"Ruskin," it says in the introduction to _The Crown of Wild Olive_ which my little friend reads at school, "is certainly one of the greatest masters of English prose." That has often been declared. But is he? Or is our tribute to Ruskin only a show of gratitude to one who revealed to us the unpleasant character of our national habits when contrasted with a standard for gentlemen? It ought not to have required much eloquence to convince us that Widnes is unlovely; the smell of it should have been enough. It is curious that we needed festoons of chromatic sentences to warn us that cruelty to children, even when profit can be made of it, is not right. But I fear some people really enjoy remorseful sobbing. It is half the fun of doing wrong. Yet I would ask in humility--for it is a fearful thing to doubt Ruskin, the literary divinity of so many right-thinking people--whether English children who are learning the right way to use their language, and the noblest ideas to express, should run the risk of having Ruskin's example set before them by softhearted teachers? I think that a parent who knew a child of his, on a certain day, was to take the example of Ruskin as a prose stylist on the subject of war, would do well, on moral and aesthetic grounds, to keep his child away from school on that day to practise a little roller-skating. For humility and gratitude should not blind us to the fact that few writers in English of Ruskin's reputation have ever considered such a rosy cloud of rhetoric as is his lecture on war, in which a reasonable shape no sooner looms than it is lost again, to be worth preserving. The subject of war is of importance, inflammable humanity being what it is, and the results of war being what we know; and the quality of the critical attention we give to so great a matter is unfortunately clear when we regard the list of distinguished critics of letters who have accepted, apparently without difficulty, as great prose, Ruskin's heedless rush of words upon it. Perhaps his language appears noble because the rhythmic pour of its sentences lulls reason into a comfortable and benignant sleepiness. I remember the solemn voice of a lecturer on English literature, years ago, moving me to buy _The Crown of Wild Olive_. Such obvious ignorance as I knew mine to be could not be tolerated. Whatever I went without, it could not be that book. I put it in my hold-all when, as was my duty, I went for my training with the artillery volunteers. I read in camp the essay on war, when bombardiers no longer claimed my attention, and the knightly words of sergeant instructors were taking a needed rest. I pondered over that essay, and concluded that though plainly I was very young and very wrong to feel puzzled and even derisive over English prose which fascinated a learned lecturer into solemnity, yet I would sooner learn to make imitation flowers of wool than read that essay to a critical audience, especially if I had written it myself.