INTRODUCTION xlv

been the first of the quarterly reviews to recognise Ruskin’s genius, and giving an appreciative summary of his new volume, thus continued:-

“We cannot conclude our notice of this remarkable volume without expressing our delight in the contemplation of one with all the allurements to idleness, and the profitless pleasures of fashionable life, which beset the path of a man in his known position, devoting his early and best energies to the illustration and advancement of art, and making all things subservient to the glory of God, dealing out his censures with severity, chiefly on those who have mistranslated the works of the Great Artificer.... In all societies, whether of literature, science, or art, we hear his name mentioned with respect, not only by those from whom he differs, but by those whose works he has condemned; and we have before us a letter from an artist of no mean mark, who writes to us in somewhat homely phrase, ‘He has blown me up; but he has spoken the truth, and I hope to profit by it: he is a glorious fellow!’”

Cultivated readers, themselves of eminence in letters, were of the same opinion. We have seen already how Mrs. Gaskell and Charlotte Brontë read the earlier volumes of Modern Painters together. In sending to her friend the first volume of The Stones of Venice, Charlotte Brontë wrote:-“I hope you will find passages in it that will please you. Some parts would be dry and technical were it not for the character, the marked individuality, which pervades every page.” To another correspondent she wrote:-

“The Stones of Venice seem nobly laid and chiselled. How grandly the quarry of vast marbles is disclosed! ... I shall bring with me The Stones of Venice; all the foundations of marble and of granite, together with the mighty quarry out of which they were hewn; and, into the bargain, a small assortment of crotchets and dicta-the private property of one John Ruskin, Esq.”¹

Miss Brontë’s admiration for Ruskin’s work was no doubt passed on to him by Mr. George Smith, the friend and publisher of both. But the encouragement that must have pleased him most was Carlyle’s:-

CHELSEA, March 9, 1851.

DEAR RUSKIN,-I did not know yesterday till your servant had gone that there was any note in the parcel; nor at all what a feat you had done! A

¹ The two letters are in Mrs. Gaskell’s Life of Charlotte Brontë, pocket ed., pp. 383, 368. The passage omitted in the second letter has already been given in Vol. III., p. xxxix.

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