There were many who agreed with his aspirations: he received shoals of letters from sympathizing readers, most of them praising his aims and criticising his means. Others objected rather to his manner than to his matter; the title savoured of levity, and an art-critic writing on theology was supposed to be wandering out of his province. Tradition says that the "Notes" were freely bought by Border farmers under a rather laughable mistake; but surely it was no new thing for a Scotch reader to find a religious tract under a catching title. There were a few replies; one by Mr. Dyce, who defended the Anglican view with mild persiflage and the usual commonplaces. And there the matter ended, for the public. For Ruskin, it was the beginning of a train of thought which led him far. He gradually learnt that his error was not in asking too much, but in asking too little. He wished for a union of Protestants, forgetting the sheep that are not of _that_ fold, and little dreaming of the answer he got, after many days, in "Christ's Folk in the Apennine." Meanwhile the first volume of "Stones of Venice" had appeared, March, 1851. Its reception was indirectly described in a pamphlet entitled "Something on Ruskinism, with a 'Vestibule' in Rhyme, by an Architect" complaining bitterly of the "ecstasies of rapture" into which the newspapers had been thrown by the new work: "Your book--since reviewers so swear--may be rational, Still, 'tis certainly not either loyal or national;" for it did not join in the chorus of congratulation to Prince Albert and the British public on the Great Exhibition of 1851, the apotheosis of trade and machinery. The "Architect" finds also--what may surprise the modern reader who has not noticed that many an able work has been thought unreadable on its first appearance--that he cannot understand the language and ideas: "Your style is so soaring--and some it makes sore-- That plain folks can't make out your strange mystical lore." He will allow the author to be quite right, when he finds something to agree upon; but the moment a sore point is touched, then Ruskin is "insane." In one respect the "Architect" hit the nail on the head: "Readers who are not reviewers by profession can hardly fail to perceive that Ruskinism is violently inimical to _sundry existing interests_." The best men, we said, were the first to recognise Ruskin's genius. Let us throw into the opposite scale an opinion of more weight than the "Architect's," in a transcript of the original letter from Carlyle. "CHELSEA, _March_ 9, 1851. "DEAR RUSKIN,