INTRODUCTION xxix

with a few Turners on the walls, and a few roses in the garden, to be very happy near my father and mother, who will not, I think, after this absence of nearly a whole year, be able very soon to spare me again. So I must travel in Italy with you-who never lead me into any spot where I would not be; and when I am overwearied with the lurid gloom of the London atmosphere, will you still let me come sometimes to St. James’s Place, to see the sweet colours of the south? ...

“Ever, dear Mr. Rogers, most affectionately and respectfully yours,

“J. RUSKIN.”

The remarks made in the preceding volume on the manuscript and text apply also here (see Vol. X. pp. lxi., lxii.). The MS., which is in possession of Mr. George Allen, is written on some four or five hundred leaves of grey foolscap. Together with it are numerous loose sheets of additional matter, discarded drafts, etc. Some of this material has been used for footnotes to the text; other portions are printed as Appendix 11; and some, again, as supplementary notes to the text of volume iii., and of the Examples. A facsimile of part of an often-quoted passage is given between pp. 204 and 205. The greater part of the Venetian Index is not included among the Allen MSS. The MS. of the “Castel-Franco” chapter is in Mr. Wedderburn’s possession. It consists of fifteen folio pages; but the MS. of the extracts from Ruskin’s diary and from Modern Painters given in the chapter are in the hands of secretaries. There are also three sheets of a rough copy of §§ 1-2, and § 3, down to the words “denies the unexpected truth.”

The notes to the text added by the author in the “Travellers’ Edition” are distinguished by the date in square brackets, [1881]; that being the year in which the second volume of the “Travellers’ Edition” was published.

The illustrations in this volume comprise (1) twenty-eight Plates, being all that appeared in the original editions of The Stones of Venice, vol. iii., and of the Examples of the Architecture of Venice, together with (2) four now published as additional illustrations. The names of the first engravers appear on the plates, which are reproduced from the original ones.

Of the added illustrations, the frontispiece is a drawing of the Scuola di San Marco, one of the edifices which Ruskin selected for mention among the beautiful works of the Early Renaissance in Venice (see below, p. 21). The drawing, made in 1876, is in water-colour; it is at Brantwood.

[Version 0.04: March 2008]