every other subject. The adoption of a _nom-de-plume_ at all implied (as
also the concealment of name on the first publication of 'Modern
Painters') a sense of a power of judgment in myself, which it would not
have been becoming in a youth of eighteen to claim...."

"As it is, these youthful essays, though deformed by assumption, and
shallow in contents, are curiously right up to the points they reach;
and already distinguished above most of the literature of the time, for
the skill of language, which the public at once felt for a pleasant gift
in me." (_Præterita_, vol. I. chap. 12.)

In a paper on "My First Editor," written in 1878, Mr. Ruskin says of
these essays that they "contain sentences nearly as well put together as
any I have done since."

The Conductor of the _Architectural Magazine_ in reviewing the year's
work said (December, 1838):--"One series of papers, commenced in the
last volume and concluded in the present one, we consider to be of
particular value to the young architect. We allude to the 'Essays on the
Poetry of Architecture,' by Kata Phusin. These essays will afford little
pleasure to the mere builder, or to the architect who has no principle
of guidance but precedent; but for such readers they were never
intended. They are addressed to the young and unprejudiced artist; and
their great object is to induce him to think and to exercise his
reason.... There are some, we trust, of the rising generation, who are
able to free themselves from the trammels and architectural bigotry of
Vitruvius and his followers; and it is to such alone that we look
forward for any real improvement in architecture as an art of design and
taste."