We are getting on about the open spaces gradually, and, I think, surely; but there is no need to trouble anyone yet, till those we have in view are more definitely arranged about. It is a great joy to me that something will be done. Will you be interested I wonder, in the enclosed letter? My sister[[79]] wrote it for our pupils, past and present; but I was so delighted with it, that I took possession of it, and printed it for private circulation. Though it is only a week old, it is meeting with the warmest response, so that I fancy we shall have to let it become something larger and more public. I want our Clubs, Institutes, school-rooms, when we have our parties there, and the outsides of our churches and houses, to be brighter.
May 22nd, 1876.
From Ruskin.
What time, I wonder, will it take, before we fairly encounter the opposite tide, wave to wave—you with your steady gain—the Enemy with his steadier and swifter ruin? When is the limit to be put to the destruction of fields?[[80]]
Miranda Hill.
From a Photograph by Maull and Fox.
RUSKIN ON THE GROWING EVIL OF LONDON
June 8th, 1876.
From Ruskin.
My question, a very vital one, is, whether it really never enters your mind at all that all measures of amelioration in great cities, such as your sister’s paper pleads for, and as you rejoice in having effected, may in reality be only encouragements to the great Evil Doers in their daily accumulating Sin?