Letters of John Ruskin

II.

1857-1859.

IN the preface to the fifth and last volume of Modern Painters Ruskin gives a brief statement of " matters which had employed or interrupted ” him between 1855 and 1860. The great variety of these matters shows the extent of his intellectual interests, ranging from the Elements of Drawing to theories of Political Economy.

Through the autumn and winter of 1857-58 he was occupied in caring for and arranging the immense mass of the Turner drawings in the National Gallery. In May, 1858, exhausted by the hard labor, the exciting interest, and the heavy responsibility of this work, he went to Switzerland to rest, and to make studies in several of the old towns in order to illustrate some of Turner’s compositions.

In August he went on into Italy and stopped at Turin. Almost twenty years afterwards he wrote of his experience there : “I was still in the bonds of my old Evangelical faith, and, in 1858, it was with me Protestantism or nothing: the crisis of the whole turn of my thoughts being one Sunday morning, at Turin, when, from before Paul Veronese’s Queen of Sheba, and under a quite overwhelmed sense of his God - given power, I went away to a Waldensian chapel, where a little squeaking idiot was preaching to an audience of seventeen old women and three louts, that they were the only children of God in Turin; and that all the people in Turin outside the chapel, and all the people in the world out of sight of Monte Viso, would be damned. I came out of the chapel, in sum of twenty years of thought, a conclusively un - converted man. . . . Thus then it went with me till 1874, when I had lived sixteen full years with ‘ the religion of Humanity ’ for rough and strong and sure foundation of everything.” ¹

Ruskin returned to England to spend the winter of 1859 at home, very hard at work, which was by no means concentrated on Modern Painters. In the spring he went to Berlin, to Dresden, and to Munich, in order to study the Venetian pictures in the galleries of those cities. After his return home, he set himself to his task steadily, and with his accustomed industry, and in the spring of 1860, seventeen years after the publication of the first volume, the fifth and last volume of Modern Painters was completed and published. The following letters illustrate this period, which proved as time went on to have been practically the turningpoint of his life.²

PENRITH, CUMBERLAND, 24th September, ’57.
DEAR NORTON, — I was very thankful to know you had arrived safely, and without getting any blue put on your wings by that Atlantic, and I am trying to conceive you as very happy in the neighborhood of those rattlesnakes, bears, etc., though it seems to me much the sort of happiness (compared with ours at home here) that a poor little chimney-sweeper is enjoying below on the doorstep, to whom I have just imparted what consolation there is in sixpence for the untowardness of his fate, his mother having declared that if “ he didna get a job, he would stop oot all day.” You have plenty “ jobs,” of course, in your fine new country ; but you seem to me, nevertheless, “ stopping out all day.” I envy your power of enjoyment, however, and respect it, and, so far, understand it; for truly it must be a grand thing to be in a country that one has good hope of, and which is always improving, instead of, as I am, in the position of the wicked man in one of the old paraphrases my mother used to teach me : —
And yet, I should n’t say that, neither, for in all I am doing, or trying to do, I assume the infancy of my country, and look forward to a state of things which everybody mocks at, as ridiculous and unpopular, and which holds the same relation to our present condition that the said condition does to aboriginal Britonship. Still, one may look triumphantly to the advance of one’s country from its long clothes to its jacket, and yet grudge the loss of the pretty lace on the baby caps. Not, by the way, that baby caps ever should have any lace (vide, passim, my political economy). Truly, however, it does look like a sunset in the east, today ; and my baby may die of croup before it gets its jacket; but I know what kind of omen it is for your American art, — whatever else may flourish among the rattlesnakes, that the first studies of nature which I get sent me here by way of present are of Dead leaves, — studies of hectic red and “ flying gold of the ruined woodlands,” by a young lady. I have accepted them gratefully, but send her back word that she had better draw “ buds ” henceforward. I am just returning through Manchester to London to set to work on the Turner sketches, which are going finally to be entrusted to me, altogether; and a pretty piece of work I shall have of them ; pretty, I hope to make it at last, in the most literal sense.
We have had a wonderfully fine summer, and the harvest of oats in Scotland is quite as pretty as any vintage, prettier, I think, for a vintage is a great mess, and I always think it such a pity the grapes should be squeezed. Much more when it comes to dancing among the grapes with bare feet, — and other such arcana of Bacchanalian craft. Besides there is, so far as I know, no instrument employed on vines, either for pruning or cutting, half so graceful or metaphorical as the sickle. I don’t know what they used in Palestine for the clusters of the “ Vine of the earth,” but as far as I remember vintages, it is hand work. I have never seen a maize or rice harvest (have you ?), and, for the present, think there is nothing like oats ; — why I should continue to write it in that pedantic manner I know not; the Scotch word being “ aits ” and the English “ whuts ” — the h very mute, and the u full. It has been such fine weather, too, that all our little rivers are dried up. You never told me enough about what Americans feel when first they see one of our “ celebrated ” rivers ; Yarrow, or Tweed, or Teviot, or such like ; consisting, in all probability, of as much water as usually is obtained by a mischievous boy from the parish pump, circling round a small stone with a water wagtail on it.
I have not often been more surprised than I was by hearing of Mrs. Stowe at Durham. She had an introduction to the librarian, of course, and there are very notable manuscripts at Durham as you probably know ; and the librarian is very proud of them, and was much annoyed when Mrs. Stowe preferred “ going in a boat on the river.” This preference would have seemed, even to me, a great manuscript hunter, quite justifiable in a novelist; but it puzzled me to account for Mrs. Stowe’s conceding the title of “ River ” to the water at Durham, or conceiving the idea of its floating a boat, seeing that it must, in relation to an American river, bear much the aspect of a not very large town drain.
I shall write you again when I get some notion of my work for winter; I hope in time for the letter to get over the water by the 16th November; I have put it down 16th in my diary ; and yet in my memory it always seemed to me you said the 17th. I can’t make out why. I am very glad that you found all well. Present my sincerest regards to Mrs. Norton and your sisters. My father and mother unite in kind and grateful remembrances to yourself. Ever affectionately yours,
J. RUSKIN.

Copyright, 1904, by CHARLES ELIOT NORTON.

DENMARK HILL, 5th December, 1857.
DEAR NORTON, — I am now beginning to be seriously anxious lest you should not have got either of my letters — and if not, what you are thinking of me by this time I cannot guess — kindly and merciful as I know your judgment always is. I sent you one letter from Manchester, not a long one, but still a “ letter ; ” then a “ salutation ” rather than letter, posted as I thought very cleverly, so as to get over the water just in time for your birthday, about ten days afterwards. Just about then— No, it must have been later, perhaps five days after the 16th, I got your letter of the 30th October ; but I supposed at all events my birthday letter would have reached you and explained matters. My letters were directed Cambridge, near Boston. I knew nothing of Rhode Island or Newport,³ nor do I know more now, but this line must take its chance. I was delighted with the magazine⁴ and all that was in it — but I won’t write more just now, for I feel doubtful even of your Rhode Island address and in despair lest I should never catch you with a letter in that fearful American Wilderness, from which you will shoot barbed arrows at me, or poisoned ones of silence.
Ever affectionately yours,
J. RUSKIN.

I see you are to stay at Rhode Island some months, so I may risk a little bit more chat — not that I can chat at present, for my head and hands are full to choking and perpetual slipping through thoughts and fingers. I’ve got all the Turner sketches in the National Gallery to arrange, — 19,000: of these some 15,000 I had never seen before, and though most of them quite slight and to other people unintelligible, to me they are all intelligible and weary me by the quantity of their telling — hundreds of new questions beyond what they tell being suggested every hour. Besides this I have to plan frames — measure — mount — catalogue — all with single head and double hands only: and under the necessity of pleasing other people no less than of satisfying myself — and I’ve enough to do.⁵ (I did n’t know there was anything graphic on this side of the paper.⁶)
I’m very grateful for your faith in me through all this unhappy accident of silence.
Ever affectionately yours,
J. RUSKIN.

What a glorious thing of Lowell’s that is ⁷ — but it’s too bad to quiz Pallas, I can stand it about anybody but her.

[February 28, 1858.]
MY DEAR NORTON, — Your letter for my birthday and the two little volumes of Lowell reached me as nearly as possible together — the letter on the ninth of February ⁸ — so truly had you calculated. I know you will have any patience with me, so here is the last day of the month, and no thanks sent yet.
To show you a little what kind of state my mind is in, I have facsimiled for you as nearly as I could one of the 19,000 sketches. It, like most of them, is not a sketch, but a group of sketches, made on both sides of the leaf of the notebook. The size of the leaf is indicated by the red line,—on the opposite leaf of the note-paper is the sketch on the other side of the leaf in the original. The notebooks vary in contents from 60 to 90 leaves; there are about two hundred books of the kind (300 and odd, of notebooks in all), and each leaf has on an average this quantity of work, a great many leaves being slighter, some blank, but a great many also elaborate in the highest degree, some containing ten exquisite compositions on each side of the leaf — thus — each no bigger than this ⁹ — and with about that quantity of work in each — but every touch of it inestimable, done with his whole soul in it. Generally the slighter sketches are written over everywhere, as in the example enclosed, every incident being noted that was going on at the moment of the sketch. The legends on one side, you will see, “ Old wall, Mill, Wall, Road, Linen drying.” Another subject, scrawled through the big one afterwards, inscribed, “ Lauenstein [?].” The words under “ Children playing at a well ” I can’t read. The little thing in the sky of the one below is the machicolation of the tower.
Fancy all this coming upon me in an avalanche — all in the most fearful disorder — and you will understand that I really can hardly understand anything else, or think about anything else.
Thank you, however, at least for all that I can’t think about. Certainly I can’t write anything just now for the magazine. Thank you for your notice of my mistake about freno in Dante — I have no doubt of your being quite right. . . .
I’ve been reading Froissart lately, and certainly, if we ever advance as much from our own times as we have advanced from those of Edward III, we shall have a very pretty free country of it. Chivalry, in Froissart, really seems to consist chiefly in burning of towns and murdering women and children.
Well— no more at present— from — as our English clowns say at the ends of their letters. I assure you this is a longer letter than I’ve written to anybody this four months. Sincerest regards to your mother and sisters.
Ever affectionately yours,
J. RUSKIN.

FROM JOHN JAMES RUSKIN.
LONDON, 31 May, 1858.
MY DEAR SIR, — Being authorized to open Letters addressed to my Son Mr. J. Ruskin during his absence (a privilege not always accorded to Fathers), I have had the pleasure of perusing your Letter of 17 May, and a part of it requiring immediate reply will account for my intruding my Correspondence upon you.
I beg of you to detain the Drawing of the Block of Gneiss, being quite certain my son would so wish. He will tell you himself when he wants it — your Letter will go to him to-morrow, at Lucerne.
He has spent seven months, nearly, in reducing to something of Order a Chaos of 19,000 Drawings and Sketches by Turner, now National property — getting mounted or framed a few hundred of such Drawings as he considered might be useful or interesting to young Artists or the public. These are at Marlborough House, and he is gone to make his own Sketches of any Buildings about the Rhine or Switzerland or north of Italy in danger of falling or of being restored. His seven-month work, though a work of Love, was still work, and though sorry to have him away I was glad to get him away to fields and pastures new. It may be the end of October before he returns D. V. to London. I conclude you have seen his Notes on Exhibitions or I would send one. The public seem to take more interest in the Pictures as Artists take more pains — It is long since I have bought a Picture (my Son going sufficiently deep into the Luxury), but I was tempted by 3 Small ones at the first glance, — Plassan’s Music Lesson, French Exhn.; Lewis’s Inmate of the Harem, Rl. Academy; Lewis’s Lilies & Roses, Constantinople, Rl. Ac’y. I did not tell my Son I had bought the first till his Notes were printed — not that it could bias him, but it might have cramped his Critique. When his Notes were out I told him the picture was his, and I was glad he had spoken, say written, so well of it.¹⁰ As the Times calls the Inmate of the Harem a Masterpiece of Masterpieces, and the Spectator stiles it a marvelous Gem, it is a pretty safe purchase. I had it at home before the public saw it.
I forward to my Son your Photograph of the Giorgione, and I cut out and send Stillman’s Lecture, as the present Post Master of France, Nap’n 3rd, is not to be trusted with a newspaper. You are fortunate in possessing a picture of Gainsborough — neither spot nor blot of him ever appear for sale here.
If I have used a freedom in my mode of addressing you at the commencement of this Letter, you have yourself occasioned it. In the too few visits you made to us here you almost endeared yourself to Mrs. Ruskin and me as you had already done to my Son. We beg to offer our united Regards and best wishes for your Health.
I am, my dear Sir,
Yours very truly,
JOHN JAMES RUSKIN.
CHAS. E. NORTON, Esqr.
Will you present our Kind Remembrances to your Mother and Sisters. I send a copy of Notes to make sure.

DENMARK HILL, 24th October, ’58.
DEAR NORTON, — At last I begin to write letters again. I have been tired, ill, almost, and much out of heart during the summer; not fit to write to you, perhaps chiefly owing to the reaction from the intense excitement of the Turner work; partly because at 39 one begins to feel a life of sensation rather too much for one. I believe I want either to take up mathematics for a couple of years, or to go into my father’s counting house and sell sherry for the same time — for otherwise, there seems to me a chance of my getting into perfect Dryasdust. I actually found the top of St. Gothard “ dull ” this year. Besides this feeling of weariness, I have more tiresome interruption than I can bear ; questions — begging for opinions on pictures, etc. — all which I must put a stop to, but don’t yet see my way clearly to the desired result: —the upshot of the matter being that I am getting every day more cold and sulky — and dislike writing letters even to my best friends; I merely send this because I want to know how you are.
I went away to Switzerland this year the moment Academy was over ; and examined with a view to history Habsburg, Zug, Morgarten, Grutli, Altorf, Bürglen, and Bellinzona — sketching a little; but generally disgusted by finding all traditions about buildings and places untraceable to any good foundation; the field of Morgarten excepted, which is clear enough. Tell’s birthplace, Bürglen, is very beautiful. But somehow, I tired of the hills for the first time in my life, and went away — where do you think ? — to Turin, where I studied Paul Veronese in the morning and went to the opera at night for six weeks. And I’ve found out a good deal, — more than I can put in a letter, — in that six weeks, the main thing in the way of discovery being that painting — to be a first-rate painter — you must n’t be pious; but a little wicked, and entirely a man of the world. I had been inclining to this opinion for some years ; but I clinched it at Turin.
Then from Turin I came nearly straight home, walking over the Cenis, and paying a forenoon visit to my friends at Chamouni, walking over the Forclaz to them from St. Gervais and back by the road — and I think I enjoyed that day as if it had been a concentrated month : — but yet — the mountains are not what they were to me. A curious mathematical question keeps whispering itself to me every now and then, Why is ground at an angle of 40, anything better than ground at an angle of 30 — or of 20 — or of 10 — or of nothing at all ? It is but ground, after all.
Apropos of St. Gervais and St. Martin’s— you may keep that block of gneiss altogether if you like it; I wish the trees had been either in the sky, or out of it.
Please a line to say how you are. Kindest regards to your Mother and Sisters. My Father and mother are well and beg kindest regards to you.
I have written your initials and mine in the two volumes of Lowell (how delightful the new prefaces to the Fable). He does me more good in my dull fits than anybody, and makes me hopeful again. What a beautiful face he has.
Ever affectionately yours,
J. RUSKIN.

29th November [1858].
DEAR NORTON, — I’m so intensely obliged to you for your letter and consolations about Paolo Veronese and Titian and Turner and Correggio and Tintoretto. Paolo and Titian are much deeper however than you know yet, immensely deeper than I had the least idea of till this last summer. Paolo’s as full of mischief as an egg ’s full of meat—always up to some dodge or other — just like Tintoretto. In his Solomon receiving Queen of Sheba, one of the golden lions of the Throne is put into full light, and a falconer underneath holds a white falcon, as white as snow, just under the lion, so as to carry Solomon on the lion and eagle, — and one of the elders has got a jewel in his hand with which he is pointing to Solomon, of the form of a Cross; the Queen’s fainting — but her Dog is n’t, — a little King Charles Spaniel, about seven inches high, — thinks it shocking his mistress should faint, stands in front of her on all his four legs apart, snarling at Solomon with all his might — Solomon all but drops his sceptre stooping forward eagerly to get the Queen helped up — such a beautiful fellow, all crisped golden short hair over his head and the fine Arabian arched brow — and I believe after all you ’ll find the subtlest and grandest expression going is hidden under the gold and purple of those vagabonds of Venetians.¹¹ Yes, I should have been the better of you — a good deal. I can get on splendidly by myself if I can work or walk all day long — but I could n’t work, and got low because I could n’t.
I can’t write more to-day — but I thought you’d like this better than nothing.
I’m better now, a little, but doubtful and puzzled about many things. Lowell does me more good than anybody, what between encouraging me and making me laugh. Mr. Knott¹² makes me laugh more than anything I know in the world — the punning is so rapid and rich, there’s nothing near it but Hood, and Hood is so awful under his fun that one never can laugh.
Questi poveri — what are we to do with them ? You don’t mean to ask me that seriously? Make pets of them to be sure — they were sent to be our dolls, like the little girls’ wax ones — only we can’t pet them until we get good floggings for some people, as well.
Always yours affectionately,
J. RUSKIN.

DENMARK HILL, 28th December, 1858.
DEAR NORTON, — I am sadly afraid you have not got my answer to your kind letter written on your birthday. The answer was short — but instant — and you must rightly have thought me unfeeling when you received none — it is doubly kind of you to send me this poem of Lowell’s and your good wishes. Indeed, I rather want good wishes just now, for I am tormented by what I cannot get said, nor done. I want to get all the Titians, Tintorets, Paul Veroneses, Turners, and Sir Joshuas in the world — into one great fireproof Gothic gallery of marble and serpentine. I want to get them all perfectly engraved. I want to go and draw all the subjects of Turner’s 19,000 sketches in Switzer-

land and Italy, elaborated by myself. I want to get everybody a dinner who has n’t got one. I want to macadamize some new roads to Heaven with broken fools’-heads; I want to hang up some knaves out of the way, not that I’ve any dislike to them, but I think it would be wholesome for them, and for other people, and that they would make good crow’s meat. I want to play all day long and arrange my cabinet of minerals with new white wool; I want somebody to amuse me when I’m tired; I want Turner’s pictures not to fade; I want to be able to draw clouds, and to understand how they go — and I can’t make them stand still, nor understand them — they all go sideways, πλаγιаι (what a fellow that Aristophanes was ! and yet to be always in the wrong in the main, except in his love for Æschylus and the country. Did ever a worthy man do so much mischief on the face of the Earth ?) Farther, I want to make the Italians industrious, the Americans quiet, the Swiss romantic, the Roman Catholics rational, and the English Parliament honest — and I can’t do anything and don’t understand what I was born for. I get melancholy — overeat myself, oversleep myself — get pains in the back — don’t know what to do in anywise. What with that infernal invention of steam, and gunpowder, I think the fools may be a puff or barrel or two too many for us. Nevertheless, the gunpowder has been doing some work in China and India. Meantime, thank you for Lowell. It is very beautiful, but not, I think, up to his work. Don’t let him turn out any but perfect work (except in fun). I don’t quite understand this — where is “ Godminster ” ? How many hostile forms of prayer are in the bells of the place that woke him — or where was it? “Ointment from her eyes ” is fine, read in the temper it was written in ; but the first touch of it on the ear is disagreeable — too much of “ Eyesalve ” in the notion. I’ve ordered all I’ve been writing lately to be sent to you in a parcel.
Thank you always for what you send me.
Our sincerest regards to you all.
Ever affectionately yours,
J. RUSKIN.

P. S. I want also to give lectures in all the manufacturing towns, and to write an essay on poetry, and to teach some masters of schools to draw ; and I want to be perfectly quiet and undisturbed and not to think, and to draw, myself, all day long, till I can draw better; and I want to make a dear High Church friend of mine sit under Mr. Spurgeon.

SCFTAFFHAUSEN, 31st July, ’59.
MY DEAR NORTON, — I have been too unwell or sick at heart lately to write to my friends — but I don’t think there’s another of them who has been so good as you, and believed still in my affection for them. As I grow older, the evil about us takes more definite and overwhelming form in my eyes, and I have no one near me to help me or soothe me, so that I am obliged often to give up thinking and take to walking and drawing in a desperate way, as mechanical opiates, but I can’t write letters. My hand is very shaky to-day (as I was up at three to watch the dawn on the spray of the fall, and it is hot now and I am tired), — but I must write you a word or two. The dastardly conduct of England in this Italian war has affected me quite unspeakably — even to entire despair — so that I do not care to write any more or do anything more that does not bear directly on poor people’s bellies — to fill starved people’s bellies is the only thing a man can do in this generation, I begin to perceive.
It has not been my fault that the Rossetti portrait was not done. I told him, whenever he was ready, I could come. But when I go now, I will see to it myself and have it done. I broke my promise to you about sending books — there was always one lost or to be got or something — and it was put off and off. Well, I hope if they’d been anybody else’s books, or if I really had thought that my books would do you any good, I’d not have put it off. But you feel all I want people to feel, and know as much as anybody need know about art, and you don’t want my books. Nevertheless, when the last volume of M. P. comes out, I ’ll have ’em all bound and sent to you. I am at work upon it, in a careless, listless way — but it won’t be the worse for the different tempers it will be written in. There will be little or no bombast in it, I hope, and some deeper truths than I knew — even a year ago.
The Italian campaign, with its broken faith, has, as I said, put the top to all my ill humor, but the bottom of it depends on my own business. I see so clearly the entire impossibility of any salvation for art among the modern European public. Nearly every old building in Europe, France and Germany is now destroyed by restoration, and the pictures are fast following. The Correggios of Dresden are mere wrecks ; the modern Germans (chiefly at Munich) are in, without exception, the most vile development of human arrogance and ignorance I have ever seen or read of. I have no words to speak about them in. The English are making progress — which in about fifty years might possibly lead to something — but as yet they know nothing and can know nothing, and long before they gain any sense Europe is likely to be as bare of art as America. You have hope in beginning again. I don’t see any way to it clearly.
I want to be as sure as I can of a letter reaching you just now. I shall send this with my London packet to-day, and the next sheet with the next packet next week, so as to have two chances. My health is well enough. I draw a great deal, thinking I may do more good by copying and engraving things that are passing away.
Sincere regards to your Mother and Sisters. Ever, dear Norton,
Affectionately and gratefully yours,
J. RUSKIN.

THUN, 15th August [1859].
DEAR NORTON, — Scrap No. 2 is long in coming — if it had n’t been for the steamers here, which keep putting me in mind, morning and evening, of the steamer on lake of Geneva,¹³ I don’t know when it would have come. It’s very odd I don’t keep writing to you continually, for you are almost the only friend I have left. I mean the only friend who understands or feels with me. I’ve a good many radical half friends, but I ’m not a radical and they quarrel with me — by the way, so do you a little — about my governing schemes. Then all my Tory friends think me worse than Robespierre. Rossetti and the P R B ¹⁴ are all gone crazy about the Morte d’Arthur. I don’t believe in Evangelicalism — and my Evangelical (once) friends now look upon me with as much horror as on one of the possessed Gennesaret pigs. Nor do I believe in the Pope — and some Roman Catholic friends, who had great hopes of me, think I ought to be burned. Domestically, I am supposed worse than Blue Beard; Artistically, I am considered a mere packet of quibs and crackers. I rather count upon Lowell as a friend, though I’ve never seen him. He and the Brownings and you. Four — well — it’s a good deal to have — of such, and I won’t grumble — but then you ’re in America, and no good to me — except that I ’m in a perfect state of gnawing remorse about not writing to you, and the Brownings are in Italy, and I ’m as alone as a stone on a high glacier, dropped the wrong way — instead of among the moraine. Some day, when I’ve quite made up my mind what to fight for, or whom to fight, I shall do well enough, if I live, but I have n’t made up my mind what to fight for — whether, for instance, people ought to live in Swiss cottages and sit on threelegged or one - legged stools ; whether people ought to dress well or ill; whether ladies ought to tie their hair in beautiful knots ; whether Commerce or Business of any kind be an invention of the Devil or not; whether Art is a Crime or only an Absurdity ; whether Clergymen ought to be multiplied, or exterminated by arsenic, like rats ; whether in general we are getting on, and if so where we are going to ; whether it is worth while to ascertain any of these things ; whether one’s tongue was ever made to talk with or only to taste with. (Send to Mr. Knott’s house and get me some raps if you can.)
Meantime, I’m copying Titian as well as I can, that being the only work I see my way to at all clearly, and if I can ever succeed in painting a bit of flesh, or a coil of hair, I ’ll begin thinking “ what next.” I ’ll send you another scrap soon. I’m a little happier to-day than I’ve been for some time at the steady look and set of Tuscany and Modena. It looks like grey of dawn, don’t it ? Sincerest regards to your Mother and Sisters.
Ever affectionately yours,
J. RUSKIN.

DENMARK HILL, 10th December, 1859.
MY DEAR NORTON, — The first thing I did when I got home was to go to Rossetti to see about the portrait. I found him deep in work — but, which was worse, I found your commission was not for a little drawing like Browning’s, but for a grand finished, delicate oil—which R. spoke quite coolly of taking three or four weeks about, wanting I don’t know how many sittings. I had to go into the country for a fortnight, and have been ill since I came back with cold and such like, and I don’t like the looks of myself — however, I’m going to see R. about it again immediately;¹⁵ but I’m now worried about another matter. The drawing he has done for you is, I think, almost the worst thing he has ever done, and will not only bitterly disappoint you, but put an end to all chance of R’s reputation ever beginning in America. Under which circumstances, the only thing to be done, it seems to me, is to send you the said drawing indeed, but with it I will send one he did for me, which at all events has some of his power in it. I am not sure what it will be, for I don’t quite like some bits in the largest I have, and in the best I have the color is changing — he having by an unlucky accident used red lead for vermilion. So I shall try and change the largest with him for a more perfect small one, and send whatever it is for a New Year’s token. I shall put a little pencil sketch of R’s in with it — the Virgin Mary in the house of St. John — not much — yet a Thing — such as none but R. could do.
I have your kind letter with Lowell’s — both quite aboundingly helpful to me. Please take charge of enclosed answer to Lowell.
I am finishing 5th vol.,¹⁶ and find it is only to be done at all by working at it to the exclusion of everything else. But — that way — I heartily trust in getting it done in spring and having my hands and soul so far free.
I had heard nothing of that terrible slave affair,¹⁷ till your letter came. I can understand the effect it may have — but here in Europe many and many a martyrdom must come before we shall overthrow our slavery.
I hope to write you another line with drawings — meantime love and all good wishes for your Christmas time, and with sincerest regards to your Mother and Sisters,
Ever affectionately yours,
J. RUSKIN.<BR/> Charles Eliot Norton.

(To be continued.)