RUSKIN, John (1819-1900). Author, artist & social reformer.
Fine Autograph Letter Signed to J.L. (possibly T.L.) Worthington, 3 pages 8vo with envelope (traces of mounting on the reverse), Brantwood, 13 July 1881. Answering the concerns of an aspiring architect and enunciating his own personal credo. Together with a copy of Worthington's letter which instigated the correspondence.
The young Worthington, very probably a member of the extensive Manchester family of architects of which Thomas Worthington (1826-1909) was the founder and patriarch, had written to Ruskin to express his reservations about the use of cast iron railings as a replacement for brick walls. Ruskin is characteristically forthright in his reply.

'I am much pleased by your candid and earnest letter.
 'Learn first, to know what good wrought metal work in gold, silver, and iron, is.
 'As soon as you do, you will hate the sight of a cast iron ornament of any kind or for any purpose, as you would hate the sight of a skeleton or a bit of dead body.
 'There is a farther curse on it in these days, that commission is paid on it to an utterly ignorant manufacturer - who is an element of political stupefaction wherever he exists - and farther - that you keep men capable of doing good work in the upper-world hell of the iron foundry!
 'Put logs, bricks - broken bottles - slag from the foundry heaps - for your wall - if you like! But not Cast iron (or cast anything ornament).
 'I write, necessarily, what must seem to you unreasonable in its decision and intensity. But the Reason of my forty years thought is in it. / Ever truly yrs / J Ruskin.'
 [Postscript, written sideways on the second page. The letter is on 'pages' 1 and 3, which are reproduced together in the linked image]
'Nothing is so bad, also for the
public taste, as having its desire
for beauty spuriously and cheaply
met - or rather sopped and stupified
Build nothing - or build well.
Carve nothing - carve well
Say nothing - say well.
Do nothing - do well
There's a life's quatrain for you.'

[No: 24356]