lxii INTRODUCTION

written on some 560 leaves, principally of blue foolscap. As we have seen, this MS. was the outcome of many earlier drafts; in its final form it shows further on every page frequent marks of close revision. A few illustrative examples are given in footnotes to the text (see, e.g., pp. 13, 106, 141). A facsimile of part of a celebrated passage is given between pp. 186, 187. The Allen MSS. include also several unpublished passages and discarded drafts. These have occasionally been used to illustrate or supplement the text (see, e.g., pp. 149, 275, 430). There are several copies of the printed text on which Ruskin at one time or another made notes. His own copy at Brantwood contains some. Portions of another copy (now belonging to Mr. Wedderburn) were used by him in preparing the “Travellers’ Edition”; and these pages contain a few notes, additional to those printed in that edition, which have here been included. Revises of some of the sheets were also kept by Ruskin’s valet (Crawley), at whose death they passed into the possession of Crawley’s son-in-law, Mr. Maltby. These also contain notes and corrections which have been utilised in this edition.

The text of this volume in successive editions exhibits comparatively few variations, and these are not very important. But a few mistakes which appeared in all previous editions are here corrected (see, e.g., pp. 96, 111, 187, 291, 384, 395), and a few passages have been revised in accordance with the author’s notes (see, e.g., pp. 23, 383, 415). Ruskin does not seem ever to have revised the volume, after its first publication, for the press; in the present edition it is for the first time printed correctly (the editors believe) throughout and in accordance with the author’s intention, the text hitherto given being supplied at the foot. An enumeration of all the various readings is added at the end of the Bibliographical Note (p. lxx.).

The illustrations in this volume comprise (1) all that appeared in the original edition, together with (2) eleven now published as additional illustrations. As in the case of the preceding volume, the old illustrations have not been re-numbered; the new ones are distinguished by letters A-J). In the case of some of the old illustrations, it has been found possible to use the original plates (15, 16, and 18). The names of the first engravers are given on the various plates. Comparing the original plates in the first volume of The Stones of Venice with those in the second, the reader will be struck by the greater delicacy of many of them. Ruskin called attention to the difference in a letter to his father:-

“October 19 [1851].-... Until now I have drawn everything with the sole view of learning what things were; the moment I had got

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