drawing, as by the previous discipline of your powers
of thought, that the character of your composition will be determined.
Simplicity of life will make you sensitive to the refinement and modesty
of scenery, just as inordinate excitement and pomp of daily life will
make you enjoy coarse colours and affected forms. Habits of patient
comparison and accurate judgment will make your art precious, as they
will make your actions wise; and every increase of noble enthusiasm in
your living spirit will be measured by the reflection of its light upon
the works of your hands.

Faithfully yours,

J. RUSKIN.

FOOTNOTES:

[234] I give Rossetti this preeminence, because, though the leading
Pre-Raphaelites have all about equal power over colour in the abstract,
Rossetti and Holman Hunt are distinguished above the rest for rendering
colour under effects of light; and of these two, Rossetti composes with
richer fancy and with a deeper sense of beauty, Hunt's stern realism
leading him continually into harshness. Rossetti's carelessness, to do
him justice, is only in water-colour, never in oil.

[235] All the degradation of art which was brought about, after the rise
of the Dutch school, by asphaltum, yellow varnish, and brown trees,
would have been prevented, if only painters had been forced to work in
dead colour. Any colour will do for some people, if it is browned and
shining; but fallacy in dead colour is detected on the instant. I even
believe that whenever a painter begins to _wish_ that he could touch any
portion of his work with gum, he is going wrong.

It is necessary, however, in this matter, carefully to distinguish
between translucency and lustre. Translucency, though, as I have said
above, a dangerous temptation, is, in its place, beautiful; but lustre,
or _shininess_, is always, in painting, a defect. Nay, one of my best
painter-friends (the "best" being understood to attach to both divisions
of that awkward compound word), tried the other day to persuade me
thatlustre was an ignobleness in _anything_; and it was only the fear of
treason to ladies' eyes, and to mountain streams, and to morning dew,
which kept me from yielding the point to him. One is apt always to
generalise too quickly in such matters; but there can be no question
that lustre is destructive of loveliness in colour, as it is of
intelligibility in form. Whatever may be the pride of a young beauty in
the knowledge that her eyes shine (though