INTRODUCTION xli

and education. “I hope,” he wrote to his father, in sending the first sheets for transmission to the newspaper (March 14, 1852), “the Times will put these letters in, for twenty years hence, if I live, I should like to be able to refer to them, and say, ‘I told you so, and now you are beginning to find it out.’” The letters were, however, in the exercise of paternal discretion, held back; but Ruskin seems to have used the third of the series, or some portion of it, as Appendix 7 (“Modern Education”) in the third volume of The Stones of Venice. Such portions of the letters as have been found among the author’s MSS., together with an interesting correspondence on the subject between father and son, are given in a later volume of this edition.

Two other distractions from his regular work, of a different kind, remain to be mentioned before we leave Venice. On December 19, 1851, Turner died, and though the precise terms of the will were not yet known, Ruskin learnt at once that he had been appointed an executor. The position was to involve him in many worries, but for the moment it filled him with new interests and excitements. He would perhaps write Turner’s Life; he would at any rate arrange all his works; the nation would build a gallery for the reception of the artist’s bequest, and he, the disciple, would be commissioned to plan the shrine. Meanwhile it was to be presumed that many of Turner’s drawings and sketches would come into the market, and Ruskin wrote to his father letter after letter of instructions with regard to those which were, and were not, to be acquired for their collection. We shall have to refer to these matters in a later volume, wherein Ruskin’s Turner Notes are collected. Another affair which occupied some of his time and thoughts at Venice was the acquisition which he hoped to persuade the Trustees to allow him to make on their behalf of two pictures by Tintoret for the National Gallery. He took much trouble in the matter, but was unsuccessful; to this also we shall refer in a later volume.¹

The negotiations with the Trustees of the National Gallery kept him at Venice beyond his appointed time; his lease of the Casa Wetzler was up, and at the beginning of May he moved into lodgings in St. Mark’s Place, “It is very delicious,” he wrote (May 16), “looking down upon the place, as Turner found out long ago when he painted the first picture I defended²-‘Juliet and her Nurse.’” He was detained at Venice yet further by the theft of some of his wife’s jewels

¹ Ruskin bought another picture by Tintoret for himself, which he afterwards presented to the University of Oxford; see note in the next volume, Venetian Index, s. “Ducal Palace,” ad fin.

² See Vol. III. p. 636.

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