[Ruskin, as he says in a letter of 1874, had at one time an intention of recasting the artistic criticisms of Modern Painters, omitting some of the religious discussions on which he had come to take a different standpoint. In a copy of the book, which he afterwards presented to Arthur Burgess (now in the possession of Mr. Hugh Allen), he has made excisions and rearrangements which seem to belong to a proposed revision of parts viii. and ix. (“Of Ideas of Relation”). This rearrangement would have more emphasised “Ideas of Power,” a side of the matter which, as he said at Oxford, he had not sufficiently emphasised. It will be observed, in the text as it stands, that Ideas of Power are involved in the discussion of Ideas of Relation; for he defines the latter as an inquiry “into the various Powers, Conditions, and Aims of mind involved in the conception or creation of pictures” (pt. viii. ch. i. § 1, p. 203).

In recasting this portion of his work Ruskin strikes out lines 7 and 8 of the existing text, thus keeping part viii. more strictly to technical matters. He then notes “Bring in first Ch. ii. of Vol. IV.”