al and essential book--Livy (the two first books), and three
plays of Aristophanes (_Clouds_, _Birds_, and _Plutus_). Of travels, I
read myself all old ones I can get hold of; of modern, Humboldt is the
central model. Forbes (James Forbes in Alps) is essential to the modern
Swiss tourist--of sense." Mr. Ruskin puts the word _all_ to Plato,
_everything_ to Carlyle, and _every word_ to Scott. Pindar's name he adds
in the list of the classics, and after Bacon's name he writes "chiefly the
_New Atlantis_."

The work of destruction is marked by the striking out of all the
_Non-Christian Moralists_, of all the Theology and Devotion, with the
exception of Jeremy Taylor and the _Pilgrim's Progress_. The
Nibelungenlied and Malory's _Morte d'Arthur_ (which, by the way, is in
prose) go out, as do Sophocles and Euripides among the Greek Dramatists.
_The Knights_ is struck out to make way for the three plays of
Aristophanes mentioned above. Gibbon, Voltaire, Hume, and Grote all go, as
do all the philosophers but Bacon. Cook's Voyages and Darwin's Naturalist
in the _Beagle_ share a similar fate. Southey, Longfellow, Swift, Hume,
Macaulay, and Emerson, Goethe and Marivaux, all are so unfortunate as to
have Mr. Ruskin's pen driven through their names. Among the novelists
Dickens and Scott only are left. The names of Thackeray, George Eliot,
Kingsley, and Bulwer-Lytton are all erased.

Mr. Ruskin sent a second letter full of wisdom till he came to his reasons
for striking out Grote's "History of Greece," "Confessions of St.
Augustine," John Stuart Mill, Charles Kingsley, Darwin, Gibbon, and
Voltaire. With these reasons it is to be hoped that few readers will
agree.

Mr. Swinburne makes a new list of his own which is very characteristic.
No. 3 consists of "Selections from the Bible: comprising Job, the Psalms,
Ecclesiastes, the Song of Solomon, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Joel; the Gospels of
St. Matthew and St. Luke, the Gospel and the First Epistle of St. John and
Epistle of St. James." No. 12 is Villon, and Nos. 45 to 49 consist of the
plays of Ford, Dekker, Tourneur, Marston, and Middleton; names very dear
to the lover of our old Drama, but I venture to think names somewhat
inappropriate in a list of books for a reader who does not make the drama
a speciality. Lamb's Selections would be sufficient for most readers.

Mr. William Morris supplies a full list with explanations, which are of
considerable interest as coming from that distinguished