At present holding it of more importance not to violate confidence [80] than to sell photographs cheap, I do not even publish what I have ascertained, since this note was half written, to be the (actual) trade price, and I must simply leave the thing in the beautiful complexity of competition and secretiveness called British Trade; only, at Oxford, I have so much personal influence with Mr. Davis, in Exeter Street, as may, I think, secure his obtaining the photographs, for which, as a dealer combined with other dealers, he must ask three shillings, of good quality; to him, therefore, at Oxford, for general business, my readers may address themselves; or in London, to Miss Bertolacci, 7, Edith Grove, Kensington; and, for impressions certified by me, to Mr. Ward, at Richmond, (address as above,) who will furnish them, unmounted, for two shillings each, and mounted, for three. And for a foundation of the domestic art-treasure of their establishment, I do not hold this to be an enormous or unjustifiable expense. FORS CLAVIGERA. LETTER LX. I cannot finish the letter I meant for my Christmas Fors; and must print merely the begun fragment—and such uncrystalline termination must now happen to all my work, more or less, (and more and more, rather than less,) as it expands in range. As I stated in last letter, I have now seven books in the press at once—and any one of them enough to take up all the remainder of my life. ‘Love’s Meinie,’ for instance, (Love’s Many, or Serving Company,) was meant to become a study of British birds, which would have been occasionally useful in museums, carried out with a care in plume drawing which I learned in many a day’s work from Albert Durer; and with which, in such light as the days give me, I think it still my duty to do all I can towards completion of the six essays prepared for my Oxford schools:—but even the third of these, on the Chough, though already written and in type, is at pause because I can’t get the engravings for it finished, and the rest—merely torment me in other work with the thousand things flitting in my mind, like sea-birds for whom there are no sands to settle upon. ‘Ariadne’ is nearer its close; but the Appendix is a mass of loose notes which need a very sewing machine to bring together—and any one of these that I take in hand leads me into ashamed censorship of the imperfection of all I have been able to say about engraving; and then, if I take up my Bewick, or return to my old Turner vignettes, I put my Appendix off again—‘till next month,’ and so on.