CONTENTS OF VOLUME I.
| PAGE | |
| [Author’s Preface] | [ix] |
| [Editor’s Preface] | [xviii] |
| [Chronological List of the Letters in Volume I] | [xviii] |
| [Letters on Art]: | |
| [I. Art Criticism and Art Education.] | |
| “Modern Painters;” a Reply. 1843 | [3] |
| Art Criticism. 1843 | [10] |
| The Arts as a Branch of Education. 1857 | [24] |
| Art-Teaching by Correspondence. 1860 | [32] |
| [II. Public Institutions and the National Gallery.] | |
| Danger to the National Gallery. 1847 | [37] |
| The National Gallery. 1852 | [45] |
| The British Museum. 1866 | [52] |
| On the Purchase of Pictures. 1880 | [55] |
| [III. Pre-raphaelitism.] | |
| The Pre-Raphaelite Brethren. 1851 (May 13) | [59] |
| The Pre-Raphaelite Brethren. 1851 (May 30) | [63] |
| “The Light of the World,” Holman Hunt. 1854 | [67] |
| “The Awakening Conscience,” Holman Hunt. 1854 | [71] |
| Pre-Raphaelitism in Liverpool. 1858 | [73] |
| Generalization and the Scotch Pre-Raphaelites. 1858 | [74] |
| [IV. Turner.] | |
| The Turner Bequest. 1856 | [81] |
| [Turner’s Sketch Book. 1858 | [86, note] |
| The Turner Bequest and the National Gallery. 1857 | [86] |
| The Turner Sketches and Drawings. 1858 | [88] |
| [The Liber Studiorum. 1858 | [97, note] |
| The Turner Gallery at Kensington. 1859 | [98] |
| Turner’s Drawings. 1876 (July 5) | [100] |
| Turner’s Drawings. 1876 (July 19) | [104] |
| Copies of Turner’s Drawings. 1876 | [105] |
| [Copies of Turner’s Drawings—Extract. 1857 | [105, note] |
| [Copy of Turner’s Fluelen | [ibid.] |
| “Turners,” False and True. 1871. | [106] |
| The Character of Turner. 1857. | [107] |
| [Thornbury’s Life of Turner. 1861. | [108] |
| [V. Pictures and Artists.] | |
| John Leech’s Outlines. 1872. | [111] |
| Ernest George’s Etchings. 1873. | [113] |
| The Frederick Walker Exhibition. 1876. | [116] |
| [VI. Architecture and Restoration.] | |
| Gothic Architecture and the Oxford Museum. 1858. | [125] |
| Gothic Architecture and the Oxford Museum. 1859. | [131] |
| The Castle Rock (Edinburgh). 1857 (Sept. 14) | [145] |
| Edinburgh Castle. 1857 (Sept. 27) | [147] |
| Castles and Kennels. 1871 (Dec. 22) | [151] |
| Verona v. Warwick. 1871 (Dec. 24) | [152] |
| Notre Dame de Paris. 1871 | [153] |
| Mr. Ruskin’s Influence—A Defence. 1872 (March 15) | [154] |
| Mr. Ruskin’s Influence—A Rejoinder. 1872 (March 21) | [156] |
| Modern Restorations. 1877 | [157] |
| Ribbesford Church. 1877 | [158] |
| Circular relating to St. Mark’s, Venice. 1879. | [159] |
| [Letters relating to St. Mark’s, Venice. 1879. | [169, note.] |
| [Letters on Science]: | |
| [I. Geological.] | |
| The Conformation of the Alps, 1864 | [173] |
| Concerning Glaciers. 1864. | [175] |
| English versus Alpine Geology. 1864 | [181] |
| Concerning Hydrostatics. 1864 | [185] |
| James David Forbes: His Real Greatness. 1874. | [187] |
| [II. Miscellaneous.] | |
| On Reflections in Water. 1844 | [191] |
| On the Reflection of Rainbows. 1861 | [201] |
| A Landslip Near Giagnano. 1841 | [202] |
| On the Gentian. 1857 | [204] |
| On the Study of Natural History (undated) | [204] |
AUTHOR’S PREFACE.
My good Editor insists that this book must have an Author’s Preface; and insists further that it shall not contain compliments to him on the editorship. I must leave, therefore, any readers who care for the book, and comprehend the trouble that has been spent on it, to pay him their own compliments, as the successive service of his notes may call for them: but my obedience to his order, not in itself easy to me, doubles the difficulty I have in doing what, nevertheless, I am resolved to do—pay, that is to say, several extremely fine compliments to myself, upon the quality of the text.
For of course I have read none of these letters since they were first printed: of half of them I had forgotten the contents, of some, the existence; all come fresh to me; and here in Rouen, where I thought nothing could possibly have kept me from drawing all I could of the remnants of the old town, I find myself, instead, lying in bed in the morning, reading these remnants of my old self—and that with much contentment and thankful applause.
For here are a series of letters ranging over a period of, broadly, forty years of my life; most of them written hastily, and all in hours snatched from heavier work: and in the entire mass of them there is not a word I wish to change, not a statement I have to retract, and, I believe, few pieces of advice, which the reader will not find it for his good to act upon.
With which brief preface I am, for my own part, content; but as it is one of an unusual tenor, and may be thought by some of my friends, and all my foes, more candid than graceful, I permit myself the apologetic egotism of enforcing one or two of the points in which I find these letters so well worth—their author’s—reading.
In the building of a large book, there are always places where an indulged diffuseness weakens the fancy, and prolonged strain subdues the energy: when we have time to say all we wish, we usually wish to say more than enough; and there are few subjects we can have the pride of exhausting, without wearying the listener. But all these letters were written with fully provoked zeal, under strict allowance of space and time: they contain the choicest and most needful things I could within narrow limits say, out of many contending to be said; expressed with deliberate precision; and recommended by the best art I had in illustration or emphasis. At the time of my life in which most of them were composed, I was fonder of metaphor, and more fertile in simile, than I am now; and I employed both with franker trust in the reader’s intelligence. Carefully chosen, they are always a powerful means of concentration; and I could then dismiss in six words, “thistledown without seeds, and bubbles without color,” forms of art on which I should now perhaps spend half a page of analytic vituperation; and represent, with a pleasant accuracy which my best methods of outline and exposition could now no more achieve, the entire system of modern plutocratic policy, under the luckily remembered image of the Arabian bridegroom, bewitched with his heels uppermost.