"MY DEAR SIR,--I wanted to tell you what deep respect I had for Sydney Smith; but my time has been cut to pieces ever since your note reached me. He was the first in the literary circles of London to assert the value of 'Modern Painters,' and he has always seemed to me equally keen-sighted and generous in his estimate of literary efforts. His 'Moral Philosophy' is the only book on the subject which I care that my pupils should read, and there is no man (whom I have not personally known) whose image is so vivid in my constant affection.--Ever your faithful servant, "JOHN RUSKIN."--[ED.] * * * * * ART. I. HISTORY AND CRITICISM. LORD LINDSAY'S "CHRISTIAN ART." (_Quarterly Review, June 1847._) EASTLAKE'S "HISTORY OF OIL PAINTING." (_Quarterly Review, March 1848._) SAMUEL PROUT. (_Art Journal, March 1849._) SIR JOSHUA AND HOLBEIN. (_Cornhill Magazine, March 1860._) * * * * * "THE HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN ART."[4] BY LORD LINDSAY. 16. There is, perhaps, no phenomenon connected with the history of the first half of the nineteenth century, which will become a subject of more curious investigation in after ages, than the coincident development of the Critical faculty, and extinction of the Arts of Design. Our mechanical energies, vast though they be, are not singular nor characteristic; such, and so great, have before been manifested--and it may perhaps be recorded of us with wonder rather than respect, that we pierced mountains and excavated valleys, only to emulate the activity of the gnat and the swiftness of the swallow. Our discoveries in science, however accelerated or comprehensive, are but the necessary development of the more wonderful reachings into vacancy of past centuries; and they who struck the piles of the bridge of Chaos will arrest the eyes of Futurity rather than we builders of its towers and gates--theirs the authority of Light, ours but the ordering of courses to the Sun and Moon.