Autograph letter signed : Edinburgh, to J. Beavington Atkinson, 1860 January 31.

Enclosing a check for Atkinson's article entitled The diffusion of taste, published in Blackwood's magazine in February of 1860, and defending the appearance in that magazine of an article attacking John Ruskin; "The paper is a good paper and by a very accomplished man. Iknow nothing about Ruskin except what all the world knows & have no personal feelings towards him whatever ... If Ruskin will write with such arrogant violence against the plainest matter of common sense and common belief he must expect to be roughly handled. I fancy the strongest language in the paper would be found in the adoption of some of his own phrases used by him against better men. I am not aware of anything in the paper alluding to his unfortunate domestic arrangements."; transcribes an excerpt from the Bristol times clearing Atkinson of the prevailing suspicion that he is the author of the article attacking Ruskin.