the multitude of melodious
thoughts with which you will be haunted, thoughts which will of course
be noble or original in proportion to your own depth of character and
general power of mind; for it is not so much by the consideration you
give to any single drawing, as by the previous discipline of your powers
of thought, that the character of your composition will be determined.
Simplicity of life will make you sensitive to the refinement and modesty
of scenery, just as inordinate excitement and pomp of daily life will
make you enjoy coarse colors and affected forms. Habits of patient
comparison and accurate judgment will make your art precious, as they
will make your actions wise; and every increase of noble enthusiasm in
your living spirit will be measured by the reflection of its light upon
the works of your hands.--Faithfully yours,

J. RUSKIN.

FOOTNOTES:

[41] I give Rossetti this pre-eminence, because, though the leading
Pre-Raphaelites have all about equal power over color in the
abstract, Rossetti and Holman Hunt are distinguished above the rest
for rendering color under effects of light; and of these two,
Rossetti composes with richer fancy, and with a deeper sense of
beauty, Hunt's stern realism leading him continually into harshness.
Rossetti's carelessness, to do him justice, is only in water-color,
never in oil.

[42] All the degradation of art which was brought about, after the
rise of the Dutch school, by asphaltum, yellow varnish, and brown
trees would have been prevented, if only painters had been forced to
work in dead color. Any color will do for some people, if it is
browned and shining; but fallacy in dead color is detected on the
instant. I even believe that whenever a painter begins to _wish_
that he could touch any portion of his work with gum, he is going
wrong.

It is necessary, however, in this matter, carefully to distinguish
between translucency and luster. Translucency, though, as I have
said above, a dangerous temptation, is, in its place, beautiful; but
luster or _shininess_ is always, in painting, a defect. Nay, one of
my best painter-friends (the "best" being understood to attach to
both divisions of that awkward compound word,) tried the other day
to persuade me that luster was an ignobleness in anything; and it
was only the fea