INTRODUCTION lxxxv

father any further; on the contrary, a month later, he found an occasion for a graceful reconciliation:-

“Sunday, 26th April [1852].-... À propos of cutting out, I found the other day by accident a bit of MS. of the letter which you would not let me send about the Pre-Raphaelites-the second to the Times, which I re-wrote at your request-cancelling the original draft of it. I am amazed to find how ill it now reads to myself, and how right you were in refusing to let it go, so that I am quite ready to trust in your disapproval of the others to the Times. Indeed I am very thankful already, since I saw Lord Derby’s appeal to the country, that the attack on the Ministry did not appear. It is rather painful to me, however, to find how unequal I am at times, and how little I can judge of what I write, as I write it. I have not any more notice, in any of your letters, of the last on education, which you seem at first to have been much pleased with. I liked that, myself; and some time or other I must re-cast it, in some way, for I want to have at our present system-I don’t know anything which seems to me so much to require mending.”

The Letters, then, were consigned to the shelf, but the views expressed in them remained and developed in Ruskin’s mind. Twelve years later they were embodied in his treatise entitled Unto this Last. For once his father’s judgment was in part at least at fault. So far as Ruskin stood for aristocracy against democracy in the machinery of government, his political edifice has, indeed, been submerged. But the principles of fiscal policy, of taxation, and of national education for which he argued in 1852 have stood, and have been gradually more and more adopted in this country, for fifty years-whatever fate the future may have in store for them. Whether they were indeed firm as Eddystone Lighthouse, the future will show; but the past has already vindicated them from the character of “Slum Buildings.”

In closing the Introduction to this volume of Miscellanies, written during the years 1847 to 1854, I may again remind the reader that they were by-works only; pieces thrown off in intervals of other work; excursions into fresh fields; reinforcements of conclusions elsewhere stated. During the same period, Ruskin wrote two of his great books-The Seven Lamps of Architecture and The Stones of Venice. The collection of these other scattered pieces into a single volume is well calculated to give a forcible impression of his many intellectual activities, and a vivid picture of his strenuous life.

[Version 0.04: March 2008]