lxxvi INTRODUCTION

Ruskin’s love-letters to Rose are not in existence. Communicative, expansive, un-reticent though Ruskin was, his literary executors felt that these letters, though perhaps the most beautiful things that he ever wrote, were too sacred for publicity. A letter from Rose to him, which he specially valued, he used to carry in his breast-pocket between plates of fine gold. After her death, he kept them all-his to her, and hers to him-in a rosewood box. On a day in autumn, Mrs. Severn and Professor Norton took them to the woodland garden above Brantwood, and gave them to the flames. A wind was blowing, and one letter fluttered away from the pyre. It was written from Brantwood, when Ruskin was first settling in his new home, and in it he wonders whether Rosie will ever give him the happiness of welcoming her there. But she never came to Brantwood. The garden, lake, and shore which became so dear to Ruskin were left without any memory of her presence, though often, as it seemed to him, graced by her spirit.

The Text of Præterita has been carefully revised for this edition, and some passages, of which the meaning has hitherto been obscured by misprints or mistakes, have been made intelligible.¹

Of the Illustrations in this volume, the Plates are either portraits; pictures of homes; or drawings by Ruskin. The frontispiece is a photogravure from the beautiful photograph of Ruskin taken by Mr. Frederick Hollyer at Brantwood in 1896. “He lifted his voice,” said Canon Scott Holland, in describing the portrait, “in praise of high and noble things through an evil and dark day; and now he sits there, silent and at peace, waiting for the word that will release him and open to him a world where he may gaze on the vision of Perfect Beauty unhindered and unashamed.”² Datur hora quieti.

The cameo-portrait of Ruskin in 1841 (XIIIA.) is described in the text (p. 280).

The portraits of Ruskin with Sir Henry Acland (Plate A) and of Miss Rose La Touche (Plate C) have been mentioned already. Plate B is a wood-engraving after Mr. Arthur Severn’s drawing of the

had chosen all knowledge for her province, and was an admirable scholar. She was very brilliant in conversation, and had an encyclopædic memory. She was moreover an accomplished horsewoman. In politics she was a convinced Radical. Miss La Touche was, indeed, in the judgment of the writer, who had some little acquaintance of her, and whose recollection has not been dimmed by the mists of thirty years and more which have elapsed since her death, one of the most delightful personalities of her generation.” It will be noticed that there is some difference in the account of her eyes-“blue” (p. 525), “grey” (above); doubtless, as one of the poets has it, they were “the greyest of things blue, the bluest of things grey.”

¹ See, for instance, on p. xc. the notes on ii. §§ 9, 28, 57, 204, 233.

² The Commonwealth, July 1896.

[Version 0.04: March 2008]