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VI

Mary for

Almighty give us succes over these fellows

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and shable us tour a Peace

by all that's positive, all that's progressive, all that's spiral, all that's conchoidal, and all that's evolute-great Human Son of Holothurian Harries, answer me.1

"Since imprisoned in my mother

Thou me feed'st, whom have I other
Held my stay, or made my song?
Yea, when all me so misdeemed,
I to most a monster seemed,

Yet in thee my hope was strong.
Yet of thee the thankful story
Filled my mouth: thy gratious glory
Was my ditty all the day.
Do not then, now age assaileth,
Courage, verdure, vertue faileth,
Do not leave me cast away."

16. I have little space, as now too often, for any definite school work. My writing-lesson, this month, is a facsimile of the last words written by Nelson, in his cabin, with the allied fleets in sight, off Trafalgar. It is entirely fine in general structure and character."

17. Mr. Ward has now three, and will I hope soon have the fourth, of our series of lesson photographs, namely,―

1. Madonna by Filippo Lippi.

2. The Etruscan Leucothea.

3. Madonna by Titian.

4. Infanta Margaret, by Velasquez.*

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[For Mr. Frederic Harrison's answer, see Letter 67, § 24 (below, pp. 662-663). In the Fortnightly Review, July 1876, Mr. Harrison, as already stated (p. 618 n.), made further reply; in this, referring to the present passage, he says: 'And you finally invoke me to answer you, tracing my birth to a species of slug whom you take to be the founder eponymous of our numerous but respectable clan."] 2 [See Plate VI., hitherto given as Frontispiece to this Letter. The facsimile is of the last words of Nelson's letter to Lady Hamilton, written two days before the battle. The letter is in the British Museum (Egerton MS. 1614, f. 125), and is exhibited in the Grenville Library.]

3

[See Letter 69, §§ 15, 16 (pp. 699-–701).]

[For particulars of No. 1, see above, p. 445 n. ; and of No. 2, p. 574 n. No. 3 (Plate VII.) is of the picture, in Titian's earlier manner, in the Imperial Gallery at Vienna, generally known as "The Madonna with the Cherries." No. 4 (Plate VIII.) is of the portrait in the same gallery of the Infanta Margarita Teresa as a child.]

XXVIII.

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On these I shall lecture, as I have time, here and in the Laws of Fésole;1 but, in preparation for all farther study, when you have got the four, put them beside each other, putting the Leucothea first, the Lippi second, and the others as numbered.

Then, the first, the Leucothea, is entirely noble religious art, of the fifth or sixth century B.C., full of various meaning and mystery, of knowledges that are lost, feelings that have ceased, myths and symbols of the laws of life, only to be traced by those who know much both of life and death.

2

Technically, it is still in Egyptian bondage, but in course of swiftly progressive redemption.

The second is nobly religious work of the fifteenth century of Christ,-an example of the most perfect unison of religious myth with faithful realism of human nature yet produced in this world. The Etruscan traditions are preserved in it even to the tassels of the throne cushion: the pattern of these, and of the folds at the edge of the angel's drapery, may be seen in the Etruscan tomb now central in the first compartment of the Egyptian gallery of the British Museum; and the double cushion of that tomb is used, with absolute obedience to his tradition, by Jacopo della Quercia, in the tomb of Ilaria di Caretto.*

3

The third represents the last phase of the noble religious art of the world, in which realization has become consummate; but all supernatural aspect is refused, and mythic teaching is given only in obedience to former tradition, but with no anxiety for its acceptance. Here is, for

[For later references in Fors to the Four Lesson Photographs, see Letter 69 (pp. 699-701); to the Velasquez, Letter 70 (p. 720 n.); and to the "Leucothea," Letters 77 and 78 (Vol. XXIX. pp. 117, 127). Ruskin did not refer to them in the Laws of Fésole, as printed; but, for a discussion of the Lippi, see Vol. XXIV. pp. 451-454.]

2 [See above, p. 563.]

The Cervetri Sarcophagus, now in the Room of Terra-cottas at the British Museum (acquired from the Castellani Collection in 1873). The same tasselled pillow (the "fringed mattress of Arnold's poem on the church) is to be seen on the famous tomb in the church of Brou.]

4 [Compare Letter 45, § 2 (p. 146).]

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