Letter from John Ruskin, Oxford, to Arthur Helps, 1874 February? : autograph manuscript signed.

Ruskin says that the Pantomimes are not over and that he wants to go again, asking when Helps can go. "And won't it be astonishing to find ourselves there--philosophically." Asks if Helps has really never seen Kate Vaughan dance yet. What Helps says about him being able to see things much is true, and understands having set him to look. Doesn't believe that "Florentine Gentlemen" ever said anything much better than Ruskin's "no noble thing in wealth but to a noble person" and such like. Doesn't in the least know what the ordinary sense of the word "bad" is--of women--they are not responsible creatures he thinks, and don't know right from wrong. A religious --or ambitious to be tenderhearted, is their all. (Helps' daughter) Alice unambitious for going to the shore at Whitby but not the cliffs or the Abbey. But is glad that she has done what her father likes. "It is the best that any of us can ever do, as long as we have one (a father); but we don't all find that out in time."