[65] I need not say that this inquiry can only be pursued by the help of those who will take it up good-humoredly and graciously: such help I will receive in the spirit in which it is given; entering into no controversy, but questioning further where there is doubt: gathering all I can into focus, and passing silently by what seems at last irreconcilable.
[66] This essay, Chapter II. in the Art Journal, is here omitted as having been already reprinted with only a few verbal alterations in The Queen of the Air, §§ 135 to 142 inclusive, which see. The Art Journal, however, contained a final paragraph, introductory of Chapter III., which is omitted in The Queen of the Air, and was as follows:—"To the discernment of this law" (i.e., that to which the arts are subject, see Queen of the Air, § 142) "we will now address ourselves slowly, beginning with the consideration of little things, and of easily definable virtues. And since Patience is the pioneer of all the others, I shall endeavor in the next paper to show how that modest virtue has been either held of no account, or else set to vilest work in our modern Art-schools; and what harm has resulted from such disdain, or such employment of her."—Ed.
[67] A small portion of this chapter was read by Mr. Ruskin, at Oxford, in November 1884, as a by-lecture, during the delivery of the course on the "Pleasures of England."—Ed.
[68] The rest of this and the whole of the succeeding paragraph is also reprinted in Ariadne Florentina, § 115, and para. i. of 116.—Ed.
[69] Art Journal, vol. iv., pp. 129-30. May 1865.—Ed.
[70] I have received some interesting private letters, but cannot make use of them at present, because they enter into general discussion instead of answering the specific question I asked, respecting the power of the black line; and I must observe to correspondents that in future their letters should be addressed to the Editor of this Journal, not to me; as I do not wish to incur the responsibility of selection.
[71] Art Journal, vol. iv., pp. 177-8. June 1865.—Ed.
[72] Wórnum's "Epochs of Painting." I have continual occasion to quarrel with my friend on these matters of critical question; but I have deep respect for his earnest and patient research, and we remain friends—on the condition that I am to learn much from him, and he (though it may be questionable whose fault that is) nothing from me.
[73] Prov. xx, 27.
[74] As I was preparing these sheets for press, I chanced on a passage in a novel of Champfleury's, in which one young student is encouraging another in his contest with these and other such evils;—the evils are in this passage accepted as necessities; the inevitable deadliness of the element is not seen, as it can hardly be except by those who live out of it. The encouragement, on such view, is good and right; the connection of the young etcher's power with his poverty is curiously illustrative of the statements in the text, and the whole passage, though long, is well worth such space as it will ask here, in our small print.