My informant, an orderly person of a very different stamp, set him down for mad at once; but he is much beloved among his parishioners, and if the escapade above mentioned do not indicate disease of the brain, I can only say it would be good for the country if we had more madmen of the same sort.  As to John Ruskin, I would not answer for quiet people not taking him for crazy too.  He is an enthusiast in art, often right, often wrong,—­“in the right very stark, in the wrong very sturdy,”—­bigoted, perverse, provoking, as ever man was; but good and kind and charming beyond the common lot of mortals.  There are some pages of his prose that seem to me more eloquent than anything out of Jeremy Taylor, and I should think a selection of his works would answer to reprint.  Their sale here is something wonderful, considering their dearness, in this age of cheap literature, and the want of attraction in the subject, although the illustrations of the “Stones of Venice,” executed by himself from his own drawings, are almost as exquisite as the writings.  By the way, he does not say what I heard the other day from another friend, just returned from the city of the sea, that Taglioni has purchased four of the finest palaces, and is restoring them with great taste, by way of investment, intending to let them to Russian and English noblemen.  She was a very graceful dancer once, was Taglioni; but still it rather depoetizes the place, which of all others was richest in associations.

Mrs. Browning has got as near to England as Paris, and holds out enough of hope of coming to London to keep me from visiting it until I know her decision.  I have not seen the great Exhibition, and, unless she arrives, most probably shall not see it.  My lameness, which has now lasted five months, is the reason I give to myself for not going, chairs being only admitted for an hour or two on Saturday mornings.  But I suspect that my curiosity has hardly reached the fever-heat needful to encounter the crowd and the fatigue.  It is amusing to find how people are cooling down about it.  We always were a nation of idolaters, and always had the trick of avenging ourselves upon our poor idols for the sin of our own idolatry.  Many an overrated, and then underrated, poet can bear witness to this.  I remember when my friend Mr. Milnes was called the poet, although Scott and Byron were in their glory, and Wordsworth had written all of his works that will live.  We make gods of wood and stone, and then we knock them to pieces; and so figuratively, if not literally, shall we do by the Exhibition.  Next month I am going to move to a cottage at Swallowfield,—­so called, I suppose, because those migratory birds meet by millions every autumn in the park there, now belonging to some friends of mine, and still famous as the place where Lord Clarendon wrote his history.  That place is still almost a palace; mine an humble but very prettily placed cottage.  O, how proud and glad I should be, if ever I could receive Mr. and Mrs. Fields within its walls for more than a poor hour!  I shall have tired you with this long letter, but you have made me reckon you among my friends,—­ay, one of the best and kindest,—­and must take the consequence.

    Ever yours, M.R.M.