Back from a whirlwind tour of email & logs, just cracked the Letters of John Ruskin to Charles Eliot Norton my brother sent me, ex libris, but who isn't?

Some funny bits from Norton's preface:

"In his later years much even of what he wrote for publication could not but cause regret to every reader of sensitive appreciation, as affording evidence of weakened faculty of judgment by its lack of self-control and becoming reticence."

"Though the background of his life was dark, many gleams of sunshine passed over its foreground."

"In spite of the poets, in spite of modern usage, in spite of Ruskin's own example, I hold with those who believe that there are sanctities in love and life to be kept in privacy inviolate."

Good old Ruskin.