Venice, 20th November, 1876

1. The day on which this letter will be published will, I trust, be the first of the seventh year of the time during which I have been permitted, month by month, to continue the series of Fors Clavigera. In which seventh year I hope to gather into quite clear form the contents of all the former work; closing the seventh volume with accurate index of the whole. These seven volumes, if I thus complete them, will then be incorporated as a single work in the consecutive series of my books.

If I am spared to continue the letters beyond the seventh year, their second series will take a directly practical character, giving account of, and directing, the actual operations of St. George's Company; and containing elements of instruction for its schools, the scheme of which shall be, I will answer for it, plainly enough, by the end of this year, understood. For, in the present volume, I intend speaking directly, in every letter, to the Yorkshire operatives, and answering every question they choose to put to me,—being very sure that they will omit few relevant ones.

2. And first they must understand one more meaning I have in the title of the book. By calling it the “Nail bearer,” I mean not only that it fastens in sure place the truths it has to teach (January, 1872), but also, that it nails down as on the barn-door of our future homestead, for permanent and picturesque exposition, the extreme follies of which it has to give warning: so that in expanded heraldry of beak and claw, the spread, or split, harpies and owls of modern philosophy may be for evermore studied, by the curious, in the parched skins of them.