nd that you too are
seized? In a day or two I hope to ascertain that you are well
again. Adieu; here is an interruption, here also is the end of the
paper.

"With many thanks and regards."

[Signature cut away.]

As soon as the first volume of "Stones of Venice" and the "Notes on the
Construction of Sheepfolds" were published, Ruskin took a short Easter
holiday at Matlock, and set to work at a new edition of "Modern
Painters." This was the fifth reprint of the first volume, and the third
of vol. ii. They were carefully and conscientiously revised, and the
Postscript indulged in a little triumph at the changed tone of public
criticism upon Turner.

But it was too late to have been much service to the great artist
himself. In 1845--after saying good-bye and "Why _will_ you go to
Switzerland? there will be such a _fidge_ about you when you're
gone"--Turner lost his health, and was never himself again. The last
drawings he did for Ruskin (January, 1848), the "Bruenig" and the
"Descent from the St. Gothard to Airolo," showed his condition
unmistakably; and the lonely restlessness of the last, disappointing
years were, for all his friends, a melancholy ending to a brilliant
career. Ruskin wrote:

"This year (1851) he has no picture on the walls of the Academy;
and the _Times_ of May 3 says: 'We miss those works of
INSPIRATION'!"

"_We_ miss! Who misses? The populace of England
rolls by to weary itself in the great bazaar of Kensington,[3]
little thinking that a day will come when those veiled vestals and
prancing amazons, and goodly merchandise of precious stones and
gold, will all be forgotten as though they had not been; but that
the light which has faded from the walls of the Academy is one
which a million Koh-i-noors could not rekindle; and that the year
1851 will, in the far future, be remembered less for what it has
displayed, than for what it has withdrawn."

[Footnote 3: The Great Exhibition in Hyde Park.]

CHAPTER V

PRE-RAPHAELITISM (1851-1853)

The _Times_, in May 1851, missed "those works of inspiration," as Ruskin
had at last taught people to call Turner's pictures. But the
acknowledged mouthpiece of public opinion found consolation in
castigating a school of young artists who had "unfortunately become
notorious by addicting themselves to an antiquated style and an affected
simplicity in painting.... We c