and which was cruelly hurtful without knowing it; and terrible discoveries in the course of such investigation as I made into grounds of old faith were all concerned in this: and it would have been, but for the pain which I could not resolve to give my parents. . . .

You have also done me no little good ... and I don't think there's any chance now of my going all to pieces. . .

So there's a letter about myself and nothing else. I wonder I have the face to send it, but you know you asked me once to write you a sort of account of the things that made me, as you were pleased to say, "what I am," which is at present an entirely puzzled, helpless and disgusted old gentleman.

As for things that have influenced me, I believe hard work, love of justice and of beauty, good nature and great vanity, have done all of me that was worth doing. I've had my heart broken, ages ago, when I was a boy - then mended, cracked, beaten in, kicked about old corridors, and finally, I think, flattened fairly out. I've picked up what education I've got in an irregular way - and it's very little. I suppose that on the whole as little has been got into me and out of me as under any circumstances was probable; it is true, had my father made me his clerk I might have been in a fair way of becoming a respectable Political Economist in the manner of Ricardo or Mill - but granting liberty and power of travelling, and working as I chose, I suppose everything I've chosen to have been about as wrong as wrong could be. I ought not to have written a word; but should have merely waited on Turner as much as he would have let me, putting in writing every word that fell from him, and drawing hard. By this time, I ought to have been an accomplished draughtsman, a fair musician, and a thoroughly good scholar in art, literature, and in

1 "Knowing that you have in your body but a small bit of the earth which is vast, and a little of the water which is vast you think that you alone have by some good

...

do

good health besides. As it is, I've written a few second rate books, which nobody minds; I can't draw, I can't play nor sing, I can't ride, I walk worse and worse, I can't digest, and I can't help it there. Good-by, love to your Mother and Sisters,

Ever affectionately yours,
J. RUSKIN.

HOLYHEAD, 26 August, 1861. DEAR NORTON, Glad, and glad, and glad again have I been of your letters though I do not answer them, because if I did, it would make you sorry. This last, however, I must though but to say it is impossible for me to come to America. The one thing I need seems to be, for the present, rest; and the power of slowly following some branch of natural history or other peaceful knowledge; not that natural history is in one sense peaceful, but terrific: its abysses of life and pain; of diabolic ingenuity, merciless condemnation, irrevocable change, infinite scorn, endless advance, immeasurable scale of beings incomprehensible to each other, every one important in its own sight and a grain of dust in its Creator's

it makes me giddy and desolate beyond all speaking: but it is better than the effort and misery of work for anything human. It is of no use for me to talk or hear talking as yet. What can be said. for good, I have for the most part well heard and thought of no one much comforts me but Socrates. Is not this a glorious bit of antimaterialism, summing nearly all that can be said: :

Εἰδὼς ὅτι γῆς τε μικρὸν μέρος ἐν τῷ σώματι, πολλῆς οὔσης, ἔχεις, καὶ ὑγροῦ ẞpaxù, ToλλOû ŎνTOS, βραχὺ, πολλοῦ ὄντος, νοῦν δὲ μόνον ἄρα οὐδαμοῦ ὄντα σε εὐτυχῶς πως δοκεῖς συναρπάσαι; καὶ τάδε ὑπερμεγέθη καὶ πλῆθος ἄπειρα δι' ἀφροσύνην τινὰ οὕτως οἴει εὐτάκτως ἔχειν oe evráкTOS EXELV; (Memorabilium, i, 4.)

1

fortune seized for yourself intelligence which exists nowhere else? and that this immense and countless assemblage of things is maintained in order by something devoid of reason?"

compas

sionate. - I think I see how one ought to live, now, but my own life is lostgone by. I looked for another world, and find there is only this, and that is past for me: what message I have given is all wrong: has to be all re-said, in another way, and is, so said, almost too terrible to be serviceable. For the present I am dead-silent. Our preachers drive me mad with contempt if I ever read or listen to a word; our politicians, mad with indignation. I cannot speak to the first any more than I could to pantaloons in a bad pantomime, or to the last more than to lizards in a marsh. I am working at geology, at Greek -weakly patiently — caring for neither; trying to learn to write, and hold my pen properly reading comparative anatomy, and gathering molluscs, with disgust.

I have been staying at Boulogne nearly two months. I went out mackerel fishing, and saw the fish glitter and choke, and the sea foam by night. I learned to sail a French lugger, and a good pilot at last left me alone on deck at the helm in mid channel, with all sail set, and steady breeze. It felt rather grand; but in fact would have been a good deal grander if it had been nearer shore - but I am getting on, if I don't get too weak to hold a helm, for I can't digest anything I think. I tried Wales after that, but the moorland hills made me melancholy utterly. I've come on here to get some rougher sailing if I can then I'm going over to Ireland for a day or two. . . Then I'm going straight to Switzerland, for the fall of the leaf; and what next I don't know. There's enough of myself

for you. I'm so glad you think hopefully about the war. It interests me no more than a squabble between black and red ants. It does not matter whether people are free or not, as far as I can see, till when free they know how to choose a master. Write to me, please, poste restante, Interlachen, Switzerland. I'm hoping to find out something of the making of the Jungfrau, if the snows don't come too soon, and my poor 42-year-old feet still serve me a little. .

Ever your affectionate

J. RUSKIN.

DENMARK HILL, 6 January, '62. DEAR NORTON,- At home again at last, after six months' rest. I have two letters of yours unanswered.. But after six months of doing nothing I feel wholly incapable of ever doing anything any more, so I can't answer them. Only, so many thanks, for being nice and writing them. Thanks for Atlantic. Lowell is delicious in the bits. "The coppers ain't all tails,' and such like; but I can't make out how it bears on the business that's laziness too, I suppose. Also, for said business itself, I am too lazy to care anything about it, unless I hear there's some chance of you or Lowell or Emerson's being shot, in which case I should remonstrate. For the rest, if people want to fight, my opinion is that fighting will be good for them, and I suppose when they're tired, they'll stop. They've no Titians nor anything worth thinking about, to spoil — and the rest is all one to me.

I've been in Switzerland from the 20th September to day after Christmas. Got home on last day of year. It's quite absurd to go to Switzerland in the summer. Mid-November is the time. I've seen a good deal — but nothing ever to come near it. The long, low light, the float

I've been drawing-painting- a little; with some self-approval. I've tired of benevolence and eloquence and everything that's proper and I'm going to cultivate myself and nobody else, and see what will come of that. I'm beginning to learn a little Latin and Greek for the first time in my life, and find that Horace and I are quite of a mind about things in general. I never hurry nor worry, I don't speak to anybody about anything; if anybody talks to me, I go into the next room. I sometimes find the days very long and the nights longer; then I try to think it is at the worst better than being dead; and so long as I can keep clear of toothache, I think I shall do pretty well.

Now this is quite an abnormally long and studied epistle, for me, so mind you make the most of it and give my love to your Mother and Sisters, and believe

me

Ever affectionately yours,

J. RUSKIN.

DENMARK HILL, 28th April, 1862. DEAR NORTON, .... Where one's friends are, one's home ought to be, I know whenever they want us; but every day finds me, nevertheless, sickening more and more for perfect rest less and less able for change of scene or thought, least of all for any collision with the energies of such a country and race as yours. Nay, you will say, it would

1 It was to look for the first of the four essays, afterward collected in a volume under the title of Munera Pulveris, essays intended as a preface to an exhaustive treatise on Political Economy, which "I resolved," wrote Ruskin,

MORNEX, HAUTE SAVOIE,
28th August, 1862.

DEAR NORTON,- During the summer I was at Milan, trying to copy some frescoes of Luini's. I suppose it will be the last drawing work I shall ever try, for all my strength and heart is failing. All my work has been done hurriedly and with emotion, and now the reaction has come. I found myself utterly prostrated by the effort made at Milan-so gave in on my way hence, and have rented a house for a month on the slope of the Salève. I saunter about the rocks, and gather a bit of thistledown or chickweed

- break a crystal — read a line or two of Horace or Xenophon-and try to feel that life is worth having unsuccessfully enough for that. I have no power of resting- and I can't work without bringing on giddiness, pains in the teeth, and at last, loss of all power of thought. The

"to make the central work of my life." They were written in the autumn of 1861, partly at Milan, partly at the pretty village of Mornex on the southeastern slope of the Mont Salève, not far from Geneva.

doctors all sing "rest, rest." I sometimes wish I could see Medusa.

And you can't help me. Ever so much love can't help me - only time can, and patience. You say "does it give you no pleasure to have done people good?" No for all seems just as little to me as if I were dying (it is by no means certain I'm not) — and the vastness of the horror of this world's blindness and misery opens upon me as unto dying eyes the glimmering square (and I don't hear the birds).

As for your American war, I still say as I said at first, if they want to fight, they deserve to fight, and to suffer. It is entirely horrible and abominable, but nothing else would do. Do you remember Mrs. Browning's Curse of America? I said at the time "she had no business to curse any country but her own." But she, as it appeared afterwards, was dying

and knew better than I against whom her words were to be recorded. We have come in for a proper share of suffering but the strange thing is how many innocent suffer, while the guiltiest-Derby and d'Israeli, and such like are shooting grouse.

Ever your affectionate

what they want one to sacrifice to them for. I can't kill one of my beasts for any God of them all unless they'll come and dine with me, and I've such a bad cook that I'm afraid there's no chance of that.

I'm bitterly sorry to leave my father and mother, but my health was failing altogether and I had no choice.

I'm only in lodgings yet - seven miles north of Geneva, nearer the Alps; but I'm going to build myself a nest, high on the hills, where they are green. Meantime, I've a little garden with a spring in it, and a gray rough granite wall, and a vine or two, and then a dingle about 300 feet deep, and a sweet chestnut and pine wood opposite; and then Mont du Reposoir, and Mont Blanc, and the aiguilles of Chamouni, which I can see from my pillow, against the dawn. And behind me, the slope of the Salève, up 2000 feet. I can get to the top and be among the gentians any day after my morning reading and before four o'clock dinner. Then I've quiet sunset on the aiguilles, and a little dreaming by the fire, and so to sleep. Your horrid war troubles me sometimes the roar of it

seeming to clang in the blue sky. You poor mad things - what will become of you?

Send me a line just to say if you get this. After saying nothing so long, I want this to go quickly.

Ever affectionately yours,

J. RUSKIN.

MORNEX, 10th February, 1863. MY DEAR NORTON, Glad was I of your letter, for I had been anxious about you, fearing illness, or disturbance of your happiness by this war. It is a shame that you are so comfortable but I'm glad of it.

It is no use talking about your war. There is a religious phrensy on such of you as are good for anything, just as wild, foolish, and fearful as St. Dominic's and as obstinate as de Montfort's. Mahomet's was mild, Christian-like and

rational, in comparison. I have not, however, seen a single word, spoken or written, by any American since the war began, which would justify me in assuming that there was any such noble phrensy in the matter; but as Lowell and you are in it, I am obliged to own the nobility, and only wish I could put you both in straight waistcoats. The miserablest idiocy of the whole has been your mixing up a fight for dominion (the most insolent and tyrannical, and the worst conducted, in all history) with a soi disant fight for liberty. If you want the slaves to be free, let their masters go free first, in God's name. If they don't like to be governed by you, let them govern themselves. Then, treating them as a stranger state, if you like to say, "You shall let that black fellow go, or etc., as a brave boy would fight another for a fag at Eton-do so; but you know perfectly well no fight could be got up on those terms; and that this fight is partly for money, partly for vanity, partly (as those wretched Irish whom you have inveigled into it show) for wild anarchy and the Devil's cause and crown, every where. As for your precious proclamation

"A gift of that which is not to be given

As soon as I've got a house, I'll ask you to send me something American - a slave, perhaps. I've a great notion of a black boy in a green jacket and purple capin Paul Veronese's manner. As for concentrated wisdom, if I haven't enough to make me hold my tongue, I have n't enough to put on the end of it.

MORNEX, 10th March, 1863. MY DEAR-EST NORTON, I shall give you the dissyllable—henceforward. . . . Well, I will do as you say, and write a little word daily or other daily - for you. I shall like it for the loneliness is very great, if the peace in which I am at present - and the peace is as if I had buried myself in a tuft of grass on a battlefield wet with blood- - for the cry of the earth about me is in my ears continually if I do not lay my head to the very ground the folly and horror of humanity enlarge to my eyes daily. But I will not write you melancholy letters. I will tell you of what I do and think, that may give you pleasure. I should do myself no good and you, sometimes, perhaps harm, if I wrote what was in my heart or out of it. The surface thought and work I will tell you.

I wrote you a letter the other day you either have it by this time and are very angry with me for once, or have it not, and are forgiving me for supposed neglect of your kind last letter. . .

...

Do letters come pretty regularly in these pleasant times of yours? Ever affectionately and gratefully yours, J. RUSKIN. I'll get that book of Jean Paul's. I know well that happiness is in little things if anywhere but it is essentially within one, and being within, seems to fasten on little things. When I have been unhappy, I have heard an opera from end to end, and it seemed the shrieking of winds, when I am happy, a sparrow's chirp is delicious to me. But it is not the chirp that makes me happy, but I that make it sweet.