APPENDIX 323 MR. RUSKIN'S LETTERS I BRANTWOOD, CONISTON, LANCASHIRE, _20th June, 1879_. DEAR MR. MALLESON,--I could not at once answer your important letter: for, though I felt at once the impossibility of my venturing to address such an audience as you proposed, I am unwilling to fail in answering to any call relating to matters respecting which my feelings have been long in earnest, if in any wise it may be possible for me to be of service therein. My health--or want of it--now utterly forbids my engagement in any duty involving excitement or acute intellectual effort; but I think, before the first Tuesday in August, I might be able to write one or two letters to yourself, referring to, and more or less completing, some passages already printed in Fors and elsewhere, which might, on your reading any portions you thought available, become matter of discussion during the meeting at some leisure time, after its own main purposes had been answered. At all events, I will think over what I should like, and be able, to represent to such a meeting, and only beg you not to think me insensible of the honour done me by your wish, and of the gravity of the trust reposed in me. Ever most faithfully yours, J. RUSKIN. THE REV. F. A. MALLESON. II BRANTWOOD, CONISTON, _23rd June, 1879_. DEAR MR. MALLESON,--Walking, and talking, are now alike impossible to me;[1] my strength is gone for both; nor do I believe talking on such matters to be of the least use except to promote, between sensible people, kindly feeling and knowledge of each other's personal characters. I have every trust in _your_ kindness and truth; nor do I fear being myself misunderstood by you; what I may be able to put into written form, so as to admit of being laid before your friends in council, must be set down without any question of personal feeling--as simply as a mathematical question or demonstration. [1] In answer to the proposal of discussing the subject during a mountain walk. The first exact question which it seems to me such an assembly may be earnestly called upon by laymen to solve, is surely axiomatic: the definition of themselves as a body, and of their business as such.