Sesame and Lilies by John Ruskin

"Be thou glad, oh thirsting Desert; let the desert be made cheerful, and bloom as the lily; and the barren places of Jordan shall run wild with wood. "-ISAIAH XXXV. I. (Septuagint.)

IT will, perhaps, be well, as this LECTURE is the sequel of one previously given, that I should shortly state to you my general intention in both. The questions specially proposed to you in the first, namely, How and What to Read, rose out of a far deeper one, which it was my endeavour to make you propose earnestly to yourselves, namely, _Why_ to Read. I want you to feel, with me, that whatever advantages we possess in the present day in the diffusion of education and of literature, can only be rightly used by any of us when we have apprehended clearly what education is to lead to, and literature to teach. I wish you to see that both well-directed moral training and well-chosen reading lead to the possession of a power over the ill-guided and illiterate, which is, according to the measure of it, in the truest sense, _kingly_; conferring indeed the purest kingship that can exist among men: too many other kingships (however distinguished by visible insignia or material power) being either spectral, or tyrannous; -spectral-that is to say, aspects and shadows only of royalty, hollow as death, and which only the "likeness of a kingly crown have on: " or else-tyrannous-that is to say, substituting their own will for the law of justice and love by which all true kings rule.