to have come long ago, I yield to it, and am glad that it comes
on this first day of a new year to inaugurate the time. It may be a good
omen for _me_. Who knows?

We received your letter at Florence and very much did it touch me--us, I
should say--and then I would have written if you hadn't bade us wait for
another letter, which has not come to this day. Shall I say one thing?
The sadness of that letter struck me like the languor after victory, for
you who have fought many good fights and never for a moment seemed to
despond before, write this word and this. After treading the world down
in various senses, you are tired. It is natural perhaps, but this evil
will pass like other evils, and I wish you from my heart a good clear
noble year, with plenty of work, and God consciously over all to give
you satisfaction. What would this life be, dear Mr. Ruskin, if it had
not eternal relations? For my part, if I did not believe so, I should
lay my head down and die. Nothing would be worth doing, certainly. But I
am what many people call a 'mystic,' and what I myself call a 'realist,'
because I consider that every step of the foot or stroke of the pen here
has some real connection with and result in the hereafter.

'This life's a dream, a fleeting show!' no indeed. That isn't my
'_doxy_.' I don't think that nothing is worth doing, but that everything
is worth doing--everything good, of course--and that everything which
does good for a moment does good for ever, in _art_ as well as in
morals. Not that I look for arbitrary punishment or reward (the last
least, certainly. I would no more impute merit to the human than your
Spurgeon would), but that I believe in a perpetual sequence, according
to God's will, and in what has been called a 'correspondence' between
the natural world and the spiritual.

Here I stop myself with a strong rein. It is fatal, dear Mr. Ruskin, to
write letters on New Year's day. One can't help moralising; one falls on
the metaphysical vein unaware.

Forgive me.

We are in Rome you see. We have been very happy and found rooms swimming
all day in sunshine, when there is any sun, and yet not ruinously dear.
I was able to go out on Christmas morning (a wonderful event for me) and
hear the silver trumpets in St. Peter's. Well, it was very fine. I never
once thought of the Scarlet Lady, nor of the Mortara case, nor anything
to spoil the pleasure. Yes, and I enjoyed it both aesthetically and
devotionally, putti