off, and away like a four-year old. And if you can get a
horse through that clay vale, why then you can get him 'mostwards';
leastwise so I find, for a black region it is, and if you ain't in the
same field with the hounds, you don't know whether you are in the same
parish, what with hedges, and trees, and woods, and all supernumerary
vegetations. Actually I was pounded in a 'taty-garden,' so awful is the
amount of green stuff in these parts. Come and see me, and take the old
mare out, and if you don't break her neck, she won't break yours.

JOHN RUSKIN (1819-1900)

The peculiar wilfulness--the unkind called it
wrong-headedness--which flecked and veined Mr. Ruskin's
genius, had, owing to his wealth and to his entire
indifference to any but his own opinion, opportunities of
displaying itself in all his work, public as well as
private, which are not common. Naturally, it showed itself
nowhere more than in letters, and perhaps not unnaturally he
often adopted the epistolary form in books which, had he
chosen, might as well have taken another--while he might
have chosen this in some which do not actually _call_
themselves "letters." There is, however, little difference,
except "fuller dress" of expression, between any of the
classes of his work, whether it range from the first volume
of _Modern Painters_ to _Verona_ in time, or from _The Seven
Lamps of Architecture_ to _Unto This Last_ in subject. If
anybody ever could "write beautifully about a broomstick" he
could: though perhaps it is a pity that he so often did. But
this faculty, and the entire absence of bashfulness which
accompanied it, are no doubt grand accommodations for
letter-writing; and the reader of Mr. Ruskin's letters gets
the benefit of both very often--of a curious study of high
character and great powers uncontrolled by logical
self-criticism almost always. The following--part of a still
longer letter which he addressed to the _Daily Telegraph_,
Sep. 11, 1865, on the eternal Servant Question--was of
course written for publication, but so, practically, was
everything that ever came from its author. It so happens too
that, putting aside his usual King Charles's Head of Demand
and Supply, there is little in it of his more mischievous
crotchets, nothing of the petulance (amounting occasionally