FOOTNOTES:
[117] This letter was in answer to a request of the Sheffield Society of Artists similar to that replied to in the preceding letter.
[From "The Sheffield Daily Telegraph," September 7, 1875.]
ST. GEORGE'S MUSEUM.[118]
Brantwood, Coniston, Lancashire.
My dear Sir: I am obliged by your note, but the work of the St. George's Company is necessarily distinct from all other. My "museum" may be perhaps nothing but a two-windowed garret. But it will have in it nothing but what deserves respect in art or admiration in nature. A great museum in the present state of the public mind is simply an exhibition of the possible modes of doing wrong in art, and an accumulation of uselessly multiplied ugliness in misunderstood nature. Our own museum at Oxford is full of distorted skulls, and your Sheffield ironwork department will necessarily contain the most barbarous abortions that human rudeness has ever produced with human fingers. The capitals of the iron shafts in any railway station, for instance, are things to make a man wish—for shame of his species—that he had been born a dog or a bee.
Ever faithfully yours,
J. Ruskin.
P.S.—I have no doubt the geological department will be well done, and my poor little cabinets will enable your men to use it to better advantage, but would be entirely lost if united with it.