asked. "Nothing," he said, "except this new silk umbrella."

The tea-shop was one of Mr. Ruskin's "experiments" in connection with "Fors." He himself dislikes the word, because it savors of failure. But words are what we make of them; and in this case he made experiment mean success. He had talked so much of the possibility of carrying on honest and honorable retail trade that he felt bound to exemplify his principles. He took a house, No. 19 Paddington Street, with a corner shop, near his Marylebone property, and set himself up in business as a tea-man. Mr. Arthur Severn painted the sign, in neat blue letters; the window was decked with fine old china, bought from a cavaliere near Siena, whose unique collection had been introduced to notice by Professor Norton; and Miss Harriet Tovey, an old servant of Denmark Hill, was established there, like Miss Mattie in "Cranford," or rather like one of the salaried officials of "Time and Tide," to dispense the unadulterated leaf to all comers. No advertisements, no self-recommendation, no catchpenny tricks of trade were allowed; and yet the business went on, and, I am assured, prospered with legitimate profits.

At first, various kinds of the best tea only were sold; but it seemed to the tenant of the shop that coffee and sugar ought to be included in the list. This was not at all in Mr. Ruskin's programme, and there were great debates at home about it.

At last he gave way, on the understanding that the shop was to be responsible for the proper roasting of the coffee according to the best recipe.

After some time Miss Tovey died. And when, in the autumn of 1876, Miss Octavia Hill proposed to take the house and business over and work it with the rest of the Marylebone property, the offer was thankfully accepted.

Another of his principles was cleanliness; "the speedy abolition of all abolishable filth is the first process of education." Indeed, it was one of his chief differences with an ill world that fouled its own nest with sewage in its rivers and smoke in its lungs. There was "nothing so small and mean," as his George Herbert had said, that it did not come into his province. If the prophet had bidden us do some great thing! But his teaching was to attack the enemy in detail, and carry on a guerrilla warfare with all the powers of

darkness.

It was a very unimportant outpost of the devil, it might appear, that he attacked when he undertook to keep certain streets, not crossings only, cleaner than the public seemed to care for, between the British Museum and St. Giles's. But that labor came to his hand, and he did it with his might. He took the broom himself, for a start, put on his gardener, Downs, as foreman of the job, and engaged a small staff of helpers. The work began, as he promised, in a humorous letter to the "P. M. G.," upon New Year's Day,

1872, and he kept his three sweepers at work for eight hours daily "to show a bit of our London streets kept as clean as the deck of a ship of the line."

There were some difficulties, too. One of the staff was an extremely handsome and lively shoeblack, picked up in St. Giles's. It turned out that he was not unknown in the world; he had sat to artists to Mr. Edward Clifford, to Mr. Severn; and went by the name of "Cheeky." Every now and then Mr. Ruskin "and party" drove round to inspect the works. Downs could not be everywhere at once; and Cheeky used to be caught at pitch and toss or marbles in unswept Museum Street. Mr. Ruskin never gives anybody "the sack;" but street-sweeping was not good enough for Cheeky, and so he enlisted. The army was not good enough, and so he deserted; and was last seen disappearing into the darkness, after calling a cab for his old friends one night at the Albert Hall.

The Oxford diggings and St. George's farms afterwards claimed Downs's services. Enough, however, had been done to set the example, and to show that

"Who sweeps a·

street- -as for Thy laws, Makes that and the action-fine."

One more escapade of this most unpractical man, as they called him. Since his fortune was rapidly melting away, he had to look to his works as an ultimate resource; they have actually be

come his only means of livelihood. One might suppose that he would be anxious to put his publishing business on the most secure and satisfactory footing; to facilitate sale, and to ensure profit. But he had views. He objected to advertising; though he thought that in his St. George's scheme he would have a yearly book gazette drawn up by responsible authorities, indicating the best works. He distrusted the system of unacknowledged profits and percentages, though he fully agreed that the retailer should be paid for his work, and wished, in an ideal state, to see the shopkeeper a salaried official. He disliked the bad print and paper of the cheap literature of that day, and knew that people valued more highly what they did not get so easily. He had changed his mind with regard to one or two things religion and glaciers chiefly about which he had written at length in earlier works.

So he withdrew his most popular books "Modern Painters" and the rest - from circulation, though he was persuaded by the publisher to reprint "Modern Painters" and "Stones of Venice" once more, "positively for the last time," as they said the plates would give no more good impressions. He had his later writings printed in a rather expensive style; at first by Smith & Elder, after two years by Messrs. Watson & Hazell (now Hazell, Watson & Viney, Ltd.); and the method of publication is illustrated in the history of "Sesame and Lilies," the first volume

of these "collected works." It was issued by Smith & Elder, May, 1871, at seven shillings, to the trade only, leaving the retailer to fix the price to the public. In September, 1872, the work was also supplied by Mr. George Allen, and the price was raised to nine shillings and sixpence (carriage paid) to trade and public alike, with the idea that an extra shilling, or nearly ten per cent., might be added by the bookseller for his trouble in ordering the work. If he did not add the commission, that was his own affair, though with postage of order and payment, when only one or two copies at a time were asked for, this did not leave much margin. So it was doubled, by the simple expedient of doubling the price!—or, to be accurate, raising it to eighteen shillings (carriage paid) for twenty shillings over the counter. It was freely prophesied by business men that this would not do; however, at the end of fifteen years the sixth edition of this work in this form was being sold, in spite of the fact that, five years before, a smaller edition of the same book had been brought out at five shillings, and was then in its fourth edition of 3,000 copies each.

Compared with the enormous sale of sensational novels and schoolbooks, this is no great matter; but for a didactic work, offered to the public without advertisement, and in the face of the almost universal opposition of the book-selling trade, it means not only that, as an author, Mr. Ruskin had made a secure reputation, but also that he de