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Arrows of the Chace, vol. 2/2 / being a collection of scattered letters published chiefly in the daily newspapers 1840-1880 cover

Arrows of the Chace, vol. 2/2 / being a collection of scattered letters published chiefly in the daily newspapers 1840-1880

Chapter 179: FOOTNOTES:
By John Ruskin
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About This Book

A collected set of public letters offers sustained commentary on political, economic, and cultural questions of the era. Subjects include foreign policy, war, and imperial unrest, as well as economic issues such as currency, supply and demand, wages, strikes, and the nature of wealth and property. Other pieces discuss infrastructure and industry, domestic service and housing, education, art and literary criticism, dress and women's work, and proposals for social and institutional reform. The epistolary form combines moral argument, practical policy suggestions, and cultural observation addressed to newspapers, public figures, and civic audiences.

[From "The Liverpool Weekly Albion," November 9, 1872.]
LETTER TO THE AUTHOR OF A REVIEW.[171]
Corpus Christi College, Oxford,
Wednesday, 30th Oct.

[My dear] Sir: I was on the point of writing to the Editor of The Albion to ask the name of the author of that article. Of course, one likes praise [and I'm so glad of it that I can take a great many kinds], but I never got any [that] I liked so much before, because, as far as I [can] remember nobody ever noticed or allowed for the range of work I've had to do, and which really has been dreadfully costly and painful to me, compelling me to leave things just at the point when one's work on them has become secure and delightsome, to attack them on another rough side. It is a most painful manner of life, and I never got any credit for it before. But the more I see, the more I feel the necessity of seeing all round, however hastily.

I am entirely grateful for the review and the understanding of me; and I needed some help just now—for I'm at once single-handed and dead—or worse—hearted, and as nearly beaten as I've been in my life.

Always therefore I shall be, for the encouragement at a heavy time,

Very gratefully yours,
(Signed) J. Ruskin.

FOOTNOTES:

[171] The review was the first of three articles entitled "The Disciple of Art and the Votary of Science," published in the Liverpool Weekly Albion of November 9, 16, and 23, 1873. The first of them had also appeared previously in the Liverpool Daily Albion, and was reprinted with the present letter in the weekly issue of Nov. 9. The aim of the articles was partly to show how the question "what is art?" involved a second and deeper inquiry, "What is man?" The words bracketed here were omitted in the Albion, but occur in the original letter, for access to which I have to thank the writer of the articles.