APPENDIX, 15 467

Ruskin’s father found his powers of admiration more easily sated, and seems to have acknowledged the arrival of the bulky treasures a little coldly:-

“You say,” rejoins his son (April 30), “that you suppose they are necessary. They are not necessary, only great helps and great possessions. Almost every time I look at these things, I get a new idea, but I don’t get a new idea every time I look at my own drawings. I have also spared myself a great deal of labour for the present, in making drawings, for which my eyes are all the better. A cast of a piece of detail is better than the best sketch, for information-though the sketch is usually more delightful.”

On arriving home Ruskin determined to share his “great possessions” with the general public, as indeed he had all along intended; he presented to the Architectural Museum (see above, p. lvii.) “forty-five specimens of Venetian Gothic cast from those in his possession.”]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]