A jewelled casket, every jewel of which was itself sacred. Not a slab of it, nor a shaft, but has been brought from the churches descendants of the great Seven of Asia, or from the Christian-Greek of Corinth, Crete, and Thrace, or the Christian-Israelite in Palestine—the central archivolt copied from that of the church of the Holy Sepulchre, and the opposing lions or phœnixes of its sculptures from the treasury of Atreus and the citadel of Tyre.

Thus, beyond all measure of value as a treasury of art, it is also, beyond all other volumes, venerable as a codex of religion. Just as the white foliage and birds on their golden ground are descendants, in direct line, from the ivory and gold of Phidias, so the Greek pictures and inscriptions, whether in mosaic or sculpture, throughout the building, record the unbroken unity of spiritual influence from the Father of light—or the races whose own poets had said “We also are his offspring”—down to the day when all their gods, not slain, but changed into new creatures, became the types to them of the mightier Christian spirits; and Perseus became St. George, and Mars St. Michael, and Athena the Madonna, and Zeus their revealed Father in Heaven.

In all the history of human mind, there is nothing so wonderful, nothing so eventful, as this spiritual change. So inextricably is it interwoven with the most divine, the most distant threads of human thought and effort, that while none of the thoughts of St. Paul or the visions of St. John, can be understood without our understanding first the imagery familiar to the Pagan worship of the Greeks; on the other hand, no understanding of the real purport of Greek religion can be securely reached without watching the translation of its myths into the message of Christianity.

Both by the natural temper of my mind, and by the labor of forty years given to this subject in its practical issues on the present state[154] of Christendom, I have become, in some measure, able both to show and to interpret these most precious sculptures; and my health has been so far given back to me that if I am at this moment aided, it will, so far as I can judge, be easily possible for me to complete the work so long in preparation. There will yet, I doubt not, be time to obtain perfect record of all that is to be destroyed. I have entirely honest and able draughtsmen at my command; my own resignation[155] of my Oxford Professorship has given me leisure; and all that I want from the antiquarian sympathy of England is so much instant help as may permit me, while yet in available vigor of body and mind, to get the records made under my own overseership, and registered for sufficient and true. The casts and drawings which I mean to have made will be preserved in a consistent series in my Museum at Sheffield, where I have freehold ground enough to build a perfectly lighted gallery for their reception. I have used the words “I want,” as if praying this thing for myself. It is not so. If only some other person could and would undertake all this, Heaven knows how gladly I would leave the task to him. But there is no one else at present able to do it: if not now by me, it can never be done more.—And so I leave it to the reader’s grace.

J. Ruskin.

All subscriptions to be sent to Mr. G. Allen, Sunnyside, Orpington, Kent.

POSTSCRIPT.[156]

By the kindness of the Society of Painters in Water-colors I am permitted this year, in view of the crisis of the fate of the façade of St. Mark’s, to place in the exhibition-room of the Society ten photographs, illustrative of its past and present state. I have already made use of them, both in my lectures at Oxford and in the parts of Fors Clavigera intended for Art-teaching at my Sheffield Museum; and all but the eighth are obtainable from my assistant, Mr. Ward (2 Church Terrace, Richmond), who is my general agent for photographs, either taken under my direction (as here, Nos. 4, 9, and 10), or specially chosen by me for purposes of Art Education. The series of views here shown are all perfectly taken, with great clearness, from the most important points, and give, consecutively, complete evidence respecting the façade.

They are arranged in the following order:

1.The Central Porch.—Arranged in one frame.
2.The Two Northern Porches.
3.The Two Southern Porches.
4.The Northern Portico.
5.The Southern Portico. Before restoration.
6.The West Front, in Perspective. Seen from the North.
7.The West Front, in Perspective. Seen from the South.
8.The South Side. Before restoration.
9.Detail of Central Archivolt.
10.The Cross of the Merchants of Venice.