'Morning breaks as I write, along those Coniston Fells, and the level mists, motionless and grey beneath the rose of the moorlands, veil the lower woods, and the sleeping village, and the long lawns by the lake shore. 'Oh that some one had told me, in my youth, when all my heart seemed to be set on these colours and clouds, that appear for a little while and then vanish away, how little my love of them would serve me, when the silence of lawn and wood in the dews of morning should be completed, and all my thoughts should be of those whom, by neither, I was to meet more! 'BRANTWOOD, 12th Feb. 1878.' 'J. RUSKIN. The portrait of the author prefixed to the present edition has been engraved by M. AMAND DURAND, from a sketch made by Mr. GEORGE REID, R.S. A., in February 1882. JOHN LEECH. "John Leech was an absolute master of the elements of character; of all rapid and condensed realisation ever accomplished by the pencil, his is the most dainty and the least fallible in the subjects of which he was cognisant, not merely right in the traits which he seizes, but refined in the sacrifice of what he refuses.'MR. RUSKIN, in a letter to Miss Leech on her brother's drawings. |