If for no other reason, no artist worth sixpence in a day would live in Sheffield, nor would any one who cared for pictures—for a million a year.
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.
FOOTNOTES:
[118] This letter was written in answer to one addressed to Mr. Ruskin by Mr. W. Bragge, F.R.G.S., who, having read in "Fors Clavigera" of Mr. Ruskin's intention to found the St. George's Museum at Sheffield, wrote to inform him that another museum, in which his might be incorporated, was already in course of building. It was read by Mr. Bragge at a dinner which followed the opening of Western Park to the public on September 6, 1875.