"My dear Wright,
I am very greatly obliged to you for letting me see these opals, quite unexampled, as you rightly say, from that locality—but from that locality I never buy—my kind is the opal formed in pores and cavities, throughout the mass of that compact brown jasper—this, which is merely a superficial crust of jelly on the surface of a nasty brown sandstone, I do not myself value in the least. I wish you could get at some of the geology of the two sorts, but I suppose everything is kept close by the diggers and the Jews at present.
"As for the cameos, the best of the two, 'supposed' (by whom?) to represent Isis, represents neither Egyptian nor Oxonian Isis, but only an ill-made French woman of the town bathing at Boulogne, and the other is only a 'Minerve' of the Halles, a petroleuse in a mob-cap, sulphur-fire colour.
"I don't depreciate what I want to buy, as you know well, but it is not safe to send me things in the set way 'supposed' to be this or that! If you ever get any more nice little cranes, or cockatoos, looking like what they're supposed to be meant for, they shall at least be returned with compliments.
"I send back the box by to-day's rail; put down all expenses to my account, as I am always amused and interested by a parcel from you.
"You needn't print this letter as an advertisement, unless you like!
Ever faithfully yours,
J. Ruskin."
Brantwood, 23rd May.