[16] See Contemporary Review, February 1880.
[17] The owners of five talents and of two talents are commended for making cent. per cent. of their money; but the man who hid away his one talent, as French peasants do, and brought it to his Lord untouched and undiminished, received a severe rebuke.
[18] Lycidas. See "Sesame and Lilies," p. 27.
[19] It was but yesterday that a voice reached me from one of the remotest of our Ultima Thules amongst these mountains, affirming, with something like self-gratulation, that he "cared less than nothing for anything Mr. Ruskin might write outside the subject of Art!" Yet one of the best of our Bishops—and we have many good ones—wrote by the same post: "Mr. Ruskin's letters are full of suggestive thoughts, and must do anyone good, if only in getting one out of the ruts." But, alas! against this I must needs set the dictum of another dignitary of the Church, an intensely practical man: "I have a great reverence for Mr. Ruskin's genius, and for what he has written in time past, and on this account I would rather not say a single word in comment upon these letters;" and again—"I really could not discuss them seriously."
[20] On the Atonement.