To Charles Eliot Norton

Denmark Hill, 10th January, 1866.

My dear Norton,—I wrote you a letter of thanks for your book on Dante, some months ago. I fear you have not received it and you must think me worse than I am, but I'm bad enough. I never shall be able to forgive any of you for the horror of this past war—not but that I know you'll all be the better of it. But I've never cared to read a word of Lowell's or anybody on the other Atlantic's side, since—only I love you still, and wish you the best that may be for this year. Not that anything that I wish ever happens, so it's no use.

I send you my last book, and with faithful regards to your mother and sisters, am ever your affectionate

J. Ruskin.

To Charles Eliot Norton4

Denmark Hill, 11 Januaryr, 1866.

Dear Norton,—I got your letter yesterday evening, after posting one to you by the 5 o'clock post. I can only answer quickly to-day that I have written this morning to Edward Jones, begging him to have me to sit instantly; and that I hope you'll find something more of me in the little book of new lectures I have sent you.

But how can you expect a man living alone, and with everything gone cross to him, and not in any way having joy, even of the feeblest sort,—but at the best only relief from pain, and that only when he is at work,—to show anything but a cramped shadow of the little there is in him?