nearly
worthless original drawings by fifth-rate artists, would obtain for the
misguided buyers, in something like a proportion of ten to one, most
precious copies of drawings which can only be represented at all in
engraving by entire alteration of their treatment, and abandonment of
their finest purposes. I feel this so strongly that I have given my best
attention, during upwards of ten years, to train a copyist to perfect
fidelity in rendering the work of Turner; and having now succeeded in
enabling him to produce facsimiles so close as to look like replicas,
facsimiles which I must sign with my own name and his, in the very work
of them, to prevent their being sold for real Turner vignettes, I can
obtain no custom for him, and am obliged to leave him to make his bread
by any power of captivation his original sketches may possess in the
eyes of a public which maintains a nation of copyists in Rome, but is
content with black and white renderings of great English art; though
there is scarcely one cultivated English gentleman or lady who has not
been twenty times in the Vatican, for once that they have been in the
National Gallery.

NOTES.

228. I. The following letter, from one of my most faithful readers,
corrects an important piece of misinterpretation in the text. The waving
of the reins must be only in sign of the fluctuation of heat round the
Sun's own chariot:--

"Spring Field, Ambleside,
"February 11, 1875.

"Dear Mr. Ruskin,--Your fifth lecture on Engraving I have to hand.

"Sandro intended those wavy lines meeting under the Sun's right[BH]
hand, (Plate V.) primarily, no doubt, to represent the four ends of the
four reins dangling from the Sun's hand. The flames and rays are seen to
continue to radiate from the platform of the chariot between and beyond
these ends of the reins, and over the knee. He may have wanted to
acknowledge that the warmth of the earth was Apollo's, by making these
ends of the reins spread out separately and wave, and thereby inclose a
form like a flame. But I cannot think it.

"Believe me,
"Ever yours truly,
"CHAS. WM. SMITH."

II. I meant to keep labyrinthine matters for my Appendix; but the
following most useful by-words from Mr. Tyrwhitt had better be read at
once:--

"In t