So the second edition appeared with the subjects elaborately popularized in fashionable engraving.

More recently they have undergone reduction for a cheap issue.

But any book lover knows the value of the original "Seven Lamps" with its San Miniato cover and autograph plates.
As to its reception, or at least the anticipation of it.

Charlotte Bronte bears witness in a letter to the publishers.
"I congratulate you on the approaching publication of Mr.Ruskin's new work.

If 'The Seven Lamps of Architecture' resemble their predecessor, 'Modern Painters,' they will be no lamps at all, but a new constellation,--seven bright stars, for whose rising the reading world ought to be anxiously agape." The book was announced for his father's birthday, May 10, 1849, and it appeared while they were among the Alps.