II

CIRCULAR RESPECTING MEMORIAL STUDIES OF ST. MARK’S, VENICE, NOW IN PROGRESS UNDER MR. RUSKIN’S DIRECTION¹

1. MY friends have expressed much surprise at my absence from the public meetings called in defence of St. Mark’s. They cannot, however, be too clearly certified that I am now entirely unable to take part in exciting business, or even, without grave danger, to allow my mind to dwell on the subjects which, having once been dearest to it, are now the sources of acutest pain. The illness which all but killed me two years ago² was not brought on by overwork, but by grief at the course of public affairs in England, and of affairs, public an dprivate alike, in Venice; the distress of many an old and deeply regarded friend there among the humbler classes of the city being as necessary a consequence of the modern system of centralization, as the destruction of her ancient civil and religious buildings.

How far forces of this national momentum may be arrested by protest, or mollified by petition, I know not; what in either kind I have felt myself able to do has been done two years since, in conjunction with one of the few remaining representatives of the old Venetian noblesse.³ All that now remains for me is to use what time may be yet granted for such record as hand and heart can make

¹ [Issued in 1879-1880: see above, p. 403. For particulars of the “public meetings,” see above, Introduction, p. lxi.]

² [In February 1878: see the Turner Notes of that year (Vol. XIII. p. liv.), and Fors Clavigera, March 1880 (Letter 88, § 1).]

³ [See above, pp. 405 seq.]

412

[Version 0.04: March 2008]