The first
lecture is the only one which keeps to the title of the book; in
the others the legend is used merely as a starting-point for the
expression of various pregnant ideas on social and historical
problems. The book as a whole abounds in flashes of inspiration
and insight, and is a favourite with many readers of Ruskin.
Carlyle, in a letter to Froude, wrote: "Passages of that last
book, _Queen of the Air_, went into my heart like arrows."
In different places of my writings, and through many years of
endeavour to define the laws of art, I have insisted on this Tightness
in work, and on its connection with virtue of character, in so many
partial ways, that the impression left on the reader's mind--if,
indeed, it was ever impressed at all--has been confused and uncertain.
In beginning the series of my corrected works, I wish this principle
(in my own mind the foundation of every other) to be made plain, if
nothing else is: and will try, therefore, to make it so, so far as, by
any effort, I can put it into unmistakable words. And, first, here is
a very simple statement of it, given lately in a lecture on the
Architecture of the Valley of the Somme,[199] which will be better read
in this place than in its incidental connection with my account of the
porches of Abbeville.
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