certain, a sweet Venetian peasant, with her child, and fruit from the market-boats of Mestre. The Ecce Agnus, topsy-turvy on the finely perspectived scroll, may be deciphered by whoso list.

But the work itself is still sternly conscientious, severe, reverent, and faultless.

The fourth is an example of the highest reach of technical perfection yet reached in art; all effort and labour seeming to cease in the radiant peace and simplicity of consummated human power. But all belief in supernatural things, all hope of a future state, all effort to teach, and all desire to be taught, have passed away from the artist's mind. The Child and her Dog are to him equally real, equally royal, equally mortal. And the History of Art since it reached this phase-cannot be given in the present number of Fors Clavigera.

NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE

18. (I.) AFFAIRS of the Company.

No. 50. G. £10, 10s.

This is a subscription of five guineas for each year: this amount_completes that sum (with the £15, 15. which appeared at p. 65 February Fors1) for each of the five years.

19. The publication of the following letter, with its answer, will, I hope, not cause Mr. Tarrant any further displeasure. I have only in the outset to correct his statement that the payment of £10, 14s. 11d. was on my behalf. It is simply payment to another lawyer. And my first statement 2 was absolutely accurate; I never said Mr. Tarrant had himself taxed, but that he had been "employed in taxing"; I do not concern myself with more careful analysis, when the accounts are all in print. My accusation is against the "legal profession generally," not against a firm which I have chosen as an entirely trustworthy one, to be employed both in St. George's business and my own.

2, BOND COURT, WALBROOK, 25th April, 1876.

DEAR MR. RUSKIN,-I have the April Fors, in which I see you have published our account of costs against you, amounting to £47, 13s. 4d. The document was yours, and you had a perfect right to lay it before your readers, but you are the first client who has ever thought it necessary to put such a document of mine to such a use. I don't know, however, that it will do me any injury, although the statement preceding it is somewhat inaccurate, because our costs of the transfer of the Sheffield property were £26, 15s. 11d., which included a payment of £10, 14s. 11d. made on your behalf, leaving our costs at £16, 1s., the other portion of the £47, 13s. 4d. being costs relating to the constitution of the St. George's Company, leaving altogether £29, 14s. 11d. only payable to us beyond money paid on your account. It is hardly fair, therefore, to say that I employed myself in taxing the transfer of the property to nearly £50.

As to the charge for letters (the writing of which is really not brickmakers' work), you must bear in mind that the entire conduct of your matters had to be done by correspondence, for which you are fairly chargeable; and I cannot accuse myself of having written a single letter that was unnecessary.

As to the position of the St. George's Company, it is not a legal company, if by that you mean a company recognized by law: it has neither the advantages nor disadvantages of companies incorporated in accordance with the provisions of the

several Acts of Parliament relating to such matters. It is not a legal trust of a charitable nature, if by that term be meant a trust which is liable to the supervision or interference of the Charity Commissioners. It is a number of persons unincorporated, but associated for other purposes than that of gain. It is on a similar footing to such a society as that for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge. The Master will be personally responsible for the debts of the Company contracted by his order. If you desire to have a legal Company, or the supervision of the Charity Commissioners, you must give way in many points which you have hitherto considered indispensable to your scheme. On the 29th February last we sent you a specimen of the form in which we proposed to draw up the memorandum for each Companion to subscribe. If will return us this with any you remarks upon it which may occur to you, we will at once have it engrossed, and send it you to be signed by all the Companions.

We were expecting a call from you when you were in town some time since, and should have then discussed this subject with you, and also the subject of the trust deed which will have to be executed by the Master of the Company.

We will act upon your suggestion, and forward the deed of the Sheffield property to Mr. Bagshawe.1 Shall I also send all the title deeds to him relating to the property? Tell me this.

PROFESSOR RUSKIN,

ARTHUR SEVERN, ESQ., HERNE HILL, S. E.

(Answer.)

Faithfully yours,

W. P. TARRANT.

PATTERDALE, 6th May, 1876.

DEAR MR. TARRANT,-I was surprised and vexed by the opening of your letter of 25th April, showing that you had not in the least hitherto understood the scope or meaning of my present work. There is not the smallest unfriendliness in my publication of your account. No client ever had occasion to do it before, of course ;-you never had a client before engaged in steady and lifelong contest with the existing principles of the Law, the Church, and the Army,-had you? The publication of your accounts of course can do you no harm, if they are fair; nor have, or had I, the slightest idea of their being otherwise. All accounts for St. George are to be printed: the senders-in must look to the consequences.

The delay in my returning your draft of the rules of Company is because every lawyer I speak to tells me of a new difficulty. The whole piece of business, you remember, arose from my request to you simply to secure a piece of ground to our trustees, which had been given us by Mr. Baker. Now I find at the last moment that neither Mr. Baker nor anybody else can give us a piece of land at all, but must sell it us.

Next, I want to know if this form, as you have drawn it up, is approved by me, what are you going to do with it? What is the good of it? Will the writing of it in black letter make us a legal company, like a railway company, capable of holding land? Do the Charity Commissioners interfere with their business? or must we blow some people to bits or smash them into jelly, to prove our want of charity,-and get leave, therefore, to do what we like with our own?

1 [See Letter 80, § 12 (Vol. XXIX. p. 183).]