“You have done, and are doing, a good work for England, and I pray you not to be discouraged. Continue as you have been doing, convincing us by your ‘sweet reasonableness’ of our errors and miseries, and the time will doubtless come when your work, now being done in Jeremiah-like sadness and hopelessness, will bear gracious and abundant fruit. “Will you pardon my troubling you with this note? but, indeed, I could not be happy after reading your gloomy experience, until I had done my little best to send one poor ray of comfort into your seemingly almost weary heart. “I remain, “Yours very sincerely.” II. Next to this delightful testimony to my ‘sweet reasonableness,’ here is some discussion of evidence on the other side:— November 12, 1872. “To John Ruskin, LL.D., greeting, these. “Enclosed is a slip cut from the ‘Liverpool Mercury’ of last Friday, November 8. I don’t send it to you because I think it matters anything what the ‘Mercury’ thinks about any one’s qualification for either the inside or outside of any asylum; but that I may suggest to you, as a working-man reader of your letters, the desirability of your printing any letters of importance you may send to any of the London papers, over again—in, say, the space of ‘Fors Clavigera’ that you have set apart for correspondence. It is most tantalizing to see a bit printed like the enclosed, and not know either what is before or after. I felt similar feelings some time ago over a little bit of a letter about the subscription to Warwick Castle. “We cannot always see the London papers, especially us provincials; and we would like to see what goes on between you and the newspaper world. “Trusting that you will give this suggestion some consideration, and at any rate take it as given in good faith from a disciple following afar off, “I remain, sincerely yours.” The enclosed slip was as follows:— “Mr. Ruskin’s Tender Point.—Mr. John Ruskin has written a letter to a contemporary on madness and crime, which goes far to clear up the mystery which has surrounded some of his writings of late. The following passage amply qualifies the distinguished art critic for admission into any asylum in the country:—‘I assure you, sir, insanity is a tender point with me.’” The writer then quotes to the end the last paragraph of the letter, which, in compliance with my correspondent’s wish, I am happy here to reprint in its entirety. MADNESS AND CRIME. TO THE EDITOR OF THE ‘PALL MALL GAZETTE.’