9. VIA CONDOTTI, ROMA.

26. March. 1859.

At last your two pictures are done, & will be out of my hands in two days from this, & before the first of May I trust they will be in Carlton Gardens. So far as admiration of them can please an artist I have certainly had a full share from the 7 or 800 people who have seen them in my study: but I shall nevertheless be very desirous to know how you are pleased with them. The Masada is the most striking: its sunset-colour, & excessive lonely character must always make it so. The Jerusalem is perhaps the most interesting; & I hope both will give you plea- {132} sure for many years to come. At any time I should have finished these two pictures carefully for my own sake, & on account of the interest of the subjects, but I must tell you that I have been more than ordinarily attentive to your two commissions, in as much as they were given me in faith, and because the payment of one of them was an assistance to me in going to the Holy Land.

For the same reason I have taken as much pains as I could with Lord Clermont’s picture too, which I believe I shall send off also next week. Neither picture of Jerusalem will I ever repeat, for the minute architecture has tried my sight a good deal, & moreover I hold that an Artist loses much of his originality by repetition of his works.