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‘ FORS CLAVIGERA.’ 2/9
to “dash to pieces” the Gothic of Tuscany and Lom-
bardy, and others to stick bills bearing “Rome or
death” upon the ancient walls of Venice, but there was
no time nor money for saving the subalpine valleys from
flood. At the same time Ruskin gives a simple lesson
to engineers on the making of reservoirs, and to writers
(Charles Reade is evidently aimed at) on the description
of them. They should be wide, not deep; the gate of
a dry dock can keep out the Atlantic, to the necessary
depth in feet and inches—“ the depth giving the pres-
sure, not the superficies.” Thence he passes, like
Napoleon after making roads, but to better purpose, to
the education of girls; and describes with an exquisite-
ness that at once quickens and guards the sweet and
humorous and modest phrases, Carpaccio’s painting of
the young princess. It is hard upon two American
girls, whom Ruskin saw travelling from Venice to
Verona with the blinds of the railway carriage closed,
to rebuke them by the contrast of their mind and
manners with St Ursula’s. Incidentally Ruskin quotes
much from Marmontel, a writer of the late eighteenth
century to whom he claims a kind of resemblance of
sympathy, but whom the reader is free to think he
honours over much.
The twenty-fourth letter, which is the first dated from
Corpus Christi College, is the last which begins “ My
Friends ” : not one of the workmen he addressed had
sent him a friendly word in answer. “Nor shall I sign
myself ‘ faithfully yours ’ any more ; being very far from
 
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