with Carlyle, I stand, we two alone now in England, for God and the Queen.”  After that, though he might explain[49] that he never under any conditions of provocation or haste, would have said that he hated Liberalism as he did Mammon, or Belial, or Moloch; that he “chose the milder fiend of Ekron as the true exponent and patron of Liberty, the God of Flies,” still the matter-of-fact Glaswegians were minded to give the scoffer a wide berth.  He was put up as an independent candidate in the three-cornered duel; and, as such candidates usually fare, he fared badly.  The only wonder is that three hundred and nineteen students were found to vote for him, instead of siding, in political orthodoxy, with Mr. Fawcett or the Marquis of Bute.

[Footnote 49:  Epilogue to “Arrows of the Chace.”]

At last a busy and eventful year came to a close at Coniston, with a lecture at the village Institute on his old friend Sir Herbert Edwardes (December 22nd).  His interest in the school and the schoolchildren was unabated, and he was always planning new treats for them, or new helps to their lessons.  He had set one of the assistants to make a large hollow globe, inside of which one could sit and see the stars as luminous points pricked through the mimic “vault of heaven,” painted blue and figured with the constellations.  By a simple arrangement of cogs and rollers the globe revolved, the stars rose and set, and the position of any star at any hour of the year could be roughly fixed.  But the inclement climate of Coniston, and the natural roughness of children, soon wrecked the new toy.

About this time he was anxious to get the village children taught music with more accuracy of tune and time than the ordinary singing-lessons enforced.  He made many experiments with different simple instruments, and fixed at last upon a set of bells, which he wanted to introduce into the school.  But it was difficult to interfere with the routine of studies prescribed by the Code.  Considering that he scorned “the three R’s,” a school after his own heart would have been a very different place from any that earns the Government grant; and he very strongly believed that if a village child learnt the rudiments of religion and morality, sound rules of health and manners, and a habit of using its eyes and ears in the practice of some good handicraft or art and simple music, and in natural philosophy, taught by object lessons—­then book-learning would either come of itself, or be passed aside as unnecessary or superfluous.  This was his motive in a well-known incident which has sometimes puzzled his public.  Once, when new buildings were going on, the mason wanted an advance of money, which Mr. Ruskin gave him, and then held out the paper for him to sign the receipt.  “A great deal of hesitation and embarrassment ensued, somewhat to Mr. Ruskin’s surprise, as he knows a north-country-man a great deal too well to expect embarrassment from him.  At last the man said, in dialect:  ’Ah mun put ma mark!’ He could not write.  Mr. Ruskin rose at once, stretched out both hands to the astonished rustic, with the words:  ’I am proud to know you.  Now I understand why you are such an entirely good workman.’”