“I like Mr. and Mrs. Halle so very much,” he wrote home, “and am entirely glad to know so great a musician and evidently so good and wise a man.  He was very happy yesterday evening, and actually sat down and played quadrilles for us to dance to—­which is, in its way, something like Titian sketching patterns for ball-dresses.  But afterwards he played Home, sweet Home, with three variations—­quite the most wonderful thing I have ever heard in music.  Though I was close to the piano, the motion of the fingers was entirely invisible—­a mere mist of rapidity; the hands moving slowly and softly, and the variation, in the ear, like a murmur of a light fountain, far away.  It was beautiful too to see the girls’ faces round, the eyes all wet with feeling, and the little coral mouths fixed into little half open gaps with utter intensity of astonishment.”

Ruskin could not be idle on his visits; and as he was never so happy as when he was teaching somebody, he improved the opportunity by experiments in education permitted there for his sake.  Among other things, he devised singing dances for a select dozen of the girls, with verses of his own writing; one, a maze to the theme of “Twist ye, twine ye,” based upon the song in “Guy Mannering,” but going far beyond the original motive in its variations weighted with allegoric thought.  Deep as the feeling of this little poem is, there is a nobler chord struck in the Song of Peace, the battle-cry of the good time coming; in the faith—­who else has found it?—­that looks forward to no selfish victory of narrow aims, but to the full reconciliation of hostile interests and the blind internecine struggle of this perverse world, in the clearer light of the millennial morning.

Ruskin’s method of teaching, as illustrated in “Ethics of the Dust,” has been variously pooh-poohed by his critics.  It has seemed to some absurd to mix up Theology, and Crystallography, and Political Economy, and Mythology, and Moral Philosophy, with the chatter of school-girls and the romps of the playground.  But it should be understood, before reading this book, which is practically the report of these Wilmington talks, that it is printed as an illustration of a method.  It showed that play-lessons need not want either depth or accuracy; and that the requirement was simply capacity on the part of the teacher.

The following letter from Carlyle was written in acknowledgment of an early copy of the book, of which the preface is dated Christmas, 1865.

     “CHELSEA,

     “20 Decr, 1865.

“The ‘Ethics of the Dust,’ wh’h I devoured with’t pause, and intend to look at ag’n, is a most shining Performance!  Not for a long while have I read anything tenth-part so radiant with talent, ingenuity, lambent fire (sheet—­and other lightnings) of all commendable kinds!  Never was such a lecture on Crystallography before, had there been