xxxviii INTRODUCTION

end of my work very well. Having the book once in form is a great thing. I have not, however, been sending you any bits lately, partly because George has been working for me in tracing inscriptions, and partly because I have not anything in complete form enough for sending. The chapter on the Ducal Palace, which has cost me a great deal of reading, is still devoid of all adornment: some chapters, finished to within a certain point, contain rather more of the homely facts of Venice than I am afraid you would like; and, in fact, the whole book, even where it is quite put up, is a good deal like a house just built, full of dust and damp plaster-you could hardly see it at a worse time, and I must let it dry before I paint or paper it.”

Neither Ruskin’s literary work, nor his artistic pursuits, nor social distractions interrupted his religious studies and exercises. It has been said by a graceful French critic that Ruskin’s religion was that of beauty,¹ and there is a sense in which the saying is true, but much more was he filled with the beauty of holiness. Acland, who saw much of him in the following year (1853), wrote: “Ruskin I understand more than I have before; truth and earnestness of purpose are his great guides, and no labour of thought or work is wearisome to him;” and again: “I ought to say, as a key to Ruskin, I had no idea of the intensity of his religious feeling before now.”² Similarly in perusing Ruskin’s diaries and family letters one is impressed at every page with the deeply religious bent of his mind, as, for instance, in the entry which heads this introduction. His Bible studies were never intermitted. Here at Venice, while at work on The Stones, he wrote “a commentary of 90 pages on Job” (Dec. 3). In his home letters, too, there are careful analyses and collations of Bible teaching on various points-on the Psalmist’s conception, for instance, of righteousness, and on the relations between rich and poor. Such studies were not merely literary or critical; they tended to edification; they were aids to personal religion. He regrets in one letter that his observance of outward ceremonies-such as his Scripture readings, family prayers, and church-going-did not lead to such true contrition as he could desire. In other letters he discusses with his father the doubts and difficulties that beset him in the manner of Divine revelation, and then comes a piece of religious experience in which doubts and despondency vanish before earnest resolutions and answered prayer:-

“Good Friday [April 9, 1852].-... One day last week I was getting very nervous about the continual feeling of relaxation in the throat, though in itself such a trifle. ... I began thinking over my past life,

¹ See Ruskin et la Religion de la Beauté, par Robert de la Sizeranne, 1897.

² Sir Henry Acland: a Memoir, by J. B. Atlay, 1903, pp. 173-174.

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