INTRODUCTION xxv

illustrations small size,” Ruskin wrote to his father (January 16, 1852). “I think the better way with the large ones would be to withdraw them at once from the market and bear the present loss, and keep them in a heap, like Mr. Turner, till people would be thankful for them.” He did not thus withdraw them, and the copies were gradually disposed of-proving to original purchasers a good investment, as will be seen from the note of prices below, p. xxxiii. But the slow sale caused him to suspend the preparation of the further Parts which he had intended, and to which reference is frequently made in the text of The Stones. One additional illustration-of one of the archivolts of St. Mark’s-is here reproduced from an unfinished mezzotint by Thomas Lupton. This is given as Plate 16 of the Examples.

The reader who studies the three volumes of The Stones of Venice as here presented will be in a position to understand the amount of work which Ruskin threw into them. The work was done, as has been said already, with full zest;¹ but not without some disillusionment, so far as the picturesque side of Venice was concerned. We have seen this mood expressed already to Professor Norton-in a letter, however, of later date, and therefore reminiscent only. The same mood appears in a letter of the time, when Ruskin was actually at work in Venice, to Samuel Rogers. As this refers also to various topics touched upon in The Stones of Venice, it may fitly be introduced here, by way of conclusion to the introductions to that book. It is one of the letters with which Ruskin took particular pains. Writing to his father from Venice (May 24, 1852), he says: “I have been laying the foundations of a letter to Miss Mitford which I will enclose to you to-morrow, and then forthwith proceed with one for Mr. Rogers. I could not write to him before; I was in so prosaic a humour with Venice. But these letters take up all my spare time.” The letter to Rogers did not get itself dispatched, it will be seen, till a month later:²-

“VENICE, 23rd June [1852].

“DEAR MR. ROGERS,-What must you have thought of me, after your kind answer to my request to be permitted to write to you, when I never wrote? ... I was out of health and out of heart when I first

¹ See Vol. X. p. 26.

² The letter is reprinted as it stands (with the addition of the year) in Rogers and his Contemporaries, by P.W. Clayden, 1889, vol. ii. pp. 303-309. It was included in the privately-printed collection of Ruskiniana, 1890, Part i. pp. 6-9, being reprinted there from Igdrasil (the Journal of the Ruskin Reading Guild), vol. i. pp. 85-87.

[Version 0.04: March 2008]