Though the theme of the first lecture is books, Ruskin manages to present to his audience his whole philosophy of life.  He gives us, with a wealth of detail, a description of what constitutes a real book; he looks into the meaning of words, and teaches us how to read, using a selection from Milton’s Lycidas as an illustration.  This study of words gives us the key with which we are to unlock “Kings’ Treasuries,” that is, the books which contain the precious thoughts of the kingly minds of all ages.  He shows the real meaning and end of education, the value of labor and of a purpose in life; he treats of nature, science, art, literature, religion; he defines the purpose of government, showing that soul-life, not money or trade, is the measure of national greatness; and he criticises the general injustice of his age, quoting a heartrending story of toil and suffering from the newspapers to show how close his theory is to daily needs.  Here is an astonishing variety in a small compass; but there is no confusion.  Ruskin’s mind was wonderfully analytical, and one subject develops naturally from the other.

In the second lecture, “Of Queens’ Gardens,” he considers the question of woman’s place and education, which Tennyson had attempted to answer in The Princess.  Ruskin’s theory is that the purpose of all education is to acquire power to bless and to redeem human society; and that in this noble work woman must always play the leading part.  He searches all literature for illustrations, and his description of literary heroines, especially of Shakespeare’s perfect women, is unrivaled.  Ruskin is always at his best in writing of women or for women, and the lofty idealism of this essay, together with its rare beauty of expression, makes it, on the whole, the most delightful and inspiring of his works.

Among Ruskin’s practical works the reader will find in Fors Clavigera, a series of letters to workingmen, and Unto This Last, four essays on the principles of political economy, the substance of his economic teachings.  In the latter work, starting with the proposition that our present competitive system centers about the idea of wealth, Ruskin tries to find out what wealth is; and the pith of his teaching is this,—­that men are of more account than money; that a man’s real wealth is found in his soul; not in his pocket; and that the prime object of life and labor is “the producing of as many as possible full-breathed, bright-eyed, and happy-hearted human creatures.”  To make this ideal practical, Ruskin makes four suggestions:  (1) that training schools be established to teach young men and women three things,—­the laws and practice of health, habits of gentleness and justice, and the trade or calling by which they are to live; (2) that the government establish farms and workshops for the production of all the necessaries of life, where only good and honest work shall be tolerated and where a standard of work