The following letter, from a friend whose observations on natural history for the last seven or eight years have been consistently valuable and instructive to me, will be found, with that subjoined in the note, in various ways interesting; but especially in its notice of the inefficiency of ordinary instrumental registry in such matters:--
"6, MOIRA PLACE, SOUTHAMPTON, _Feb. 8th, 1884_.
DEAR MR. RUSKIN,--Some time since I troubled you with a note or two about sea-birds, etc.... but perhaps I should never have ventured to trouble you again, had not your lecture on the 'Storm Clouds' touched a subject which has deeply interested me for years past. I had, of course, no idea that you had noticed this thing, though I might have known that, living the life you do, you must have done so. As for me, it has been a source of perplexity for years: so much so, that I began to wonder at times whether I was not under some mental delusion about it, until the strange theatrical displays, of the last few months, for which I was more or less prepared, led so many to use their eyes, unmuzzled by brass or glass, for a time. I know you do not bother, or care much to read newspapers, but I have taken the liberty of cutting out and sending a letter of mine, sent on the 1st January to an evening paper,[A] upon this subject, thinking you might like to know that one person, at any rate, has seen that strange, bleared look about the sun, shining so seldom except through a ghastly glare of pale, persistent haze. May it be that the singular coloring of the sunsets marks an end of this long period of plague-cloud, and that in them we have promise of steadier weather? (No: those sunsets were entirely distinct phenomena, and promised, if anything, only evil.--R.)
I was glad to see that in your lecture you gave the dependants upon the instrument-makers a warning. On the 26th I had a heavy sailing-boat lifted and blown, from where she lay hauled up, a distance of four feet, which, as the boat has four hundred-weight of iron upon her keel, gives a wind-gust, or force, not easily measured by instruments.
Believe me, dear Mr. Ruskin, Yours sincerely, ROBT. C. LESLIE."
I am especially delighted, in this letter, by my friend's vigorously accurate expression, eyes "unmuzzled by brass or glass." I have had occasion continually, in my art-lectures, to dwell on the great law of human perception and power, that the beauty which is good for us is prepared for the natural focus of the sight, and the sounds which are delightful to us for the natural power of the nerves of the ear; and the art which is admirable in us, is the exercise of our own bodily powers, and not carving by sand-blast, nor oratorizing through a speaking trumpet, nor dancing with spring heels. But more recently, I have become convinced that even in matters of science, although every added mechanical power has its proper use and sphere, yet the things which are vital to our happiness and prosperity can only be known by the rational use and subtle skill of our natural powers. We may trust the instrument with the prophecy of storm, or registry of rainfall; but the conditions of atmospheric change, on which depend the health of animals and fruitfulness of seeds, can only be discerned by the eye and the bodily sense.