been published, and Mr. Harrison was able to set right from memory Collier's account of Coleridge's classification of readers.1

66 es

They both had been greatly interested in the lectures, and had found in them a general intellectual stimulus of a high order, as well as specific criticisms which they had learned to value as years went on. Ruskin thought Coleridge had been vastly overrated as a philosopher, and that his best poems were feverish. Another topic of the after-dinner talk was Emerson's English Traits, which was then a new book. All praised it. "How did he come to find out so much about us?" said the elder Mr. Ruskin, pecially as regards matters on which we keep quiet and reserved among ourselves." That was the voice of the generation to which Mr. Ruskin belonged. His son, speaking for himself and for his generation, would hardly have used the like terms. One of the great changes in England during the nineteenth century was the breaking down of many of the old style walls within which the shy Englishman was wont to entrench himself, and no English writer ever opened himself and his life to the public with more complete and indiscreet unreserve than Ruskin. His father would have been horrified could he in the days of which I am writing have foreseen the revelations of Fors and Præterita. They do, indeed, form a contrast which is both humorous and pathetic to the close reserves of Denmark Hill, and to the strict Anglican conventions, at their best so pleasant and so worthy of respect, in ac

1 Mr. Harrison was good enough to write down for me the next day what he had told at dinner, and since Collier's is the only known report of this course of lectures, Mr. Harrison's correction of it has perhaps interest enough to justify its preservation. "Coleridge gave four types of readers, one of which I have forgotten: 1st, Those whose minds are like an hour-glass; what they read runs in and runs out like the sand and not a grain is retained. 2nd, Those who are like sponges, which suck up everything

cordance to which life there was conducted.

The difference in age between Ruskin and myself (I was nine years the younger), no less than other greater differences between us, which might well have prevented our intercourse from becoming anything more than a passing acquaintance, seemed not to present themselves to Ruskin's mind. His kindness had its roots in the essential sweetness of his nature. Everything in life had conspired to spoil him. He was often willful and wayward and extravagant, but the better elements of his being prevailed over those which, to his harm, were to gain power when he was released from the controlling influence of his father's good sense and his mother's authority. The extraordinary keenness of his perceptions of external things, the vivacity of his intelligence, the ardor of his temperament, the immense variety of his interests and occupations, and the restless energy and industry with which he pursued them, made him one of the most interesting of men. And combined as they were with deep poetic and deeper moral sentiment, as well as with a native desire to give pleasure, they gave to intercourse with him a charm which increased as acquaintance grew into affectionate friendship. His mind was, indeed, at this time in a state of ferment. He was still mainly busy with those topics of art and nature to which his writings had hitherto been devoted. But his work in that field had led him into other regions of inquiry, which stretched wide and dark before him, through which no clear

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and give it out again in much the same state, but a little dirtied. 3rd," [Forgotten. According to Collier, "Strain bags who retain merely the dregs."] 4th, The readers who are like the slaves in the mines of Golconda, they cast aside the dirt and dross, and preserve only the jewels." Collier's plainly incorrect report of this fourth class is as follows: "Mogul diamonds, equally rare and valuable, who profit by what they read, and enable others to profit by it also."

[LONDON] 28th December, 1856. DEAR NORTON, Railways are good for letters, assuredly; it seems very wonderful, and is very pleasant, to hear from you in Rome only a week ago; for I got your letter yesterday, and should have had it the day before, but that I was staying in town for a few days. And I hope the enjoyment of that damp and discordant city; and that desolate and diseaseful Campagna, of which your letter assures me, may be received as a proof of your own improved health, and brightness of heart and imagination.

I think, perhaps, I abuse Rome more because it is as sour grapes to me. When I was there1 I was a sickly and very ignorant youth; and I should be very glad, now, if I could revisit what I passed in weariness or contempt; and I do envy you (sitting as I am just now in the Great Western hotel at Paddington, looking out upon a large number of panes of gray glass, some iron spikes, and a brick wall) that walk in sight of Sabine hills. Still, reasoning with myself in the severest way, and checking whatever malice against the things I have injured,

1 He was there in bad health in the winter of 1840-41. See Præterita, ii. ch. 2, for the account of his stay there.

or envy of you, there may be in the feelings with which I now think of Rome, these appear to me incontrovertible and accurate conclusions, that the streets are damp and mouldy where they are not burning; that the modern architecture is fit only to put on a Twelfth cake in sugar (e. g. the churches at the Quattro Fontane); that the old architecture consists chiefly of heaps of tufo and bricks; that the Tiber is muddy; that the Fountains are Fantastic; that the Castle of St. Angelo is too round; that the Capitol is too square; that St. Peter's is too big; that all the other churches are too little; that the Jews' quarter is uncomfortable; that the English quarter is unpicturesque; that Michael Angelo's Moses is a monster; that his Last Judgment is a mistake; that Raphael's Transfiguration is a failure; that the Apollo Belvidere is a public nuisance; that the bills are high; the malaria strong; the dissipation shameful; the bad company numerous; the Sirocco depressing; the Tramontana chilling; the Levante parching; the Ponente pelting; the ground unsafe; the politics perilous, and the religion pernicious. I do think, that in all candour and reflective charity, I may assert this much.

Still, I can quite understand how, coming from a fresh, pure and very ugly country like America, there may be a kind of thirst upon you for ruins and shadows which nothing can easily assuage; that after the scraped cleanliness and business and fussiness of it (America), mildew and mould may be meat and drink to you, and languor the best sort of life, and weeds a bewitchment (I mean the unnatural sort of weed that only grows on old bricks and mortar and out of cracks in mosaic; all the Campagna used to look to me as if its grass were grown over a floor); and the very sense of despair which there is about Rome must be helpful and balmy, after the over-hopefulness and getting-on-ness of America; and the very sense that no

body about you is taking account of any thing, but that all is going on into an unspelt, unsummed, undistinguished heap of helplessness, must be a relief to you, coming out of that atmosphere of Calculation. I can't otherwise account for your staying at Rome.

You may wonder at my impertinence in calling America an ugly country. But I have just been seeing a number of landscapes by an American painter of some repute; and the ugliness of them is Wonderful. I see that they are true studies, and that the ugliness of the country must be Unfathomable. And a young American lady has been drawing under my directions in Wales this summer, and when she came back I was entirely silenced and paralyzed by the sense of a sort of helplessness in her that I could n't get at; an entire want of perception of what an English painter would mean by beauty or interest in a subject; her eyes had been so accustomed to ugliness that she caught at it wherever she could find it, and in the midst of beautiful stony cottages and rugged rocks and wild foliage, would take this kind of thing for her main subject; or, if she had to draw a mountain pass, she would select this turn in the road,2 just where the liberally-minded proprietor had recently mended it and put a new plantation on the hill opposite.

1

which, for the present, has arrived at a turn in the Circumlocution road, much resembling in its promising aspect that delineated above, but which may nevertheless lead to something, and whether it does or not, I accept with too much pleasure the friendship you give me, not to tell you what is uppermost in my own mind and plans at the moment, even though it should come to nothing (and lest it should, as is too probable, don't speak of it to any one). Meantime I am writing some notes on the Turner pictures already exhibited, of which I shall carefully keep a copy for you; think they will amuse you, and I have got a copy of the first notes on the Academy, which you asked me for, and which I duly looked for, but could n't find to my much surprise; the copy I have got is second-hand. You have n't, of course, read Mrs. Browning's Aurora Leigh, or you would have spoken in your letter of nothing else. I only speak of it at the end of my letter, not to allow myself time to tell you anything about it except to get it; and to get it while you are still in Italy.

This will not reach you in time for the New Year, but it will, I hope, before Twelfth day; not too late to wish you all happiness and good leading by kindliest stars, in the year that is opening. My Father and Mother send their sincerest regards to you, and do not cease to congratulate me on having gained such a friend. Believe me,

Affectionately yours,

J. RUSKIN.

You never saw your vignette framed; it looks lovely.

After the winter in Rome I went to Venice, and there received the following letter:

8 Turner's water-color drawing of Scott's house, Castle Street, Edinburgh.

1

[Undated, but May, 1857.] DEAR NORTON,1- Very good it is of you to write to me again; and to think of me before the snowy mountains, in spite of my unsympathizing answer to your first letter, and my no answer to your second; which, nevertheless, I was grateful for. And so you are going to Venice, and this letter will, I hope, be read by you by the little square sliding pane of the gondola window. For I hope you hold to the true Gondola, with Black Felze, eschewing all French and English substitutions of pleasure-boat and awning. I have no doubt, one day, that the gondolas will be white instead of black, at the rate they carry on their reforms at Venice.

I went through so much hard-dry, mechanical toil there, that I quite lost, before I left it, the charm of the place. Analysis is an abominable business; I am quite sure that people who work out subjects thoroughly are disagreeable wretches. One only feels as one should when one does n't know much about the matter. If I could give you, for a few minutes, just as you are floating up the canal just now, the kind of feeling I had when I had just done my work, when Venice presented itself to me merely as so many "mouldings," and I had few associations with any building but those of more or less pain and puzzle and provocation. Pain of frost-bitten fingers and chilled throat as I examined or drew the window sills in the wintry air; puzzlement from said window-sills which did n't agree with the doorsteps back of house, which would n't agree with front; and provocation, from every sort of soul or thing in Venice at once; from my gondoliers, who were always wanting to go home, and thought it stupid to be tied to a post in the Grand Canal all day long, and disagreeable to have to row to Lido afterwards; from

or

1 The greater part of this letter was printed in my introduction to the Brantwood edition of the Stones of Venice, 1886.

my cook, who was always trying to catch lobsters on the doorsteps, and never caught any; from my valet de place, who was always taking me to see nothing; and waiting by appointment—at the wrong place; from my English servant, whom I caught smoking genteelly on St. Mark's Place, and expected to bring home to his mother quite an abandoned character; from my tame fish, who splashed the water all over my room, and spoiled my drawings; from my little sea-horses, who would n't coil their tails about sticks when I asked them; from a fisherman outside my window, who used to pound his crabs alive for bait every morning just when I wanted to study morning light on the Madonna della Salute; from the sacristans of all the churches, who used never to be at home when I wanted them; from the bells of all the churches, which used always to ring most when I was at work in the steeples; from the tides, which never were up, or down, at the hour they ought to have been; from the wind, which used to blow my sketches into the canal, and one day blew my gondolier after them; from the rain, which came through the roof of the Scuola di San Rocco; from the sun, which blistered Tintoret's Bacchus and Ariadne every afternoon, at the Ducal palace, - and from the Ducal palace itself, worst of all, which would n't be found out, nor tell me how it was built (I believe this sentence had a beginning somewhere, which wants an end some other where, but I have n't any end for it, so it must go as it is;) but apropos of fish, mind you get a fisherman to bring you two or three cavalli di mare, and put them in a basin in your room, and see them swim. But don't keep them more than a day, or they'll die; put them into the canal again.

There was only one place in Venice which I never lost the feeling of joy in; at least the pleasure which is better than joy; and that was just halfway between the end of the Giudecca and St. George

of the Seaweed at sunset. If you tie your boat to one of the posts there, you can see at once the Euganeans, where the sun goes down, and all the Alps, and Venice behind you by this rosy sunlight; there is no other spot so beautiful. Near the Armenian convent is however very good also; the city is handsomer, but the place is not so simple and lonely.

I have got all the right feeling back, now, however; and hope to write a word or two about Venice yet, when I have got the mouldings well out of my head and the mud; for the fact is, with reverence be it spoken, that whereas Rogers says, "there is a glorious city in the Sea," a truthful person must say, "There is a glorious city in the Mud." It is startling at first to say so, but it goes well enough with marble—“Oh Queen, of marble and of Mud."

Well, I suppose that you will look at my Venetian index in the Stones of Venice, which is in St. Mark's library, so that I need not tell you what pictures I should like you to see,· so now I will tell you a little about myself here. First, I am not quite sure I shall be at home at the middle of June - but I shall not be on the Continent. You will, of course, see the exhibition of Manchester, and if not at home, I shall be somewhere in the North, and my father and mother will certainly be at home and know where I am, in case we could plan a meeting. And I shall leave your vignette in my father's care. Secondly, you will be glad to hear that the National Gallery people have entrusted me to frame a hundred Turners at their expense in my own way; leaving it wholly in my hands. This has given me much thought, for had I done the thing at my own cost, I could have mended it afterward if it had gone wrong in any way; but now I must, if possible, get it all perfect at first, or the Trustees won't be pleased. It will all be done by the time you come. Third ly, I have been very well all the winter, and have not overworked in any way,

and I am angry with you for not saying how you are. Fourthly, my drawingschool goes on nicely, and the Marlborough House people are fraternizing with me. Fifthly, I have written a nice little book for beginners in drawing, which I intend to be mightily useful; and so that is all my news about myself, but I hope to tell you more, and hear a great deal more when you come.

My father and mother beg their sincere regards to you. Mine, if you please, to your mother and sisters when you write.

Please write me a line from Venice, if you are not, as I used to be, out so late in St. Mark's Place or on the lagoons, that you can't do anything when you come in. I used to be very fond of night rowings between Venice and Murano and then the crossing back through the town at midnight we used to come out always at the Bridge of Sighs, because I lived either at Danieli's or at a house nearly opposite the Church of the Salute.

Well, good-bye, I can't write more tonight, though I want to. Ever, my dear Norton, affectionately yours,

J. RUSKIN.

Monday morning. I was half asleep when I wrote that last page, or I would n't have said anything about night excursions, which are n't good for you. Go to bed. Moonlight's quite a mistake; it is nothing when you are used to it. The moon is really very like a silver salver, no, - more like a plated one half worn out and coppery at the edges. It is of no use to sit up to see that.

If you know Mr. Brown, please give him my kind love; and say I shall have written to him by the time you get this.

Mind you leave yourself time enough for Verona. People always give too little time to Verona; it is my dearest place in Italy. If you are vindictive, and want to take vengeance on me for despising Rome, write me a letter of