I.

MY DEAR SIR: Yes, I began writing something--a year ago, is it?--on your subject, but have lost it, and am now utterly too busy to touch so difficult and so important a subject. I shall come on it, some day, necessarily.

Meantime, the one thing I have to say mainly is that the idea of making money by a theatre, and making it educational at the same time, is _utterly_ to be got out of people's heads. You don't make money out of a Ship of the Line, nor should you out of a Church, nor should you out of a College, nor should you out of a Theatre.

Pay your Ship's officers, your Church officers, your College tutors, and your Stage tutors, what will honorably maintain them. Let there be no starring on the Stage boards, more than on the deck, but the _Broadside_ well delivered.

And let the English Gentleman consider with himself what _he_ has got to teach the people: perhaps then, he may tell the English Actor what _he_ has to teach them.

Ever faithfully yours, (Signed) J. RUSKIN.

BRANTWOOD, _July 30th_, 1880.