Ruskin, hurls his satiric shafts against the spirit of modern skepticism, the points are touched with caustic, and betray a deep impatience darkening quickly into wrath. Is it not bad enough that we ride in steam-cars instead of post-chaises, live amid brick houses instead of green fields, and pass by some of the "most accomplished pictures in the world" to stare gaping at the last new machine, with its network of slow-revolving, wicked-looking wheels? If, in addition to these too prominent faults, we are going to frown down the old appealing superstitions, and threaten them, like naughty children, with the corrective discipline of scientific research, he very properly turns his back upon us forever, and distinctly says he has no further message for our ears.
Let us rather, then, approach the subject with the invaluable humility of Don Bernal Dias del Castillo, that gallant soldier who followed the fortunes of Cortés into Mexico, and afterwards penned the Historia Verdadera, an ingenuous narrative of their discoveries, their hardships, and their many battles. In one of these, it seems, the blessed Saint Iago
