. ON LETTER XI I cannot but feel astonished and grieved at the perversity of those who[19] persist in looking upon Mr. Ruskin as altogether a noxious kind of a scribbler, and likely to do much injury by the unflagging constancy with which he perseveres in pointing his finger at all our weak and sore places. And yet it cannot be said that even if he does "lade men with burdens grievous to be borne," he himself "touches not the burdens with one of his fingers."