What! you taunt a man because he and his father have risen above the state in which they were born by use of the intellect God gives them? Fie! What sort of encouragement do you give to the working men to whom you address these letters, when you insinuate that one sprung from the people has no right to dwell in a hall or drive a carriage; and broadly hint he is no gentleman, no scholar, and has nothing to boast of but his money? Come here, and see if Ned G- is the sort of man you picture; see the refinement visible in his idea of art, and which he has tried to impress on others by his example, and then ask yourself whether you have done well to lend the sanction of your name to decry, as a mere vulgar parvenu, one who has done his best to keep a high standard before him.

"As to living at Heath Hall, I ask, Is it a crime to spend your money in preserving to posterity a beautiful specimen of the house of the smaller gentry in Queen Elizabeth's time, which you only enjoy during a few years' lease? A little longer neglect, and this fine old house would have become a ruin: when we took it, ivy grew inside, and owls made their nests in what are now guestchambers.

"No squire has lived here for a century and a quarter; and the last descendant of the venerated Lady B― (Dame Mary Bolles, that is), utterly refused to reside near so dull a town as Wakefield-preferring Bath, then at the height of its glory and Beau Nash's; even before his time the hereditary squires despised and deserted the lovely place, letting it to any who would take it. Now it is repaired and restored, and well worth a visit even from Mr. Ruskin-who, if he is what I believe him, will withdraw the false imputations which must cause pain to us and surprise to those who know us. That last little stroke about bribery betrays E. L.'s disgust, not at the successful man, but at the Blue Tory. Well! from envy, malice, and all uncharitableness, from evil-speaking and slandering: Good Lord deliver us!

(I make no comments on this letter till the relations of Dame Mary Bolles have had time to read it, and E. L. to reply.2)

*

16. (V.) The following account, with which I have pleasure in printing the accompanying acknowledgment of the receipt, contains particulars of the first actual expenditure of St. George's moneys made by me, to the extent of twenty-nine pounds ten shillings, for ten engravings now the property of the Company. The other prints named in the account are bought with my own money, to be given or not given as I think right. The last five engravings-all by Dürer-are bought at present for my proposed school at Sheffield, with the Melancholia, which I have already; but if finer impressions of them are some day given me, as is not unlikely, I should of course withdraw these, and substitute the better examplesretaining always the right of being myself the ultimate donor of the two

*The printseller3 obligingly giving an eleventh, "Pembury Mill,"-Fors thus directing that the first art gift bestowed on the Company shall be Turner's etching of a flour-mill.

1 [Ruskin refers to this charge against him "of sneering at people of no ancestry" in Letter 63, § 12 (below, p. 547).]

2 [For E. L.'s reply, see Letters 60, § 7, and 62, § 23 (pp. 468, 533).] 3 [Mr. Colnaghi: see below, p. 579.]

St. Georges, in their finest state, from my own collection. But these must at present remain in Oxford.

Solway Moss

Hind Head Hill

LONDON, October 5, 1875.

JOHN RUSKIN, Esq.

£ s. d.

St. G. 1

2

دو

Pembury Mill

Apollo and the Python, by Master of the Die1
Raglan Castle

Three impressions of Falls of the Clyde (£2 each)

Hindoo Worship

Dunblane Abbey

Etching of the Severn and Wye

10

11

12

13

The Arveron
Raglan Castle

Woman at the Tank

Grande Chartreuse

2 0 0

3 10

...

0

101 19 6

10 1 0

91 18 6

19

Pilate.
Caiaphas

18 0 0 310 0 700 2 0 0 3 0 0

£125 8 6

MY DEAR SIR,-It is delightful to do business with you. How I wish that all my customers were imbued with your principles. I enclose the receipt, with best thanks, and am

JOHN RUSKIN, ESQ.

Yours very sincerely and obliged.

1 [The "Master of the Die," an unknown artist, who flourished about 1532; so called because some of his prints are marked with a small cube, or die.]

2 [Of the eleven prints here noted as the property of "St. George," all but Nos. 7-11 are in the Museum at Sheffield. The Museum possesses a copy of No. 7, but it is not the one bought by Ruskin. One of the etchings in the second list (Nos. 3, 4) is in the Museum, as are Nos. 16-20.]

3

[That is, on the sum of £72 odd, the amount of the items "J. R., 1–15.”]

Of course, original accounts, with all other vouchers, will be kept with the Company's registers at Oxford. I do not think it expedient always to print names; which would look like advertisement.

17. Respecting the picture by Filippo Lippi,2 I find more difficulty than I expected. On inquiring of various dealers, I am asked three shillings each for these photographs. But as I on principle never use any artifice in dealing, most tradesmen think me a simpleton, and think it also their first duty, as men of business, to take all the advantage in their power of this my supposed simplicity; these photographs are therefore, I suppose, worth actually, unmounted, about a shilling each; and I believe that eventually, my own assistant, Mr. Ward, will be able to supply them, of good impression, carefully chosen, with due payment for his time and trouble, at eighteenpence each; or mounted, examined by me, and sealed with my seal, for two shillings and sixpence each. I don't promise this, because it depends upon whether the government at Florence will entertain my request, made officially as Slade Professor at Oxford, to have leave to photograph from the picture.3

At present holding it of more importance not to violate confidence* than to sell photographs cheap, I do not even publish what I have ascertained, since this note was half written, to be the (actual) trade price, and I must simply leave the thing in the beautiful complexity of competition and secretiveness called British Trade; only, at Oxford, I have so much personal influence with Mr. Davis, in Exeter Street, as may, I think, secure his obtaining the photographs, for which, as a dealer combined with other dealers, he must ask three shillings, of good quality; to him, therefore, at Oxford, for general business, my readers may address themselves; or in London, to Miss Bertolacci, 7, Edith Grove, Kensington; and, for impressions certified by me, to Mr. Ward, at Richmond (address as above), who will furnish them, unmounted, for two shillings each, and mounted, for three. And for a foundation of the domestic art-treasure of their establishment, I do not hold this to be an enormous or unjustifiable expense.

* Remember, however, that the publication of prime cost, and the absolute knowledge of all circumstances or causes of extra cost, are inviolable laws of established trade under the St. George's Company.

1 [That is, in Ruskin's rooms at Corpus: see Letter 55, § 7 (p. 377).] 2 [See above, p. 445.]

3 [Mr. Ward never heard of this request, or of its result. The copies of the photograph which he used to supply were obtained through the Berlin Photographic Company. The price was 2s. 6d. For some time copies (of this as of the other Lesson Photographs) were signed with Ruskin's autograph, to signify that he had passed the prints (see below, p. 605).]

4

[A most intelligent and cultivated printseller, well known to Oxford men of the 'seventies. By "Exeter Street" Ruskin means 66 The Turl," in which street Exeter College is situated.]

LETTER 60

STARS IN THE EAST1

1. I CANNOT finish the letter I meant for my Christmas Fors; and must print merely the begun fragment—and such uncrystalline termination must now happen to all my work, more or less (and more and more, rather than less), as it expands in range. As I stated in last letter, I have now seven books in the press at once-and any one of them enough to take up all the remainder of my life. Love's Meinie, for instance (Love's Many, or Serving Company'), was meant to become a study of British birds, which would have been occasionally useful in museums, carried out with a care in plume drawing which I learned in many a day's work from Albert Dürer; and with which, in such light as the days give me, I think it still my duty to do all I can towards completion of the six essays prepared for my Oxford schools: 5-but even the third of these, on the Chough, though already written and in type, is at pause because I can't get the engravings for it finished, and the rest-merely torment me in other work with the thousand things flitting in my mind, like sea-birds for which there are no sands to settle upon.

6

Ariadne is nearer its close; but the Appendix is a mass of loose notes which need a very sewing-machine' to bring

1 [See below, § 3.]

[See above, p. 447.]

3 [See above, p. 444.]

4 [See further on the word, Letter 28, § 14 (Vol. XXVII. p. 516).]

[It does not anywhere appear what the "six lectures' were to be. In the University Gazette Ruskin announced only three (Vol. XXV. p. 5)—namely, on the Robin, the Swallow, and the Chough. A fourth lecture (though never delivered as such) was on the Dabchicks. See Vol. XXV. pp. xxxi.-xxxii.]

6 [The six chapters of Ariadne had already been issued (the last in July 1875). The appendix, completing the book, was ultimately issued in September 1876; for the author's apology for the delay, see Vol. XXII. p. 463.]

7 [See above, p. 453.]

together and any one of these that I take in hand leads me into ashamed censorship of the imperfection of all I have been able to say about engraving; and then, if I take up my Bewick, or return to my old Turner vignettes, I put my Appendix off again-"till next month," and so on.

Proserpina will, I hope, take better and more harmonious form; but it grows under my hands, and needs most careful thought. For it claims nothing less than complete modification of existing botanical nomenclature, for popular use; and in connection with Deucalion and the recast Elements of Drawing, is meant to found a system of education in Natural History, the conception of which I have reached only by thirty years of labour, and the realization of which can only be many a year after I am at rest. And yet none of this work can be done but as a kind of play, irregularly, and as the humour comes upon me. For if I set myself at it gravely, there is too much to be dealt with; my mind gets fatigued in half-an-hour, and no good can be done; the only way in which any advance can be made is by keeping my mornings entirely quiet, and free of care, by opening of letters or newspapers; and then by letting myself follow any thread of thought or point of inquiry that chances to occur first, and writing as the thoughts come,-whatever their disorder; all their connection and cooperation being dependent on the real harmony of my purpose, and the consistency of the ascertainable facts, which are the only ones I teach; and I can no more, now, polish or neatly arrange my work than I can guide it. So this fragment must stand as it was written, and end,-because I have no time to say more.

COWLEY RECTORY, 27th October, 1875.

2. My Christmas letter this year, since we are now definitely begun with our schooling, may most fitly be on the

1 [Near Uxbridge, the home of the Rev. J. C. and Mrs. Hilliard, whose daughter Connie (now Mrs. Churchill) has already been named (see Vol. XXVII. p. 308 n.), and whose son, Laurence, was for some time Ruskin's secretary.]