APPENDIX, 15 463

APPENDIX, 15

NOTE BY THE AUTHOR TO CHAPTER VIII. (“THE DUCAL PALACE”)

[In the “Travellers’ Edition,” volume i. (1879), the following addition to Chapter viii. was appended:-]

“NOTE

“I have printed the chapter on the Ducal Palace, quite one of the most important pieces of work done in my life, without alteration of its references to the plates of the first edition, because I hope both to republish some of those plates, and, together with them, a few permanent photographs (both from the sculpture of the Palace itself, and from my own drawings of its details), which may be purchased by the possessors of this smaller edition to bind with the book or not, as they please. This separate publication I can now soon get set in hand; and I believe it will cause much less confusion to leave for the present the references to the old plates untouched. The wood-blocks used for the first three figures in this chapter are the original ones; that of the Ducal Palace façade were drawn on the wood by my own hand, and cost me more trouble than it is worth, being merely given for division and proportion. The greater part of the first volume, omitted in this edition after ‘The Quarry,’ will be republished in the series of my reprinted works, with its original wood-blocks.

“But my mind is mainly set now on getting some worthy illustration of the St. Mark’s Mosaics, and of such remains of the old capitals (now for ever removed, in process of the Palace restoration, from their life in sea, wind, and sunlight, and their ancient duty to a museum-grave) as I have useful record of, drawn in their native light. The series, both of these and of the earlier mosaics, of which the sequence is sketched in the preceding volume, and further explained in the third number of St. Mark’s Rest, become to me every hour of my life more precious, both for their art and their meaning; and if any of my readers care to help me, in my old age, to fulfil my life’s work rightly, let them send what pence they can spare for these objects to my publisher, Mr. Allen, Sunnyside, Orpington, Kent.

“Since writing the first part of this note, I have received a letter from Mr. Burne Jones, assuring me of his earnest sympathy in its object, and giving me hope even of his superintendence of the drawings, which I have already desired to be undertaken. But I am no longer able to continue work of this kind at my own cost; and the fulfilment of my purpose must entirely depend on the money-help given me by my readers.”

[This note of 1879 touches upon four matters which require some explanation:-(1) Ruskin’s schemes for securing and publishing illustrations of details of St. Mark’s and the Ducal Palace; and in connection with these (2) the restoration of mosaics in St. Mark’s, (3) the restoration of the fabric of that building, and (4) the restoration of the Ducal Palace.

(1) Particulars under this head will be found in a later volume of this edition, containing an account of the Ruskin Museum at Sheffield, where are preserved the pictures, drawings, and casts which were executed for him in later years. The scheme

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