Rome, 43 Bocca di Leone: January 1, 1859.
My dear Mr. Ruskin,—There is an impulse upon me to write to you, and as it ought to have come long ago, I yield to it, and am glad that it comes on this first day of a new year to inaugurate the time. It may be a good omen for me. Who knows?
We received your letter at Florence and very much did it touch me—us, I should say—and then I would have written if you hadn't bade us wait for another letter, which has not come to this day. Shall I say one thing? The sadness of that letter struck me like the languor after victory, for you who have fought many good fights and never for a moment seemed to despond before, write this word and this. After treading the world down in various senses, you are tired. It is natural perhaps, but this evil will pass like other evils, and I wish you from my heart a good clear noble year, with plenty of work, and God consciously over all to give you satisfaction. What would this life be, dear Mr. Ruskin, if it had not eternal relations? For my part, if I did not believe so, I should lay my head down and die. Nothing would be worth doing, certainly. But I am what many people call a 'mystic,' and what I myself call a 'realist,' because I consider that every step of the foot or stroke of the pen here has some real connection with and result in the hereafter.
'This life's a dream, a fleeting show!' no indeed. That isn't my 'doxy.' I don't think that nothing is worth doing, but that everything is worth doing—everything good, of course—and that everything which does good for a moment does good for ever, in art as well as in morals. Not that I look for arbitrary punishment or reward (the last least, certainly. I would no more impute merit to the human than your Spurgeon would), but that I believe in a perpetual sequence, according to God's will, and in what has been called a 'correspondence' between the natural world and the spiritual.
Here I stop myself with a strong rein. It is fatal, dear Mr. Ruskin, to write letters on New Year's day. One can't help moralising; one falls on the metaphysical vein unaware.
Forgive me.
We are in Rome you see. We have been very happy and found rooms swimming all day in sunshine, when there is any sun, and yet not ruinously dear. I was able to go out on Christmas morning (a wonderful event for me) and hear the silver trumpets in St. Peter's. Well, it was very fine. I never once thought of the Scarlet Lady, nor of the Mortara case, nor anything to spoil the pleasure. Yes, and I enjoyed it both æsthetically and devotionally, putting my own words to the music. Was it wise, or wrong?
But we have had and are having some cold, some tramontana, and I have kept house ever since. Only in Rome there's always hope of a good warm scirocco. We talk of seeing Naples before we turn home to our Florence, to keep feast for Dante.