I find my immitigable Editor insists on epilogue as well as prologue from his submissive Author; which would have fretted me a little, since the last letter of the series appears to me a very pretty and comprehensive sum of the matters in the book, had not the day on which, as Fors would have it, I am to write its last line, brought to my mind something of importance which I forgot to say in the preface; nor will it perhaps be right to leave wholly without explanation the short closing letter to which I have just referred.

It should be observed that it was written to the President of the Liberal party of the Glasgow students, in answer to the question which I felt to be wholly irrelevant to the business in hand, and which could not have been answered in anything like official terms with anything short of a forenoon's work. I gave the answer, therefore, in my own terms, not in the least petulant, but chosen to convey as much information as I could in the smallest compass; and carrying it accurately faceted and polished on the angles.

For instance, I never, under any conditions of provocation or haste, would have said that I hated Liberalism as I did Mammon, or Belial, or Moloch. I chose the milder fiend of Ekron, as the true exponent and patron of Liberty, the God of Flies; and if my Editor, in final kindness, can refer the reader to the comparison of the House-fly and House-dog, in (he, and not I, must say where)[180] the letter will have received all the illustration which I am minded to give it. I was only surprised that after its publication, of course never intended, though never forbidden by me, it passed with so little challenge, and was, on the whole, understood as it was meant.

The more important matter I have to note in closing, is the security given to the conclusions arrived at in many subjects treated of in these letters, in consequence of the breadth of the basis on which the reasoning is founded. The multiplicity of subject, and opposite directions of investigation, which have so often been alleged against me, as if sources of weakness, are in reality, as the multiplied buttresses of the apse of Amiens, as secure in allied result as they are opposed in direction. Whatever (for instance) I have urged in economy has ten times the force when it is remembered to have been pleaded for by a man loving the splendor, and advising the luxury of ages which overlaid their towers with gold, and their walls with ivory. No man, oftener than I, has had cast in his teeth the favorite adage of the insolent and the feeble—"ne sutor." But it has always been forgotten by the speakers that, although the proverb might on some occasions be wisely spoken by an artist to a cobbler, it could never be wisely spoken by a cobbler to an artist.

J. Ruskin.
Amiens, St. Crispin's Day, 1880.