My dear Sir: There is a mass of letters on my table this morning, and I am not quite sure if the "Y. M. A. Magazine," among them, is the magazine which yours of the 15th speaks of as "enclosed;" but you are entirely welcome to print my letter about Blind Asylums anywhere, and if in the "Y. M. A." I should be glad to convey to its editor, at the same time, my thanks for the article on "Growing Old," which has not a little comforted me this morning—and my modest recommendation that, by way of antidote to the No. III. paper on the Sun, he should reproduce the 104th, 115th, and 116th paragraphs of my "Eagle's Nest," closing them with this following sentence from the 12th Book of the Laws of Plato, dictating the due time for the sittings of a Parliament seeking righteous policy (and composed, they may note farther, for such search, of Young Men and Old):
ἑκαστης μὲν ἡμερας συλλεγομενος ἐξ ἀνάγκης ἀπ' ὄρθρου μέχρι περ ἂν ἥλιος ἀνίσχῃ.
Ever faithfully yours, J. Ruskin.
Brantwood, Coniston, Lancashire, August 17th, 1879.
FOOTNOTES:
[133] The article on "Growing Old" (Y. M. A., August, 1879) was "a study from the poets" on happiness in old age; that upon the sun, contained in the same number of the magazine, dealt with the spots in the sun, and the various scientific opinions about them; the paragraphs reprinted from the "Eagle's Nest" are upon the sun as the Light, and Health, and Guide of Life.
[From "The Y. M. A. Magazine," November, 1879, Vol. iv., No. 2, p. 36.]
POLITICS IN YOUTH.
To the Editor of "The Y. M. A. Magazine."
My dear Sir: I am heartily obliged by your publication of those pieces of "Eagle's Nest," and generally interested in your Magazine, papers on politics excepted. Young men have no business with politics at all; and when the time is come for them to have opinions, they will find all political parties resolve themselves at last into two—that which holds with Solomon, that a rod is for the fool's back,[134] and that which holds with the fool himself, that a crown is for his head, a vote for his mouth, and all the universe for his belly.