Him, or fear of Him; but simply found what people told me was His service, disagreeable; and what people told me was His book, not entertaining. I had no companions to quarrel with, neither; nobody to assist, and nobody to thank. Not a servant was ever allowed to do anything for me, but what it was their duty to do; and why should I have been grateful to the cook for cooking, or the gardener for gardening,-when the one dared not give me a baked potato without asking leave, and the other would not let my ants' nests alone, because they made the walks untidy! The evil consequence of all this was not, however, what might perhaps have been expected, that I grew up selfish or unaffectionate; but that, when affection did come, it came with violence utterly rampant and unmanageable, at least by me, who never before had anything to manage.

16. For (second of chief calamities) I had nothing to endure. Danger or pain of any kind I knew not: my strength was never exercised, my patience never tried, and my courage never fortified. Not that I was ever afraid of anything,—either ghosts, thunder, or beasts; and one of the nearest approaches to insubordination which I was ever tempted into as a child, was in passionate effort to get leave to play with the lion's cubs in Wombwell's menagerie.

17. Thirdly. I was taught no precision nor etiquette of manners; it was enough if, in the little society we saw, I remained unobtrusive, and replied to a question without shyness: but the shyness came later, and increased as I grew conscious of the rudeness arising from the want of social discipline, and found it impossible to acquire, in advanced life, dexterity in any bodily exercise, skill in any pleasing accomplishment, or ease and tact in ordinary behaviour.

18. Lastly, and chief of evils. My judgment of right and wrong, and powers of independent action,* were left

* Action, observe, I say here; in thought I was too independent, as I said above.

entirely undeveloped; because the bridle and blinkers were never taken off me. Children should have their times of being off duty, like soldiers; and when once the obedience, if required, is certain, the little creature should be very early put for periods of practice in complete command of itself; set on the barebacked horse of its own will, and left to break it by its own strength. But the ceaseless authority exercised over my youth left me, when cast out at last into the world, unable for some time to do more than drift with its elements. My present courses of life are indeed not altogether of that compliant nature; but are, perhaps, more unaccommodating than they need be, in the insolence of reaction; and the result upon me, of the elements and the courses together, is, in sum, that at my present age of fifty-six, while I have indeed the sincerest admiration for the characters of Phocion,' Cincinnatus, and Caractacus, and am minded, so far as I may, to follow the example of those worthy personages, my own private little fancy, in which, for never having indulged me, I am always quarrelling with my Fortune, is still, as it always was, to find Prince Ahmed's arrow, and marry the Fairy Paribanou.2

19. My present verdict, therefore, on the general tenor of my education at that time, must be, that it was at once too formal and too luxurious; leaving my character, at the most important moment for its construction, cramped indeed, but not disciplined; and only by protection innocent, instead of by practice virtuous. My mother saw this herself, and but too clearly, in later years; and whenever I did anything wrong, stupid, or hard-hearted,—(and I have done many things that were all three),-always said, "It is because you were too much indulged.'

1

20. So strongly do I feel this, as I sip my coffee this

[With this reference to Phocion, compare Vol. XX. p. 357 and n.; and for similar references to Cincinnatus, see Vol. XVIII. p. 508, and Bible of Amiens, ch. iii. § 21.]

2

[Arabian Nights (" History of Prince Ahmed and the Fairy Pari-Banou"). This sentence "My present. . . Fairy Paribanou "-was omitted from the Præterita version.]

morning (May 24th), after being made profoundly miserable last night, because I did not think it likely I should be accepted if I made an offer to any one of three beautiful young ladies who were crushing and rending my heart into a mere shamrock leaf, the whole afternoon; nor had any power to do, what I should have liked better still, send Giafar (without Zobeide's knowing anything about it) to superintend the immediate transport to my palace of all three; that I am afraid, if it were left to me at present to institute, without help from kinder counsellors, the education of the younger children on St. George's estate, the methods of the old woman who lived in a shoe would be the first that occurred to me as likely to conduce most directly to their future worth and felicity.

21. And I chanced, as Fors would have it, to fall, but last week, as I was arranging some books bought two years ago, and forgotten ever since,-on an instance of the use of extreme severity in education, which cannot but commend itself to the acceptance of every well-informed English gentlewoman. For all well-informed English gentlewomen and gentle-maidens, have faithful respect for the memory of Lady Jane Grey.

But I never myself, until the minute when I opened that book, could at all understand Lady Jane Grey. I have seen a great deal, thank Heaven, of good, and prudent, and clever girls; but not among the very best and wisest of them did I ever find the slightest inclination to stop indoors to read Plato, when all their people were in the Park. On the contrary, if any approach to such disposition manifested itself, I found it was always, either because the scholastic young person thought that somebody might possibly call, suppose-myself, the Roger Ascham of her

1 [The three daughters of his friend, Alfred Tylor, with whom Ruskin was staying at Carshalton; for a later reference to them, see Letter 80, § 7 (Vol. XXIX. p. 176).]

2 [Compare Letter 91, § 7 (Vol. XXIX. p. 445).]

3 [Arabian Nights ("History of the Porter, the three Royal Calenders, and three Ladies of Bagdad").]

[Foreign readers may here be referred to the note on p. 310.]

time, or suppose somebody else who would prevent her, that day, from reading "piu avanti," or because the author who engaged her attention, so far from being Plato himself, was, in many essential particulars, anti-Platonic. And the more I thought of Lady Jane Grey, the more she puzzled me.

22. Wherefore, opening, among my unexamined books, Roger Ascham's Scholemaster, printed by John Daye, dwelling over Aldersgate, An. 1571, just at the page where he gives the original account of the thing as it happened, I stopped in my unpacking to decipher the black letter of it

And one example, whether loue oz feare both worke moze in a childe,fo2 vertue and learning, I will gladly re, post : which may be heard with some pleasure, & followed with moze profite. Befoze I went into Germanie, came to Bodegate in Leicestershire,to take my leaue of that noe ble Lady Lane Grey, to whom I was excæding much bes holding. Her parentes,the Duke and the Dutchelle, with all the houfholde, Gentlemen and Gentlewämen,were bunting in the Parke: I found her in her chamber, reas bing Phædon Platonis in Græke, & that with as much des lite,as some gentleman would read a mery tale in Bocafe. After falutation,and duetie done,with some other talke, I alked her, why thee would life fuch paltime in the Parker Smiling the answered mæ: I wise, all their spost in the Parke,is but a shadow to that pleasure, ý I finde in Plato: Alas god folke,they neuer felt, what true pleasure ment, with attention; which, by your leave, good reader, you shall also take the trouble to do yourself, from this, as far as I can manage to give it you, accurate facsimile of the old page. And trust me that I have a reason for practising you in these old letters, though I have no time to tell it you just now.3

2

1 [Dante, Inferno, v. 138:

"In its leaves that day

We read no more (Cary's translation).

The passage is quoted also in Vol. IV. p. 252 and Vol. VI. p. 453.]

[The "old page" has hitherto been represented, not very accurately, by modern type. The actual page (11) in the British Museum's copy of the first edition is here facsimiled by photo-zincography.]

3 [See below, Letters 61, § 9, and 64, § 16 (pp. 494, 573); 94, § 7 (Vol. XXIX. p. 486).1

23. Thus far, except in the trouble of reading black letters, I have given you nothing new, or even freshly old. All this we have heard of the young lady a hundred times over. But next to this, comes something which I fancy will be unexpected by most of my readers. For the fashion of all literary students, catering for the public, has hitherto been to pick out of their author whatever bits they thought likely to be acceptable to Demos, and to keep everything of suspicious taste out of his dish of hashed hare. Nay, "he pares his apple that will cleanly eat," says honest George Herbert.' I am not wholly sure, however, even of that; if the apple itself be clean off the bough, and the teeth of little Eve and Adam, what teeth should be, it is quite questionable whether the good old fashion of alternate bite be not the method of finest enjoyment of flavour. But the modern frugivorous public will soon have a steammachine in Covent Garden, to pick the straw out of their strawberries.

In accordance with which popular principle of natural selection, the historians of Lady Jane's life, finding this first opening of the scene at Brodegate so entirely charming and graceful, and virtuous, and moral, and ducal, and largelanded-estate-ish-without there being the slightest suggestion in it of any principle, to which anybody could possibly object,-pounce upon it as a flawless gem; and clearing from it all the objectional matrix, with delicate skill, set it forth-changed about from one to another of the finest cases of velvet eloquence to be got up for money in the corner shop--London and Ryder's,' of the Bond Street of Vanity Fair.

24. But I, as an old mineralogist, like to see my gems in the rock; and always bring away the biggest piece I can break with the heaviest hammer I can carry. Accordingly,

1 [The Temple ("The Church Porch," stanza xi.): "He pares his apple that will cleanly feed."]

2 [For another reference to this well-known jeweller's shop, see Deucalion, Vol. XXVI. p. 173.]