Also, when you began to say pleasant things to me, you hadn't a bit of personal feeling to make a happy prejudice of, and really I can't flatter myself that you have now.

What I meant was that you, John Ruskin, not being a critic _sal merum_ as the ancients had it, but half critic, and half poet, may be rather encumbered sometimes by the burning imagination in you, may be apt sometimes, when you turn the light of your countenance on a thing, to see the thing lighted up as a matter of course, just as we, when we carried torches into the Vatican, were not perfectly clear how much we brought to that wonderful Demosthenes, folding the marble round him in its thousand folds--how much we brought, and how much we received.

Was it the sculptor or was it the torch-bearer who produced that effect?
And like doubts I have had of you, I confess, and not only when you have spoken kindly of _me_.

You don't mistake by your heart, through loving, but you exaggerate by your imagination, through glorifying.

There's my thought at least.
But what I meant by 'apprehending too intensely,' dear Mr.Ruskin, don't ask me.