604 LEAVES THEY HAVE TOtlCHED> 



of hearing Max Miiller lecture on tKe Nibelungen Lied at tte Taylor 

 Institute in Oxford. A note which. I had made of his lecture having 

 become, on revision, obscure in a certain respect, to myself, I 

 applied to him for information, forwarding him at the same time 

 *' Canada and Merton"---a paper read by me before the Canadian 

 Institute. The kind and frank reply received was the accompanying 

 note : " Many thanks for your interesting paper on Merton. The 

 sentiment which you refer to as forming the key-note of the Nibe- 

 lunge Not was probably " Leid nach Freud," " Sorrow after Joy." 

 Yours very truly. Max MiJLLER." 



I now show the handwriting of one v/ho in these days has done 

 more than any other person to educate the common mind in relation 

 to Art, and the beautiful in Nature : Mr. Euskin. " Modern 

 Painters," his first production, bore on its title-page " by a Graduate 

 of Oxford" simply. The book fell like a bomb'shell in the camp of 

 the conventional critics and reviewers. " When public taste" the 

 Graduate said " seems plunging deeper and deeper into degradation 

 day by day, and when the press universally exerts such power as it 

 possesses, to direct the feeling of the nation more completely to all 

 that is theatrical, affected, and false in Art ; while it vents its ribald 

 buffooneries on the most exalted truth, and the highest ideal of land- 

 scape that this or any other age has ever witnessed (the reference is 

 of course to Turner's paintings), it becomes the imperative duty of 

 all who have any perception or knowledge of what is really great in 

 Art, and any desire for its advancement in England, to come 

 fearlessly forward, regardless of such individual interests as are likely 

 to be injured by the knowledge of what is good and right, to declare 

 and demonstrate wherever they exist, the essence and the authority 

 of the Beautiful and the True." Since 1843 several volumes bearing 

 the same title as the first production, viz. : " Modern Painters," have 

 appeared with Ruskin's own. name prefixed. Also *' The Stones of 

 Venice," " The Seven Lamps of Architecture," " Pre-Raphaelitism," 

 " the Political Economy of Art," and numerous other works, bon- ' 

 stituting quite a literature on the subject of Good Taste. On account 

 of a certain engaging egotism, a habit of having recourse to his own 

 experience for illustrations, Ruskin has of late been compared to 

 Montaigne. This modern celebrity is represented in my collection 

 by a short characteristic note in his neat, airy handwriting, reading 

 as follows J " I fear I can't stay at home to-day. I want much to 



