xxxvi INTRODUCTION

After leaving Edinburgh Ruskin went on some visits, including one to Hamilton, where the Duke had invited him to see the MSS.¹

Ruskin returned home at the end of the year, resumed his sittings to Millais, and prepared the Lectures for publication. This involved a good deal of work. As we have seen, he did not write out the whole of the earlier lectures, and accordingly, as he explains in the Preface (see p. 7), he had to fill up these blanks in his manuscript. The manuscript of the book as printed is in Mr. Allen’s possession, written on about 210 leaves of various sizes; in large part it seems to embody the original MS. for the lectures as delivered-consisting partly of passages wholly written out, and partly of notes and memoranda. Some passages in the lectures as delivered were omitted in the book; but the MS. does not enable the editors to supply them, as it contains at these places a few memoranda only; nor are the reports in the local press full enough to be of any assistance. A few passages which occur in the MS. in a completed form are, however, added (see pp. 22, 62, 73-74, 76-77, 122).

In addition to revising and completing the Lectures, Ruskin wrote, as “Addenda to Lectures i. and ii.,” a reply to his critics and a restatement of his main propositions. These will already be familiar to readers of The Seven Lamps and The Stones of Venice. Indeed it may be said generally of these Lectures on Architecture and Painting that they break little new ground; they are rather a re-statement, on a smaller scale and in a more popular and direct form, of the leading ideas and doctrines contained in his previous works. This will appear from the references to parallel passages supplied in the footnotes.

The Lectures had been reported in several journals at the time of their delivery, and were widely noticed in the press upon their publication in book-form in April 1854.² This was a period of crisis in Ruskin’s

¹ See below, p. lxvii.

² The Lectures were reported (among other places) in the Edinburgh Courant and the Edinburgh Guardian, and criticised upon their conclusion in that paper (November 19) and in the Edinburgh Advertiser (November 22). They were also reported (except the last one) in the Builder (November 12, 26, December 3); and criticised in that paper (December 31), the article being signed “W. M. B.” The book was reviewed in the Athenæum, May 20 and 27, 1854 (No. 1386, pp. 611-612, No. 1387, pp. 650-652); Spectator, May 27; Builder, June 10, 1854 (and in the same periodical in 1856-March 22, 29, April 12, 26, and May 10-a series of articles on “Revolutionary Architectural Principles,” signed “Leny,” criticising the Edinburgh Lectures, etc.); the Leader, June 10; Blackwood’s Magazine, June 1854 (vol. 75, pp. 740-756); the New Quarterly Review, July 1854 (vol. 3, pp. 374-378); the Prospective Review, August 1854 (vol. 10, pp. 352-368); the New Monthly Review, edited by W. H. Ainsworth, August 1854, vol. 101, pp. 413-418; Putnam’s Monthly, August 1854; the Rambler, August and September 1854, vol. 2 (N. S.), pp. 155-162, 247-258; the British Quarterly, October 1854, vol. 20, pp. 301-334 (an article headed “Fine Art in the Crystal Palace,” noticing, among other books, the Edinburgh Lectures and Stones of Venice, vol. iii.); the

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