LETTERS OFJOHN RUSKIN TO CHARLES ELIOT NORTON r Ulrkh Middcldorf Digitized by tine Internet . Arcliive in 2013 Iittp://arcliive.org/details/lettersofjolinrus02rusk LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN TO CHARLES ELIOT NORTON IN TWO VOLUMES VOLUME II LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN TO CHARLES ELIOT NORTON IN TWO VOLUMES VOLUME II BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 1904 COPYRIGHT 1904 BY CHARLES ELIOT NORTON ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Published November, 1Q04 'i.c GETTY CthlU LIBRARY CONTENTS OF VOLUME II PART III, Continued. 1868-1873 LETTER PAGE LXXXVIII. Venice, 17 June [1870] 4 LXXXIX. Venice, 19 June [1870] 4 XC. [Venice], 20 June [1870] 6 XCI. [Florence], 29 June [1870] 8 XCII. Bellinzona, 8 July [1870] 9 XCIII. GlESBACH, 12 July, 1870 II XCIV. Denmark Hill, 29 July, 1870 12 XCV. Denmark Hill, 7 August, 1870 13 XCVI. [Denmark Hill], 9 August, 1870 16 XCVn. [Denmark Hill], 14 August, 1870 17 XCVin. [Denmark Hill], 17 August [1870] 18 XCIX. [Denmark Hill], [1870] 20 C. [Denmark Hill], 26 August, 1870 23 Cl. [Denmark Hill], 9 September, 1870 25 CII. Cowley Rectory, Uxbridge, 30 September, 1870 26 cm. [DiCNMAUK Hill], 10 November, 1870 28 vi CONTENTS CIV. [22 December], 1870 30 CV. Oxford, 23 February, 187 1 31 CVI. [Denmark Hill], 3 April, 1871 31 CVII. [Denmark Hill], 18 May [187 1] 34 CVin. Broadlands, 28 May, 187 1 35 CIX. Denmark Hill, 10 August, 1871 36 ex. Brantwood, 14 September, 187 1 37 CXI. Brantwood, 15 September, 187 1 38 CXII. Melrose, 24 September, 187 1 38 CXIII. [Denmark Hill], i November, 187 1 40 CXIV. [Denmark Hill], 3 November, 187 1 41 CXV. Denmark Hill, 6 November, 187 1 42 CXVI. [Denmark Hill], 15 November, 187 1 43 CXVII. Denmark Hill, 9 December, 187 1 44 CXVIII. [Denmark Hill], 23 December, 187 1 45 CXIX. [Denmark Hill], 4 January, 1872 47 CXX. [Denmark Hill], 28 [January, 1872] 48 CXXI. Denmark Hill, 13 February, 1872 49 CXXII. Denmark Hill, [13 February], 1872 50 CXXIII. Oxford, [13 March], 1872 51 CXXIV. Herne Hill, 10 August, [1872] 53 CXXV. Oxford, 18 November, 1872 53 CXXVI. Lancaster, 27 December, 1872 54 CXXVII. Brantwood, 15 Januar}% 1873 5^ CXXVIII. Brantwood, 7 February, 1873 57 CXXIX. Brantwood, 8 February, 1873 57 * CXXX. Brantwood, 26 February, 1873 59 CONTENTS vii PART IV. CAAAl. xiRANTWOOD, 25 June, 1873 ^5 UAAAil. ±)RANTWOOD, 15 July, 1873 00 L-AAAiil. UXFORD, 2 December, 1873 00 CAAAiV. xlERNE xlILL, II February, 1874 69 UAAAV. jlERNE JtlILL, 13 February, 1874 70 i^AAAVl. xlERNE xlILL, [14 February] i»74 71 L.AAAV11. UXFORD, 15 February, 1874 72 CAAAVlil. x^ISA, 9 April, 1874 72 L/AAAIA. ASSISI, II April, 1874 74 r'YT AccTCT V^AJ_/. /iSSISI, 19 J une, 1074 75 YT T A OOTCT LxAJLl. ASSISI, 20 June [1874] 77 CAL/il. ASSISI, 21 June, 1874 79 v^AL/iil. J-iUCCA, 12 August, 1874 o2 r^YT TIT" T TTt~>/^A AL«1 V . JLUCCA, 12 August [1874] ft >• »4 L.AL.V. LiUCCA, [15 August] 1874 86 r'YT VT T Jinn A 18 August, 1874 88 /""YT '\7'TT TTt /-vtj irxTr"!? l_/AJ_>Vil. rLORENCE, 21 August, 1874 91 /^YT '\rTTT TTt /-kT> T-XTz-'-r- l^AijViil. rLORENCE, 23 August, 1874 93 CXLIX. Florence, 26 August, 1874 95 CL. Florence, 7 September, 1874 98 CLI. Florence, 16 September, 1874 99 CLII. Lucca, 21 September, [1874] 1.0 1 CONTENTS CLIII. St. Martin's, CLIV. Brantwood, CLV. Ashbourne, CLVI. Herne Hill, CLVII. Brantwood, CLVIII. Brantwood, CLIX. Brantwood, CLX. Herne Hill, CLXI. Broadlands, CLXn. Cowley Rectory, CLXni. Cowley, CLXIV. Broadlands, CLXV. [Broadlands], CLXVI. [London], CLXVn. [Broadlands], CLXVin. Broadlands, CLXIX. Oxford, CLXX. [Oxford], CLXXI. Herne Hill, CLXXH. Dolgelly, CLXXni. Venice, CLXXIV. Venice, 12 October, 1874 102 [31 December], 1874 108 27 January, 1875 109 13 February, 1875 112 25 March, 1875 114 15 July, 1875 116 17 September, 1875 118 5 October, 1875 120 5 October, 1875 121 30 October, 1875 121 14 November, 1875 123 14 December, 1875 124 8 January, 1876 125 13 January, 1876 126 20 January, 1876 127 I February, 1876 128 [22 February, 1876] 129 I March, 1876 130 20 April, 1876 132 2 August, 1876 135 5 October, 1876 13S 16 January, 1877 141 CONTENTS ix CLXXV. Brantwood, 31 July, 1877 144 CLXXVI. Brantwood, 17 February, 1878 145 CLXXVII. Herne Hill, [23 July, 1878] 148 CLXXVIII. DuNiRA, Crieff, 25 September, 1878 150 CLXXIX. Brantwood, 26 November, 1878 151 CLXXX. Brantwood, 25 February, 1879 152 CLXXXI. Brantwood, 27 February, 1879 153 CLXXXII. Brantwood, [14 April], 1879 155 CLXXXIII. Brantwood, 4 June, 1879 ^57 CLXXXIV. Brantwood, 9 July, 1879 ^59 CLXXXV. Herne Hill, i November, 1879 159 CLXXXVI. Brantwood, 16 May, 1880 161 CLXXXVII. Brantwood, 20 January, 1881 162 CLXXXVni. Brantwood, 24 March, 1881 167 CLXXXIX. Brantwood, 26 April, 1881 168 CXC. Brantwood, 18 July, 1881 170 CXCI. Brantwood, 29 August, 1881 171 CXCn. Brantwood, 15 October, 1881 (From L. I. Hilliard) 171 • X CONTENTS CXCIII. Brantwood, 7 March, 1882 (From G. Collingwood) 173 CXCIV. AVALLON, 30 August, 1882 174 cxcv. Sallenche, II September, 1882 176 CXCVI. Lucca, 3 October, 1882 179 CXCVII. Lucca, 16 October, 1882 182 CXCVIII. Pisa, 5 November, 1882 185 CXCIX. Herne Hill, I January, 1883 188 cc. Oxford, 10 March, 1883 189 CCI. Herne Hill, 15 March, 1883 191 ecu. Brantwood, 16 April, 1883 194 CCIII. Oxford, 19 June, 1883 19s CCIV. Brantwood, 24 June, 1883 196 ccv. Brantwood, 28 July, 1883 196 CCVI. Brantwood, 29 July, 1883 198 CCVII. Brantwood, 2 August [1883] 199 CCVIII. Brantwood, 25 Februar)', 1884 201 CCIX. Brantwood, I June, 1884 203 ccx. [London], 7 October, 1884 204 CCXI. Canterbury, 9 October, 1884 205 CCXII. Brantwood, 2 January, 1885 207 CCXIII. Brantwood, I October, 1885 208 CCXIV. Brantwood, 20 October, 1885 209 ccxv. Brantwood, [28 April, 1886] 210 CCXVI. Brantwood, 16 May, 1886 211 CONTENTS xi CCXVII. Brantwood, CCXVIII. Brantwood, CCXIX. Brantwood, CCXX. Brantwood, CCXXI. Brantwood, 24 June, 1886 212 18 August, 1886 215 28 August, 1886 215 13 September, 1886 217 23 March, 1887 219 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE John Ruskin .... Frontispiece Brantwood 70 Sketch in Letter, August 12, 1874 . . . 84 Two Drawings in Letter, September 16, 1874 100 CoNisTON Hall (with Ivied Chimneys) opposite Brantwood 132 Facsimile of Letter, October 5, 1876 . . 138 Drawing in Letter, October 3, 1882 . . 180 Facsimile of Second, Third, and Fourth Pages of Letter, November 5, 1882 . . 186 Ill — Continued 1868-1873 4 LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN III — Continued 1868-1873 During the summer and autumn of 1870 my home was in one of the spacious old villas near Siena. The climate was delightful, the city one of the most interesting and pic- turesque of the many Italian cities to which these terms apply. In June Ruskin came, with a charming party, consisting of Miss Agnew, Mrs. H. and her daughter, to spend some days with us. He was in a delightful mood ; the clouds which darkened his spirit had lifted for the moment, and all its sunshine and sweetness had free play. He spent much time in drawing the lioness and her cubs at the base of one of the pillars of the wonderful pulpit in the wonderful Cathedral. We wan- dered through the mediaeval town, we drove and walked through many of the roads and 4 LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN paths of the picturesque region, and Ruskin enjoyed to the full all the loveliness of the Tuscan landscape, the interest of its historic associations, and the charm of the Italian at- mosphere. No guest could have added more to the pleasure of the household. Venice, Saturday, 17th June [1870]. My dearest Charles, — I have just got your letter; yes, I will come to Siena. I have to go for a fortnight up into Switzerland with Joanna and our friends to see Alpine roses. Then I '11 run straight south to you. I can- not write more to-day, but will this evening. It seems to me as if every saving power was at present being paralyzed, or stupefied, or killed. I know, too well, the truth of what Dickens told you of the coming evil. Ever your affectionate J. RUSKIN. Venice, 19th June. My dearest Charles, — I knew you would deeply feel the death of Dickens. It is very LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN 5 frightful to me — among the blows struck by the fates at worthy men, while all mis- chievous ones have ceaseless strength. The literary loss is infinite — the political one I care less for than you do. Dickens was a pure modernist — a leader of the steam- whistle party par excellence — and he had no understanding of any power of antiquity ex- cept a sort of jackdaw sentiment for cathedral towers. He knew nothing of the nobler power of superstition — was essentially a stage man- ager, and used everything for effect on the pit. His Christmas meant mistletoe and pud- ding — neither resurrection from dead, nor ris- ing of new stars, nor teaching of wise men, nor shepherds. His hero is essentially the iron- master ; in spite of " Hard times," he has ad- vanced by his influence every principle that makes them harder — the love of excitement, in all classes, and the fury of business com- petition, and the distrust both of nobility and clergy which, wide enough and fatal enough, and too justly founded, needed no apostle to 6 LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN the mob, but a grave teacher of priests and nobles themselves, for whom Dickens had essentially no word. . . . Please send me a line to post office Lugano, saying how long you stay, and I will do my best to come as soon as I can, if your " sum- mer" means not quite into the hot months. My faithful love to you all. Ever your affectionate J. RUSKIN. Monday, 20th Jiine. My dearest Charles, — I have changed my purpose, suddenly, and am going to make sure of seeing you at once — though I can- not at present stay — but for many reasons, chiefly the danger of losing hold of what I have just been learning here, it is better for me not to stay in Italy, but to go home quietly and write down what I have got — else I should learn too much, and get nothing said. Yes, necessarily, there is a difference in manner between writing intended for a pro- LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN 7 fessor's class and that meant to amuse a popular audience; also, I hope at fifty I am mentally stronger than at twenty-five. But the pain has not done anything for me. In- dignation has sometimes — but always more harm than good, the now quite morbid dis- like of talking being one result of it very inconvenient at Oxford. I shall have to trespass on you (ultimately I do not doubt you will be glad I have) by bringing not only J. and C, but C.'s good and sweet (and infinitely sensitive in all right ways) mother, for whom, mainly, I made all the plans of this journey; a most refined Eng- lish gentlewoman, who had never seen Italy. But, alas, I can't stay more than three days at the utmost. I must be three days in Flor- ence for my own work. I shall take those at once, at the Grande Bretagne, before coming to you. Ever your loving John Ruskin. I am very glad the Medusa is not Leo- nardo's, but I speak of his temper from gen- 8 LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN eral examination of his drawings. I never remember seeing his signature, except as " Lionardo." Why do you like " e " better ? 29 Juncy 1870. My dearest Charles, — It 's no use try- ing to write thanks, or good-byes, but here 's what I wrote yesterday for heads of talk about Lippi — for J.'s satisfaction if any may be, out of me, just now : — 1. Laying on of gold as paint, for light, all exquisite — none lost. 2. Chiaroscuro perfect, when permitted. 3. Faces all in equal daylight — conven- tional. 4. No unquiet splendor in accessaries. 5. Essential colour as fine as Correggio. 6. Expressional character the best in the world — individual character feeble, but lovely. 7. Essential painting as good as Titian in his early time. LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN 9 8. Form, in invention, perfect; in know- ledge and anatomy, false. 9. Colour in invention very feeble; in sen- timent exquisite. There — and I 've seen the Strozzi Titian — and it 's Beyond everything, and I 'm Ever yours, J. R. Bellinzona, Thursday, 8th July. My DEAREST Charles, — I find here your long and interesting letter of June 20th. . . . I quite feel all that you say of Dickens, and of his genius, or benevolence, no one, I be- lieve, ever has spoken, or will speak, more strongly than I. You will acquit me, I know, of jealousy ; you will not agree with me in my acknowledgment of his entire superiority to me in every mental quahty but one — the desire of truth without exaggeration. It is my stern desire to get at the pure fact and nothing less or more, which gives me what- ever power I have ; it is Dickens's delight in grotesque and rich exaggeration which has lo LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN made him, I think, nearly useless in the pre- sent day. I do not believe he has made any one more good natured. 1 think all his finest touches of sympathy are absolutely undis- covered by the British public ; but his mere caricature, his liberalism, and his calling the Crystal palace " Fairyland " have had fatal effect — and profound. . . . I believe Dickens to be as little understood as Cervantes, and almost as mischievous. We had a lovely day at Padua, and I see Mantegna with ever increasing admiration. (By the way, on the 4th we all drank to the prosperity of America — I recommending Mrs. H. to put her good wishes for it into the form of the prayer in the Litany for "fatherless children and widows, and all that are desolate and oppressed.") Then some Luini study at Milan, Como, and Lugano, and such a drive from Lugano here as I think never was driven by mortal before, for beauty. I fear I must close this before I get yours LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN ii — if there is one, but will write again from the Giesbach. Love to you all from all of us. Ever your loving J. RUSKIN. Giesbach, 12th July^ 1870. My dearest Charles, — We have been travelling so fast that I have had no time to look at anything in my folios. I have now been examining your present of the " Man- tegnas " very carefully, and must again thank you for it most earnestly. I have never seen more wonderful or instructive work — the richness of its life and strength, and utter masterfulness of hand, surpass all I know of this kind. What a strange hardness and gloom pervades it all, nevertheless, and what a strange element of Italian character this is, in Sandro Botticelli, and even in the Pisani, partly, also. I feel that I have left Italy too soon for my purposes, and I must come back in the autumn for a few weeks. I shall most likely 12 LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN run down to you, if you are still at Siena, and finish my lioness and cubs, who are not at all what I want, yet, and show Eliot one or two things I promised and did not. . . . Ever your affectionate J. RUSKIN. Denmark Hill, 29th July, 1870. My dearest Charles, — . . . The war is very awful to me : being as I think all men's fault as much as the emperor's ; certainly as much Prussia's and England's. Paris looks infinitely sad, but I took Mrs. H., J., C, and C.'s two brothers to the theatre (Comedie Fran9aise), and we heard the Mar- seillaise sung about as w^ell as it could be. The cry of the audience, " a genoux," at the last verse, was very touching. C. was singing the Marseillaise all the way to Boulogne at the top of her pretty voice, to my no small discomfiture, who was reading Sainte-Beuve's " Etude sur Virgile," which is very nice as far as it reaches, curi- LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN 13 ously shortened in its reach by the writer's never for a moment admitting to himself the possibility of a True, as well as an Ideal, spirit, or God. I have been endeavoring this morning to define the limits of insanity. My experience is not yet wide enough : I have been entirely insane, as far as I know, only about Turner and Rose, and I 'm tired ; and have made out nothing satisfactory. All the grass burnt up everywhere — drought like Elijah's, and priests of Baal everywhere with nobody to kill them. My mother is wonderfully well, but home is very sad, and I have n't got my pups at Siena half as well as I thought I had. Please write a line to me often. I am anx- ious about you. Ever your loving J. RUSKIN. Denmark Hill, 7th August, 1870. My DEAREST Charles, — Your letter and the photographs, which are delightful, arrived 14 LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN last night ; it is better to send some little word of answer at once ... to your two questions about Turner. His " I have been cruelly treated " was reported to me by his friend Mr. Griffith (who was much with him before his death) as having been said one day almost without consciousness of speaking aloud, as he was looking sorrowfully at the pictures then exhibiting at Pallmall, from his gallery, everybody admiring them too late. The other saying came from an unquestionable quarter. Mr. Kingsley's cousin was in Tur- ner's own gallery with him. They came to the " Crossing the Brook ; " a piece of paint out of the sky, as large as a fourpenny piece, was lying on the floor. Kingsley picked it up, and said, " Have you noticed this?" "No," said Turner. " How can you look at the pic- ture and see it so injured ?" said Kingsley. " What does it matter ? " answered Turner, " the only use of the thing is to recall the impression." Of course it was false, but he was then thinking of himself only, having LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN 15 long given up the thought of being cared for by the public. It was very curious your reading Ste.- Beuve's *' Virgil " with me. You will have seen by the lectures already that I feel as strongly as he, and much more strongly. (I like Ste.-Beuve much, and see why you spoke of his style as admirable ; but he is altogether shallow and therefore may easily keep his agitation at ripple-level. Please compare his translation of Homer's Eolus at p. 204 with mine in " Queen of Air," p. 22, and see how he has missed the mythic sense of the feasting, and put in " viandes savoreuses " out of his head, not understanding why Homer made the house misty). But for " Vir- gil," all you say of him is true — but through and under all that there is a depth and per- fectness that no man has reached but he; just as that Siena arabesque, though in a bad style, is insuperable, so Virgil, in (not a bad, but) a courtly and derivative style, has sterling qualities the most rare. i6 LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN Thank you for writing what you had told me, but what I am only too glad to have written, of Cervantes. I will look at the two parts carefully. Yes, I '11 write often now, little words to tell you what I am feeling, and trying to do. Loving memory to you all. Ever your grateful J. RUSKIN. 9th August, '70. My dearest Charles, — I did not, in my last letter, enter at all on my real meaning in saying " Don Quixote " was mischievous, and I want you to know it.' I never discerned the difference you point out between the parts. But / read the whole as the first, not as the last. It always affected me throughout with tears, not laughter. It was always throughout, real chivalry to me ; and it is precisely because the most touching valour and tenderness are rendered vain by madness, and because, thus vain, » See letter of July Sth. LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN 17 they are made a subject of laughter to vulgar and shallow persons, and because all true chivalry is thus by implication accused of madness, and involved in shame, that I call the book so deadly. Ever your loving J. R. Sunday Morning, 14th August, '70. My dearest Charles, — ... I got yester- day in London a — guess what 1 " Roman de la Rose," of about 1380, with beautiful little dark gray vignettes. Very typical of the course of all my Roman, and therefore ex- quisitely sweet in feeling — not particularly wise in execution. But they are so pretty, the Dieu d'Amour, with a Httle stiff crown and his hair coming out in crockets like Richard the H. It is perfect from end to end, and in the French form Chaucer must have read it in (I had to give £200 for it! and feel very much ashamed of myself). Look here — will you please, when next you i8 LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN go into Siena, look at the bosses of the dragon panel of pulpit at the corners and tell me if this one ' is indeed flatter than the other three, or has had its central boss broken away ? Ever your loving J. R. Morning, 17th August. My dearest Charles, — I was looking for accounts of thunder this morning, and took your despised Virgil. N.B. — Behind me in my own special bookcase I have only two books, — Burmann's Virgil and the large " della Crusca Dante," with Longfellow's translation beside it (Europe and America). Well, Bur- mann's Virgil (get this edition, Amsterdam, 1746; it is every way so useful with its se- rious notes and full index) has, on two of its pages, the 441st to the 456th line of JEx\. 8th — ending with the 456th.^ ' Here a hasty sketch. ^ The verses referred to are as follows : — Arma acri facienda viro : nunc viribus usus, Nunc manibus rapidis, omni nunc arte magistra. - Praecipitate moras. Nec plura effatus : at illi LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN 19 Please read those very slowly — stopping first at the 453rd, and going over the 441st to that, again and again, till you have got them thoroughly into your ears and mind. Ocius incubuere omnes, pariterque laborem 445 Sortiti. Fluit aes vivis, aurique metallum, Volnificusque chalybs vasta fornace liquescit. Ingentem clypeum informant, unum omnia contra Tela Latinorum ; septenosque orbibus orbes Inpediunt. Alii ventosis follibus auras 450 Accipiunt redduntque ; alii stridentia tingunt Aera lacu. Gemit impositis incudibus antrum. Uli inter sese multa vi brachia tollunt In numerum, versantque tenaci forcipe massam. Haec pater Aeoliis properat dum Lemnius oris, 455 Evandrum ex humili tecto lux suscitat alma, Et matutini volucrum sub culmine cantus. If there were other reason for the selection of these special verses for study, than the vivid picture they present, and the charm of the contrast between the toil and noise with which the cave resounds, and the smoky glare which fills it, with the quiet of Evander's hut, and the clear light of dawn, and the morning song of the birds, I must leave the reader to discover it. — I cannot recall what led Ruskin to speak of " your despised Virgil." The epithet does not match with the admiration which the perfection of Virgil's art inspires, or with the personal sympathy which the peculiar depth and delicacy and tenderness of his sentiment often evokes. Per- haps I had spoken of the lack in him of the high powers of the imagination which the two or three poets possessed who, each in his own heaven of invention, sopra gli altri com' aquila vola. 20 LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN Then go on and read the last three, 454 to 456, very slowly alsp. Ever your loving, J. R. My dearest Charles, — I have your beautiful letter to-day, about Don Quixote, etc. I *m just beginning to-day, seriously, my autumn course of lectures, which are to be on Greek coins, with the Tortoise of Egina, and I 'm in my writing element again, and almost happy, chiefly because I heard the day before yesterday that somebody else was very ^^^happy. (Did you ever think there was such monstrousness in me ?) That is indeed an important mistake about the bag.' Of course these stories are all first fixed in my mind by my boy's reading of Pope — then I read in the Greek rapidly to ' In the Queen of the Air (i. 19) Ruskin, writing of the myth of i^^olus, said, "-<41olus gives them [the winds] to Ulysses, all but one, bound in a leathern bag." But it was only "the blustering winds," $vKTda>v ave/iotv KfXevda (-Od. X. 20) that ^olus had tied up. V LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN 21 hunt out the points I want to work on, and am always Hable to miss an immaterial point. But it is strange that I hardly ever get any- thing stated without some grave mistake, however true in my main discoveries. That use of KVLcrcrrjev ' is precisely the most delicious thing in the myth — it is that which makes it an enigma. Had Homer used any other word than that he would have shown his cards in a moment — which he never does, nor any other of the big fellows. Yet it ought at once to lead you to the mythic meaning when you remember that meat smoke is precisely what winds would carry away — that the house being full of the smell of dinner is precisely the Unwindiest char- acter you could have given it. Well, that ought to set you considering : and then you will see that while the Calm cloud is high in heaven, the Wind cloud rises up from the earth, and is actually the Steam of it, under ' In the description of the house of ^olus, at the begin- ning of the tenth book of the Odyssey. 22 LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN the beneficent Cookery of the winds, which make it good for food. " Thy Dwelling shall be of the Dew of Heaven, and of the fatness of the Earth." My long training in Hebrew myths had at least the advantage of giving this habit of al- ways looking for the under-thought, and then my work on physical phenomena just gave nje what other commentators, scholars only, can never have, the sight of what Homer saw. I bought a picture by Holman Hunt this year, of a Greek sunset, with all the Homeric colours in the sky — and the KVLcro-rjei/ cloud just steaming up from the hills, so exactly true that everybody disbelieves its being true at all. Then I found out the Piping and Fluting from the Pindaric ode which de- scribes Athena making the Pan's pipe out of Medusa's hair. You '11 be aghast at the lot of things I 've got together about Egina, but they are so pretty, the whole story of the i^acidae and Myrmidons and ever so much political economy — with the Phoenician LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN 23 Aphrodite to soften it all into correggiosity of Correggio. Ever your ridiculous and loving, JR. oveLara is a perfectly heavenly word — it means the benefit of well digested anything ; all my books are oveLara — it means a dinner ate imaginatively — vlov eV dcr(j)6SeXo) — the Barmecides' dinner sometimes. Look at Liddell's last reference to the Homeric Hymns : Arj fnjTT) p rj8v KaTaiTveiovcra, Ka\ iv k6\ttoi(tiv e^ovcra . . . ddapdroLSydvrjTol*; r oveiap /cat x^Pf^cL reru/crat. Denmark Hill, 26th August, '70. My dearest Charles, — Your little Siena picture and my bas-relief, which I 'm de- lighted with, came a week ago. Yoiir absurdest of all conceivable, and very charming letter came the night before last. I was too much astonished to answer. And the photograph of my Florence door came last 24 LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN night, and so I must answer, to say it 's the very thing I want, and I 'm ever so grateful. You '11 never make me miserable any more by thinking you may be right and Carlyle wrong, after all, when I see how you misread this French war ; this war is, on the one side, the French, the purest and intensest repub- licanism (choosing a fool for a leader, and able to kick him off when it likes) joined to vanity, lust, and lying — against, on the German side, a Personal, Hereditary, Feudal government as stern as Barbarossa's, with a certain human measure of modesty, decency, and veracity, in its people. And dear old Carlyle — how thankful I am that he did his Friedrich exactly at the right time ! It 's the likest thing to a Provi- dence I 've known this many a year, except my getting the " Roman de la Rose." You 're more absurd about that than even about the French — but it 's of no use talking. Were n't you pleased when the photograph of the Pisano Lions came, to see how piti- LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN 25 ful it was, compared even to that rude sketch of mine ? — and that we poor draughtsmen are still worth our salt ? I 'm in hopes of bringing out enough from the Greek coins to make you not sorry I stay at home. I wish I were with you, but that 's all " Roman " — put it out of your head. Ever affectionately yours, J. R. ()th September^ 1870. My dearest Charles, — I don't know if any letters are likely to reach you just now. Have you got mine on ^olus and fat smoke 1 1 have two kind ones from you. . . . A letter you sent to me in March on Michael Angelo is of great value. (It quotes Lucretius tantum religio, but you are not to pity me out of Lucretius, whom I much dis- like). I am greatly sorry not to be with you. But you may be pleased for one reason. Had I come back to Italy, I might never have taken up my broken Greek work again, 26 LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN whereas this has thrown me back on it, mak- ing not only my past labour of service, but laying a more formal foundation for all. But I 'm very weary and sad. Joan is gone away — and the evenings' sitting beside my mother only makes me sadder still. . . . Love to you all. Ever your affectionate J. RUSKIN. Cowley Rectory, Uxbridge, 30M Sept. 1870. My dearest Charles, — . . . Thanks for reference to Boutmy.' I was glad you named it, for I had picked it up at a railway stall, and read it with attention, and was wondering, till I got your letter, whether it represented average French criticism, or was really what it appeared to me — a work of separate merit. It is very good, and suggestive from its French point of view, but very narrow and shallow. It is most interesting in the utter incapability of the Frenchman to penetrate the solemnity ^ Philosophic de V Architecture e?i Grlce, par fimile Boutmy. Paris, 1870. • LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN 27 of Greek thought. The quantity of pain that I have myself actually suffered has been greatly useful to me in this respect, and it has not been less useful because in many ways my own fault or folly. I know in every shadow the meaning of the word Molpa. Its analysis of the Parthenon is exactly the kind of thing I used to do, of separate buildings that I had closely studied — igno- rant of others. I could write a similar essay on any good building whatsoever, and show it to be alone in the world — from the great Pyramid to Chartres ; and the reason that my Greek work is so imperfect now is precisely because I did no^ begin with it, but have reached it and worked it into a complete, or nearly so, panorama of methods of art. I think when you see what I am doing, even now, for Oxford this year, you will admit it to be of more value than any existing state- ment of Greek style; and that while other people could, and will, do as good or better work than I in mediaeval study, no one but I 28 LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN could have put true life into those dead Greek forms. You yourself know more than I (in many- points) of mediaeval art — and incomparably more than I of mediaeval literature, but as soon as you have a little more confidence in me, you will find me opening out much both new and firm ground to you in the classics. In both fields I am but a gleaner and guesser — but I can understand Diomed's mind, or Dio- genes's, infinitely better than I can a Vene- tian soldier s or a Florentine monk's. Love to you all. Ever your affectionate John Ruskin. loth November, 1870. My DEAREST Charles, — . . . I am busy on my work. I wish that wanted less mend- ing, after first draught of it — the patching is most of the business. The third lecture, on colored sculpture, will be amusing, I think. I enlarge first one LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN 29 of the fish from those little ivory Japan cir- clets you bought for me at Paris, then, saying simply that for execution it is an ideal of true Greek ideal of sculpture, I give beside the fish profile the profile of the self-made man from Punch, — enlarged also to bas-relief size, and then a Greek Apollo beside both, to show them how all real design depends on 1/01)9 Tcov 7^110)7 droiv. A great deal comes out nicely, as I work on. . . . C and her mamma came last week to help Joan to give a party — Dance! I went, with C to the dressmaker's a month ago and got her first low dress, and she wore it for the first time at Joan's party, and looked lovely. Meantime, I had gone to a dinner of the Metaphysical Society, where Huxley was to read a paper on a Frog's soul — or appearances of soul. The Deans of Westmin- ster and Canterbury, Bishop of Worcester, Master of Lincoln, Duke of Argyll, Arch- bishop Manning, Father Dal — something, who said the shrewdest things of any, and 30 LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN Chancellor of Exchequer (who only made jokes) might have made a nice talk of it, but the Duke of Argyll got into logical antago- nisms with Huxley, and then nothing came of it. I wanted to change the frog for a toad — and to tell the company something about eyes — but Huxley would n't let himself be taken beyond legs, for that time. I came back impressed more than ever with the frivolous pugnacity of the world, — the campaign in France not more tragic in reality of signi- ficance, than the vain dispute over that table. . . . Ever your loving J. RUSKIN. Shortest Day, 1870. My dearest Charles, — ... I am giddy, a little, with overwork, or I would tell you something of lectures. They did not come out half what I wanted ; the days seemed to melt into nothing at last. England has been bad for me, this time, LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN 31 but I won't live in a mere cobweb of fate any more. I '11 send you some pamphlets, or the like, soon. Ever your loving J. R. Oxford, 23rd February ^ '71. . . , I am setting to my work here, reck- lessly, to do my best with it, feeling quite that it is talking at hazard, for what chance good may come. But I attend regularly in the schools as mere drawing-master, and the men begin to come one by one — about fifteen or twenty already, — several worth having as pupils in any way, being of temper to make good growth of. I am living in a country inn, or, rather, country-town inn, the Crown and Thistle of Abingdon, and drive in, six miles, to Ox- ford every day but Sunday — two days every week being statedly in the schools — and con- tingently there or in the Bodleian on others. 32 LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN This seems to put an end, abruptly, to all Denmark Hill life. [Denmark Hill] 3rd April, '71. ... I have had much disturbed work at Oxford, and coming home a few days ago for rest, my poor old Annie dies suddenly, and I 've just buried her to-day, within (sight of!) her bid master's grave. It is very wonderful to me that those two, who loved me so much, should not be able to see me any more.' * Anne, or Annie, as she was indifferently called, was an important and characteristic member of the Denmark Hill household, one of the wheels on which it ran its steady course. In 1873 Ruskin wrote of her in Fors Clavigera^ Let- ter xxviii, words which he repeated twelve years later in the first number of Prceterita, and which, because of my pleasant memories of her keen inspection and kind old-fashioned at- tentions to me as her master's friend, when I was at Denmark Hill, I am glad to reprint here. " Among the people whom one must miss out of one's life, dead, or worse than dead, by the time one is past fifty, I can only say for my own part, that the one I practically and truly miss most, next to my father and mother, ... is this Anne, my father's nurse and mine. . . . From her girlhood to old age, the entire ability of her life was given to serving us. She had a natural gift and speciality for doing disagreeable things," not so much things disagreeable to others as those which others found disagree- able to do for themselves. She was altogether occupied from the age of fifteen to seventy-two, in doing other people's LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN 33 At Oxford, having been Professor a year and a half, I thought it time to declare open hostilities with Kensington, and requested the Delegates to give me a room for a sepa- rate school on another system. They went with me altogether, and I am going to furnish my new room with coins, books, catalogued drawings and engravings, and your Greek vases ; ' the mere fitting will cost me three or four hundred pounds. Then I 'm going to found a Teachership under the Professorship — on condition of the teaching being on such and such principles, and this whole spring I must work hard to bring all my force well to bear, and show what I can do. It is very sad that I cannot come to Venice, but everything is infinitely sad to me — this black east wind for three months most of all. Of all the things that oppress me, this sense of the evil working of nature herself — my wills instead of her own, and seeking other people's good instead of her own." Anne was no saint, but few saints have deserved as she did such a tribute. * Vases which I had obtained in Italy for him. 34 LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN disgust at her barbarity — clumsiness — darkness — bitter mockery of herself — is the most desolating. I am very sorry for my old nurse, but her death is ten times more hor- rible to me because the sky and blossoms are Dead also. 1 8th May. My dearest Charles, — The Fortune has come. She is enough to change mine, for life — the Greek darling — and a globe made of Hexagons. And the vases, the thirty, not one broken and every one lovelier than the last. What can I send you for such a gift ' (and the very thing I wanted in the nick of time) ? It 's late afternoon, and I have to go out and can only send this. I 'm better, but I 've so much on my mind just now — among other things I 'm going to give ;^5000 of stock to found a sub-mastership of drawing at Ox- ford, and to-day I 've been painting the white Florentine lily for him to teach with. » Not a gift in the usual sense. LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN 35 I '11 send you something of catalogues that will please you soon. Ever your grateful J. RuSKIN, Broadlands, 28th May, '71. ^ My dearest Charles, — I have your little note about Titians, Tintorets, etc. I am so glad you have been fortunate enough to get those Tintorets — they are worth anything. I fear / cannot afford to buy anything more, so set am I now on my political work, as far as money is concerned, for my main actual work is all in art now, but I can't do the tenth part of what I plan ; above all I cant get things printed ; I 've nine lectures full of good work, all but ready, and can't get them into final form. But I hope you '11 see news of me in the papers, in mid June, at Oxford. You have my joyful note over the Greek girl and the vases, I hope — they are quite priceless to me. Domestic matters very bad with me. My 36 LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN mother steadily declining — I obliged to leave her in patient solitude sinking towards less and less possibility of pleasure or exertion. I am here with the (f)LXr)' to whom the book is dedicated, which I hope you will receive either with this or by next post. . . . Business matters heavy on me, too. I want to found an under-mastership at Oxford be- fore June, and I can't sell the houses I want to found it with. And altogether ! Forgive me when I don't write. My hand is so weary and heart so sick — but ever Lovingly yours, J. RUSKIN. Denmark Hill, loth Augjist, 1871. My DEAREST Charles, — ... I have to thank you for your letter on Michael An- gelo, but I think I must have missed one since, for I am nearly certain you must have written after reading my Lecture to say that you were pleased at our feeling so exactly alike. * Lady Mount-Temple. The book was Sesame and Lilies. LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN 37 I am much better/ but my mother is so very feeble that I cannot in the least say whether there is any chance of my getting away from home. I have also things on hand which I think it will do me less harm to go on with quietly, than to bear the chagrin of neglecting — but you may trust me to go on quietly now, and I will soon write again. Ever your loving J. RUSKIN. CoNiSTON, Lancashire, 14th September^ 1871. ... In haste — more to-morrow. I 've bought a small place here, with five acres of rock and moor, a streamlet, and I think on the whole the finest view I know in Cumber- land or Lancashire, with the sunset visible over the same. The house — small, old, damp, and smoky chimneyed — somebody must help me get to rights. ' He had been dangerously ill at Matlock. 38 LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN CoNiSTOx, Lancashire, 15th September, '71. . . . My address as above for three weeks. I could not come to Dresden any more than Venice, being too ill to look at pictures or do more than I had engaged to do of thought. Here I have rocks, streams, fresh air, and, for the first time in my life, the rest of the pur- posed home. I may by some new course of things be induced to leave it, but have no intention of seeking ever again for a home, if I do. I have been directing the opening of paths to-day through copse, from a little nested garden sloping west to the lake and the sunset. I '11 send you some little sketches of it soon. Melrose, 24th September, '71. ... I shall in all probability be fairly settled in the house in November, for one of the reasons of my getting it is that I may fully command the winter sunsets, in clear sky — instead of losing the dead of day in the three- o'clock fog of London. Meantime, I am very LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN 39 thankful for that sense of rest, which you feel also ; but it is greatly troubled and dark- ened and lowered by the horrible arrange- ment of there being women in the world as well as mountains and stars and lambs, and what else one might have been at peace with — but for those other creatures ! What a lovely Tintoret that one at Dresden must be ! I never saw it; and what a gigan- tic, healthy, Sea-Heaven of a life he had, compared to this sickly, muddy, half eau sucree and half poisoned wine — which is my River of Life ; and yet how vain his also ! except to you and me. I am writing a word or two on his work — as true " wealth " op- posed to French lithographs and the like, in the preface to second volume of my revised works, " Munera Pulveris." (The Oxford lec- tures on sculpture will soon follow, for the third.) I send you two of their illustrations, — not photo, but permanent engravings, — and " Fors Clavigera" is, I think, going on well. It takes more time than I like, but is begin- 40 LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN ning to make an impression. Folio plates are in preparation, several successfully accom- plished, for a series of examples to be issued to the public from the Oxford schools, with a short text to each number to replace my " Elements of Drawing." They begin with Heraldry (what will your backwoodsmen say to that .?), then take up natural history in relation to it. [Denmark Hill] ist November^ 1871. My dearest Charles, — I have to-day your most kind letter. When I came back from Lancashire I found my mother ill. I had to leave her to go to Oxford — returning, found her nigh, as I thought, to death. She has ral- lied, and may yet be spared some weeks to me, but that is all the respite I can hope, though a longer one, the physicians say, is possible. I am still heavily overworked, but you will soon see, now, not uselessly. By Christmas I hope to send you three books at once, all carefully revised or written this year. LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN 41 There is no fear of my sucking the orange at Coniston. There is none to suck. I have simply light and air, instead of darkness and smoke, — and ground in which flowers will grow. All I look for is light and peace — those, unless by some strange chance of evil, are sure to me. What little pleasure I still look for will be in Italy, mixed with bitter pain — but still intense in its way. In Cum- berland ' I merely breathe and rest. [Denmark Hill] 3 November, 1871. I am working very prosperously. About Xmas, there (D. V.) will be a complete vol- ume of " Fors," a volume of lectures on sculp- ture, a volume of revised Political Economy, and a begun " Natural History and Mytho- logy of Birds " and the same of Fishes. My poor Mother will only look from afar {if ^o) — and I suppose not care to read — out of Heaven. * Coniston is actually in Lancashire. 42 LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN ^Dictated] Denmark Hill, 6th November, 1871. My dearest Charles, — I have really to- day posted — Joan will bear witness to that — an order to send you the numbers of " Fors " you want. I have only been remiss in sending you anything because you cannot have any notion of what I am trying to do till the end of the year, when you will get, D. v., three books at once. However, I shall send you the last revises of the Lectures as they are printed, so that any helpful comment or caution may reach me, so as to leave me yet a moment for repentance. . . . I don't wonder that you find Dresden a little dull. Since they got coal there it has been all spoiled ; nevertheless, even in winter-time there must surely be loveliness in the granite valleys to the South, and all the hills on the other side of the bridges used to be beautiful, not to speak of Konigstein and its district within so easy reach ; and then, you 've got Titian's pink lady in the Gallery, and Vero- LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN 43 nese's Magi — I won't reckon George the Fourth's plate, which I was once taken to see, nor the little monsters with pearl stomachs in the Green chamber. But there must be music also — and surely some blue eyes worth looking at. . . . Tell me what you are working at, and give me more specific accounts of your health. Ever your lovingest John Ruskin. 15 November^ 1871. . . .To-day I believe the first five sheets of the lectures are sent you — still in a very rough state apparently, for I catch two errors in the same leaf. Please read " fair " instead of " air " in fourth line page 75, and put a full stop after " Duces " and none after " proles " in page 76. The meaning of the title ' is that I have traced all the elementary laws of sculp- ture, as you will see in following sheets, to a right understanding of the power of incision * Aratra Pentelici. 44 LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN or furrow in marble. The Greek girl you gave me — she is standing on tiptoe just now, very much pleased at what I am saying, in the cor- ner of my study, and looks as if she never had heard anything that made her quite under- stand herself before — is made, if you recol- lect, a girl instead of a block of marble, by little more than a few fine furrows traced to and fro. Denmark Hill, 9th December, '71. My dearest Charles, — It is Saturday — and on Tuesday last my mother died, and yet I have not written to tell you, feeling continu- ally the same dread that I should have of tell- ing you anything sad concerning yourself. I am more surprised by the sense of loneli- ness than I expected to be, — but it can only be a sense, never a reality, of solitude, as long as I have such friends as you. I have been very curious to ask you — since you will not admit Frederick to have been a hero, what your idea of heroism is } LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN 45 I believe I shall have to give a subject for an essay at St. Andrews this year — the old- est University of Scotland. I am going to give " The definition of Heroism, and its function in Scotland at this day." Ever your loving J. RUSKIN. p. S. [by Mrs. Severn]. He has n't told you that he has been made Lord Rector of St. Andrews. 23d December^ 1871. This will, I hope, reach you not long after Xmas day. My wishes are of no use, but are always very earnestly for you, and with you and yours. Last night I saw a proof of the last of the 21 plates for sculpture-lectures, quite right. Nothing now but binding wanted for those and "Munera." To-day I have my series of casts and shields from Tomb of Queen Eleanor and Aymer de Valence, to begin my drawing class in Heraldry, and of little 46 LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN statues from same tombs, to begin them in Propriety. I have the first lecture written, and the rest planned, of series on connection of Sci- ence and Art, for next spring (ten), begin- ning 8th February, I hope. In a book on Heraldry I find the 8th Feb- ruary, in Gothic times, began spring. I have my Xmas and January " Fors " printed. February nearly all written. I have a lecture on " The Bird of Calm," nearly ready for Woolwich in a fortnight. It is to be given to the cannon-making workmen. I have got a " Danthe" of 1490 printed at Venice, out of Kirkup sale, with woodcuts to every canto. I have got a wonderful new piece of opal, and some mineralogy in hand. And I 'm very well, for me, but the day 's foggy, and I 've forgotten the chief thing I meant to put down — I 'm keeping my ac- counts since the shortest day beautifully. That 's all I can say to-day, except love. LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN 47 Oh — I forgot again the other chief thing I Ve to say — I 've been going into the Americans as hard as I can go in " Fors," lately; but I don't meanjj/^^, you know, and I '11 come round presently to the other side. Ever your loving J. R. [Denmark Hill] 4th January, 1872. I have been so singularly, even for me, depressed and weak since the beginning of the year, that I could not write to you. One of the distinctest sources of this depression is my certitude that I ought now to wear spec- tacles ; but much also depends on the sense of loss of that infinitude of love my mother had for me, and the bitter pity for its extinc- tion. . . . I much delight in this coin of Frederick, and very solemnly and with my whole heart prefer it to the Hercules. I should even pre- fer my own profile to the Greek Hercules, though mine has the wofulest marks of folly, 48 LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN irresolution, and disease. But Frederick and I had both of us about the worst education that men could get for money, and both had passed through rough times which partly conquered us — being neither of us, cer- tainly not I, made of the best metal, even had we been well brought up. One of the quaintest things in your last letter was your fixing, in your search for bad epithets for Frederick, on " Unsociable." And yet you love me! But not to continue so insolent a compar- ison any longer, take the one instance of Frederick's domestic and moral temper, that having been in danger of death under the will — almost sentence — of a father partly in- sane, he yet never accuses, but in all things justifies, and evidently reverences that father through life. . . . [January] 28th [1872]. ... I have the registered letter, and will pack the " Slaver " forthwith. LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN 49 It is right that it should be in America,' and I am well pleased in every way, and always Your lovingest, J. RUSKIN. D. Hill, 13th February^ '72. ... I am, as usual, unusually busy — when I get fairly into my lecture work at Oxford, I always find that the lecture would come bet- ter some other way, just before it is given, and so work from hand to mouth. There are to be ten this spring. Two are given, and I have two a week for four weeks, on the rela- tion of art to natural science, and am print- ing them as I go on — besides all the work of changing into my rooms at Corpus, and sending the rest that 's in the house to Brant- wood, and business connected with all, etc., etc., etc., — and I want to draw some things this spring for the men. I keep pretty well, and have not, if I * Turner's grand and astonishing picture, now in the Bos- ton Museum of Fine Arts. 50 LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN sleep, time to be sad, though living in my quiet rooms at Corpus is very wonderful to me ; but not painful. Going about London is very dreadful to me, every street having some bitter memory ; but when I get away from it, and everybody is kind to me, I can't keep sulky. . . . St. Valentine's eve, 1872. My dearest Charles, — I sent you a little line this morning. I 've just seen at Ellis's your " Triumph of Max"" " ' — it is a very nice copy, and I told them I would write and say so. I had just seen a large paper one not much better in any way, and not at all so pleasant to look at. I do not know if I ever told you how much I admire it, but you will like to hear that I am going to cut one all to pieces, and frame in raised mounts, the square banners with the women-shield-bearers, for the Oxford men * A copy of the volume of superb wood-cuts known as the Trm})iph of [the Emperor] Maximilian. LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN 51 to learn pen drawing from, and some of the Knights that carry them, the half length, only without the horses, so as to compel attention to the faces, plumes, and body armour. I think you will like, as nobody yet has liked, going over the schools, when you come ^ome — to England. It's absurd to think of yourself as American any more ; but even if you do, all good Americans should live in England, for America's sake, to make her love her fathers' country — if not in the past, at least now. Ever your loving J. RUSKIN. Corpus Christi College, Oxford, Easter Sunday, '72. My dearest Charles,— I left my Denmark Hill study, to go back no more, on Thurs- day, and have passed my Good Friday and Saturday here, quite alone, finding, strangely, one of my Father's diaries for my solace, giving account of all our continental journeys. 52 LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN from the time I was six years old, when he and my mother, and I, and a cat, whom I made a friend at Paris, and an old French man- chambermaid, were all very happy (yet not so much in degree as completeness) at Paris — my Father some twelve years younger than I am now. . . . We leave England, D. V., on Tuesday the 9th. A line to care of Arthur Severn, Heme Hill, London, would find me probably sit- ting writing before breakfast at the window of my old nursery — whence I visited Paris for the first time. . . . I am going to sell my Venice Rialto by Turner. It is too large for Brantwood, and I have enough without it, and it makes me sad. . . . I am so tired that this which I have writ- ten, in the idea of its being quite a slow and careful and proper letter, looks as slovenly as if I cared nothing for you, but I care for you though I can't write. Ever yours, J. RUSKIN. LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN 53 Herne Hill, S. E., London, loth August. I am myself going to give, this autumn, at Oxford, a summary of the points in the lives of the Florentines and their school as related by Vasari, i. e., assuming Vasari to be correct, what thoughtful conjecture may be made as to each life. Then I shall correct Vasari after- wards as I can, to make him understood, first sifting the points in each life from the rubbish. I shall do Verrocchio, Mantegna, Sandro Bot- ticelli, Pollajuolo, Lorenzo di Credi, Perugino, and the Lippis, with what else comes in nat- urally — and I think it will be interesting. Nothing I have ever seen in mythic and reli- gious art has interested or delighted me so much as Sandro and Perugino in the Sistine Chapel — Perugino at Perugia was another piece of new life to me. Corpus Christi College, Oxford, i^tk November J 1872. ... I will never take anybody's advice any more. I want somebody to help me against 54 LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN you — you 're always too strong for me — the more foolish they are the better. . . . You spoke of coming down with Ned on Thursday. Please do/ Lancaster, 27th December^ '72. My dearest Charles, — I brought your Siena ^ home from Oxford with me, and have been reading it all the way down, having carriage to myself. It is curious that the first drawing I ever made of Italian art should have been from Duccio, and that I should have sent it to you the day before I read the account you give of him — twenty times more interesting than Cimabue. I was greatly surprised by the early dates you assign and prove for the fall of Siena, and also by your ascribing it in the end, * I was established for the winter in London. <' Ned " was Burne-Jones. " An account of the building of the Duomo at Siena, af- terwards published in my Church-Building in the Middle Ages. LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN 55 so completely, to the failure of religious faith. Q., — and this is the only thing which dur- ing the whole • day I wanted my pen to sug- gest, all the rest being unquestionable, — should we not rather say, the failure of the qualities which render religious faith possible, and which, if it be taught, make it accept- able? How far religion made — how far de- stroyed — the Italians is now a quite hope- lessly difficult question with me. My work will only be to give material for its solu- tion. My cold is nearly gone. I will do S her drawing and you yours, at Brantwood. I have been dining on turtle soup and steak, and have had more than half a pint of sherry, and feel comfortable — here in King's Arms Inn, with picture of Dickens's Empty Chair behind me, and his signature to it, cut out of a letter to the landlord. Volunteer band playing, melodiously and cheerfully. Mind 56 LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN you get acquainted with a conscientious Punch. P. S. Pitch dark day. O. (not a critical one). After that time of homicide at Siena, Heaven sent the Black Plague. " You will kill each other, will you ? You shall have it done cheaper." TVe have covered ourselves with smoke. " You want darkness } " says Heaven. " You shall have it cheaper." Brant WOOD, Coniston, 15th January^ 1873. My dearest Charles, — ... I have had fourteen days of incessant wind and rain, and am stupid with disgust and wonder that such things should be. Nature herself traitress to me — whatever Wordsworth may say. No light to paint, nor temper to think ; but I have been working at the instructions to my drawing-class. Everything now takes so much more time than I calculate — it is terri- ble. . . . Love to you all, especially to S. I 've done LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN 57 a bit of ivy, but it looks gloomy, and hope to get a bit of cup-moss for her instead. Ever your lovingest J. RUSKIN. 7th February, 1873. ... I will have the marbles sent down here.' I am going to make more and more a perfect home of this place. I have the gift of sucking bitters, and am just now quite uncomfortable because my house is too pleasant, and I don't like going back to Ox- ford. Brantwood, Coniston, 8th February^ 1873. My dearest Charles, — I send you an old sketchbook, full of scrawls done in the cold (with that excuse for never doing any- thing that I ought to have done to them) in the winter of '62,1 think, or '61 — Crawley* will know. * Some pieces of late thirteenth century Pisan sculpture, fragments of a font, which I had obtained for him in Italy. ^ His old servant. 58 LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN They now only give me sorrow and shame to look at — both deep. I ought perhaps to be very thankful that I am wise enough to think my ten years old self a fool, and that I am unhappy only by not getting what I wanted, instead of getting it. I walked seven miles yesterday on hea- venly short, sheep-bitten turf; climbed 1800 feet above lake among the snow; rowed a mile; superintended the making of a cor- ner window in my " lodge," to be Crawley's house, and worked at Greek coins all the evening, without spectacles. I ought n't to grumble, at 54, to be able to do that. And, indeed, I am less discontented than I was at Lucerne, that winter. Perhaps I shall be quite happy just before I leave the world. If there 's anything in the sketchbook you would like name put to, I '11 do it when I come to town, if you leave the book with me. All good be to you that can be. Ever your loving J. R. LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN 59 Brantwood, Ash Wednesday, 26th February^ i873' Dearest Charles, — Your lovely little note just come, and with it the Dante mar- bles. Far beyond what I had hoped, and quite beyond all price to me. I have n't been so pleased for many a year. I ought to be very good — now such a study as I have. Must tell you about it, or, rather, you must all come and see, in May. Ever your loving, ♦ J. R. RUSKIN, (JOHN). Autograph Letter, Signed with Initials. Ip. 8vo, i "Corpus Christi College. Oxford. March 20, 1873. To Charles Eliot Norton, ' with original addressed and stamped envelope. Reads: "My dearest Charles: Can you be at home on Sunday for me — in the forenoon? I can't get to you before. I shall bring Connie to you on Monday, however. I hope you make her very happy . . . Ever yours, J. R." IV I873-I893 IV I873-I893 After my return from Europe in May, 1873, ten years passed before I again saw Ruskin. They were years of grave change and sad experience for him. He continued to engage in dangerous excess of dispersed and exhaust- ing work, and to yield to a still more danger- ous excess of emotion. The intensity of his sensitiveness to immediate impressions, the passionate ardor of his feelings, the habit of uncontrolled expression reacting to increase the temper from which it sprang, continued to aggravate the bitterness of his resentment against the evil of the world and to deprive him of peace of mind. His unsettled religious convictions failed to afford him solid spiritual comfort and support His writings, largely devoted to social questions, exposed him by their manner as well as by their doctrine to harsh criticism, by which he was wounded and embittered. He felt deeply the separation 64 LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN which was growing wider and wider between himself and other men. His firmest convic- tions were opposed to the prevailing ideas of his time. He stood alone and like a pro- phet to whom his people would not hearken. Personal sorrows added to his troubles. His brain and his heart were alike over- wrought. Yet there were intervals when the natural elasticity and cheerfulness of his disposition asserted themselves, when the delights of nature or of art could still minister to his happiness, and when all the sweetness and generosity of his nature displayed them- selves in their incomparable abundance. His friends could not but be anxious for him, and they strove in vain to persuade him to moderate his exhausting career. For a long time the vigor of his constitution enabled it to endure the excessive strain to which it was subjected, but finally, in 1878, it gave way, and he was brought near death by a violent inflam- mation of the brain. The immediate attack passed, leaving apparently little effect. The monthly issue of " Fors Clavigera," which had continued unbroken for seven years, LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN 65 and in which he had poured out his thought on every subject, displaying himself and his affairs with astonishing frankness and sincer- ity, was now suspended. It had been a dan- gerous mode of relief of his overburdened spirit. From this time he was never safe from similar breakdowns, which recurred at in- tervals with more or less severity, with grad- ual permanent damage to his brain. Brant WOOD, Coniston, 25th June, 1873. Dearest Charles, — I am not doing as you bid me. It is Saturday, and a month since your letter was written, and this is my first. I am very hard at work on my new elements of drawing. The scheme is too large for arrangement. I must do it piece by piece. When I was systematic, nobody believed I was, so it matters little. But the time it takes one to determine how large a quatre-foil is to be drawn, how thick a line, etc. ! Things wholly unallowed for as taking time at all. 66 LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN But really, I think I have done much lately, and that it must tell soon. I mean to get the Botticelli lectures out, somehow. I am more curious about you and your life that is to be than about anything not my own business. I am more thankful for your friend- ship every hour. Love to you all — as much as I have left for any one. living. I hope you will be better pleased with the pieces about Scott than you are usually with " Fors," this next month. Alfred Hunt has been staying with me. He is very faithful and affectionate to me, as I am to you, and Ever your devbted J. RUSKIN. Brantwood, Coniston, Lancashire, i5th>/K, 1873- ... I am writing, not against time, but constantly, what is becoming (in " Fors ") al- most a life of Walter Scott, and an impor- tant analysis of Frederick. Merely digests of Lockhart and Carlyle, but useful. My great LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN 67 mental gift is Digestion, and my great bodily defect, Indigestion — it's odd enough; but really, the best authors appear to me very often as I suppose her cubs do to a bear. I hope Carlyle will take his licking as it 's meant. Also, I am slowly, but steadily, getting both " Birds " and " Botticelli " published, but the press correction is very painful to me. And I am gardening and walking a good deal. And before breakfast — i. e., from half past six to nine — I read (finding that one must have some fresh wool on one's staff to spin with) : i.e., half past six to seven, Greek Testament of nth century, partly to master early Greek writing, partly to read the now to me very curiously new Testament with a witness : seven to eight, " Romance of Rose " in fourteenth century MS., a little be- fore Chaucer ; the very text he translated — delicious old French — worse than Joinville to make out, a great deal : eight to half past, "Cent Ballades," completing (slowly) begun 68 LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN translation: half past eight to nine, "Calli- machus " — very delicious and fruitful to me. I rest almost entirely after two o'clock. My. woods want thinning, and I saunter through them, bill in hand. . . . I am happier than I was at Denmark Hill — and yet look back to Denmark Hill, en- raged at myself for not knowing its bless- ings. I am always your lovingest J. R. Oxford, C[orpus] C[hristi] C[ollege], Dece7nber 2nd, 1873. ... I often hear your sermons over again. I attend to them very much indeed. I think my steady resistance to them the most heroic of all the efforts I make in the service of my poor — "lower than the angels." Sometimes, when I 'm tired in the evening, they nearly break me down, and I 'm so proud next morn- ing of not having been beaten. But I 'm very sure you will be better pleased with the " Fors " for next year, if I live. LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN 69 I go to Assisi early in the spring to work there, with what help I can gather, on a mono- graph of it. I am surprised to find how well my health holds, under a steady press of work ; but my sight begins to fail, and I shall begin with spectacles this next year. I will find a bit of architecture for you, how- ever, or, even with my old eyes, do you a bit that won't be copiable by the " bold " scholars. Herne Hill, nth February^ '74. My dearest Charles, — I am sitting in my old nursery, in the afternoon of a clear, very cold frosty day, wind outside sharp. I a little numb and weary, after drawing on Giot- to's tower for a drawing example (I am push- ing them now at last). The view through the bars put to keep me from falling out when I was little is much as it was — only the Crystal Palace is there, and a group of houses on the ridge of the hill, where the Palace Hotel is, — where my father and mother used to go 70 LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN when they could n't travel any more with me. ... Send me all the remarks you can on Val d' Arno — they will be in plenty of time. I shall go down to Brantwood for a month, and then start straight for Assisi, about end of March. I have no pleasure whatever in the thought of going, bift perhaps may find more than if I expected it. But I shall think of Siena, and many sad things, and at present Italy is saddest of all. Herne Hill, 13th February^ 1874. My dearest Charles, — Your letter came to-night, after dinner, — on one side of the tray on which letters are brought up. o , . I am so glad you like those Brantwood photographs. It was a terrible disappointment to me, your not coming. No photograph can give you the least idea of the sweet greys and greens in the intense English richness of the moss vege- tation, or the ^almost Italian beauty of the LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN 71 lower end of the lake — all the photographs lose it in mist. I will send you a little sketch or two this next month, God willing. Herne Hill, Saturday morning, St. Valentine's, 1874. . . . I 'm going to drive up the hill to the Crys- tal Palace, and I shall play some games of chess with the automaton chess player. I get quite fond of him, and he gives me the most lovely lessons in chess. I say I shall play some games, for I never keep him waiting for moves and he crushes me down steadily, and my mind won't be all in my play, to-day, any more than Henry 8th at end of the play' — only the automaton won't say, " Sir, I did never win of you before ! " Thanks for your words about " Fors." Ever your affectionate J. R. ^ The reference is to these verses : — King Henry. Charles, I will play no more to-night ; My mind 's not on 't ; you are too hard for me. Suffolk. Sir, I did never win of you before. Henry VHI. V. i. 72 LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN Corpus Christi College, Oxford, 15th February, 1874. ... I played three games with the automa- ton — not bad ones, considering. Two other people played him, also, — an hour and a half went in the five games. . . . I came away here in the evening, and am going down to Brantwood. I shall make you a little drawing of myself, positively, before I go abroad. Write for the present to Brantwood. I have just put up half a dozen proofs of Turner's Rivers, etc., for you — all but one have some scratching or pencilling of his own on them. Pisa, 9th Aprils 1874. ... I have always thought you just as wrong in following out your American life, as you think me in following " Fors " to its issue — perhaps we each of us judge best for the other. Suppose we both give up our con- founded countries ? Let them go their own way in peace, and we will travel together, LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN 73 and abide where we will, and live b. Co — or in the 13th century. I will draw, you shall write, and we shall neither of us be too merry for the other — and both much the stronger for the other. I really think this a very lovely plan — and sometimes we '11 go and have a symposium at Venice with R. B.' Meantime, I can't in the least help you about Athens. I 've had to give up my Greek work. Vita Brevis, It needs a better scholar and younger life. I 'm going to draw what I can in Italy, and say a few words for Christ's sake against your Philosophers and Radicals yet, if I live ; but I can't do more for Athena. I have told Burgess to send you the two beginnings of myself I made for you. All that is good in me depends on terrible sub- tleties, which I find will require my very best care and power of completion — all that comes at first is the worst. Continually I see accidental looks, which, if I could set down, you would like ; but I have been able to do * Rawdon Brown. 74 LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN nothing yet, only I let these failures be sent to show I have been trying. „ . . I am writing in the inn where we were to- gether in 1870. I was bitterly wrong to leave La Spina undrawn, and the old River quays. We had better arrange that Expatriotic plan at once. I '11 write again soon from Assisi or Palermo. Assisi, nth Apn'l, 1874. ... I have just got here, and have ordered all things to be ready in the upper church to-morrow to begin work with the Arundel society man, who is really enthusiastic and tender, but weak. I hope to get some im- portant impressions made on him. But how difficult it is, to tell any man not to " im- prove " his copy ! All one's little character and life goes into the minute preferences which are shown in the copy. In one's own feeble sort, it must be prettier than the original, or it is dead. A plum, even by Hunt, must be Huntized — and if your LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN 75 Giotto copyist is, as nearly as possible, Giotto's negative on a small scale, the exact opposite of him, gentle when he is rough, and sad when he is gay, no lecturing will turn said negative to good account. . . . I 'm so very glad you like my drawings. That one of the Fall of Schaff hausen ' was the only one I ever saw Turner interested in. He looked at it long, evidently with pleasure, and shook his finger at it, one evening, stand- ing by the fire in the old Denmark Hill drawing-room. How Destiny does mock one, giving all the best things when one is too young to use them! Fancy if I had him to shake fingers at me now. . . . Sacristan^s Cell, Monastery of Assist, Morning, yi««^ 19th, 1874. ... I am wholly occupied just now with Giotto's " Poverty." I 've done Botticelli's ^ This drawing was made probably as early as 1843. It is a fine study, of which Ruskin had lost sight, and which turned up for sale in New York, where I obtained it. 76 LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN Zipporah successfully ' — but the " Poverty " is on a vault, and the looking up at it and not being able to change the distance torments me dreadfully. It is fine, but on the whole I am greatly disappointed with Giotto, on close study — and on the contrary, altogether amazed at the power of Cimabue, before wholly unknown to me. Botticelli remains where he was, only be- cause he could n't get higher, in my mind, after a month's work on him. I wish I could give him the rest of my life, but it must be broken into small pieces. If a blessing comes on the fragments, they may some day multiply. I write the supplementary part of my lectures on him here, every morning, in abso- lute quiet, looking out on the Apennines — St. Francis lying within thirty yards of me. ^ Just after the preceding letter was written Ruskin had left Assisi for Rome and Palermo. At Palermo he passed a few days with Colonel Yule and his daughter, and then re- turning to Rome, he spent May there, employed mainly in copying the Zipporah in Botticelli's fresco in the Sistine Chapel. He got back to Assisi early in June. LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN 77 . . . The Cimabue is a discovery to me, — wholly unexpected, — Vasari mistaking as usual the place where he is, and everybody passing, as I did myself, the apparently coarse Madonna of the Scuola Greca. At last I set myself on it on a bright day and upset Giotto from his pedestal in a minute or two's close look. Vasari is all right about the upper church, but not the lower. The large frescoes in upper church are grand, but it is one Madonna in the lower that has knocked me over. I 'm going to set to work on her to-day, D. V. — June 20th. Assisi, Inn of the Lion, June 20th. . . . To-day your dear little note finds me after some wanderings about Rome. I am very glad of it, chiefly of your thought of Greece. But I can't travel now, except in comfortable places — so much has my too luxurious life corrupted me — and I don't know what I 78 LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN may have to do, these coming years. So far from being in peace as you think, my days here are passed in daily maddening rage, and daily increasing certainty that " Fors " is my work — not painting — at this time. But Fors, pursued in deed, not word. How you, with all the tenderness that is in you, can deliberately see this people perish, and yet tell every fiddler to go on fiddling, and every painter to go on painting, as if there were yet ears to hear or eyes to see, is the most amazing thing to me among all the various amazements which leave me alone in my work, or worse than alone — obliged, at each stone I lay, to drag up with me the lengthening chain of friends* reproof. Note the date of this letter — you shall have a copy of what I wrote this morning in the Sacristan's cell — it will be interesting to you. I '11 write to Burgess. J. R. LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN 79 Monastery of Assisi, 2isx June, 1874. My dearest Charles, — I am writing in my cell, within a few yards — just across the cloister passage — of the door into the lower church, in the angle of the transept, just opposite my newly found treasure of Cima- bue. It may be useful to you in your own work to know what I have — I may already almost say — ascertained about him. That he was a man of personal genius, equal to Tintoret, but with his mind entirely formed by the Gospels and the book of Genesis ; his art, as you know, what he could receive from By- zantine masters — and his main disposition, compassion. You will comprehend in a moment what a new subject of investigation this is to me, and the extraordinary range of unexpected interests and reversed ideas which it involves. Giotto is a mere domestic gossip, compared to Cimabue. Fancy the intellect of Phidias with the soul of St. John, and the knowledge 8o LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN of a boy of ten years old, in perspective, light and shade, etc. He can't by any effort make his Madonna look as if she were sitting in her throne. She is merely standing stumpily. But I am pre- pared to assert her for the sublimest Mater Dolorosa ever painted, as far as my know- ledge extends, in the Italian schools. I am going to draw her, and think I can, and you shall have a photograph (I hope a little sketch, also, quickly). But do you sup- pose my power either of drawing or seeing her, is merely because I have a painter's eye ? I must have that, to begin with ; but the rea- son I can see her, or draw her {if indeed I can), is because I have read, this morning, the ninth of Jeremiah, and understand that also. (I beg your pardon for the vulgar underlining.) I wrote these two pages, and then went to my own work, rewriting or completing my lectures on Botticelli after my work on him in Rome. But it is grey and thunderous, and I can't write, somehow — have been awake LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN 8i since four, and am tired. I walk to the win- dow — there's a lovely little scene down in the valley beneath — steep down — five hundred feet. I see the bed of the brook (Tescio) all but dry; a peasant has brought seven or eight sheep to feed on the shrubs among the stones of it ; and his wife or daughter is walking up to their cottage in a white jacket with brown petticoat, carrying an amphora on her head, and with a Greek pitcher in her hand, full (I can see almost into the mouth of the amphora, I look so steeply down with my glass upon her). " Such a picturesque figure, and so clas- sical, and of course you '11 sketch her," say my London acquaintances, enchanted at the idea — Charles Norton backing them, too. No, my good acquaintances and one friend, I shall go and explain to her why the bed of the stream is dry, why the sheep have to nibble among the stones of it, and why she has to go down to fill her amphora instead of having a fountain at her door. [Here a 82 LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN hasty sketch of the Sacristan's cell, with which the letter ends.] Lucca, 12th August^ 1874. Art. I. My dearest Charles, — This " Art. I." was to be the beginning of an art-grammar for a young Italian who besought me at Assisi to teach him something. In endeavoring to do which, I have taught him a little, but myself much. Art. I. is to be, in such Italian as I can manage : " Every light is shade to higher lights ; and every shade is light to lower shades," — from the Sun to Night, which alone are Light and Shade absolute. Art. II. Every colour has its own proper darkness ; that is to say, as soon as it can be distinguished from darkness, it is distin- guished also from other colours. Therefore, you must not shade any colour with grey, for red darkened with grey is not dark red, but a condition of purple ; and blue darkened with LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN 83 grey is not dark blue, but a debased blue, and yellow darkened with grey is not dark yellow, but a condition of green. Therefore, the shade of every colour must be the dark- ness of itself. Normally, it is the shade of a hollow removed from the influence of reflec- tion in a surface of that colour. A deep fold in red velvet is proper dark red ; and a deep fold in yellow velvet, proper dark yellow. Article three is to define red, blue, and yellow, and I am in a fix about dark yellow, or proper brown ; which is dreadfully optical and puzzling. I have your letter in answer to Assisi. My dearest Charles, I never meant to accuse you of not considering the poor, or of ill- management of your own life. It has been an incomparably wiser one than mine. But you are like Henry Morton remonstrating with Habakkuk Mucklewrath, or Pleydell pa- cifying Dandie — or as Lucy Bertram to Meg Merrilies. I can't write more to-day. 84 LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN Write — Hotel de TArno, Florence. I 'm there for a month yet Lucca, 12th August Dearest Charles, — I sent you a scrawl this morning, thinking it might amuse you a little, and before going to bed must answer about Cimabue. Giotto is not dethroned — at least, not diminished — in his own real place, which is of human passion. In mystic and majestic thought, Cimabue leads wholly, and the By- zantines generally. Giotto and Taddeo Gaddi are loving realists of little things. The finest thing of Giotto's in Assisi is not the " Pov- erty" or "Chastity," but a little group of peo- ple in the street, looking at a boy who has just been restored to life, after falling out of a three pair of stairs window. The Christ, St. Francis, and Charity, are all three total fail- ures in the great Poverty Fresco ; and in the Charity, she herself and Fortitude are quite valueless ; while Obedience in the op- posite one is monstrous. But the sweetness !S--r-!. VM , LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN 85 of a monk reading on the grass while St. Francis receives the stigmata, and the sud- den passion of a woman clasping her hands and thanking God for the boy brought to life, are more pure and exquisite than any- thing of the subsequent schools. I find the Spanish Chapel of boundlessly more importance than I had imagined. I 'm staying a month longer in Italy for this alone, hoping to draw Astronomy and Logic. I think the daring and divine heresy of Zo- roaster under Astronomy — enclosed scrawl may remind you — quite exquisite; I can't make out whose they are, though. Not Gaddi nor the man called Simon Memmi at Assisi. By the way, geography's globe was di- vided thus, and is thus : ' — Here 's rather a pretty bit I wrote this morning about the Music : " Under her sits Tubalcain, striking on his anvil with two ham- » Here a sketch showing the globe divided originally into Asia, Africa, and Europe, now into Asia, America, and Europe. 86 LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN mers. But he forges nothing. He looks up into the air and listens. And the sounds of the sheep bell on the mountains, of the chime and call and lament on the tower, of clashed cymbal, thunderous organ, far-thrilling trum- pet — these he forges in thought, from the beginning of the world to its Judgment.'' Of course this assumes that Memmi mixes him up with Jubal — on Giotto's tower they are separate. But it is curious that at Pe- rugia, the other day, I heard the only bit of fine choral singing I ever heard given in a free-hearted way in Italy — out of a smithy, timed to the hammers — " harmonious black- smith " to purpose, but very different from Handel's; this was a really grand, slow chant. Ever your loving J. R. Lucca, Feast of the Assumption. My dearest Charles, — I am writing my account of Giotto's " Poverty," for you, and for others who care for it — and was getting LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN 87 into some feeling and power with it, when I was entirely stopped and paralyzed by a ^ steam whistle at the railway, sent clear through intensely calm and watery air at intervals of about a quarter of a minute for the last quarter of an hour — a sharp, intense, momentary explosive whistle, like a mocking Devil playing the " Lucca trumpet " in a high key — the most torturing and base thing that in all my St. Anthony times has hap- pened to me. It comes every morning at my best worktime, and at midnight — it is a luggage train which can't make up its mind to anything, and whistles at every new idea that strikes it. If you can read " Fors," — which I don't believe you do, — look at the bit I am writ- ing — it will be the end of the " Squires " " Fors," for September. I stopped to write this to you at the words, " Charity is wound with white roses, which burst as they open into flames of fire." And the whistle of the Lucca devil is going on all this time. 88 LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN I meant to have written to you at any rate, to say that I can't think what I wrote to put you on the self-defensive, to that extent, in this last letter. My dearest Charles, I never said that you ought to live, or think, otherwise than you do; I am only pained because you think / ought. I wish you en- joyed " Fors," and looked for it, and saw some- thing more in it than a " monthly letter." I wish also you knew a little more the change there is upon me — unfitting for any other work — fitting me, I think, very definitely for this. . . . Don't you see that one must feel " grim " to the full extent of " Fors ; " and it 's of no use to say one ought n't or that that "isn't the right method "? Ever your loving J.R. Lucca, i8th August, 1874. My dearest Charles, — As soon as you get the illustrated " Val d' Arno " you will be interested by the plate of Niccolo's Madonna, LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN 89 and some others; I hope also by the dis- tinction between " Greeks and Greeks " of the Baptistery font. I 've found it all out now. The effete Greek of St. John Lateran is real Byzantine — polluted at Rome to its death. The Font of Pisa is native Etruscan. So is that of Pistoja. So are the masons of Como, who formed the Free masons. The race has held its own to this day ; one of them drove me last night, with the same black eyes that are inlaid on the Font of Pisa, — the same sharp, ridged nose, a breast like a Hercules, — and he drove (and drives every evening if I would let him) like Auriga, before he died for his kiss. The infallible mark of the race and style in the sculpture is straight hair carved in ridges like a ploughed field. I have here, side by side in the porch of the Duomo, Niccolo Pisano's first (known) sculpture (the Deposition) and an Etruscan reaper (June), with his straight hair and inlaid black eyes. He and February are the 90 LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN only ones who have their heads left, for modern Italy, taught by America, considers it " the thing " to knock off heads, and the schoolboys rarely pass the porch without throwing a stone or two at it. (The great thing to do is to knock off the nose ; but that is not always possible when the sculpture is high up.) Niccolo has the bossy hair of the Greek Jupiter for everybody, and his great points in the Deposition are pulling out the nails with the pincers, and supporting the weight of the body as it falls. You will see in a moment how much follows from this, the Etruscan never losing his contemplative re- ligious habit, and caring nothing whatever about Weight going down, but only about Spirit going up, while, on the other hand, Niccolo, with those pincers pulling the nail out, laid hold of the entire scheme of material and naturalistic art, good and bad ; and with the arm of Joseph of Arimathea, catch- ing the {dead) body of Christ, embraced LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN 91 Michael Angelo and Rubens and all that they are, and mean. My Etruscan drives me every evening to a valley which is entered through a glade of Spanish chestnuts, like that in the Cephalus and Procris; then the path goes over and under rocks of the hardest marble I ever struck, into groves of olive, which go up and up the hillside, for which the Pisans can't see Lucca,' but from which, on this side of them, I see as I climb, the Carrara mountains in their purple, and Lucca lying like a crown of gold on the Etruscan plain. Ever your loving J. R. Florence, 21st August, 1874. My dearest Charles, — My discovery of this native Etruscan element has so beauti- fully cleared and composed my scheme given * — al monte Per che i Pisan veder Lucca non ponno. Inferno, xxxiii. 30. 92 LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN in 2nd "Ariadne" that I can't help — partly in exultation, and partly because I think you '11 like it — stopping in my sketching out notes for next October's lectures on Arnolfo and Brunellesco, to give you the form they have taken. School of 1 200. Chartres Cathedral — North. Monreale — South. Font of Pisa. (Etruscan) — Centralized. Still all in a certain sense savage and Pagan. Broken in upon by Niccolo Pisano. Then the Three Great Successive Christian Schools: A. Arnolfo's and Dante's. Christian or Pure Gothic, Type — St. Paul's tomb under the 12th century form of basilica. The Gothic School is entirely Faithful and imaginative. B. Brunellesco's. Christian or Pure Classic, The Classic School, nobly naturalist — LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN 93 beginning to try its faith and rule level lines. C. Perugino's. Christian or Pure Romantic, Horatius Cocles — Cincinnatus — St Michael — Madonna — all seen through Christian Iris of colour. Luini, Bellini, Botticelli. (When I send you a photograph of my Zipporah (she 's really come nicely) it will explain to anybody with eyes; of course you'll see it (I mean how pat and pretty it comes) without wanting Zipporah.) Then — chivalry expiring — we get sur- gery and optics — Michael Angelo and Leo- nardo. . . . Florence, 23rd August^ 1874. My dearest Charles, — I *m in the Hotel d' Arno, itself a palace once, opposite (street only 10 feet wide) one of the grandest of the old towers, with a mason's shop in the bot- tom of it. . . . 94 LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN But that is not the point ; I Ve just done such a lovely bit — to my own fancy — of notes for lectures on Contemplative and Dramatic, that I must just scratch it over the Atlantic to you. You see, Lord Lindsay always talks of Contemplative and Dramatic, without observing that the nobleness of each school is in what you Contemplate and what you do. You Contemplate a " Lemon Peel and Pigs," if you 're a Dutchman, and a Maesta of Cimabue, if you 're an Etruscan. You have for Drama — at present in Naples — a policeman catching two parties who are chopping up a child. Or you have — of old in Pisa — The Last Judgment. But of all the loveliest bits of acutely piquant drama of the loveliest sort, I think the one in the Spanish chapel beats. We have our modern dramas of Court Introduction, " The Queen receiving the Princess Alex- andrina, or Russymutchka, or whatever she may be ; His Royal Highness, the Prince of Wales receiving the Lord Mayor and Lady LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN 95 Mayoress, etc., etc." But of all piquant In- troductions, here's the acutest — "Eve in- troduced to Christ, with the Devil looking on." Simon has done it, oh, so prettily! Ever your loving J.R. Florence, 26th August^ 1874. Dearest Charles, — I am not without hope of a change in your thoughts about " Fors " and all my work, as you read the concluding letters of this year, especially one I 've been writing to-day, after returning last night from the Badia of Fesole, which I thank- fully found uninjured — wholly uninjured in adjunct and fact, and with only one sign of modern Florentine life on it — a pencil scrawl on one of the pieces of its white inlaid mar- ble, of which I will tell you another day ; to- day I only want to say that it must have seemed to you I had only half read your let- ter by not asking you to send the St. Buona- 96 LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN Ventura life/ Please do, to Oxford when I get there this October ; this morning I en- quired for those you tell me of, — the Fioretti and Fra Jacopone, and quote the " utile e hu- mile e pretiosa e casta," appropriately watch- ing the people getting up on the other side of Arno and throwing their slops out of win- dow with great crashes into the river, occa- sional drifts of spray in the descent — as of the Staubbach — into their neighbours' win- dows — occurring under the sublime influ- ences of a thunderous and fitful wind. " And the Spirit of God moved on the face of the waters." Cimabue's " Creation " at Assisi is the sum and substance of all others. God the Father in a circle of closely set, crowded, infusorial Angels ; beneath them the Dove — beauti- fully drawn — in profile, not [a slight sketch], but [another sketch] (Goodness — that I can't draw it !) ; then Christ descending in * The Life of St. Francis, by St. Buenaventura, which Ruskin had not read. LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN 97 the form of Man; and the waters below beginning to take order under them ; and the successive events then all crowded below. I am more and more crushed every day under the stupendous power of Botticelli. But he is always — even at his grandest — a rapturous dreamer, or thoughtful, disciplined, practical reformer, while Cimabue lives in the solemn presence of the Maesta of God and the Virgin — the last of the great Greeks. But Botticelli — there are no words for his imagination, solemnity of purpose, artis- tic rapture, in all divinely artistic things; mightier in chiaroscuro than Correggio, brighter in jewellry than Angelico ; abun- dant like Tintoret, and intent on completion like Leonardo — I never saw or thought such things possible till I went into the Academy delle Belle Arti this last time, Ever your loving J. RUSKIN. P. S. That dove 's wrong, after all. Cima- 98 LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN bue's wings go up [sketch]. I confuse things now in a day, if I don't put them down instantly. Florence, 7th September^ 1874. My dearest Charles, — Tm writing " A Walk in Florence," for the English Respect- able Tourist! — explaining to him Giotto's frescoes of St. Francis in Sta, Croce, and the Gospel of Works ; and Simon Memmi's fres- coes of St. Dominic and the Gospel of Faith. And I 'm very much pleased with my own bit of work as it 's coming ; only I 've so much drawing to do. I 'm drawing Astro- nomy, and Music, and Logic, and Gram- mar telling little Florentine boys and girls to enter in at the straight gate (which really is too straight to be comfortable, as well as Grammar's own stays), and the Emperor, and the King, and Botticelli's Spring's ankle among the daisies ; and I 've enough to do. But in my account of the Gospel of Faith, LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN 99 I 'm going to quote Lowell's St. Ambrose, but with the proper contrary of John Bun- yan's Presumption's " Every vat must stand on its own bottom," and I 'm going to finish with this : " At least, you must be sure that you are a vase of crystal being filled by an angel with water of life, and not a gobbling little fish wagging your tail in a drain." I 've had such a time of it with Donatello and Luca and all the unfinished M. Angelos to-day in the National Museum. Ever your loving J.R. Florence, i6th September^ '74. My dearest Charles, — I 've been writing myself sick, not with fatigue, but interest, in describing the frescoes of Spanish chapel this morning, and must be off to my work on them in a quarter of an hour, but I have your letter and its scented herb, — very grateful to me, — and the writing is for three cheap Walks or Mornings in Florence with which I 100 LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN hope to cut out Mr. Murray a little this win- ter. First Morning, Sta. Croce and Gospel of Works. Second, the Spanish chapel, and Gospel of Faith. Third, Mio del San Gio- vanni, Please tell me over again what you told me about Dominican buildings, in San Domenico of Siena; it has got fuzzy in my head (not in my heart). I send you three scrawls drawn on a ladder from the "June" at Lucca, — pure, native Etruscan work, of I2th-i3th century — you '11 see what they mean ; you Ve got my letter about them by this time, I hope. I was too sanguine about noses — only Febru- ary's nose is left now, of all the months. The " divine in all men exercise of the Will," ac- cording to Mr. Lowell, has produced that effect on them. What an intensely simple fellow Lowell is! Read his paragraph about " Race ■' in " My Study Windows," written in the vain hope of establishing America as a nation. I saw a wall scratched down its new plaster here at LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN loi Mont' Oliveto the day before yesterday, with a pattern out of the village mason's head, Greek — eighth century e. c. pure — and without a flaw in the genealogy, as I can prove. Ever your loving J.R. Lucca, zist September. My dearest Charles, — Coming here this evening, — dog, cat, and mouse-tired with trying to draw the Etruscan sculpture on the font of Pistoia — I found your dear little note. ... I had been writing in the morn- ing a piece a little making amends to Giotto, as I hope you will think, about four frescoes I have found, which nobody knows anything of, in a back cloister of Santa Maria No- vella. . . . It is a very difficult question, that about doing one's best. Here in a month at Flor- ence I 've drawn Grammar, Logic, Astro- nomy, Zoroaster, Tubalcain, the Pope, the 102 LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN Emperor, Eve, St. Agnes, Practical Religion, and a "found sheep," all in a very second or third best way. If I had done my best, I could only have drawn one figure in the time. It is true it would have been worth more than the whole eleven, but I should not have learned the eleventh part of what I have, nor been able to prove what I now can, that poor old Va- sari is entirely right in his account of that chapel. The best thing I got in Florence, however, was a quick, early morning sketch of the woman and the man-child in Giotto's Apoca- lypse. H6TEL Du Mont Blanc, St. Martin's, 1 2th October, 1874, one p. m. My dearest Charles, — I received your letter of the i8th September three hours since, as I sate, after a quiet morning's work on Walter Scott, breakfasting in my father's room, with Mont Blanc grey against the LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN 103 dazzling white eastern light of perfect autumn morning. No plank, no stone, no garden litter, no cottage roof, has been stirred, so far as I can see, in all this village, since our morning walk [in 1856]. This village, observe. Sallenche is entirely spoiled, in the open part of it ; but the dingle and all the hills are absolutely un- changed. The trees don't seem to me to have grown. It is like a miracle or a dream. I saw Sirius rise over Mont Blanc last night at half past one, like Agamemnon's beacon, Orion above, blazing like a fixed flash of lightning. All star-lights in Italy as of mere star-dust and faded thrones, in com- parison. And I am quiet here, — for the first time these six months, — and after the faces of what is now average humanity in Florence, the face of the worst cretin here is as the face of an angel in its innocence and pitiable, 104 LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN indeed, but not hateful, fatuity. The withered- apple Savoyard of average honest heart and quiet spirit — lovely and divine. The horror of those Itahan towns now is unutterable. I am r^-writing my glacier lectures, and much more, in days of cloudless sunshine, one after another from dawn, and golden autumn morning over blue mist, to rose- purple sunset. . . . Yes, I have n't been thinking of Eastern Italy. I don't know the Ravenna part of it; and I call Venice — Venice, and nobody else. She 's no more Italy than I am. She won't fit in but in a world scheme. (Don't think I 've modified, anyhow, my notion in the different titles given to the schools in my coming lectures, — they are only a partial glance in one direction.) Thanks for all you say of " Fors." Very solemn things are happening to me. You see how my mind is leading me to a personal effort, made in simple life. I have also been spending and losing money at a great LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN 105 rate in these last years, and must now live — not extravagantly. I can't think how this horrid leaf got crushed. I can't write on it what I want — must enclose another which will show you I 've enough to think on, and decide. Mean- time, I 'm writing, as I told you, on glaciers, and am ever your Loving J. R. Also you see in "Fors" how all my thoughts are bent on certain spiritual problems, only to be approached in, I don't say monastic, but at all events secluded life. These, I believe, you think only morbid remnants of old days. It may be so. I should not be sad, if I did not feel thus. But they are still, you see, questions to me, and now getting impera- tive. 1 11 soon write again. I 'm always thinking of sending you things, never doing it — wretch that I am ! I 've a great plan of sending now. io6 LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN St. Martin's — Evening. My dearest Charles, — The enclosed scrawl (tired in stupidity and writing both) may yet show you I was thinking of you. It was kept to carry news also of my last bit of work in Florence, getting the bas-reliefs photographed on tower of Giotto. I never did anything more useful. I have ordered a complete set to be sent to you. ... You will see in an instant how precious they are. The Astronomy seeing through the vault of heaven to the Spirits of it, to my (intolerable, almost) humiliation had es- caped me, in the bas-relief itself. The Her- cules and Antaeus, if you remember with it that of Pollajuolo in the Uffizi, — in which they are two exhausted wrestlers, H. himself at the last gasp but one, and A. at the one, — is the most striking type of the glory of Contemplative against Anatomical (always, I mean) Drama that I have yet got hold of. Turner would have given the Drama, but LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN 107 otherwise than Pollajuolo. The hiding of half the body by the earth — the soft, uncon- vulsed death — how beautiful — in Giotto's (or Andrea's) ! I 've done a furious six months' work. Went south through Cenis tunnel on 4th of April, back through it on 4th of October. Here since the 6th, or at Chamouni, in cloudless calm. I saw my old guide — 80, from 69 when last seen. A beautiful old man. The Glacier des Bois is no more. Of thatv of our days is left a little white tongue of ice showing in the blank bed. ... But the saddest of all is Mont Blanc itself from here — it is, to what it was, as a mere whitewashed wall to a bridecake. When the snow is level nearly, it holds on pretty well, but on the steep Bionnassay valley it has all flowed down and consumed away. I have much to think of in this little room — of things that are as that snow. io8 LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN Brantwood, Coniston, Lancashire, Last day of 1874, sun just down. My dearest Charles, — I cannot employ the last busy hour of 1874 better than in sending you my love. I have been looking out a few fragments of memoranda which may be interesting to you, enabling you to show people who care, how the work was done for the Stones of Venice ; there 's a little bit of brown cave bone which I drew for the heads of extinct animals on it, one . day beside Richard Owen ; a blot from Tin- toret's Annunciation (I wish I had done more of these), and finally a little pen sketch of Edward Frere, on a letter to Gambart. I am gradually putting my things into some order, I hope, and going over what can be turned to any good. I Ve been reading your notes on third Volume of " Modern Painters " this afternoon, of which I chiefly concur in the frequent one, " All this needs modification." Which I fear me it can never get. Perhaps a single volume of Aphorisms LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN 109 may be possible to me, when I 've done Ox- ford work, telling all I know. You rebel abominably against my great chapter about Lawlessness. You know it is all summable in a sentence : " There can be no rule for doing what cannot be done twice." Well, here 's more love to you. Bitter, but bright, frost here, makes me fancy it must be like there. Ever your loving John Ruskin. Ashbourne, Derbyshire, 27th January, 1875. My dearest Charles, — I think I sent some sort of an answer to yours of November 9th. Perhaps not; for, as you feared, I had rather a bad time just then, . . . and was again somewhat seriously injured in health, going down to Brantwood in a state of torpor and feebleness from which I am but now slowly recovering. no LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN I write to-day to tell you what may be of some value to you. The " Cockayne " tombs in the church here are of elaborate 15th cen- tury and Elizabethan work, and consist of recumbent figures on raised sarcophagi sur- rounded by niches, correspondent in design to the first Italian and French tombs, but so barbarous, ludicrous, and helpless in all the actual sculpture, so stupid in their sav- ageness, that I feel compelled at once by them to read in a different light great part of our English history and Hterature. That any noble family, even in the remotest coun- try place, should be such baboons as to put up these tombs in Donatello's time, is quite appalling to me. Also, measuring my strength and circumstances, and possible time, it seems to me now expedient to trouble myself no more with history, mythology, or literature, but to concentrate myself on what I have peculiar gift for — natural history, including sky (not that we Ve much left of that in England), in connection with Turner's work LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN in only, and so end as I began. I much and bitterly regret that I cannot go on doing fresco copies of the greater Italians; but this would involve, I think, as I get older, too much effort, sorrow, and disappointment, to be consistent with my health. I have not yet acknowledged the receipt of your catalogue and admirable illustrations of the Liber: nothing could possibly be better. But I do not believe you will ever have the satisfaction of seeing any result of your labours in America. There is not a tree of Turner's which is not rooted in ruins ; there is no sunset of his which does not set on the accomplished fate of the elder na- tions. I have been thinking much of my por- trait. In the autobiography which will de- velop, I hope, in " Fors," into something more interesting than I had expected (for as I think over it much becomes interesting to myself which I once despised), I am per- haps going to try to give a portrait or two, 112 LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN and may end with myself. But at present I 'm busy on saxifrage and stone-crop. My best love to you all — particularly to S. And I am Your loving J.R. All you said about my being among wrong sort of people has come home to me in a deadly way lately. I have been an infi- nite ass to let myself drift as I have. Herne Hill, 13th February^ 1875. My dearest Charles, — If I don't an- swer your letters on the instant, months go by somehow, so I send scrawl at once. How you can find so much art in those old sketches of mine I can't think; but as it is so, I '11 look you out more at once. I am, in fact, putting things, as much as I can now, where I think they should be if I went where last year's roses are, — not that I 'm at all beaten yet, but I 'm fifty- six ; and strongly emotional lives with much LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN 113 disgust at the end of them are not good at insurance offices. . . . The deadliest of all things to me is my loss of faith in nature. No spring — no summer. Fog always, and the snow faded from the Alps. But even through all this I can fight yet, if I can only carry on with rhubarb pills instead of a stomach. Grief kills me, not by its own strength, but by indigestion. I think you will be pleased, however, with my Italian work, which will soon now come to you. My botany also pleases me, and I expect " Fors " will have much that interests you this year. All that was so terrifically true you wrote about my friends being not fit for me — but it s difficult to make new ones. . . . But really, the one thing that I physically want is one of those Graces out of Botticelli's picture of the Spring. I can't make out how that con- founded fellow was able to see such pretty things, or how he lived among them. I hope Allen has sent you the fifth " Ari- 114 LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN adne," and will soon have sixth out — but press correction hurts me more than any other work. Bother your Parthenon. I 'm really sick of that one thing the Greeks did in archi- tecture. I was in Westminster the other day — thought it finer than ever. But how can I help you in your work? It seems to me as if you gave all sympathy to me, and I none to you. I never feel so selfish in any other relation as I do in all mine with you ; but am Ever your loving J. RUSKIN. Brantwood, Coniston, Lancashire, 25th March^ 1875. My dearest Charles, — I was so glad to see your hand, having got anxious about you ; and, with all that is distasteful in it, your letter is gladdening to me, in one way, more than usual, — in its showing the long- ing to be back in our old country. That LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN 115 you and I, with our insights and will to help people, should both be obliged to econo- mies (I have not bought a Turner for years and miss the most lovely things in MSS. continually), — while any rogue with a glib tongue and cool head gets his 100,000 a year, is not one of the least causes of my writing of political economy instead of art, — useless, at present, the last, in our coun- try, as in yours. But nothing would beat me except the plague of darkness and blighting winds, — perpetual — awful, — crushing me with the sense of Nature and Heaven failing as well as man. I have also been singularly weak and ill all this spring, and am obliged to take warn- ing of many things, and give up some of the most pet possessions of hope. But many things are over, for me, altogether. My addi- tional years begin to tell now in the fatal sense of there being no time to try anything again. ii6 LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN I want to answer on the day I get your letter, and am too stupid to write more. Ever your loving J.R. Two months after the preceding letter was written, the death of Miss LaTouche, the woman to whom Ruskin's heart had for many years been devoted, closed for him a period of alternate hopefulness and disappointment which had kept him in a constant state of restless and exhausting emotion. It was a sad story from beginning to end. She died worn out by the stress of the conflict between her heart and her conscience, and he was left hurt with wounds that were little short of mortal. Brantwood, Coniston, Lancashire, 15th July^ 1875. Dearest Charles, — I have not been writ- ing, because that death, as you so well un- derstand, has made so much of my past life at once dead weight to me that I feel as I did when I first got out of bed after my illness LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN 117 at Matlock/ as if my limbs were of lead — mentally and bodily. This is so with me just now, and I only fight through by going on with mechanical work all I can — but the effect on my general health has been very paralyz- ing, and it was no use writing about it ; also, my work has now at once and in all things taken the form of bequest, and I am review- ing old notes, drawings, etc., etc., and being my own executor as much as I can . . . and writing, if I can, some things that I want to say before ending — not that I definitely ex- pect to end yet ; and to the public I keep my head above water as if I had no cramp ; hith- erto, at least, I think so. My literary work seems to me up to its usual mark. . . . " Proserpina " is liked, and " Deucalion," which will have all my geology swept up in it, is liking to myself. If only I can keep my stomach in order. Now, about the bust. I send you photo- graphs of Carlyle,* but they are miserable. * In the summer of 1871. * Of Boehm's statue of Carlyle. ii8 LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN Perspective of feet of course ridiculous, and all the subtlety of face lost. But Boehm is a jewel, not a Jew. A perfect type of intense blue-eyed, Harz-bred Germany. I hope he will like me, and ask to do me, — that will be ever so much better than if I asked him, or you either. But if he does n*t I will. . . . Ever your loving J. R. Brantwood, Coniston, Lancashire, 17th September, 1875. Dearest Charles, — Little deserving a letter, I greatly weary for one. The summer is past, and the dark days are darker to me than ever yet, and fly faster. But I have done a little leaf-drawing and Turner drawing in my old way which may please you a little, and I Ve been trying to get photos of the Italian book for you, but they will not come rightly ; a very little darkening of the shade vulgarizes all. And in all ways I am disap- pointed and failing, yet still I hope advan- LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN 119 cing in main battle. Only you don't care about my main battle. . . . My old work haunts me. I don't like to let it all rot in the damp here, till you can't read any of its wreck ; so I am going to try to edit some, with engravings, as I used to do, if I can find engravers, or else num- bering the drawings, and leaving them for reference or publication by my executors. The geology and botany will, I hope, be- come classical books in education. I mean to collect and separate with extreme care what is really known of geology proper from mere theory, and illustrate it as best I can. . . . I 've found myself rather weak in body this summer ; the thing that chiefly tires me, however, is the continually dark sky, like a plague — all the rest is chiefly stomachic. If grief would only let one's stomach alone, I would manage the heart, well enough. Oh, dear, what's this brown, horrid stain? Tea } I 'm forbidden tea by the doctor, 120 LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN and it 's high time if I throw it about like this. All possible good be with you. Ever your affectionate J. R. Herne Hill, 5th October^ 1875. ... I am more cheerful than I have been for several years. David's behaviour when the child died is I think natural and possible, not because grief is a form of prayer, but be- cause pure grief is not a disturbing element as the returning waves of steadily ebbing hope are. My actual work, however, is also more pleasing and interesting to me, coming into full ear out of its blade. I hope you will begin to like " Fors " better, as it now associates itself with other things. . . . I don't like what you say of Froude. I like the man, and have learned much from his work. If it is romance, it is unintention- ally so, and at present, to me, unique among history-work since Tliucydides, for being of no side. . . . « LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN 121 Broadlands, 5th October, 1875. My dearest Charles, — You are the first person I write to from my new home. The Temples have given me a room here for my own, and leave to stay in it in the evenings instead of coming down to their late dinner — and say they will be generally good to me and take care of me ; so I came down here to-day from my old nursery at Heme Hill, and am making myself comfortable in my new nest — a cloudless sunset giving me its good omen, over the sweet river and woods. . . . Cowley Rectory, 30th October , 1875. My dearest Charles, — I 've just sent — late — to press the November " Fors," an- nouncing that I have now on hand altogether seven big books going on at once — and I must always have a little book going on be- sides, to close the octave, of letters to you ; for you will begin to take pleasure in my work again, now, if we both live. . . . 122 LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN Meantime, I have been resting a little at Broadlands, and it is a great relief to me to be where I 've nothing to manage, and can go out in the garden without being asked what is to be sown, or cut, or sold, or bought, or burnt, or manured, or drained, or fenced, or carted, or — something or other that I don't know half so much about as the blackbirds. Then the servants are all nice, the cook especially ; and she makes creams and jellies for me, and I go down to the kitchen and make experiments on glacier motion in valleys of napkin and have got the loveliest results. . . . To-morrow I go to Oxford to give twelve lectures on Sir Joshua's lectures; then I 'm go- ing to Brighton for the dark days, to see sun- sets over sea, and Aquarium. Then, if all 's well, to Brantwood for the spring; and to Fesole and Siena perhaps, once more, for the summer — home by Venice. It is very strange to me to feel all my life become a thing of the past, and to be now LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN 123 merely like a wrecked sailor, picking up pieces of his ship on the beach. This is the real state of things with me, of course, in a double sense — People gone — and things. My Fa- ther and Mother, and Rosie, and Venice, and Rouen — all gone ; but I can gather bits up of the places for other people. I 'm wonderfully well, on the whole, and doing masses of work — only my eyes fail — in languor more than lens. I can only see well by strong light. . . . Love, very true, to your mother and sisters and children. Ever your devoted J. RUSKIN. Cowley, 14th November ^ 1875. . . . You cannot have in America the forms of mental rest with soothed memory of other, far distant, sorrow, not our own, which is so beautiful in these old countries. How different for a man like you, a walk by our riversides under Bolton or Furness, or in 124 LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN cloister of Vallambrosa or Chartreuse, from any blank cessation from absolute toil in that new land ! Do come to us again. . . . Let us have a quiet time in Italy together, as soon as days are long, next year. What will a pic- ture less matter to me ? or a cipher less in my banker's book.? Let us take a pleasant little suite of rooms in Florence or Venice — and we'll economize together, and think together — and learn together — and per- haps — even Hope a little together before we die. ... Broadlands, 14th December^ 1875. ... I have heard wonderful things this very afternoon. I have seen a person who has herself had the Stigmata, and lives as com- pletely in the other world as ever St. Francis did, from her youth up, and — this is for you — she had the wounds more than once, but on one occasion conveyed instantly by a relic of St. Catherine of Siena. And I 'm as giddy as if I had been thrown LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN 125 off Strasburg steeple and stopped in the air; but thing after thing of this kind is being brought to me. I can't write more to-night. . . . ^ih January, 1876. Dearest Charles, — In case of missing a steamer, I answer your kindest letter by re- turn post — though only a word. I am most thankful for its warning ; and truly I need it, for the forms of disturbance that present themselves to me, not at Broad- lands only, are terrific in difficulty of dealing with, because, you know the Middle Ages are to me the only ages, and what Angelico believed, did produce the best work. That I hold to as demonstrated fact. All modern science and philosophy produces abortion. That miracle-believing faith produced good fruit— the best yet in the world. . . . Ever your loving J.R. 126 LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN 13th January, '76. . . . The pleasure you take in those draw- ings and scratches is infinitely delightful to me — almost infinitely amazing, except that I suppose you feel through their failure the intense and pathetic love of the places in which they are done. It is true that I am burning the candle at many ends, but surely in the many dark places I live in, that is the proper way to use one's life. . . . There was a time in my work when it was tentative and stupid — to a degree now quite incomprehensible to my- self. . . . I enclose proof of fifth and roughly bound fourth " Morning." ' It is woful to have to leave that pleasant work — driven out by fiendish modern republicanism too horrible to be borne with. Here in England, Atheism and Spiritual- ism mopping and mowing on each side of me. At Broadlands, either the most hor- * Mornings in Florence, of which there were six in all. LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN 127 rible lies were told me, without conceiv- able motive — or the ghost of R. was seen often beside Mrs. , or me. — Which is pleasantest of these things I know, but can- not intellectually say which is likeliest — and meantime, take to geology. Your loving J. R. 20th January y 1876. ... I am absolutely certain that were either St. Louis, St. Francis, or St. Hugo of Lin- coln here in the room with me, they would tell me, as positively as John Simon would tell me the disease of a muscle, that my igno- rance of what they knew was wholly owing to my own lust, apathy, and conceit ; and that if I chose to live as they lived, I should learn what they knew. My perfectly firm conviction of this, and yet the distinct duty which I feel to cultivate the rare analytic and demonstrative faculty of me, rather than the enthusiastic one which 128 LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN has been common to so many, will give a very singular tone to my writings, hence- forward — if I am spared to complete any part of what is in my mind. I have sent to- day the first chapter of the " Laws of Fesole " to the printer — and have got the second plate home. Here 's a little waste study for the fifth plate, which you may perhaps like to have. I have been looking at your "Vita Nuova" again lately. I wonder whether, when he was alive, you would have told him that " any- thing that disturbed him was bad for him " } One would think you looked on me as an alderman after dinner. All the same, it 's very true, and quiet after dinner is very good for me. Broadlands, I February, 1876. ... I am being brought every day now into new work and new thoughts, and, whether I will or no, into closer contact with evidence of an altered phase of natural, if not super- natural, phenomena, the more helpful to me^ LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN 129 because I can compare now, with clear know- ledge, the phase of mind in which J. S. and other noble Deists or infidels are, and in which I have been for ten years, with that which I am now analyzing in the earlier Florentines, and recognizing in some living Catholics. To me, personally, it is no common sign that just after the shade of Rose was as- serted to have been seen beside Mrs. T. and beside me, here, I should recover the most precious of the letters she ever wrote me, which, returned to her when we parted, she had nevertheless kept. . . . Corpus Christi College, Oxford. {February 22, 1876.] My dearest Charles, — Actually, there is American blood in you ; strongly as I have denied it. To think that after all your work at Siena, you can still think that the races of men were made to do their best work in heart- ily believing lies. 130 LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN I wish you would read the " Memorabilia " again, I understand it so much better than of old. The enclosed letter may interest you. I think it will at least show you that all Spiritualism, however mistaken, is not cold. I can only write this scrap to-night, but am Your loving J. R. Lowell's " Dante " is very good ; but the entire school of you moderns judge hopelessly out, of these older ones, because you never admit the possibility of their knowing what we don't. The moment you take that all- knowing attitude, the heavens are veiled. Lowell speaks of Dante as if Dante were a forward schoolboy, and Lowell his master. Corpus Christi College, \s\ March^ 1876. . . . My final work on Angelico at Perugia taught me much, last year, and the real difference between you and me, now, is in my intense " Practicality." . . . I 'm just doing a most careful preface to LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN 131 Xenophon — mapping Greek colonies and religion all over Europe, and am giddy with the lot of things that focus, now, out of past work. I heard, day before yesterday, Crooke's lec- ture on the motive power of light. Black things first absorb, and then run away from it. . . . His little pith wafers behaved beau- tifully, and whirled, being poised in vacuo, blackened on one side, white on the other, on the approach of a candle, about five revolu- tions in a second, for slowest. In sunshine, one had whirled itself to pieces, the black so eager to get away. No saying what this may n't lead to. Ever your lovingest J.R. I have no new faith, but am able to get some good out of my old one, not as being true, but as containing the quantity of truth that is wholesome for me. One must eat one's faith like one's meat, for what good 's in it. But modern philosophy for the most 133 LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN part contents itself in the excremental func- tion, and rejoices in that: absolutely incapa- ble of nourishment. Herne Hill, S. E., 20th April, 1876. My dearest Charles, — I'm leaving H. Hill (my old nursery) to post quietly down to Brantwood ; to-day, D. V., to St. Albans — to-morrow to Cambridge, then Peterborough, Grantham — Lincoln, etc. I hope to get down in about twelve days. The rubbishy scrawl with this is the view down the lake (about four miles long) from my own bit of moor — oppo- site hills from three to five hundred feet only, width from a quarter to a half mile — little Monk island in distance. Looking north, I have Helvellyn and the Wordsworth Fells, but this view to the south is of most rare and sweet beauty. All these things are little more than a dream to me, now — the destruction of Venice, Florence, etc., being to me simply fractus orbis ; and Rosie's death, fractum cesium LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN 133 (which Horace might as well have added, when he was about it) — and I am chiefly at present (slightly pavidus, however) trying to mend both. I wonder when you will begin to under- stand me a little ? It is against you that with all my practical and logical faculty — colossal as both are — I can't get my sums in addition right in " Fors." The thing that beats me most of all is the Weather ; but there 's a little watery gleam of sun to-day. Ever your loving J. R. Regaining some fragments of his old reli- gious faith, modified by new conceptions of the faith of the mediaeval Church, and by dallyings with Spiritualism, Ruskin attained for a time a more cheerful mood and more serenity of spirit than he had possessed dur- ing recent previous years. A pleasant picture of him at Brantwood was sent to me in the summer in a letter by the late Professor Gur- 134 LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN ney of Harvard University, a man whose untimely death can never cease to be a sor- row to those who had the happiness of being numbered among his friends. He wrote : — " The day after we arrived at Coniston we received an invitation to a * high tea * or ' meat tea ' from Mrs. Severn, and the next day she called to arrange for our being rowed over. Pleasant as she was, I went over with some misgivings, which proved to be wholly groundless, as we have not had a more de- lightful evening on this side of the water, and Ruskin was everything that is consider- ate and courteous and kind. He first showed us his literary and art treasures while there was yet light ; had tea laid in the drawing- room that we might enjoy the lake ; talked delightfully, with a slight twinkle of humour- ous enjoyment of his own extravagance, when he trampled upon all the existing arrange- ments of society and augured its speedy downfall; read us bits of Cowley and Sir Philip Sidney, and, best of all, the preface, so far as yet written, to the edition he is to bring out of Sidney's version of the Psalms, LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN i35 full of humour and nice feeling; and instead of coming away at nine as we had proposed, we tore ourselves away at half past ten or later; and instead of walking home as we had arranged to do, the faithful Downs, who wished his duty conveyed to you all, insisted on rowing us back as well as over. It was pleasant to hear him talk of his master and of his own pride in appearing in person in the ' Fors.' The row back in the dusky light was an appropriate close to an evening so delightful in all ways." DoLGELLY, N. Wales, 2nd August, 1876. My dearest Charles, — I want to write to you every day, but must, at last, having *had quite a feeling of next door neighbour- hood to you this last month, in sight of Mr. Moore first,' and then in talk with Leslie Stephen, and with a very pleasant American traveller, Mr. Field." I was, of course, delighted with Mr. Moore ; ^ Mr. Charles H. Moore, then instructor, since professor of the Fine Arts in Harvard University. * Mr. John W. Field, a most friendly and genial man. 136 LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN and had most true pleasure in the time he could spare to me, increased by feeling that I was able to show him things which he felt to be useful. I left, on Monday, my pleasant Brantwood, and Miss Thackeray, and Leslie Stephen, and my Joanie, and all, to begin movement Venice-wards, to meet Mr. Moore in Car- paccio's Chapel. Alas, every place on the Continent is now full of acute pain to me, from too much association with past pleasure, giving bitterness to the existing destruction. I do not know how I should have felt in re- turning to the places which my Father and Mother and I were so happy in, had they remained in unchanged beauty — but I think the feeling would have been one of exalting and thrilling pensiveness, as of some glorious summer evening in purple light. But to find all the places we had loved changed into railroad stations or dustheaps — there are no words for the withering and disgusting pain. However, when once I get there I LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN 137 shall set to work to make a few pencil outline drawings from general scenes, such as are left, to illustrate the new edition of " Stones of Venice." It is no use to re-engrave old plates. I will make new drawings, giving some notion of my old memories of the place, in Turner's time, and get them expressed in line engraving, as best may be — then I shall omit pretty nearly all the architectural analy- sis of the first volume, and expand and com- plete the third. Your commented volumes will suggest all that needs to be done, though probably the line I shall take in doing it will be more divergent from that you hoped than I care to say, till I find out what it is really likely to be. I walked up Cader Idris yesterday with good comfort, but find my limbs fail me in my attempt at such swift descent as I used to be proud of. But I would fain leave all my printing and talking, and set myself to quiet study of geology with such legs and eyes as I have 138 LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN still left, — were not the world too miserable to be let alone. ... I shall be away for Venice before you can answer this. It will be best to address there, but let the " Stones of Venice " when you send them (if not already sent) come to Ox- ford, as I shall not use them till my return. . . . With love to your mother and sisters. Your faithful and loving J.R. Venice, 5th October, 1876. My dearest Charles, — It always seems to me that whenever I write a careful letter, people don't get it. I 'm sure one or two long ones to you have been lost. However, I have yours, to-day, and sit down to tell you how my days pass. I wake as a matter of course, about half past five, and get up and go out on my balcony in my nightgown to see if there 's going to be a nice dawn. That 's the view I have from it ' — with the * See facsimile. LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN 139 pretty traceried balcony of the Contarini Fasan next door. Generally there is a good dawn (nothing but sunshine and moonlight for the last month). At six I get up, and dress, with occasionally balcony interludes — but al- ways get to my writing table at seven, where, by scolding and paying, I secure my punc- tual cup of coffee, and do a bit of the Laws of Plato to build the day on. I find Jowett's translation is good for nothing and shall do one myself, as I Ve intended these fifteen years. At half past seven the gondola is waiting and takes me to the bridge before St. John and Paul, where I give an hour of my very best day's work to painting the school of Mark and vista of Canal to Murano. It 's a great Canaletto view, and I 'm painting it against him. I am rowed back to breakfast at nine, and, till half past ten, think over and write what little I can of my new fourth vol. of " Stones of Venice." At half past ten, I go to the Acad- 140 LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN emy, where I find Moore at work ; and we sit down to our picture together. They have been very good to me in the Academy, and have taken down St. Ursula and given her to me all to myself in a locked room and perfect light. I 'm painting a small carefully toned general copy of it for Oxford, and shall make a little note of it for you, and am drawing various parts larger. Moore is making a study of the head, which promises to be excel- lent. He sits beside me till twelve, then goes to early dinner with Mrs. Moore and Bessie — I have a couple of hours tete-a-tete with St. Ursula, very good for me. I strike work at two or a little after — go home, read letters, and dine at three. Lie on sofa and read any vicious book I can find to amuse me — to prevent St. Ursula having it all her own way. Am greatly amused with the life of Casanova at present. At half-past four, gondola again — I am floated, half asleep, to Murano — or the Ar- LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN 141 menians — or the San Giorgio in Alga — wake up, and make some little evening sketch, by way of diary. Then take oar myself, and row into the dark or moonlight. Home at seven, well heated — quiet tea — after that, give audiences, if people want me ; otherwise read Venetian history — if no im- perative letters — and to bed at ten. I am very much delighted at having Mr. Moore for a companion — we have perfect sympathy in all art matters and are not in dissonance in any others. His voice contin- ually reminds me of yours. And he 's not at all so wicked nor so re- publican as you, and minds all I say ! But for all your naughtiness, I 'm always, your loving John Ruskin. Venice, i6th January, '77. My dearest Charles, — I must at once thank you for your Christmas note, but can scarcely do more, being at very heavy work all 142 LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN day long. ... I can't get my own studies for Oxford completed, the Carpaccio colour be- ing the most subtle and impossible I ever attempted, except Turner's. Giotto and An- gelico tried me ; but this is hardest of all. I get on with it, nevertheless, though slowly, and with much else — chiefly in thoughts good for Christmas of which . . . 7th February, and so it stopped. ... I Ve nearly now done three drawings from Carpaccio ' — one of the entire picture, one of the window with vervain leaves, the third, of the hand, — hand and clothes over the breast, full size. The hair has cost me terrific work. I thought Car- paccio had done it by felicity, but found it was art and cunning carried to such a point as to be totally unrecognizable from the felicitous lightness of Gainsborough. I had to do it all over again, putting literally every hair in its place, approximately. I 've been four months at work on these * From Carpaccio's picture of St. Ursula asleep. LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN 143 three drawings, with other sketches going on, not sHght ones, and a new history and guide in Venice. The detail of each day varies not much; nor in the detail of it ought you to take much pleasure — for I have none — ex- cept of a solemn kind. Time was, every hour in Venice was joy to me. Now, I work as I should on a portrait of my mother, dead. I am pleased with myself when I succeed. In- terested in the questions of the meaning of such and such a bend of lip, such and such a winding vein, pulseless. You will be inter- ested in the history of her life, which I can thus write. So am I; and "happy" — in that way in my work. But it is a different happi- ness from having my mother to read Walter Scott to me. There is also now quite an enormous sepa- ration between you and me in a very serious part of our minds. Every day brings me more proof of the presence and power of real Gods, with good men ; and the religion of Venice is virtually now my own — mine at least 144 LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN * (or rather at greatest) including hers, but fully accepting it, as that also of John Bun- yan, and of my mother, which I was first taught. . . . I hope my next letter will be able to report more actual accomplishment. . . . Ever your grateful and loving J. R. I have been very " happy " — in such sense as I ever can be — with Mr. Moore, he is so nice. Brantwood, 31st July, 1877. Dearest Charles, — ... I have no com- fort now for anything unless in thoughts which you would not care for my telling you. I am nearer breaking down myself than I meant voluntarily to have run, — owing to the extreme need for doing all I could at Venice this winter — and I have reduced myself nearly to the state of a brittle log — which you may break before you can fetch fire out of, or grief — and what I do or seem to do is more a kind of lichenous greenery than any- LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN 145 thing of my own ; else I should have written, as you may well believe, many a day before now .... P. S. I read your note — knowing how much pleasure it would give — to Joan and Arthur, who are here. You will be glad to know that when I read them the first page of my answer I was stopped by screams of laugh- ter — partly subdued, indeed, complimentary — but real enough, because I was out walking with them yesterday and, it seems, gave nei- ther of them the impression of being a " brit- tle log." Brantwood, y"]^ February, 1878. Dearest Charles, — Good things have " chanced " to me to-day. Perhaps, to many besides. I have had a wonderful letter from America, and would fain tell you what some day or other you will be glad to hear of the incredible. I sent you some etchings. " Fesole " is go- ing on. — Don't be angry with me — I cant 146 LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN do it faster. Second number all but done — and it is nice. My love to your mother — to your sister. Oh, how little I ever show you of the grati- tude and love I have to yourself ! Your faithful John Ruskin. Written with Sir Walter Scott's own pen, given by him to Maria Edgeworth, and lent to me by Mr. Butler, to whom it came. At last the catastrophe, long anxiously fore- boded, arrived. In February, 1878, Ruskin's overwrought brain gave way. He was desper- ately ill. His dear and wise friend, the emi- nent surgeon and medical adviser, the late Sir John (then Mr.) Simon, hastened from Lon- don to Brantwood, and for a fortnight, while Ruskin hovered between life and death, did everything for him that devotion and skill could devise. Mr. Simon wrote to me on the 4th of March: "... I trust that the worst has now passed. . . . You know, without my telling it, all that has brought this dreadful disaster on him, — the utterly spendthrift LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN 147 way in which (with imagination less and less controlled by judgment) he has for these last years been at work with a dozen different irons in the fire — each enough to engage one average man's mind. And his emotions all the while as hard- worked as his intellect — they always blowing the bellows for its fur- nace. As I see what he has done, I wonder he has not broken down long ago." . . . Before the end of March convalescence had begun. It went on rapidly, and by June Ruskin seemed to all intents restored to entire health. He soon fell into his common modes of life. On the 4th of August Mr. Simon wrote again to me : "... It is now more than three months since I saw him, and I studiously avoid direct correspondence with him ; but I think I know his state fairly well, and can tell you as much about him as if we had recently been together. In bodily health he appears to be as well as needs be, and in mind he shows no such fault as would strike casual observers. He appears to be fairly cautious against dangers of re-upset : perhaps not so abstinent as I should wish him to be from 148 LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN use of pen and ink, but, for him, self-restrain- ing ; and he professes to be on his guard against over-colloquism." As a result of his illness Ruskin resigned his professorship at Oxford, but he would not give up other work. • Herne Hill, Tuesday. [23d 1878.] Dearest Charles, — I have n't read your last letter ! but I can answer it at least, and at last, so far as to tell you with some secu- rity that I've got most of my strayed wits together again, for better or worse, and have for the present locked the gate they got out at, and they seem all pretty quiet and very much ashamed of themselves, so I hope the best for them. The Doctors say it was overwork and worry, which is partly true, and partly not. Mere overwork or worry might have soon ended me, but it would not have driven me crazy. I went crazy about St. Ursula and the other saints, — chiefly young-lady saints, — and I LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN 149 rather suppose had offended the less pretty Fors Atropos, till she lost her temper. But the doctors know nothing either of Ste. Ursula or Ste. Kate, or Ste. Lachesis — and not much else of anything worth know- ing. The chief real danger of the delirium, I believe, was not in the brain disease itself, which was a temporary inflammation, run- ning its course, and passing, but in the par- ticular form it took during the first stages of recovery — the (quite usual, I believe, in such cases) refusal to eat anything ; not that I did n't want to, but I would n't take it out of a cup with a rose on it, or the like, — and so on, till poor Joan was at her wit's end, nearly — but her wits were longer than mine, and held on. How she ever got through it, I can't think, for I took to calling her hard names at one time, and did n't know her at another. However, here she is, and well ; and here I am, not much the worse in looks, people ISO LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN say; and I believe, if anything, a little bit wiser than I was before, — but very little. Practically, I can go on with my Botany and Geology, and with a little Turner work, but nothing else, and no more of that than I can do without the least trouble. Therefore^ I couldn't read your letter, nor can I take up the Turner etching business in the least. I Ve far more on my hands for Fesole than I shall get through this year with all the time I have or can have, and will not add to it by a grain of pains in any other direction. . . . This is all I can write to-day. Ever your loving J. R. DuNiRA, Crieff, N. B., 25th September^ 1878. My dearest Charles, — At last I think I may tell you that you need not be seriously fearful for me any more, except as for all mortal creatures, for I have passed a week of total idleness, with some applause from my doctors, and no great discomfort to myself. LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN 151 and think the practice of doing nothing in- ures me to that hardship far more quickly than could have been expected. The "Liber Studiorum" facsimiles are per- fectly lovely, and for all practical purposes whatever as good as the originals.' Love to you all, ever and ever Your grateful J. RUSKIN. I am doing fairly good work on " Proser- pina," I think, and on " Fesole," which is turn- ing out a different sort of thing from the old " Elements," and I hope a better sort of thing. But it will include whatever was really useful in them. Brantwood, 26th November ^ 1878. My dearest Charles, — I am profoundly thankful for your letter, most chiefly in its as- surance of your continued health and power, which are really at my heart more than any other things hoped for relating to my per- * I had had thirty of the etchings of the Liber Studiorum reproduced in fac-simile by the Heliotype Printing Company. 152 LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN sonal friends, — either for their own sake or for that of any desires I have that what I have endeavoured to do may be carried forward. . . . To-day (Monday — date guessed above), I believe the comic Whistler lawsuit is to be decided. I enclose you a copy of my last " instructions " to my lawyers. . . . I keep fairly well, on condition of doing only about two hours' real work each day. But that, with the thoughts that come in idle- ness, or as I chop wood, will go a good way yet, if I live a few years more. I hope the III " Fesole " will be with you nearly as soon as the II, and two more " Pro- serpinas," not bad ones, are just done, too. Ever your lovingest J. RUSKIN. Brantwood, 2Sth February, 1879. . . . What will come of Dante in America I believe a good careful account of the vision of Hell I had myself would be more to the purpose. There was one very tremendous LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN I53 scene of a blue-and-purple hot fire which I wish I could paint. It was very beautiful — other bits were very much the contrary; but as facts of delirium, highly instructive. It was just this time last year. I 've got a horrible cold in my head — but otherwise never felt much better. My vile writing means much laziness — not shakiness — and partly cold hands. Lake frozen again this morning, a mile square. Brantwood, 27th February, '79. My dearest Charles, — I took out a feather to begin for you this morning ; but shyed it — and took to sorting out sketches.' I have found some that I am sure you will think useful ; others which I believe you may take some pleasure in, partly in friendship, partly in knowledge of the places. I am putting nearly all I have of Assisi, but the best are at Oxford — they will be more use- ful in your hands than any one else's, and * I was arranging for an exhibition of Ruskin's drawings. 154 LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN perhaps of more in America than in Eng- land. I begin to think that it is of no use talking to a country in her decline. What was the use, even yet, of their teachers to them — Jeremiah, or Horace, all the same. But in a new country, one way or another, a man will have power. Many of these sketches I feel disgraceful to me — but I send them for such pleasure as they may give you. Giotto's " Poverty," for instance. The one you ask especially for I am a little afraid to risk, for it is in a part of the fresco that nobody but I could have made out. I will try to copy it : the St. Mark's copy appals me a little as I think over it to-day — but I 've had bad cold and stomach illness, and am much down. I 'm signing and dat- ing all the sketches — on back, if not front. Shall I risk all by one ship ? I will wait your answer before sending the best ; a certain set I will get ready and despatch at once. Ever your loving J. R. LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN 155 I have been speaking as if they were all to stay. I 'm not sure that they may not. Friday — 28th — evening. I am better, though I was uncomfortably ill last night, and being summoned to Lon- don to give evidence on a charge of forgery, variously painful to me, was considering whether I would go or not — I greatly trust in the Sortes Horatianae, as well as Virgilian, at least, for me, — and opening my Horace ,in the morning at " Mors et fugacem,"' deter- mined at once to go : and have been much more comfortable in mind and body ever since. . . . Brantwood, Easter Monday, 1879. My darling Charles, — I have to-day your delightful note of the 31st. .. . I think that book on the European power of Italy would be a very glorious thing to do. It is certainly unknown. People fancy they civilized themselves ! and that they could have * Mors et fugacem prosequitur hominem. Carm, iii. ii. 14. 156 LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN had Shakespeare without Verona, and Black- friars Bridge without St. Francis. (I 've just been finding a place for my " Fioretti " in my fixed library here; Oxford finally disman- tied.) But please set to work on that book at once. I Ve put off everything I meant most to do, till I feel as if I had n't ten days to live. We had snow and hail three days last week, and as I look up from my paper the sun touches silver streaks on the mountains. But we 've had snowdrops for six weeks back — they 're all over now, and the daffodils all a dazzle. Ever your loving J. R. We launched my own first boat on Satur- day — larch-built as thoroughly as boat can be — with a narrow stern seat, for one only, and a Lago di Garda bow. I had a nice pretty niece of Joannie's to christen her for me — " the Jumping Jenny." (" Ste. Genevieve " on the sly, you know) — and the following benediction was spoken over her : — LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN 157 Waves give place to thee, Heaven send grace to thee, And Fortune to ferry Kind folk, and merry. She 's my first essay in marine architecture, and the boat-builders far and near approve! Brantwood, 4th June^ 1879. My dearest Charles, — The sad closing sentences of your letter efface from my mind most of the rest of it. For indeed it is only by my own follies and sins that I have fallen so far short of the knowledge of good as to be now unable to cheer you — by blaming you — and saying. Why should blindness be darkness — and why the coming of Death a Sorrow ? It is only in utter shame and self- reproach that I ever allow myself (or cannot help myself) in despondency; and the very wildness of howling devilry and idiocy in the English mob around me strengthens me more than it disgusts — in the definiteness of its demoniac character. To see the devil 158 LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN clearly is in the 19th century all that less than saints can hope for — but I am content with so much of Apocalypse as all that I de- serve; and with the absolute sense that he and I are not of the same mind. It is very foolish of me never to be able to get over the notion of the Atlantic between us, so as to write notes as I should if you were on the other side of the lake. I 've much to tell you that would please you — but ex- cept that the St. Mark's ' is well on, and a pheasant's feather and spray of cotoneaster done (I send them to Oxford to be looked at, to-day, to spite them that they're to have no more of the sort but that you are wiser over the water) — I won't tell you anything to- day, that I may be forced into writing again to-morrow — except that the anti-hypaethral pamphlet * is a really grand piece of work, exemplary in matter and manner, and a noble * A water-color drawing of admirable quality. ^ The Hypcethral Question: An Attempt to determine the Mode in which . . . a Greek Temple was lighted. By Joseph Thacher Clarke. Harvard Art Club Papers, No. i. LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN 159 *' number one" of such essays. Its glacial tone of infidelity may be forgiven to a youth who has studied Doric only. Ever your loving J. R. Br ANT WOOD, 9th July, 1879. ... I get very little done now of anything — but am on that condition, very well ; and I hope that what I do get done is not apo- plectic. I'm doing the Laws of Plato thor- oughly. Jowett's translation is a disgrace to Oxford, and how much to Plato, — if he could be disgraced more than by everybody's neg- lect of him, — cannot be said, and I must get mine done all the more. I 'm at work on Scott again, too, and some abstract questions about poetry and drama, of which I know more than I did of old. Herne Hill, ist November y 1879. My dearest Charles, — I have not an- swered your last letter — and to-day I take up one of Dec. 20, 1875, when your children i6o LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN and Moore's little girl, and Henrietta Child were playing (preparing their play of) King Adland and King Estmere, and think of my- self as beginning to play in the last act of my world play, and of you, with your not so far carried-on part, but both of us, now, without any one to hear the plaudit (if plaudit be). Was your mother — to you — in this, as mine to me, the inciter and motive-in- chief of what one did for praise ? Not that she did not uphold me in all that was right — praised or not — but still — I would have done much to please her with the hearing of it only. As for instance — Well, it 's no matter. . . . I was n't quite pleased with your account of their reading " Maud " and so on. Much too close hothouse air they seemed to me to be in — and I fancy that my own early limita- tions to Shakespeare and Homer were more healthy — but I don't know — perhaps they only made me take more violently to Shelley — who did me no end of harm afterwards. LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN i6i I wonder if it will give you any pleasure to hear that my museum is fairly now set afoot at Sheffield, and that I am thinking of living as much there as possible. The people are deeply interesting to me, and I am needed for them and am never really quiet in conscience, elsewhere. Write — if at all just now — to Herne Hill. Ever your lovingest J.R. Brantwood, Sunday, i6tli May^ 1880. My dearest Charles, — We 've had two months of fine weather, and I 've been paint- ting and digging. I could have sent you a scrap like this before, but was ashamed — and now I Ve been getting into a lot of new work on Scott, and never get a line of letters written at all — only I won't give any of my drawings to America. They would not be of any real use — I know that more and more, by their uselessness here — and they 're worth i62 LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN money to me besides — and I 'm not going to fleece myself any more. I've done enough. But I 'm not less your Ever loving and grateful J. RUSKIN. Br ANT WOOD, 20th January^ '8i. Dearest Charles, — Very thankful I was for your letter of New Year, received this morning. Many a thought I 've had of you, but at Christmas time I was not myself — the over-excitement of an autumn spent in France leaving me much pulled down. I am better now (though my hand shakes with cold to-day), and can report fairly of what is done and doing. I found Chartres, both castle and town, far more spared than I had thought possi- ble, and more of historical interest than I had ever dreamed in Amiens ; and the book' sent with this is the first of what I believe will bring out more of the at present useless * The Bible of Amiens. LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN 163 feelings in me than any work lately under- taken. When I first looked at your book ' I felt a chill from the tone of it (in the points you know of) far more than I ever feel, or could feel, in talking with you; but it will furnish me with just what I want of the most definite and trustworthy facts — and these curried with a little spice of old Jerome and Knox — as you know they are mixed in me — will give, I believe, more of the zest of that old life than has yet been got in history. I have still eye and hand enough to draw, or even etch what I want, if I can only get time; and I have just laid my hand on a young assistant who can get more of this spirit of sculpture than I can myself. The people over there get interested themselves when I stay a while with them, and I hope to be allowed to cast things for the Sheffield Museum and leave, if I live yet a few years * Church- Building in the Middle Ages, i64 LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN more, more than enough to show what Gothic was. . . . The Venetian head you gave me is in my new dining room here, and you should see the view through the window beside it, not to speak of much else which I can't picture to you, of moorland and wood, which you would like to walk in, as we used to do at the Giesbach. This dull letter will I hope bring a brighter one after it, but I answer by return of post, though to-day with cold wits — not heart. Ever your loving * J. Ruskin. The illness of 1878, although it seemed to pass without leaving serious effects, marked virtually the close of work accomplished by Ruskin with his full powers. His mind, as his letters show, continued as active as ever. The diversity of his interests did not dimin- ish, and each in turn was pursued with ex- hausting enthusiasm. He gave himself no rest, and, rejecting the counsel of Prudence (for him the most difficult of the virtues), he pursued a course which could not but end in renewed disaster. In 1881, after several pre- LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN 165 vious threatenings, a fresh attack of trouble in the brain broke him down for a time, and this was followed the next year by a similar, but still more serious and alarming attack. In each instance the illness passed, having apparently done little harm. From each of them Ruskin recovered without consciousness of injury, and without loss of confidence in his own powers, so that in 1883 he accepted reelection to his Oxford professorship, and began to lecture again not only at the Uni- versity, but in London and elsewhere. I made a short visit to England in the summer of 1883, and again in that of 1884, and in both years spent some days at Brant- wood. Ruskin, as I have already said, had changed greatly in the ten years since our last meeting. I had left him in 1873 a man in vigorous middle life, young for his years, erect in figure, alert in action, full of vitality, with smooth face and untired eyes ; I found him an old man, with look even older than his years, with bent form, with the beard of a patriarch, with habitual expression of weari- ness, with the general air and gait of age. But there were all the old affection and ten- i66 LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN derness ; the worn look readily gave way to the old animation, the delightful smile quickly kindled into full warmth; occasionally the unconquerable youthfulness of temperament reasserted itself with entire control of manner and expression, and there were hours when the old gayety of mood took possession of him with its irresistible charm. He had become, indeed, more positive, more absolute in man- ner, more irritable, but the essential sweet- ness prevailed. Given his circumstances, no ordering of life could have been more happy for him than that at Brant wood. He was the object of the most loving and watchful sympathy and care. His cousin, Mrs. Severn, was at the head of his household, and the best of daughters could not have been more dear and devoted to him. Her children kept the atmosphere of the home fresh and bright; the home itself was delightful, beautiful within with innumerable treasures of art, and sur- rounded without by all the beauties of one of the fairest scenes of the English lake coun- try. A pleasanter home, or one more lovely in its surroundings and more appropriate for him, could not have been desired. LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN 167 Brantwood, 24th March^ 1881. My dearest Charles, — I 've just read your dear letter to me on my birthday, after hav- ing another bite or two of Nebuchadnezzar's bitter grass. I went wild again for three weeks or so, and have only just come to myself — if this be myself, and not the one that lives in dream. The two fits, of whatever you like to call them are both part of the same course of trial and teaching, and I 've been more gently whipped this time and have learned more; but I must be very cautious in using my brains yet awhile. I can't make out why you like that " Bible of Amiens." I thought you had given up all that sort of thing. I shall have some strange passages of dream to tell you of as soon as I am strong again. The result of them, however, is mainly my throwing myself now into the mere fulfil- ment of Carlyle's work. Say words of him — say you. Are not his i68 LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN own words written in white-hot fire on every city-wall of Europe ? Read " Past and Present " again, now. This was the main part of the cause of my dream. The other was what I talked of once to you at Prato (beside Filippo Lippi). I '11 write soon again — God willing. Ever your lovingest . J. RUSKIN. Brant WOOD, 26th Aprils 1881. ^ My dearest Charles, — I have your little note of the 13th, in a cluster of other vari- ously pleasant in a minor way. . . . And with the more enjoyment that I don't feel any need for doing or " nothing doing " as I 'm bid ! but, on the contrary, am quite afloat again in my usual stream, and sent off (retouched) two dozen pages of lecture on Dabchick to printer, only yesterday, besides painting a crocket of Abbeville in the after- noon a great deal better than I could when we were there in '68. (Goodness ! 1 3 years LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN 169 ago — it ought to be better anyhow.) And, ^ the fact is, these illnesses of mine have not been from overwork at all, but from over- excitement in particular directions of work, just when the blood begins to flow with the spring sap. The first time, it was a piece of long thought about St. Ursula; and this year it was brought on by my beginning family prayers again for the servants on New Year's Day — and writing two little collects every morning — one on a bit of gospel, the other on a bit of psalm. They are at least as ra- tional as prayers usually are, but gradually I got my selfishness — the element you warned me of in " Fors," too much engaged — and, af- ter a long meditation on the work of the " other seventy " (Luke x, beginning) and the later Acts of Apostles, got in my own evening thoughts into a steady try if I could n't get Rosie's ghost at least alive by me, if not the body of her. ... Ever your lovingest J. R. I/O LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN Brantwood, 1 8th July^ '8i. My dearest Charles, — Moore writes to me from North Conway, N. H. (" New Hell," I suppose) but I don't know if he lives there or whether he expects any answer to his let- ter — anyhow here 's one enclosed, if you '11 please read it and send it him. There 's some general talk on America which you ought to see, too. ... It really makes me a little more indul- gent to the beastliness of modern Europe, to think what we might possibly have got to see and feel by this time, but for the various malaria from America. I 'm working rather hard on the history of Amiens, and hope to get some bits of histori- cal sculpture cut out of it which will come into good light and shade — chiefly light; and I 've just finished two numbers of " Love's Meinie," which will come to you the moment I 've a clean proof. I 've sent in the last revise. Sheffield also in good progress. Ever your affectionate J. R. LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN 171 Brant WOOD, 29th August, '81. You will soon have some books, I hope, showing what I am about. . . . Early post to-day, and I've the house full of people. Joan 's well and in good feather, and I 'm just what I always was, except a little Grosser when I 'm bothered and a little merrier when I 'm not. Nearly a year passed after this letter was written before Ruskin wrote to me again. The two following letters afford the sad explanation of his silence. FROM LAURENCE I. HILLIARD. Brantwooi?, 15 October, 1881. Dear Mr. Norton, — ... I am sorry I can- not give you a very satisfactory account of Mr. Ruskin's health. He is almost as active as ever, and is just now deeply interested in some experimental drainage of a part of his little moor, which he hopes to be able to cul- tivate ; but he seems more and more to find 172 LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN a difficulty in keeping to any one settled train of thought or work, and it is sad to see him entering almost daily upon newschemes which one cannot feel will ever be carried out. So far as he will allow us, we try to help him, but the influence of any one of those around him is now very small, and has been so ever since the last illness. I hope that this mis- trust of his friends may some day wear off, and that if you are ever able to come and see him, you will find him in a happier frame of mind. . . . Yours most sincerely, Laurence I. Milliard. Mr. Hilliard was a young man of great charm and large promise, who acted for a while as Ruskin's secretary. His early death was a grave loss to Ruskin, for the services which he rendered were inspired by old fam- ily affection, and their value was enhanced by the sweet and strong qualities of his na- ture. LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN 173 FROM G. COLLINGWOOD. Brantwood, March 7, 1882. Dear Sir, — Please forgive my opening your letter, and be patient for an answer, be- cause Mr. Ruskin is away from home, and unwell, as he has been for months ; but now worse, so far as I can gather. It has been so difficult to approach him on any subject but the most commonplace, that though we have often tried to get him to send kind words to Cambridge, he always turned the subject. His illnesses have mixed most of his oldest and best friends with delirious dreams and un- kind hallucinations. That is why, and that 's the only reason why you don't hear from him. When I came to live here last summer I found him dreadfully altered ; and am sure if you could see him for a day, you would find that it is not ill-feeling, but ill-health of mind and body, which makes him shy of reminis- cences, and very irritably disposed even to those whom he endures about him. 174 LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN As soon as ever he is a little better, and I can summon up the courage, he shall have your note. . . . I 'm under orders to save him all correspondence, and this is my excuse for what you might think impertinence. . . . Yours very respectfully, G. COLLINGWOOD/ AVALLON, 30th August, '82. My darling Charles, — I have just come in from morning work, drawing scrolls and frets — Greek fret with the rest — on the most wonderful 12th century porch I ever saw, Pisa not excepted. Pisa (baptistery door) is lovelier, but this is the fierier ; Greek workmen from the south must have done it — or the devil himself, for such straight away splendidness in every touch I Ve never, as I say, seen yet. Well, I got your little note with that blessed news of the Carlyle and Emerson letters the first thing this morning, before ^ Mr. Collingwood, Ruskin's faithful friend and assistant for many years, and his sympathetic official biographer. LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN 175 going out. It had been lying for some days at Dijon, but I don't lose time in answering. I had in mind to write to you for a month or two back, ever since shaking off my last ill- ness, but one feels shy of writing after being so extravagantly and absurdly ill. I got faster better this time, because Sir William Gull got me a pretty nurse, whom at first I took for Death (which shows how stupid it is for nurses to wear black), and then for my own general Fate and Spirit of Destiny, and then for a real nurse, . . . and slowly — and rather with vexation and desolation than any pleas- ure of convalescence — I came gradually to perceive things in their realities ; but it took me a good fortnight from the first passing away of the definite delirium to reason my- self back into the world. I have not been so glad of anything for many a day as about those Emerson letters ; nevertheless, one of my reasons (or causes) of silence this long time has been my differ- ing with you (we do differ sometimes) in a 176 LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN chasmy manner about Froude's beginning of his work. "... I 'm fairly well again, but more sad than I need say about myself and things in gen- eral. But I can still draw, and to-morrow I 'm going to Dijon, and on Thursday I drive to Citeaux, and on Friday I hope to get to the Jura, and drive over them once more, getting to Geneva and Bonneville early in next week ; then by Annecy over little St. Bernard and so on to Genoa and Pisa. You might be there nearly as soon as I shall be, if you liked to ! Ever your loving J. RUSKIN. Sallenche, nth September^ 1882. My darling Charles, — I think a good deal of you here, and of other people that are not here, without deserving to be scolded for being anywhere else. I was trying to-day to draw the view I showed you that morning with the piny ridge * His Life of Carlyle. LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN 177 between us and the Mont Blanc. But I couldn't draw the ridge, and there was no Mont Blanc, any more than there was any you ; for indeed the Mont Blanc we knew is no more. All the snows are wasted, the lower rocks bare, the luxuriance of light, the plentitude of power, the Eternity of Being, are all gone from it — even the purity — for the wasted and thawing snow is grey in comparison to the fresh-frosted wreaths of new-fallen cloud which we saw in that morning light — how many mornings ago } The sadness of it and wonder are quite unparalleled, as its glory was. But no one is sad for it, but only I, and you, I suppose, would be. L. would be perfectly happy, doubtless, because Mont Blanc is now Sans-culotte literally, and a naturalized. Re- publican, French Mount besides, — without any Louis Napoleon to make the dying snows blush for their master. And as the Glaciers, so the sun that we knew is gone ! The days of this year have passed in one drift of soot-cloud, mixed with 1/8 LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN blighting air. I was a week at Avallon in August, without being able to draw one spiral of its porch-mouldings, and could not stand for five minutes under the walls of Vezelay, so bleak the wind. The flowers are not all dead yet, however — the euphrasy and thyme are even luxuriant, and the autumn crocus as beautiful as of old. I can't get up, now, alas, to my favorite field of gentian under the Ai- guille de Varens,but I find the fringed autumn gentian still within reach on the pastures of the Dole. The Rhone still runs, too, though I think they will soon brick it over at Geneva, and have an " esplanade " instead. They will then have a true Cloaca Maxima, worthy of modern progress in the Fimetic Arts. I go back to Geneva on Wednesday, and then to Pisa and Lucca — a Hne to Lucca would find me in any early day of October, and should be read beside Ilaria, and perhaps with her gift of Cheerfulness. Ever your loving J. R. LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN 179 Don't think this is a brain-sick statement — I certify you of the facts as scientifically true. Lucca, Coffee time (7 a. m.) 3 October, 1882. . . . Well, about these Pisa measurings. You might as well try to measure the sea- waves, and find out their principle. The be- ginning of the business would be to get at any historical clue to the facts of yielding foundation. The Parthenon is quite a differ- ent case from any mediaeval building what- soever. In all great mediaeval buildings you have foundation unequal to the weight, you have more or less bad materials, and you have a lot of stolen ones. You might as well go and ask a Timbuctoo nigger why he wears a colonel's breeches wrong side upwards, as a Pisan architect why he built his walls with the bottom at the top and the sides squinting. He likes to show his thefts to begin with — if the ground gives way under him, he stands i8o LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN on the other leg. I Ve long believed myself that finding the duomo would n*t stand up- right anyhow, they deliberately made a ship of it, with the leaning tower for a sail ; and my good helper, Mr. Collingwood, who has been doing the loveliest sections of the Savoy Alps, who are exactly like Pisan architects in their "principles," or unprinciples, too — said that he could n't look at the north side with- out being seasick. But all this entanglement is of no impor- tance as to the main question of " Liberty " of line, which even I have always taught to be the life of the workman, and which exists everywhere in good work to an extent till now unconceived, even by me — till I had seen the horror of the restoration which put it " to rights." Nearly all our early English Gothic is free hand in the curves, and there is no possibility of drawing even the apparent circles with compasses. Here, and I think in nearly all work with Greek roots in it, there is a spiral passion which drifts every- LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN i8i thing like the temple of the winds; this is the first of all subtle charms in the real work — the first of all that is ai/SoVd out of it by the restorer. Do you recollect (my " of one mind" with my friend) the quarrel we had about the patchwork of the Spina Chapel? I think you will recollect the little twisted trefoil there. Of course in the restoration they 've put it square. And it is n't of the slightest use to point any of these things out to the present race of mankind. It is finally tramwayed, shamwayed, and eternally damn- wayed, and I wish the heavens and the fates joy over it ; but they can't expect any help from me, whatever they mean to make of it. All the same, it seems to me a great shame that I 'm old, and can't see it come to grief ; nor even the snows come back to the Alps again, if they do. Again, all the same, I '11 run back to Pisa just now after I 've been at Florence, and get at some measures for you, if I find them takeable on the Baptistery. I did the Florentine Baptistery in 1872, and i82 LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN found there was n't a single space in all the octagon and all the panelling, that matched another. It is exactly like measuring a quartz crystal, except that even the angles are n't fixed! but I didn't measure any of them^ practically they are true enough in the main octagon. I think the most important thing for your purposes would be to get the entasis of the great campaniles and war-towers. The Guinigi here, and the Verona campanile, and St. Mark's are all extremely beautiful. I '11 see what I can make of the Guinigi to-day, and send you some bits of masonry worth notice for the wanton intricacy of piecing. . . . Write to Sallenche. It is safe to the end of October. I can't stop in the horror of Italy more than another ten days or so. Lucca, 9, Morning, i6th October, 1882. I 've just got your letter of the ist, and have only been out for a little walk in the dew, and to see the Carrara mountains, and come back, round the Chapel of the Madonna LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN 183 of the Rose, to answer it. I 'm so glad you got that of mine from Sallenches, and I hope my answer to the Pisa one is with you ere this. I Ve done some curious work for you since on the walls of Fesole, finding out also much for myself on them, and underneath them. But it's the Niagara bit I want to answer to-day. There seems to me no question but that this generation is meant to destroy of the good works of men and of God, pretty nearly all they can get at. But — what next? The temporary help to Niagara, or poor little fragments saved at Pisa or Canterbury are virtually nothing, unless as a leaven, and spark in ashes, for future bread and fire. What now 1 — is the question for all of us. Here in Lucca, I was drawing last night a literal bouquet of red Campaniles. Five in a cluster, led by the Guinigi — up against amber and blue sunset. But, they must all soon come down ; the wonder is they Ve stood so long. And what is to be built in- i84 LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN stead? — chimneys? or minarets of muez- zin to the Religion of Humanity? or shot towers ? Underneath them, Mr. Collingwood, sur^ veying Lucca for me, has shaded already fourteen churches with 12th century (or earlier) fronts. When these are gone, what is to vary the street effects ? The Italians think Magazzmi, but what think Americans, the better sort ? . . . What do you propose to make of the new blank world which Nature herself seems re- solved to sweep clean for you, down to her own snows, and carry off the last ruins of Italy with the melting of them, all the four bridges of Verona gone in one day's swirl of Adige. My own conviction has been these twenty years that when the wicked had destroyed all the work of good people, the good people would get up and destroy theirs ; but, though I could bombard Birmingham, and choke the St. Gothard tunnel, and roll Niagara over LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN 185 every hotel and steamer in the States, to- morrow, I still don't see my way to anything farther ! and can't lay out my Nuova Vita on the new lines ! I expect a London architect to join me here, and I '11 take him to Pisa and get his notions of things, and measures. The Fesole findings shall soon come to you. . . . Ever your lovingest J.R. Pisa, 5th November^ 1882. My dearest Charles, — I have been longer than I meant in getting back here ; but what I promised will be all the better done, for now, I have brought with me Signor Boni,' the master of the works on the Ducal palace of Venice. He is a Venetian of the old race, and a man of the purest temper and feeling. He has the Government authority to examine any public building he wishes, so that he can put ladders and scaffolding where « The eminent and admirable architect and archaeologist. i86 LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN he likes here ; and he 's getting the Cathedral levels and measures to a centimetre. But he, and I, and my secretary, who is a good draughtsman, are all agreed on the main point, that there is no endeavour to obtain deceptive perspectives anywhere — but only to get continual variety of line, and an al- most exulting delight in conquering difficul- ties or introducing anomalies, which is rather provoked to frolic than subdued by any inter- ference of accident. It seems probable that the five western arches of the nave were added after the rest with less careful founda- tion, and that they sank away from the rest — so.' When the subsidence stopped, they took the cornice off all, rebuilt the arch a, of junction, and threw the cornice up, to bal- ance the fall by opposition. This, of course, is a violent exaggeration — but the actual interval at b is about three feet. The most curious point of all being that they have used a thicker moulding for three arches at the * See facsimile. ,^C^j---c&^^ 4*- or ^ ^4 ^ '^---^ f^ "-^i-^. A 3 LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN 187 junction, so that they only touch the cor- nice. Then shafts of upper court are dimin- ished down, westward, the whole way, sloping a little in harmony with the fallen arches. I beg your pardon for scrawling so, but I 've been doing a lot of rather hard drawing this week, and am tired, only I just wanted to tell you we were at work for you. The discovery I spoke to you of at Fesole was made possible to me by the recent exca- vation of part of the wall to the foundation on the native rock. You know the superb fitting of the varied joints of the wall, etc., etc. — Well, when I got to the rock surface, I found the surface cleavage of its beds A — B seen from above thus : ' AB is the line of the wall base, and the rock they built it of and on, was simply imitated by them. I Ve kept quite well all the while I Ve been in Italy, but have just caught a little cold which makes me languid and scrawly. There 's nothing but sneezing likely to come of it, and ' See facsimile. i88 LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN this Guy Fawkes day is as warm and sweet here as it is always wretched in London. So I hope to write a better report soon. Address now to Heme Hill. I 'm afraid S.'s photograph is at Annecy, and I shall not get it till next week at soonest. I must content myself meanwhile with the pretty Pisans. Ever your lovingest J.R. Herne Hill, ist January^ 1883. Darling Charles, — What a venomous old infidel you are ! I think I never read a nastier comment on a lovely theory than that " other walls are like Fesole that are not on the like rocks." I don't believe there are any other walls like Fesole. You could n't build them but of macigno, and I don't know any macigno anywhere else. Yes. I got draw- ings — fairly careful, of wall and rock — both. Those Pisan details are quite delightful, but I think Boni's report will be exhaustive — he has got his measures to a centimeter, LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN 189 and has such a knowledge of cements and joints that nothing escapes him. I send you a present of one of his Httle drawings of orna- ment, which will show you the infinite fine- ness of the creature. I 'm very well, and doing crystallography and geology ; I think my good assistant Col- lingwood will get the glacier theory well swept out of the way at last. . . . Ever your lovingest J. R. Oxford, loth March, 1883. My dearest Charles, — Emerson and Car- lyle came to me about a week since, and I am nearly through them, grateful heartily for the book, and the masterful index ; but much dis- appointed at having no word of epitaph from yourself on both the men. The Emerson letters are infinitely sweet and wise ; here and there, as in p. 30, vol. ii., unintelligible to me. C 's, like all the words of him published since his death, have vexed IQO LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN me, and partly angered, with their perpetual " me miserum " — never seeming to feel the extreme ill manners of this perpetual whine ; and, to what one dares not call an affected, but a quite unconsciously false extent, hiding the more or less of pleasure which a strong man must have in using his strength, be it but in heaving aside dustheaps. What in my own personal way I chiefly regret and wonder at in him is, the percep- tion in all nature of nothing between the stars and his stomach, — his going, for in- stance, into North Wales for two months, and noting absolutely no Cambrian thing or event, but only increase of Carlylian bile. Not that I am with you in thinking Froude ^ wrong about the " Reminiscences." They are , to me full of his strong insight, and in their distress, far more pathetic than these bowlings of his earlier life about Cromwell and others of his quite best works ; but I am vexed for want of a proper Epilogue of your own. I came here from Brantwood through driv- LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN 191 ing snow — sprinkling, but vicious in the whiffs — on Thursday, and found people glad to see me, and elbowing each other to hear, so that I had to give the one lecture I had really for them, twice over. It will be in print next week, and quickly sent you. . . . How much better right than C. have I to say, " Ay de mi ? " I am going to leave to-morrow, but return after Easter to set things further ahead here : a new edition of second volume of " Modern Painters," not without comment and epilogue, will be out by that time, and I hope to amuse you. There are no threatening symptoms, yet, as in former springs, of any returning illness, but I am well taught the need of cau- tion. . . . Ever your grateful and loving J. RUSKIN. Herne Hill, 15th March, 1883. Here's your note of fearing question — just come. I hope mine about your Emerson 192 LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN book is by this time at sea ; but it 's a delight to me to follow it with further assurance of my hitherto safety this year. As far as I can judge, there is no threatening, for I sleep quite soundly, and long enough, and people say I am looking well. But it is curious that I really look back to all those illnesses, except some parts of the first, with a kind of regret to have come back to the world. Life and Death were so wonderful, mingled together like that — the hope and fear, the scenic majesty of delusion so awful — sometimes so beautiful. In this little room, where the quite prosy sunshine is resting quietly on my prosy table — last year, at this very time, I saw the stars rushing at each other — and thought the lamps of London were gliding through the night into a World Collision. I took my pretty Devonshire farm-girl Nurse for a Black Vision of Judgment; when I found I was still alive, a tinkly Italian organ became to me the music of the Spheres. No- thing was more notable to me through the ill- LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN 193 ness than the general exaltation of the nerves of sight and hearing, and their power of making colour and sound harmonious as well as intense — with alternation of faintness and horror of course. But I learned so much about the nature of Phantasy and Phantasm — it would have been totally inconceivable to me without seeing, how the unreal and real could be mixed. I 'm not going to stay in London, but go down to my lake again till after Easter, when I 'm going to give a lecture on Burne-Jones, exclusively ; and then one on Leighton and Watts. Leighton has won my heart by painting some extremely pretty girls, whom I can't but with much deprecation of myself extremely prefer to the old hard outlined Man- tegnas and Leonardos and the like. Love to S. accordingly, and I am Ever your penitent Author of " Modern Painters." I found I was really rather bored by Lippi and the rest of them, this time ! ! ! 194 LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN Brantwood, 1 6th April, 1883. Darling Charles, — I Ve been out on the lake in as strong wind as I could hold the boat against — with Miss Kate Greenaway sitting at the stern of my little "Jumping Jenny," and my hand shakes a little now, but I must answer your kind letter the day I get it, chiefly to thank you for the strong and precious words about Carlyle. My one question about a man is, whether his work be right or not. Pope's lies, or Byron's, in the Walty affair and the like, or Carlyle's egoisms, or my own follies, or Turner's, I recognize as disease or decay, or madness, and take no interest in the nosology; but I never excuse them, or think them merely stomachic, but spiritual disease. . . . I should like to see Volterra ; but unless it is of macigno it can't be like Fesole, any more than Perugia can be like Mycenae. Pisa is really done by Signor Boni ; but I am so terribly afraid of my brains going again (I like your saying I 'm not cautious !) LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN 195 that I can't see to its carrying out at present. I Ve a book on the Alps by Mr. Colling- wood going on, and another of which I hope to send you a copy swiftly by an American girl. The " Modern Painters " shall be found directly. Ever your lovingest J.R. Oxford, 19th June^ '83. Darling Charles, — I Ve just finished my spring work (and note paper) here, and have only to say how thankful I am that you 're coming, and that I am well enough to make you happier by coming — or going — any- where with you ; but the first thing must be that you come straight to Brantwood and stay there enough to see what 's there, and then I '11 come with you as far as here, any- how. I 'm not my own master quite, this year, but we '11 see, and think. I '11 write again from Brantwood if I get there safe — I always think of railway as of sea — and 196 LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN write this at any rate to be sure of meeting you when you land. Ever your loving John Ruskin. Brantwood, 24th June^ 1883. Darling Charles, — ... I expect you to- morrow — or Tuesday — or — Wednesday at latest, and I don't think you 'II want to start directly, even for Switzerland. I can't, at all events before the end of July, if then ; but I have to go back to Oxford first, and doubtless you will have to be in London a little while. I expect a nice girl here to-day . . . who will probably stay for a week, — Flora Shaw, a soldier's daughter, and a really clever and right-minded story-writer, who will be very happy with us, and you not less at ease, I hope, than if she were n't here. Ever your lovingest J. R. Brantwood, 28th July^ 1883. . . . What a shame that I 've never said a word since you left; but somehow I can't LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN 197 believe in the existence nor mediatorship of Messrs. Baring. To-day I have your note from blessed Domo d' Ossola — and I would I were there. But I 've got entangled in ground veronica and Anagallis tenella — and am sick to finish some work in weeds half done years ago; and the ideas of it festering in my head ever since ; and worse, I 've letters from the Keeper of National Gallery, and Librarian of British Museum and the British Museum is being broken up, and the National Gallery wants its plates and drawings ; and the British Mu- seum writes to me to defend it — and I 've written back that I 'm going to advise send- ing the Manuscripts to the Bodleian, and putting the sculpture in the National Gal- lery cellars ; but I must go up to London to get well into the row; and I don't see my way out of it, and believe it will be very utterly impossible for me to get abroad this year — even as far as Chart res — but it is possible you might like to look at Wells and 198 LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN Glastonbury with me, rather than come to autumnal Brantwood. I'll write more to- morrow of what I 'm doing. . . . All our loves, and all manner of every other pleasant feeling mixed in mine. Your ever faithful and — obedient J. RUSKIN. Brantwood, Sunday, 29th July^ '83. Darling Charles, — Instead of telling you more of what I am about, I want to press on you to use your time at Milan in getting rid of your respect for Leonardo. He was meant for a botanist and engineer, not a painter at all ; his caricatures are both foolish and filthy, — filthy from mere ugli- ness ; and he was more or less mad in pur- suing minutiae all his days. Study the St. Stephen in the Monasterio Maggiore, and what you can find of Luini in the Brera, al- ternately with the smirking profiles in the Ambrosian library ; but above all, the pure pale Christ in left hand chapel in St. Am- LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN 199 brogio — also the grand Maries opposite — by his companion fresco painter. You will find there is really never a bit of colour of the smallest interest in Leonardo, nor a thought worth thinking, and his light and shade is always, one side light against dark, the other dark against light — and he's done for! When did you ever see either a profile or full face by Leonardo in mid- dle tint against light behind ? Don't waste time in going to Saronno. Look and think in the Brera, and then go back to the hills. Ever your lovingest J.R. Brantwood, 2nd August. Darling Charles, — I 've got a quiet time now — Joanie away at a wedding; and I Ve given up a journey to London, which the summer 's too short for, and have been read- ing some bits of old diary, in which the ink is getting pale. 200 LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN I should like you to have the burning of these things, when I 've done with them. I don't see much what else is to be done ; but it may be in your heart perhaps to give a day or two here to talk over the matter, only I don't want you to shorten your Italian time. . . . I hope to-day to do a quiet bit of leaf- drawing — once more, — a little rod of Ve- ronica officinalis. I hope you 're being very good and find- ing out the folly in Leonardo, and that you haven't so much plague cloud as we have here. But we had one quite clear, beatific day last week. I read about the Ischian convulsion yes- terday. What do the Gods mean ? How sol- emnly we in England and you in America should cherish the life on safe rock and un- der clement sky. Ever your lovingest J. R. LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN 201 Brant WOOD, 25th February, 1884. ... I can't write, because I 've always so much to say. How can I tell you anything of the sea of troubles that overwhelm old age — the trouble of troubles being that one can't take trouble enough. At this moment I 'm arranging a case at the British Museum, to show the whole his- tory of silica, and I 'm lending them a perfect octahedral crystal of diamond weighing 129 carats, which I mean to call St. George's diamond, and to head my history of precious stones. And I 'm giving them dreadful ele- mentary exercises at Oxford which they mew and howl over, and are forced to do, never- theless ; and I 'm writing the life of Sta. Zita of Lucca ; and an essay, in form of lecture, on clouds, which has pulled me into a lot of work on diffraction and fluorescence; and I 've given Ernest Chesneau ' a commission to write a life of Turner from a French point I Author of a book on the Ecole Anglaise, of which the translation was edited by Ruskin. 203 LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN of view — under my chastisement " if too French;" and I Ve just got the preface writ- ten for Collingwood's " Alps of Savoy," sup- plement to " Deucalion ; " and I 'm teaching Kate Greenaway the principles of Carpaccio, and Kate's drawing beautiful young ladies for me in clusters, — to get oflF Carpaccio if she can. And 'I Ve given Boehm a commission for 12 flat medallions, Florentine manner, life size, of six British men and six British wo- men, of typical character in beauty ; all to be looking straight forward in pure profile, and to have their hair treated with the Greek furrow. And I 'm beginning to reform the drama, by help of Miss Anderson ; and I had " The Tempest " played to me last week by four little beauties — George Richmond's grand- children — of whom the youngest (i i) played Ferdinand and Caliban, both, and was a quite perfect lover ; and the eldest played the boat- swain and Miranda. And I 've given three LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN 203 sets of bells (octaves) to Coniston school, and am making the children learn chimes. And I 'm doing a " Fors " now and then in a byeway ; Allen will have a nice parcel to send soon. And I 'm here at Herne Hill — and I 'm just going down to breakfast, . . . and I can't write any more. I 'm pretty well, I believe — but watching for breakdown. . . . I 'm ever Your poor old J. R. I am so glad you can remember with happi- ness. I live wholly to-day, and sadly enough, except in work (or wicked flirting). But, though I say it, nice girls do make quite as much fuss about me as I do about them, and they plague my life out to sign their birthday books. Brantwood, ist June, 1884. Dearest Charles, — A thousand welcomes, and please come here as soon as you possibly can. I have more reasons for asking you to 204 LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN do so than my impatience to see you, but I think that great one is enough — though the rest are not little ones. Joan's love and wel- come, with all her heart and mind — and Turner's, and my father's and mother's ; and I 'm ever Your loving and grateful John Ruskin. EusTON Hotel [London], 7th Oct., '84. It has been a great mortification and dis- appointment to me not to see S. again ; but the world 's made up of morts and disses, and it 's no use always saying " Ay de mi ! " ' like Carlyle. I 'm really ashamed of him in those letters to Emerson. My own diaries are indeed full of mewing and moaning, all to myself, but I think my letters to friends have more a tendency to crowing, or, at least, on the whole, try to be pleasant. I 've great gladness in your note about S. W. Wind. I shall have you sending me nice sympathetic data about your glaciers, soon. . . . LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN 205 I am just going down to Canterbury — to Oxford next week, to begin lectures on the pleasures of England. 1. Bertha to Osburga, 2. Alfred to Confessor, 3. Confessor to Coeur de L., 4. Coeur de L. to Eliz., 5. Protestantism, 6. Atheism, 7. Mechanism, Pleasure of Learning. Faith. " Deed. " " Fancy. " Truth. " " Sense. " " Nonsense. I 'm pretty well forward with them, — but they 're not up to my best work. Ever your loving J. R. Canterbury, 9th October, 1884. Dearest Charles, — .... i caught cold, slightly, as soon as I left Brantwood on Wednesday last, and am nursing myself, with the help of two dear old ladies in the pre- cincts of Canterbury. For the first time yes- terday I saw St. Martin's Church, and the view it commands of the county gaol. I re- 206 LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN treat to-day to my bedside, whence I have a lovely view of Becket's crown, and the Cen- tral Tower — the domestic looking little apse between them is now rich in sunlight, — but Lucca and Pisa have spoiled me. I am getting such lovely work done in Switzerland and Savoy by the writer of en- closed card, which I send that you may envy us both, and come back as soon as you can to see the " subject by the river." These drawings he (Mr. Rooke is draw- ing for me are the first I ever had done as I wanted, and as I should have done them myself, if only I had never written " Modern Painters." The first number of its reprint — which is to be in three parts : In Montibus Sanctis, Coeli Enarrant, and Laetitia Silvae (or some such name) — is passed for press. . . . Your lovingest J. R. * Mr. T. M. Rooke, whose drawings, admirable in skill and fidelity and full of appreciation of the poetic elements of his subjects, deserve all the praise which Ruskin gives them. LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN 207 Brantwood, 2nd January^ 1885. ... I am not so well as you hoped, having overstrained myself under strong impulse at Oxford, and fallen back now into a ditch of despond, deepened by loss of appetite and cold feet, and dark weather, — Joan in London and people all about more or less depending on me ; no S. or M. for me to depend on — no Charles — no Carlyle. Even my Turners for the time speechless to me, my crystals lus- treless. After some more misery and desola- tion of this nature I hope, however, to revive slowly, and will really not trust tnyself in that feeling of power any more. But it seems to me as if old age were threatening to be a weary time for me. I '11 never mew about it like Carlyle, nor make Joanie miserable if I know it — but it looks to me very like as if I should take to my bed and make every- body wait on me. This is only to send you love — better news I hope soon. Ever your J. R. 2o8 LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN Brantwood, 1st October, '85. Dearest Charles, — I am certainly better, and at present steadily gaining, bearing the burden of idle hours in the thankfulness that I am myself no longer a burden to poor Joanie. But she insists on the idleness, and will not let me write — but only dictate, and truly it will be better for you to have in her hand the rest of this note. In the looking over the neglects of past life! I found a lovely letter of yours of 1882, about the Cathedral of Pisa, giving evidence of the fa9ade being meant to incline forward. Neglected alike in that year, the result of Signer Boni's examination, which I suppose he has written out — of course it is lost ; but I 'm going to ask him this question about the fagade. The letter goes on very sadly about the "victory of materialism," and the distant hope of a revival in a thou- sand years, of all that you and I have cared for — only the Alps to be let go in the mean- time ! LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN 209 I believe the despondency caused by their own natural, as it seems, sympathy, with the scorn of their beauty, by the perishing of their snows, has borne a great part in the steady depression which has laid me open to these great illnesses. If only the Mont Blanc that you and I saw from St. Martin's that morning was still there, I would set out on a slow pedestrian tour, and expect you to meet me there ! As it is, I can't find anything to amuse me, or to bring to any good in my old geological work ; but I don't believe in any " victory of materialism." The last two years have shown me more spirituality in the world than all my former life. Enough for to-day. Ever your lovingest J. RUSKIN. Brantwood, 20th October^ ' 85. Dearest Charles, — I am so very glad you have got those letters to edit. Carlyle is en- V\ tirely himself when he stops talking of him- 2IO LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN self; but I totally disagree with you about the wife letters being sacred. . . . I can't give you my letters, because I must use them in autobiography. I use very few of anybody's — the purpose of the book be- ing simply to say how I got my knowledge of art and principles of — Economy ! There may be a post mortem examination of my loves and friendships. I have got back some interest in things I used to care for, and am looking a little into things I did n't. Do you happen — or does anybody at Harvard, know where there 's a human book (not a scientific one) on crabs, and shrimps ? The Dragon 's out, or I should never have got all this written. Ever your lovingest J.R. Brantwood, Easter Wednesday, '86. Dearest Charles, — I am entirely for- bidden to write letters, and I 've written seven difficult ones this morning — and this eighth LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN 211 has been on my mind this month. I thought you might be wondering what I meant to make of " Praeterita," if I live to finish it — and that you ought to know. There are to be 36 numbers — for sixty years. You and Joan may give account of me afterwards. I 've got it all planned out now ; and it will be pretty and readable enough I think, all through. . . . I am retouching and mounting drawings also, and liking my own better; and when you come to see Brantwood again, whether I 'm in it or not, you will find it in a little better order. . . . Brantwood, i6th May. My very dear Charles, — Thank you, very heartily, for returning me the two draw- ings — but you wholly misunderstand my motive in asking their return. It is not for myself, but for my scholars and lovers that I ask them. There is no drawing of a stone by my hand so good as 212 LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN your boulder — few of the church I love best so good as that arch of St. Mark's/ America, as long as she worships Mr. Chase, and pirates the teaching of the living, and taxes the teaching of the dead, can get no good of work or word of mine, and no friend of mine should disgrace my work by keeping it there. ... I hope this year to retain my power of managing my own servants, and walking in my own woods. You shall hear from me, if I do so. If I am shut up again, you may at all events be thankful I can't say naughty things about America. Ever your faithful friend, J.R. Brantwood, 24th Juney '86. Darling Charles, — I saw your nice note to Joan the other day, and vowed I must write at once. Two — three days have passed, irksome or ^ Both in my possession now. LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN 213 more or less pro-vocantive things keeping me otherwise busy. To-day I have had pen in hand since the morning — now three after- noon — windy nothingness instead of lake — no going out. I was going to lie down on the sofa to try to sleep, when I saw your third vol. M. P. with all those lovely annotations laid out for conference with my own final opinions ! So I began peeping and muttering — and now I 've just come on the passage I think worth all the rest of the book, marked " Omit to end of chapter." I was getting a little dull, myself, over the Campo Santo of Pisa (chap. vi. vol. ii. " Prae- terita "), and feared the reader would say the book had better stop now. But in chap. x. (Vevay) I propose to give an account of a steamboat passage thence to Geneva, and some farther passages of the year 1856 — and I think the " Omit to end of chapter " will be the loveliest finish for it. I think I shall begin to-morrow morning, D. V. Not but there 's some sense in some of the 214 LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN annotations, but on the whole, I consider the book has the best of it, and the only obser- vations I feel inclined now to attend to are such as " The analysis of this temper needs to be carried farther " ! etc. Quite seriously, I am very thankful to find the book has so much good in it, and am a good deal cheered after being for the last month or two weeks sick hearted enough in thinking of what I might have done instead. The weather has been worse than depress- ing. Night without stars — day without evening or morning — and all the garden blighted for the year. My chief comfort has been in reading Carlyle's descriptions of peo- ple. I 've got Froude's leave to take them all out and edit them myself — if only — only — I get a little strong next year. My chief dis- comfort is . . . and my beard's getting thin and stiff, and general dilapidation of the stones yet left on one another — in Venice or me. ... I was glad to see Moore again, and hope to be somewhat helpful to him. LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN 215 When shall I see you? You really ought to look at our lovely England again — as a Manufacturing town. Oliver Wendell seenas delighted — and says he has seen hawthorn. / h^ve n't this spring. Ever your lovingest St. C. Brantwood, i8th Augttst, '86. My dearest Charles, -You ought not to be so anxious during these monsoons and cyclones of my poor old plagued brains. They clear off, and leave me, to say the least, as wise as I was before. Certainly this last fit has been much nastier for me than any yet, and has left me more frightened, but not so much hurt, as the last one Send me a line now and then still, please, - whether I 'm mad or not I 'm Your loving J. R. Brantwood, 28th Aug., '86. Darling Charles, — Your note to Joan of the 13th is extraordinarily pious, for you! 2i6 LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN and not a bit true! It is not the Lord's hand, but my own folly, that brings these illnesses on me ; and as long as they go off again, you needn't be so mighty grave about them. How many wiser folk than I go mad for good and all, or bad and all, like poor Tur- ner at the last, Blake always, Scott in his pride, Irving in his faith, and Carlyle, be- cause of the poultry next door. You had better, by the way, have gone crazy for a month yourself than written that niggling and naggling article on Froude 's misprints.' I learn a lot in these fits of the way one sees, hears, and fancies things, in morbid con- ditions of nerve. ... I suffer no pain whatso- ever, and am not the least frightened for my- self. ... Part of this last vision, in which a real thunderstorm came to play its own part, was terrific and sublime more than anybody can see, sane (unless perchance they are to * For some years past Ruskin had been on terms of cor- dial friendliness with Froude, and much influenced by him, especially in his view of Froude's dealings with the trust committed to him by Carlyle. LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN 217 be swallowed up by Etna or swept away by a cyclone). Did I tell you that during this illness I was able to read Sydney Smith 's " Moral Philoso- phy," and with what sense I have got back, declare it now to be the only moral philoso- phy. It entirely supersedes the wisdom of "Modern Painters." Ever your loving J. R. Brantwood, 13th September, '86. Darling Charles, — I like the notion of leaving you out of my Autobiography. What would be the use of it, if it did not show under what friendly discouragements I wrote my best works ? You might as well propose I should leave out Carlyle, or Joan herself ! I have been steadily gaining since last re- port, and on Friday was half way up the Old Man,^ without more fatigue than deepened the night's rest, and greatly pleased that, the day I The mountain called " Coniston Old Man." 2i8 LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN being exceptionally clear, I saw Ingleborough without any feeling' of diminished faculty of sight. And the last illness did indeed leave les- sons as to the danger of mere active excite- ment of brain, which none of the four pre- vious ones did. For all those, there was some reason in the particular trains of feeling that ended in them ; but this last came of a quite dispassionate review of the opinions of the Committee of Council on Education, and analysis of the legal position of the Vicar of Coniston under the will of Lady le Flem- ing. It has only struck me lately that I was meant for a lawyer, and that the aesthetic side, or point, of me ought to have remained undeveloped, like the eyes which the Dar- winians are discovering in the backs, or be- hinds, of lizards. By the way, nothing in late reading has delighted me more, or ever did, in praeterite reading, than the letters of aged Humboldt to youthful Agassiz. LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN 219 ... I had an interesting encounter with a biggish viper, who challenged me at the top of the harbour steps one day before my last fit of craze came on. I looked him in the eyes, or rather nose, for half a minute, when he drew aside into a tuft of grass, on which I summoned our Tommy — a strong lad of 1 8, who was mowing just above — to come down with his scythe. The moment he struck at the grass tuft, it — the snake — became a glittering coil more wonderful than I could have conceived, clasping the scythe and avoid- ing its edge. Not till the fifth or sixth blow could Tommy get a disabling cut at it. I finally knelt down and crushed its head flat with a stone, — and hope it meant the last lock of Medusa's hair for me. Ever your lovingest J.R. Brantwood, 23rd March, 1887. Tm writing from 15 to 25 letters a day just now, besides getting on with " Praeterita," 220 LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN " Proserpina," " Ulric " editing and " Christ's Folk" editing, and as you can't be much more busy, and have n't been crazy, I think you ought to keep up our acquaintance with an occasional word or two. . . . The chapter of " Praeterita " I 'm upon (" Hotel du Mont Blanc ") is lagging sadly because I can't describe the Aiguille de Va- rens as I want to. I do hope I shan't go off my head this summer again and lose the wild roses, — for " Praeterita" will be very pretty if I can only get it written as it's in my head while right way on. It is snowing and freezing bitterly, and I consider it all the fault of America and fail- ure of duty in Gulf Stream, and so on. . . . Seriously, I believe I am safer than for some years in general health, but have lost sadly in activity and appetite. Ever your loving J. R. It was soon after my last stay with him that Ruskin began to write his " Praeterita," the LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN 221 record " of scenes and thoughts," as its title says, " perhaps worthy of memory in my (his) past life." It was issued in monthly numbers, beginning in April, 1885, but its regular pub- lication was at times interrupted by illness, and the last number, the twenty-eighth, appeared in July, 1889. By far its largest autobiograph- ical part is occupied with the account of Rus- kin's childhood and youth, ending practically with the year 1856, when he was thirty-seven years old. It was the year of the beginning of our friendship. Although there are many passages which indicate the disturbance of his mind, yet, barring these, the spirit and style of the book are thoroughly delightful, and truly represent the finer characteristics of his nature. He has written nothing better, it seems to me, than some pages of this book, whether of description or reflection. The retrospect is seen through the mellowing at- mosphere of age, the harshness of many an outline is softened by distance, and the old man looks back upon his own life with a feel- ing which permits him to delineate it with perfect candor, with exquisite tenderness, and a playful liveliness quickened by his humor- 222 LETTERS OF JOHN*RUSKIN ous sense of its dramatic extravagances and individual eccentricities. After a fresh attack of illness in 1889, Ruskin was never able to take up again the broken thread of his story. The last ten years of his life were spent in retirement, and save for recurrent attacks of brain trouble, his days were peaceful and not unhappy. He still enjoyed the beauties of Nature and of Art, still liked to read or hear read his favorite books, still loved to listen to simple music. He was cared for with entire tender- ness and devotion. His sun sank slowly, and amid clouds, but they did not wholly darken its light. The last words of his own writing which I received from him were written on the 2ist of November, 1896, a few months more than forty years from the date of the begin- ning of our friendship. They were at the foot of a letter of Mrs. Severn, and were written in pencil with a trembling hand, — " From your loving J. R." " Prasterita " ends with the following words, strangely symbolic of much of the life of which they close the record : " Fonte Branda LETTERS OF JOHN RUSKIN 223 I last saw with Charles Norton, under the same arches where Dante saw it. We drank of it together, and walked together that even- ing on the hills above, where the fireflies among the scented thickets shone fitfully in the still undarkened air. How they shone ! moving like fine-broken starlight through the purple leaves. How they shone! through the sunset that faded into thunderous night as I entered Siena three days before, the white edges of the mountainous clouds still lighted from the west, and the openly golden sky calm behind the Gate of Siena's heart, with its still golden words, * Cor magis tibi Sena pandit,' and the fireflies everywhere in sky and cloud rising and falling, mixed with the lightning, and more intense than the stars." INDEX INDEX Note. R. stands Abbeville church, i. 178, 179, 182. Accounts, R. keeps, ii. 46. Adulteration and competition, i. 245. Agassiz, Miss, drawings by, i. 109. Agassiz, Louis, letters from Humboldt to, ii. 218. Agnew, Joanna R. See Severn. Alps, the, R. loses enthusiasm for (1858), i. 67; R. in (i860), 99; (1861), 122, 126; (1862-1863), 128, 133, 137, 140, 141, 144; (1869), 226-228, 231 ; (1874), ii. 102-104, 107 ; (1882), 166- 168; in winter, i. 122, 126; R.'s lecture on Savoy, 140 ; R.'s plan to regulate water flow, 204, 207, 216, 236 ; retreat of ' glaciers and snow line, ii. 107? 177, 209 ; flowers of, 178 ; R.'s work on, 180, 193, 202, Ambleside, R. at (1867), i« 166, 168. America, fresh and ugly, i. 27- 29 ; happiness in, 50 ; art in, 52, 82 ; R. on, 57, ii. 10, 47, 51, 170,212; tourists,i. 218; and Turner's art, ii. iii ; responsi- ble for modern degeneracy, 233. See also Civil War. Amiens, cathedral of, i. 186 ; R. on, ii. 162, 170. for John Ruskin. Anderson, Miss, ii. 202. Annie, R.'s servant, ii. 32. Antwerp, spire of cathedral, i. 206. Apollo Belvidere, i. 27. Appleton, T. G., meets R., i. 178. Aratra Pentelici, meaning of title, ii. 33. Architecture, Seven Lamps, i. 5 ; Stones of Venice, 5, ii. 108, 137, gathering material for Stones of Venice, i. 32-35 ; restora- tions and destructions, 63, 81, 155, 178, 182, 206, 214, ii. 136, 180, 183-185; Abbeville church, i. 178, 182, 185; Amiens cathedral, 186, ii. 162, 170 ; developments of Mon- treux, i. 206 ; spire of Antwerp cathedral, 206 ; tomb in Verona, 2 II , 2 1 2 n. ; balcony at Lugano, 220 ; balustrade at Baveno, 220 : Roman Doric capitals, 223; Parthenon, ii. 114, West- minster, 114 ; HypcBthral Ques- tion, 158 : Chartres, 162 ; Nor- ton's Church-Building, 163 ; symmetry of mediaeval build- ings, 179, 181 ; anomalies of Pisa cathedral, 179, 186, 208 ; measurement of medi- aeval buildings, 181, 185; con- struction of Fesole wall, 187, % 228 INDEX 1 88; Canterbury cathedral, 206. See also Art. Argyll, Duke of, at Metaphysical Society dinner, ii. 30. Ariadne Florentina, ii. 92, 113. Aristophanes, R. on, i. 76. Amolfo di Cambio, school of, ii. 92. Art, R.'s early works, i. 4; Turner, 24, 59-61, 168; at Rome, 26 ; at Verona, 39 ; American, 52, 82; Plassan's Music Lesson, (iT^^ddfXi.; Lewis's Inmate of Harem, 63, 64; R.'s change in convictions, 71, 92, 97; Veronese's Solomon, 72; Venetian school, 73; Modern Painters, 79, 81, 87, 91, 92, ii. 108, 191, 206, 213, 214 ; present and future condition, i. 81, 1 55, ii. 90, 178, 181 ; modern Ger- man, i. 81 ; English, 82, ii. 154, 161 ; Rossetti, i. 90, 97, loi, 124; Hunt, 102, ii. 23; St. Louis missal, i. 104; Titian's power, 106; Church's Coto- paxi, 151 ; Turner's Liber Stu- diorum, 165-168, ii. 151; sub- ject painful to R., i. 166 ; diges- tion of nature, 168; didactic, 200; griffins at Verona, 214; Luini's Crucifixion, 221, 222 ; lectures at Oxford, 255-259, ii. 20, 22, 28, 30, 46, 49, 53, 92, 93, 122, 191 ; Tintoret's supre- macy, i. 261, ii. 39; Lippi, 193; Strozzi Titian, 9; Man- tegna, 10, 11 ; Botticelli, 11, 53, 75. 76, 93. 97; the Pisani, i. 269; school at Oxford, ii. 31-34, 45; at Dresden, 42 ; Aratra Pentelici, 43 ; plates for sculpture lectures, 45 ; and science, 46 ; Trimnph of Maximilian, 50; Perugino, 53 : Val d'Arno, 53, 70, 88, 89; Duccio, 54; Cimabue, 54, 76, 77, 79, 80, 84, 96-98 ; and re- ligion, 54, 55, 125; frescoes at Assisi, 74-80, 84, 96-98; "im- proving " a copy, 74 ; Giotto, 75, 79, 84, 91, loi, 106; gram- mar, 82 ; frescoes at Florence, 85, 86, 94, 98, loi, 102 ; Morn- ings in Florence, 98-100, 126; Etruscan, 89-92, 100, loi; Niccolo Pisano, 90 ; Ariadne Florentina, ()2, 113 ; successive Italian schools, 92, 93, 104; contemplative and dramatic, 94, 106 ; bas-reliefs on Giotto's Tower, 106 ; fifteenth century English, no; America and Turner, in ; Carpaccio, 140, 142; guide to Venice, 143; R. hopeful of preserving know- ledge of Gothic, 163; Leigh- ton, 193 ; Leonardo, 198. See also Architecture, Drawing. Art objects, Norton obtains for ii- 33. 34, 57. 60. Ashbourne, England, Cockayne tombs, ii. no. Assisi, R.'s monograph on,ii. 69; frescoes in San Francesco, 74-77, 79. 80, 84, 86-88. Atlantic Monthly, R. praises, i. 57 ; R. declines to write for, 61, 87. Avallon, R. at, ii. 174. Baveno, balustrade, i. 220. Beckenried, R. at (1869), i. 227. Bellinzona, R. at (1870), ii. 9. INDEX 229 Bellini, art of, ii. 93. Bible of Amiens ^ ii. 162, 167. Bird of Calm, lecture, ii. 46. Birmingham, R. would bombard, ii. 184. Black Plague, ii. 56. Blanc, Mont, change in, ii. 107, 177, 209. Blumenthal, Carlo, i. 236. Boat, R. builds, ii. 156. Boehm, Sir J. E., statue of Car- lyle, ii. 117; bust of R., 118; commission for medallions, 202. Bond, E. A., i. 203. Boni, Signor, cathedral measure- ments, ii. 185, 188, 194, 208. Books, R. on type and binding of, i. 243. Borromeo, Count, i. 242. Botany, name Lamiuniy i. 140; R.'s interest in, 159, 161 ; Pro- serpina, 254, 256, ii. 113, 119, 151, 152, 220; Alpine flowers, 178; R.'s work on weeds, 197. Botticelli, Sandro, hardness and gloom, ii. II; work in Sistine Chapel, 53, 75; R.'s lectures on, 66, 67, 76, 80 ; art of, 76, 93> 97. Boulogne, R. at (1861), i. 115, 119. Boutmy, fimile, Philosophy of Greek Architecture, ii. 26. Brantwood, R. purchases, ii. 37 ; a purposed home, 38 ; R.'s expectations of life at, 41, 51, 59; R. on beauty of, 70; view from, 132, 164; life at, 166. Brientz, Lake, R, at (1869), i- 228. Bright, John, on adulteration, i. 245- British Museum, proposed dis- tribution of its treasures, ii. 197. Broadlands, R. at, ii. 36, 121, 122. Brown, John, raid, i. 91, Brown, Rawdon, at Venice, i. 39, 42, ii. 73. Browning, Elizabeth B., Aurora Leigh, i, 31 ; curse on Amer- ica, 130. Browning, Robert, and R., i. 84. Brunellesco, Filippo, school of, ii. 92. Buonaventura, St., Life of St. Francis by, ii. 95. Biirglen, beautiful, i. 67. Burmann, Pieter, edition of Vir- gil, ii. 18. Burne-Jones, Edward, at Work- ingmen's College, i. 41 ; art, 102 ; marriage, 112; threatened ill-health, 125, 126; portrait of 153, 154, 156, 159. 160, 162. Burne-Jones, Mrs. Edward, and the ballet, i. 112. Byron, Lord, R. on, i. 215. Callimachus, R. reads, ii. 68. Canterbury, R. on, ii. 205. Carlyle, Thomas, ziitx Frederick, i. 1 50 ; Frederick done at right time, ii. 24; R.'s analysis of Frederick, 66 ; Boehm's statue, 117; his work, 167, 168; let- ters, 174, 189, 209; Froude's biography, 176, 190, 216; whine of, 190, 204. 230 INDEX Carpaccio, Vittore, St. Ursula, ii. 140, 142. Cavalli di mare, i. 35. Cent Ballades, Les, i. 242 ; R. translates, 254, 259, ii. 67. Cervantes, R. on, ii. 10, 16. Chartres, R. on, ii. 162. Chase, Mr., ii. 212. Chaucer, R. translates, i. 254, 259- Cheapness, R. on, i. 243. Chemistry, R.'s interest in, i. 152. Chesneau, Ernest, life of Turner, ii. 201. Chess-player, automaton, ii. 71, 72. Children, spiritual training of, i. 251-253- Chimes, R. presents, to Conis- ton school, ii. 202. Chivalry, R. on, ii. 16, 71 ; and art, 93. Church, F. E., his Cotopaxi, i. 1 51 . Cimabue, Giovanni, R. on, ii. 54; frescoes, 76, 77, 79,80, 84, 96-98. Civil War, R.'s attitude toward, i. 120, 121, 130, 133-136, 145, 146, 151, 153, 158. Clarke, J. T., Hypcethral Ques- tion, ii. 158. Clouds, R.'s desire to draw, i. 76; R.'s work on, ii. 201. Cockayne tombs, ii. no. Coeli Enarrant, in preparation, ii. 201. Coleridge, S. T., lectures on Shakespeare, i. 20 ; on types of readers, 20 n. Collingwood, G., on R.'s health, ii. 173. Collingwood, W. G., on Pisa cathedral,ii. 180 ; as R.'s assist- ant, 184, 186, 189, 195. Colours and their proper dark- ness, ii. 82. Como, granite colonnade, i. 223. Conchology, R.'s interest, i. 152. Cornhill Magazine, R.'s eco- nomic papers, i. 95, 103. Correggio, A. A. da, paintings at Dresden, i. 81. Crofton, Sir W., on Employ- ment Committee, i. 189, 192. Crookes, Sir William, on motive power of light, ii. 131. Crown of Wild Olive ^ i. 149. Dallas, E. S., i. 10. Dante, Rossetti's picture, i. 96; Norton's Vita Nuova, 97, 170 ; portraits, 149 ; Longfellow's translation, 169; R.'s attitude toward, 170 ; and Horace on death of Ulysses, 210; edition of 1490, ii. 46 ; Lowell on, 120. Darwin, Charles, i. 176; R. meets, 195. Denmark Hill, R.'s home, i. 10, 150, 152; life at, ii. 68. Dickens, Charles, death of, ii. 4 ; R. on his political sentiments, 5 ; genius, 9. Drawing, R. arranges Turner's sketches, i. 30, 37, 52, 58-61 ; R.'s school, 37, 40; Elements of Drawing, 38, 41 ; R. on his own, 76, 82, 105, no, 122, 126, 160, 182, 207, 260, ii. 3, 12, 13, 18, 25, 57, 58, 112, 126, 158, 161, 174, 176, 178, 211; with brush, i. 259 ; Turners on sale. INDEX 231 201 ; R. founds mastership of, at Oxford, ii. 33, 34, 36 ; R-'s new work on, 40, 65, 69 ; R.'s Fall of Schaffhausen, 75 ; Laws of Fesole, 128, 145, 150-152; exhibition of R.'s, 153, 154; Rooke's, 206. See also Art. Dresden, Correggios at, i. 81 ; a Tintoret at, ii. 39 ; R. on, 42 ; art at, 42. Drought in England (1870), ii. 13- Duccio di Buoninsegna, R. on, ii. 54. Dutch art, R. on, ii. 94. Eaglets Nesty lectures men- tioned, ii. 46. Economics, beginning of R.'s interest in, i. 23, 44 ; R.'s prin- ciples, 93, 128 n., 136; Unto this Last, 95, 103; opposition to R.'s views, 95, 103 n.; Mune- ra Pulveris, 12^ n., 136, 248, ii. 45; Employment Committee (1868), i. 187-193 ; R.'s interest in the unemployed, 188 ; R.'s resolution on employment, 190 ; expenditure and future wealth, 223, 224 ; R.'s antag- onism to school of Mill, 224, 228, 230, 232, 233, 240, 241, 245-247 ; R. resents criticism, 239 ; importance of definitions, 244 ; adulteration and compe- tition, 245 ; justice rather than laissez faire, 247 ; and govern- ment, 248 ; R.'s claim for his theories, 248; wealth, 248, 249 ; R.'s axiom and Mill's, 249 j influence of Dickens, ii. 5. See also Social conditions. Emancipation Proclamation, R. on, i. 135. Emerson, R. W., J. J. Ruskin on, i. 21; Compensation, 160; letters to Carlyle, ii. 174, 175- Employment Committee (1868), i. 187-193. England, and Italian war, i. 80 ; art, 82 ; fifteenth century art, ii. no. Ethics of the Dust, i. 149. Etruscan art, ii. 89-92, 100, lOi ; racial survival, 89. Faido, R. at (1869), i. 224. Fesole, Badia of, ii. 95 ; construc- tion of wall, 187, 188; and Volterra, 194. Field, J. W., and R., ii. 135. Fielding, A. V. C, i. 11. Financial distress of 1867, i. 165. Florence, school of art, ii. 53; frescoes in Spanish Chapel, 85, 94, 98, loi, 102 ; Fioretti exemplified, 96 ; Giotto's fres- coes, 98, 10 1 ; symmetry of Baptistery, 181. Flowers, Alpine, ii. 178. See also Botany. Fors Clavigera, going on well, 11. 39, 41 ; mentioned, 42, 71, 87, 104, 105,111,113, 120, 121, 133 ; autobiographical, 65 ; sus- pended, 65 ; Norton's opinion of, 66, 68, 72, 88, 95 ; renewed, 203. Francis of Assisi, Saint, bio- graphy, ii. 96 ; modern exem- plification of Fioretti, 96. Franco-German War, R. on, ii. 12, 24. 232 INDEX Eraser's Magazine, R.'s economic essays, i. 128. Frederick the Great, Carlyle's life of, i. 1 50, ii. 24, 66 ; Norton on, 44 ; R. on, 47, 48. Frescoes at Assisi, ii. 74-85, 96- 98 ; at Florence, 85, 86, 94, 98, loi, 102; R. gives up copying, III. Froissart, R. on, i. 61. Froude, J. A., R. on his history, ii. 120; Carlyle, 176, 190, 216. Fuller, Mr., on Employment Committee, i. 192. Furnivall, F. J., and Working- men's College, i. 40. Geneva, R. at (1856), i. 6, 7 ; to brick-over the Rhone, ii. 178. Geology, R.'s interest in, i. no, 145, 1 52, 180, ii. 209 ; lecture on Savoy mountains, i. 140 ; gla- ciers, ii. 104, 189; R.'s work on, 117, 119. Giesbach, R. at (1869), i- 228; (1870), ii. II. Giotto, frescoes at Assisi, ii. 75, 79, 84; frescoes at Florence, 98, loi ; bas-reliefs on Tower, 106. Glaciers, R.'s work on, ii. 104, 189. Gneiss, R.'s drawing of block of, i. 62, 68. Gondolas, genuine, i. 32. Grammar of art, ii. 82. Greek culture, language, i. 119, 123; mythology, 146, 152, 155; Queen of the Air, 200, 205, 213 n., ii. 20 ; R.'s lectures on coins, 20, 25 ; R.'s interest in and understanding of, 20-23, 25-28, 73 ; lighting of temples, 158. Greenaway, Kate, and R., ii. 194, 202. Griffith, Mr., ii. 14. Gull, Sir William, ii. 175. Gunpowder, R. on, i. 77. Gurney, E. W., on R. in 1876, ii. 134. Happiness, an inward condition, i. 142. Harrison, Frederic, on R.'s mid- life, i. 93 ; on fortune left R. by his father, 167. Harrison, W. H., and R., i. 18, 202 ; on Coleridge's lectures, 20. Heraldry drawings, ii. 45. Heme Hill, R.'s first home, ii. 69. Hill, Mr., on Employment Com- mittee, i. 191. Hilliard, L. I., on R.'s health, ii. 171, 172 ; and R., 172 n. Holmes, O. W., R. on, i. 126; his 4th of July speech, 144; in England (1886), ii. 215. Homer, use of Kviffffrjev, ii. 15, 21, 22 ; Hymns, 23. Horace, R. on, i. 123 ; and Dante on death of Ulysses, 210; chance verse of, guides R., ii. 155- Hughes, Thomas, at Working- men's College, i- 40 ; his pre- face to Biglow Papers, 88. Humboldt, Alexander von, his letters to Agassiz, ii. 218. Hunt, Alfred, ii. 66. Hunt, William, and R., i. 102 ; INDEX 233 picture of a Greek sunset, ii. 22. Huxley, T. H., paper on a frog's soul, ii. 29. Hypcethral Question^ ii. 158. Illumination, St. Louis missal, i. 104 ; Hotirs of St. Louis ^ 186. Immortality, R. on, i. 163, 168, 170, 250-252. Insanity, limits of, ii. 13 ; and genius, 216. Irrigation, Italian, i. 235. Ischia, earthquake, ii. 200. Italy, Austrian war, i. 80, 81, 85 ; character of modern inhabit- ants, 156, 205, 214, ii. 103; social destruction of law, i. 225 ; plan to control drainage of northern, 216, 236. Jacopone, Fra, ii. 96. Jarves, J. J., i- 3- Jowett, Benjamin, his translation of Plato, ii. 139, 159. jfoy Forever^ A, i. 45. Kensington school, R.'s opposi- tion to, ii. 33. Keston, Norton at, i. 176, 195. King's Arms Inn, Lancaster, ii. 55- Kingsley, Mr., on Turner, ii. 14. Kingsley, Charles, and Work- ingmen's College, i. 40. La Touche, Miss Rose, and R., i. 93, 107, III, 116, 138; R. and her death, ii. 116, 120, 129, 132, 169. Laws of FisoUy ii. 128, 145, 150- 152. Leighton, Frederick, art, ii. 193. Lewis, J. F., i. II ; Inmate of the Harem, 63, 64. Liber Studiorum^ i. 1 65- 168, ii. 151- Liberty, R. on, i. 214, 219, 247, ii. 90, 100. Liddell, H. G., reference to Ho- meric Hymns, ii. 23. Light, and shade, ii. 82, motive power of, 131. Linnaeus, Carolus, on "econ- omy," i, 246, 247. Lippi, Filippo, art, ii. 8, 193. Literature, Lowell's poetry, i. 7, 59, 68, 74, 77, 88, 121 ; Cole- ridge's lectures, 20 ; Mrs. '^xov^xim^ s Aurora Leigh, 31 ; Froissart, 61 ; Aristophanes, 76; Mimoires de Joinville, 104 n ; Socrates, 117; Holmes's poetry, 126; Horace, 140, 210, ii. 145 ; Swinburne's Atalanta, 157 ; Emerson's Compensation^ 160; Longfellow's Dante, 169; Dante, 170, 210; R.'s early verses, 197-199; Byron, 215; Omar, 217 ; Sainte-Beuve, 239, ii. 12, 15; Old French, i. 242, 254, ii, 67 ; R.'s series of stand- ard, i. 264, 269; Chaucer, 264, 269 ; Dickens, ii. 9, Cervantes, 10, 16; Virgil, 15, 18-20; Homer, 15, 21-23; Lucretius, 25; Callimachus, 68; Memo- rabilia, 130 ; Froude's history, 120, London, R.'s bitter memory, ii. 50, Longfellow, H. W., references to,i, 151, 187, 188, 206; meeting in Paris, 178 ; in Verona, 206; translation of Dante, 169, ii. 18. 234 INDEX Lovers Meinie, ii. 170. Lowell, J. R., R. on, i. 7, 59, 68, 74, 77, 121, ii. 100 ; letter from R. (1859) on writing and Lowell's poetry, i. 86; R.'s friendship, 84, 89; Hughes's preface to Biglow Papers ^ 88 ; Dante y ii. 130. Lucca, R. at (1874), ii. 82; (1882), 179, 182; Etruscan art and Pisano's art, 89-91, 100 ; Etruscan type, 89 ; drive, 91. Lucretius, R. dislikes, ii. 25. Lugano, hotel balcony, i. 220 ; Luini's Crucifixion, 221, 222, 242 ; defilement of lake shore, 222. Luini, Bernadino, Crucifixion, i. 221, 222, 242 ; art, ii. 93, 198. Manchester Fine Arts Exhibi- tion (1857), R.'s lectures, i. 44. Manning, Archbishop, on Em- ployment Committee, i. 191. Mantegna, Andrea, art, ii. 10, II. Marmontel, J. F., Tales, i. 6 ; Memoirs, 256. Maurice, F. 0., and Working- men's College, i. 40. Memmi, Simon, frescoes, ii. 85, 86, 94, 98. Mimoires de Jean Sire de Join- ville, i. 104 n. Memorabilia, ii. 130. Metaphysical Society, dinner, ii. 29. Meurice's, dinner at, i. 170. Michael Angelo, Moses, Last Judgment, i. 27. Milan, art at, ii. 198. Mill, J. S., R.'s antagonism to economic theories of, i. 224, 228, 230, 232, 233, 240, 241, 245-247. Mineralogy, R.'s interest in, i. 76, 150, 159, 255, ii. 46, 201. Modern Painters, fourth volume, i. 79 ; last volume, 81, 87, 91, 92 ; revision, ii. 108; new edi- tion, 191, 206; R. on (1886), 213, 214. Montreux, i. 206. Moore, C. H., and R., ii. 135, 170; with R. in Venice, 140, 141, 144. Morgarten, traditions, i. 66. Mornex, R. at, i. 128-142. Mornings in Florence, planned, ii. 98-100 ; proof, 126. Morris, William, and Working- men's College, i. 41. Mount-Temple, Lady, ii. 36, 121. Munera Pulveris, i. 128 n., 136, 248, ii. 45. Munroe, Alexander, sculptor, i. 102. Music, R. takes lessons, i. 256 ; choral, ii. 86. Natural science, R. on, i. 117, 155, ii. 210. Nature, ugliness of America, i. 27-29 ; defacement of, 155, 222, 227, ii. 178, 183-185 ; evil, 33, 56, 115, 133, 184, 200, 220; R. loses faith in, 1 13. See also Alps. Neuchatel, R. at (i860), i. 97 ; modern church at castle, 206. Niagara, R. on destruction of, ii. 183-185. Norton, C. E., first meeting with R., i. 3, 4 ; second meeting, 5 ; INDEX 235 R.'s friendship, 7-9, 22, 24, 31, 83,99» 136, 154, 158, 186, 211, 225, 229, 240, ii. 44, 53, 66, 114, 124, 146, 151, 213, 217; J. j. Ruskin invites, to dinner, i. 10 ; acquires water-color by Turner, 24, 31 ; R.'s birthday greeting (1857), 55; and J. J. Ruskin, 65; R.'s promised portrait, 80, 89, 96, 97, 124, 126, 153, 154, 156, 159-162 i feeling and knowledge of art, 81 ; drawings by Rossetti, 90, 96, 124 ; Vita Nuova, 97, 170 ; R. on birth of his child, 142, 143 ; Portraits of Dante, 149 ; R.'s desire to see (1867), 171, 179; (1875)' ii- 124; (1886), 215 ; in England (1868), i. 175, 176; his children and R., 176, 180, 187, ii. 159; at Abbeville, i. 178, 186; R. cannot enter- tain, 179 ; criticism of R.'s work, 200, 201, 204, ii. 42, 108, 137, 138, 213, 214, 217; R. places matters in charge of, i. 202, 203, 205 ; practical coun- sel to R., 205, 210-213, 238; incapable of understanding R.'s state of mind, 209-211; foundation of America, 223; responsible for social degen- eracy, 223, 228, 245 ; and R.'s economic theories and soci- ology, 225, 229, 232, 239-241, 244,ii. 68, 78,81, 83, 119,128; and R. at Siena (1870),! ii. 3, 6, 223; on Virgil, 19 n.; know- ledge of mediaeval culture, 28 ; obtains art objects for R., 33, 34, 47 ; sends R. a Greek Fortune, 34, 35, 43; acquires Tintorets, 35; on Frederick the Great, 44 ; not an Ameri- can, 51, 72 ; article on Siena cathedral, 54, 55; and Fors Clavigera, 66, 68, 72, 88, 95 ; R.'s resistance of his advice, 68; R.'s drawing of himself for, 72-74 ; R. proposes joint expatriation and travel, 72, 124; longing for Europe, (1875), 114; R. acknowledges American blood in, 129; re- publicanism, 141 ; exhibition of R.'s drawings, 153, 154; R. on his bereavement, 157 ; Church-Building, 163; Vene- tian head for R., 164 ; in Eng- land {1883, 1884), 165; and Bible of Amiens, 167; Carlyle- Emerson Letters, 174, 175 ; on Froude's Carlyle, 175, 216; R.'s welcome (1883), 195, 196; (1884), 203; R. cannot meet, on Continent (1883), 197 ; on victory of material- ism, 208; R. asks return of drawings, 211; on Frceierita, 217,220-222; R.'s last words to, 222. Norton, Mrs. C. E., R.'s letters to (1868), i. 189-194. Oats, harvest, compared with vintage, i. 53. Old French, R. reads, i. 242, 254, ii. 67. Omar Khayyam, R. on. i. 217. Owen, Sir Richard, his definition of man, i. 1 56. Oxford, R.'s professorship at, i. 227 ; R.'s lectures, first course, 255-259 ; second course, ii. 20, 236 INDEX 22, 28, 30; (1872), 49, 53; (1874), 92, 93; (1875), 122; (1883), 191 ; (1884), 205; R.'s life at, 31, 49, 50; his art school, 31-34, 45 ; R. founds master- ship of drawing, 33, 34, 36; R. resigns, 148 ; R. reelected, 165. Painting, See Art. Paris, visit to, in 1868, i. 178; in July, 1870, ii. 12. Parthenon, R. sick of, ii. 114. Paul, Jean, i. 142. Penguins, R. finds comfort in, i. ICQ. Perugino, work in Sistine Chap- el, ii. 53 ; school of, 93. Philosophy, R. on modern, ii. 131 ; Sydney Smith's, 217. Pig rhyme, ii. 243-245. Pisa, R. at (1874), ii. 72 ; anoma- lies of cathedral architecture, 179, 186, 208. Pisano, Niccolo, art of, ii. 90. Pistoia, Etruscan art, ii. 89, loi. Plassan, A. E., Music Lesson, i. 63, 64 n. Plato, R.'s translation of the Laws of, ii. 139, 159. Pleasures of England, ii. 205. Poetry. See Literature. Political Economy of Art, i. 44. Pollajuolo, Antonio, art of, ii. 106. Poor, to be petted, i. 74. See also Social conditions. Posting, ii. 132. Prceterita, purpose and plan, ii, 210, 211; progress, 213, 220; character, 220-222 ; symbolic end, 222. Pre-Raphaelite Brethren, and R., i. 83 ; interested in Morte (T Arthur, 83. Proserpina, i. 254, 256, ii. 113, 119, 151, 152, 220. Purism, R. on, i. 106. Queen of the Air, planned, i. 200 ; publication, 205, 213 n.; mis- take in, ii. 20. Raphael Sanzio, his Transfigu- ration, i. 27. Ravenna, R.'s ignorance of, ii. 104. Readers, Coleridge's classifica- tion, i. 20 n. Religion, R.'s change in convic- tions, i. 49, 69-72, 92,97,106, III, 118; R. on God and im- mortality, 162, 168, 170, 250- 252, ii. 13; and art, 54, 55, 125; modern instance of Stigmata, 124; faith and modern phi- losophy, 131 ; R. and his old faith, 131, 133; R.'s views (1876), 143; (1881), 169. Republicanism, R. on modem, ii. 126. Restorations, R. on, i. 63, 81, 178, 182, 214, ii. 180. Reynolds, Sir Joshua, R.'s lec- tures on, ii. 122. Rhone valley, R.'s plan to re- deem, i. 204, 207, 208, 216. Richmond, George, ii. 202. Rigi railroad, R. on, i. 227. Rivers, English, i. 53, 54. Rogers' Italy, R. sends Norton a copy, i. 24. Roman de la Rose, R.'s copy, ii. 17- INDEX 237 Rome, R. on, i. 25-28; R. at (1874), ii. 7611. Rooke,T.M., drawing by, ii. 206. Rossetti, D. G., and Working- men's College, i. 41 ; portrait of R., 80, 89, 96, 97, 124, 126, 153; drawing for Norton, 90, 124 ; water-color of Dante and Beatrice, 96; art, 97, loi, 124; marriage, 112. Royal Academy, R.'s notes on, i. 30- Ruskin, John, life : eagerness to give pleasure, i. 4, 15, 23, 175, 176, 196; appearance and manner (1855), 5, 16 ; (1868), 175-178; (1876), ii. 134; (1883), 165 ; exalts merits of friends, i. 6; magnifies present inter- ests, 6, 177; Denmark Hill home, 10, II, ii. 68; and his parents, i. 12-14, 43, 94, 106, 125, 147, 148, 163, 176, 184, ii. 26, 48, 160; training and course of life, i. 12-14, 108, 183-185, 211, 241, ii. 17, 39, 48 ; charac- ter, i. 14-17, 49; friendless, 15, 79, 83; lack of knowledge of men or affairs, 16 ; incon- sistency, 16; generosity and self-indulgence, 16; cheerful rather than happy, 17; and W. H. Harrison, 18,202; un- reserve, 21 ; sweetness of na- ture, 22; distinguishing charac- teristics, 22 ; health (1857), 37 ; (1858), 65; (i860), 100, 105; (1861), 110-112, 115; {1862), 128-132; (1863), 139; (1866), 159-161 ; (1867), 164, 165 ; (i87o),258,ii. 3o;(i87i),37,f38, 46; (1872), 47; (1873). 58,67, 69; (1875), 109, 112, 117, 119, 123; (1877). 144, 145; (1878), 146-150,152; (1881), 164, 167- 169, 171,172; (1882), 173, 175; (1883), 189, 191, 192 ; (1885), 207, 208; (1886), 215-218; (1887) 220; movements (1857), i. 37 ; unspoiled, 44 ; nervous energy and overwork, 49, 65, 202, ii. 63, 64, 126, 147; fears to become Dryasdust, i. 66 ; tiresome interruptions, 66 ; in Alps, (1858), 66-68; (i860), 99; (1861), 122,126; (1862-3), 128, 133, 137, 140, 141, 144; (1869), 226-228, 231; (1874), ii. 102-104, 107; (1882), 176-178; in Turin (1858), i. 67 ; multi- farious wants, 75-78 ; depres- sion, (1859), 79; (i860), 106; (1861), 110-112; (1862), 128- 132; (1872), ii. 47; (1885), 207-209; (1886), 214; last trip to Continent with''parents, i. 79; friendship for Lowell, 84, 89; mid-life, 93; and Rose La Touche, 93, 107, III, 116, 138, ii. 116, 120, 129, 132; and Stillman, i. 98-101, 112; col- lapse (i860), 100; solitary life, 102, 123; without enthu- siasm in his work, 105, 107, 227, 229, ii. 70, 143; seeks rest (1861), i. 105, 113, 115, 117, 119; (1862), 123-125; things which had influenced him, 108 ; and visit to Amer- ica, 114, 116, 127 ; going to cultivate himself, 122; inten- tion to live abroad, 127 ; be- comes a Pagan, 132 ; sympa- thy, 147; inheritance, 147, 148 ; 238 INDEX effect of father's death, 148 ; and Pre-Raphaelite Brethren, 150; bewails his joyless con- dition, 154; without thoughts, 162 ; sulks, 162 ; on his future, 163, ii. 73, 78, 104, 105, 127; wretchedness and impatience of pain, i. 164; all but dead, 165; at Ambleside (1867), 166, 168; denies lost tone of mind, 168 ; at work, but nerve- less, 169 ; thoughtful kind- ness, 176, 195 ; restless and un- happy, 177 ; contrast of per- sonal intercourse and writings, 177, 230 ; lack of consecutive occupation, 178, ii. 63, 64; at Abbeville (1868), i. 178, 182- 188; and Longfellow, 178, 187, 188,206; plans unaccom- plished, 187, ii. 56, 65 ; thinks two hearts better than one, i. 193; meets Darwin, 195; breaks away from work, (1869), 202, 205, 213; on making his will, 205, 211, 238; everything a problem, 207 j mental influ- ence of pain, 209 ; serious matters on hand, 209 ; suffers from reticences, 213; opiate of work, 225, 260 ; exaction of his love, 225, 240 ; indifferent to posthumous reputation, 238, 241 ; sensitive to present criti- cisms, 238, ii. 62; desire for truth, i. 267 ; pain, indignation, and mental growth, 265, ii. 27 ; almost happy, 20 ; life at Oxford, 31, 49, 50; death of Annie, 32 ; business affairs, 36, 115, 162 ; purchases Brant- wood, 37 ; expectations of life at Brantwood, 38, 41, 51, 59, 70 ; mother's death, 44, 47 ; keeping accounts, 46 ; specta- cles, 47, 58, 69; profile, 47 ; sells Turner's Slaver ^ 48 ; unsocia- ble, 48 ; bitter memory of London, 50 ; first continental journey, 52 ; strength at fifty- four, 58 ; at fifty-seven, 137 ; at sixty-seven, 217; mental digestion, 67 ; physical indi- gestion, 67, 113, 117, 119; ex- cess of emotion, 63 ; brain fever, 64, 65, 146-150, 152, 164, 166, 167-169, 175, 192, 194,215-218; routine (1873), 67 ; at his first home, 69 ; chess with the automaton, 71, 72 ; denounces steam whistle, 87 ; portrait in Fors, 11 1 ; ac- knowledges wrong compan- ionship, 112 ; bust, 117 ; work more pleasing, 120; at Broad- lands, 121, 122 ; his life a thing of the past, 122, 132; intense practicality, 130, 133 ; posting, 132 ; more serene in spirit, 133 ; and C. H. Moore, 135, 140, 141, 170; and Mrs. Severn, 149, 166, 200, 210; idleness (1878), 150; on Whistler's suit, 152; builds a boat, 1 56 ; guides movements by chance verse in Horace, 155; lesson of illness forgot- ten, 164, 168, 170; life at Brantwood, 166 ; activity and fluctuating state of mind ( 1 88 1 ), 171 ; irritable about friends, 172, 173 ; travel (1882), 176; rowing, 194 ; old diaries, 199 ; great variety of occupations, INDEX 239 201 ; presents bells to Conis- ton School, 202 ; sees Tem- pest played by children, 202 ; private complainings, 204 ; ef- fect on, of change in the Alps, 200; writes letters though forbidden, 210 ; hopes to be his own master (i886), 212; meant for a lawyer, 218 ; on killing a viper, 219 ; last years, 222 ; shining life, 222. See also Norton, C. E., Re- ligion. Work and interests: toil and trials in Venice, i. 32-36; interest in Workingmen's Col- lege, i. 40 ; lectures at Man- chester {1857), 44 ; sketches buildings liable to restoration, 63, 178, 214; tires of the hills, 67, 68 ; declines to write for Atlantic^ 61, 87 ; geology, no, 145, 161, 180, ii. 117, 119, 120; Greek and Greek culture, i. 119, 123, 146, 152, 155, 200, ii. 20-23, 25-28, 73; lecture on Savoy mountains, i. 140 ; liter, ary activity (1865), 148; Se- same and Lilies^ 149, 254; Crown of Wild Olive ^ 149; mineralogy, 149, 255, ii. 46, 201 ; quietly busy (1865), i. 150, 152 ; natural history, 150, 152, ii. 210 ; botany, i. 159, 161, 254, 256, ii. 151, 152, 197; painting, i. 162 ; lost oppor- tunities concerning Turner, 166, 167, ii. 75; early verses, i. 196-199 ; plan to control Alpine drainage, 204, 207, 208, 216, 236; Old French, 242, 254, ii. 67 ; standard literature for young people, i. 254, 259; music lessons, 256 ; multifari- ous interests (1869), 253-256, 259; (187 1), ii. 45-47 ; copy of Roman de la RosCy 17 ; use of poetic allusions, 20 ; conscious of inaccuracies, 21 ; looks for the under thought, 22 ; his books ovelara, 23 ; at a Meta- physical Society dinner, 29 ; devotes money to economics, time to art, 35 ; revised works, 39; Fors Clavigera, 39, 41, 64, 68, 78, 88, 203 ; publications (1871), 40-42, 45 ; Lord Rector of St. Andrew's, 45 ; work on Scott, 66, 159, 161; work (1873), 69; best work, loi, 102 ; glacier lectures, 104; future work (1875), iioj arranges his old work, 119; publica- tions (1875), 121 ; contending convictions, 127 ; preface to Xenophon, 130 ; translation of Plato, 139, 159; work after his illness, 150-152, 168, 170; delayed work, 156; work (1879), 159; Sheffield mu- seum, 161, 163 ; work on the Alps, 195, 202; work (1884), 201-203 ; medallions of Brit- ish types, 202 ; work on clouds, 201 ; lectures on pleasures of England, 205 ; autobiography, 210, 211, 213, 220-222 ; works pirated in America, 212 ; work (1887), 219, 220. See also Architecture, Art, Drawing, Economics, Social conditions. Opinions : on Rome, i. 25- 28 ; on ugliness of America, 27-29 ; on gondolas, 32 ; on 240 INDEX moonlight, 39; on happiness in America, 50 ; on harvest of oats and vintage, 52 ; on English rivers, 53 ; on America, 57, 268, ii. 47, 51, 100, 170, 212 ; on Atlantic Monthly, i. 57 ; on England and the Ital- ian war, 80, 81, 85; questions progress and its direction, 84 ; on John Brown's raid, 91 ; on natural science, 117, 15 5 ; finds comfort in Socrates, 117; on Civil War, 120, 121, 130, 133- 136, 145, 146, 151, 153, 156, 158; on inwardness of happi- ness, 142; helpless bitterness against humanity, 143, 144; on modern destruction of nature and art, 155, 222, ii. 90, 136, 178, 181, 183-185 ; on Darwin, i. 181 ; on a sick Catholic friend, 193 ; ungentle world, 194 ; on " attempting " to inter- pret an inscription, 213; on strife of life, 218; on old and new fashions, 218; on travel- ling Americans, 218 ; on Ti- cino torrent, 226; on Rigi railroad, 227 ; on tourists, 228 ; pig rhyme and its moral, 233- 235 ; on cheapness and cheap books, 243 ; on liberty and justice, 247 ; on spiritual train- ing of children, 251-253 ; on death of Dickens, ii. 4; on Franco-German War, 12, 24; on limits of insanity, 13 ; on frivolous pugnacity of world, 30; on evil in nature, 33, 56, 113, 115, 133, 184, 200, 220; on women, 39 ; on Dresden, 42 ; on establishment of na- tionality, 100 ; on Eastern Italy, 104 ; on decrease of Al- pine snow and its moral, 107, 177 ; on lawlessness, T08; and Spiritualism, 128, 129, 133, 169 ; on work and faith in lies, 129; on past and present know- ledge, 130; on motive power of light, 131 ; on modern philoso- phy, 131 ; on European power of Italy, 155; on despondency, 157 ; on incitement of work for praise, 160 ; on children's read- ing, 160; on Carlyle's work, 167, 168 ; on Froude's Carlyle^ 176, 190, 216; on Carlyle-Em- erson letters, 189-191 ; on Car- lyle's whine, 190, 204 ; on retro- gression of species, 191 ; on work and eccentricities of great men, 194, 206; on distribution of British Museum treasures, 197 ; on Ischian earthquake, 200; on Carlyle's egotism, 209; on Sydney Smith's philosophy, 217 ; on Humboldt- Agassiz let- ters, 218. See also Architec- ture, Art, Drawing, Econo- mics, Literature, Religion, Social conditions. Ruskin, J. J., invites Norton to dinner, i. 10; appearance, 12; and his son, 13, 94, 106, 147; character, 17, 21, 147 ; his Nelson sherry, 19 ; on Cole- ridge's lectures, 20; on Em- erson, 21 ; to Norton (1858), on Turner's drawings and buy- ing pictures, 62-65 ; and Nor- ton, 65; urges completion of Modern Painters, 79 ; to Nor- ton (1861), son's health, 114; INDEX 241 death, 147 ; estate, 147 ; tomb and epitaph, 163 ; diaries, ii. SI- Ruskin, Mrs. J. J., appearance, character, i. 12, 43; and her son, 13, 43, 106, 176, ii. 26 ; faith, i. 125; health, 150, 161, 163, 179; decline, ii. 36, 38, 40, 41 ; death, 44, 47 ; inciter of R.'s work for praise, 160. St. Andrew's University, R. elected Lord Rector, ii. 45. St. Gothard tunnel, R. would choke, ii. 184. St. Louis, missal, i. 104, 203 ; Joinville's MimoireSy 104 n. ; Hours, 186. St. Martin's, inn, i. 7 ; R. at (i860), 99; in 1874, ii. 103, 104. Sainte-Beuve, C. A., R. on, i. 239, ii. 12, 15. Sallenche, in 1874, ii. 103 ; R., at (1882), 176. Schaffhausen, R. at (1859), i. 79. Science, lectures on art and, ii. 46. See also sciences by name. Scott, Sir Walter, R.'s work on, ii. 66, 159, 161. Sculpture. See Art. Severn, Mrs. Arthur (Joanna R. Agnew), and R., i. 211, ii. 3, 4, 149, 166, 208, 210. Sesame and Lilies, i. 149 ; new edition, 254. Shaw, Flora, at Brantwood, ii. 196. Sheffield, R.'s museum, ii. 161, 163. Sickle, graceful and metaphori- cal, i. 53. Siena, R. and Norton at (1870), ii. 3, 223 ; Pisano's pulpit, ii. 3, 13, 18 ; artistic fall of, 54, 55. Simon, Sir John, on R.'s illness (1878), ii. 146-148. Smith, R. B., Colonel, Italian Irrigation, i. 235 n. Smith, Sydney, philosophy of, ii. 217. Social conditions, beginning of R.'s interest in, i. 23, 40, 44 ; R.'s antagonism to modern, 51, 74, 79, 80, 93, 100, 116, 139, 142-144, 156, 205, 214, 225. ii. 63, 78, 80, 81, 83, 88, 95, 103, 119, 128, 183-185 ; present-life problems paramount, i. 118, ii. 118, 126, 138; Norton fears victory of materialism, 20S; R. sees increase of spiritual- ity, 209. See also Economics. Socrates comforts R., i. 117. Spiritualism, R.'s interest in, ii. 126, 128-130, 133, 169. Spring, R.'s early verses on, i. 198 ; beginning in Gothic times, ii. 46. Starlight, Alpine and Italian, ii. 103. Steam whistle distracts R., ii. 87. Stigmata, modern instance of, ii. 124. Stephen, Leslie, and R., ii. 135. Stillman, W. J., and R., i. 98-101, 112. Stones of Venice, gathering ma- terial for, i. 32-35 ; memo- randa, ii. 108; new edition, 137. Stowe, Harriet B., Mrs., at Dur- ham, i. 54. 242 INDEX Swinburne, A. C, Atalanta^ i. 157- Switzerland, unreliable tradi- tions, i. 66. See also Alps. Tempest, played by children for R., ii. 202. Thompson, H. G., i. 104 n. Thun, Lake, R. at, i. 83, 231. Ticino River, torrent, i. 226 ; drive up, 268. Tintoret, art, i. 72, 261, ii. 35, 39 ; Norton acquires works by, 35- Titian, art of, i. 72, 106; R. copies, 85; Strozzi picture, ii. 9. Tortoise of Egina, ii. 20. Trevelyan, Lady, death of, i. 159. Triumph of Maxim ilian, ii. 50. Turin, R. at (1858), i. 67 ; study and incident there work a great change in his artistic and reli- gious convictions, 67-73. Turner, J. M. W., works pos- sessed by R., i. 3, 4, 1 1 ; Nor- ton purchases water-color by, 24 ; '31 ; art, 24, 59-61, 168 ; R. .arranges his drawings, 30, 37. 52, 58-63; Liber Stu- diorum, 165-168, ii. 151 ; R.'s lost opportunities concerning, i. 166, 167, ii. 75 ; drawings for sale, i. 201 ; and Ticino torrent, 226 ; favorite quay, 232 ; treatment, ii. 14 ; R. sells Slaver, 48, 49 ; R. to sell Rialto, 52 ; proofs of Rivers, 72 ; and R.'s drawing, 75; his art not for America, 1 1 1 ; French biography, 201. Ulric, ii. 220. Ulysses, Horace and Dante on death of, i. 210. Unto this Last, i. 95, 103. Val £/'.<4^«i7, planned, ii. 54; Nor- ton's comments, 70; plate, 88 ; on Greek types, 89. Vasari, Giorgio, his correctness, ii. 54, 77, 102. Venice, gondolas, i. 32 ; R.'s toil and trials in, 32-35, sunset 35; city of marble and mud, 36; moonlight, 38, 39 ; school of painting, 73 ; R. at (1870), 259, 260; R. at (1876), 128-133; R.'s guide to, 133; R.'s drawing of arch of St. Mark's, 148, 202. Verona, R.*s enthusiasm for, i. 39; R. at (1869), 204; modern inhabitants, 205, 214 ; tomb at St. Anastasia cemetery, 211, 212 n. ; griffins on cathedral, 214 ; destruction of Theodo- ric's palace, 215. Veronese, Paolo, his Solomon and Queen of Sheba, i. 70, 72 ; depth and subtlety of his work, 72. Vevay, Norton at (1869), i, 204. Vinci, Leonardo da, temper of, i. 266; spelling of name, 266; art of, ii. 198. Vintage and harvest of oats, i. 54- Viper, R. on killing, ii. 219. Virgil, R. on first Georgic, i. 140, ii. 15; verses in iEneid viii. to be studied, 18-20; Bur- mann's edition of, 18 ; Norton on, 19 n. Valterra and Fesole, ii. 194. INDEX 243 Wales, R. in (1861), i. 120; R.'s early verses on, 197. Watson, Dr., i. 115. Westminster Abbey, R. on, ii. 114. Whistler, J. A. M., suit against R., ii. 152. Will, R. on making his, i. 205, 211, 238. Winter in Alps, i. 122, 126. Woman, R. on, ii. 39. Workingmen's College, pur- pose, i. 40 ; R.'s interest, 40. Wright, Chauncey, i. 1 10 n. Xenophon, R.'s preface to, ii. 130. Zita, Santa, R, plans a biography of, ii. 201. ElectrotyPed and printed dy H. O. Houghton «&* C#. Cambridge, Mass., U.S. A. GETTY CENTER LIBRARY