a half-page
here and there _could_ be submitted to general readers--_could_, with
any decency, much less delicacy.

But no, her 'judgment' was not 'unerring.' She was too intensely
sympathetical not to err often, and in fact it was singular (or seemed
so) what faces struck her as most beautiful, and what books as most
excellent. If she loved a person, it was enough. She made mistakes one
couldn't help smiling at, till one grew serious to adore her for it. And
yet when she read a book, provided it wasn't written by a friend, edited
by a friend, lent by a friend, or associated with a friend, her judgment
could be fine and discriminating on most subjects, especially upon
subjects connected with life and society and manners. Shall I confess?
She never taught _me_ anything but a very limited admiration of Miss
Austen, whose people struck me as wanting souls, even more than is
necessary for men and women of the world. The novels are perfect as far
as they go--that's certain. Only they don't go far, I think. It may be
my fault.

You lay down your finger and stop me, and exclaim that it's my way
perhaps to attribute a leaning of the judgment through personal sympathy
to people in general--that I do it perhaps to _you_. No, indeed. I can
quite easily believe that you don't either think or say 'the pleasantest
things to your friends;' in fact, I am sure you don't. You would say
them as soon to your enemies--perhaps sooner. Also, when you began to
say pleasant things to me, you hadn't a bit of personal feeling to make
a happy prejudice of, and really I can't flatter myself that you have
now. What I meant was that you, John Ruskin, not being a critic _sal
merum_ as the ancients had it, but half critic, and half poet, may be
rather encumbered sometimes by the burning imagination in you, may be
apt sometimes, when you turn the light of your countenance on a thing,
to see the thing lighted up as a matter of course, just as we, when we
carried torches into the Vatican, were not perfectly clear how much we
brought to that wonderful Demosthenes, folding the marble round him in
its thousand folds--how much we brought, and how much we received. Was
it the sculptor or was it the torch-bearer who produced that effect? And
like doubts I have had of you, I confess, and not only when you have
spoken kindly of _me_. You don't mistake by your heart, through loving,
but you exaggerate by your imagination, through glorifying. There's my
thought