Last evening, Mr [John] Ruskin delivered a lecture in the large room of the Manchester Town Hall, to a fashionable audience, in aid of a fund for fitting up schoolrooms in a densely populated part of St Andrew's parish, Ancoats. The Rev. Canon Richson presided; and briefly introduced the lecturer.
Mr Ruskin said this lecture was a sequel to one he delivered a week ago. In the former one he endeavoured to show that there was only one pure kind of kingship, that which consisted in a stronger moral state, and in a truer thoughtful state than that of others, enabling us therefore to guide or serve others. All literature, and all education were only useful so far as they led to the apprehension and continuance of that kingly power, first over ourselves, and through ourselves over all around us.
He was going to ask that evening what portion of the royal authority arising out of education might rightly be possessed by women, how far they were called to a true queenly power over all within their spheres. This could not be determined until it was agreed what the ordinary and common power of women should be.
Last week he said the best use of education was to enable us to consult wise men on all points of difficulty. Applying that rule now, he would inquire what the greatest, the wisest, and the purest-hearted among the men of all time held as to the true dignity and position of women. Taking Shakespeare first, he had not one entirely heroic figure in all his plays, except the slightly sketched one of Henry V exaggerated for the purposes of the stage, and the still slighter Valentine in The Two Gentlemen of Verona.
On the other hand there was scarcely a play that had not in it a perfect woman. Isabella, Queen Katherine, Perdita, Sylvia, Viola, Hermione, Imogen, Helena, and last, and perhaps loveliest, Virgilia were all faultless, all conceived in the highest type of humanity. The catastrophe of every play was brought about always by the folly or fault of a man; the redemption, if there were any, by the wisdom and virtue of a woman. (Hear, hear.)
· This article is drawn from the archive at the Newsroom
