And my astonishing friend went on to say that this was to be our principle of action "where the path was not quite clear"--as if any path ever _was_ clear till you got to the end of it, or saw it a long way off; as if all human possibility of path was not among clouds and brambles--often cold, always thorny--misty with roses occasionally, or dim with dew, often also with shadow of Death--misty, more particularly in England just now, with shadow of that commercially and otherwise valuable smoke before spoken of. However, if the path is not to be seen, it may be felt, or at least tumbled off, without any particular difficulty. This latter course of proceeding is our probablest, of course.--But I can't write any more to-night. I am, etc., J. RUSKIN. _Note_ to p. 6.--The lines quoted are from Wordsworth's "Poems dedicated to National Independence and Liberty," Part II., Sonnet i. The second line should read, "By all the blended powers of earth and heaven." FOOTNOTES: [1] This and the two following letters deal, it will be seen, with "the Italian question" in 1859, when the peace of Europe was disturbed by the combined action of France and Sardinia against Austria in the cause of Italian independence. Of these three letters the first was written two days after the defeat of the Austrians at Magenta, followed by the entrance into Milan of the French, and the second a few days before the similar victory of the French and Sardinian armies at Solferino. [2] Few readers need be reminded of the position of Tell in the list of Swiss patriots (_pace_ the "acutest historical investigation," which puts him in the list of mythical personages) in the early part of the fourteenth century; of Arnold von Winkelried who met the heroic death, by which he secured his country's freedom, at Sempach in 1386; or of Ulrich Zuingli, the Swiss Protestant leader of his time, who fell at Cappel, in the war of the Reformed against the Romish cantons, in 1531. At the battle of Morgarten, in 1315, twenty thousand Austrians were defeated by no more than thirteen hundred Swiss, with such valor that the name of the victors' canton was thereupon extended to the whole country, thenceforth called Switzerland. It may be further noted that Arnold of Sempach is, with Leonidas, Curtius, and Sir Richard Grenville, named amongst the types of "the divinest of sacrifices, that of the patriot for his country," in Mr. Ruskin's Preface, "Bibliotheca Pastorum," Vol. i. p. xxxiii. [3] The year of the Lombard insurrection, when Radetzky, the Austrian field-marshal, defeated the insurgents at Custozza near Verona. Radetzky died in 1858. [4] The Prince Frederick William, now Emperor of Germany (having succeeded his brother Frederick William IV. in January, 1861), was at the date of this letter Regent of Prussia, and Commander-in-chief of the Prussian forces. [From the "Scotsman," July 23, 1859.]