Judgments given as absolute in your letters to the Manchester press are shown by the commentary which your last letter furnishes to be in a manner conditional, and without that commentary your words were rather misleading. I was not unnaturally a little startled--I, who do not think a "subject" in the ordinary sense of the word imperative at all--to find you condemn the purchase of Yeames's "Arthur and Hubert" (which, for the element of human emotion, certainly satisfies the Aristotelian demand in reference to tragedy), because the emotion does not turn on an heroic act; and I may say, in passing, that I am unable to see how a scene in which deep pity for the helpless is aroused, can be justly described as a "horror which it is foolish to try to realise." Meanwhile, I fully feel the practical difficulty which your last letter describes. It is a difficulty of the most perplexing kind. For it must be evident that whilst with a people of strong moral fibre and an almost entire absence of æsthetic sensibility--at all events, on the side of form--you may indirectly insinuate some perception of the beautiful--of that essence which lifts us out of ourselves--under the cover and pretext of a _moral_ emotion--we cannot ignore the danger of producing the exactly opposite effect of confirming the dully-strung spectator in the belief that the stirring of that moral emotion is in fact the _raison d'être_ of the work. One is, of course, glad, as the world goes, that the doors of righteousness should be opened, even by the wrong key; but one would still more desire that the door which yields only to that key should not itself remain closed. Pray do not take the trouble to acknowledge these parting words: but believe me, very truly yours, FRED LEIGHTON. With regard to Leighton's acute artistic sense of fitness when it was a matter of chosing a site for buildings or monuments, so that such placing should give them their full value of effect, I remember, after a site had been decided on for Cleopatra's Needle in London, Leighton vehemently denouncing the idea of placing it where it now stands. The conversation we had respecting it was recalled by finding the following letter:--