That Ruskin was open to conviction and conversion could be shown from the difference in his tone of thought about poetry before and after this period; that he was the best of friends with the man who took him to task for narrowness, may be seen from the following letter, written on the next Christmas Eve:
"MY DEAR MR. RUSKIN,
"Your note having just arrived, Robert deputes me to write for him while he dresses to go out on an engagement. It is the evening. All the hours are wasted, since the morning, through our not being found at the Rue de Grenelle, but here—and our instinct of self-preservation or self-satisfaction insists on our not losing a moment more by our own fault.
"Thank you, thank you for sending us your book, and also for writing my husband's name in it. It will be the same thing as if you had written mine—except for the pleasure, as you say, which is greater so. How good and kind you are!
"And not well. That is worst. Surely you would be better if you had the summer in winter we have here. But I was to write only a word—Let it say how affectionately we regard you.
"ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING
"3, RUE DU COLYSÉE,
"Thursday Evening, 24th" (December, 1855).
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