101. This, then, being the general course and material of education for all children, observe farther, that in the preface to 'Unto this Last' I said that every child, besides passing through this course, was at school to learn "the calling by which it was to live." And it may perhaps appear to you that after, or even in the early stages of education such as this above described, there are many callings which, however much called to them, the children might not willingly determine to learn or live by. "Probably," you may say, "after they have learned to ride, and fence, and sing, and know birds and flowers, it will be little to their liking to make themselves into tailors, carpenters, shoemakers, blacksmiths, and the like." And I cannot but agree with you as to the exceeding probability of some such reluctance on their part, which will be a very awkward state of things indeed, (since we can by no means get on without tailoring and shoemaking,) and one to be meditated upon very seriously in next letter. 102. P.S.--Thank you for sending me your friend's letter about Gustave Dore; he is wrong, however, in thinking there is any good in those illustrations of 'Elaine.' I had intended to speak of them afterwards, for it is to my mind quite as significant--almost as awful--a sign of what is going on in the midst of us, that our great English poet should have suffered his work to be thus contaminated, as that the lower Evangelicals, never notable for sense in the arts, should have got their Bibles dishonored. Those 'Elaine' illustrations are just as impure as anything else that Dore has done; but they are also vapid, and without any one merit whatever in point of art. The illustrations to the 'Contes Drolatiques' are full of power and invention; but those to 'Elaine' are merely and simply stupid; theatrical betises, with the taint of the charnel-house on them besides. LETTER XVII. THE RELATIONS OF EDUCATION TO POSITION IN LIFE. _April 3, 1867._