PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION 5

of error in the description of things which must be in many parts observed from a distance, or under unfavourable circumstances of light and shade; and of which many of the distinctive features have been worn away by time. I believe few people have any idea of the cost of truth in these things; of the expenditure of time necessary to make sure of the simplest facts, and of the strange way in which separate observations will sometimes falsify each other, incapable of reconcilement, owing to some imperceptible inadvertency. I am ashamed of the number of times in which I have had to say, in the following pages, “I am not sure,”¹ and I claim for them no authority, as if they were thoroughly sifted from error, even in what they more confidently state. Only, as far as my time, and strength, and mind served me, I have endeavoured, down to the smallest matters, to ascertain and speak the truth.

3. Nor was the subject without many and most discouraging difficulties, peculiar to itself. As far as my inquiries have extended, there is not a building in Venice, raised prior to the sixteenth century, which has not sustained essential change in one or more of its most important features. By far the greater number present examples of three or four different styles, it may be successive, it may be accidentally associated; and, in many instances, the restorations or additions have gradually replaced the entire structure of the ancient fabric, of which nothing but the name remains, together with a kind of identity, exhibited in the anomalous association of the modernised portions: the Will of the old building asserted through them all, stubbornly, though vainly, expressive; superseded by codicils, and falsified by misinterpretation; yet animating what would otherwise be a mere group of fantastic masque, as embarrassing to the antiquary as, to the mineralogist, the epigene² crystal, formed by materials of one

¹ [See, for instance, below, pp. 392, 401; but probably the reference is rather to the later volumes of the book. For Ruskin’s industry, and method of work, upon The Stones of Venice, see above, Introduction, pp. xxiv., xxv.]

² [This term, in the sense of “subsequent to birth” (as opposed to “congenital”), is applied in mineralogy to crystals wherein a chemical alteration has taken place subsequent to their formation.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]