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1 Yosemite Valley January 9th 1873 Dear McChesney I have just finished a ramble through the handsome Ruskin you have
me Ruskin is great but not a great man, only a great ready-to-burst bud of a man, He is fettered bounded though his chain
is longer? His tether seems at times to break all together he roams over all this world what he takes to be the next, but
after all, one never can feel that he is free-, his widest world, his highest sky is inclosed by a hard definite shell, making
us think of a mouse beneath a huge bell glass so huge that it scarce feels its bounds There are writers of far lesser in-
tellectual growth who nevertheless in margin: The very hope longings of Ruskin are clearest regular in form as bricks could
be made to order by a machine 00195 4 when taken into the stomach so would silver gold. So would sunshine but I have
lived with loved with Kalmia many a day slept with my cheek upon her bonnie purple flowers glossy leaves I know that she is
only love directly spoken from the lips of God, I know something about the blasted trunk, the barren rock, the moaning of
the bleak winds, the solemn solitudes of moors seas, the roar of the black, perilous merciless whirlpools of the mountain
streams they underlined: have a language for me but declare nothing of wrath or of Hell Only Love plain as was ever spoken
All that he says about near approach to mtn beauty familiarity with Nature in general is very com- pletely false This my friend
is the true infidelity a disbelief in the con- stancy sufficiency everlastingness of God's Love as written in Nature We should
use beauty every moment as we use breath Christianity Mountainanity are streams from the same fountain When I read such heresy
as Ruskins Mtn loom Mtn evil Mtn devil the unwholesome- ness of Mtn beauty as everyday bread I wish in margin: I were a preacher.
Ever cordially yrs John Muir