1870

[In February and March of this year Ruskin delivered his Inaugural Course of Lectures as Professor of Fine Art at Oxford. He also began the arrangement and cataloguing of a Collection of Examples there (see pp. 3, 5). At the end of April he went abroad with Miss Agnew and Mrs. and Miss Hilliard (Vol. XX. p. xlix.), returning at the end of July. Some letters written from Italy and Switzerland are given in that volume, pp. l.-lv. On his return, he prepared a second course of lectures (Aratra Pentelici), which were delivered in November and December.]

To Miss JOAN AGNEW

DENMARK HILL, 1st January, 1870.

I write to you first of all people this year, and shall next write to Norton.

I trust that you will have more happiness this year than you can at present hope, or even imagine, though you will have to make it out of more serious matters than happiness is usually contrived from. I have many plans—resolved upon in their general directions and objects, not yet in detail—which you will have to help and encourage me in, and of which you will share with me—a little perhaps of the self-denial—and much of the pleasure of feeling that one is doing one's best—in ways which, if at all successful, will be productive of much good, and in which even failure is nobler than not attempting anything.