/-- 1 
 
 VI 
 
 7 

 
 THE LIFE AND WORK 
 
 OF 
 
 JOHN RUSKIN 
 
 VOL. I.
 
 THE LIFE AND WORK OF 
 JOHN RUSKIN BY W. G. 
 COLLINGWOOD M.A. EDITOR 
 
 OF -THE POEMS OF JOHN RUSKIN" 
 
 ETC. WITH PORTRAITS AND 
 OTHER ILLUSTRATIONS IN 
 TWO VOLUMES VOL. I 
 
 /IDetfouen & Co. 
 
 18 BURY STREET W.C. 
 LONDON 
 
 1893
 
 TO 
 
 MRS. ARTHUR SEVERN, 
 
 WITH GRATITUDE FOR THE HELP 
 
 WHICH HAS BROUGHT THEM TO COMPLETION, 
 
 THESE MEMOIRS OF HER DISTINGUISHED COUSIN, 
 
 ARE INSCRIBED BY 
 
 THE AUTHOR. 
 
 2067456
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 "VI O reader, I hope, will expect in this instance the 
 * usual apologies for writing a book on one who is yet 
 among us. Mr. Ruskin has been public property, so to 
 say, for more than half a century ; his thoughts have been 
 common subjects of discussion, and his actions of criticism ; 
 so that there need be no indiscretion in relating the true 
 story of his life and work. 
 
 If excuse were wanted, I could point to his own confes- 
 sions, and take shelter under the permission he has often 
 accorded his friends, myself included, to print his letters 
 and to pry into the details of his past. Already quite a 
 literature has grown up about him, inviting the reader's 
 interest, and then disappointing it with slightness of treat- 
 ment. Few, even among the warmest admirers of his 
 genius, seem to be fully aware of the circumstances of his 
 development, the extent of his studies and occupations, 
 and the breadth of his outlook upon the world. His auto- 
 biography has indeed given us a charming picture of his 
 boyhood, in all its most intimate details ; but the readers 
 of Prczterita cannot help wishing to hear the sequel of
 
 viii PREFACE. 
 
 the story so untimely ended ; to trace the fortunes of that 
 precocious child throughout a career which they all know 
 to have been brilliant, though, from want of a connected 
 account, they cannot follow it, as they ,' would, from dawn 
 to meridian, and from noonday to evening light. 
 
 When it was proposed to me to write such an account, 
 I believed that previous study would make the task an 
 easy one. I had the privilege of long acquaintance with 
 Mr. Ruskin, and the advantage of having worked under 
 him, in different capacities, at different times, during some 
 twenty years, on most of the subjects which have occu- 
 pied his attention since his call to Oxford. I had already 
 collected material enough for a volume, in order to write a 
 biographical outline published in 1889 under the editorship 
 of Mr. John Wau'gh of Bradford. I was compiling from 
 Mr. Ruskin's works an attempt at a review of his art- 
 philosophy, and retracing with care, in the manuscript 
 poems and other remains of his youth, the history he has 
 indicated, from his own point of view, in Pr&terita. 
 
 But to complete a biography much fuller information 
 was needed. All the materials at Brantwood were kindly 
 placed in my hands. Papers put aside for the continuation 
 of Pr&terita and Dilecta I did not think right to include, 
 in the hope that one day he might be able to finish his 
 own work. Of private letters I have made a sparing use, 
 for Mr. Ruskin has been an extraordinarily fertile corres- 
 pondent ; there are already several collections of his letters 
 in print, and no doubt more will ultimately appear. A 
 " Life and Letters " worthy of the title would be altogether
 
 PREFACE. IX 
 
 too voluminous and one-sided, quite a different kind of 
 work from that which is here attempted ; though a number 
 of samples of his style in correspondence, many of them 
 new, are given, with permission from his publisher, Mr. 
 George Allen. Of letters received by Mr. Ruskin, a few 
 specimens by Carlyle and Browning, with a distinct 
 biographical interest, are inserted. 
 
 To the information gained from these papers much has 
 been added from many sources. Among the older friends 
 of Mr. Ruskin who have contributed their reminiscences, 
 I would especially mention Miss Prout, the great artist's 
 daughter, whose recollections reach back to the early days 
 of Denmark Hill ; for later years, Mr. and Mrs. Arthur 
 Severn are the chief authorities, and they have given every 
 kind of assistance. Mrs. Arthur Severn took the trouble 
 to read the whole work in proof, correcting and adding 
 many points of importance. Mr. Arthur Severn kindly 
 sketched Mr. Ruskin's three homes purposely for this 
 work, choosing the most characteristic points of view. The 
 drawings by Mr. Ruskin, illustrating the development of 
 his artistic style, have been lent, with one exception, by 
 Mrs. Severn. The frontispiece is from a sketch by Mr. 
 Ruskin in her possession, of unique value and interest : 
 the original is a good likeness of a face whose most note- 
 worthy expressions no artist or photographer has quite 
 succeeded in catching, and the plate is a triumph of 
 chromolithograph facsimile. To the same friend I owe 
 the four blocks of portraits by Northcote and Rich- 
 mond, which have appeared in the Magazine of Art to
 
 x PREFACE. 
 
 illustrate a notice of the " Portraits of John Ruskin," by 
 Mr. M. H. Spielmann. Another portrait has been lent 
 by Mr. H. Jowett, Editor of HazelFs Magazine, from the 
 photograph which Mr. Ruskin has Considered the best 
 likeness of himself. 
 
 The framework of chronology into which all the details 
 so discovered had to be fitted, and which is given in brief 
 abstract in the Appendices, was mainly compiled, with 
 infinite labour and wide research, by Mr. Sydney C. 
 Cockerell. To his care and generosity I am indebted for 
 the confidence with which I have been able to treat the 
 course of the story ; and, while tacitly correcting errors 
 of date in previous publications, to assure the reader 
 that, whatever be the shortcomings of this work, its main 
 statements of fact are founded on the fullest attainable 
 evidence, most carefully sifted and weighed. 
 
 Together with all students of Ruskin, I must express 
 great obligations to my former collaborateur, the Editor 
 of Arrows of the Chace, On the Old Road, Ruskiniana, 
 etc., whose valuable work has paved the way to systematic 
 study of Mr. Ruskin's life and writings. Another im- 
 portant source has been the great Bibliography now 
 in progress ; to its editors, Mr. T. J. Wise and Mr. 
 James P. Smart, jun., I owe not only private help, but 
 permission to abstract from their exhaustive work the 
 condensed bibliography which will be found in the 
 Appendices. 
 
 In the compilation of the Catalogue of Mr. Ruskin's 
 dated drawings, which is also a mere abridgment of fuller
 
 PREFACE. XI 
 
 information, I have again to acknowledge great help from 
 Mr. S. C. Cockerell, as well as the kindness of Lady Simon, 
 Mrs. Talbot, Mrs. W. H. Churchill, Miss and Mr. F. 
 Hilliard, Prof. C. H. Moore and Mr. Richard Norton of 
 Cambridge, U.S.A., Mr. A. Macdonald of Oxford, and 
 many others. 
 
 Lastly, I ought to apologise to some, whose names I 
 have taken the liberty of mentioning in connection with 
 Mr. .Ruskin's, without asking their leave. Perhaps, how- 
 ever, the apology is due rather to those whose friendship 
 and services have been left unnoticed. But they are begged 
 to remember that this book was not to be " The Life and 
 Friends of John Ruskin," nor his " Life and Times." Its 
 limits are expressed by the title. It is intended neither 
 as an apology nor as a criticism ; it records too inade- 
 quately, too inefficiently, I know but with warm regard 
 for its hero and earnest respect for truth, the story of 
 a noble life, and the main issues of a great man's work. 
 
 W. G. C. 
 
 LANEHEAD, CONISTON, 
 
 October 2ist, 1892.
 
 CONTENTS OF VOL. I. 
 
 BOOK I. 
 
 THE BOY POET (18191842). 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 I. THE RUSKIN FAMILY (1780 1819) ... 3 
 II. THE FATHER OF THE MAN (1819 1825) . . 14 
 
 III. PERFERVIDUM INGENIUM (1826 1830) ... 26 
 
 IV. MOUNTAIN- WORSHIP (1830 1835) . . . - 37 
 V. A LOVE STORY (1836 1839) 53 
 
 VI. " KATA PHUSIN " (18361838) . . . 63 
 
 VII. SIR ROGER NEWDIGATE'S PRIZE (1837 1839) 79 
 
 VIII. THE BROKEN CHAIN (18401841) ... 88 
 
 IX. THE GRADUATE OF OXFORD (1841 1842) . . 96 
 
 BOOK II. 
 THE ART CRITIC (18421860). 
 
 I. "TURNER AND THE ANCIENTS" (1842 1844) . 107 
 
 II. CHRISTIAN ART (1845 1847) . . . .119 
 
 III. "THE SEVEN LAMPS" (18471849) . . . 133 
 
 IV. "STONES OF VENICE" (1849 1851) . . . 142
 
 xiv CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 V. PRE-RAPHAELITISM (1851 1853) .... 155 
 
 VI. THE EDINBURGH LECTURES (1853 1854) . .168 
 
 VII. THE WORKING MEN'S COLLEGE (1854 1855) . 178 
 
 VIII. "MODERN PAINTERS" CONTINUED (1855 1856) . 191 
 
 IX. "THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART" (1857 1858) 204 
 
 X. "MODERN PAINTERS" CONCLUDED (1858 1860) . 216 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 CHRONOLOGY (1819 1860) . . . . . 227 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY (1834 1860) 233 
 
 CATALOGUE OF DRAWINGS BY MR. RUSKIN (1829 1859) 238
 
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
 John Ruskin, by Himself (about 1864-65) . . . Frontispiece 
 
 TO FACE PAGE 
 
 John Ruskin at the age of Three, by James Northcote, R.A. (1822) 17 
 " The Thorn in the Foot" (the head painted from John Ruskin), 
 
 by James Northcote, R.A. (1824) 18 
 
 The Scala Monument, Verona, by John Ruskin (1835) . . .51 
 Stirling Palace and Church, by John Ruskin (1838) ... 74 
 Mr. Ruskin's Home at Herne Hill, by Arthur Severn, R.I. . . 107 
 The Author of " Modern Painters," by George Richmond, R.A. 
 
 (1842) 108 
 
 Mr. Ruskin's House at Denmark Hill, by Arthur Severn, R.I. . ii6 
 
 Olive at Carrara, by John Ruskin (1845) I21 
 
 The Pilatus, Lucerne, by John Ruskin (1846) . . . .130 
 John Ruskin, by George Richmond, R.A. (1857) .... 210
 
 BOOK I. 
 
 THE BOY POET. 
 (1819 1842.) 
 
 1 ' Eat fern-seed 
 
 And peer beside us, and report indeed 
 If (your word) ' genius ' dawned with throes and stings 
 And the whole fiery catalogue, while springs, 
 Summers and winters quietly came and went." 
 
 Sordello. 
 
 VOL. I.
 
 CHAPTER T. 
 
 THE RUSKIN FAMILY. 
 
 (17801819.) 
 
 "And still within our valleys here 
 We hold the kindred-title dear, 
 Even when, perchance, its far-fetched claim 
 To Southern ear sounds empty name ; 
 For course of blood, our proverbs deem, 
 Is warmer than the mountain-stream." 
 
 Scott. 
 
 IF origin, if early training and habits of life, if tastes, and 
 character, and associations, fix a man's nationality, then 
 John Ruskin is a Scotsman. He was born in London, but 
 his family was from Scotland. He was brought up in 
 Surrey, but the friends and teachers, the standards and 
 influences of his early life, were chiefly Scottish. The 
 writers who directed him into the main lines of his thought 
 and work, not so much because he chose them as leaders, 
 as because he was naturally brought under the spell of 
 their inspiration, were Scotsmen from Sir W. Scott and 
 Lord Lindsay and Principal Forbes to the master of his 
 later studies of men and the means of life, Thomas Carlyle. 
 The religious instinct so conspicuous in him is a heri- 
 tage from Scotland ; so is his conscience and code of 
 morality, part emotional, part logical, and often unlike an 
 Englishman's in the points that satisfy it or shock it. The
 
 4 THE LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
 combination of shrewd common sense and romantic senti- 
 ment ; the oscillation between levity and dignity, from 
 caustic jest to tender earnest ; the restlessness, the fervour, 
 the impetuosity, all these are characteristics of a Scotsman 
 of parts, and highly developed in Ruskin. 
 
 There are many points on which his judgments are 
 totally different from any which we English should antici- 
 pate ; no doubt because he represents a racial character 
 which, to many of us, is practically alien. We who are 
 not his kinsfolk find ourselves studying him almost as we 
 would study a foreigner, the more interesting from his 
 unfamiliarity. And as no man is a prophet in his own 
 country, though he may find a few disciples there, it is 
 from Scotland that he has met with the severest opposi- 
 tion, the deepest disappointments of his life ; as well as 
 the best help and most devoted hero-worship. 
 
 The English world owes much to Scotland, in conduct of 
 war, and in enterprise of commerce and industry ; but still 
 more in literature. And above the rest, four names stand 
 preeminent : Burns and Scott ; Carlyle and Ruskin. 
 
 But there are Scots and Scots. Ruskin is not only 
 Scottish, but Jacobite. Although one of his great-grand- 
 fathers represented a Covenanting stock, the tradition of 
 loyalty to the Stuarts ran in his other kindred ; and a 
 tradition which meant so much, during a hundred years 
 of struggle and strife, could not fail to leave an impress on 
 the family character. It comes out in his tastes in litera- 
 ture, in his ideals of politics and society. That strange 
 Tory revolutionism of Fors Clavigera, at once monarchical 
 and democratic, loyal and radical, holding so close to estab- 
 lished usage and yet so ideal in its aims ; the romanticism, 
 the altruistic self-abandonment, the readiness to rush in on
 
 I 
 THE RUSKIN FAMILY. 5 
 
 the weaker side with a passionate cry for poetical justice ; 
 these mark him as inheriting a character uncommon among 
 us English, who like fair play, indeed, but leave the dis- 
 putants to fight it out ; whose conservatism is law-abiding, 
 and whose reforms are nothing if not immediately practical. 
 It must be an old Scottish trait that comes out, too, in his 
 devotion to France and the French, in spite of a free 
 criticism of them ; an Englishman with his tastes would 
 have been more at home among the ancient Greeks, or the 
 modern Italians ; a Scot of the other party, like Carlyle, 
 loved the Germans. 
 
 There is not only the Scot and the Jacobite, but some- 
 thing of the Highland Celt, in Ruskin. 
 
 The origin of the family name is unknown. It was 
 commonly supposed to be simply a vulgar nickname 
 Roughskin ; but every one who has looked into such affairs 
 knows how little the popular derivations are to be trusted ; 
 they are usually no more than blundering explanations of 
 things that have been forgotten. And in this case, if 
 Ruskin be Roughskin, how comes it that there is a family 
 of Rusken, with an "e," of earlier origin apparently, of 
 greater worldly standing and expansion ? to whom the 
 Ruskins claimed some kind of affinity ; whose arms, with a 
 difference, they assumed. 
 
 The question is trifling, except to those who are curious 
 about the race from which an interesting man has sprung. 
 It is certain that there once was a family of Rusking, the 
 patronymic for some Teutonic hero Rusk (or whatever the 
 form was) ; and they were Angles, for a branch of them left 
 their mark in the settlement in Lincolnshire with the 
 Anglian ending " ton," Ruskington. As the Angles also 
 colonised the Lowlands of Scotland, another line may have
 
 6 THE LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
 preserved the name, curtailed by dropping the " g " ; and 
 with that genealogy, if it could be proved, Mr. Ruskin 
 might be claimed by the admirers of the Anglo-Saxon 
 genius as a Teuton. But this explanation, also, hardly 
 gives the variant Rusken. 
 
 Both names are unusual ; they do not figure in history ; 
 the family is not one of the great clans. The name seems 
 to start up in the eighteenth century, as far as we are 
 concerned, with a solitary Ruskin in Edinburgh, as if he 
 were some immigrant known by the name of his place of 
 origin : one of the many who drifted to the towns in that 
 period seeking safety, or a field for labour ; with clan-name 
 either concealed through prudence, or too common to 
 identify him. We find a kirk of Roskeen, near Invergordon, 
 on the firth of Cromarty ; a Gaelic name which, variously 
 transliterated into the Sassenach, might give Rusken to an 
 earlier immigrant, Ruskin to the later. About this dimly- 
 seen person we only know that his son was famous for his 
 handsome looks, and handed on to his children the deep- 
 eyed earnestness and poetical countenance of the typical 
 Highlander ; and that his great-grandson has exemplified, 
 like any chieftain or bard of romance, the distinguishing 
 spirit of the Gael. For the ideals of John Ruskin are 
 surely Celtic. Whether he comes from the clans of Ross, 
 or from some obscurer and less traceable stock, he stands 
 as the central figure among those artists and poets, writers 
 and orators, whose inspiration we refer to survivals of 
 Ossianic nature-worship, Fingalian heroism and Columban 
 piety ; he exemplifies the "recrudescence of the Celt." 
 
 But the exponent of a national ideal is rarely pure -bred : 
 if for no other reason than this : to expound an ideal, one 
 must be in touch with the actual ; to introduce one party to
 
 THE RUSKIN FAMILY. 7 
 
 another you must hold the hands of each. It is commonly 
 remarked that notable men are of mixed race. And in 
 this case the Celtic fire was fed with some west-country 
 piety and tempered with an infusion of coolness from a 
 sailor of the North Sea. 
 
 Ruskin of Edinburgh, the second known of the name, 
 married, about 1780, Catherine Tweddale, daughter of the 
 minister of Glenluce* in Wigtownshire, and born in the 
 old abbey of St. Ninian. Her miniature shows a bright 
 and animated brunette, run away with, at sixteen, by the 
 handsome young husband. He was in the wine-trade in 
 Edinburgh, and lived in the Old Town at the head of George 
 Wynd, then a respectable neighbourhood. They belonged 
 to the upper middle class, with cultivated tastes and com- 
 fortable surroundings, highly connected, and entertaining 
 among others such a man as Dr. Thomas Brown, the pro- 
 fessor of philosophy, a great light in his own day, and still 
 conspicuous in the constellation of Scotch metaphysicians. 
 
 Their son, John James Ruskin (born May loth, 1785), 
 was sent to the famous High School of Edinburgh, under 
 Dr. Adam, the most renowned of Scottish headmasters ; 
 and there he received the sound old-fashioned classical 
 education. Before he was sixteen his sister Jessie was 
 
 * To a Catherine Tweddale, aunt or great-aunt of this man, the 
 original " Solemn League and Covenant " had been delivered by Baillie 
 of Jarviswood before his execution, about 1685. The document was 
 sold at the sale of this Mr. Tweddale's library, at his death, when his 
 children were yet young. His brother-in-law was the Dr. Adair who is 
 seen in Benjamin West's picture, supporting General Wolfe at Quebec, 
 and trying to stanch his blood. Robin Adair of the song was, they 
 say, an ancestor. The Adairs of Gennoch, Rosses of Balsarrach, and 
 Agnews of Lochnavv, from whom Mr. Ruskin is descended, were among 
 the noblest families of the south. His detailed pedigree is thick with 
 names of distinction in the army, navy and learned professions.
 
 
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 Other Issue. 
 
 PS o I
 
 THE RUSKIN FAMILY. 9 
 
 already married at Perth to Peter Richardson, a tanner, 
 living at Bridge End by the Tay. And so his cousin 
 Margaret Cox was sent for, to fill the vacant place. 
 
 She was a daughter of old Mr. Ruskin's sister, who 
 had married a Captain Cox, sailing from Yarmouth for the 
 herring fishery. He had died in 1789, or thereabouts, from 
 the results of an accident while riding homewards to his 
 family after one of his voyages ; and his widow, with 
 Scottish energy, maintained herself in comfort by keeping 
 the old King's Head Inn at Croydon market-place, and 
 brought up her two daughters with the best available edu- 
 cation. The younger one married another Mr. Richardson, 
 a baker at Croydon ; so that by an odd coincidence there 
 were two families of Richardsons, unconnected with one 
 another except through their relationship to the Ruskins. 
 
 Margaret, the elder daughter, who came to keep house 
 for her uncle in Edinburgh, was then nearly twenty years 
 of age. She had been the model pupil at her Croydon 
 day-school ; tall and handsome, pious and practical, she 
 was just the girl to become the confidante and adviser of 
 her dark-eyed, active and romantic young cousin, his 
 guardian angel. 
 
 Some time before the beginning of 1807, John James, 
 having finished his education at the High School, went 
 out to seek his fortune in London. He was followed by 
 a kind letter from Dr. Thomas Brown, who advised him to 
 keep up his Latin and to study Political Economy ; for 
 the Professor looked upon him as a young man of unusual 
 promise and power. During some two years he worked 
 as a clerk in the house of Gordon, Murphy & Co., where 
 he made friends and laid the foundation of his prosperity. 
 For along with him at the office there was a Mr. Peter
 
 10 THE LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
 Domecq, owner of the Spanish vineyards of Macharnudo, 
 learning the commercial part of his business in London, 
 the headquarters of the sherry trade. He admired his 
 fellow-clerk's capacity so much that, on setting up for 
 himself, he offered the management of his London branch 
 to John James Ruskin ; and not only that, but practically 
 the headship of the firm, since the London agency was 
 naturally the most important part of the concern. And 
 so they entered into partnership, about 1809, as Ruskin, 
 Telford & Domecq ; Domecq contributing the sherry, 
 Mr. Henry Telford the capital, and Ruskin the brains. 
 
 He returned home to Edinburgh on a visit, and arranged 
 marriage with his cousin Margaret if she would wait 
 for him until he was safely established ; and then he set 
 to work at the responsibilities of creating a new business. 
 It was a severer task than he had anticipated ; for in 
 course of time his father's health and affairs both went 
 wrong : he left Edinburgh and settled at Bower's Well, 
 Perth ; ended unhappily, and left a load of debt behind him, 
 which the son, sensitive to the family honour, undertook 
 to pay before laying by a penny for himself. It took nine 
 years of assiduous labour and economy. He worked the 
 business entirely by himself. The various departments 
 that most men entrust to others he filled in person. He 
 managed the correspondence, he travelled for orders, he 
 arranged the importation, he directed the growers out 
 in Spain, and gradually built up a great business, paid off 
 his father's creditors, and secured his own competence. 
 
 This was not done without sacrifice of health, which 
 he never recovered ; nor without forming habits of over- 
 anxiety and toilsome minuteness which lasted his life long. 
 But his business cares were relieved by cultured tastes.
 
 THE RUSKIN FAMILY. II 
 
 He loved art, and drew well in water-colours in the old 
 style. He loved literature, and read aloud finely all the 
 old standard authors, though he was not too old-fashioned 
 to admire " Pickwick " and the " Noctes Ambrosianae " 
 when they appeared. He loved the scenery and archi- 
 tecture among which he had travelled in Scotland and 
 Spain ; but he could find interest in almost any place and 
 any subject, an alert man, in whom practical judgment 
 was joined to a romantic temperament, strong feelings and 
 opinions to extended sympathies. His portraits by Copley 
 and Northcote give the idea of an expressive face, sensitive, 
 refined, every feature a gentleman's. 
 
 So, after those nine years of work and waiting, he went 
 to Perth to claim his cousin's hand. She was for further 
 delay ; but with the minister's help he persuaded her one 
 evening into a prompt marriage in the Scotch fashion, 
 drove off with her next morning to Edinburgh, and on to 
 the house he had prepared in London at 54, Hunter Street, 
 Brunswick Square. 
 
 The heroine of this little drama was no ordinary bride. 
 At Edinburgh she had found herself though well brought 
 up, for Croydon inferior to the society of the Modern 
 Athens. As the affianced ^f a man of ability she felt it 
 her duty to make herself his match in mental culture, as 
 she was already in her own department of practical matters. 
 Under Dr. Brown's direction and stimulated by his notice, 
 she soon became not a blue-stocking but- well-read, 
 well-informed above the average. She was one of those 
 persons, too rarely met with, who set themselves a very 
 high standard in every way, and resolve to drag both 
 themselves and their neighbours up to it. But, as the 
 process is difficult, so it is disappointing. People became
 
 12 THE LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
 rather shy of Mrs. Ruskin, and she of them, so that her 
 life was solitary and her household quiet. It was not 
 from any narrow Puritanism that she made so few friends ; 
 her morality and her piety, strict as they were within their 
 own lines, permitted her the enjoyments and amusements 
 of life ; still less was there any cynicism or misanthropy. 
 But she devoted herself to her husband and son : she was 
 too proud to court those above her in worldly rank, and 
 she was not easily approached except by people fully 
 equal to her in strength of character, of whom there could 
 never be many. And so the ordinary acquaintances got 
 an unkindly view of her ; by the young especially she was, 
 in her later years, feared rather than loved. But to the 
 few who made their way to her friendship she was a true 
 and valuable friend. 
 
 It is worth while thus briefly studying the parents, the 
 sort of people from whom John Ruskin sprang : for it was 
 not only in the unconscious heredity of race that they con- 
 tributed to his character. No man was ever more carefully 
 formed by deliberate training and prearranged education ; 
 and few men have more conscientiously and effectually 
 carried out their parents' plan. Most of our talented 
 young people revolt from the parental regimen, and owe, 
 or fancy they owe, everything to themselves. They set up 
 to be intellectual Melchisedeks, " without father, without 
 mother, without descent." They boast in being mentally 
 " self-made " men and women, as if such spontaneous 
 generation of genius were possible. The rest of mankind, 
 the vast majority of virtuous respectabilities, accept the 
 family tradition and walk in it, without either inquiry or 
 restiveness : what was good enough for their parents is 
 good enough for them. But in John Ruskin we see a
 
 THE RUSKIN FAMILY. 13 
 
 son who accepted the parental direction luckily for him, 
 worthy of acceptance ; he never came into violent collision 
 with his Lares and Penates. Of course he always had his 
 own view of things, his own character and individuality, 
 from the first ; undisguised interests and occupations be- 
 yond and beside the prescribed rule of home life ; and 
 naturally, in course of time, this graft of his own per- 
 sonality grew, and spread, and blossomed into a new 
 variety of the species ; but always on the parent stock. 
 He built him the "more stately mansion" that the poet 
 tells of, but without first dismantling the ancestral home. 
 
 And yet the gradual enlargement of his ideas and 
 sphere of thought involved a gradual estrangement from 
 his parents ; much more painful than any sudden revolt, 
 because then they would have known, so to speak, the 
 worst, and some sort of reconciliation on a new basis 
 would have been possible. As it was, they saw or 
 thought they saw, for they could not tell how it would 
 end their work being gradually undone, their cherished 
 hopes frustrated, their intentions unfulfilled. And all their 
 pride in his fame, and their confidence in his dutiful affec- 
 tion, could not hide the fact that, once launched on his 
 life's true career, he had drifted away from their track, out 
 of their sight, voyaging through strange seas of thought, 
 alone.
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE FATHER OF THE MAN. 
 
 (18191825.) 
 
 " While yet a child, and long before his time, 
 Had he perceived the presence and the power 
 
 Of greatness." 
 
 Wordsworth. 
 
 INTO this family John Ruskin was born, on the 8th of 
 February, 1819. 
 
 It might be, if we had fuller information about the per- 
 sonages of history, that we could trace in all of them the 
 influences of heredity and early training as distinctly and 
 as completely as in his case. But the birth and breeding 
 of most writers and artists are, in essential points, com- 
 paratively undetailed. We have anecdotes about them ; 
 we hear of their sudden appearance, their struggles, their 
 adventures ; but we cannot trace the development, step by 
 step, of their genius. We see the result ; but the process 
 is like the growth of a Jonah's gourd, something that seems 
 to have sprung up in the darkness, whence, or how, we can 
 only surmise. And so, not the least interesting fact about 
 this life is the circumstantiality with which its early part 
 is known. We have not only the autobiography, but the 
 recollections of friends, and, most important of all, the 
 actual relics of the very time, in old letters and notebooks 
 
 14
 
 THE FATHER OF THE MAN. 15 
 
 and documents, by which the child's mental growth can 
 be traced, year by year, almost, in many periods, day 
 by day. 
 
 We see what he owed to his parents. But there are 
 three sources of any man's personality, heredity, and 
 training, and that private and particular individual cha- 
 racter which, however explained, is present in him from 
 the beginning and remains with him to the end, binding 
 his days " each to each in natural piety." In John Ruskin 
 this individuality was seen at an earlier stage than in most 
 children, because it was more definite and influential ; and 
 it goes on rapidly but steadily developing, recurring con- 
 tinually to old lines, haunting accustomed scenes, asserting 
 itself in one department after another of study and work ; 
 so that the story of his life cannot rightly be given in a set 
 of tableaux m'vants, a few strong situations ; the whole 
 interest of it lies in the gradual unfolding of a notable 
 character, and in tracing from its germ a mind which, 
 however we rate it, has assuredly been one of the great 
 motive forces of the modern world. 
 
 We can chronicle no comet for his birth, as they do for 
 some not greater men ; but this year 1819 was prolific in 
 characters of interest. We may remark that it was the 
 year of our Queen Victoria ; and among literary men three 
 notables Charles Kingsley, James Russell Lowell, and 
 Walt Whitman. Mr. Ruskin, who has his mood of playing 
 with the occult, believing at times, like so many, that " there 
 is something in it," declares that Saturn presided at his 
 birth : another way of saying that an unfortunate influence 
 seems to have predominated over his life. Weak health, 
 especially, has to be set off against a fair share of wealth ; 
 a certain ill luck in little things and personal aims against
 
 l6 THE LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
 the supreme gift of genius. The violent reaction of a too 
 sensitive nervous system discounts his keen capacity for 
 enjoyment ; and renown, public notice, has been much 
 more trouble to him than it was ever worth. 
 
 But while his " line of luck " so a student of palmistry 
 declares is broken, both at the head and at the heart, it is 
 straight for his early years. His character showed itself 
 fixed from an early age, but his destiny at first seemed 
 to be a happy one. Few notable men have opened their 
 career so fortunately, so brilliantly. 
 
 His mother " devoted him to God," and herself to him. 
 There were no other children to create division of interests ; 
 there were no petty cares or sordid struggles for life and 
 social standing-place. The whole of her was at his dis- 
 posal ; and the very strength and sincerity of her nature 
 taught her to guard her own affection with a show of 
 serene severity, which to gossips appeared almost too 
 Spartan. There is a story told as against her, that when 
 her baby cried to handle the bright tea-kettle, she forced 
 the nurse to let him touch it ; and dismissed him scream- 
 ing. It seems that she did not consider her child as a toy, 
 but as a trust ; to be taught by experience, or when that 
 failed, to be punished into obedience and into something 
 like her own self-control. When he tumbled downstairs 
 she whipped him that he might learn to be careful ; and 
 he certainly acquired an adroitness and presence of mind 
 which have often surprised his companions in mountain- 
 climbing. When he came in to dessert or played among 
 the fruit-trees, she drew the line at one currant ; and there 
 are few men of his artistic and poetical sort who are less 
 tempted to self-indulgence in anything. When an affec- 
 tionate aunt sent him a gaudy Punch and Judy they were
 
 JOHN RUSKIN, AT THE AGE OF THREE. 
 By James Northcote, R. A. 1822. 
 
 [Vol. I., p. , 7 .]
 
 THE FATHER OF THE MAN. I/ 
 
 put away, and he was thrown on his own resources for 
 amusement. Another child would have wept, perhaps, 
 or screamed, to attract attention ; but he invented games 
 with his bunch of keys, his cart, and ball, and bricks ; he 
 discovered how interesting things are if you look at them 
 enough patterns on carpets, watercarts filling at the plug, 
 any view from any window, at which he would stare till, 
 as they put it, the eyes seemed coming out of his head. 
 From this training came a habit of investigation, so that he 
 could not pass a scene or a picture as most of us do, lightly 
 and carelessly ; he must always be studying it, brooding 
 over it and thinking about its plan and purpose ; which 
 when written turned out to be the imaginative description 
 we wonder at, the eloquence which we put vaguely down 
 as a gift or a style, the analytic mind of Ruskin. 
 
 Though he was born in the thick of London he was not 
 city bred. His love for landscape was not the result of 
 a late discovery of it, and of an enthusiastic contrast of 
 wild nature with streets and squares, as it has been in 
 some cases. He was always acquainted with country life, 
 and even mountains were familiar to his childhood. His 
 first three summers were spent in lodgings in what was then 
 rustic Hampstead or Dulwich ; so early as his fourth 
 summer he was taken to Scotland by sea to stay with his 
 aunt Jessie, Mrs. Richardson of Perth. There he found 
 cousins to play with, especially ope little Jessie of nearly 
 his own age ; he found a river with deep swirling pools, 
 that impressed him more than the sea ; and he found the 
 mountains. Coming home in the autumn he sat for his 
 full-length portrait to James Northcote ; and being asked 
 what he would choose for background he replied, " Blue 
 hills." 
 
 VOL. I. 2
 
 1 8 THE LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
 Northcote had painted Mr. and Mrs. Ruskin, and, as 
 they were fond of artistic company, remained their friend. 
 A certain friendship, too, was struck up between the old 
 Academician, then in his seventy-seventh year, the acknow- 
 ledged cynic and satirist, and the little wise boy who asked 
 shrewd questions and could sit still to be painted ; who, 
 moreover, had a face worth painting, not unlike the model 
 from whom Northcote's master, the great Sir Joshua, had 
 painted his famous cherubs. The painter asked him to 
 come again and sit as the hero of a fancy picture, bought 
 at the Academy by the flattered parents ; relegated since 
 to the outhouse at Brantwood. There is a grove ; a flock 
 of toy sheep ; drapery in the grand style ; a mahogany 
 Satyr taking a thorn out of the little pink foot of a conven- 
 tional nudity, poor caricatures of the Titianesque. But the 
 head is an obvious portrait, and a happy one ; far more 
 like the real boy, so tradition says, than the generalised 
 chubbiness of the commissioned picture. 
 
 In the next year (1823) they quitted the town for a 
 suburban home. The spot they chose was in rural 
 Dulwich ; on Herne Hill, a long offshoot of the Surrey 
 downs ; low, and yet commanding green fields and trees 
 and scattered houses in the foreground, with rich undulating 
 country to the south, and looking across London toward 
 Windsor and Harrow. It is all built up now ; but their 
 house (the present No. 28) must have been as secluded as 
 any in a country village the suburbs were, of course, once 
 country villages and as pleasant in its old-fashioned com- 
 fort. There are ample gardens front and rear, well stocked 
 with fruit and flowers ; quite an Eden for a little boy, and 
 all the more that the fruit of it was forbidden. It was here 
 that all his years of youth were spent. Here, under his
 
 THE THORN IN THE FOOT. 
 By James Northcote, R.A, 
 
 [Vol. I., p. 18.]
 
 THE FATHER OF THE MAN. 19 
 
 parents' roof, he wrote his earlier works, as far as vol. i. 
 of Modern Painters. To this house, as his own separate 
 home, he returned for a period of his middle life ; and in 
 the same place, handed over to his adopted daughter, he 
 still finds his own rooms ready when he cares to visit 
 London. 
 
 So he was brought up almost as a country boy, though 
 near enough to town to get the benefit of it, and far enough 
 from the more exciting scenes of landscape nature to find 
 them ever fresh when, summer after summer, he revisited 
 the river scenery of the west or the mountains of the north. 
 For by a neat arrangement, and one fortunate for the boy's 
 education, his summer tours were continued yearly. Mr. 
 John James Ruskin still travelled for the business, then 
 greatly extending ; Mr. Telford, the capitalist partner, 
 meanwhile taking the vacant chair at the office and amiably 
 lending his carriage for the journeys. There was room for 
 two ; so Mrs. Ruskin accompanied her husband, whose 
 indifferent health would have given her constant anxiety 
 during long separations. And the boy could easily be 
 packed in, sitting on his little portmanteau and playing 
 horses with his father's knees ; the nurse riding on the 
 dicky behind. They started usually after the great family 
 anniversary, the father's birthday on May loth, and 
 journeyed by easy stages through the south of England, 
 working up the west to the north, and then home by the 
 east-central route, zigzagging from one provincial town 
 to another, .calling at the great country-seats, to leave no 
 customer or possible customer unvisited ; and in the intervais 
 of business seeing all the sights of the places they passed 
 through : colleges and churches, galleries and parks, ruins, 
 castles, caves, lakes and mountains ; and seeing them all,
 
 20 THE LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
 not listlessly, but with keen interest ; noting everything, 
 inquiring for local information, looking up books of refer- 
 ence, setting down the results, as if they had been meaning 
 to write a guide-book and gazetteer of Great Britain : they, 
 I say, did all this, for as soon as the boy could write he was 
 only imitating his father in keeping his little journal of 
 the tours ; so that all he learned stayed by him, and the 
 habit of descriptive writing was formed. 
 
 We could follow out the tourists in detail, if it were 
 worth while : in the chronology at the end of this work will 
 be found enough to identify their whereabouts at different 
 dates, which is sometimes useful in verifying letters and 
 drawings. But it must suffice here to notice the points of 
 interest which influenced and impressed the boy's mind, 
 and left a mark upon his work. 
 
 In 1823 they seem to have travelled only through the 
 south and south-west: in 1824 they pushed north to the 
 lakes ; stayed awhile at Keswick ; and while the father 
 went about his business, the child was rambling with his 
 nurse on Friar's Crag, among the steep rock and gnarled 
 roots, which suggested, even at that age, the feelings ex- 
 pressed in one of the notable passages in Modern Painters. 
 Thence they went on to Scotland and revisited their rela- 
 tives at Perth. In 1825 they took a more extended tour, 
 and spent a few weeks in Paris, partly for the festivities 
 after the coronation of Charles X., partly, no doubt, for 
 business conferences with Mr. Domecq, who had just been 
 appointed wine-merchant to the King of Spain. Thence 
 they went to Brussels and the field of Waterloo, of greater 
 interest than the sights of Paris to six-year-old John, who 
 often during his boyhood celebrated the battle, and the 
 heroes of the battle, in verse.
 
 THE FATHER OF THE MAN. 21 
 
 These excitements of travel alternated with the quietest 
 homekeeping, employed in uneventful study, not stimu- 
 lated by competition, nor sweetened by any of those 
 educational sugarplums with which the modern child's 
 path is so thickly strewn. And yet his lessons were 
 followed with both steadiness and interest, for he had 
 already begun his life's work, in the sense that his later 
 writing and teaching are demonstrably continuous with 
 his earliest interests and efforts. He has been laughed 
 at for seeing in a copy of verses written at seven the 
 germ of his Political Economy, and what not. But it 
 is true that the expressions there used are expressions of 
 the very same feeling and the same habits of thought that 
 gradually developed into the theories he laid before the 
 world ; they are the initial segments of lines which, drawn 
 boldly out, are recognised as his own lines ; and even from 
 these early indications we now, looking back, can see the 
 man. 
 
 Before he was quite three he climbed up into a chair 
 the chair that all his friends have seen him sitting in of 
 evenings and preached. There is nothing so uncommon 
 in that. Of Robert Browning, his neighbour and seven 
 years older contemporary, the same tale is told. But 
 while the incident that marks the baby Browning is the 
 aside, apropos of a whimpering sister " Pew-opener, remove 
 that child," the baby Ruskin is seen in his sermon : 
 " People, be dood. If you are dood, Dod will love you. 
 If you are not dood, Dod will not love you. People, be 
 dood." That was all ; but it shows that he never was 
 exactly an Evangelical. 
 
 At the age of four he had begun to read and write, 
 refusing to be taught in the orthodox way this is so
 
 22 THE LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
 accurately characteristic by syllabic spelling and copy- 
 book pothooks. He preferred to find a method out for 
 himself, as he always did ; and he found out how to read 
 whole words at a time by the look of them, and to write 
 in vertical characters like bookprint, just as the latest 
 improved theories of education suggest. When once he 
 could read, thenceforward his mother gave him regular 
 morning lessons, in Bible-reading and in reciting the 
 Scotch paraphrases of the Psalms and other verse, which 
 for his good memory was an easy task. He made rhymes 
 before he could write them, of course. 
 
 At five he was a bookworm, and the books he read at 
 once fixed him in certain grooves of thought ; or rather, 
 say they were chosen as favourites from an especial interest 
 in their subjects, an interest which arose from his character 
 of mind, and displayed it. But with all this precocity he 
 was no milksop nor weakling. He was a bright, active 
 lad, full of fun and pranks, not without occasional com- 
 panions, though solitary then at home, and kept precisely, 
 guarded from every danger. He was so little afraid of 
 animals a great test of a child's nerves that about this 
 time he must needs meddle with their fierce Newfoundland 
 dog, Lion, which bit him in the mouth and spoiled his 
 looks. Another time he showed some address in extri- 
 cating himself from the water-butt, a common child-trap. 
 He was not afraid of ghosts or thunder ; instead of that, 
 his early-developed landscape feeling showed itself in 
 dread of foxglove dells, and dark pools of water, as in 
 the popular Italian dream-presage ; in coiling roots of 
 trees things that to the average fancy have no significance 
 whatever. 
 
 At six, he began to imitate the books he was reading,
 
 THE FATHER OF THE MAN. 23 
 
 to write books himself. He had found out how to print, 
 as children do ; and it was his ambition to make real 
 books, with title-pages and illustrations ; not only books, 
 indeed, but series of volumes, a complete library of his 
 whole works. About these there are two prophetic circum- 
 stances, the one pointing to his habit of bringing out a 
 work not all at once, but in successive parts, at intervals 
 perhaps of " olympiads," as he once said ; and the other, 
 to his unfortunate tendency to find himself unable to com- 
 plete his enterprises, to let one subject be crowded out by 
 others, and to drop it in the forlorn hope of resuming it at 
 the more convenient season which is so long in coming ; so 
 that there is hardly a title of his which stands before a 
 properly finished work. The Seven Lamps and Stones of 
 Venice are indeed complete in themselves ; but Modern 
 Painters was concluded in a hurry, quite inadequately ; 
 Fors is a bundle of letters ; and so is Time and Tide ; 
 other works are only collections of lectures or detached 
 essays : of hardly any can it be said that it is carried out 
 according to a studied programme. 
 
 The first of these sets was imitated in style from Miss 
 Edge worth : Harry and Lucy Concluded, or Early Lessons, 
 didactic he was from the beginning. It was to be in four 
 volumes, uniform in red leather, with proper title, frontis- 
 piece and " copperplates " " printed and composed by a 
 little boy and also drawn." It was begun in 1826 and 
 continued at intervals until 1829. It was all done labori- 
 ously in imitation of print ; and, to complete the illusion, 
 contained a page of errata a capital touch of infantile 
 realism. This great work was of course never completed, 
 though he laboured through three volumes ; but when he 
 tired of it, he would turn his book upside down and begin
 
 24 THE LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
 at the other end with other matters ; so that the red books 
 contain all sorts of notes on his minerals and travels, 
 reports of sermons and miscellaneous information, besides 
 their professed contents ; in this respect also being very 
 like his later works. 
 
 The fact that much of his childish writing consisted of 
 accounts of summer tours gave him practice in description, 
 which is commonly thought to be his strong point. His 
 drawings at first were made to illustrate his books ; and as 
 a rule in after times when he sketched it was usually with 
 the same object in view ; hence, not only his own style, 
 but a tendency in all his criticism to look at pictures as 
 illustrations a tendency which was shaken off only in his 
 later period. 
 
 For his travels he sometimes planned a skeleton journal 
 beforehand, and noted in advance the chief sights, that 
 nothing might be missed. After the journey he filled in 
 his impressions : architecture, scenery, minerals and pro- 
 ducts, engineering and economy. His Harry and Lucy 
 is mainly a dramatised account of tours ; himself being 
 Harry, with an imaginary sister, studied from Jessie of 
 Perth or Bridget of Croydon, for he had nobody then to 
 act permanently in that capacity, as his cousin Mary did 
 afterwards. The moralising mamma and literary papa 
 represent his parents to the life. Beside the tours we read 
 of white rabbits and silkworms, air-pumps and fireworks ; 
 the scrapes of a savant in pinafores in quest of general 
 information, from hydraulics, pneumatics, acoustics, elec- 
 tricity, astronomy, mineralogy, to boat-building, engineering 
 and riddles. Much, of course, is ideal : as where Harry 
 anticipating, shall we say ? a later enterprise at Coniston, 
 constructs a great mud globe, " and when his mamma and
 
 THE FATHER OF THE MAN. 25 
 
 papa saw this, whenever they were at a loss for the situa- 
 tion of any country, they went to Harry's globe for satis- 
 faction ! " or when he experimented with a well-appointed 
 laboratory for the astonishment of Lucy. But the descrip- 
 tion of a week at Hastings in the spring of 1 826 is probably 
 a bit of history, and told with lively artlessness. 
 
 There you have our author ready made, with his ever 
 fresh interest in everything, and all-attempting eagerness. 
 Out of which the first thing that crystallises into any 
 definite shape is the verse-writing.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 PERFERVIDUM INGENIUM. 
 
 (18261830.) 
 
 "Apres, en tel train d'estude le mist qu'il ne perdoit heures quelconques du 
 jour : ainsi tout son temps consommoit en lettres." 
 
 Gargantua. 
 
 THE first dated " poem " was written a month before 
 little John Ruskin reached the age of seven. It is 
 a tale of a mouse, in seven octosyllabic couplets, " The 
 Needless Alarm," remarkable only for an unexpected 
 correctness in rhyme, rhythm, and reason. 
 
 His early verse, like his early prose, owes much to the 
 summer tours ; it was from the practice they gave that he 
 became a descriptive writer. The journey to Scotland of 
 1826 suggested two poems, of which one is really interest- 
 ing for its sustained sequence of thought the last thing 
 you ask from a child. And the final stanza has a ring of 
 wild imagery of the infinite, like Blake's best touches : 
 
 " The pole-star guides thee on thy way, 
 When in dark nights thou art lost ; 
 Therefore look up at the starry day, 
 Look at the stars about thee tost." 
 
 But these are only the more complete bits among a 
 quantity of fragments. These summer tours were prolific 
 
 26
 
 PERFERVIDUM INGENIUM. 2/ 
 
 in notes ; everything was observed and turned into verse. 
 And the habit lasted ; and grew into the poetical journals 
 of Ruskin's boyhood, and the ample diaries and notebooks 
 of later years, which supplied the materials for his great 
 works. 
 
 The other inspiring source during this period of versi- 
 fication was his father the household deity of both wife 
 and child, whose chief delight was in his daily return from 
 the city, and in his reading to them in the drawing-room 
 at Herne Hill. John was packed into a recess, where he 
 was out of the way and the draught ; he was barricaded 
 by a little table that held his own materials for amuse- 
 ment ; arid if he liked to listen to the reading, he 
 had the chance of hearing good literature ; the chance 
 sometimes of hearing passages from Byron and Chris- 
 topher North and Cervantes, rather beyond his compre- 
 hension ; for his parents were not of the shockable sort : 
 with all their religion and strict Scotch morality they 
 could laugh at a broad jest, as old-fashioned people could. 
 And it did the child less harm to hear an occasional coarse 
 expression among the sound judgments and great thoughts 
 of fine literature, than it would have done to have been 
 accustomed from the first to the namby-pamby and the 
 shallow twaddle of the modern schoolroom shelf. 
 
 So he associated his father and his father's readings 
 with the poetry of reflection, as he associated the regular 
 summer round with the poetry of description ; the two 
 manners were like two rivulets of verse flowing through 
 his life ; occasionally intermingling, but in their main 
 channels and directions kept distinct. As every summer 
 brought its crop of description, so against the New Year 
 (for being Scotch, they did not then keep our Christmas)
 
 28 THE LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
 and against his father's birthday in May, he used always 
 to prepare some little drama or story or " address " of a 
 reflective nature. The first of these, on " Time," written 
 for New Year's Day, 1827, has perhaps received more 
 notice than was needed. 
 
 In 1827 they were again at Perth; and on their way 
 home, some early morning frost suggested the not ungrace- 
 ful verses on the icicles at Glenfarg. By a childish mis- 
 conception the little boy seems to have confused the real 
 valley that interested him so, with Scott's ideal Glendearg ; 
 and, partly for that reason, to have taken a greater pleasure 
 in " The Monastery " ; which he thereupon undertook to 
 paraphrase in verse. There remain some hundreds of 
 doggrel rhymes ; but his affection for that particular novel 
 survived the fatal facility of his octosyllabics, and reappears 
 time after time in his later writings. It is a little curious 
 that Scott's immediate critics thought " The Monastery " 
 a failure, while Ruskin, who has done more than any one 
 to perpetuate the worship of Sir Walter, counts it his most 
 characteristic work. 
 
 Next year, 1828, their tour was stopped at Plymouth 
 by the unwelcome news of the death of his aunt Jessie, 
 to whom they were on their way. It was hardly a year 
 since the bright little cousin Jessie of Perth had died, of 
 water on the brain. She had been John's especial pet and 
 playfellow, clever like him, and precocious ; and her death 
 must have come to his parents as a warning, if they needed 
 it, to keep their own child's brain from over-pressure. It 
 is evident that they did their best to " keep him back " ; 
 they did not send him to school for fear of the excitement 
 of competitive study. His mother put him through the 
 Latin grammar herself, using the old Adam's manual which
 
 PERFERVIDUM INGENIUM. 29 
 
 his father had used at Edinburgh high school. She had 
 the secret of engaging his interest in her lessons, without 
 using any of those adventitious means which teachers now- 
 adays recommend. Even this old grammar became a sort 
 of sacred book to him ; and when at last he went to school, 
 and his English master threw the book back to him say- 
 ing " That's a Scotch thing," the boy was shocked and 
 affronted, as which of us would be at a criticism on our first 
 instrument of torture ? He remembered the incident all 
 his life, and pilloried the want of tact it was no more 
 with acerbity in his reminiscences. 
 
 They could keep him from school, but they did not keep 
 him from study. The year 1828 saw the beginning of 
 another great work " Eudosia, a Poem on the Universe " ; 
 it was " printed " with even greater neatness and labour : 
 but this too, after being toiled at during the winter months, 
 was dropped in the middle of its second " book." It was 
 not idleness that made him break off such plans, but just 
 the reverse a too great activity of brain. His parents 
 seem to have thought that there was no harm in this 
 desultory and apparently quiet reading and writing. They 
 were extremely energetic themselves, and hated idleness. 
 They seem to have held a theory that their little boy 
 was all right as long a3 he was not obviously excited, and 
 to have thought that the proper way of giving children 
 pocket-money was to let them earn it. So they used to 
 pay him for his literary labours, " Homer " was I s. a page, 
 " Composition " id. for 20 lines ; " Mineralogy " id. an 
 article. And the result of it all is described in a chapter of 
 Harry and Lucy, written at the end of 1828. 
 
 " After Harry had learned his lessons he went to a poem 
 that he was composing for his father on New Year's Day,
 
 30 THE LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
 as he always presented his father with a poem at that 
 period. The subject of it was a battle between the Pre- 
 tender, or " Chevalier " as Harry would have him called, 
 and the forces, or part of the forces, of George II. All 
 the poems that he had hitherto presented to his father 
 were printed in what Harry called single letters, thus 
 n or m ; but Harry printed this double print, in this 
 manner rai ; and it was most beautifully done, you may be 
 sure. It was irregular measure. 
 
 " Harry, when he had done what he thought a moderate 
 allowance of his poem, went to his map. But scarcely had 
 the pen touched the paper when in came dinner. How- 
 ever, that hindrance was soon over, and Harry returned 
 to his map. Harry to-day nearly finished it ; and, after 
 having had some ' Don Quixote,' he went to bed. 
 
 " But as, whenever the world was left ' to darkness and 
 to me,' a bright thought came into Harry's mind, he 
 thought that if he could contrive to make a Punch's show, 
 or rather Fantoccini, out of paper, he could exhibit it when 
 he presented his poem, and please his father a little more. 
 So he fell to work to invent or plan one. First, he settled 
 the size, which was to be about five inches long, two broad, 
 and two sideways. The top, where the figures were to act, 
 was to be two inches square. 
 
 "This settled, Harry began to think how he should 
 make it. This was rather difficult. Harry first thought 
 what shape the piece of paper must be, before it was put 
 together so as to form the show. [Follows a description 
 with diagrams, elaborate and correct, of a marionette- 
 theatre, reduced to lowest terms, with pasteboard figures 
 worked from below with sticks.] 
 
 " Harry, being now quite satisfied with his plan, fell
 
 PERFERVIDUM INGENIUM. 31 
 
 asleep. . . . And in the morning . . . alas ! he was, to use 
 his own words, in a hugeous hurry ! Four days, and he 
 would be entering upon another year ! How was he to get 
 a poem finished consisting of eighty-nine lines,- finished in 
 that style of printing, with the show ? It was altogether 
 impossible. So Harry put off the show till his father's 
 birthday." 
 
 This was the end of that long-continued episode ; for 
 he had now found a real Lucy, and the ideal vanished. 
 The death of his aunt Jessie left a large family of boys 
 and one girl to the care of their widowed father ; and the 
 Ruskins felt it their duty to help. They fetched Mary 
 Richardson away, and brought her up as a sister to their 
 solitary son. She was not so beloved as Jessie had been, 
 but a good girl and a nice girl, four years older than John, 
 and able to be a companion to him in his lessons and 
 travels. There was no sentimentality about his attachment 
 to her, but a steady fraternal relationship ; he, of course, 
 being the little lord and master, but she was not without 
 spirit which enabled her to hold her own, and perseverance 
 which sometimes helped her to eclipse, for the moment, his 
 brilliancy. They learnt together, wrote their journals 
 together, and shared alike with the scrupulous fairness 
 which Mrs. Ruskin's sensible nature felt called on to show. 
 And so she remained his sister, and not quite his sister, 
 until she married, and after a very short married life died. 
 
 Another accession to the family took place in the same 
 year (1828) : the Croydon aunt, too, had died, and left a dear 
 dog, Dash, a brown and white spaniel, which at first refused 
 to leave her coffin, but was coaxed away, and found a 
 happy home at Herne Hill, and frequent celebration in his 
 young master's verses. So the family was now complete ;
 
 32 THE LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
 papa and mamma, Mary and John, and Dash. One other 
 figure must not be forgotten, nurse Anne, who had come 
 from the Edinburgh home, and remained always with them, 
 John's nurse and then Mrs. Ruskin's attendant, as devoted 
 and as censorious as any old-style Scotch servant in a 
 story-book. 
 
 The year 1829 marked an advance in poetical com- 
 position. For his father's birthday he did something better 
 than the " show," a book more elaborate than any ; sixteen 
 pages in a red cover, with a title-page quite like print : 
 " Battle of Waterloo | a play | in two acts | with other small 
 | Poems | dedicated to his father | by John Ruskin | 1829 
 | Hernhill (sic} \ Dulwich." The play, modelled on a 
 Shakspere history, shows Wellington with his generals, 
 and Bonaparte with his guards, mouthing " prave 'orts " 
 like Prince Harry and Pistol. There is a Shaksperian 
 chorus, bidding you imagine the fight ; and in the next act 
 the arrival of Blucher is dramatised, and Louis XVIII. 
 with the Duchess of Angouleme praying for the issue. 
 Then we have Bonaparte soliloquising on the deck of the 
 Bellerophon ; with the chorus at the end describing, the 
 triumphal procession in London. 
 
 To this are appended, among other pieces, fair copies of 
 the May, and Skiddaw, and Derwentwater, printed in his 
 collected Poems from a previous copy. There is some- 
 thing very Ruskinian in the thought when comparing 
 Skiddaw with the Pyramids 
 
 " All that art can do 
 
 Is nothing beside thee. The touch of man 
 Raised pigmy mountains, but gigantic tombs. 
 The touch of nature raised the mountain's brow, 
 But made no tombs at all."
 
 PERFERVIDUM INGENIUM. 33 
 
 Right or wrong, that has always been his leading motive, 
 the normal beneficence of Nature ; and no wonder, for 
 Nature, as he knew her, was very kind to him in those 
 glorious early years of home love and summer excursions 
 into wonderland. 
 
 An illness of his postponed their tour for 1829 until it 
 was too late for more than a little journey in Kent. Mr. 
 Ruskin has referred his earliest sketching to this occasion, 
 but it seems likely that the drawings attributed to this year 
 were done in 1831. He was, however, busy writing poetry ; 
 at Tunbridge, for example, he wrote that fragment " On 
 Happiness " which catches so cleverly the tones of Young 
 a writer whose orthodox moralising suited with the creed 
 in which John Ruskin was brought up alternately, be it 
 remembered, with Don Quixote. 
 
 Coming home, he began a new edition of his verses, on 
 a more pretentious scale than the old red books ; in a fine, 
 really bound volume, exquisitely " printed," with the poems 
 dated. The fair copying seems to have been quite as 
 important to him as the composition ; and it laid the 
 foundation of his interest in calligraphy generally, and 
 missals in particular. 
 
 An enormous quantity of verse follows here, of which 
 only samples have seen the light The " poems " are 
 curious from their great variety of style and subject, grave 
 and gay ; but as might hardly be suspected the violent- 
 heroic predominates. There was a strong touch of Celtic 
 bravura in little John's character ; he liked to be dressed as 
 a soldier, and lived in imagination much among warriors. 
 And down to his later years, though nobody has so ener- 
 getically denounced the waste and the cruelty and the 
 folly of war, yet nobody has dwelt so lovingly on the 
 
 VOL. I. 3
 
 34 THE LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
 virtues that war brings out in noble natures, and on the 
 dignities of a knight's faith. " Tis vice," he says in one of 
 the poems of this time, " 'tis vice, not war, that is the curse 
 of man." 
 
 He was now growing out of his mother's tutorship ; and 
 in this last autumn he was put under the care of Dr. 
 Andrews for his Latin. He relates the introduction in 
 Prceterita, and more circumstantially in a letter of the 
 time to Mrs. Monro, the mother of his charming Mrs. 
 Richard Gray, the indulgent neighbour who used to pamper 
 the little gourmand with delicacies unknown in severe Mrs. 
 Ruskin's dining-room. He says in the letter this is at 
 ten years old : " Well, papa seeing how fond I was of 
 the Doctor, and knowing him to be an excellent Latin 
 scholar, got him for me as a tutor ; and every lesson I 
 get I like him better and better, for he makes me laugh 
 'almost, if not quite,' to use one of his own expressions, 
 the whole time. He is so funny, comparing Neptune's 
 lifting up the wrecked ships of yEneas with his trident to 
 my lifting up a potato with a fork^ or taking a piece of 
 bread out of a bowl of milk with a spoon ! And as he 
 is always saying [things] of that kind, or relating some 
 droll anecdote, or explaining the part of Virgil (the book 
 which I am in) very nicely, I am always delighted when 
 Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays are come." 
 
 Pr&terita hardly does justice to the " dear Doctor," who 
 was not only "an excellent Latin scholar" and a genial 
 teacher, but distinguished as a humanity student in his 
 university of Glasgow. But, alas for school distinctions 
 and honours by examination ! In the perspective of 
 history such accidents, by some law of evanescence, dis- 
 appear ; and the personality of the man alone remains,
 
 PERFERVIDUM INGENIUM. 35 
 
 emphasised and explained by the relationship in which he 
 stands to a pair of charming figures. Mrs. Ruskin, who 
 let none but pretty girls come to her house, welcomed 
 the Doctor's daughters ; one, who wrote verses in John's 
 notebook, and sang " Tambourgi," still lives in Bedford 
 Park ; the other lives in Mr. Coventry Patmore's Angel in 
 the House. When Mr. Ruskin, thirty years later, wrote 
 of that doubtfully-received poem that it was " the sweetest 
 analysis we possess of quiet modern domestic feeling," 
 few of his readers could have known all the grounds of 
 his appreciation, or suspected the weight of meaning in 
 the words. 
 
 Dr. Andrews' lessons did not interfere with the private 
 book writing and mineralogy, during this winter of 1829-30. 
 Perhaps it was the influence of the " long roll " o/ the 
 Virgilian hexameter that infused a greater sonority into 
 the verses of this period, and gave a greater rhetorical 
 roundness to their lines. For mere literary study there 
 is sound work in this kind of thing : 
 
 " Meantime, the mourning victors bore 
 Their Nelson to his native shore ; 
 And a whole weeping nation gave 
 Funereal honours to the brave " ; 
 
 and everywhere in the MS. of 1830 we see the same new 
 impulse towards alliteration and far-sought phrasing two 
 tricks of Virgil's that Ruskin has never unlearnt. A little 
 pedantry is natural in a boy who liked his schooling ; but 
 you can hardly call the lad a " prig." A prig has been 
 happily defined as an animal overfed for its size. John 
 Ruskin was just the opposite. He was starved, intellec- 
 tually, or at all events kept on short diet, for fear of the
 
 36 THE LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
 results of mental surfeit. His omnivorous appetite was 
 like that of a young Gargantua, not like the fairy change- 
 lings who eat and eat and never grow. His "good 
 digestion turned all to health," and he soon became an 
 enfant terrible on the hands of his pastors and masters, 
 something much bigger than they had meant to breed, 
 and ready like a fairy-tale hero for the roughest exchange 
 of hugs and buffets in the wrestling ring of the literary 
 world.
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 MOUNTAIN- WORSHIP. 
 
 (1830-1835.) 
 
 '' The North and Nature taught me to adore 
 Your scenes sublime, from those beloved before." 
 
 Byron. 
 
 who are least disposed to give Mr. Ruskin 
 credit for his artistic doctrines or economical theories 
 unite in allowing that he has taught us to look at Nature ; 
 and especially at the sublime in Nature, at storms and 
 sunrises, and the forests and snows of the Alps. Not that 
 such things were unknown to others, but that he has most 
 impressively united the merely poetical sentiment of their 
 grandeur with something of a scientific curiosity as to 
 their details and conditions ; he has brought us to linger 
 among the mountains, and to love them. And as a man 
 rarely convinces unless he is convinced, so Ruskin's mission 
 of mountain-worship has been the outcome of a passion 
 beside which the other interests and occupations of his 
 youth were only toys. He could take up his mineralogy 
 and his moralising, and lay them down ; but the love of 
 mountain scenery was something beyond his control. We 
 have seen him leave his heart in the Highlands at three 
 years old : we have now to follow his passionate pilgrim- 
 
 37
 
 38 THE LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
 ages to Skiddaw and Snowdon, to the Jungfrau and 
 Mont Blanc. 
 
 The summer tour of 1830 is important as the first of 
 which he has left his impressions completely recorded. 
 Earlier than that there are rhapsodic fragments about 
 Ben Lomond and the hill of Kinnoul, about the Lakes and 
 North Wales ; but now he began to treat the scenery as 
 a subject of art, and to develop his journals consciously 
 into poems. 
 
 They had planned a great tour through the Lakes and 
 the North two years before ; but were stopped at Plymouth 
 by the news of Mrs. Richardson's death. This time the 
 same plan was carried out. A prose diary was' written 
 alternately by John and Mary, one carrying it on when 
 the other tired, with rather curious effect of unequally- 
 yoked collaboration. We read how they "set off from 
 London at seven o'clock on Tuesday morning, the i8th of 
 May," and thenceforward we are spared no detail : the 
 furniture of the inns, the bills of fare ; when they got out 
 of the carriage and walked ; how they lost their luggage ; 
 what they thought of colleges and chapels, music and May 
 races at Oxford, of Shakespeare's tomb, and the pin-factory 
 at Birmingham ; we have a complete guide-book to 
 Blenheim and Warwick Castle, to Haddon and Chatsworth, 
 and the full itinerary of Derbyshire. " Matlock Bath," we 
 read, " is a most delightful place " ; but after an enthusiastic 
 description of High Tor, John reacts into bathos with a 
 minute description of how they wetted their shoes in a 
 puddle. The cavern with a Bengal light was fairyland 
 to him, and among the minerals he was quite at home. 
 
 Everything was interesting on these journeys, everything 
 was noteworthy : and the excitement was certainly kept up
 
 MOUNTAIN-WORSHIP. 39 
 
 at a high pitch. Sightseeing by day was not enough : 
 John must get out his book after supper in the evening at 
 the hotel, and write poems ; when he had written up his 
 journal he went on with some subject totally unconnected 
 with his travels or the place he was in. For instance, after 
 seeing Haddon, that very night he finished a gruesome 
 account of the Day of Judgment! This power of detach- 
 ing himself from surroundings and fixing his mind on any 
 business in hand has always been one of his most curious 
 and most enviable gifts. How few writers could correct 
 proofs at Sestri and write political economy at Chamouni ! 
 After spending the morning in drawing early Gothic, and 
 the afternoon driving to some historic site, with a sketch 
 of sunset perhaps, he could settle down in his hotel bedroom 
 and write a preface -to an old work ; and next morning 
 be up before the sun, busy at a chapter of Fors or 
 Prcsterita. It is this "ohne Hast, ohne Rast' that has 
 enabled him to do so much and so varied work ; the 
 power is the result of a habit, and the habit was formed 
 from the beginning. 
 
 To resume the tour. " Manchester is a most disagreeable 
 town," but at Liverpool they were delighted with the river, 
 assisted at a trifling collision, and got caught in the old 
 dockgates ; on which adventure John bursts into ballad 
 rhyme. Then they hurried north to Windermere. Once 
 at Lowwood, the excitement thickens, with storms and 
 rainbows, .mountains and waterfalls, boats on the lake 
 and coaching on the steep roads. This journey through 
 Lakeland is described in the galloping anapaests of the 
 " Iteriad," which was simply the prose journal versified 
 on his return : one of the few enterprises of the sort which 
 were really completed.
 
 40 THE LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
 To readers who know the country it is interesting as 
 giving a detailed account of it sixty years ago, in the 
 days of the old regime, when this " nook of English 
 ground " was " secure from rash assault." One learns that, 
 even then, there were jarring sights at Bowness Bay and 
 along Derwentwater shore, elements unkind and bills 
 exorbitant ; Coniston especially was dreary with rain, and 
 its inn extravagantly dear ; " but" says John, with his eye 
 for mineral specimens, " it contains several rich copper- 
 mines." An interesting touch is the hero-worship with 
 which they went reverently to peep at Southey and 
 Wordsworth in church ; too humble to dream of an intro- 
 duction, and too polite to besiege the poets in their homes, 
 but independent enough to form their own opinions on the 
 personality of the heroes. They did not like the look of 
 Wordsworth, at all. 
 
 The dominant note of the tour is, however, an ecstatic 
 delight in the mountain scenery ; on Skiddaw and 
 Helvellyn all the gamut of admiration is lavished. Reluct- 
 antly leaving the wilder country, they returned to Derby- 
 shire ; and meeting a friend to whom it was new, they 
 revisited everything with revived pleasure. They did not 
 seem to know what it was to be bored. The whole tour 
 was a triumphal progress, or a march of conquest. 
 
 On returning home, John began Greek under Dr. 
 Andrews, and was soon versifying Anacreon in his note- 
 books. He began to read Byron for himself, with what 
 result we shall see before long. But the most important 
 new departure was the attempt to copy Cruikshank's 
 etchings to Grimm's Fairy-tales, his real beginning at 
 art. From this practice he learnt the value of the line, 
 the pure, clean line that expresses form. It is a good
 
 MOUNTAIN-WORSHIP. 41 
 
 instance of the authority of these early years over Mr. 
 Ruskin's whole life and teaching, that in his " Elements 
 of Drawing " he advises young artists to begin with 
 Cruikshank, as he began ; and wrote appreciatively both 
 of the stories and the etchings so many decades afterwards 
 in the preface to a reprint by Messrs. Chatto & Windus. 
 
 His cousin-sister Mary had been sent to a day-school, 
 when Mrs. Ruskin's lessons were superseded by Dr. 
 Andrews ; and she had learnt enough drawing to attempt 
 a view of the hotel at Matlock a thing which John could 
 not do. So, now that he too showed some power of neat 
 draughtsmanship, it was felt that he ought to have her 
 advantages. They got Mr. Runciman, the drawing master, 
 to give him lessons, in the early part of 1831. His 
 teaching was of the kind which preceded the Hardingesque : 
 it aimed at a bold use of the soft pencil, with a certain 
 roundness of composition and richness of texture, a con- 
 ventional " right way " of drawing anything. This was not 
 what John wanted ; but, not to be beaten, he facsimiled 
 the master's freehand by a sort of engraver's stipple, which 
 his habitual neatness helped him to do to perfection. Mr. 
 Runciman soon put a stop to that, and took pains with 
 a pupil who took such pains with himself ; taught him, at 
 any rate, the principles of perspective, and remained his 
 only drawing-master for many years. 
 
 Now he could rival Mary when they went for their 
 summer excursion. He set to work at once at Sevenoaks 
 to draw cottages ; at Dover and Battle he attempted 
 castles. It may be that these first sketches are of the 
 pre-Runciman period ; but the Ruskins made the round of 
 Kent in 1831, and though the drawings are by no means 
 in the master's style, they show some practice in using
 
 42 THE LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
 the pencil. From the first John Ruskin cared more to 
 carry away a true record of his subject than to produce a 
 pleasing picture ; he is even diagrammatic in this early 
 stage, lettering his architecture with references to enlarged 
 detail, and finishing parts with a characteristic disregard 
 for the unity of his composition. 
 
 The journey was extended by the old route, conditioned 
 by business as before : round the south coast to the west 
 of England, and then into Wales. There, his powers of 
 drawing failed him ; moonlight on Snowdon was too vague 
 a subject for the black lead pencil, but a hint of it could be 
 conveyed in rhyme : 
 
 " Folding, like an airy vest, 
 The very clouds had sunk to rest ; 
 Light gilds the rugged mountain's breast, 
 Calmly as they lay below; 
 Every hill seemed topped with snow, 
 As the flowing tide of light 
 Broke the slumbers of the night." 
 
 Harlech Castle was too sublime for a sketch ; but it was 
 painted with the pen : 
 
 " So mighty, so majestic, and so lone ; 
 And all thy music, now, the ocean's murmuring." 
 
 And the enthusiasm of mountain-glory, a sort of Bacchic 
 ecstasy of uncontrollable passion, struggles for articulate 
 deliverance in the climbing-song, " I love ye, ye eternal 
 hills." 
 
 It was hard to come back to the daily round, the 
 common task, especially when, in this autumn of 1831, to 
 Dr. Andrews' Latin and Greek, the French grammar and 
 Euclid were added, under Mr. Rowbotham. And the new
 
 MOUNTAIN-WORSHIP. 43 
 
 tutor had no funny stories to tell ; he was not so engaging 
 a man as the " dear Doctor," and his memory was not 
 sweet to his wayward pupil. But the parents had chosen 
 the best man for the work : one who was favourably known 
 by his manuals, and capable of interesting even a budding 
 poet in the mathematics. For our author tells that a 
 little later he spent all his available time in trying to 
 trisect an angle, and that at Oxford, and ever after, he 
 knew his Euclid without the figures ; in French, too, he 
 progressed enough to be able to find his way alone in 
 Paris two years later. And however the saucy boy may 
 have satirised his tutor in the droll verses on " Bed-time," 
 Mr. Rowbotham always remembered him with affection, 
 and spoke of him with respect. John Ruskin, boy and 
 man, has had a terrible power of winning hearts. 
 
 In spite of these tedious tutorships, he managed to 
 scribble energetically all this winter : attempts at Waverley 
 novels which never got beyond the first chapter, and imita- 
 tions of Childe Harold and Don Juan ; scraps in the style 
 of everybody in turn, necessarily imitative because im- 
 mature. He was curiously versatile ; one time he would be 
 pedantic, or stiff with the buckram and plume of romance ; 
 again, gossipy and naif and humorous ; then sarcastic 
 and satirical, sparing no one ; then carried away with a 
 frenzy of excitement, which struggles to express itself, 
 convulsively, and dies away in nonsense. No wonder his 
 mother sent him to bed at nine, punctually ; and kept him 
 from school, in vain efforts to quiet his brain. The lack 
 of companions was made up to him in the friendship of 
 Richard Fall, son of a neighbour on " the Hill," a boy 
 without affectation or morbidity of disposition, whose com- 
 plementary character suited him well. An affectionate
 
 44 THE LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
 comradeship sprang up between the two lads, and lasted 
 until in middle life they drifted apart, not quarrelling, but 
 each going on his own course to his own destiny. 
 
 John Ruskin made some real advance this winter 
 (1831-32) with his Shelleyan "Sonnet to a Cloud " and his 
 imitations of Byron's Hebrew Melodies, from which he 
 learnt how to concentrate expression, and to use rich 
 vowel-sounds and liquid consonants with rolling effect. A 
 deeper and more serious turn of thought, that gradually 
 usurps the place of the first boyish effervescence, is traced 
 by him to the influence of Byron, in whom, while others 
 see nothing more than wit and passion, Mr. Ruskin sees 
 an earnest mind and a sound judgment. 
 
 But the most sincere poem, if sincerity be marked by 
 unstudied phrase and neglected rhyme, the most genuine 
 " lyrical cry " of this period, is that song in which our boy- 
 poet poured forth his longing for the " blue hills " he had 
 loved as a baby, and for those Coniston crags over which, 
 when he became old and sorely stricken, he was still to see 
 the morning break. When he wrote these verses he was 
 nearly fourteen, or just past his birthday ; it had been 
 eighteen months since he had been in Wales, and all the 
 weary while he had seen no mountains ; but in his regrets 
 he goes back a year farther still, to fix upon the Lakeland 
 hills, less majestic than Snowdon, but more endeared ; and 
 he describes his sensations on approaching the beloved 
 objects in the very terms that Dante uses for his first sight 
 of Beatrice : 
 
 " I weary for the fountain foaming, 
 
 For shady holm and hill ; 
 My mind is on the mountain roaming, 
 My spirit's voice is still.
 
 MOUNTAIN-WORSHIP. 45 
 
 "I weary for the woodland brook 
 
 That wanders through the vale ; 
 I weary for the heights that look 
 Adown upon the dale. 
 
 " The crags are lone on Coniston 
 
 And Glaramara's dell ; * 
 And dreary on the mighty one, 
 The cloud-enwreathed Sea-fell. 
 
 " Oh ! what although the crags be stern 
 
 Their mighty peaks that sever, 
 Fresh flies the breeze on mountain-fern, 
 And free on mountain heather. . . . 
 
 " There is a thrill of strange delight 
 
 That passes quivering o'er me, 
 
 W7ien blue hills rise upon the sight, 
 
 Like summer clouds before me." 
 
 Judge, then, of the delight with which he turned over 
 the pages of a new book, given him this birthday by the 
 kind Mr. Telford, in whose carriage he had first seen these 
 blue hills, a book in which all his mountain-ideals, and 
 more, were caught and kept enshrined, visions still, and 
 of mightier peaks and ampler valleys, romantically " tost " 
 and sublimely "lost," as he had so often written in his 
 favourite rhymes. In the vignettes to Rogers' Italy, 
 Turner had touched the chord for which John Ruskin had 
 been feeling all these years : no wonder that he took 
 Turner for his leader and master, and fondly tried to copy 
 the wonderful " Alps at daybreak " to begin with, and then 
 to imitate this new-found magic art with his own subjects, 
 and finally to come boldly before the world in passionate 
 defence of a man who had done such great things for him. 
 
 This mountain-worship was not inherited from his father, 
 
 * So in the MS. ; changed afterwards to " Loweswater's dell."
 
 46 THE LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
 however it may have been an inheritance, as some think, 
 from remote ancestry. Mr. J. J. Ruskin never was enthu- 
 siastic about peaks and clouds and glaciers, though he was 
 interested in all travelling in a general way. So that it 
 was not Rogers' Italy that sent the family off to the Alps 
 that summer ; but, fortunately for John, his father's eye was 
 caught by the romantic architecture of Prout's Sketches 
 in Flanders aud Germany when it came out in April 1833 ; 
 and his mother proposed to make both of them happy 
 in a tour on the Continent. The business-round was 
 abandoned, but they could see Mr. Domecq on their way 
 back through Paris, and not wholly lose the time. 
 
 They waited to keep papa's birthday on May loth, 
 and early next morning drove off ; father and mother, 
 John and Mary, nurse Anne and the courier Salvador. 
 They crossed to Calais, and posted, as people did in the 
 old times, slowly from point to point ; starting betimes ; 
 halting at the roadside inns, where John tried to snatch a 
 sketch ; reaching their destination early enough to investi- 
 gate the cathedral or the citadel, monuments of antiquity 
 or achievements of modern civilisation, with impartial 
 eagerness ; and before bedtime John would write up his 
 journal and work up his sketches, just as if he were at 
 home. Once or twice he found time to sit down and make a 
 Proutesque study of some great building, probably to please 
 his father ; but his mind was set on his Turner vignettes. 
 
 So they worked through Flanders and Germany, following 
 Prout's lead by the castles of the Rhine : but at last, at 
 Schaffhausen one Sunday evening " suddenly behold 
 beyond ! " they had seen the Alps. Thenceforward 
 Turner was their guide, as they crossed the Spliigen, 
 sailed the Italian lakes, wondered at Milan Cathedral and
 
 MOUNTAIN-WORSHIP. 47 
 
 the Mediterranean at Genoa, and then whether because 
 it was too hot to go southward, or because John having 
 tasted the Alps importuned for more roamed through the 
 Oberland and back to Chamouni. All this while a great 
 plan shaped itself in the boy's head : no less than to make 
 a Rogers' Italy for himself, just as once he had tried to 
 make a Harry and Lucy or a Dictionary of Minerals. On 
 every place they passed he would write verses and prose 
 sketches, to give respectively the romance and the reality 
 or ridicule, for he saw the comic side of it all, keenly ; and 
 he would illustrate the series with Turneresque vignettes, 
 drawn with the finest crowquill pen, to imitate the delicate 
 engravings. That was his plan ; and if he never quite 
 carried it out, he got good practice in two things which 
 went to the making of Modern Painters in descriptive 
 writing, and in getting at the mind and method of Turner, 
 by following him on his own sketching-ground and carrying 
 out his subjects in his own way. This is just what Turner 
 had done with Vandevelde and Claude ; and it is the way 
 to learn a landscape painter's business : there is no other, 
 for simple copying neglects the relation of art to Nature, 
 it is like trying to learn a language without a dictionary ; 
 and unguided experiments are not education at all. By 
 this imitation of Turner and Prout, John Ruskin learnt 
 more drawing in two or three years than most amateur 
 students do in seven : he had hit upon the right method, 
 and worked hard. For the first year he has the " Watch- 
 tower of Andernach " and the " Jungfrau from Interlaken " 
 to show, with others of similar style ; and thenceforward 
 alternates between Turner and Prout, until he settles into 
 something different from either. 
 
 But Turner and Prout were not the only artists he knew :
 
 48 THE LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
 at Paris he found his way into the Louvre, and got leave 
 from the directors, though he was under the age required, 
 to copy. It is curious that the picture he chose was a 
 Rembrandt ; it shows, what the casual reader of his works 
 on art might miss, that he is naturally a chiaroscurist, and 
 that his praise of the pre-Raphaelite colour and draughts- 
 manship is not prompted by his taste and native feeling so 
 much as by intellectual judgment. 
 
 Between this foreign tour and the next, John Ruskin's 
 chief work was to draw these vignettes and to write the 
 poems suggested by the scenes he had visited : that was 
 what he did con amore ; his studies in classics and mathe- 
 matics were mere routine. He had outgrown the evening 
 lessons with Dr. Andrews, and as he was fifteen it was 
 time to think more seriously of preparing . him for Oxford, 
 where his name was put down at Christ Church. His 
 father hoped he would go into the Church, and eventually 
 turn out a combination of a Byron and a bishop : some- 
 thing like Dean Milman, only better. For this, college 
 was a necessary preliminary ; for college, some little 
 schooling. So they picked the best day-school in the 
 neighbourhood, that of the Rev. Thomas Dale, in Grove 
 Lane, Peckham, the author of various learned and theo- 
 logical works as it appears from second-hand catalogues 
 and afterwards Canon of St. Paul's. His first start with 
 the new boy was unfortunate, and he never regained the 
 confidence he had lost when he called Adam's Grammar 
 " that Scotch thing." John Ruskin worked with him 
 rather less than two years. In 1835 he was taken from 
 school in consequence of an attack of pleurisy, and never 
 returned ; though he attended Mr. Dale's lectures at King's 
 College, London, in 1836:
 
 MOUNTAIN-WORSHIP. 49 
 
 More interesting to him than school was the British 
 Museum collection of minerals, where he worked occa- 
 sionally with his Jameson's Dictionary. By this time he 
 had a fair student's collection of his own, and he increased 
 it by picking up specimens at Matlock or Clifton or in the 
 Alps, wherever he went ; for he was not short of pocket- 
 money : he earned enough by scribbling even if his father 
 were not always ready to indulge his fancy. He took the 
 greatest pains over his catalogues, and wrote elaborate 
 accounts of the various minerals in a shorthand he invented 
 out of Greek letters and crystal forms. 
 
 Grafted on this mineralogy, and stimulated by the Swiss 
 tour, was a new interest in physical geology ; which his 
 father so far approved as to give him Saussure's Voyages 
 dans les Alpes for his birthday in 1834. In this book he 
 found the complement of Turner's vignettes, something 
 like a key to the " reason why " of all the wonderful forms 
 and marvellous mountain-architecture of the Alps. 
 
 In our hills of the north these things do not so obviously 
 call for explanation ; but no intelligent boy could look long 
 and intently at the crags of Lauterbrunnen and the peaks 
 of Savoy without feeling that their twisted strata present 
 a problem which arouses all his curiosity. And this boy 
 was by no means content with a superficial sentiment of 
 grandeur. He tried to understand the causes of it, to get 
 at the secrets of the structure ; and found poetry in that 
 mystery of the mountains, no less than in their storms 
 and sunrises. He soon wrote a short essay on the subject, 
 and had the pleasure of seeing it in print, in Loudon's 
 Magazine of Natural History for March 1834, along with 
 another bit of his writing, asking for information on the 
 cause of the colour of the Rhine- water. It was rather 
 
 VOL. I. 4
 
 50 THE LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
 characteristic that he began his literary career by asking 
 questions that got no answer ; and that his next appear- 
 ance in print was to demolish a correspondent to the same 
 magazine, whose account of rats eating leaden pipes was 
 discredited by the extraordinary dimensions which he 
 assigned. The analytic John Ruskin was already an enfant 
 terrible. 
 
 He had already made some acquaintance with Mr. 
 J. C. Loudon, F.L.S., H.S., etc., and he was on the staff of 
 that versatile editor not long afterwards, and took a lion's 
 share of the writing in the Magazine of Architecture. 
 Meanwhile he had been introduced to another editor, and 
 to the publishers with whom he did business for many 
 a year to come. The acquaintance was made in a curious, 
 accidental manner. His Croydon cousin, Charles, had 
 come to town as clerk in the publishing house of Messrs. 
 Smith, Elder & Co., and had the opportunity of mention- 
 ing the young poet's name to Mr. Thomas Pringle, who 
 edited their well-known annual Friendship's Offering. Mr. 
 Pringle came out to Herne Hill, and was hospitably enter- 
 tained as a brother Scot, as not only an editor, but a poet 
 himself, not only a poet, but a man of respectability and 
 piety, who had been a missionary in South Africa. In 
 return for this hospitality he gave a good report of John's 
 verses, and after getting him to re-write two of the best 
 passages in the last Tour, carried them off for insertion 
 in his forthcoming number. He did more : he carried 
 John to see the actual Mr. Samuel Rogers whose verses 
 had been adorned by the great Turner's vignettes ; but 
 it seems that the boy was not courtier enough home- 
 bred as he had been to -compliment the poet as poets 
 love to be complimented ; and the great man, dilettante
 
 THE SCALA MONUMENT, VERONA. 
 By John Ruskin. 1835. 
 
 [Vol. I., p. 51.]
 
 MOUNTAIN-WORSHIP. 51 
 
 as he was, had not the knowledge of art to be honestly 
 delighted with the boy's enthusiasm for the wonderful 
 drawings which had given his book the best part of its 
 value. 
 
 After the pleurisy of April 1835, his parents took him 
 abroad again, and he made great preparations to use the 
 opportunity to the utmost. He would study geology in the 
 field, and took Saussure in his trunk ; he would note 
 meteorology, the colour whether of Rhine- water or of 
 Alpine skies, and invented a cyanometer a scale of blue 
 to measure the depth of tone. He would sketch ; by now 
 he had abandoned the desire to make MS. albums, after 
 seeing himself in print ; and so chose rather to imitate the 
 imitable, and to follow Prout, this time, with careful out- 
 lines on the spot, than to idealise his notes in mimic 
 Turnerism. And he meant to keep his journal in verse, 
 warned by the labour and the failures involved in re- 
 writing everything on his return. But even that poetical 
 journal was dropped after he had carried it through France, 
 across the Jura, and to Chamouni. The drawing crowded it 
 out, and for the first time he found himself over ihepons 
 asinorum of art, and as ready with his pencil as he had 
 been with his pen. 
 
 His route is marked by the drawings of that year, from 
 Chamouni to the St. Bernard and Aosta, back to the 
 Oberland and up the St. Gothard ; then back again to 
 Lucerne and round by the Stelvio to Venice and Verona ; 
 and finally through the Tyrol and Germany homewards. 
 The ascent of the St. Bernard was told in a dramatic 
 sketch of great humour and power of characterisation ; and 
 a letter to Richard Fall records the night on the Rigi 
 when he saw the splendid sequence of storm, sunset,
 
 52 THE LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
 moonlight and daybreak which forms the subject of one 
 of the most impressive passages of Modern Painters. 
 
 It happened that Mr. Pringle had a plate of Salzburg 
 which he wanted to print in order to make up the volume 
 of Friendship's Offering for the next Christmas. He 
 seems to have asked John Ruskin to furnish a copy of 
 verses for the picture ; and at Salzburg, accordingly, a 
 bit of rhymed description was written, and re-written, and 
 sent home to the editor. Early in December the Ruskins 
 returned ; and at Christmas there came to Herne Hill 
 a gorgeous gilt morocco volume " To John Ruskin, from 
 the Publishers." On opening it, there were his " Ander- 
 nach " and " St. Goar," and his " Salzburg," opposite 
 a beautifully engraved plate, all hills and towers and 
 boats and picturesquely-moving figures under the sunset, 
 in Turner's manner more or less, really by Turner's 
 engraver. It was almost like being Mr. Rogers himself.
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 A LOVE-STORY. 
 
 (1836-39.) 
 
 I think there is no unreturned love the pay is certain, one way or another. 
 I loved a certain person ardently, and my love was not returned, 
 Yet out* of that, I have written these songs." 
 
 Leaves of Grass. 
 
 HENEVER a new biography comes, be it of poet 
 V or statesman, engineer or philanthropist, I confess 
 to turning the pages in hope of a love-story. Other 
 readers, it seems, do likewise ; and not unreasonably. 
 There is so much to be learnt from the behaviour of 
 a man under those trying circumstances ; one gets the 
 character unveiled in moments of passion. If he is an 
 egoist, he shows it then, perhaps, after keeping it dark for 
 years. If he is coarse or selfish by nature, with only a 
 veneer of culture, in his love-affair the true man comes out. 
 In vino veritas, they used to say ; meaning that when a 
 man is quite off his guard, he tells his secret. And so it 
 is in love. Note him then, and you have the truth about 
 him. That is perhaps why we lay stress on the domestic 
 relations of our leaders : we cannot trust a man who has 
 deceived the woman he chose ; we cannot believe in the 
 ideals of a man who has falsified them in the critical 
 
 53
 
 54 THE LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
 opportunity of his life. On the other hand, we forgive 
 much to one who loves much : we admire a man who 
 forbears much ; and we augur well of the youth 
 whose first romance has left him nothing that he need 
 be ashamed of. 
 
 In the quiet household on Herne Hill, the ordinary 
 temptations of youth were unknown. Don Juan and Don 
 Quixote, with all their supposed evil example, coarse expres- 
 sion and suggestion, ran like water from a duck's back : 
 to the pure all things are pure. The ideal Harry of our 
 young hero's early days, who mirrored him in everything, 
 took little interest in his reading unless he had " seen 
 something like it " outside of books ; and there was 
 nothing to be seen like Julia or Maritornes in his imme- 
 diate surroundings. Not that it was a monastery : there 
 was plenty of liveliness ; there were pretty playmates 
 and charming neighbours ; but the blight of unwatched 
 schoolboy hood never touched him. If it had, there 
 would surely be some indication of it in his work ; but 
 there is no trace of even ordinary interest in womankind 
 in the mass of notes and scribbles of all these early days. 
 Rather, if anything, an antagonism to girls ; for they 
 teased him about his rhymes as not being sentimental 
 enough. 
 
 So, when love came, it was a surprise. There had been 
 no foretaste of it, no vulgarisation of it ; nothing to take 
 the bloom off, to discount the impetuosity of a first passion. 
 And it is no wonder if, looking back, he was amused at 
 himself, and wrote jestingly in Pr&terita of the affair, to 
 cover the annoyance with which one regards the absurdi- 
 ties of one's youth. But it was a quite serious affair, on 
 his side ; and led to serious consequences.
 
 A LOVE-STORY. 55 
 
 The Ruskins had reached home early in December 1835, 
 and found cold cheer in England after their travelling. 
 The father especially felt it hard to settle down to work 
 in his dingy office after the excitements of Italy. In a 
 clever scene in which John dramatised a typical family 
 talk at breakfast, satirising his parents with a freedom 
 which shows that any severity recorded of them was only 
 superficial, the father is made to describe the tedium of 
 business-talk and the annoyances of the warehouse in very 
 lively terms ; while his good wife " flytes " him, as in duty 
 bound. 
 
 But they were not to be left long without excitement 
 A few weeks later, Mr. Domecq came over from Paris on 
 business, and brought his four younger daughters the 
 eldest having been lately married to a Count Maison, heir 
 to a peer of France. It was an unaccustomed invasion 
 of the house, and something new to have a bevy of young 
 ladies to take about and entertain, while their father was 
 busy with partners and customers. 
 
 There were four of them : the " first really well-bred and 
 well-dressed girls " John had met ; all charming and clever 
 and pretty. His mother might have known that he was 
 bound to fall in love with one or other ; but she argued 
 that he was safe in his studies ; and then the girls were 
 foreigners and convent-bred Catholics, which seemed to 
 put a great gulf between them and a true-blue Briton and 
 
 Protestant. As to Mr. Domecq When one has four 
 
 daughters, and a first-rate business-partner with a clever 
 son, what may not one think right to do ? 
 
 Any of the sisters would have charmed him, but the 
 eldest of the four, Adele Clotilde, bewitched him at once 
 with her graceful figure and that oval face which was so
 
 56 THE LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
 admired in those times. She was fair, too ; another recom- 
 mendation. He was on the brink of seventeen, at the ripe 
 moment ; and he fell passionately in love with her. She 
 was only fifteen, and did not understand this adoration, 
 unspoken, and unexpressed except by intensified shy- 
 ness. For he was a very shy boy with strangers, brought 
 up as he was without any regular experience of drawing- 
 room manners and social affability. If he had been taught 
 a little to dance, it was only enough to discover that 
 quadrilles were invented by Stupidity itself ; and now, 
 what would he not have given for a share of that 
 despised man-of-the-worldliness and assurance of address ? 
 In company he sat uneasy ; when he got the chance of 
 separate conversation, a jibbing Pegasus plunged him 
 into perverse and inconsiderate behaviour. His uneasiness 
 bred an appearance of antagonism ; in fit upon fit of 
 shyness he disputed, prosed, sulked, did everything that 
 could alienate a bright girl from Paris, too ; whose notions 
 of British morgue and phlegm were only too justified by 
 his want of style and his obvious awkwardness. 
 
 And yet he had advantages, if he had known how to 
 use them. He was tall and active, light and lithe in 
 gesture, not a clumsy hobbledehoy. He had the face that 
 caught the eye, in Rome a few years later, of Keats' Severn, 
 no mean judge surely of faces, and poets' faces. He was 
 undeniably clever, he knew all about minerals and mount- 
 ains, he was quite an artist ; and a printed poet ! But 
 these things weigh little with a girl of fifteen who wants to 
 be amused ; and so she only laughed at John. 
 
 He tried to amuse her, but he tried too seriously. He 
 wrote a story to read her " Leoni, a Legend of Italy " ; for 
 of course she understood enough English to be read to, no
 
 A LOVE-STORY. 57 
 
 doubt to be wooed in, seeing her mother was English. The 
 story was of brigands and true lovers, the thing that was 
 popular in the romantic period, when Eastlake's Banditti 
 were admired in the Royal Academy, and Schiller's Robbers 
 had not lost its effect. The costumery and mannerisms of 
 the little romance are out of date now, and seem ridicu- 
 lous as an old-fashioned dress does ; though Mr. Pringle 
 and the public were pleased with it then, when it was 
 printed in Friendship's Offering. But the note of passion 
 was too real for the girl of fifteen, and she only laughed 
 the more. 
 
 When they left, he was alone with his poetry again. 
 But now he had no interest in his tour-book ; even the 
 mountains, for the time, had lost their power ; and all his 
 plans of great works were dropped for a new style of verse, 
 the love poems of 1836. In reading these one is struck by 
 something artificial : they are too closely modelled on well- 
 known forms ; for the poet was not mature in his art ; and 
 it means great accomplishment when the height of passion 
 is united with absolute freshness in diction ; the celare 
 artem of the consummate writer. The best love poems 
 have been written to imaginary loves ; and real-life love- 
 letters are generally but poor literature, a cento of common- 
 places. So that the derivative nature of these verses does 
 not preclude the genuineness of the passion that inspired 
 them. 
 
 This formality appears more strongly in those pieces 
 which were afterwards revised for publication ; for the 
 extraordinary thing is that this passion and poesy were no 
 secret. His father, from whom he kept nothing, approved 
 the verses, and did not disapprove his views on the young 
 lady. A marriage could hardly have been a mesalliance
 
 58 THE LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
 on either side from a worldly point of view, for the Ruskins 
 were now well off, and business is business : perhaps the 
 bishopric in view would have been lost sight of. But to 
 Mrs. Ruskin, with her religious feelings, it was intolerable, 
 unbelievable, that the son whom she had brought up in 
 the nurture and admonition of the strictest Protestantism 
 should fix his heart on an alien in race and creed. The 
 wonder is that their relations were not more strained : 
 there are few young men who would have kept their full 
 allegiance to a mother whose sympathy failed them at such 
 a crisis. As it was, this marks the first step towards the 
 withdrawal not of affection but of completely reposed 
 confidence. 
 
 To end the story we must anticipate a little. There are 
 so many strands in this complex life that they cannot be 
 followed all at once. When we have traced this one out, 
 we can resume the history of John Ruskin as student and 
 poet and youthful savant. 
 
 As the year went on his passion seemed to grow, in the 
 absence of the beloved object. His only plan of winning 
 her was to win his spurs first : but as what ? Clearly, his 
 forte, it seemed, was in writing. If he could be a successful 
 writer of romances, of songs, of plays, surely she would 
 not refuse him. And so he began another romantic story, 
 Velasquez, the Novice opening with the monks of St. 
 Bernard, among whom had been, so the tale ran, a mys- 
 terious member whose papers, when discovered, made him 
 out the hero of adventures in Venice. He began a play 
 which was to be another great work, Marcolini, to which 
 he has alluded in terms which leave one in doubt whether 
 its author has re-read it since it was written under the 
 mulberry tree in Herne Hill garden, that summer of 1836.
 
 A LOVE-STORY. 59 
 
 i 
 
 Partly Shakspearian, but more Byronic in form, it does 
 not depend merely on description, but shows a dramatic 
 power of character and dialogue indicated by many earlier 
 attempts at stories and scenes, which justifies the remark 
 of Mrs. Thackeray Ritchie ; " Ruskin should have been a 
 novelist. When he chooses to describe a man or a woman, 
 there stands the figure before us ; when he tells a story, 
 we live it." But she is equally right in adding, " His is 
 rather the descriptive than the constructive faculty ; his 
 mastery is over detail and quantity rather than over form." 
 The weakness of Marcolini is in the arrangement and 
 disposition of the plot : he has no playwright's eye for 
 situations. But the conversation is animated, and the 
 characters finely drawn, with more discrimination than one 
 would expect from so young an author. 
 
 This work was interrupted at the end of Act III. by 
 pressing calls to other studies, of which in the next 
 chapter ; and then by the attempt to win the distinction 
 he sought in the Newdigate prize at Oxford. But it was 
 not that he had forgotten Adele. From time to time he 
 wrote verses to her, or about her ; and as in 1838 she was 
 sent to school with her sisters near Chelmsford, to " finish " 
 her in English, in that August he saw her again. She had 
 lost some of her first girlish prettiness, but that made no 
 difference. And when the Domecqs came to Herne Hill 
 at Christmas to spend their holidays, he was as deeply 
 in love as ever. He could show her the new Friendship's 
 Offering, just come out, with a poem " To *' * * ," which 
 was a direct appeal enough. He followed it up with 
 printing others of his poems to her in TJie London 
 Monthly Miscellany for the next three months. He won 
 his Newdigate ; he had written brilliantly, for a youth,
 
 6O THE LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
 in the Architectural Magazine, and was plainly a rising 
 young man. But she still laughed at him. 
 
 It seems that the pertinacity of his passion disturbed 
 his parents not a little ; enough for them to employ the 
 somewhat desperate expedient of throwing other girls in 
 his way. And one gathers from tradition, putting hints 
 together, that more than one fair damsel would have been 
 willing enough to receive his suit. But his affections 
 remained fixed, most unreasonably, if lovers knew such 
 a thing as reason. 
 
 Soon after her return to France, emancipated from 
 schoolgirlhood greatly, no doubt, to the elder Ruskins' 
 relief her father died ; and proposals were made for her 
 hand by a young French Baron Duquesne ; of which 
 the unsuccessful suitor heard in September 1839. He 
 wrote the long poem of " Farewell," dated the eve of 
 their last meeting and parting. One sees that he has 
 been reading his Shelley ; one sees that he knows he is 
 writing " poetry " ; but at the same time one cannot but 
 believe that his disappointment was deep, after nearly 
 four years of hope and effort, and real fidelity at a period of 
 life when, if ever, a lover's unfaithfulness might be easily 
 pardoned, placed as he was among new scenes and new 
 people, among success and flattery and awakening ambition. 
 But in this disappointment there is no anger, no bitterness, 
 no reproach. She is still to be his goddess of stone ; calm 
 and cold, but never to be forgotten. 
 
 At twenty, young men do not die of love : but I find 
 that a fortnight after writing this he was taken seriously 
 ill. During the winter the negotiations for the marriage 
 in Paris went on. It took place in March. In May he 
 was pronounced consumptive, and had to give up Oxford,
 
 A LOVE-STORY. 6 1 
 
 and all hope of distinction in the schools for which he had 
 laboured, and with that, any plans that might have been 
 entertained for his distinction in the Church. And remem- 
 bering how his physical illnesses have always followed upon 
 mental strain or grief, it is hard to believe that this first 
 great calamity of his life how far-reaching cannot well be 
 told was not the direct consequence of this unhappy love- 
 story. 
 
 For nearly two years he was dragged about from place 
 to place, and from doctor to doctor, in search of health ; 
 and thanks to wise treatment, more to new faces, and most 
 to a plucky determination to employ himself usefully with 
 his pen and his pencil, he gradually freed himself from the 
 spell ; and fifty years afterwards could look back upon the 
 story as a pretty comedy of his youthful days. How pretty 
 at any rate the actress must have been, if we do not believe 
 his own words, and taste, we can judge from a little side- 
 glimpse of the sequel afforded us by a writer whose 
 connoisseurship in pretty girls we can trust Mrs. A. 
 Thackeray Ritchie {Harper's Magazine, March 1 890) : 
 
 " The writer can picture to herself something of the 
 charm of these most charming sisters ; for once, by chance 
 travelling on Lake Leman, she found herself watching a 
 lady who sat at the steamer's end, a beautiful young 
 woman, all dressed in pale grey, with a long veil floating 
 on the wind, who sat motionless and absorbed, looking 
 toward the distant hills, not unlike the vision of some 
 guiding, wistful Ariel at the prow, while the steamer sped 
 its way between the banks. The story of the French 
 sisters has gained an added interest from the remembrance 
 of those dark, lovely eyes, that charming countenance ; for 
 afterwards, when I knew her better, the lady told me that
 
 62 THE LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
 her mother had been a Domecq, and had once lived with 
 her sisters in Mr. Ruskin's home. Circumstances had 
 divided them in after days, but all the children of the 
 family had been brought up to know Mr. Ruskin by name, 
 and to love and appreciate his books. The lady sent him 
 many messages by me, which I delivered in after days, 
 when, alas ! it was from Mr. Ruskin himself I learned that 
 the beautiful traveller Isabelle, he called her had passed 
 away before her time to those distant hills where all our 
 journeys end."
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 "KATA PHUSIN." 
 
 (1836-1838.) 
 
 " And you, painter, who are desirous of great practice, understand, that if you 
 do not rest it on the good foundation of Nature, you will labour with little honour 
 and less profit : and if you do it on a good ground, your works will be many and 
 good, to your great honour and advantage." Leonardo da Vinci. 
 
 LOVE in idleness was no part of the Herne Hill 
 programme. Beside the playwriting and song- 
 composing, which was not exactly work, although it used 
 up much time and energy, and over and above the lectures 
 at King's College already mentioned, John Ruskin entered 
 in 1836 upon a new and more serious phase of his study 
 of Art. 
 
 In Switzerland and Italy, during the autumn of 1835, 
 he had made a great many drawings, carefully outlined in 
 pencil or pen, on grey paper, and sparsely touched with 
 body colour, in direct imitation of the Prout lithographs. 
 Prout's original coloured sketches he had seen, no doubt, 
 in the exhibition ; but he does not seem to have thought 
 of imitating them, for his work in this kind was all 
 intended to be for illustration. The " Italy " vignettes 
 likewise, with all their inspiration, suggested to him only 
 pen-etching ; he was hardly conscious that somewhere 
 
 63
 
 64 THE LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
 there existed the tiny, delicious coloured pictures that 
 Turner had made for the engraver. Still, now that he 
 could draw really well, his father, who painted in water- 
 colours himself, wished him to be promoted to a colour 
 box ; and as he always got the best of everything, went 
 straight to the President of the Old Water Colour Society, 
 and engaged him for the usual course of half a dozen 
 lessons at a guinea. Copley Fielding, besides being Presi- 
 dent, could draw mountains as nobody else but Turner 
 could, in water colour ; he had enough mystery and poetry 
 to interest the younger Ruskin, and enough resemblance to 
 ordinary views of nature to please the elder. 
 
 So they both went to Newman Street to his painting- 
 room, and John worked through the course, and a few extra 
 lessons ; but, after all, found that he could no more pick 
 up this trick from a teacher than he could formerly pick 
 up the orthodox method of reading and writing. The 
 stronger a man's individuality is, the less he is likely, and 
 even able, to comply with common means and aims. Such 
 a man sometimes thinks it very stupid in himself that he 
 cannot do what other people find so easy : Wagner, for 
 instance, always hoping to succeed, next time, in hitting 
 the popular taste ; and Beethoven, labouring in vain to 
 throw some lightness into his great overture, to please 
 the manager of the opera. So Ruskin must be him- 
 self, or nothing ; and his way of work remained for him 
 to devise for himself, by following at first the highest 
 masters he knew, and by superadding to the lessons he 
 could get from them an expression of his own sincere 
 feeling. 
 
 One such lesson was given in the Royal Academy Ex- 
 hibition of 1836, when Turner showed the first striking
 
 "KATA PHUSIN." 65 
 
 examples of his later style in the " Juliet and her Nurse," 
 the " Mercury and Argus," and the " Rome from Mount 
 Aventine." The strange idealism, the unusualness, the 
 mystery of these pictures, united with evidence of intense 
 significance and subtle observation, appealed to young 
 Ruskin as it appealed to few other spectators. Here was 
 Venice as he saw her in his own dreams ; here were 
 mountains and skies such as he had watched and studied, 
 and attempted to describe in his own poems. It was not for 
 nothing that he had been devoted to Nature, that he had 
 tried to set down her phenomena in writing, and to repre- 
 sent her forms with severe draughtsmanship ; that he had 
 studied the geology of mountains as well as the poetry 
 of them. In Turner's work he saw both sides of his own 
 character reflected, both aspects of Nature recorded. It 
 was not the mere matter-of-fact map of the place, which 
 would have appealed to merely matter-of-fact people, in- 
 terested in science. Nor was it simply a vague Miltonian 
 imagination, which would have appealed to the mere senti- 
 mentalist. But Turner had been able to show, and young 
 Ruskin to appreciate, the combination of two attitudes 
 with regard to Nature : the scientific, inquisitive about her 
 facts, her detail ; and the poetical, expatiating in effect, in 
 breadth and mystery. 
 
 There may have been other people who appreciated 
 these pictures : if so, they said nothing. On the contrary, 
 public opinion regretted this change for the worse in its 
 old favourite, the draughtsman of Oxford colleges, the 
 painter of shipwrecks and castles. And Blackwoocfs 
 Magazine, which the Ruskins, as Edinburgh people and 
 admirers of Christopher North, read with respect, spoke 
 about Turner, in a review of the picture -season, with that 
 
 VOL. I. 5
 
 66 THE LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
 freedom of speech which Scotch reviewers claim as a 
 heritage from the days of Jeffrey. Young Ruskin at once 
 dashed off an answer, indignant not so much that Turner 
 was attacked, but that he should have been attacked by a 
 writer whose article showed that he was not a qualified 
 critic of art, and that this should have been printed in 
 " Maga." 
 
 The critic had found that Turner was "out of nature " : 
 Ruskin tried to show that the pictures were full of facts, 
 studied on the spot and thoroughly understood, but treated 
 with poetical licence ; Turner being, like Shakespeare, an 
 idealist, in the sense of allowing himself a free treatment 
 of his material. The critic pronounced Turner's colour bad, 
 his execution neglected, and his chiaroscuro childish ; in 
 answer to which Ruskin explained that Turner's reasoned 
 system was to represent light and shade by the contrast of 
 warm and cold colour, rather than by the opposition of 
 white and black which other painters used ; he denied that 
 his execution was other than his aims necessitated, and 
 maintained that the critic had no right to force his cut-and- 
 dried Academic rules of composition on a great genius ; at 
 the same time admitting that " the faults of Turner are 
 numerous, and perhaps more egregious than those of any 
 other great existing artist ; but if he has greater faults, he 
 has also greater beauties. 
 
 " His imagination is Shakespearian in its mightiness. 
 Had the scene of 'Juliet and her Nurse' risen up before 
 the mind of a poet, and been described in ' words that 
 burn,' it had been the admiration of the world. . . . Many- 
 coloured mists are floating above the distant city, but such 
 mists as you might imagine to be ethereal spirits, souls of 
 the mighty dead breathed out of the tombs of Italy into
 
 "KATA PHUSIN." 6/ 
 
 the blue of her bright heaven, and wandering in vague and 
 infinite glory around the earth that they have loved. In- 
 stinct with the beauty of uncertain light, they move and 
 mingle among the pale stars, and rise up into the bright- 
 ness of the illimitable heaven, whose soft, sad blue eye 
 gazes down into the deep waters of the sea for ever, that 
 sea whose motionless and silent transparency is beaming 
 with phosphor light, that emanates out of its sapphire 
 serenity like bright dreams breathed into the spirit of a 
 deep sleep. And the spires of the glorious city rise indis- 
 tinctly bright into those living mists, like pyramids of pale 
 fire from some vast altar ; and amidst the glory of the 
 dream, there is as it were the voice of a multitude entering 
 by the eye arising from the stillness of the city like the 
 summer wind passing over the leaves of the forest, when 
 a murmur is heard amidst their multitudes. 
 
 "This, oh Maga, is the picture which your critic has 
 pronounced to be like ' models of different parts of Venice, 
 streaked blue and white, and thrown into a flour-tub ' ! " 
 
 Before sending this reply to the editor of Blackwood, 
 as had been intended, it was thought only right that Turner 
 should be consulted, as he was the person most interested. 
 The MS. was enclosed to his address in London, with a 
 courteous note from Mr. John James Ruskin, asking his 
 permission to publish. Turner replied, expressing the scorn 
 which such a man would be sure to feel for anonymous 
 attacks ; and jestingly hinting that the art-critics of the old 
 Scotch school found their " meal-tub " in danger from his 
 " flour-tub " : but " he never moved in such matters," so he 
 sent on the MS. to Mr. Munro of Novar, who had bought 
 the picture. 
 
 Thus the essay was lost, until another copy turned up
 
 68 THE LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
 among old papers, enabling us to add an important link to 
 the history of a great enterprise ; for this was the " first 
 chapter," the germ of Modern Painters, and indeed of all 
 Mr. Ruskin's work as an exponent of painting. 
 
 Turner was quite right in silencing his young champion. 
 The essay, though extremely clever for a boy of seventeen, 
 was naturally immature, and it would have done little 
 except prolong the discussion, for which John Ruskin 
 was hardly ripe. And then, instead of Modern Painters, 
 we should have had only a few unsatisfactory passages of 
 repartee in the pages of forgotten reviews. Turner did not 
 even ask to see his young champion ; for he was shy of 
 the world ; always either overworking himself or seeking 
 violent relaxation ; and he did not like the sort of people 
 who talked about art, even when they complimented him. 
 It is always futile discussing what might have been : if 
 Turner had taken the young writer kindly and frankly by 
 the hand, he might have saved him from many errors both 
 about himself and about art : but perhaps most likely 
 the greater and weightier individuality would have crushed 
 or bent the younger and more pliable ; and instead of a 
 Turner and a Ruskin we should have had only a Turner, 
 and his biographer. 
 
 Ten days or so after this episode John Ruskin was 
 matriculated at Oxford. He tells the story of his first 
 appearance as a gownsman in one of those gossiping letters 
 in verse which show his improvisational humorous talent to 
 the best advantage : 
 
 " A night, a day past o'er the time drew near, 
 The morning came I felt a little queer ; 
 Came to the push ; paid some tremendous fees ; 
 Past ; and was capped and gowned with marvellous ease.
 
 "KATA PHUSIN." 69 
 
 Then went to the Vice-Chancellor to swear 
 
 Not to wear boots, nor cut or comb my hair 
 
 Fantastically, to shun all such sins 
 
 As playing marbles or frequenting inns ; 
 
 Always to walk with breeches black or brown on ; 
 
 When I go out, to put my cap and gown on ; 
 
 With other regulations of the sort, meant 
 
 For the just ordering of my comportment. 
 
 Which done, in less time than I can rehearse it, I 
 
 Found myself member of the University ! " 
 
 In pursuance of his plan of getting the best of everything, 
 his father had chosen the best college, as far as he knew, 
 and the best position in it that of gentleman-commoner. 
 Nowadays, no doubt, he would have wished his son to be a 
 scholar of Balliol, or whatever college has the highest record 
 in the last examination. But at that time Oxford was 
 rather the fashionable finishing-school for young gentle- 
 men than the scene of intellectual struggle-for-life which 
 it has since become. Mr. Ruskin hints that one reason 
 for entering him as gentleman-commoner was a fear that 
 he might not pass the ordinary matriculation examina- 
 tion. But, although his teaching had been desultory, it 
 would have been strange if any college had refused a 
 candidate with such evidence of brains and the will to 
 use them. 
 
 After matriculation he did not go into residence until 
 January 1837. Part of the winter was spent on his 
 Newdigate, part on his " Smalls." The long vacation was 
 passed in a tour through the north of England, during 
 which his advanced knowledge of art was shown in a series 
 of admirable drawings, so Proutesque in manner as almost 
 to pass for the master's work, except for traces of a strong 
 individuality which could not be concealed. Their subjects
 
 7O THE LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
 are chiefly architectural, though a few mountain drawings 
 are found in his sketch-book for that summer. 
 
 The interest in ancient and picturesque buildings was no 
 new thing, and it seems to have been the branch of art- 
 study which was chiefly encouraged by his father. During 
 this tour among Cumberland cottages and Yorkshire 
 abbeys, a plan was formed of a series of papers on archi- 
 tecture ; perhaps in answer to an invitation from Mr. 
 Loudon, who had started an architectural magazine, and 
 knew John Ruskin from previous contributions to the 
 Magazine of Natural History. And so in the summer he 
 began to write " The Poetry of Architecture ; or, the 
 Architecture of the Nations of Europe considered in its 
 association with Natural Scenery and National Character " ; 
 and the papers were worked off, month by month, from 
 Oxford or wherever he might be, with a steadiness that 
 showed his power of detaching himself from immediate 
 surroundings, like any experienced litterateur. This piece 
 of work, buried in a rarely seen periodical, is a valuable 
 link in the development of his Seven Lamps ; anticipating 
 many of his conclusions of later days, and exhibiting his 
 literary style as very near maturity. It deals chiefly with 
 the countries he had visited the English Lakeland, France, 
 Switzerland and North Italy ; but some little notice of 
 Spain suggests occasional collaboration with his father. 
 
 He begins by deploring the want of taste in modern 
 buildings the " Swiss chalets " in suburban brickfields, and 
 the Regent's Park boxes on Derwentwater : and he shows 
 that it is the public who are to blame, for though utility 
 is the first requirement, it does not preclude taste. Then 
 he contrasts, with something of the power of analysis 
 which he afterwards displayed, the snug neatness of south-
 
 "KATA PHUSIN." 71 
 
 country English cottages, with the historical and senti- 
 mental interest of dilapidated French farms, and the 
 pensive poetry of half-ruined Italian country-houses. He 
 shows how each style arises naturally from the require- 
 ments and circumstances of the inhabitants, and therefore 
 is in harmony with the surroundings. Still more perfect 
 examples are the cottages of the Alps and the Cumbrian 
 hills. He is not so kind to the Swiss and their chalets 
 as one might expect ; but he describes the rugged home- 
 steads of the Lake district with affection : " The un- 
 cultivated mountaineer of Cumberland has no ' taste,' and 
 no idea what architecture means ; he never thinks of what 
 is right, or what is beautiful ; but he builds what is most 
 adapted to his purpose, and most easily erected. By 
 suiting the building to the uses of his own life, he gives 
 it humility ; and by raising it with the nearest material, 
 adapts it to its situation. That is all that is required." 
 
 He proceeds to formulate a few principles by which a 
 builder of cottages, conscious of what he is doing, should 
 be guided. In " A Chapter on Chimneys " he explains why 
 they should not be ornamented, holding tight to the notion 
 of the development of beauty from use, and illustrating 
 with a sketch of " an old building called Coniston Hall." 
 
 The second half of the series discusses the Villa that is, 
 the gentleman's country-house as distinct from the cottage 
 and from the castle or palace. He describes the shores 
 of Windermere with sarcastic humour ; and contrasts the 
 villas of Como, slyly quoting or misquoting a couple of 
 lines from one of his own unpublished poems. In develop- 
 ing the subject, he anticipates many of his later views, and 
 balances the commonsense utilitarianism of his first part 
 by saying, as he did .in the Seven Lamps " The mere
 
 72 THE LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
 preparation of convenience is not architecture in which 
 man can take pride, or ought to take delight ; but the 
 high and ennobling part of architecture is that of giving 
 to buildings whose parts are determined by necessity such 
 forms and colours as shall delight the mind." And he 
 concludes by expounding at length the principles that 
 should guide the builder of country-houses, insisting on 
 their thoughtful adaptation to the scenery and position, 
 as opposed to the mere following of arbitrary style and 
 blind fashion. 
 
 The papers terminate with the termination of the maga- 
 zine, which ran for those two years only. They are bright 
 and amusing, full of pretty description and shrewd thoughts. 
 They parade a good deal of classical learning and travelled 
 experience ; so much so that no doubt the readers of the 
 magazine took their author for some dilettante don at 
 Oxford ; and the editor did not wish the illusion to be 
 dispelled. So John Ruskin had to choose a nom de plume. 
 He called himself Kata Phusin (" according to nature "), for 
 he had begun to read some Aristotle after his " Smalls." No 
 phrase would have better expressed his point of view, that 
 of common sense extended by experience, and confirmed 
 by the appeal to matters of fact, rather than to any authority, 
 or tradition, or committee of taste, or abstract principles. 
 
 While these papers were in process of publication Kata 
 Phusin plunged into his first controversy. Mr. Arthur 
 Parsey had published a treatise on Perspective Rectified, 
 with a new discovery that was to upset all previous practice. 
 He said, in effect, that when you look at a tower, the top 
 is farther from the eye than the bottom ; therefore it must 
 look narrower ; therefore it should be drawn so. This was 
 " Parsey's Convergence of Perpendiculars " ; according to
 
 "KATA PHUSIN." 73 
 
 which vertical lines should have a vanishing point, even 
 though they are assumed to be parallel to the plane of 
 the picture. 
 
 He had been discussed by one, and ridiculed by another 
 of the contributors to the magazine, when Kata Phusin 
 joined in, with the remark that the convergence is per- 
 ceptible only when we stand too close to the tower to draw 
 it (when, of course, the verticals are not parallel to the 
 plane of the picture) ; and that we never can draw it at 
 all until we are so far away that the eye is practically 
 equidistant from all parts, top and bottom. You see that 
 in reflections too, he said : the vertical lines do converge, 
 when your eye ranges round the horizon, and from zenith 
 to nadir ; but as a matter of fact, in a picture we include 
 so small a piece of the whole field of vision that the 
 convergence is practically reduced to nil. 
 
 A writer signing himself " Q." gravely reviews the situa- 
 tion, and gives the palm to Kata Phusin ; yet, he says, the 
 convergence is there. To which Kata Phusin answers that 
 of course it is, and all artists know it, but they know also 
 that the limited angle of their picture's scope makes away 
 with the difficulty. 
 
 Parsey was not satisfied. Kata Phusin appeals to obser- 
 vation. He says he is looking out of his window at one 
 of the most noble buildings in Oxford, and the vertical lines 
 of it do fall exactly on the sashes of his window-frame. 
 He suggests a new line of defence : that to see a picture 
 properly, the eye must be opposite the point of sight, and 
 the angle of vision is the same for the picture, placed at 
 the right distance, as for the actual scene ; so whatever 
 convergence there is in the scene, there is also in the 
 picture, when rightly viewed. And so the discussion
 
 74 THE LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
 dragged on ; Kata Phusin appealing tq common sense 
 and common practice as against the mathematicians and 
 the theorists ; and the editor gave him the last word to 
 conclude the magazine. 
 
 None of the disputants were bold enough to remark 
 that the great science of perspective was after all only an 
 abstraction ; that the " plane of the picture " is a mere 
 assumption, made for the convenience of geometrical 
 draughtsmen ; and that if you draw what you really see, 
 you would draw the top of a tower broader than its base ! 
 for such is the position of the question in its latest phase, 
 as discussed with curious experiment and improved know- 
 ledge of optics, by Dr. P. H. Emerson and Mr. Goodall 
 in a recent tract 
 
 During this controversy, and just before the summer 
 tour of 1838 to Scotland, John Ruskin was introduced 
 to Miss Charlotte Withers, a young lady who was as fond 
 of music as he was of drawing. They discussed their 
 favourite studies with eagerness ; and to settle the matter, 
 he wrote a long essay on " The Comparative Advantages 
 of the Studies of Music and Painting," in which he sets 
 painting as a means of recreation and of education far 
 above music. He allows to music a greater power of 
 stirring emotion, but finds that power strongest in pro- 
 portion as the art is diminished ; so that the yEolian harp 
 is the most touching of all melody, and next to it, owing 
 partly to associations, the Alp-horn. " The shepherds on 
 the high Alps live for 'months in perfect solitude, not 
 perhaps seeing the face of a human being for weeks 
 together. Among these men there is a very beautiful 
 custom the manner in which they celebrate their evening 
 devotions. When the sun is just setting, and the peaks
 
 zja- *. 
 
 ~"- 
 
 w 
 o
 
 "KATA PHUSIN." 75 
 
 of eternal snow become tinted of a pale but bright rose- 
 colour by his dying beams, the shepherd who is highest 
 upon the mountains takes his horn, and sounds through 
 it a few simple but melodious notes signifying ' Glory be 
 to God.' Far and wide on the pure air floats the sound. 
 The nearest shepherd hears, and replies ; and from man 
 to man, over the illimitable deserts of a hundred hills, 
 passes on the voice of worship. Then there is a silence 
 a deep, dead silence. Every head is uncovered ; every 
 knee bowed. And from the stillness of the solitude rises 
 the voice of supplication, heard by God only. Again the 
 highest shepherd sounds through his horn, ' Thanks be to 
 God.' Again is the sound taken up, and passed on from 
 man to man along the mountains. It dies away ; the 
 twilight comes dimly down, and every one betakes himself 
 to repose." 
 
 To the higher forms of music he awards no such power 
 of compelling emotion, and finds no intellectual interest 
 in them to make up for the loss ; whereas in painting, 
 the higher the art, the stronger the appeal both to the senses 
 and the intellect. He describes an ideal " Crucifixion by 
 Vandyke or Guido," insisting on the complexity of emo- 
 tions and trains of thought roused by such a picture. He 
 goes into ecstasies over a typical " Madonna of Raphael " ; 
 discusses David's " Horatii," and concludes that even in 
 Landscape this double office of painting, at once artistic 
 and literary, gives it a supremacy to which music has no 
 claim. As a practical means of education, he finds little 
 difficulty in showing that "with regard to drawing, the 
 labour and time required is the same [as for music], but 
 the advantages gained will," he thinks, " be found con- 
 siderably superior. These are four : namely (i) the power
 
 76 THE LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
 of appreciating fine pictures ; (2) the agreeable and inter- 
 esting occupation of many hours ; (3) the habit of quick 
 observation, and exquisite perception of the beauties of 
 Nature ; and lastly, the power of amusing and gratifying 
 others." 
 
 In the examples chosen, we see the boy who admired 
 as yet without full discrimination ; in the line of thought 
 taken, we see the man. He never was a musician : he 
 learnt to play and sing a little, and he has composed a 
 few pretty little melodies as an amusement of his later 
 years. He takes great delight in ballad singing and in 
 the simpler forms of old operatic music. But he has no 
 ear for the higher efforts of the art ; is not what we call 
 musical. But what do we ask ? Surely not that one 
 man should combine in himself every possible power, for 
 that would make but a neutral mixture. 
 
 As a forecast of his art-criticism this essay is important. 
 We see him giving scrupulous attention to the demands 
 of the artistic side, but more honestly interested, then, in 
 the literary subject. It was his double sympathy that 
 enabled him in later years to introduce the public, on the 
 one hand, to the aims of the artist ; and, on the other hand, 
 to press upon artists the admission that the public, after 
 all, are right in demanding that, as a picture sets out with 
 some suggestion of representing nature, the representation 
 ought to be as complete as it can be. There will always be 
 people who can see one side of the question only ; and 
 such people will always think Ruskin inconsistent. 
 
 Already at nineteen, then, we see him as a writer on 
 art, not full-fledged, but sturdily taking his own line and 
 making up his mind upon the first great questions. As 
 Kata Phusin he was attracting some notice. Towards
 
 "KATA PHUSIN." 77 
 
 the end of 1838, a question arose as to the best site for 
 the proposed Scott memorialat Edinburgh ; and a writer 
 in the Architectural Magazine quotes Kata Phusin as the 
 authority in such matters ; saying that it was obvious, 
 after those papers of his, that design and site should be 
 simultaneously considered. On which the editor "begs 
 the favour of Kata Phusin to let our readers have his 
 opinion on the subject, which we certainly think of con- 
 siderable importance." 
 
 And so he discusses the question of monuments in 
 general, and of this one in particular, in a long paper ; 
 unsatisfactorily coming to no very decided opinion ; pre- 
 ferring, on the whole, a statue group with a colossal Scott 
 on a rough pedestal, to be placed on Salisbury Crags, 
 " where the range gets low and broken towards the North, 
 at about the height of St. Anthony's Chapel." But he 
 finds that, after all, the climate and, more effectually, 
 the sentiment of the north, militate against this kind of 
 monument. 
 
 We often think we have nicely disposed of our idealists 
 when we have asked them to practise what they preach, 
 to better what they criticise. And against Mr. Ruskin it 
 has been urged, time and again, that his plans are fine, but 
 impracticable. We see him here already stopped on the 
 threshold by his inability to put his own principles into 
 action. When he is asked, " Well, now, and what are 
 we to do?" he replies vaguely, and in general terms, or 
 proposes something that won't work ! The reason is 
 simple enough. An ideal, to be an ideal, is something 
 out of reach ; something to aim at, not as yet to attain. 
 The rest of us are content to be opportunists, to do the 
 best we can with the materials we have. He has all his
 
 78 THE LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
 life been an idealist ; his counsels are counsels of perfection. 
 In art, in ethics, all the various departments of life that he 
 has touched, his work has been to set the standard higher, 
 not to drag it down within easy reach. Without such men 
 among us, should we not be like wanderers on a waste and 
 dangerous moorland, making sure, indeed, of each next 
 step ; but to what goal tending ?
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 SIR ROGER NEWD1GATES PRIZE. 
 (1837-1839.) 
 
 6 8' aiV6Xos &8' aydpevev' 
 rot, /cai t<pifj*pos & Ad<f>vi <f><ava.' 
 Ad<r5eo rds (rtf/nyyas' evtKijcras 7&/> deidwv. 
 
 ^ Theocritus. 
 
 OXFORD in the 'Thirties has been often described. 
 It was beginning to awake from the torpor of its 
 traditional " classic groves " and cloistered erudition, and 
 to take upon itself the burden of educating England. It 
 was stirring especially in two directions : in religion, and 
 in physical science. The movement which created the 
 modern High Church and Broad Church parties was 
 already afoot ; and it would be natural to suppose that 
 any active mind, thrown into the thick of the fight, 
 would be sure to take a side, and share the experiences 
 of Newman or Pusey, Pattison or Clough. 
 
 But in all these matters John Ruskin the undergraduate 
 was a Gallio. It seems strange that a man who had been 
 brought up on constant Bible-reading and sermon-hearing, 
 who was destined for the Church, whose eventual mission 
 has been to refer everything to the language and principles 
 of religion, it seems strange that he, of all people, should 
 
 79
 
 8O THE LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
 have looked on unmoved while great questions were being 
 agitated, consciences wrung, and souls torn asunder between 
 faith and doubt. 
 
 But there were reasons why he was not drawn into 
 the struggle. He was pious ; and yet his piety was not 
 an affair of speculation, but of habit, a branch of ethical 
 practice. He had no " call " to doubt ; he observed his 
 religious duties, and went on his way. During his career 
 at Oxford, also, his mother lived near him, in the High 
 Street, and he saw her constantly. Nothing keeps up a 
 habit so much as intercourse with persons who have been 
 accustomed to enforce it. And it was only when he got 
 away from his parents' company, as we shall hereafter 
 find, that he wandered from his parents' religion. 
 
 In the question, as between Church and Church, he 
 accepted what he had been taught, and all the more 
 easily because he had not been fostered in any of the 
 narrower sects, though always in the strictest Protest- 
 antism. He had not been fettered even to the Church of 
 England ; for the Scottish traditions of his family, partly 
 descended from the hereditary keepers of the " Solemn 
 League and Covenant," the Tweddales, and partly from 
 old-time Jacobites, saved him from any exclusive devotion 
 to one party, or even nationality, in religion. He had 
 seen the good sides of more than one school of Protestant 
 Christianity, and their weak points as well. So that an 
 ecclesiastical contest had no interest for him ; he could 
 take neither side. 
 
 But the other movement, then less heard of, was des- 
 tined to make a greater impression on the world. The 
 beginning of modern Physical Science was not confined 
 to Oxford, but it was well represented there. And it
 
 SIR ROGER NEWDIGATE'S PRIZE. 81 
 
 happened that at Christ Church there were two leading 
 workers in the cause : among the elder men, Dr. Buckland, 
 the veteran geologist ; and among the younger men, Henry 
 W. Acland, who was already beginning his life's work in 
 Physiology. 
 
 The latter so the story runs while crossing the Quad, 
 one day, spied a noble lord riding a freshman round the 
 place, to the great amusement and gratification of other 
 noble lords, the senior gentlemen-commoners. The fresh- 
 man took his initiatory bullying with good nature ; and 
 though he had never been to school, to speak of, and 
 though he was too given to reading and writing, and though 
 his father was only a wine-merchant, he soon won a place 
 in the miniature republic, where, while ordinary advantages 
 of course have their weight, still the best man is more 
 frankly recognised than in the bigger world. And if our 
 freshman had found no other company at Christ Church 
 but this, it would still have been good for him to be there. 
 As a self-educated dilettante in art and a bourgeois 
 reformer of society he could never have attained that 
 breadth of outlook, that freedom of expression, which he 
 got by mixing with all classes, from the highest to the 
 -lowest; gauging all tastes, testing all pretensions, com- 
 paring all ideals. 
 
 But to meet a man like Mr. Acland, to be placed at 
 the outset in necessary comradeship with so fine a nature, 
 was a true stroke of luck ; without which young Ruskin 
 would have been left to fight his way alone in an uncon- 
 genial world. He was too able a man to be neglected 
 but too thoughtful to be content with merely aristocratic 
 and fashionable companions. If he had not found real 
 comrades in his own college and at his own table in 
 
 VOL. I. 6
 
 82 THE LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
 Hall, he might have been obliged to seek them elsewhere, 
 to have become perhaps the hero of an inferior set of men, 
 which is the worst thing that can happen to a clever 
 undergraduate. 
 
 To Mr. (now Sir) Henry Acland, and Dr. Buckland, 
 who took notice of a young geologist and made him 
 useful in drawing diagrams for lectures, he owed his first 
 encouragement in science. To Sir Charles Newton, now 
 famous as our leading authority on classical archaeology, and 
 at that time an undergraduate antiquary of Christ Church, 
 young Ruskin owed sympathy in his artistic tastes. So 
 that, by the best of fortune, no side of his nature was 
 left undeveloped, and he began his career as the junior 
 comrade of the best men in each walk of life. 
 
 The dons of his college were not interesting to him, 
 nor interested in him. His college-tutor, indeed, the Rev. 
 Walter Brown, remained his friend ; and his private tutor, 
 the Rev. Osborne Gordon, famous for his scholarship but 
 still more for his tact, was always regarded with affectionate 
 respect. Habits of study and an extremely good memory 
 made his reading easy to him. He was always at a dis- 
 advantage in the nicer points of classical scholarship ; but 
 he made up for that by a much more vivid interest in 
 the subjects he read Herodotus and Thucydides, the 
 tragedians and Aristophanes, with some Plato and Aris- 
 totle. To him they were not merely school-books : they 
 were authors and inspirers of original thought, which in 
 the end is more valuable than grammatical minutiae. But, 
 even so, he was a safe candidate for examinations, and 
 could have won any ordinary success by mere force of 
 intelligence and application, if his health had permitted. 
 So little was he overworked by the usual course of reading,
 
 SIR ROGER NEWDIGATE'S PRIZE. 83 
 
 that he had to look for otfyer subjects to employ his mind 
 upon : such as the Kata Phusin papers, and Science. But 
 the chief by-play of his Oxford years was poetry. 
 
 He had made up his mind to win the Newdigate ; and 
 he had not been in residence a term before he sent in his 
 first trial-poem " The Gipsies " : an essay in rhyme in the 
 style of the eighteenth century, very well devised and full of 
 neat lines and passages of shrewd reflection. He describes 
 the encampment in the woods ; the vagrant's feats and the 
 fortune-teller's power, too often abused but sometimes used 
 for kindly ends. Then he turns suddenly to contrast this 
 beggarly function of modern astrology and palmistry 
 with the widespread belief in such things of old ; and to 
 compare the despairing superstition of the gipsies with 
 enlightened faith in 
 
 " That Great One whose spirit interweaves 
 The pathless forests with their life of leaves; 
 And lifts the lowly blossoms, bright in birth, 
 Out of the cold, black, rotting charnel earth : 
 Walks on the moon-bewildered waves at night, 
 Breathes in the morning breeze, burns in the evening light ; 
 Feeds the young ravens when they cry; uplifts 
 The pale-lipped clouds among the mountain clifts ; 
 Moves the pale glacier on its restless path ; 
 Lives in the desert's universal death ; 
 And fills, with that one glance which none elude, 
 The grave, the city, and the solitude." 
 
 And he concludes by showing how far removed from true 
 liberty is the unrestrained and lawless life, which some 
 have sentimentally praised and unreflectingly envied ; in 
 which he anticipates his own doctrine of the Seven 
 Lamps, and his consistent belief that only in service is 
 perfect freedom to be found and used.
 
 84 THE LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
 This poem is much above the average of such exercises, 
 and would have won the prize had it not been for the 
 still stronger work of a senior member of his own college, 
 Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, afterwards Dean of Westminster. 
 Ruskin was not to be beaten, but with ft a perseverance 
 worthy of a better cause " tried again and again until he 
 was successful. We may be allowed to regret this success, 
 not so much for the sake of the time spent upon writing, 
 re-writing and polishing those useless essays in verse, as 
 because it fixed the young poet in a habit of treating his 
 art merely as an art ; writing to order without waiting for 
 inspiration. We have already seen him supplying verses 
 for a picture the "Salzburg" of Friendship's Offering: 
 and, strange as it may seem in a man like Ruskin, we find 
 him repeatedly doing the same kind of thing, as in " The 
 Two Paths " the poem of that name, and " The Departed 
 Light." This was owing partly to his " fatal facility," partly 
 to his humility in accepting advice and meeting the require- 
 ments of any one who assumed to be his critic and censor. 
 He was sincerely anxious to learn the art of literature, to 
 improve himself; and generously ready to please. So 
 he laid aside his own standards for those of his father, of 
 Mr. Pringle, of Mr. Harrison, of the Newdigate examiners : 
 a dangerous thing to do, even with his powers. And he 
 succeeded in adapting his verse to the fashion of the 
 day so well that his own individuality in it was lost, all 
 the spontaneity of his earlier work vanished ; while in the 
 meantime Tennyson and Browning were steering their own 
 courses in sturdy independence toward ultimate success. 
 
 The second Newdigate, " The Exile of St. Helena," though 
 it treated of a subject familiar to him, was more stilted, 
 more strained and unreal than the first. This time the
 
 SIR ROGER NEWDIGATE'S PRIZE. 85 
 
 prize was won by his old schoolfellow at Mr. Dale's, 
 Henry Dart of Exeter College. He was at any rate 
 beaten by a friend, and by a poem which his honourable 
 sympathy and assistance had helped to perfect. 
 
 The third try won it, with " Salsette and Elephanta " : in 
 which, though it deals with scenes of which he had no 
 experience, there is an artificial gorgeousness of descrip- 
 tion, carefully extracted from books of travel, and an 
 exaltation of phrase copied from the " best models," enough 
 to justify the award. No doubt the examiners were 
 further influenced by the orthodoxy of the closing passage, 
 which prophesies the prompt extermination of Brahminism 
 by the missionaries. 
 
 In this poem there is a strong tinge of the horrible, 
 which, to judge from Mr. Ruskin's expressed opinions on 
 art, we should hardly suspect ever to have been his taste. 
 But during all his boyhood and youth there were moments 
 of weakness when he allowed himself to be carried away 
 by a sort of nightmare, the reaction from healthy delight 
 in natural beauty. In later life the same tendency led him 
 at times to brood over the sufferings of the poor and the 
 crimes of society until a too sensitive brain could no longer 
 bear the tension and the torture. 
 
 But by that time he had learnt to put limits to art, and 
 to refuse the merely horrible as its material. As an under- 
 graduate, however, writing for effect, he gave free rein to 
 the morbid imaginations to which his unhappy affaire de 
 cazur and the mental excitement of the period predisposed 
 him. In his first year he was reading Herodotus, and was 
 struck as who is not? by the romantic picturesqueness 
 of the incomparable old chronicler. Several passages of 
 Greek history the story of the Athenian fugitive from the
 
 86 THE LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
 massacre at JEgma., and the death of Aristodemus at Plataea 
 offered telling subjects for lyrical verse : the death of 
 Arion and the dethronement of Psammenitus were treated, 
 later, at length ; but above all, the account of the Scythians, 
 with their wild primitive life and manners, fascinated him. 
 Instead of gathering from their history such an idyl as 
 Mr. William Morris would have made, he fixed upon only 
 the most gruesome points their fierce struggle with the 
 Persians, cruelty and slavery, burial-rites and skull- 
 goblets which he set himself to picture with ghastly 
 realism. 
 
 Mr. Harrison, his literary mentor, approved these poems, 
 and inserted them in Friendship's Offering, along with love- 
 songs to Adele. One had a great success and was freely 
 copied plagiarism being then, as always, the most favour- 
 able criticism : and the preface to the annual for 1840 publicly 
 thanked the " gifted writer " for his " valuable aid." What 
 with that, and the Newdigate just gained, it surely seemed 
 that John Ruskin had found his vocation at last, and that 
 he was on the high road to reputation as a poet. But 
 " the great difficulty about making verses," as Dr. Johnson 
 sagely observed, " is to know when you have made good 
 ones." Was there nobody among those friends, whose 
 criticism he anxiously courted and whose advice he so 
 humbly followed, to tell him that if he would keep clear of 
 Graecisms in syntax and Latinisms in etymology,* and if 
 he would condescend to be as explicit in verse as he could 
 
 * To wit, "the scatheless keel," for "the keel without scathe," and 
 " prore " for " prow." The subject of the song is obscure until, on re- 
 reading, one sees some great Indiaman, homeward bound with troops 
 aboard, striking an unknown rock and sinking with all hands, in sight 
 of shore.
 
 SIR ROGER NEWDIGATE'S PRIZE. 87 
 
 be in prose, then he would charm the world with such music 
 as we hear in The Wreck ? 
 
 " Its masts of might, its sails so free 
 Had borne the scatheless keel 
 Through many a day of darkened sea, 
 And many a storm of steel. 
 When all the winds were calm, it met 
 (With home-returning prore) 
 
 With the lull 
 
 Of the waves 
 On a low lee shore. 
 
 " The crest of the conqueror 
 On many a brow was bright ; 
 The dew of many an exile's eye 
 Had dimmed the dancing sight. 
 But for love, and for victory, 
 One welcome was in store, 
 
 ... In the lull 
 
 Of the waves 
 On a low lee shore."
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE BROKEN CHAIN. 
 
 (1840 1841.) 
 
 " But never more the same two sister pearls 
 Ran down the silken thread to kiss each other 
 On her white neck ; so is it with this rhyme." 
 
 Tennyson, 
 
 " \ T 7" HEN all the seas were calm ; " so it seemed to 
 the friends who celebrated John Ruskin's coming- 
 of-age, on Feb. 8th, 1840. He was not far, now, from his 
 desired haven. A very few months, and he would be pass- 
 ing his final examinations, taking his degree, and preparing 
 for honourable settlement in a dignified profession in which 
 life would be congenial, advancement easy, and success 
 anticipated. He had wealth, which he owed to his father ; 
 health, to all appearance, which he owed to his mother's 
 constant care ; friends of the best, and fame already much 
 wider and more appreciable than the strictly academic 
 reputation of the ordinary successful undergraduate. For 
 was he not the authority of one magazine, the " gifted 
 contributor " of another, winner of the most popular Uni- 
 versity prize, and, in circles where such tastes are current, 
 welcomed as a clever young artist and an eager student 
 of science? If, as he was bidden, he "counted up his
 
 THE BROKEN CHAIN. 89 
 
 mercies," there was much to be thankful for ; it was indeed 
 an auspicious coming-of-age. 
 
 His father, who had sympathised with his admiration 
 for Turner enough to buy two pictures the " Richmond 
 Bridge " and the " Gosport " for their Herne Hill drawing- 
 room, now gave him a picture all to himself for his 
 rooms in St. Aldate's the " Winchelsea " ; and settled on 
 him an allowance of pocket-money of 200 a year. The 
 first use he made of his wealth was to buy another Turner. 
 In the Easter vacation he met Mr. Griffith, the dealer, at the 
 private view of the Old Water-colour Society ; and hearing 
 that the " Harlech Castle " was for sale, he bought it there 
 and then, with the characteristic disregard for money 
 which has always made the vendors of pictures and books 
 and minerals find him extremely pleasant to deal with. 
 But as his love-affair had shown his mother how little he 
 had taken to heart her chiefest care for him, so this first 
 business transaction was a painful awakening to his father, 
 the canny Scotch merchant, who had heaped up riches 
 hoping that his son would gather them. 
 
 This " Harlech Castle " transaction, however, was not 
 altogether unlucky. It brought him an introduction to the 
 painter, whom he met when he was next in town, at Mr. 
 Griffith's house. He knew well enough the popular idea 
 of Turner, as a morose and niggardly, inexplicable man. 
 As he had seen faults in Turner's painting, so he was 
 ready to acknowledge the faults in his character. But 
 while the rest of the world, with a very few exceptions, 
 dwelt upon the faults, Ruskin had penetration to discern 
 the virtues which they hid. Few passages in his auto- 
 biography are more striking than the transcript from his 
 journal of the same evening recording his first impression :
 
 90 THE LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
 " ' I found in him a somewhat eccentric, keen-mannered, 
 matter-of-fact, English-minded gentleman ; good-natured 
 evidently, bad-tempered evidently, hating humbug of all 
 sorts, shrewd, perhaps a little selfish, highly intellectual, 
 the powers of the mind not brought out with any delight 
 in their manifestation, or intention of display, but flashing 
 out occasionally in a word or a look.' Pretty close, that," 
 he adds, later, " and full, to be set down at the first glimpse, 
 and set down the same evening." 
 
 Turner was not a man to make an intimate of, all at 
 once : the acquaintanceship continued, and it ripened into 
 as close a confidence as the eccentric painter's habits of life 
 permitted. He seems to have been more at home with the 
 father than with the son ; but even when the young man 
 took to writing books about him, he did not, as Carlyle is 
 reported to have done in a parallel case, show his exponent 
 to the door. 
 
 The occasion of John Ruskin's coming to town this time 
 was not a pleasant one : nothing less than the complete 
 break-down of his health, we have heard the reasons why, 
 in the last chapter but one. It is true that he was working 
 very hard during this spring ; but hard reading does not 
 of itself kill people : only when it is combined with 
 real and prolonged mental distress, acting upon a sensitive 
 temperament. The case was thought serious ; reading was 
 stopped, and the patient was ordered abroad for the 
 winter. 
 
 From February to May, and such a change ! Then he 
 had seemed so near the top of the hill, and the prospect 
 was opening out before him ; now, cloud and storm had 
 come suddenly down ; the path was lost, the future blotted 
 out. Disappointed in love after four years of hope and
 
 THE BROKEN CHAIN. 91 
 
 effort ; disappointed in ambition after so nearly gathering 
 the fruits of his labour ; to be laid aside, to be sent away 
 out of the battlefield as a wounded man, perhaps, to die. 
 
 We have seen how this young man bore himself when 
 he met Love face to face ; watch him now, encountering 
 Death. 
 
 For that summer there was no hurry to be gone : 
 rest was more needful than change, at first. Late 
 in September the same family-party crossed the sea to 
 Calais : how different a voyage for them all from the 
 merry departures of bygone Mays ! Which way should 
 they turn ? Not to Paris, for there was the cause of all 
 these ills ; so they went straight southwards through 
 Normandy to the Loire, and saw the chateaux and churches 
 from Orleans to Tours ; famous for their Renaissance 
 architecture, and for the romance of their chivalric history. 
 Amboise especially made a strong impression upon even 
 the languid and unwilling invalid. It stirred him up to 
 write, in easy verse, the tale of love and death that his 
 own situation too readily suggested. In " The Broken 
 Chain," he indulged his gloomy fancy, turning, as it was 
 sure to do, into a morbid nightmare of mysterious horror, 
 not without reminiscence of Coleridge's Christabel. But 
 through it all he preserved, so to speak, his dramatic 
 incognito : his own disappointment and his own antici- 
 pated death were the motives of the tale ; but treated 
 in such a manner as not to betray his secret, nor even 
 to wound the feelings of the lady who now was beyond 
 appeal from an honourable lover taking his punishment 
 like a man. 
 
 This poem lasted him, for private writing, all through 
 that journey : a fit emblem of the broken life which it
 
 92 THE LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
 records. A healthier source of distraction was his drawing, 
 in which he had received a fresh impetus from the exhibi- 
 tion of David Roberts' sketches in the East. More delicate 
 than Prout's work, entering into the detail of architectural 
 form more thoroughly, and yet suggesting chiaroscuro with 
 broad washes of quiet tone and touches of light, cleverly 
 introduced "that marvellous pop of light across the 
 foreground " Harding said of the picture of the Great 
 Pyramid these drawings were a mean between the limited 
 manner of Prout and the inimitable fulness of Turner. 
 Ruskin took up the fine pencil and the broad brush, and 
 with that blessed habit of industry which has helped so 
 many a one through times of trial, made sketch after 
 sketch on the half-imperial board, finished just so far as 
 his strength and time allowed, as they passed from the 
 Loire to the mountains of Auvergne, and to the valley 
 of the Rhone, and thence slowly round the Riviera to 
 Pisa and Florence and Rome. 
 
 He was not in a mood to sympathise readily with the 
 enthusiasms of other people. They expected him to be 
 delighted with the scenery, the buildings, the picture- 
 galleries of Italy, and to forget himself in admiration. 
 He did admire Michelangelo, and he was interested in 
 the back streets and slums of the cities. Something 
 piquant was needed to arouse him ; the mild ecstasies of 
 common connoisseurship hardly appeal to a young man 
 between life and death. He met the friends to whom 
 he had brought introductions : Mr. Joseph Severn, who 
 had been Keats' companion, and was afterwards to be 
 the genial consul at Rome ; and the two Messrs. Richmond, 
 then studying art in the regular professional way one 
 of them to become a celebrated portrait painter, and the
 
 THE BROKEN CHAIN. 93 
 
 other a canon of Carlisle. But his views on art were not 
 theirs ; he was already too independent and outspoken in 
 praise of his own heroes, and too sick in mind and body 
 to be patient and to learn. 
 
 They had not been a month in Rome before he took 
 the fever. As soon as he was recovered, they went still 
 farther south, and loitered for a couple of months in the 
 neighbourhood of Naples, visiting the various scenes of 
 interest Sorrento, Amalfi, Salerno. They did not drag 
 the patient up Vesuvius, of course ; and perhaps even if 
 he had been strong he would not have cared for the 
 excursion, for just as he loved the Alps and found nothing 
 but beauty and beneficence in their crags and glaciers, so 
 he saw in the crumbling soil and lurid smoke of the 
 volcanic region in spite of its scientific interest " the 
 image of visible hell." It was not only sentimentalism, 
 but a sensitiveness to form, especially to the details of 
 curvature, which gave him this impression : a quality of 
 his taste which had been early shown in his awe of 
 the twining roots of Friar's Crag, and which has deter- 
 mined most of his judgments on art. Where, in nature, 
 the subject admits, or, in art, the painter perceives, what 
 he calls " infinite curves," springing lines of life, he has 
 always recognised beauty ; but where the normal exquisite- 
 ness of vital form is replaced by lines suggesting inertness 
 or decay, he has scented " a form of death." 
 
 On the way to Naples he had noted the winter scene 
 at La Riccia which he afterwards used for a glowing 
 passage in Modern Painters ; and he had ventured into 
 a village of brigands to draw such a castle as he had 
 once imagined in his Leoni. From Naples he wrote an 
 account of a landslip near Giagnano, which was sent
 
 94 THE LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
 home to the Ashmolean Society. He seemed better ; 
 they turned homewards, when suddenly he was seized with 
 all the old symptoms, worse than ever. After another 
 month at Rome, they travelled slowly northwards from 
 town to town ; spent ten days of May at Venice, and 
 passed through Milan and Turin, and over the Mont 
 Cenis to Geneva. 
 
 At last he was among the mountains again the Alps 
 that he loved. It was not only that the air of the Alps 
 braced him, but the spirit of mountain-worship stirred 
 him as nothing else could. At last he seemed himself, 
 after more than a year of intense depression ; and he 
 records that one day, in church at Geneva, he resolved 
 to do something, to be something useful. That he could 
 make such a resolve was a sign of returning health ; but 
 if, as I have heard, he had just been reading Carlyle's 
 lately published lectures " on Heroes," though' he did not 
 accept Carlyle's conclusions nor admire his style, might 
 he not, in spite of his judgment, have been spurred the 
 more into energy by that enthusiastic gospel of action ? 
 
 They travelled home by Basle and Laon ; but London 
 in August, and the premature attempt to be energetic, 
 brought on a recurrence of the symptoms of consumption. 
 He wished to try the mountain-cure again, and set out 
 with his friend Richard Fall for a tour in Wales. But his 
 father recalled him to Leamington, to try iron and dieting 
 under Dr. Jephson, who, if he was called a quack, was a 
 sensible one, and successful in subduing, for several years 
 to come, the more serious phases of the disease. The 
 patient was not cured : he suffered from time to time from 
 his chest, and still more from a weakness of the spine, 
 which during all the period of his early manhood gave
 
 THE BROKEN CHAIN. 95 
 
 him trouble, and finished by bending his tall and lithe 
 figure into something that, were it not for his face, would 
 be deformity. In 1847 he was again at Leamington under 
 Jephson, in consequence of a relapse into the consumptive 
 symptoms ; after which we hear no more of it. He out- 
 grew the tendency, as so many do. But nevertheless the 
 alarm had been justifiable, and the malady had left traces 
 which, in one way and another, haunted him ever after. 
 For one of the worst effects of consumption is to be 
 thought consumptive, and marked down as an invalid. 
 
 At Leamington, then, in September 1841, he was finding 
 a new life under the Doctor's dieting, and new aims in life, 
 which were eventually to resolder, for a while, the broken 
 chain. Among the Scotch friends of the Ruskins there 
 was a family at Perth whose daughter came to visit at 
 ' Herne Hill more lovely, and more lively, than his Spanish 
 princess had been. The story goes that she challenged the 
 melancholy John, engrossed in his drawing and geology, 
 to write a fairy-tale as the least likely task for him to 
 fulfil. Upon which he produced at a couple of sittings 
 The King of tJie Golden River, a pretty medley of Grimm's 
 grotesque and Dickens' kindliness and the true Ruskinian 
 ecstasy of the Alps. 
 
 He had come through the valley of the shadow, that 
 terrible experience which so few survive ; fewer still emerge 
 from it without loss of all that makes their life worth the 
 living. But though for a while he was " hard bested," he 
 fought a good fight, and kept his faith in God, and in 
 Nature, and but too fond a faith, in the human heart.
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THE GRADUATE OF OXFORD. 
 
 (1841 1842.) 
 
 ' ' Enough of Science and of Art ; 
 Close up those barren leaves ; 
 Come forth, and bring with you a heart 
 That watches and receives.' 1 Wordsworth. 
 
 READY for work again, and in reasonable health of 
 mind and body, John Ruskin sat down in his little 
 study at Herne Hill in November 1841, with his wise tutor, 
 Osborne Gordon. There was eighteen months' leeway to 
 make up ; and the dates of ancient history, the details of 
 schematised Aristotelianism, soon slip out of mind when 
 one is sketching in Italy. But he was more serious now 
 about his work ; and aware of his deficiencies. To be 
 useful in the world, is it not necessary, first, to understand 
 all possible Greek constructions? So said the voice of 
 Oxford ; but our undergraduate was saved, both now and 
 afterwards, from this vain ambition. " I think it would 
 hardly be worth your while," said Gordon, with Delphic 
 double-entendre. 
 
 Ruskin could not now go in for honours, for his lost year 
 had superannuated him. So in May he went up for a pass. 
 In those times, when a pass-man showed unusual powers, 
 they could give him an honorary class : not a high class, 
 
 96
 
 THE GRADUATE OF OXFORD, 97 
 
 because the range of the examination was less than in the 
 honour-school. This candidate wrote a poor Latin prose, 
 it seems ; but his divinity, philosophy, and mathematics 
 were so good that they gave him the best they could, 
 an honorary double fourth. Upon which he took his B.A. 
 degree, and could describe himself as " A Graduate of 
 Oxford." 
 
 It is noteworthy that Ruskin wrote a bad Latin prose. 
 He knew Latin well ; it was Greek that he was deficient 
 in. He knew French, and read it constantly ; which is a 
 help to Latin writing. He was a clever imitator of style, 
 and surely never workman handled his tools with readier 
 skill. But he was inaccurate. His early writing was 
 full of thought, of sonority, of effect ; but risking strange 
 irregularities of grammar, not to say blunders, from which 
 he has never quite cleared his paragraphs. That freedom 
 of touch is a trick of his literary art. 
 
 The divinity, by which is meant Bible-knowledge, was 
 thoroughly learnt from his mother's early lessons. Not 
 long after he was contemptuously amused at a Scotch 
 reviewer who did not know what a " chrysoprase " was : 
 as the word occurs in the Revelation, he assumed that 
 every one ought to know it, whether mineralogist or not. 
 And his works teem with Biblical quotations see their 
 indexes for the catalogue. The mathematics were riot 
 elaborate in the old Oxford pass-school ; geometry and 
 the elements of trigonometry and conies, thoroughly got 
 by heart, and frequently alluded to in early works, sum 
 up his studies. The philosophy meant the usual Logic 
 from Aldrich, with Bacon and Locke, Aristotle and Plato, 
 analysed into rather thin abstract. But Ruskin, with his 
 thoroughness in all matters of general interest, took in the 
 
 VOL. I. 7
 
 98 THE LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
 teaching of his books and inwardly digested it. Modern 
 Painters^ even in its literary style, is imbued with Locke ; 
 Aristotle is his leader and antagonist, alternately, through- 
 out the earlier period of art criticism ; and Plato his guide 
 and philosopher ever after. Some Scotch philosophy he 
 had read : Thomas Brown, his parents' old friend ; Dugald 
 Stewart, and the rest of the school ; and their teaching 
 comes out in the scheme of thought that underlies his 
 artistic theories. 
 
 It is worth while dwelling upon his acquirements at this 
 moment, taking stock, as it were, because he was on the 
 brink of his first great work. Modern Painters has been 
 usually looked upon as the sudden outburst of a genius ; 
 young, but mature ; complex, but inexplicable ; to be 
 accepted as a gospel, or to be decried as the raving of 
 a heretic. But we cannot trace the author's life without 
 seeing that the book is only one episode in an interesting 
 development. We have been gradually led up to it ; and 
 as gradually we shall be led away from it. And the better 
 we understand the circumstances of its production, the 
 better we shall be able to appreciate it, to weigh it, and to 
 keep what is permanent in it. That will be true criticism, 
 the only possible criticism for an intelligent reader, who 
 sees no authority in the impudent assumption of an 
 extemporised black cap. 
 
 All this religious and useful learning was very lightly^ 
 carried by our Oxford graduate. He could now take no 
 high academic position, and the continued weakness of 
 his health kept him from entering either commerce or the 
 Church. And his real interest in art was not crowded out 
 even by the last studies for his examination. While he 
 was working with Gordon, in the autumn of 1841, he was
 
 THE GRADUATE OF OXFORD. 99 
 
 also taking lessons from J. D. Harding ; and the famous 
 study of ivy, his first naturalistic sketching, to which we 
 must revert, this must have been done a week or two 
 before going up for his " finals." 
 
 The lessons from Harding were a useful counter-stroke 
 to. the excessive and exaggerated Turnerism in which he 
 had been indulging during his illness. The drawings of 
 Amboise, the coast of Genoa, and the Glacier des Bois, 
 though published later, were made before he had exchanged 
 fancy for fact ; and they bear, on the face of them, the 
 obvious marks of an unhealthy state of mind. Harding, 
 whose robust common sense and breezy mannerism endeared 
 him to the British amateur of his generation, was just the 
 man to correct any morbid tendency. He had religious 
 views in sympathy with his pupil ; and he soon inoculated 
 Ruskin with his contempt for the minor Dutch school ; 
 those bituminous landscapes so unlike the sparkling fresh- 
 ness that Harding's own water colour illustrated ; and those 
 vulgar tavern-scenes, painted, he declared, by sots who 
 disgraced art alike in their works and in their lives. 
 
 Until this epoch, John Ruskin had found much that 
 interested him in the Dutch and Flemish painters of the 
 seventeenth century. He had classed them all together as 
 the school of which Rubens, Vandyck and Rembrandt 
 were the chief masters, and those as names to rank with 
 Raphael and Michelangelo and Velasquez. He was a 
 humorist, not without boyish delight in a good Sam- 
 Wellerism ; and so could be amused with the " drolls," 
 until Harding appealed to his religion and morality against 
 them. He was a chiaroscurist, and not naturally offended 
 by their violent light and shade, until George Richmond 
 showed him the more excellent way in colour, the glow of
 
 IOO THE LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
 Venice ; first hinting it at Rome in 1840, and then proving 
 it in London in the spring of 1842, from Samuel Rogers' 
 treasures, of which the chief (now in the National Gallery) 
 was the " Christ appearing to the Magdalen." 
 
 Much as the author of Modern Painters owed to these 
 friends and teachers, and to the advantages of his varied 
 training, he would never have written his great work with- 
 out a farther inspiration. Hoarding's especial forte was his 
 method of drawing trees. He looked at nature with an 
 eye which, for his period, was singularly fresh and un- 
 prejudiced ; he had a strong feeling for truth of structure 
 as well as for picturesque effect ; and he taught his pupils 
 to observe as well as to draw. But in his own practice he 
 rested too much on having observed ; formed a style ; and 
 copied himself if he did not copy the old masters. Hence 
 he held to rules of composition, and conscious graces of 
 arrangement ; and while he taught naturalism in study, he 
 followed it up with teaching artifice in practice. 
 
 Turner, who was not a drawing-master, lay under no 
 necessity to formulate his principles and stick to them. 
 On the contrary, his style developed like a kaleidoscope, 
 ever changing into something more rich and strange. He 
 had been in Switzerland and on the Rhine in 1841, 
 " painting his impressions," making watercolour notes from 
 memory of effects that had struck him. From one of these, 
 " Spliigen," he had made a finished picture, and now wished 
 to get commissions for more of the same class. Ruskin 
 was greatly interested in this series, because they were 
 not landscapes of the ordinary type, scenes from nature 
 squeezed into the mould of recognised artistic composition ; 
 nor on the other hand mere photographic transcripts ; but 
 dreams, as it were, of the mountains and sunsets, in which
 
 THE GRADUATE OF OXFORD. IOI 
 
 Turner's wealth of detail was suggested, and his intuitive 
 knowledge of form expressed, together with the unity 
 which comes of the faithful record of a single impression. 
 Nothing had been done like them before, in landscape. 
 They showed that an artistic result might be obtained with- 
 out the use of the ordinary tricks and professional rules ; 
 that there was a sort of composition possible, of which 
 the usual hackneyed arrangements were merely frigid and 
 vapid imitations ; and that this higher kind of art was 
 only to be learnt by long watching of Nature and sincere 
 rendering of her motives, of her supreme moments, of the 
 spirit of her scenes. 
 
 The lesson was soon enforced upon his mind by example. 
 One day, while taking his student's constitutional, he 
 noticed a tree-stem with ivy upon it, which seemed not 
 ungraceful, and invited a sketch. As he drew, he fell into 
 the spirit of its natural arrangement, and soon perceived 
 how much finer it was as a piece of design than any con- 
 ventional rearrangement would be. Harding had tried to 
 show him how to generalise foliage ; but in this example 
 he saw that not generalisation was needed to get at its 
 beauty, but truth. If he could express his sense of the 
 charm of the natural arrangement, what use in substituting 
 an artificial composition ? 
 
 In that discovery lay the germ of his whole theory of 
 art, the gist of his mission. Understanding the importance 
 of it, we shall understand his subsequent writing, the 
 grounds of his criticism and the text of his art-teaching. 
 If it can be summed in a word, the word is " Sincerity." 
 Be sincere with Nature, and take her as she is; neither 
 casually glancing at her " effects," nor dully labouring at 
 her parts, with the intention of improving and blending
 
 102 THE LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
 them into something better : but taking her all in all. On 
 the other hand, be sincere with yourself ; knowing what 
 you truly admire, and painting that : refusing the hypocrisy 
 of any " grand style " or " high art " just as much as you 
 refuse to pander to vulgar tastes. And then vital art is 
 produced ; and if the workman be a man of great powers, 
 great art. 
 
 All this follows from the ivy-sketch on Tulse Hill in 
 May 1842. It did not follow all at once : repeated experi- 
 ment was needed to give the grounds from which the induc- 
 tion was drawn. At Fontainebleau soon after, under much 
 the same circumstances, a study of an aspen-tree, idly 
 begun, but carried out with interest and patience, confirmed 
 the principle. At Geneva, once more in the church where 
 he had formed such resolutions the year before, the desire 
 came over him with renewed force : now not only to be 
 usefully employed, but to be employed in the service of 
 a definite mission ; which, be it observed, was, in art, 
 exactly what Carlyle had preached in every other sphere 
 of life in that book of Heroes : the gospel of sincerity ; the 
 reference of greatness in any form to honesty of purpose 
 as the underlying motive of a perspicuous intellect and 
 a resolute will, these last being necessary conditions of 
 success ; but the sincerity being the chief thing needful. 
 
 The design took shape. At Chamouni he studied plants 
 and rocks and clouds, not as an artist, to make pictures out 
 of them, nor as a scientist, to class them and analyse them ; 
 but to learn their aspects and enter into the spirit of their 
 growth and structure. And though on his way home 
 through Switzerland and down the Rhine he made a few 
 drawings in his old style for admiring friends, they were 
 the last of the kind that he attempted. Thenceforward his
 
 THE GRADUATE OF OXFORD. 1 03 
 
 path was marked out ; he had found his vocation. He 
 was not to be a poet that was too definitely bound up 
 with the past which he wanted to forget, and with conven- 
 tionalities of art which he wished to shake off ; not to be 
 an artist, struggling with the rest to please a public which 
 he felt himself called upon to teach ; not a man of science, 
 for his botany and geology were to be the means and not 
 the ends of his teaching ; but the mission was laid upon 
 him to tell the world that Art, no less than the other 
 spheres of life, had its Heroes ; that the mainspring of their 
 energy was Sincerity, and the burden of their utterance, 
 Truth.
 
 BOOK II. 
 
 THE ART CRITIC. 
 (18421860.) 
 
 1 ' The almost unparalleled example of a man winning for himself the unanimous 
 plaudits of his generation and time, and then casting them away like dust, that he 
 may build his monument <zre perennius." 
 
 Ruskin on Turner, 1844. 
 
 105
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 " TURNER AND THE ANCIENTS." 
 (1842 1844.) 
 
 'Apx'fy y&P r b 8 T <" 
 
 Aristotle, Eth. i. 4. 
 
 THE neighbour, or the Oxonian friend, who climbed 
 the steps of the Herne Hill house and called upon 
 Mrs. Ruskin, in the autumn and winter of 1842, would 
 learn that Mr. John was hard at work in his own study 
 overhead. Those were its windows, on the second floor, 
 looking out upon the front garden : the big dormer-window 
 above was his bedroom, from which he had his grand 
 view of lowland, and far horizon, and unconfined sky, 
 comparatively clear of London smoke. In the study itself, 
 screened from the road by russet foliage and thick ever- 
 greens, great things were going on. But Mr. John could 
 be interrupted ; would come running lightly downstairs, 
 with both hands out to greet the visitor ; would show 
 the pictures, eagerly demonstrating the beauties of the last 
 new Turners, Ehrenbreitstein and Lucerne, just acquired ; 
 and anticipating the sunset glories and mountain gloom 
 of the Goldau and Dazio Grande, which the great artist 
 was " realising " for him from sketches he had chosen at 
 Queen Anne Street. He was very busy, but never too 
 
 107
 
 108 THE LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
 busy to see his friends ; writing a book ; and yet not to 
 be " pumped " about it, for he had already adopted a 
 motto which he has often repeated, " Don't talk about your 
 work, but do it" 
 
 And, the visitor gone, he would run up to his room and 
 his writing, sure of the thread of his ideas and the flow 
 of his language, with none of that misery and despair of 
 soul which an interruption brings to many another author. 
 In the afternoon his careful mother would turn him out 
 for a tramp round the Norwood lanes ; he might look in 
 at the Poussins and Claudes of the Dulwich Gallery ; or, 
 for a longer excursion, go over to Mr. Thomas Windus, 
 F.S.A., and his roomful of Turner drawings ; or sit to 
 Mr. George Richmond for the second of the two portraits, 
 the full length with desk and portfolio, and Mont Blanc 
 in the background. After dinner, another hour or two's 
 writing ; and early to bed after finishing his chapter with 
 a flourish of eloquence, to be read next morning at break- 
 fast to father and mother and Mary for from them it was 
 no secret. The vivid descriptions of scenes yet fresh in 
 their memory, or of pictures they treasured, the " thoughts " 
 as they used to be called, allusions to sincere beliefs and 
 cherished hopes, never failed to win the praise that pleased 
 the young writer most, in happy tears of unrestrained 
 emotion. These old-fashioned folk had not learnt the trick 
 of nil admirarL Quite honestly they would say, with the 
 German musician, " When I hear good music, then must 
 I always weep." 
 
 We can look into the little study, and see what this 
 writing was, that went on so busily and steadily. It was 
 the long meditated defence of Turner, provoked by 
 Blackwoods Magazine six years before, encouraged by
 
 THE AUTHOR OF "MODERN PAINTERS.' 
 By George Richmond, R.A.iSf2. 
 
 [Vol. I., p. io8.1
 
 "TURNER AND THE ANCIENTS." 
 
 Carlyle's Heroes, and necessitated by the silence, on this 
 topic, of the more enlightened leaders of thought in an 
 age of cut and dry connoisseurship and critical cant. 
 There were teachers like Prout and Harding, right, but 
 narrow in range ; and the moment any author ventured 
 upon the subject of " high art," his principles of beauty 
 and theories of sublimity stood in the way of candour and 
 common sense. 
 
 But Kata Phusin had been to college, and read his 
 " Ethics " : and he had marked such a passage as this : 
 " We must not forget the difference between reasoning 
 from principles and reasoning to principles. Plato was 
 quite right in pointing this out, and in saying that it is 
 as important in philosophy as in running races, to know 
 where your starting-point is to be. Now you and I," quoth 
 Aristotle, " can reason only upon what we know, not on 
 what we ought to know, or might be supposed to know ; 
 but upon what each of us has ascertained to be matter 
 of fact. Fact, then the particular fact is our starting- 
 point. Take care of the facts," he says, to put him into 
 plain English, " and the principles will take care of them- 
 selves." 
 
 Which Aristotle did, and in the sphere of Ethics found 
 that the observed facts of conscience and conduct were 
 not truly explained by the old moral philosophy of the 
 Sophists and the Academy. Just in the same way, our 
 young Aristotelian, by beginning with the observed facts 
 of nature, truths, he called them, and the practice, not 
 the precept, of great artists, superseded the eighteenth- 
 century Academic art-theories, and created a perfectly 
 new school of criticism ; which, however erring or incom- 
 plete in details, or misapplied in corollaries, did for English
 
 IIO THE LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
 art what Aristotle did for Greek Ethics. He brought the 
 whole . subject to the bar of common sense and common 
 understanding. He took it out of the hands of adepts and 
 initiated jargoners, and made it public property, the right 
 and the responsibility of all. 
 
 Though Ruskin had the honour of doing this work in 
 the world of art, others were doing similar work in other 
 spheres. Most of our soundest thinkers of the middle ot 
 the nineteenth century were brought up on the " Ethics," 
 and learnt to take fact for their starting-point. The 
 physical-science school, whether classically trained or not, 
 was working in the same cause, the substitution of obser- 
 vation and experiment for generalisation and a priori 
 theories. And it is curious, as showing how accurately the 
 young John Ruskin was representative of the spirit of his 
 age, that at the very moment when he was propounding 
 his revolutionary art-philosophy, John Stuart Mill was 
 writing that Logic which was to convert the old hocus- 
 pocus of Scholasticism into the method of modern scientific 
 inquiry. 
 
 Nowadays we think of Mr. Ruskin as somewhat of a 
 reactionary, laudator temporis acti, opponent of modernism. 
 But, like many men of note, he began as a Progressist, the 
 preacher of hope, the darter of new lights, the destroyer of 
 pythons chaos-bred tyrannic superstitions quibus lumen 
 ademptum. His youth was an epoch of intellectual reform ; 
 one of many such epochs, when the house of life was being 
 set in order for another cycle's work and wage -earning.; no 
 new thing, but necessary. 
 
 There had been such a clearance begun a hundred and 
 seventy years before by John Locke, when lie took fact for 
 his starting-point in a revolt from the tyranny of philo-
 
 " TURNER AND THE ANCIENTS." 1 1 1 
 
 sophical dogma. And it was not at all strange that our 
 young author should model his manifesto upon so renowned 
 a precedent ; that his style, in the opening chapters of his 
 work, his arrangement in divisions and subdivisions, even 
 his marginal summaries, should recall the Essay on the 
 Human Understanding, from which the scheme and system 
 of his thought were derived. 
 
 He began, like Locke, by showing that public opinion 
 and the dicta of tradition were no valid authorities. If 
 painting be an expression of the human mind as, in 
 another way, language is ; and if the contents of the mind 
 are Ideas; then, he said, the best painting is that which 
 contains the greatest number of the greatest Ideas. Locke 
 had shown that all Ideas are derived from Sensation, from 
 Reflection, and from the combination of both : the Ideas 
 which painting can express must be similarly derived. 
 And since the mind which we share with the Deity is 
 nobler than the senses which we share with beasts, it was 
 logical to conclude that, in proportion as the Ideas ex- 
 pressed in painting are intellectual and moral, the art that 
 expresses them is fuller and higher. Ideas of Imitation, 
 involving only the illusion of the senses, are the lowest of 
 all ; those of Power, artistic execution, are a step higher, 
 but still so much in the realm of sensation as to be hardly 
 matter of argument ; and therefore the Ideas of Truth, of 
 Beauty, and of Relation (or the imaginative presentment 
 of poetical thought in the language of painting) are the 
 three chief topics of his inquiry. 
 
 For the present he will discuss Truth ; the more readily 
 as it was the general complaint that Turner was untrue to 
 Nature. What is Truth ? 
 
 Aristotle had stated plainly enough " particular fact
 
 112 THE LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKlN. 
 
 is our starting-point." But unfortunately Sir Joshua 
 Reynolds, our old friend Northcote's master, the greatest 
 English artist and art-theorist, had taught a modified 
 Academic doctrine of Ideas, not Lockeian, but Platonic : 
 and our young philosopher lost his way, for the time, in 
 trying to reconcile one favourite authority with another. 
 But he was able to show that old-fashioned generalisation 
 was not Truth : and quitting the formal doctrinaire tone ot 
 his opening chapters, plunged eagerly into the illustration 
 of his theme namely, that Truth in landscape-art was 
 the expression of natural law, by exhibiting such facts as 
 tell the story of the scene. For example ; Canaletto, with 
 all his wonderful mechanism, when he painted Venice lost 
 the fulness of detail and glory of light and colour ; Prout 
 secured only the picturesqueness with his five strokes of 
 a reed pen ; Stanfield only the detail ; while Turner gave 
 the full character of the place in its detail, colour, light, 
 mystery and poetical effect 
 
 In the analysis of natural fact as shown in painting, 
 there was full scope for the power of descriptive writing 
 which, as we have seen, was Ruskin's peculiar gift and 
 study. When he came to compare Caspar Poussin's picture 
 of La Riccia with the real scene as he had witnessed it, he 
 had the description ready to hand in his journal of two 
 years before ; and a careful drawing on the spot not 
 indeed realising the colour, which he could not then 
 attempt but recording "the noonday sun slanting down 
 the rocky slopes of La Riccia, and its masses of entangled 
 and tall foliage," with their autumnal tints suggested so far 
 as his water-colour wash on grey paper allowed. 
 
 A still happier adaptation of accumulated material was 
 his word-picture of a night on the Rigi, with all its
 
 "TURNER AND THE ANCIENTS." 113 
 
 wonderful successive effects of gathering thunder, sunset 
 in tempest, serene starlight, and the magic glories of 
 Alpine sunrise : taken from the true story of his visit 
 there, eight years before, as described in a rhyming letter 
 to Richard Fall ; and ingeniously embroidered with a 
 running commentary on a series of drawings by Turner. 
 
 Then passing to the forms of mountains, he warmed 
 with his old enthusiasm. Years of study and travel had 
 taught him to combine scientific geology with the mystery 
 and poetry of the Alps. Byron and Shelley had touched 
 the poetry of them ; a crowd of earnest investigators were 
 working at geology. But none beside this youth of 
 twenty-three had made them the topic of literature so 
 lofty in aim and so masterly in execution. 
 
 And as the year ran out, he was ending his work, happy 
 in the applause of his little domestic circle, and conscious 
 that he was preaching the crusade of Sincerity, the cause 
 of justice for the greatest landscape artist of any age, and 
 justice, at the hands of a heedless public, for the glorious 
 works of the supreme Artist of the universe. Let our 
 young painters, he concluded, go humbly to Nature, " re- 
 jecting nothing, selecting nothing, and scorning nothing," 
 in spite of Academic theorists ; and in time we should 
 have a school of landscape worthy of the inspiration they 
 would find. 
 
 There was his book : the title of it, Turner and the 
 Ancients. Before publishing, to get more experienced 
 criticism than that of the breakfast-table, he submitted it 
 to his friend, Mr. W. H. Harrison. The title, it seemed, was 
 not explicit enough ; and after debate they substituted one 
 which was too explicit to be neat : " Modern Painters, their 
 superiority in the Art of Landscape Painting to all the 
 
 VOL. I. 8
 
 114 THE LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
 Ancient Masters proved by Examples of the True, the 
 Beautiful, and the Intellectual, from the works of Modern 
 Artists, especially from those of J. M. W. Turner, Esq., 
 R.A." And as the severe tone of many remarks was 
 felt to be hardly supported by the age and standing of 
 so young an author, he was content to sign himself " A 
 Graduate of Oxford." 
 
 Mr. Harrison did much for Mr. Ruskin's early work. 
 For thirty years he revised proofs, and acted as censor in 
 all matters of grammar and punctuation. There are few 
 authors who can say of any good piece of work, " Alone I 
 did it " : but whatever young Ruskin owed to Locke and 
 to Coleridge, to Reynolds and Johnson, to Harding and 
 Harrison, the work was such as none but he could have 
 planned and carried through. . And for the Egoist they 
 call him, is it not surprising that he should have submitted 
 to the pruning of his pet periods by the editor of Friend- 
 ship's Offering^ 
 
 It is odd how easily men of note become the heroes 
 of myths. The too common discouragement of young 
 geniuses, the old story of the rejected manuscript, disdainful 
 publishers, and hope deferred, experienced by so many as 
 to be typical of the tadpole stage of a literary reputation, 
 all this has been tacked on to Mr. Ruskin's supposed first 
 start. Anecdotes are told of his father hawking the MS. 
 from office to office until it found acceptance with Messrs. 
 Smith & Elder, absurd, since young Ruskin had been 
 doing business for seven years past with that firm ; he was 
 perfectly well known to them as one of the most " rising " 
 youths of the time, and their own literary editor, Mr. 
 Harrison, was his private mentor. And yet there is the 
 half truth in it, that his business dealings with the publishers
 
 "TURNER AND THE ANCIENTS." 11$ 
 
 were generally conducted through his father, who made 
 very fair terms for him, as things went then. 
 
 In April 1843 Modern Painters, vol. i., was published ; 
 and it was soon the talk of the art-world. It was meant 
 to be audacious, and naturally created a storm. The free 
 criticisms of public favourites made an impression, not 
 because they were put into strong language, for the tone 
 of the press was stronger then than it is now, as a whole ; 
 but because they were backed up by illustration and argu- 
 ment. It was evident that the author knew something of 
 his subject, even if he were all wrong in his conclusions. 
 He could not be neglected, though he might be protested 
 against, decried, controverted. Artists especially, who do 
 not usually see themselves as others see them, and are not 
 accustomed to think of themselves and their school as 
 mere dots and spangles in the perspective of history, could 
 not be entirely content to be classed as Turner's satellites. 
 Even the gentle Prout was indignant, not so much at the 
 " five strokes of a reed pen," but at the want of reverence 
 with which his masters and friends were treated. Harding 
 thought that his teaching ought to have been more fully 
 acknowledged. Turner was embarrassed at the greatness 
 thrust upon him. And while the book contained some- 
 thing that promised to suit every kind of reader, every one 
 found something to shock him. Critics were scandalised 
 at the depreciation of Claude ; the religious were outraged 
 at the comparison of Turner, in a passage omitted from 
 later editions, to the Angel of the Sun, in the Apocalypse. 
 
 But readers survive a few shocks ; very literally, they 
 first endured, then pitied, then embraced : for the descrip- 
 tive passages were such as had never appeared before in 
 prose ; and the obvious usefulness of the analyses of natural
 
 Il6 THE LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
 form and effect made many an artist read on, while he 
 shook his head. Of professed connoisseurs, such as reviewed 
 the book adversely in Blackwood and the Athenceum, not 
 one undertook to refute it seriously with a full restatement 
 of the Academic theory. They merely attacked a detail 
 here and there, which the author discussed in two or three 
 replies, with a patience that showed how confident he was 
 in his position.* Next year a second edition appeared. 
 
 He had the good word of some of the best judges of 
 literature. Modern Painters lay on Rogers' table ; and 
 Tennyson, who a few years before had beaten young 
 Ruskin out of the field of poetry, was so taken with it 
 that he wrote to his publisher to borrow it for him, " as he 
 longed very much to see it," but could not afford to buy it. 
 When the secret of the " Oxford Graduate " leaked out, as 
 it did very soon, through the proud father, Mr. John was 
 lionised. During the winter of 1843, ne met a ^ the cele- 
 brities of the day at fashionable dinner-tables ; and now 
 that his parents were established in their grander house 
 on Denmark Hill, they could duly return the hospitalities 
 of the great world. 
 
 It was one very satisfactory result of the success that 
 the father was more or less converted to Turnerism ; and 
 
 * Of these minor battles, one of the hardest fought was about Reflec- 
 tions in Water. Mr. J. H. Maw, then of Hastings, an enlightened 
 patron of art, and an accomplished amateur (to say nothing, here, of 
 his earnestness and ability in many other spheres), maintained that Mr. 
 Ruskin was wrong in believing that the reflecting surface of clear water 
 receives no shadow : and even after the reply which can now be read 
 in Arrows of the Chace, stuck to his opinion. It was a good instance 
 of simple misunderstanding : the experiment can be tried with any 
 shiny object, such as a watch. What seems to be shadow disappears 
 when you look across it, and catch a bright reflection in it.
 
 " TURNER AND THE ANCIENTS." 1 1/ 
 
 lined his walls with Turner drawings, which became the 
 great attraction of the house, far outshining its seven acres 
 of garden and orchard and shrubbery, and the ampler air 
 of cultured ease. For a new year's gift to his son, he 
 bought The Slave Ship, one of Turner's latest and most 
 disputed works, since then taken to America ; and he was 
 all eagerness to see the next volume in preparation. 
 
 The intention was to carry on the discussion of " Truth," 
 with further illustrations of mountain-form, trees and skies. 
 And so in May 1844 they all went away again, that the 
 artist-author might prepare drawings for his plates. He 
 was going to begin with the geology and botany of 
 Chamouni, and work through the Alps, eastward. 
 
 At Chamouni they had the good fortune to meet with 
 Joseph Couttet, a superannuated guide, whom they engaged 
 to accompany the eager but inexperienced mountaineer. 
 Couttet was one of those men of natural ability and kindli- 
 ness, whose friendship is worth more than much intercourse 
 with worldly celebrities : and for many years afterwards 
 Mr. Ruskin had the advantage of his care, and something 
 more than mere attendance. At any rate, under such 
 guidance he could climb where he pleased, free from 
 the feeling that somebody at home was anxious about 
 him. 
 
 He was not unadventurous in his scramblings ; but with 
 no ambition to get to the top of everything. He wanted 
 to observe the aspects of mountain-form ; and his careful 
 outlines, slightly coloured, as his manner then was, and 
 never aiming at picturesque treatment, record the structure 
 of the rocks and the state of the snow with more than 
 photographic accuracy. A photograph often confuses the 
 eye with unnecessary detail ; these drawings seized the
 
 Il8 THE LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
 leading lines, the important features, the interesting points. 
 For example, in his Matterhorn (a drawing of 1849), as 
 Mr. Whymper remarks in Scrambles among tJie Alps, there 
 are particulars noted which the mere sketcher neglects, 
 but the climber finds out, on closer intercourse, to be the 
 essential facts of the mountain's anatomy. All this is not 
 picture-making ; but it is a very valuable contribution and 
 preliminary to criticism. 
 
 From Chamouni this year they went to Simplon, and 
 met J. D. Forbes the geologist, whose "viscous theory" 
 of glaciers Mr. Ruskin adopted and defended with warmth 
 ever after : and then to the Bell' Alp, long before it had 
 been made a place of popular resort by Professor Tyndall's 
 notice. The Panorama of the Simplon from the Bell' Alp 
 is still to be found in the Sheffield Museum as a record 
 of Mr. Ruskin's draughtsmanship in this period. Thence 
 to Zermatt with Osborne Gordon ; Zermatt, too, unknown 
 to the fashionable tourist, and innocent of hotel luxuries. 
 It is curious that, at first sight, Mr. Ruskin did not like 
 the Matterhorn. It was too altogether unlike his ideal 
 of mountains. It was not at all like Cumberland ! But 
 he was not long in learning to appreciate the Alps for 
 their own sake : so that he could write to Miss Mitford 
 from Keswick (in 1 848, I believe) : " As for our mountains 
 and lakes, it is in vain that they are defended for their 
 finish or their prettiness. The people who admire them 
 after Switzerland do not understand Switzerland, even 
 Wordsworth does not" 
 
 After another visit to Chamouni he went home by way 
 of Paris, where something awaited him that upset all his 
 plans, and turned his energies into an unexpected channel.
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 CHRISTIAN ART. 
 
 (1845-1847-) 
 
 ' ' They might chirp and chatter, come and go 
 
 For pleasure or profit, her men alive 
 My business was hardly with them, I trow, 
 But with empty cells of the human hive ; 
 With the chapter-room, the cloister-porch, 
 
 The church's apsis, aisle or nave, 
 Its crypt, one fingers along with a torch, 
 Its face, set full for the sun to shave." 
 
 Old Pictures in Florence. 
 
 AT Paris, on the way home in 1844, Mr. Ruskin had 
 spent some days in studying Titian and Bellini and 
 Perugino. They were not new to him ; but now that he 
 was an Art-critic, it behoved him to improve his acquaint- 
 ance with the Old Masters. "To admire the works of 
 Pietro Perugino " was one thing ; but to understand them 
 was another, a thing which was hardly attempted by 
 " the Landscape Artists of England " to whom the author 
 of Modern Painters had so far dedicated his services. He 
 had been extolling modernism, and depreciating " the 
 Ancients " because they could not draw rocks and clouds 
 and trees : and he was fresh from his scientific sketching 
 in the happy hunting ground of the modern world. A 
 few days in the Louvre made him the devotee of ancient 
 art, and taught him to. lay aside his geology, for history. 
 
 119
 
 120 THE LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
 In one way the development was easy. The patient 
 attempt to copy mountain-form had made him sensitive to 
 harmony of line ; and in the great composers of Florence 
 and Venice he found a quality of abstract design which 
 tallied with his experience of what was beautiful in nature. 
 Aiguilles and glaciers, drawn as he drew them, and the 
 figure-subjects of severe Italian draughtsmen, are beautiful 
 by the same laws of composition, however different the 
 associations they suggest With the general public, and 
 with many artists, associations easily outweigh abstractions : 
 but this was an analytic mind, bent, then, upon the pro- 
 blems of form, and ready to acknowledge them no less in 
 Madonnas than in mountains. 
 
 But lie had been learning these laws of beauty from 
 Turner and from the Alps ; how did the ancients come 
 by them ? That could be found only in a thorough study 
 of their lives and times, to begin with ; to which he devoted 
 his winter, with Rio and Lord Lindsay and Mrs. Jameson 
 for his authorities. He found that his foes, Caspar Poussin 
 and Canaletto and the Dutch landscapists, were not the 
 real Old Masters ; that there had been a great age of 
 art before the era of Vandyck and Rubens, even before 
 Michelangelo and Raphael ; and that towards setting up 
 as a critic of the present, he must understand the past, 
 out of which it had grown. So he determined to go to 
 Florence and Venice, and study the religious painters at 
 first hand. 
 
 Mountain -study and Turner were not to be dropped. 
 For example, to explain the obvious and notorious licences 
 which Turner took with topography, it was necessary to 
 see in what these licences consisted. Of the later Swiss 
 drawings, one of the wildest and most impressive was the
 
 OLIVE AT CARRARA, 
 John Rjtskin, 184.3. 
 
 [Vol. I., p. 121.]
 
 CHRISTIAN ART. 121 
 
 St. Gothard ; Ruskin wanted to find Turner's point of 
 view, and to see what alterations he had made. He told 
 Turner so ; and the artist, who knew that his picture had 
 been realised from a very slight sketch, was naturally 
 rather opposed to this test, as being, from his point of 
 view, merely a waste of time and trouble. He tried to 
 persuade the Ruskins that, as the Swiss Sonderbund war 
 was beginning, travelling would not be safe, and so forth. 
 But in vain. Mr. John was allowed to go, for the first 
 time, alone, without his parents, taking only a servant, and 
 meeting the trustworthy Couttet at Geneva. 
 
 With seven months at his own disposal, he did a vast 
 amount of work, especially in drawing. The studies of 
 mountain-form and Italian design, in the year before, had 
 given him a greater interest in the Liber Studiorum, 
 Turner's early book of Essays in Composition. He found 
 there that use of the pure line, about which he has since 
 said so much ; together with a thoughtfully devised scheme 
 of light and shade in mezzotint, devoted to the treatment 
 of landscape in the same spirit as that in which the Italian 
 masters treated figure-subjects in their pen-and-bistre 
 studies. And just as he had imitated the Rogers vignettes 
 in his boyhood, now in his youth he tried to emulate 
 'the fine abstract flow and searching expressiveness of the 
 etched line, and the studied breadth of shade, by using 
 the quill pen with washes of monochrome, or sometimes 
 with subdued colour. This dwelling upon outline as not 
 only representative, but decorative in itself, has sometimes 
 led Mr. Ruskin into over-emphasis and a mannered grace ; 
 but the value of his pen-and-wash style has never been 
 fairly tested in landscape. His best drawings are known 
 to very few ; some of his finest work was thrown away
 
 122 THE LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
 on subjects which were never completed, or were ruined 
 by rough experiments when he had tired of them, and 
 no other man with half his feeling and knowledge has 
 attempted to work in the same method. 
 
 At first he kept pretty closely to monochrome. His 
 object was form, and his special talent for draughtsmanship 
 rather than for colour, which developed quite late in his 
 life. But it is this winter's study of the Liber Studiorum 
 that started him on his own characteristic course ; and 
 while we have no pen-and-wash work of his before 1845 
 (except a few experiments after Prout), we find him now 
 using the pen continually during all the Modern Painters 
 period. 
 
 On reaching the Lake of Geneva he wrote, or sketched, 
 one of his best-known pieces of verse, Mont Blanc Revisited ; 
 and a few others followed, the last of the long series of 
 poems, which had once been his chief interest and aim 
 in life. With this lonely journey there seemed to come 
 new and deeper feelings ; with his increased literary power, 
 fresh resources of diction ; and he was never so near being 
 a poet as when he gave up writing verse. Too condensed 
 to be easily understood, too solemn in their movement 
 to be trippingly read, the, lines on The Arve at Cluse, on 
 Mont Blanc, and The Glacier, should not be passed over 
 as nothing more than rhetorical. And the reflections on 
 the loungers at Conflans are full of significance of the 
 spirit in which he was gradually approaching the great 
 problems of his life, to pass through art into the earnest 
 study of human conduct and its final cause. 
 
 "Why stand ye here all the day idle?' 
 
 Have you in heaven no hope on earth no care 
 No foe in hell, ye things of stye and stall,
 
 CHRISTIAN ART. 123 
 
 That congregate like flies, and make the air 
 
 Rank with your fevered sloth ; that hourly call 
 The sun, which should your servant be, to bear 
 
 Dread witness on you, with uncounted wane 
 And unregarded rays, from peak to peak 
 
 Of fiery-gnomoned mountain moved in vain ? 
 Behold, the very shadows that ye seek 
 
 For slumber, write along the wasted wall 
 Your condemnation. They forget not, they, 
 
 Their ordered functions ; and determined fall, 
 Nor useless perish. But you count your day 
 By sins, and write your difference from clay 
 In bonds you break, and laws you disobey. 
 
 God ! who hast given the rocks their fortitude, 
 Their sap unto the forests, and their food 
 
 And vigour to the busy tenantry 
 
 Of happy soulless things that wait on Thee, 
 Hast Thou no blessing where Thou gav'st Thy blood ? 
 
 Wilt Thou not make Thy fair creation whole ? 
 Behold and visit this Thy vine for good, 
 
 Breathe in this human dust its living soul. 
 
 He was still deeply religious more deeply so than 
 before ; and found the echo of his own thoughts in George 
 Herbert, with whom he "communed in spirit" while he 
 travelled through the Alps. But the forms of outward 
 religion were losing their hold over him, in proportion as 
 his inward religion became more real and intense. It was 
 only a few days after writing these lines that he "broke 
 the Sabbath " for the first time in his life, by climbing a 
 hill after church. That was the first shot fired in a war, in 
 one of the strangest and saddest wars between conscience 
 and reason that biography records ; strange, because the 
 opposing forces were so nearly matched, and sad because 
 the struggle lasted until their field of battle was desolated, 
 before either won a victory. Thirty years later, the
 
 124 THE LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
 cleverest of his Oxford hearers* drew his portrait under 
 the name of the man whose sacred verse was his guide 
 and mainstay in this youthful pilgrim's progress : and the 
 words put into his mouth summed up with merciless 
 insight the issue of those conflicts. " ' For I ! who am I 
 that speak to you ? Am I a believer ? No. I am a 
 doubter too. Once I could pray every morning, and go 
 forth to my day's labour stayed and comforted. But now 
 I can pray no longer. You have taken my God away 
 from me, and I know not where you have laid Him. My 
 only consolation in my misery is that I am inconsolable 
 for His loss. Yes,' cried Mr. Herbert, his voice rising into 
 a kind of threatening wail, ' though you have made me 
 miserable, I am not yet content with my misery. And 
 though I too have said in my heart that there is no God, 
 and that there is no more profit in wisdom than in folly, 
 yet there is one folly that I will not give tongue to. I will 
 not say Peace, peace, when there is no peace.' " 
 
 Later on we have to tell how he dwelt in Doubting 
 Castle, and how he escaped. But the pilgrim had not yet 
 met Giant Despair ; and his progress was very pleasant in 
 that spring of 1845, tne vear f fi ne weather, as he drove 
 round the Riviera, and the cities of Tuscany opened out 
 their treasures to him. There was Lucca, with San 
 Frediano and the glories of twelfth-century architecture ; 
 with Fra Bartolommeo's picture of the Madonna with the 
 Magdalen and St. Catherine of Siena, his initiation into 
 
 O 
 
 the significance of early religious painting ; and, taking 
 hold of his imagination, in her marble sleep, more power- 
 fully than any flesh and blood, the dead lady of St. 
 Martin's church, Ilaria di Caretto. There was Pisa, with 
 
 * W. H. Mallock, The New Republic,
 
 CHRISTIAN ART. 125 
 
 the jewel shrine of Sta. Maria della Spina, then undestroyed ; 
 the excitement of street sketching among a sympathetic 
 crowd of fraternising Italians ; the Abbe Rosini, Professor 
 of Fine Arts, whom he made friends with, endured as 
 lecturer, and persuaded into scaffold-building in the Campo 
 Santo, for study of the frescoes. And there was Florence, 
 with Giotto's campanile, where the young Protestant 
 frequented the monasteries, and made hay with monks, and 
 sketched with his new-found friends Rudolf Durheim of 
 Berne and Dieudonne the French purist ; and spent long 
 days copying Angelico and annotating Ghirlandajo, fevered 
 with the sun of Italy at its strongest, and with the rapture 
 of discovery " which turns the unaccustomed head like 
 Chianti wine." 
 
 Couttet got him away, at last, to the Alps ; worn out 
 and in despondent reaction after all this excitement. He 
 spent a month at Macugnaga, reading Shakespeare and 
 trying to draw boulders ; drifting gradually back into 
 strength enough to attack the next piece of work, the 
 study of Turner sites on the St. Gothard. There he made 
 the drawings afterwards engraved in Modern Painters ; 
 and hearing that J. D. Harding, who, it seems, had quite 
 forgiven him his criticisms, was going to Venice, he 
 arranged for a meeting at Baveno on the Lago Maggiore. 
 They sketched together ; Ruskin perhaps emulating his 
 friend's slap-dash style in the " Sunset " reproduced in his 
 " Poems," and illustrating his own in the " Water-mill." 
 And so they drove together to Verona and thence to 
 Venice. 
 
 At Venice they stayed in Danieli's hotel on the Riva 
 degli Schiavoni, and began by sketching picturesque canal- 
 life. Mr. Boxall, R.A., and Mrs. Jameson, the historian
 
 126 THE LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
 of Sacred and Legendary Art, were their companions. 
 Another old friend, Joseph Severn, had in 1843 gained 
 one of the prizes at the Westminster Hall Cartoons 
 Competition ; and a letter from Mr. Ruskin, referring to 
 the work there, shows how he still pondered on the subject 
 that had been haunting him in the Alps. "With your 
 hopes for the elevation of English art by means of fresco I 
 cannot sympathise. ... It is not the material nor the 
 space that can give us thoughts, passions, or power. I see 
 on our Academy walls nothing but what is ignoble in 
 small pictures, and would be disgusting in large ones. . . . 
 It is not the love of fresco that we want ; it is the love of 
 God and His creatures ; it is humility, and charity, and 
 self-denial, and fasting, and prayed; it is a total change 
 of character. We want more faith and less reasoning, less 
 strength and more trust. You want neither walls, nor 
 plaster, nor colours $a ne fait rien a r affaire ; it is Giotto, 
 and Ghirlandajo, and Angelico that you want, and that 
 you will and must want until this disgusting nineteenth 
 century has I can't say breathed, but steamed its last." 
 So early he had taken up, and wrapped around him, the 
 mantle of Cassandra. 
 
 But he was suddenly to find the sincerity of Ghirlandajo 
 and the religious significance of Angelico united with the 
 matured power of art. Without knowing what they 
 were to meet, Harding and he found themselves one 
 day in the Scuola di S. Rocco, and face to face with 
 Tintoret. 
 
 It was the fashion before Mr. Ruskin's time, and it has 
 been the fashion since, to undervalue Tintoret. He is not 
 pious enough for the purists, nor decorative enough for the 
 Pre-Raphaelites. The ruin or the restoration of almost
 
 CHRISTIAN ART. 127 
 
 all his pictures makes it impossible for the ordinary amateur 
 to judge them ; they need reconstruction in the mind's eye, 
 and that is a dangerous process. Mr. Ruskin himself, as 
 he grew older, found more interest in the playful industry 
 of Carpaccio than in the laborious games, the stupendous 
 Titan-feats, of Tintoret. But at this moment, solemnised 
 before the problems of life, he found these problems hinted 
 in the mystic symbolism of the School of S. Rocco ; a 
 recent convert to pre-Reformation Christianity, he found 
 its completed outcome in Tintoret's interpretation of the 
 life of Christ and the types of the Old Testament ; fresh 
 from the stormy grandeur of the St. Gothard, he found 
 the lurid skies and looming giants of the "Visitation, or 
 the Baptism, or the Crucifixion, re-echoing the subjects of 
 Turner as " deep answering to deep " ; and, with Harding of 
 the Broad Brush, he recognised the mastery of landscape- 
 execution in the Flight into Egypt, and the St. Mary in 
 the Desert. 
 
 He devoted the rest of his time chiefly to cataloguing 
 and copying Tintoret. The catalogue appeared in Stones 
 of Venice, which was suggested by this visit, and begun by 
 some sketches of architectural detail, and the acquisition 
 of daguerreotypes a new invention, which delighted Mr. 
 Ruskin immensely, as it had delighted Turner, with trust- 
 worthy records of detail which sometimes eluded even his 
 industry and accuracy. 
 
 At last his friends were gone ; and, left alone, he over- 
 worked himself, as usual, before leaving Venice with 
 crammed portfolios and closely-written notebooks. At 
 Padua, he was stopped by a fever ; all through France he 
 was pursued by what, from his account, appears to have 
 been some form of diphtheria, averted only, as he believed,
 
 128 THE LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
 in direct answer to earnest prayer. At last his eventful 
 pilgrimage was ended, and he was restored to his home 
 and his parents. 
 
 It was not long before he was at work again in his new 
 study ; looking out upon the quiet meadow and grazing 
 cows of Denmark Hill, and rapidly throwing into form 
 the fresh impressions of the summer. Still thoroughly 
 Aristotelian and Lockeian in method, he found no difficulty 
 in making his philosophy the vehicle of religious thought. 
 He was strongly influenced by the sermons of Canon 
 Melvill the same preacher whom Browning in his youth 
 admired ; a good orator and sound analytic expositor, 
 though not a great or independent thinker. Osborne 
 Gordon had recommended him to read Hooker ; and he 
 caught the tone and style of the Ecclesiastical Polity only 
 too readily, so that much of his work of that winter, the 
 more philosophical part of Vol. II., was damaged by in- 
 versions, and Elizabethan quaintness as of ruff and train, 
 long epexegetical sentences, and far-sought pomposity of 
 diction. It was only when he had waded through the 
 philosophic chaos, which he set himself to survey, that he 
 could lay aside his borrowed stilts, and stand on his own 
 feet, in the Tintoret descriptions, rather stiff, yet, from 
 foregone efforts. But, after all, who writes philosophy in 
 graceful English? 
 
 For one must remember that this was really a philo- 
 sophical work, and not simply a volume of Essays, or 
 Sermons, which any preacher or journalist could turn 
 out by the piece. It may be wrongly founded ; but it is 
 founded on Locke and Aristotle, like the first volume. 
 The division of Pleasures into higher and lower may be 
 illusory ; but it is the logical outcome of the division of
 
 CHRISTIAN ART. I2Q 
 
 Ideas into those of Sensation and those of Reflection. It 
 may be foolish to mix the whole question up with Morals : 
 but so do Kant and Schopenhauer. It may be absurd to 
 express a theory of Art in terms of Theology : but so do 
 Plato and Hegel, without reproof. In short, the significance 
 of the work, as a reflex of the great movement of German 
 philosophy, and as the completion of the English school 
 of aesthetics begun by Coleridge, as a last attempt at a 
 metaphysic of the subject, before a new era of materialistic 
 thinking set in, all this can only be grasped by a reader 
 who has taken some interest in the history of thought. He 
 will see, what we can hardly loiter to explain, whence 
 Rusk in gets his Theoria, and why he opposes it to sEsthesis; 
 how the sense of Tightness, law-abiding, dominates him, so 
 that he finds that all our pleasure is to be traced to acqui- 
 escence in it ; how he identifies this natural law with the 
 Divine method of creation, in all its various moods, such 
 as Infinity, Unity, Repose, and so forth ; and traces its 
 effects in animated beings as well as in stocks and stones ; 
 producing what we call Beauty as the outward and visible 
 sign of a certain all-round Tightness, the object of admira- 
 tion, hope and love, not of the lust of the flesh and the 
 merely sensual desire of the eye. And in the same way 
 the student of philosophy will recognise a train of system- 
 atic thought in Ruskin's treatment of the imagination as 
 something beyond the mere effect of sensation, as simple 
 conception would be, which, in excess, is insanity. And 
 he will find this defence of genius more and more inter- 
 esting, when he has disentangled it from the cumbrous 
 ornaments in which it is enveloped ; more and more 
 valuable, as being quite unique in English thought ; 
 while, on re-reading, the appositeness of the illustrative 
 VOL. I. 9
 
 I3O THE LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
 passages becomes more evident ; and, the thread of the 
 idea once held, you can look about you at the varied hedges 
 and vistas and nooks in the labyrinth of thought through 
 which John Ruskin first wandered that winter of 1845, 
 with beating heart and earnest outlook, in pursuit of the 
 Minotaur of materialism, the hidden, pampered brute- 
 instinct to which his contemporaries immolated the virgin- 
 tribute of poetry and art. 
 
 When his book came out he was away again in Italy, 
 trying to show his father all that he had seen in the Campo 
 Santo and Giotto's Tower, and to explain "why it more 
 than startled him." The good man hardly felt the force 
 of it all at once. How should he ? And there were little 
 passages of arms and some heart-quaking and head- 
 shaking ; until Mr. Dale, the old schoolmaster, wrote that 
 he had heard no less a man than Sydney Smith mention 
 the new book in public, in the presence of " distinguished 
 literary characters," as a work of "transcendent talent, 
 presenting the most original views, in the most elegant 
 and powerful language, which would work a complete 
 revolution in the world of taste." 
 
 When the chief of the critics nodded approval, what 
 could the rest of the mandarin-college do, but nod ? The 
 first volume had paved the way to success ; and during 
 this journey, the young author was correcting the proofs 
 of a third edition. Turner was already a household word ; 
 Angelico and the Primitives were coming into notice: 
 Ruskin never claimed to have discovered them ; only to 
 have expounded them. And Tintoret was a great un- 
 known. There were plain folk who wondered at this 
 strange association of subjects so apparently diverse in 
 all nameable qualities ; but the best men saw that the

 
 CHRISTIAN ART. 13! 
 
 young writer had taken a firm and defensible position 
 akin to Carlyle's ; that like Carlyle he was talking and 
 thinking over the heads of the crowd ; and they forgave 
 what there was to forgive some affectation and hasty 
 dogmatism for the sake of the " fundamental brain-work " 
 which they saw in this book. 
 
 When he returned home, it was to find a respectful 
 welcome. His word on matters of Art was now really 
 worth something ; and before long it was called for. The 
 National Gallery was comparatively in its infancy. It 
 had been established less than twenty-five years, and its 
 manager, Mr. Eastlake (afterwards Sir Charles) had his 
 hands full, what with rascally dealers in forged old masters, 
 and incompetent picture-cleaners, and an economical 
 government, and a public that did not know its own mind 
 and would not trust his judgment. A great outcry was 
 set up against him for buying bad works, and spoiling the 
 best by restoration. Mr. Ruskin wrote very temperately 
 to the Times, pointing out that the damage had been 
 slight compared with what was being done everywhere 
 else ; and suggesting that, prevention being better than 
 cure, the pictures should be put under glass, for then 
 they would not need the recurring attentions of the 
 restorer. But he blamed the management for spending 
 large sums on added examples of Guido and Rubens, 
 while they had no Angelico, no Ghirlandajo, no good 
 Perugino, only one Bellini ; and, in a word, left his new 
 friends, the early Christian artists, unrepresented. He 
 suggested that pictures might be picked up for next to 
 nothing in Italy ; and he begged that the collection might 
 be made historical and educational by being fully repre- 
 sentative, and chronologically arranged.
 
 132 THE LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
 Such ideals cannot be realised at a stroke ; but as we 
 walk round our Gallery now, we can be thankful that his 
 voice was raised, and not in vain ; and rejoice that in many 
 a case justice has been done to " the wronged great soul 
 of an ancient master."
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE SEVEN LAMPS. 
 
 (18471849.) 
 
 "They dreamt not of a perishable home 
 Who thus could build." 
 
 Wordsworth. 
 
 OF the leading men who acknowledged the rising star, 
 it was natural that the foremost in their recognition 
 should be Scotsmen. Hogg and Pringle had been the 
 boy-poet's first encouragers ; and now the art-critic was 
 hailed by Sydney Smith, a former Edinburgh professor ; 
 patronised by John Murray, who got him to write notes on 
 pictures for his " Guide " ; and employed by Loekhart on 
 the staff of the Quarterly. " The happiest lot on earth is 
 to be born a Scotchman," says R. L. Stevenson ; and it is 
 certainly convenient for the aspirant to artistic or literary 
 fame. 
 
 Loekhart was a person of great interest to young Ruskin, 
 who so worshipped Scott : and Lockhart's daughter, even 
 without her personal charm, would have attracted him, as 
 the actual grandchild of the great Sir Walter. It was for 
 her sake, rather than for the honour of writing in the 
 famous Quarterly, that he went, after a fatiguing winter in 
 London society, to Ambleside, to get peace and quiet for 
 his review of Lord Lindsay's "Christian Art." It was not
 
 134 THE LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
 only society that had fatigued him. He had never quite 
 recovered from the tendency to consumption which had 
 sent him down from Oxford ; and a weakness of the spine 
 was now keeping him always more or less of an invalid. 
 The writing of his second volume, during several months 
 of mental tension and emotional excitement, had wearied 
 him out, and the tour that followed had not sufficed for 
 relaxation chiefly because he was beginning to find him- 
 self drifting away from that earlier happy confidence in his 
 parents' beliefs, and reliance on their sympathy. His father 
 and he pulled different ways not openly, not admitting 
 such a thing even to themselves ; for, some years after, the 
 father wrote that his son had " never cost him a single 
 pang that could be avoided." But that was because the 
 son never hesitated to sacrifice himself and his wishes, to 
 please his father. And now, it was not the least trying 
 sacrifice, that his father should be opposed to the idea he 
 had entertained, of recommending himself to Lockhart and 
 his daughter ; and that he should find his parents, with the 
 best intentions in the world, arranging his affairs with an 
 eye to what they believed to be his interests, and not with 
 regard to his inclinations. 
 
 With all his intellectual independence Mr. Ruskin was, 
 and is, the least selfish of men. The fact has been obvious 
 to many a one who has taken advantage of it, and ^corned 
 it as a weakness. But there have been people at all times 
 to whom his character was more estimable than his genius : 
 people like Miss Mitford, who wrote (early in this year 
 1847) that he was "certainly the most charming person 
 she had ever known." With unselfishness there generally 
 goes an unsuspicious habit, too little -on its guard against 
 vulgar knavery and folly ; and a passion for abstract justice,
 
 THE SEVEN LAMPS. 135 
 
 that does not stop to weigh consequences or circumstances, 
 and is liable to end in disappointment and bitterness, like 
 Shakespeare's Timon, " When man's worst sin is, he does 
 too much good." 
 
 After a summer visit to Oxford, working in the Geo- 
 logical section at a meeting of the British Association, Mr. 
 Ruskin's health broke down again, and he was sent to 
 Leamington to his old Doctor, Jephson, once more a 
 consumption-patient. Dr. Jephson again dieted him into 
 health ; and he went to Scotland with a new-found friend, 
 Mr. William Macdonald Macdonald of St. Martin's. He 
 had no taste for sport : one battue was enough for him ; 
 and the rest of the visit was spent in digging thistles, and 
 thinking over them, and the significance of the curse of 
 Eden, so strangely now at last interwoven with his own life, 
 " thorns also and thistles." 
 
 On his way back he stopped at Bower's Well, Perth, 
 where his parents had been married ; and in accordance 
 with their wishes proposed marriage to the young lady 
 for whom, some years earlier, he had written The King 
 of the Golden River. She had grown up into a perfect 
 Scotch beauty, another Fair Maid of Perth, with every 
 gift of health and spirits which would compensate, as they 
 thought, his retiring and morbid nature. And if she, by 
 obedience to her own parents, got the wealth and position 
 they sought for her, on the other hand the dutiful son 
 easily persuaded himself that he was, after all, the luckiest 
 of mortals. He was ready to do anything, to promise 
 anything, for so charming a prize. The parents on each 
 side had their several conditions to make ; but united in 
 hastening on the event, alike "dreaming of a perishable 
 home."
 
 136 THE LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
 In the Notes on Exhibitions added to a new edition of 
 Modern Painters then in the press, the author mentions a 
 "hurried visit to Scotland in the spring" of 1848. An old 
 newspaper-cutting betrays the reason of the journey, by 
 recording his marriage on the loth of April. The young 
 couple went to Keswick, whence on Good Friday he wrote 
 to his friend Miss Mitford, " I begin to feel that all the 
 work I have been doing, and all the loves I have been 
 cherishing, are ineffective and frivolous that these are not 
 times for watching clouds or dreaming over quiet waters ; 
 that more serious work is to be done ; and that the time 
 for endurance has come rather than for meditation, and for 
 hope rather than for happiness. Happy those whose hope, 
 without this severe and tearful rending away of all the 
 props and stability of earthly enjoyments, has been fixed 
 ' where the wicked cease from troubling.' Mine was not ; 
 it was based on 'those pillars of the earth' which are 
 ' astonished at His reproof.' I have, however, passed this 
 week very happily here. We have a good clergyman, Mr. 
 Myers ; and I am recovering trust and tranquillity. I had 
 been wiser to have come to your fair English pastures and 
 flowering meadows, rather than to these moorlands, for 
 they make me feel too painfully the splendour, not to be 
 in any wise resembled or replaced, of those mighty scenes 
 which I can reach no more at least for a time. I am 
 thinking, however, of a tour among our English abbeys." 
 
 The pilgrimage began with Salisbury, where a few days' 
 sketching in the damp and draughts of the cathedral laid 
 the bridegroom low, and brought the wedding tour to an 
 untimely end. When he was thought to be recovered, the 
 whole family started for the Continent, but a relapse in the 
 patient's condition brought them J^ack. At last, in August,
 
 THE SEVEN LAMPS. 137 
 
 the young people were seen safely off to Normandy, where 
 they went by easy stages from town to town, studying the 
 remains of Gothic building. In October they returned, 
 and settled in a house of their own, at 31, Park Street, 
 where during the winter Mr. Ruskin wrote The Seven 
 Lamps of Architecture, and as a bit of bye- work, a notice 
 of Samuel Prout for the Art Journal. 
 
 "The Seven Lamps " or Laws " of Architecture," "Thy 
 word is a lamp unto my feet," the Psalmist said ; and so, 
 not practical rules of art, but Divine conditions affecting 
 man as a building creature, and the work of his hands as 
 the expression of his mind ; complicated too with those 
 seven lamps which are the churches of latter-day Chris- 
 tianity, and their light of warning, of reproof or of 
 encouragement ; " The Seven Lamps " was not meant to 
 be either an instructive manual or an historical essay. 
 Something of the sort had been promised as part of 
 Modern Painters, an inquiry upon the aspects of Archi- 
 tecture as seen by the artist, just as the author was writing 
 on the aspects of Mountains or Waves ; and this book is 
 practically one volume of the greater work, illustrating the 
 theory of beauty and imagination stated in Vol. II. But 
 the feelings with which he had written three years before 
 had gathered strength, both through the personal experi- 
 ences he had been undergoing, and through the increasing 
 seriousness of public turmoil and discontent in that 
 memorable year of Chartism at home and Revolutions 
 abroad, 1848. 
 
 " The aspect of the years that approach us," he writes, 
 " is as solemn as it is full of mystery ; and the weight of 
 evil against which we have to contend is increasing like 
 the letting out of water. It is no time for the idleness of
 
 138 THE LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
 metaphysics, or the entertainment of the arts. The blas- 
 phemies of the earth are waxing louder, and its miseries 
 heaped heavier, every day." This was his plea for con- 
 sidering Architecture in a new light, as a language of the 
 human mind ; in the past, bearing witness to faith and 
 sincerity, and in the present, as a means of testing the 
 moral symptoms of the nation " that thus could build." 
 
 He showed, as he had done in the " Poetry of Archi- 
 tecture," that the word meant more than " building " ; it 
 meant the expression of thought and feeling in, and upon, 
 buildings ; and that this was seen especially in sacred 
 buildings, for it was upon such that the greatest care and 
 the most significant symbolism had been lavished. For 
 example, the first intent of building a house for God was a 
 form of Sacrifice, and involved the giving of the best work 
 and the costliest materials, that the sacrifice might be 
 acceptable. He could show how this had been done by 
 the Gothic builders of ancient Italy and France ; and he 
 could contrast the luxury of modern private houses with 
 the shoddy of their sham Gothic churches. Next, the 
 sincerity of the worship which sacred architecture meant 
 to illustrate was reflected in its Truth, refusing all archi- 
 tectural deceits, in structure, in material, or in the substitu- 
 tion of cheap machine-made ornament for the honest 
 result of truly artistic labour. The Lamps of Power and 
 Beauty were the expressions of seriousness, in sympathy 
 with human pain and struggle, and of pleasure, in sympathy 
 with Divine law made visible in nature. Life was the 
 result of spontaneous and unaffected art, dying out at once 
 when the workman became a formal imitator or a soulless 
 mechanist. Memory was the documentary character of 
 ancient buildings, destroyed by restoration ; and finally
 
 THE SEVEN LAMPS. 139 
 
 Obedience was shown in the refusal of impudent attempts 
 at mere bizarrerie, and novelty for its own sake ; for a 
 great style could only spring up as the unconscious expres- 
 sion of national character and circumstances, developing 
 out of the received inheritance of the traditional school. 
 
 This was Mr. Ruskin's first illustrated volume. The 
 plates were engraved by himself in soft-ground etching, 
 such as Prout had used, from drawings he had made in 
 1846 and 1848. Some are scrappy combinations of various 
 detail, but others, such as the Byzantine capital, the window 
 in Giotto's Campanile, the arches from S t t. Lo in Normandy, 
 from S. Michele at Lucca, and from the Ca' Foscari at 
 Venice, are effective studies of the actual look of old 
 buildings, seen as they are shown us in Nature, with her 
 light and shade added to all the facts of form, and her 
 own last touches in the way of weather-softening, and 
 settling-faults, and tufted, nestling plants. 
 
 The book was announced for his father's birthday, 
 May loth, 1849 5 but there was still one plate to finish, 
 that of Giotto's tower, when the whole family went abroad 
 again, the new Mrs. John replacing Cousin Mary, who also 
 had been married the year before. Mr. Ruskin worked at 
 his plate on the way through France, and bit it hastily 
 in his wash-hand-basin at the Hotel de la Cloche at Dijon 
 (perhaps on April i/th). These sketchy and unpro- 
 fessionally manipulated plates were thought to be not a 
 success ; and in the second edition more elaborate en- 
 gravings were given, with an exquisite frontispiece by 
 Armytage from a new drawing. But, apart from their 
 merely fancy value as rarities, the autograph etchings 
 are fine bold work, and especially interesting as a new 
 departure in the way of architectural illustration. The
 
 140 THE LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
 cover of the original editions, also, was happier than Mr. 
 Ruskin's book-covers have usually been ; stamped with 
 an arabesque which Mr. W. Harry Rogers designed from 
 the author's sketches of the floor of San Miniato. 
 
 As to the reception of the work, or at any rate the 
 anticipation of it, Charlotte Bronte bears witness in a letter 
 to the publishers. " I have lately been reading Modern 
 Painters, and have derived from the work much genuine 
 pleasure, and, I hope, some edification ; at any rate it has 
 made me feel how ignorant I had previously been on the 
 subject which it treats. Hitherto I have only had instinct 
 to guide me in judging of art ; I feel now as if I had been 
 walking blindfold this book seems to give me new eyes. 
 I do wish I had pictures within reach by which to test the 
 new sense. Who can read these glowing descriptions of 
 Turner's work without longing to see them ? 
 
 " I like this author's style much ; there is both energy 
 and beauty in it. I like himself, too, because he is such 
 a hearty admirer. He does not give half-measure of praise 
 or veneration. He eulogises, he reverences, with his whole 
 soul. One can sympathise with that sort of devout, serious 
 admiration, for he is no rhapsodist ; one can respect it ; 
 yet, possibly, many people would laugh at it 
 
 " I congratulate you on the approaching publication of 
 Mr. Ruskin's new work. If the Seven Lamps of Archi- 
 tecture 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 author's own opinion, thirty years later, was that the 
 book had become the most useless he ever wrote ; " the 
 buildings it describes with so much delight being now
 
 THE SEVEN LAMPS. 141 
 
 either knocked down, or scraped and patched up into 
 smugness and smoothness more tragic than uttermost ruin. 
 But I find the public still like the book, and will read it, 
 when they won't look at what would be really useful and 
 helpful to them ; . . . the germ of what I have since 
 written is indeed here, however overlaid with gilding, and 
 overshot, too splashily and cascade-fashion, with gushing 
 of words."
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 STONES OF VENICE. 
 
 (18491851.) 
 
 "I stood in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs, 
 A palace and a prison on each hand ; 
 I saw from out the wave her structures rise 
 As from the stroke of the enchanter's wand." Byron. 
 
 "And I, John, saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down from God, 
 out of heaven." REV. xxi. 2. 
 
 A BOOK about Venice had been planned in 1845, 
 during Mr. Ruskin's first long working visit. He 
 had made so many notes and sketches both of architecture 
 and painting that the material seemed ready to hand ; 
 another visit would fill up the gaps in his information ; and 
 two or three months' hard writing would work the subject 
 off, and set him free to continue Modern Painters. So 
 before leaving home in 1849, he had made up his mind 
 that the next work would be The Stones of Venice ; which, 
 on the appearance of The Seven Lamps, was announced 
 by the publishers as in preparation. 
 
 Like the Seven Lamps, this new book was not to be a 
 manual of practical architecture, but the further illustration 
 of doctrines peculiar to the author ; the reaction, that is 
 to say, of society upon art ; the close connection, in this 
 case, of style in architecture with the life, the religious 
 
 142
 
 STONES OF VENICE. 143 
 
 tone, the moral aims, of the people who produced it. 
 Venice was chosen as the special ground of inquiry, not 
 because Venetian architecture was better than Florentine 
 or French ; but because it presented a conveniently isolated 
 school, neatly continuous, with none of those breaks and 
 catastrophes which destroy the full value, as specimens of 
 development, of most other schools ; just as flaws and 
 interruptions destroy the museum-value of a mineral, as 
 specimen of crystallisation. Venice was a perfectly normal 
 development, under favourable circumstances. And there 
 was this added interest, that the character of Venice was 
 the nearest analogy in the past, and among the great 
 influential nations of history, to our own country. It was 
 free, but aristocratic and conservative ; Christian, but in- 
 dependent of the Pope ; it pursued a course of " spirited 
 foreign policy " in contrast with but as a consequence of 
 its apparently peaceful function of commerce. So that, 
 by its example, the lessons of national virtue which, since 
 1845, the author had felt called on to preach, could be 
 illustrated and enforced in a far more interesting way than 
 if he had merely written a volume of essays on political 
 morality ; at least, so he felt and intended. But in the 
 end, the inquiry branched out into so many directions 
 that the main purpose was all but hidden in flowers of 
 rhetoric and foliage of technical detail, which most readers 
 took for the sum and substance of its teaching. 
 
 In the summer of 1849 Mr. Ruskin was with his family 
 and friends in Switzerland from the beginning of May 
 until the end of October. He spent a busy and eventful 
 time, whether well or ill, happy or distressed, he was 
 always busy ; some of his most careful drawings of the 
 Alps were made this year, and their accuracy was checked
 
 144 THE LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
 by the daguerreotype-camera which he carried about with 
 him. I do not know if he can claim to be the actual 
 pioneer of Alpine photography, but he was the first to 
 photograph the Matterhorn, I believe, early in August, 
 1849. 
 
 Part of November was spent at Verona, and by the end 
 of the month he was settled with his wife at Venice for 
 the winter. He expected to find without much trouble 
 all the information he wanted as to the dates and styles 
 and history of Venetian buildings ; but after consulting 
 and comparing all the native writers, it appeared that the 
 questions he asked of them were just the questions they 
 were unprepared to answer, and that he must go into the 
 whole matter afresh. So he laid himself out, that winter, 
 for a thorough examination of St. Mark's and the Ducal 
 Palace and the other remains drawing, and measuring, 
 and comparing their details ; only to find that the work 
 he had undertaken was like a sea " chi sempre si fa 
 maggiore." The old buildings were a patchwork of all 
 styles and all periods. In St. Mark's alone, every pinnacle 
 called for separate study ; every capital and balustrade, on 
 minute inquiry, turned out to have its own independent 
 history. So that after all his labour he could give no 
 complete and generalised survey of his subject, chrono- 
 logical and systematised, without much more time and 
 thought. But at any rate the details he had in his 
 notebooks were the result of personal observation ; he was 
 no longer trusting to second-hand information or the 
 vague traditions of the tribe of ciceroni. 
 
 His father had gone back to England in September, 
 out of health ; and the letters from home did not report 
 improvement. His mother, too, was beginning to fear the
 
 STONES OF VENICE. 145 
 
 loss of her sight ; and he could not stay away from them 
 any longer, to pursue what he thought to be his own selfish 
 aims. And so, in February 1850, he broke off his work 
 in the middle of it, and returned to London. The rest 
 of the year he spent in writing the first volume of Stones 
 of Venice and in preparing the illustrations, and the 
 Examples of the Architecture of Venice, a portfolio of large 
 lithographs and engravings in mezzotint and line, to 
 accompany the work. 
 
 The illustrations to the new book were a great advance 
 upon the rough soft-ground etchings of the Seven Lamps. 
 He secured the services of some of the finest engravers 
 who ever handled the tools of their art. The English 
 school of engravers was then in its last and most 
 accomplished period. Photography had not yet begun to 
 supersede it ; and the demand for delicate work in book- 
 illustration had encouraged minuteness and precision of 
 handling to the last degree. In this excessive refinement 
 there were the symptoms of decline ; but it was most 
 fortunate for Mr. Ruskin that his drawings could be 
 interpreted by such men as Armytage and Cousen, Cuff 
 and Le Keux, Boys and Lupton, and not without advan- 
 tage to them that their masterpieces should be preserved 
 in his works, and praised as they deserved in his prefaces. 
 Sometimes, as it often happens when engravers work for 
 an artist who sets the standard high, they found Mr. 
 Ruskin a hard taskmaster. The mere fact of their skill 
 in translating a sketch from a notebook into a gem-like 
 vignette, encouraged him to ask for more ; so that some 
 of the subjects which became the most elaborate were at 
 first comparatively rough drawings, and were gradually 
 worked up from successive retouchings of the proofs, by 
 
 VOL. I. 10
 
 146 THE LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
 the infinite patience of both parties. In other cases, 
 working drawings were prepared by Mr. Ruskin, as refined 
 as the plates. How steady his hand was, and how trained 
 his eye, can be seen by any one who looks carefully at the 
 etchings by him not after him in Modern Painters ; 
 which show that he was fully competent to have produced 
 his own illustrations, had it been worth his while ; and 
 any one who has turned over a portfolio of his best 
 drawings will bear witness that, while in one mood he does 
 those roughly-handled chiaroscuro studies like the Seven 
 Lamps illustrations, at other times he can " curb the liberal 
 hand " and rival a cameo in refinement. His limitation as 
 an artist was owing to no want of executive skill. His 
 own apology is that "he has no imagination," and fails 
 in composition, especially in the arrangement of colour. 
 With which explanation one is puzzled, seeing how many 
 are in the same case ; but no doubt he has not been 
 ambitious to be of their number. 
 
 He could have been a painter if he had devoted himself 
 to painting not a Turner or a Titian, but a sound practi- 
 tioner, much above the average. The same may be said 
 of his verse-writing. In this year, 1850, his father collected 
 and printed his poems, with a number of pieces that still 
 remained in MS. ; the author taking no part in this revival 
 of bygones, which for many reasons, then, he was not 
 anxious to recall, though his father still believed that he 
 might have been a poet, and ought to have been one. He, 
 however, knew that he had found his vocation. 
 
 Another resurrection was Tlie King of the Golden River, 
 which had lain hidden for the nine years of the Ars Poetica. 
 He allowed it to be published, with woodcuts by the famous 
 " Dicky " Doyle. I say " allowed it to be published," not
 
 STONES OF VENICE. 147 
 
 that there was any reason for suppressing the work on the 
 score of triviality or juvenility. Mr. Ruskin has repeatedly 
 said that he has no desire to suppress anything he has 
 written, and proved it by sanctioning the collection of his 
 letters to newspapers, and to private friends ; without, as 
 some might think, enough regard to consequences. In this 
 case the venture was a success ; the little book ran through 
 three editions that year, and, partly because School Boards 
 have adopted it as one of their prizes, it still finds a steady 
 sale. The first issue must have been torn to rags in the 
 nurseries of the last generation, since copies are so rare as 
 to bring ten guineas apiece instead of the six shillings at 
 which they were advertised in 1850. 
 
 Living in London this year, and already one of the most 
 important literary celebrities, Mr. Ruskin could not avoid 
 entertaining society and being entertained, even on the 
 plea of book-writing. He mixed with an artistic circle, on 
 good terms with^ men both in and out of the Academy ; a 
 literary circle of the old-fashioned gentleman-author type, 
 such as rallied round the veteran Rogers ; and in the third 
 place a religious circle, or rather circles of various opinions 
 in religion, from the more pronounced Evangelicals like 
 Spurgeon to the most evasive of the early Broad Church- 
 men. Puseyites and Roman Catholics were still as heathen 
 men and publicans to him ; and he noted with interest, 
 while writing his review of Venetian history, that the 
 strength of Venice was distinctly Anti-Papal, and her 
 virtues Catholic but not Roman. Reflections on this 
 subject were to have formed part of his great work, but 
 the first volume was taken up with the d priori develop- 
 ment of architectural forms ; and the treatment in especial 
 of Venetian matters had to be indefinitely postponed, until
 
 148 THE LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
 another visit should complete his material. Meanwhile he 
 noticed with growing uneasiness as many others did the 
 divided aims of professing Christians. Even in the Church 
 of England, not to speak of the innumerable phases of 
 dissenting Protestants, there were at least three opposing 
 classes, pulling different ways and setting up different 
 standards of theological and ecclesiastical thought. And 
 all the while, the energy that might have made head 
 against Popery and Infidelity, as it seemed to him, and 
 to many, was being spent in discussing the Thirty-Nine 
 Articles, or the history of the Reformation, or the Early 
 Fathers, with every prospect of disastrous and irremediable 
 schism. 
 
 His study of Venice had shown him the political import- 
 ance of an acknowledged religion ; and the possibility of 
 such a religion maintaining its influence for good, while 
 still wedded to the state, and in external things remaining 
 under state-direction. He saw that the Church, as it was 
 regarded by the Apostles, was simply the assembly of 
 professing Christians, the flock of Christ, for whom there 
 was but one fold, with room for all. And he believed that 
 if these discussions about Church history and post-Apostolic 
 opinion were dropped, and if people would go candidly to 
 the New Testament for its simple teaching, there ought to 
 be no difficulty in finding a common ground upon which 
 all could meet. If that were possible, then all that his 
 writings had been pleading for, the habitual sincerity of 
 thought and the standard simplicity of life, which would 
 produce, among other things, a revival of the right spirit 
 of art, all this would be greatly helped and forwarded. 
 He could think so, and say so, without apology ; for in 
 those days religion was still treated with some show of
 
 STONES OF VENICE. 149 
 
 respect, and agnostic morality had scarcely been for- 
 mulated. 
 
 Accordingly he put together his thoughts in a pamphlet 
 on the text " There shall be one fold and one shepherd," 
 calling it, in allusion to his architectural studies, " Notes 
 on the Construction of Sheepfolds." He proposed a 
 compromise ; trying to prove that the pretensions to 
 priesthood on the high Anglican side, and the objections 
 to episcopacy on the Presbyterian, were alike untenable ; 
 and hoped that, when once these differences such little 
 things, he thought them were arranged, a united Church 
 of England might become the nucleus of a world-wide 
 federation of Protestants, a civitas Dei, a New Jerusalem. 
 
 There were many who agreed with his aspirations ; he 
 received shoals of letters from sympathising readers, most 
 of them praising his aims and criticising his means. For 
 it was just these little differences that stood in the way of 
 what all at every time have professed to desire. Others 
 objected, rather to his manner than to his matter : the title 
 savoured of levity, and an art-critic was supposed to be 
 wandering out of his province, it was the ne sutor upside 
 down. Tradition says that the Notes were freely bought 
 by Border-farmers under a rather laughable mistake ; but 
 surely it was no new thing for a Scotch reader to find a 
 religious tract under a catching title ; and their two shillings 
 might have been worse spent. There were a few replies ; 
 one by Mr. Dyce, the clerical R.A., who defended the 
 Anglican view with mild persiflage and the usual common- 
 places. And there the matter ended, for the public. For 
 Mr. Ruskin, it was the beginning of a train of thought 
 which led him far. He gradually learnt that his error was 
 not in asking too much, but in asking too little. He
 
 150 THE LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
 wished for a union of Protestants, forgetting the sheep that 
 are not of tJiat fold, and little dreaming of the answer he 
 got, after many days, in " Christ's Folk in the Apennine." 
 
 Meanwhile the first volume of Stones of Venice had 
 appeared. Its reception was indirectly described in a 
 pamphlet entitled " Something on Ruskinism, with "a 
 ' Vestibule ' in Rhyme, by an Architect," a Puginist, it 
 seems, who felt that his craft was in danger. He complains 
 bitterly of the " ecstasies of rapture " into which the news- 
 papers had been thrown by the new work : 
 
 i "Your book since Reviewers so swear may be rational, 
 Still, 'tis certainly not either loyal or national ; " 
 
 for it did not join in the chorus of congratulation to Prince 
 Albert and the British public on the Great Exhibition of 
 1851, the apotheosis of trade and machinery. The " Archi- 
 tect" finds also what may surprise the modern reader 
 who has not noticed that many an able writer has been 
 thought unreadable on his first appearance that he cannot 
 understand Mr. Ruskin's language and ideas : 
 
 "Your style is so soaring and some it makes sore 
 That plain folks can't make out your strange mystical lore." 
 
 He will allow the author to be quite right, when he finds 
 something to agree with ; but the moment a sore point 
 is touched, then Ruskin is "insane." In one respect the 
 " Architect " hit the nail on the head : " Readers who are 
 not reviewers by profession can hardly fail to perceive that 
 Ruskinism is violently inimical to sundry existing interests" 
 A more comprehensive answer to Mr. Ruskin's critics was 
 never given. Before leaving the " Architect " one may 
 notice that his attack was printed at " Bell Yard, Temple
 
 STONES OF VENICE. 151 
 
 Bar," where forty years afterwards the Stones of Venice is 
 re-issued, while the angry outcries it evoked are forgotten 
 by all but the laborious biographer. 
 
 The best men, we said, were the first to recognise Mr. 
 Ruskin's genius. Let us throw into the opposite scale an 
 opinion of more weight than the Architect's, in a transcript 
 from the original letter from Carlyle. 
 
 " CHELSEA, 9 March, 1851. 
 
 " DEAR RUSKIN, 
 
 " I did not know yesterday till your servant was gone 
 that there was any note in the parcel ; nor at all what a feat you 
 had done ! A loan of the gallant young man's Memoirs was 
 what I expected ; and here, in the most chivalrous style, comes 
 a gift of them. This, I think, must be in the style prior to the 
 Renaissance ! What can I do but accept your kindness with 
 pleasure and gratitude, though it is far beyond my deserts ? Per- 
 haps the next man I meet will use me as much below them ; and 
 so bring matters straight again ! Truly I am much obliged, and 
 return you many-hearty thanks. 
 
 " I was already deep in the Stones ; and clearly purpose to hold 
 on there. A strange, unexpected, and I believe, most true and 
 excellent Sermon in Stones as well as the best piece of School- 
 mastering in Architectonics ; from which I hope to learn in a great 
 many ways. The spirit and purport of these Critical Studies of 
 yours are a singular sign of the times to me, and a very gratifying 
 one. Right good speed to you, and victorious arrival on the farther 
 shore ! It is a quite new ' renaissance,' I believe, we are getting 
 into just now : either towards new, wider manhood, high again 
 as the eternal stars ; or else into final death, and the mask of 
 Gehenna for evermore ! A dreadful process, but a needful and 
 inevitable one ; nor do I doubt at all which way the issue will be, 
 though which of the extant nations are to get included in it, and 
 which to be trampled out and abolished in the process, may be 
 very doubtful. God is great :-^and sure enough, the changes in 
 the Construction of Sheepfolds as well as in other things, will 
 require to be very considerable.
 
 152 THE LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
 " We are still labouring under the foul kind of Influenza here, 
 I not far from emancipated, my poor Wife still deep in the busi- 
 ness, though I hope past the deepest. Am I to understand that 
 you too are seized ? In a day or two I hope to ascertain that you 
 are well again. Adieu : here is an interruption, here also is the 
 end of the paper. 
 
 " With many thanks and regards," 
 
 [Signature cut away.] 
 
 Another reader who was not a reviewer by profession 
 took a different view. Charlotte Bronte wrote to one of 
 her friends : " The ' Stones of Venice ' seem nobly laid and 
 chiselled. How grandly the quarry* of vast marbles is 
 disclosed ! Mr. Ruskin seems to me one of the few genuine 
 writers, as distinguished from book-makers, of this age. 
 His earnestness even amuses me in certain passages, for 
 I cannot help laughing to think how utilitarians will fume 
 and fret over his deep, serious, and (as they will think) 
 fanatical reverence for Art." 
 
 But I do not share Charlotte Bronte's view altogether, 
 nor her contempt for the utilitarians. A short while ago, 
 one of her own people, a Yorkshire working-man not far 
 from Haworth, got up in a public discussion, and said that 
 he had once talked with Mr. Ruskin and tried to say how 
 much he had enjoyed his works. " And he said to me, ' I 
 don't care whether you enjoyed them : did they do you any 
 good?'" 
 
 They have at any rate done us the good, little valued 
 by Mr. Ruskin, but greatly by many a dweller in modern 
 towns, of reforming our street-architecture. And a greater 
 outcome of this work the next chapter must unfold. 
 
 As soon as the first volume of Stones of Venice and the 
 
 * An allusion to the title of the first chapter of this first volume.
 
 STONES OF VENICE. 153 
 
 Notes on the Construction of Sheepfolds were published, Mr. 
 Ruskin took a short Easter holiday at Matlock, and set 
 to work at a new edition of Modern Painters. This was 
 the fifth reprint of the first volume, and the third of Vol. II. 
 They were carefully and conscientiously revised ; some 
 passages of rough youthful criticism were cancelled, and 
 wisely ; for more lasting good is done by expounding what 
 is noble, than by satirising what is base. The work was 
 left in its final form, except for notes added in later years ; 
 and the Postscript indulges, most justifiably, in a little 
 triumph at the changed tone of public criticism upon 
 Turner. 
 
 But it was too late to have been any service to the 
 great artist himself. In 1845 after saying good-bye and 
 " Why will you go to Switzerland ? There will be such a 
 fidge about you when you're gone" Turner was attacked, 
 no one knows how, with some paralysis or mental decay, 
 and was never himself again. The last drawings he did 
 for Mr. Ruskin (Jan. 1848), the "Briinig" and the 
 " Descent from the St. Gothard to Airolo," showed his 
 condition unmistakably ; and the lonely restlessness of 
 the last, disappointing years were, for all his friends, a 
 melancholy ending to a brilliant career. 
 
 "This year (1851) he has no picture on the walls of 
 the Academy ; and the Times of May 3rd says, ' We miss 
 those works of INSPIRATION ! ' 
 
 " We miss ! Who misses ? The populace of England 
 rolls by to weary itself in the great bazaar of Kensington, 
 little thinking that a day will come when those veiled 
 vestals and prancing amazons, and goodly merchandise of 
 precious stones and gold, will all be forgotten as though 
 they had not been ; but that the light which has faded
 
 154 THE LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
 from the walls of the Academy is one which a million 
 Koh-i-noors could not re-kindle; and that the year 1851 
 will, in the far future, be remembered less for what it has 
 displayed, than for what it has withdrawn." 
 
 Too truly prophesied ; for Turner was in his last illness, 
 hiding like a wild animal, wounded to death. On December 
 the ipth, in the evening, the sunset shone upon his dis- 
 honoured corpse through the chamber window in Chelsea. 
 Just so it shone upon another deathbed, for the sainted 
 maid of Florence prefiguring, they said, the aureole. 
 
 "The Sun is God, my dear," Turner had told his 
 housekeeper. Was there no " healing in his wings " for the 
 fallen hero ? or was that reserved only for the spotless 
 soul of Ida ? Were there still other sheep ? stones which 
 the builders of sheepfolds rejected, all manner of precious 
 stones ?
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 PRE-RAPHAELITISM. 
 
 (1851-1853.) 
 
 " Don't go yet ! Are you aware that there will be a torch-race this evening on 
 horseback, to the glory of Artemis ? 
 
 ' ' That is entirely new to me, said Socrates. And do you mean that they will 
 really have torches, and pass them from rider to rider in the race ? " Plato, Rep. 
 328. 
 
 r I S HE Academy-critic of the Times, in May 1851, who 
 J- missed " those works of inspiration," as Ruskin had 
 at last taught him to call Turner's pictures, the acknow- 
 ledged mouthpiece of public opinion found consolation in 
 castigating a school of young artists who had " unfortu- 
 nately become notorious by addicting themselves to an 
 antiquated style and an affected simplicity in painting. . . . 
 We can extend no toleration to a mere servile imitation 
 of the cramped style, false perspective, and crude colour 
 of remote antiquity. We want not to see what Fuseli 
 termed drapery < snapped instead of folded ' ; faces bloated 
 into apoplexy, or extenuated into skeletons ; colour 
 borrowed from the jars in a druggist's shop, and expression 
 forced into caricature. . . . That morbid infatuation which 
 sacrifices truth, beauty, and genuine feeling to mere eccen- 
 tricity, deserves no quarter at the hand of the public." 
 " Certainly, without doubt," said Henny-penny, Cocky-
 
 156 THE LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
 locky, and the whole farm-yard. And observe how cleverly 
 the vox populi had learnt to quack in the cadences of 
 Modern Painters, Vol. II., and the Seven Lamps : " We 
 want not to see," and so forth, quoth he ; and re-reading 
 his proof, beheld, if I mistake not, by the eye of con- 
 templative imagination, or was it associative? these 
 distinctions being somewhat difficult, beheld Mr. Ruskin's 
 graceful wave of the hand " Thank you, my Dear Sir, 
 for your noble. . . ." 
 
 Mr. Ruskin read his Times that May morning at Park 
 Street ; smiled at " his own thunder " in the Thunderer's 
 hands ; remembered that last year he had not quite approved 
 of the obviously Popish tendency, as he took it, of a picture 
 called " Ecce Ancilla Domini " by an Italian of the name 
 of Rossetti ; nor of the Holy Family in the Carpenter's 
 Shop by a Frenchman ? called Millais ; nor of the thin 
 end of the Puseyite wedge in the " Early Christian 
 Missionary" signed W. H. Hunt, no relative of his old 
 friend of the Water-colour Society. The year before he 
 had been abroad ; all these months he had been closely 
 kept to his SJieepfolds and Stones of Venice ; and now he 
 was correcting the proofs of Modern Painters, Vol. I., as 
 thus : 
 
 "Chapter the last: section 21. T/te duty and after 
 privileges of all students . . . Go to Nature in all singleness 
 of heart, and walk with her laboriously and trustingly, 
 having no other thoughts but how best to penetrate her 
 meaning, and remember her instruction ; rejecting nothing, 
 selecting nothing, and scorning nothing ; believing all 
 things to be right and good, and rejoicing always in the 
 truth." 
 
 He went round to the Academy to look at the false
 
 PRE-RAPHAELITISM. 157 
 
 perspective, and snapped draperies, and infatuated untruth, 
 and eccentric ugliness. Yes ; the faces were ugly : Millais' 
 Mariana was a piece of idolatrous Papistry, and there was 
 a mistake in the perspective. Collins' Convent Thoughts 
 more Popery ; but very careful, the tadpole " too small 
 for its age " ; but what studies of plants ! And there was 
 his own Alisma Plantago, which he had been drawing for 
 Stones of Venice (vol. L, plate 7) and describing : " the lines 
 through its body, which are of peculiar beauty, mark the 
 different expansions of its fibres, and are, I think, exactly 
 the same as those which would be traced by the currents 
 of a river entering a lake of the shape of the leaf, at the 
 end where the stalk is, and passing out at its point." 
 Curvature was one of the special subjects of Mr. Ruskin, 
 the one he found most neglected by ordinary artists. The 
 Alisma was a test of observation and draughtsmanship. 
 He had never seen it so thoroughly or so well drawn, and 
 heartily wished the study were his. 
 
 Looking again at the other works of the school, he 
 found that the one mistake in the Mariana was the only 
 error in perspective in the whole series of pictures ; which 
 could not be said of any twelve works, containing archi- 
 tecture, by popular artists in the exhibition } and that, as 
 studies both of drapery and of every other minor detail, 
 there had been nothing in art so earnest or so complete 
 as these pictures since the days of Albert Diirer. 
 
 He went home, and wrote his verdict in a letter to the 
 Times, and after farther examination of Hunt's "Two 
 Gentlemen of Verona " and Millais' " Return of the Dove " 
 wrote again, pointing out beauties, and indications of power 
 in conception, and observation of nature, and handling, 
 where at first he, like the rest of the public, had been
 
 158 THE LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
 repelled by the wilful ugliness of the faces. Meanwhile the 
 Pre-Raphaelites wrote to tell him that they were neither 
 Papists nor Puseyites. The day after his second letter was 
 published he received an ill-spelt missive, anonymously 
 abusing them. This was the sort of thing to interest his 
 love of poetical justice. He made the acquaintance of 
 several of the Brethren. " Charley " Collins, as his friends 
 affectionately called him, was the son of a respected R.A., 
 and the brother of Wilkie Collins ; himself afterwards the 
 author of a delightful book of travel in France, A Cruise 
 upon Wheels.' Mr. Millais turned out to be the most 
 gifted, charming and handsome of young artists. Mr. 
 Holman Hunt was already a Ruskin-reader, serious and 
 earnest .in his religious nature as in his painting. 
 
 The Pre-Raphaelites were not, originally, Mr. Ruskin's 
 pupils, nor was their movement, directly, of his creation. 
 But it was the outcome of a general tendency which he, 
 more than any man, had helped to start ; and it was the 
 fulfilment, though in a way he had not intended, of his 
 wishes. His advice to go to nature, selecting nothing, 
 rejecting nothing and scorning nothing, had been offered 
 to landscape students, and it had involved the acceptance 
 of Turner as their great exemplar and ultimate standard. 
 It was beginning to be accepted by many, but with timidity 
 and modifications ; and, to indulge for a moment in the 
 " might have been," if the Pre-Raphaelite revolution had 
 not happened, a school of modern landscape, naturalistic 
 on the one hand, idealistic and poetical on the other, would 
 probably have developed constitutionally, so to speak ; with 
 Mr. Ruskin as its prophet and Turner as its forerunner, a 
 school which would have been as truly national as the 
 great school of portraiture had been, and as representative
 
 PRE-RAPHAELITISM. 1 59 
 
 in one direction of the spirit of the age, as the sixteenth- 
 century Venetians. 
 
 But history does not behave so reasonably. There are 
 more wheels in the machine than we can count, " cycle on 
 epicycle," not to hint at cometary orbits unknown to the 
 almanac. The naturalistic movement, which had engaged 
 Mr. Ruskin's whole attention at his start, was only one 
 side of the nation's life. The other side was reactionary, 
 leading to Tractarianism in some, in others to historical 
 research, to Gothic revivals in architecture and painting 
 and poetry ; in all cases betraying itself in the harking 
 back to bygones, rather than in progressist modernism. 
 The lower class of minds took one side or the other, and 
 became merely radical or materialist, and Puseyite or roman- 
 tic, as their sympathies led them. But the problem, to a 
 thinker, was to mediate between these opposing tendencies ; 
 to find the higher term that embraced them both ; to unite 
 the two aims without compromise. And in proportion as 
 a man was great, he found the problem, with widening 
 issues, there for him to attempt. 
 
 So Mr. Ruskin, who began as a naturalist, was met first 
 by ancient Christian art, and spent his early manhood in 
 dissolving the antithesis between modern English landscape- 
 study and the standpoint of Angelico. No sooner had he 
 succeeded than a new element appeared an element of 
 life, as he perceived, and therefore necessary to accept 
 but at first sight irreconcilable with his arrangement of the 
 world. So he brought it into his scheme, bit by bit : first 
 the naturalism of the Pre-Raphaelites, which he tried to 
 consider the essence of the movement 
 
 But they, too, were attempting the great problem, from 
 their own side, like rival Matterhorn-pioneers : and they
 
 l6o THE LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
 shouted to him, as it were, to leave the arete he was 
 following, and its ups and downs and dizzy descent on 
 either hand, and to join them in their couloir. There the 
 little band toiled together, until some gave up the enter- 
 prise ; some were struck down by the stones that always 
 make a couloir unsafe ; some never struggled out of the 
 narrow chimney. He regained his arl>te, stronger when 
 free from the rope, and safer on the dangerous edge. 
 
 His conversion to Pre-Raphaelitism was none the less 
 sincere because it was sudden, and brought about partly 
 by the personal influence of his new allies. And in re- 
 arranging his art-theory to take them in, he had before his 
 mind rather what he hoped they would become, than what 
 they were. For a time, his influence over them was great ; 
 their first three years were their own ; their next three 
 years were practically his ; and some of them, the weaker 
 brethren, leant upon him until they lost command of their 
 own powers. No artist can afford to use another man's 
 eyes ; still less, another man's brain and heart. Mr. Ruskin, 
 great as an exponent, was in no sense a master of artists. 
 His business was to set up the target, and register the 
 shot : not to sight and aim the guns. And if he cheered 
 on the men who, he believed, were the best of the time, it 
 did not follow that he should be saddled with the responsi- 
 bility of directing them. In so far as he meddled with it, 
 he brought about their defeat. I do not think he would 
 have been defeated as leader of a party which was truly 
 his own. The Pre-Raphaelites were not his men ; he was 
 not their natural leader. He was like some good knight 
 generously heading an insurrection, for the sake of fair 
 play. The worse for him, whichever side won ; and his 
 allies would have been wiser to trust to bills and bows.
 
 PRE-RAPHAELITISM. l6l 
 
 The famous pamphlet on Pre-Raphaelitism of August 
 1851 was the apology for his conversion, and a first 
 attempt to reconcile his old principles with his new profes- 
 sions. He showed that the same motives of Sincerity 
 impelled both the Pre-Raphaelite Brethren and Turner, 
 and in a degree, men so different as Prout, old Hunt and 
 Lewis. All these were opposed to the Academical School 
 who worked by rule of thumb ; and they differed among 
 one another only in differences of physical power and 
 moral aim. Which was all perfectly true, and much deeper 
 and truer insight than the cheap criticism which could not 
 see beyond superficial differences, or the fossil theories of 
 the old school, defended in the pamphlet war by men like 
 Rippingille, his old Editor, a useful populariser of art, but 
 not a philosophic thinker. But Pre-Raphaelitism was an 
 unstable compound ; liable to explode upon the experi- 
 menter ; and its component parts to return to their old 
 antithesis of crude naturalism on the one hand and affec- 
 tation, whether of piety or poetry or simple reactionary 
 antiquarianism, on the other. And that Mr. Ruskin did 
 not then foresee. All he knew was that, just when he was 
 sadly leaving the scene, Turner gone and night coming on, 
 new lights arose. It was really far more noteworthy that 
 Millais and Rossetti and Hunt were men of genius > than 
 that the "principles" they tried to illustrate were sound. 
 And Mr. Ruskin, always safe in his intuitions, divined their 
 power, and generously applauded the dexterous troop in 
 their unexpected Lampadephoria. 
 
 Indirectly he found his reward. For, like Socrates in 
 the dialogue, by joining in the festival he found youths to 
 discourse with, and with them gradually evolved his own 
 Republic, the ideal of life which is his real contribution to 
 
 VOL. I. ii
 
 162 THE LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
 humanity: ..." What good have his writings done us ? " 
 Hitherto they had been for our enjoyment ; or, like the 
 Seven Lamps, vague outcries ; or, like the Slmpfolds, tenta- 
 tive ideals. In the later volumes of Stones of Venice we 
 find distinct aims prefigured. 
 
 Immediately after finishing the pamphlet on Pre-Raphael- 
 itism, he left for the Continent with his wife and a friend, 
 the Rev. Daniel Moore ; spent a fortnight in his beloved 
 Savoy ; and then crossed the Alps with Mr. Newton. On 
 the first of September he was at Venice again, for a final 
 spell of labour on the palaces and churches. He tells the 
 story of his ten months' stay in a letter to his venerable 
 friend Rogers the poet, dated 23rd June (1852). 
 
 " I was out of health and out of heart when I first got 
 here. There came much painful news from home,* and 
 then such a determined course of bad weather, and every 
 other kind of annoyance, that I never was in a temper fit to 
 write to any one ; the worst of it was that I lost all feeling 
 of Venice, and this was the reason both of my not writing 
 to you and of my thinking of you so often. For whenever 
 I found myself getting utterly hard -and indifferent, I 
 used to read over a little bit of the ' Venice ' in the ' Italy,' 
 and it put me always into the right tone of thought 
 again, and for this I cannot be enough grateful to you. 
 For though I believe that in the summer, when Venice is 
 indeed lovely, when pomegranate blossoms hang over every 
 garden-wall, and green sunlight shoots through every wave, 
 custom will not destroy, or even weaken, the impression 
 conveyed at first ; it is far otherwise in the length and bitter- 
 ness of the Venetian winters. Fighting with frosty winds 
 
 * Among other things, the deaths of Turner in December, and of 
 Prout in February.
 
 PRE-RAPHAELITISM. 163 
 
 at every turn of the canals takes away all the old feeling 
 of peace and stillness ; the protracted cold makes the dash 
 of the water on the walls a sound of simple discomfort, 
 and some wild and dark day in February one starts to 
 find oneself actually balancing in one's mind the relative 
 advantages of land and water carriage, comparing the Canal 
 with Piccadilly, and even hesitating whether for the rest 
 of one's life one would rather have a gondola within call 
 or a hansom. When I used to get into this humour I 
 always had recourse to those lines of yours : 
 
 ' The sea is in the broad, the narrow streets, 
 Ebbing and flowing,' etc. ; 
 
 and they did me good service for many a day ; but at last 
 a time came when the sea was not in the narrow streets, 
 and was always ebbing and not flowing ; and one day, 
 when I found just a foot and a half of muddy water left 
 under the Bridge of Sighs, and ran aground in the Grand 
 Canal as I was- going home, I was obliged to give the 
 canals up. I have never recovered the feeling of them." 
 He then goes on to lament the decay of Venice, the 
 idleness and the dissipation of the populace, the lottery- 
 gambling ; and to forebode the "destruction of old buildings 
 and erection of new " changing the place " into a modern 
 town a bad imitation of Paris." Better than that he 
 thinks would be utter neglect ; St. Mark's Place would 
 again be, what it was in the early ages, a green field, and 
 the front of the Ducal Palace and the marble shafts of 
 St. Mark's would be rooted in wild violets and wreathed 
 with vines. " She will be beautiful again then, and I 
 could almost wish that the time might come quickly, were 
 it not that so many noble pictures must be destroyed
 
 164 THE LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
 first. ... I love Venetian pictures more and more, and 
 wonder at them every day with greater wonder ; compared 
 with all other paintings they are so easy, so instructive, so 
 natural ; everything that the men of other schools did by 
 rule and called composition, done here by instinct and only 
 called truth. 
 
 " I don't know when I have envied anybody more than 
 I did the other day the directors and clerks of the Zecca. 
 There they sit at inky deal desks, counting out rolls of 
 money, and curiously weighing the irregular and battered 
 coinage of which Venice boasts ; and just over their heads, 
 occupying the place which in a London counting-house 
 would be occupied by a commercial almanack, a glorious 
 Bonifazio ' Solomon and the Queen of Sheba ' ; and in a 
 less honourable corner three old directors of the Zecca, 
 very mercantile-looking men indeed, counting money also, 
 like the living ones, only a little more living, painted by 
 Tintoret ; not to speak of the scattered Palma Vecchios, 
 and a lovely Benedetto Diana which no one ever looks 
 at. I wonder when the European mind will again awake 
 to the great fact that a noble picture was not painted 
 to be hung, but to be seen ? I only saw these by accident, 
 having been detained in Venice by some obliging person 
 who abstracted some [of his wife's jewels] and brought 
 me thereby into various relations with the respectable 
 body of people who live at the wrong end of the Bridge of 
 Sighs the police, whom, in spite of traditions of terror, I 
 would very willingly have changed for some of those their 
 predecessors whom you have honoured by a note in the 
 Italy. The present police appear to act on exactly 
 contrary principles : yours found the purse and banished 
 the loser ; these don't find the jewels, and won't let me go
 
 PRE-RAPHAELITISM. 165 
 
 away. I am afraid no punishment is appointed in Venetian 
 law for people who steal time." 
 
 Mr. Ruskin returned to England in July 1852, and 
 settled next door to his old home on Herne Hill. He 
 said he could not live any more in Park Street, with 
 a dead brick wall opposite his windows. And so, in the 
 old place where he wrote the first volume of Modern 
 Painters, he finished Stones of Venice, with a thorough 
 account of St. Mark's and the Ducal Palace and other 
 ancient buildings ; a complete catalogue of Tintoret's 
 pictures, the list he had begun in 1845 ; and a history 
 of the successive styles of architecture, Byzantine, Gothic 
 and Renaissance, interweaving illustrations of the human 
 life and character that made the art what it was. 
 
 The kernel of the work was the chapter on the Nature 
 of Gothic ; in which he showed, more distinctly than in 
 the Seven Lamps, and connected with a wider range of 
 thought, suggested by Pre-Raphaelitism, the great doctrine 
 that art cannot be produced except by artists ; that archi- 
 tecture, in so far as it is an art, does not mean the 
 mechanical execution, by unintelligent workmen, of vapid 
 working-drawings from an architect's office; that, just as 
 Socrates postponed the day of justice until philosophers 
 should be kings and kings philosophers, so Ruskin post- 
 poned the reign of art until workmen should be artists, 
 and artists workmen. 
 
 A phrase ? A formula ? As much a phrase as Napoleon's 
 carriere ouverte aux talens. As much a formula as Luther's 
 justification by faith. It was at length the frontier of his 
 battle-field reached ; a real object in life, a motive of action 
 attained ; a text to teach from, a creed to hold by. And 
 out of that idea the whole of his doctrine could be evolved,
 
 166 THE LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
 with all its safeguardings and widening vistas. For if the 
 workman must be made an artist he must have the experi- 
 ence, the feelings of an artist, as well as the skill : and 
 that involves every circumstance of education and oppor- 
 tunity which may make for his truest well-being. And 
 when Mr. Ruskin came to examine into this subject 
 practically, he found that mere drawing-schools and 
 charitable efforts could not make an artist out of a town 
 mechanic or a country bumpkin ; far wider questions 
 were complicated with this of art nothing short of the 
 fundamental principles of human intercourse and social 
 economy. Now for the first time, after much sinking of 
 trial-shafts, he had reached the true ore of thought, in 
 the deep-lying strata ; and the working of his mine was 
 begun. As we explore the scene of his labours, we can 
 pick out samples from the heaps that mark his progress, 
 and roughly assay them and partly reckon up the results. 
 But all the while we must remember that the results are 
 not here before us : they have gone out into the world ; 
 they are in circulation, current coin of the realm of modern 
 life ; won, or spent, gambled for, or bribed with ; hoarded, 
 or wasted ; until the mint mark, often, has been worn away, 
 or the image and superscription wilfully defaced. 
 
 But that matters little to the man who found the gold ; 
 and it would matter less, could he see that his wealth and 
 his work are being worthily inherited. It was that chapter 
 on the Nature of Gothic that served for the first message 
 of peace, as we shall hear, to the labouring classes in the 
 beginning of the campaign of conciliation ; and it is not 
 without curious significance that our greatest artist-work- 
 man, whom, with all his circle and their achievements 
 and aspirations, these labours of Mr. Ruskin and his
 
 PRE-RAPHAELITISM. 167 
 
 Pre-Raphaelite friends created William Morris should 
 now have chosen this chapter to reproduce, for love of it, 
 and of the art in which he has enshrined it. 
 
 " And do you mean, said Socrates, that they will be 
 Light-bearers ; and hand the light on from man to man 
 in the race ? Yes, said War-duke ; do stay with us, and 
 don't sulk. And Bright-eyes, It seems, he said, you must 
 wait."
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE EDINBURGH LECTURES. 
 
 (1853-1854.) 
 
 " The general history of art and literature shows that the highest achievements 
 of the human mind are, as a rule, not favourably received at first." Schopenhauer 
 (Lebensweisheit). 
 
 BY the end of July 1853 Stones of Venice was finished, 
 as well as a description of Giotto's works at Padua, 
 written j for the Arundel Society. The social duties of the 
 season were over ; and Mr. Ruskin took a cottage in 
 Glenfinlas, where to spend a well-earned holiday. He 
 invited Mr. Millais, by this time an intimate and heartily 
 admired friend, to go down into Scotland with him for the 
 summer's rest, such rest as two men of energy and talent 
 take, in the change of scene without giving up the habit 
 of work. Mr. Ruskin devoted himself first to foreground 
 studies, and made careful drawings of rock-detail ; and 
 then, being invited to give a course of lectures before the 
 Philosophical Society of Edinburgh, he was soon busy 
 writing once more, and preparing the cartoon-sketches, 
 "diagrams" as he calls them, to illustrate his subjects. 
 Dr. Acland had joined the party ; and one day, in the 
 ravine, it is said that he asked Millais to sketch their host 
 as he stood contemplatively on the rocks, with the torrent 
 thundering beside him. The sketch was produced at a 
 
 168
 
 THE EDINBURGH LECTURES. 169 
 
 sitting ; and, with additional work in the following winter, 
 became the well-known portrait now at Oxford in the 
 possession -of Sir Henry Acland, much the best likeness of 
 this early period. 
 
 Another portrait of Mr. Ruskin, not so highly finished, 
 but cleverly sketched, was painted in words by one of 
 his audience at Edinburgh on November ist, when he 
 gave the opening lecture of his course, his first appearance 
 on the platform. The account is extracted from the 
 Edinburgh Guardian of November I9th, 1853 : 
 
 " Before you can see the lecturer, however, you must 
 get into the hall, and that is not an easy matter, for, long 
 before the doors are opened, the fortunate holders of season 
 tickets begin to assemble, so that the crowd not only fills 
 the passage, but occupies the pavement in front of the 
 entrance and overflows into the road. At length the doors 
 open, and you are carried through the passage into the hall, 
 where you take up, of course, the best available position for 
 seeing and hearing. . . . After waiting a weary time . . . 
 the door by the side of the platform opens, and a thin 
 gentleman with light hair, a stiff white cravat, dark over- 
 coat with velvet collar, walking, too, with a slight stoop, 
 goes up to the desk, and looking round with a self-possessed 
 and somewhat formal air, proceeds to take off his great- 
 coat, revealing thereby, in addition to the orthodox white 
 cravat, the most orthodox of white waistcoats. . . . ' Dark 
 hair, pale face, and massive marble brow that is my ideal 
 of Mr. Ruskin,' said a young lady near us. This proved 
 to be quite a fancy portrait, as unlike the reality as could 
 well be imagined. Mr. Ruskin has light sand-coloured hair ; 
 his face is more red than pale ; the mouth well cut, with 
 a good deal of decision in its curve, though somewhat
 
 I/O THE LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
 wanting in sustained dignity and strength ; an aquiline 
 nose ; his forehead by no means broad or massive, but the 
 brows full and well bound together ; the eye we could 
 not see, in consequence of the shadows that fell upon his 
 countenance from the lights overhead, but we are sure that 
 the poetry and passion we looked for almost in vain in 
 other features must be concentrated there. After sitting 
 for a moment or two, and glancing round at the sheets on 
 the wall as he takes off his gloves, he rises, and leaning 
 slightly over the desk, with his hands folded across, begins 
 at once, ' You are proud of your good city of Edinburgh, ' 
 etc. 
 
 " And now for the style of the lecture. Properly 
 speaking, there were two styles essentially distinct, and 
 not well blended, a speaking and a writing style ; the 
 former colloquial and spoken off-hand ; the latter rhetorical 
 and carefully read in quite a different voice, we had 
 almost said intoned. . . . His elocution is peculiar ; he has 
 a difficulty in sounding the letter ' r ' ; and there is a 
 peculiar tone in the rising and falling of his voice at 
 measured intervals, in a way scarcely ever heard, except 
 in the public lection of the service appointed to be read in 
 churches. These are the two things with which, perhaps, 
 you are most surprised, his dress and manner of speaking 
 both of which (the white waistcoat notwithstanding) are 
 eminently clerical. You naturally expect, in one so in- 
 dependent, a manner free from conventional restraint, and 
 an utterance, whatever may be the power of voice, at least 
 expressive of a strong individuality ; and you find instead 
 a Christ Church man of ten years' standing, who has not- 
 yet taken orders ; his dress and manner derived from his 
 college tutor, and his elocution from the chapel-reader."
 
 THE EDINBURGH LECTURES. I?! 
 
 The lectures were a summing-up, in popular form, of 
 the chief ;topics of Mr. Ruskin's thought during the last 
 two years. The first stated, with more decision and warmth 
 than part of his audience approved, or than would have 
 been expected from the impression he made upon the 
 writer in the Guardian, his plea for the Gothic Revival, for 
 the use of Gothic as a domestic style. He tried to show 
 by the analogy of natural forms that the Gothic arch and 
 gable were in themselves more beautiful, and more logical 
 in construction, than the horizontal lintel and low pediment 
 of the ordinary Renaissance-Classic then in vogue. The 
 next lecture, given three days later, went on to contrast 
 the wealth of ornament in mediaeval buildings with the 
 poor survivals of conventionalised patterns which did duty 
 for decoration in nineteenth- century " Greek " architecture ; 
 and he raised a laugh by comparing a typical stonemason's 
 lion with a real tiger's head, drawn in the Edinburgh 
 zoological gardens by Mr. Millais. He showed how a 
 gradual Gothicising of the common dwelling-house was 
 possible, by introducing a porch here and an oriel window 
 there, piece by piece, as indeed had been done in Venice. 
 And he pointed out that this kind of work would give 
 opportunities for freer and more artistic workmanship ; it 
 would be an education in itself, and raise the builder's 
 man from a mere mechanical drudge into an intelligent 
 and interested craftsman. 
 
 The last two lectures, on November I5th and i8th, were 
 on Painting ; briefly reviewing the history of landscape and 
 the life and aims of Turner ; and, finally, Christian art and 
 Sincerity in imagination, which was now put forth as the 
 guiding principle of Pre-Raphaelitism. The proud possessor 
 of a cut and dry creed, and such, in spite of much talk
 
 1/2 THE LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
 about progress, we have always with us, will be stumbled 
 by this new milestone in Mr. Ruskin's intellectual pilgrimage. 
 But no educated reader, or writer, would accompany the 
 rubbing of his shins with quite so unrestrained an outcry 
 as was possible in the younger days of the century. It is 
 most difficult to understand the violence of language the 
 fanaticism of partisanship, which were common, then, in 
 controversies about poor innocent Art : it would be im- 
 possible to understand them, unless one knew that the 
 public was very eager after pictures and architecture, 
 but very ill-informed about them : and that, consequently, 
 certain " existing interests " existed beautifully on the very 
 darkness and decay of the world they adorned, like orchids 
 in the Amazonian woods. To let in the light was to cut 
 at the roots of these pretty parasites ; and fear for their 
 pets, if not for their own arbours, caused men of position 
 and education, writers in the best newspapers and magazines, 
 to use terms of childlike passion, to lose their critical 
 coolheadedness, in a way which the respectable editor of 
 to-day would rule out of order. 
 
 For instance, while these lectures were being prepared, 
 the Rev. Edward Young, M.A., gave a lecture at Bristol on 
 the Pre-Raphaelites, in which he arraigned their arrogance, 
 bigotry, and destructiveness ; labelled them unwliolesome 
 and ungenerous ; declared that they were pandering to the 
 downward tendencies of tJte age, and cried, " Woe, woe, woe, 
 to ' exceedingly young men of stubborn instincts ' ' a 
 quotation, without the context, from Mr. Ruskin, the Woe, 
 woe, woe, being his own, of course ; rather profane, for a 
 clergyman. 
 
 This lecture, when printed, the Athenceum reviewed at 
 length, as a serious contribution to literature. It began by
 
 THE EDINBURGH LECTURES. 1/3 
 
 calling Mr. Young sensible and eloquent ; after a paragraph 
 or two it doubted his fairness and impartiality, and " thought 
 he went rather far." For its own part, it objected to the 
 antiquarian spirit of the age : " What do we know of Tubal 
 Cain or Nimrod, of Assur or Menes? We cannot unravel 
 the Pyramid mystery, and we know not who built them. 
 So must it ever be." That was the Athencemris notion of 
 archaeology and of impartiality : and so frank a confession 
 of onesidedness of adhesion to the utilitarian eclaircisse- 
 ment conveniently relieves us of the trouble of analysing 
 its authority, forty years ago. 
 
 When the Lectures on Architecture and Painting were 
 published, the Atlienceum showed its impartiality thus : 
 " Mr. Ruskin has outdone himself in these lectures. Clever- 
 ness and absurdity deep insight in one direction, stone 
 blindness in every other vigour and weakness power of 
 explanation and unfairness of statement are found on 
 every page, from frontispiece to finis. The absence of 
 logic has seldom been so conspicuously paraded. . . . Why 
 are these heads placed in this conspicuous contrast ? To 
 prove that the Greeks did not copy from nature. See 
 the absurdity here involved. A Greek lion is not like a 
 Scotch tiger ; hence, Greek art is not natural ! " 
 
 And so on, for eleven columns ; for though Ruskin is 
 of course absurd, he is an uncommonly interesting and 
 plausible fellow, and we can't afford to miss the chance of 
 sprinkling his name about our pages. Indeed, however, 
 there were weak points in these lectures, considered as an 
 argumentative essay. They were not the unfolding of the 
 train of thought by which Mr. Ruskin reached his con- 
 clusions : he is not a good exponent of such trains of 
 thought, and continually does himself injustice by stating the
 
 1/4 THE LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
 conclusion without the premisses ; though now and then he 
 works out a lesson in analysis as nobody else can. They 
 were written under peculiar circumstances of domestic 
 anxiety which would have completely paralysed another 
 man : the marvel is that he was able to deliver these 
 lectures at all, "looking round with a self-possessed air." 
 And while they sum up his standpoint at the time, they 
 must have been wholly unintelligible to any who had not 
 read his previous works. Perhaps, too, it was hasty of 
 the writer to suppose that the modern Scotch have John 
 Knox's respect for the authority of the Bible : or that the 
 slight suggestive touches, with which he sketched contrast- 
 ing ages of thought and schools of art, would be easily 
 recognised and read by people who, in the surprise of his 
 sudden raid, so far forgot their schooling as to declare, with 
 the AtJienczum, that the Middle Ages were characterised by 
 cannibalism and obscenity, and that Dante seldom drew 
 an image from nature ; who, in the act of defending Greek 
 art against Ruskin the Goth, had never heard of the im- 
 portant Stele of Aristion, known as "The Soldier of 
 Marathon " ; who, as judges of modern art, found that 
 " water-colour painting can scarcely satisfy the mind craving 
 for human action and human passion " ; and " objected to 
 the painting of contemporary history because we have 
 had enough of portraits, and as for modern battles, they 
 are mere affairs of smoke and feathers." 
 
 Why do I rake up these old quarrels? Because the 
 modern Ruskin-reader, innocent of history, is often surprised 
 and pained at indications of bitterness he cannot explain, 
 and suspects some cankering grudge on the author's part, 
 some moral defect which invalidates his judgment and 
 impairs his argument. Whereas the truth is that during
 
 THE EDINBURGH LECTURES. 175 
 
 these ten years (1844-54) Mr. Ruskin had to fight his 
 way against strenuous opposition in certain quarters ; to 
 hear language used against himself and his friends which 
 was to the last degree personal and scurrilous ; to which 
 the humorous petulancies of his own old age, as calling 
 Mr. Goldwin Smith a " goose," and such obiter dicta, were 
 harmless trifling, at the worst. In these earlier times, 
 though he gave many a " smashing blow " to fallacies, he 
 did not render railing for railing : it was measures, not 
 men, that he attacked. Sometimes, of course, the cap 
 fitted one or other head : that could hardly be helped. 
 
 The argumentum ad Jiominem is always illogical : and 
 this was never shown more distinctly than in the discussion 
 which he raised, especially in these lectures, about the 
 relations of art and morality. He did seem to think, up 
 to this time, that a good painter must be what is commonly 
 called a good man. He had not clearly formulated the 
 doctrine of his Oxford Lectures, that art simply reflects the 
 general morality of the race and age, and that it is only 
 indirectly connected with the individual character of the 
 painter ; and t/iat, again, only in ideal, and not in social 
 morality. It was in this opinion that he tried to make 
 Turner's virtues shine ; and rightly, in so far as he was 
 doing justice to a great man whom the world had grossly 
 misunderstood ; rightly, also, as a counterstroke to the 
 vulgar error that proclaims genius to be another name for 
 lunacy, and greatness merely a form of successful cunning. 
 But I venture to think that, if Mr. Ruskin had found time 
 to write Turner's life at full length, thoroughly balancing 
 the different elements in that strange character, and tracing 
 the growth of the man as he had traced the growth of 
 .Venetian art, instead of contenting himself with incomplete
 
 THE LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
 notices in scattered contexts, he would then have defined 
 his views more clearly, to his own great advantage ; and 
 written a noble work, to ours. No doubt he did not wish 
 to interfere with Walter Thornbury's book, then in prepara- 
 tion : he certainly collected a mass of most interesting 
 material, which fully bears out the view he took of Turner's 
 character. 
 
 While staying at Edinburgh Mr. Ruskin met the various 
 celebrities of modern Athens, some of them at the table of 
 his former fellow-traveller in Venice, Mrs. Jameson. One 
 lifelong friendship was begun during this time, with Dr. 
 John Brown, the author of Rab and his Friends and Pet 
 Marjorie^ who corresponded with Mr. Ruskin till his death 
 in 1882, on terms of the greatest affection. 
 
 The next May (1854) the Pre-Raphaelites again needed 
 his defence. Mr. Holman Hunt exhibited the " Light of 
 '' the World " and the " Awakening Conscience," two pictures 
 whose intention was misunderstood by the public, though 
 as serious, as sincere, as the religious paintings of the Campo 
 Santo of Pisa. Mr. Ruskin made them the theme of two 
 more letters to the Times ; mentioning, by the way, the 
 " spurious imitations of Pre-Raphaelite work " which were 
 already becoming common. And on starting for his 
 summer tour on the Continent, he left a new pamphlet for 
 publication on the opening of the Crystal Palace. There 
 had been much rejoicing over the " new style of archi- 
 tecture " in glass and iron, and its purpose as a Palace of 
 Art. Mr. Ruskin who had declined, in the last chapter of 
 the Seven Lamps, to join in the cry for a new style, was 
 not at all ready to accept this as any real artistic advance ; 
 and took the opportunity to plead again for the great 
 buildings of the past, which were being destroyed or
 
 THE EDINBURGH LECTURES. 177 
 
 neglected, while the British public was glorifying its 
 gigantic^greenhouse. The pamphlet practically suggested 
 the establishment of the Society for the preservation of 
 ancient buildings which has since come into operation. 
 Some of the critics made merry over the proposal, not 
 foreseeing how the tide would turn. Others, like the 
 Builder, to the credit of their own sagacity, approved a 
 movement which is now doing good work in England ; and 
 after many years has spread to Italy, as a direct result of 
 Mr. Ruskin's work. His pupil, Signor Giacomo Boni, after 
 recommending himself in Venice as the practical exponent 
 of these principles at the Ducal Palace, has lately been 
 appointed by the Government to the post of Director of 
 the monuments of Italy, already with the happiest results. 
 And so, in spite of opposition year by year diminishing, 
 and withdrawing itself into the lower class of journalism, 
 Mr. Ruskin's work went on, until he was practically 
 acknowledged to be the leading authority upon matters of 
 art almost the dictator of taste. Pre-Raphaelitism won a 
 complete victory ; Gothic forms were soon introduced into 
 domestic architecture ; Turner became recognised as the 
 greatest of all landscapists ; art-education was extended 
 to the masses. And yet Mr. Ruskin was not satisfied. 
 What more could he want? 
 
 VOL. I. 12
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE WORKING MEN'S COLLEGE. 
 
 (1854-1855.) 
 
 " Sighing, I turned at last to win 
 Once more the London dirt and din." 
 
 Rossetti. 
 
 ONE is sometimes called upon to sympathise with 
 friends at a loss for a subject. Form, we have learnt, 
 makes the artist ; the gifts of prophecy, we hear, have been 
 withdrawn ; and there comes from me abodes of talent a 
 bitter cry of " no work to do " no interests, no excitements, 
 no burning question to illustrate, no neglected truth to 
 teach, no message to deliver. "The earth falls asunder, 
 being old." With Mr. Ruskin it was not so. Time was, 
 at the age of twelve, in a languid mood, he versified the 
 situation in a poem on Nothing ; but he does not seem to 
 have needed to do so again. Sometimes he has repeated 
 himself, but in a general way every lecture he gave was a 
 new lecture, every sketch he made was a fresh conception ; 
 and no sooner had he finished one book than he was busy 
 on another, like a wine-treader toiling to keep the grapes 
 under. 
 
 This summer of 1854 he projected a study of Swiss 
 history : to tell the tale of six chief towns Geneva, 
 
 178
 
 THE WORKING MEN'S COLLEGE. 179 
 
 Fribourg, Basle, Thun, Baden and Schaffhausen, to which 
 in 1858 he added Rheinfelden and Bellinzona. He 
 intended to illustrate the work with pictures of the places 
 described. He began with his drawing of Thun, a large 
 bird's-eye view of the town with its river and bridges, 
 roofs and towers, all exquisitely defined with the pen, and 
 broadly coloured in fluctuating tints that seem to melt 
 always into the same aerial blue ; the blue, high up the 
 picture, beyond the plain, deepening into distant mountains. 
 Suppose a Whistler etching and a Whistler colour-sketch 
 combined upon one paper, and you form an idea of the 
 style of this series : except that Mr. Ruskin's work, being 
 calculated for book-illustration, and not for decoration, can 
 only be seen in the hand, and totally loses its effect by hang- 
 ing especially by exhibition hanging. But the delicate 
 detail and studied use of the line are there, together with a 
 calculated unity of effect and balance of colour which by 
 1858 had begun to degenerate into a mannered purple. 
 
 But his father wanted to see Modern Painters com- 
 pleted ; and so he began his third volume at Vevey, with 
 the discussion of the grand style, in which he at last broke 
 loose from Reynolds, as he was bound to do, after his 
 study of Pre-Raphaelitism, and all the varied experiences 
 of the last ten years. The lesson of the Tulse Hill ivy had 
 been brought home to him in many ways : he had found 
 it to be more and more true that Nature is, after all, the 
 criterion of art, and that the greatest painters were always 
 those whose aim, so far as they were conscious of an aim, 
 was to take fact for their starting-point. Idealism, beauty, 
 imagination, and the rest, though necessary to art, could 
 not, he felt, be made the object of study ; they were the 
 gift of heredity, of circumstances, of national aspirations
 
 I SO THE LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
 and virtues ; not to be produced by the best of rules, or 
 achieved by the best of intentions. 
 
 What his own view of his own work was can be gathered 
 from a letter to an Edinburgh student written on August 
 6th, 1854: " I am sure I never said anything to dissuade 
 you from trying to excel or to do great things. I only 
 wanted you to be sure that your efforts were made with 
 a substantial basis, so that just in the moment of push 
 your footing might not give way beneath you ; and also 
 I wanted you to feel that long and steady effort made in 
 a contented way does more than violent effort made from 
 some strong motive or under some enthusiastic impulse. 
 And I repeat for of this I am perfectly sure that the 
 best things are only to be done in this way. It is very 
 difficult thoroughly to understand the difference between 
 indolence and reserve of strength, between apathy and 
 severity, between palsy and patience ; but there is all the 
 difference in the world ; and nearly as many men are 
 ruined by inconsiderate exertions as by idleness itself. To 
 do as much as you can heartily and happily do each day 
 in a well-determined direction, with a view to far-off 
 results, with present enjoyment of one's work, is the only 
 proper, the only essentially profitable way." 
 
 This habit of great industry not only enabled Mr. 
 Ruskin to get through a vast amount of work, but it 
 helped him over times of trouble, of which his readers and 
 acquaintances, for the most part, had little idea. To them 
 he appeared as one of those deities of Epicurus, sipping 
 his nectar and hurling his thunderbolts, or, when it pleased 
 him, showering the sunshine of his eloquence upon 
 delighted crowds. He had wealth and fame, the converse 
 of wit and genius ; the delight of travel and intense
 
 THE WORKING MEN'S COLLEGE. l8l 
 
 appreciation of all the pleasures that travelling afforded. 
 The fancy of the outside public pictured him in the 
 possession of rare works of art, of admiring friends, of a 
 beautiful wife. They did not know, as we do, the strange 
 ill-omened circumstances of his marriage ; they had not 
 followed him about, as we have, from place to place, and 
 seen him in continual suffering and struggle of mind and 
 body ; they could not guess, as the thoughtful reader can, 
 the effort needed on his part to do what he believed to be 
 his duty toward a wife whose affection he earnestly sought, 
 but whose tastes were discordant with his ; nor, on the 
 other hand, the disappointment and disillusioning of a 
 young girl who found herself married, by parental arrange- 
 ment, to a man with whom she had nothing in common ; 
 in habits of thought and life, though not so much in years, 
 her senior ; taking " small notice, or austerely," of the 
 gayer world she preferred, " his mind half-buried in some 
 weightier argument, or fancy-borne perhaps upon the rise 
 and long roll " of his periods. And his readers and the 
 public were intensely puzzled when she left him. 
 
 To his acquaintances, however, it was no great surprise, 
 though, with one exception, they took his part, and fully 
 exonerated him from blame. He, with his consciousness 
 of having fulfilled all the obligations he had undertaken, 
 and with an old-fashioned delicacy and chivalry which 
 revolted alike from explanation and from recrimination, 
 set up no defence, brought no counter-charges, and pre- 
 ferred to let gossip do its worst. It was only the other 
 day that a public lecturer, who had quoted a passage 
 of Mr. Ruskin's, was asked whether it were not true 
 that Ruskin had run away with somebody's wife. That 
 is a very mild version of the lies that, one time or other,
 
 1 82 THE LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
 have been current about him, scandals which have had 
 all the more weight because he never cared to speak 
 out for himself, even to people who believe that they are 
 his intimates. There are many tales whispered behind 
 his back that are perfectly true of somebody else, of 
 different people who have been his friends, at one time 
 or another people whose reputation he values, it seems, 
 more than his own. So much so, that while he gossips 
 about early days and youthful follies, laments the mis- 
 takes of his life and disappointments of his age, he has 
 never let one single word escape to clear his own character 
 at the expense of others. And this is the man they call 
 Egoist. 
 
 In that affair of 1854, how little blame really attached 
 to him can be gathered from the continuance of valued 
 friendships and expressions of esteem on the part of 
 several who would '[have been the most likely to judge him 
 severely if they had found him in the wrong ; such as Miss 
 Mitford, who not only stood firmly by him, but introduced 
 him to her friends the Brownings. Mrs. Browning wrote, 
 early in 1855, "We went to Denmark Hill yesterday, to 
 have luncheon with them (Mr. Ruskin and his parents) 
 and see the Turners, which, by the way, are divine. I like 
 Mr. Ruskin very much, and so does Robert : very gentle, 
 yet earnest refined and truthful. I like him very much. 
 We count him one among the valuable acquaintances made 
 this year in England." 
 
 He tells in Prceterita how, about this time, he used to 
 go a good deal into society, and "sometimes, indeed, an 
 incident happened that was amusing or useful to me ; 
 I heard Macaulay spout the first chapter of Isaiah, without 
 understanding a syllable of it ; saw the Bishop of Oxford
 
 THE WORKING MEN'S COLLEGE. 183 
 
 taught by Sir Robert Inglis to drink sherry-cobbler 
 through a straw ; and formed one of the worshipful 
 concourse invited by the Bunsen family, to hear them ' talk 
 Bunsenese ' (Lady Trevelyan), and see them making 
 presents to each other from their family Christmas tree, 
 and private manger of German Magi. But, as a rule, the 
 hours given to the polite circles were an angering penance 
 to me." In the performance of these duties he met, how- 
 ever, Lady Mount Temple, who has always been one 
 of his best and most valued friends. It was through Mr. 
 Cowper Temple that he was introduced to Lord Palmerston 
 not with the least result on either side, in any public 
 expressions of opinion ; for Mr. Ruskin was never made 
 for "practical" or party politics. 
 
 Another friend who stood by him, and perhaps helped 
 him out of himself most effectually by giving him some new 
 work to do, was Frederick Denison Maurice. The whole 
 story of the Working Men's College, and other efforts to 
 get into touch with the labouring classes, must be read 
 in the biography of Maurice by his son, and in such of 
 the literature of the time, like Kingsley's Alton Locke, as 
 reflects the spirit of the enterprise. It was a brave attempt, 
 in an age when such attempts were regarded as mere 
 Quixotism, to redress some of the crying evils of social 
 inequality ; and if it failed of great direct result, it certainly 
 led the way to other attempts to solve the problem of 
 fraternity. It was, at all events, a step towards the carrying 
 out of doctrines which Mr. Ruskin had been preaching 
 the improvement of the intellectual life of the workman. 
 Indeed, his influence was very definitely acknowledged by 
 the fact that Mr. Furnivall (afterwards well known in the 
 New Shakspere and the Browning Societies) printed, and
 
 1 84 THE LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
 distributed to all comers at the opening lecture,* October 
 3Oth, 1854, as a manifesto of the movement, that chapter 
 on the Nature of Gothic from The Stones of Venice. 
 
 Mr. Ruskin took charge of the drawing classes at the 
 college from the commencement, at first single-handed. He 
 attended from November 2nd, on every Thursday evening 
 from 8.30 to 10, until the Thursday before Christmas, when 
 they had their two weeks' vacation. By the beginning of 
 next term he had two allies in his work, one a friend of 
 Maurice's, Mr. Lowes Dickinson, whose portrait of Maurice 
 was mentioned with honour in the Notes on tJie Academy ; 
 his portrait of Kingsley hangs in the hall of the novelist- 
 professor's college at Cambridge. The other was a friend 
 of Mr. Ruskin's. 
 
 Only the reader who has engaged in this form of phil- 
 anthropic labour old-fashioned night-schools, or modern 
 lad's clubs or carving-classes quite understands what it 
 involves, and how difficult it is for an artist or a literary 
 man, after his sedentary day's work, to drag his tired brain 
 and over-excited nerves to a crowded room in some 
 unsavoury neighbourhood, and to endure the noise, the 
 glare, the closeness, and, worst of all, perhaps, the indocility 
 of a class of learners for whom the discipline of the ordinary 
 school or college does not exist ; who have no fear of deans 
 or examiners ; who must be coaxed to work, and humoured 
 into perseverance ; and for whom the lowest rung in the 
 ladder of culture is a giddy elevation. Such work has 
 indeed its reward, but never exceeding great ; and it has 
 
 * At St. Martin's Hall, Long Acre. The classes were begun at 
 31, Red Lion Square. Mr. Ruskin also superintended classes taught by 
 Messrs. Jeffery and E. Cooke at the Working Women's (afterwards 
 Working Men and Women's) College, Queen Square.
 
 THE WORKING MEN'S COLLEGE. 185 
 
 more discouragements and difficulties than one cares to 
 reckon up. 
 
 To people who know their Ruskin only as the elegant 
 theorist of art, sentimental and egotistic, as they will have 
 it, there must be something strange, almost irreconcilable, 
 in his devotion, week after week and year after year, to 
 such a labour. Still more must it astonish them to find 
 the mystic author of the Blessed Damosel, the passionate 
 painter of the Venus Verticordia, working by Ruskin's side 
 in this rough navvy-labour of philanthropy. 
 
 It was early in 1854 that a drawing by D. G. Rossetti 
 was sent to Mr. Ruskin by a friend of the painter's. The 
 critic already knew Millais and Hunt personally, but not 
 Rossetti. He had scarcely noticed his works, as they were 
 not exhibited at the Academy. Mr. Ruskin was just 
 bringing out the Edinburgh Lectures in book-form, and 
 busy with the defence of the Pre-Raphaelites. He wrote 
 kindly, signing himself " yours respectfully," which amused 
 the young painter. He. made acquaintance, and in the 
 appendix to his book placed Rossetti's name with those 
 of Millais and Hunt, especially praising the imaginative 
 power, which he could not fail to observe at once. 
 
 He did more than that. He agreed to buy, up to a 
 certain sum every year, any drawings that Rossetti brought 
 him, at their market price ; and his standard of money- 
 value for works of art has never been niggardly. This sort 
 of help, the encouragement to work, is exactly what makes 
 progress possible to a young and independent artist ; it is 
 better for him than fortuitous exhibition-triumphs much 
 better than the hack-work which many have to undertake, 
 to eke out their livelihood. And the mere fact of being 
 bought by the eminent art-critic was enough to encourage
 
 1 86 THE LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
 others. Rossetti was not a skilful economist, and it was 
 long before his earnings were sufficient to enable him to 
 marry and, as they call it, settle in life ; for which reason the 
 judicious help he thus received was all the more valuable. 
 
 The artist and the critic became close friends. In 1861 
 Rossetti drew a chalk portrait of Mr. Ruskin, afterwards 
 in the possession of Dr. Pocock of Brighton. Rossetti 
 was often at Denmark Hill, and Ruskin used to visit the 
 studio in Chatham Place, near Blackfriars Bridge, where 
 he met Miss Siddall, Rossetti's pupil and model, and 
 afterwards wife, and praised her so that it did her lover's 
 heart good. 
 
 It was there, too, that he first met Mr. Burne-Jones, in 
 1856, and Mr. William Morris and other famous men of the 
 school. There were still other ways in which he helped. In 
 1856 "The Burden of Nineveh" was published anonymously 
 in the Oxford and Cambridge Magazine. Ruskin liked it, 
 and wrote to Rossetti to know who was the author, perhaps 
 not without a suspicion that he was addressing the man 
 who could tell him. Though his Scotch morality did not 
 approve of some phases of Rossetti's work, for instance 
 Jenny \ at which many readers may not be surprised, he 
 tried to get Thackeray, by this time a friend of his, to 
 print Rossetti's poems in the Cornhill ; but in vain. And 
 as editors refused them, he made himself responsible for 
 the cost of their publication, both in the case of the Early 
 Italian Poets, I believe, and also in the case of the first 
 edition of the Poems in 1868. It was only afterwards, 
 when Rossetti gave way to chloral and misanthropy, and 
 became inaccessible to nearly all his old friends, that he 
 and Mr. Ruskin drifted apart. 
 
 So in the Christmas vacation of 1854 this new recruit
 
 THE WORKING MEN'S COLLEGE. 1 87 
 
 was enlisted, and during Lent term 1855 the three teachers 
 worked together every Thursday evening. With the be- 
 ginning of the third term, March 2Qth, the increase of 
 the class made it more convenient to divide their forces. 
 Rossetti thenceforward taught the figure on another night 
 of the week ; while the elementary and landscape class 
 continued to meet on Thursdays under Ruskin and Lowes 
 Dickinson. In 1856 the elementary and landscape class 
 was further divided, Mr. Dickinson taking Tuesday 
 evenings, and Mr. Ruskin continuing the Thursday class, 
 with the help of Mr. William Ward as under-master. 
 There were four terms in the Working Men's College year, 
 the only vacation, except for the fortnight at Christmas, 
 being from the beginning of August to the end of October. 
 Mr. Ruskin did not always attend throughout the summer 
 term, though sometimes his class came down to him into 
 the country to sketch. He kept up the work without 
 other intermission until May 1858, after which the com- 
 pletion of Modern Painters and many lecture -engagements 
 took him away for a time. In the spring of 1860 he was 
 back at his old post for a term ; but after that he dis- 
 continued regular attendance, and went to the Working 
 Men's College only at intervals to give addresses, or in- 
 formal lectures, to students and friends. On such occasions 
 the " drawing-room " or first floor of the house in which 
 the College was held would be always crowded, with an 
 audience who heard the lecturer at his best ; speaking 
 freely among friends, out of a full treasure-house, " things 
 new and old," the accounts of recent travel, lately-dis- 
 covered glories of art, and the growing burden of the 
 prophecy that in those years was beginning to take more 
 definite shape in his mind.
 
 1 88 THE LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
 As a teacher, Mr. Ruskin was most engaging. What is 
 called " personal magnetism," the attraction of a powerful 
 mind and intensely sympathetic manner, he exercised to 
 the highest degree over all with whom he came into 
 personal contact. His enthusiasm for the subject in hand, 
 his obvious devotion to his work, his unselfish readiness to 
 take any trouble over it, his extreme consideration for the 
 feelings of any man, woman or child, high or low, clever 
 or stupid, in his company, his vivacity and humour and 
 imagination, all spent, as the pupil proudly felt, " on little 
 me," made him simply adored. But there was this draw- 
 back, that he imputed to his pupils, in many cases, more 
 talent than they really had ; he thought that because they 
 could make great progress with his help, they might now 
 and then be trusted to walk alone ; and they, too, were 
 sometimes lifted up with pride " in little me " that went 
 before a fall ; and then there was disappointment. He 
 often " talked over their heads," and thought they were 
 following him, when they were being led into misconcep- 
 tions of his aims and their powers : for words, to him, 
 meant things and ideas which only a fully educated mind 
 was likely to grasp. 
 
 His object in the work, as he said before the Royal 
 Commission on National Institutions, was not to make 
 artists^ but to make the workmen better men, to develop 
 their powers and feelings, to educate them, in short. 
 And, in cases where ingrained self-conceit did not make it 
 impossible, he did what he intended. He always has urged 
 young people intending to study art as a profession to 
 enter the Academy Schools, as Turner and the Pre- 
 Raphaelites did, or to take up whatever other serious 
 course of practical discipline was open to them. But he
 
 THE WORKING MEN'S COLLEGE. 189 
 
 held very strongly that everybody could learn drawing, that 
 their eyes could be sharpened and their hands steadied, 
 that they could be taught to appreciate the great works of 
 nature and of art, without wanting to make pictures and 
 to exhibit and sell them. 
 
 It was with this intention that he wrote the Elements 
 of Drawing in 1856, supplemented by the Elements of 
 Perspective in 1859; which, though out of chronological 
 order, may be noticed here as an outcome of his teaching, 
 and a type of it. The Elements of Drawing are taught in 
 three letters addressed to the general amateur ; the first 
 devoted to practice with the point and brush, suggesting 
 various ways of making such drudgery interesting. The 
 methods of Rembrandt's etching and Diirer's woodcut and 
 Turner's mezzotint are illustrated, and applied to natural- 
 istic landscape. In the next letter hints are given for 
 sketching from Nature, especially showing the importance 
 of matching colours, as students are now taught to do 
 in the better schools. For the rest, the methods of old 
 William Hunt are followed, in the use of body-colour, 
 and broken tints. Finally, the laws of Colour and Com- 
 position are analysed not for the sake of teaching how 
 to colour and how to compose, but, as he says again and 
 again, to lead to greater appreciation of good colour and 
 good composition in the works of the masters. 
 
 In spite of the repeated statement that the book was 
 not intended to show a short cut to becoming an artist, 
 it has often been misused and misunderstood ; so much 
 so, that after it had proved its popularity by a sale of 
 8000, the author let it go out of print, intending to 
 supersede it with a more carefully stated code of directions. 
 But the new work, the Laws of Fesole, was never finished ;
 
 I9O THE LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
 and meanwhile the Elements of Drawing remains, if not 
 a standard text-book of Art, a model of method, a type 
 of Object-lessons, of the greatest value to those who wish 
 to substitute a more natural, and more truly educational, 
 method for the old rigid learning by rote and routine. 
 
 The illustrations for the book were characteristic sketches 
 by the author, beautifully cut by his pupil, W. H. Hooper, 
 who was one of a band of engravers and copyists formed 
 by these classes at the Working Men's College. In spite 
 of the intention not to make artists by his teaching, Mr. 
 Ruskin could not prevent some of his pupils from taking 
 up art as a profession ; and those who did became, in 
 their way, first-rate men. George Allen as a mezzotint 
 engraver, Arthur Burgess as a draughtsman and wood- 
 cutter, John Bunney as a painter of architectural detail, 
 E. Cooke as a teacher, William Ward as a facsimile copyist, 
 have all done work whose value deserves acknowledgment, 
 all the more because it has not aimed at popular effect, 
 but at the severe standard of the greater schools. But 
 these men were only the side issue of the Working Men's 
 College enterprise. Its real result was in the proof that 
 the labouring classes could be interested in Art ; that the 
 capacity shown by the Gothic workman had not entirely 
 died out of the nation, in spite of the interregnum, for 
 a full century, of manufacture ; and the experience led Mr. 
 Ruskin forward to wider views on the nature of arts and 
 the duties of philanthropic effort and social economy.
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 " MODERN PAINTERS" CONTINUED. 
 
 (18551856.) 
 
 ' ' Nor feared to follow, in the offence 
 Of false opinion, his own sense 
 Of justice unsubdued." 
 
 Robert, Lord Lytton. 
 
 IT was in the year 1855 that Mr. Ruskin first published 
 Notes on the Royal Academy and other Exhibitions. He 
 had been so often called upon to write his opinion upon 
 Pre-Raphaelite pictures, either privately or to the news- 
 papers, or to mark his friends' catalogues, that he found at 
 last less trouble in printing his notes once for all. The 
 new plan was immediately popular ; three editions of the 
 pamphlet were called for between June ist and July ist. 
 Next year he repeated the Notes, and six editions were 
 sold ; which indicated a great success in those times, when 
 literature was not spread broadcast to the millions, as it is 
 nowadays, and when the reading public was comparatively 
 limited. 
 
 In spite of a dissentient voice here and there, Mr. Ruskin 
 was really by that time recognised as the leading authority 
 upon taste in painting, and he was trusted by a great 
 section of the public, who had not failed to notice how 
 
 191
 
 1 92 THE LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
 completely he and his friends were winning the day. The 
 proof of it was in the fact that they were being imitated 
 on all sides ; Ruskinism in writing and Pre-Raphaelitism 
 in painting were becoming fashionable. Many an artist, 
 who had abused the new-fangled style three years ago, now 
 did his best to learn the trick of it and share the success. 
 It seemed easy : you had only to exaggerate the colour 
 and emphasise the detail, people thought, and you could 
 " do a Millais " ; and if Millais sold, why shouldn't they ? 
 And thus a great mass of imitative rubbish was produced, 
 entirely wanting in the freshness of feeling and sincerity 
 of conception which were the real virtues of the school. 
 
 But at the same time the movement gave rise to a new 
 method of landscape-painting, which was very much to 
 Mr. Ruskin's mind : not based on Turner, and therefore 
 not secured from the failure that all experiments risk ; and 
 yet safe in so far as it kept to honest study of Nature. So 
 that, beside the Pre-Raphaelites proper, with their poetic 
 figure-pieces, the Notes on tJie Academy had to keep watch 
 over the birth of the Naturalist-landscape school, a group 
 of painters who threw overboard the traditions of Turner 
 and Prout, and Constable and Harding, and the rest, just 
 as the Pre-Raphaelite Brethren threw over the Academical 
 masters. For such men their study was their picture ; 
 they devised tents and huts in wild glens and upon waste 
 moors, and spent weeks in elaborating their details directly 
 from nature, instead of painting at home from sketches on 
 the spot. 
 
 This was the fulfilment of Mr. Ruskin's advice to young 
 artists ; and so far as young artists worked in this way, for 
 purposes of study, he encouraged them. But he did not 
 fail to point out that this was not all that could be required
 
 "MODERN PAINTERS" CONTINUED. 193 
 
 of them. Even such a work as Brett's Val d'Aosta, mar- 
 vellous as it was in observation and finish, was only the 
 beginning of a new era, not its consummation. It was not 
 the painting of detail that could make a great artist ; but 
 the knowledge of it, and the masterly use of such know- 
 ledge. A great landscapist would know the facts and 
 effects of nature, just as Tintoret knew the form of the 
 human figure ; and he would treat them with the same 
 freedom, as the means of expressing great ideas, of affording 
 noble grounds for noble emotion, which, as Mr. Ruskin 
 had been writing at Vevey in 1854, was poetry. Mean- 
 while the public and the critic ought to become familiar 
 with the aspects of nature, in order to recognise the differ- 
 ence between the true poetry of painting, and the mere 
 empty sentimentalism which was only the rant and bombast 
 of landscape art. 
 
 With such feelings as these he wrote the third and fourth 
 volumes of Modern Painters, stopped for a time by the 
 unhappy events of the autumn of 1854, but next year 
 resumed, and afterwards interrupted only by a recurrence 
 of his old cough, brought on by the exceptionally cold 
 summer of 1855. He went down to Tunbridge Wells, 
 where his cousin, William Richardson of Perth, was prac- 
 tising as a doctor ; and it was not long before the cough 
 gave way to treatment, and he was as busy as ever. About 
 October of that year he wrote to Carlyle as follows, in a 
 letter printed by Professor C. E. Norton, conveniently 
 summing up his year : 
 
 " Not that I have not been busy and very busy, too. 
 I have written, since May, good six hundred pages, had 
 them rewritten, cut up, corrected, and got fairly ready for 
 press and am going to press with the first of them on 
 
 VOL. I. 13
 
 194 THE LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
 Gunpowder Plot day, with a great hope of disturbing the 
 Public Peace in various directions. Also, I have prepared 
 above thirty drawings for engravers this year, retouched 
 the engravings (generally the worst part of the business), 
 and etched some on steel myself. In the course of the 
 six hundred pages I have had to make various remarks 
 on German Metaphysics, on Poetry, Political Economy, 
 Cookery, Music, Geology, Dress, Agriculture, Horticulture, 
 and Navigation,* all of which subjects I have had to ' read 
 up' accordingly, and this takes time. Moreover, I have 
 had my class of workmen out sketching every week in 
 the fields during the summer ; and have been studying 
 Spanish proverbs with my father's partner, who came over 
 from Spain to see the Great Exhibition. I have also 
 designed and drawn a window for the Museum at Oxford ; 
 and have every now and then had to look over a parcel 
 of five or six new designs for fronts and backs to the said 
 Museum. 
 
 " During my above-mentioned studies of horticulture I 
 became dissatisfied with the Linnaean, Jussieuan, and Every- 
 body-elseian arrangement of plants, and have accordingly 
 arranged a system of my own ; and unbound my botanical 
 book, and rebound it in brighter green, with all the pages 
 through-other, and backside foremost so as to cut off all 
 the old paging numerals ; and am now printing my new 
 arrangement in a legible manner, on interleaved foolscap. 
 I consider this arrangement one of my great achievements 
 of the year. My studies of political economy have in- 
 duced me to think also that nobody knows anything 
 
 * Most of these subjects will be easily recognised in Modern 
 Painters, Vols. III. and IV. The " Navigation " refers to the Harbours 
 of England.
 
 " MODERN PAINTERS " CONTINUED. 195 
 
 about that ; and I am at present engaged in an investiga- 
 tion, on independent principles, of the natures of Money, 
 Rent, and Taxes, in an abstract form which sometimes 
 keeps me awake all night. My studies of German meta- 
 physics have also induced me to think that the Germans 
 don't know anything about ttiem ; and to engage in a 
 serious enquiry into the meaning oi Bunsen's great sentence 
 in the beginning of the second volume of the Hippolytus, 
 about the Finite realization of Infinity ; which has given 
 me some trouble. 
 
 " The course of my studies of Navigation necessitated 
 my going to Deal to look at the Deal boats ; and those 
 of Geology to rearrange all my minerals (and wash a 
 good many, which, I am sorry to say, 1 found wanted it). 
 I have also several pupils, far and near, in the art of 
 illumination : an American young lady to direct in the 
 study of landscape painting, and a Yorkshire young lady 
 to direct in the purchase of Turners, and various little 
 bye things besides. But I am coming to see you." 
 
 The tone of humorous exaggeration of his discoveries 
 and occupations was very characteristic of Mr. Ruskin, 
 and it was likely to be brought out all the more when 
 writing to another humorist like Carlyle. But he was 
 then growing into the habit of leaving the matter in 
 hand, as he has often done since, to follow side issues, 
 and to take up new studies with a hasty and divided 
 attention ; the result of which was seen in his sub-title for 
 the third volume of Modern Painters " Of Many Things " : 
 which amused his readers not a little. But that he still 
 had time for his friends is seen in the account of a visit 
 to Denmark Hill, written this year by James Smetham, an 
 artist who at one time promised to do great things, but
 
 196 THE LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
 died before he redeemed the promise. He was at any rate 
 a singularly charming and interesting man, admired by 
 Mr. Ruskin for his personal character, and known now by 
 the volume of his letters recently published. He wrote : 
 " I walked there through the wintry weather, and got in 
 about dusk. One or two gossiping details will interest 
 you before I give you what I care for ; and so I will tell 
 you that he has a large house with a lodge, and a valet 
 and footman and coachman, and grand rooms glittering 
 with pictures, chiefly Turner's, and that his father and 
 mother live with him, or he with them. His father is a 
 fine old gentleman, who has a lot of bushy grey hair, 
 and eyebrows sticking up all rough and knowing, with a 
 comfortable way of coming up to you with his hands in 
 his pockets, and making you comfortable, and saying, in 
 answer to your remark, that ' John's ' prose works are 
 pretty good. His mother is a ruddy, dignified, richly- 
 dressed old gentlewoman of seventy-five, who knows 
 Chamonix better than Camberwell ; evidently a good old 
 lady, with the Christian Treasury tossing about on the 
 table. She puts ' John ' down, and holds her own opinions, 
 and flatly contradicts him ; and he receives all her opinions 
 with a soft reverence and gentleness that is pleasant to 
 witness." I will interrupt Mr. Smetham to remark, that 
 this respect for his mother was one of the things that 
 visitors always noticed as characteristic of Mr. Ruskin ; 
 and the intimate friends of the family know that it was 
 something even more than respect, at all times and under 
 all circumstances. 
 
 " I wish I could reproduce a good impression of ' John ' 
 for you, to give you the notion of his ' perfect gentleness 
 and lowlihood.' He certainly bursts out with a remark,
 
 "MODERN PAINTERS" CONTINUED. 197 
 
 and in a contradictious way, but only because he believes 
 it, with no air of dogmatism or conceit He is different at 
 home from that which he is in a lecture before a mixed 
 audience, and there is a spiritual sweetness in the half- 
 timid expression of his eyes ; and in bowing to you, as 
 in taking wine, with (if I heard aright) ' I drink to thee/ 
 he had a look that has followed me, a look bordering on 
 tearful. 
 
 " He spent some time in this way. Unhanging a Turner 
 from the wall of a distant room, he brought it to the table 
 and put it in my hands ; then we talked ; then he went up 
 into his study to fetch down some illustrative print or 
 drawing ; in one case a literal view which he had travelled 
 fifty miles to make, in order to compare with the picture. 
 And so he kept on gliding all over the house, hanging and 
 unhanging, and stopping a few minutes to talk." 
 
 But it was not only from his mother that he could brook 
 contradiction, and not only in conversation that he showed 
 himself contrary to the general opinion of him amenable 
 to correction, when it came from persons whom he could 
 respect. As a truth-seeker, how could he be otherwise ? 
 And yet there were many with whom he had to deal who 
 did not look at things in his light ; who took his criticism 
 as personal attack, and resented it with a bitterness it did 
 not deserve. There is a story told (but not by himself) 
 about one of the Notes on tJie Academy, which he was then 
 publishing how he wrote to an artist therein mentioned 
 that he regretted he could not speak more favourably of 
 his picture, but he hoped it would make no difference in 
 their friendship. The artist replied (so they say) m these 
 terms : " DEAR RUSKIN, Next time I meet you, I shall 
 knock you down ; but I hope it will make no difference in
 
 198 THE LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
 our friendship." " Damn the fellow ! why doesn't he stick 
 up for his friends?" said another disappointed acquaint- 
 ance. Perhaps Mr. Ruskin, secure in his "house with 
 a lodge, and a valet and footman and coachman," hardly 
 realised that a cold word from his pen sometimes meant 
 the failure of an important Academy picture, and serious 
 loss of income that there was bitter truth underlying 
 Punch's complaint of the R.A. : 
 
 " I paints and paints, 
 Hears no complaints, 
 
 And sells before I'm dry ; 
 Till savage Ruskin 
 Sticks his tusk in, 
 
 And nobody will buy." 
 
 Still, as a public man, it was his duty to " be just, and 
 fear not " ; and, hard as it is to be just, when one looks 
 over those Notes on the Academy at this safe distance of 
 time, one is surprised to see with what shrewdness he put 
 his finger upon the weak points of the various artists, and 
 no less upon their strong points ; how many of the men 
 he praised as beginners have since risen to eminence, how 
 many he blamed who have sunk from a specious popularity 
 into oblivion. Contrast his career as a critic with that of 
 other well-known men, the Jeffries and the Giffords, not 
 to mention writers of a later date ; and note that his error 
 has been always to encourage too freely, not to discourage 
 hastily. The men who lay their failure to his account have 
 been the weaklings whom he has urged to attempts beyond 
 their powers, with kindly support, misconstrued into a 
 prophecy of success. No article of his has snuffed out a 
 rising Keats, or driven a young Chatterton to suicide. 
 And he has never stabbed in the dark. " Tout honnete
 
 "MODERN PAINTERS" CONTINUED. 199 
 
 homme doit avouer les livres qu'il public," says his proto- 
 type Rousseau : and Mr. Ruskin, after publishing his first 
 juvenile essays under a transparent pseudonym, has always 
 had the courage of his opinions and taken the consequences 
 of his criticisms. I note that most of the attacks on him 
 have been unsigned. 
 
 In these volumes of Modern Painters he had to discuss 
 the Mediaeval and Renaissance spirit in its relation to art, 
 and to illustrate, from Browning's poetry, " unerring in every 
 sentence he writes of the Middle Ages, always vital and 
 right and profound ; so that in the matter of art there is 
 hardly a principle connected with the mediaeval temper 
 that he has not struck upon in those seemingly careless 
 and too rugged lines of his." This was written twenty-five 
 years before the Browning Society was heard of, and at 
 a time when the style of Browning was an offence to most 
 people. To Mr. Ruskin, also, it had been something of a 
 puzzle ; and he wrote to the poet, asking him to explain 
 himself; which the poet accordingly did, in a letter too 
 interesting to remain unprinted, showing as it does the 
 candid intercourse of two such different minds. 
 
 " PARIS, Dec. loth, '55. 
 
 " MY DEAR RUSKIN, for so you let me begin, with the honest 
 friendliness that befits, You never were more in the wrong than 
 when you professed tc say ' your unpleasant things ' to me. This 
 is pleasant and proper at all points, over-liberal of praise here and 
 there, kindly and sympathetic everywhere, and with enough of 
 yourself in even what I fancy the misjudging, to make the 
 whole letter precious indeed. I wanted to thank you thus much 
 at once, that is, when the letter reached me ; but the strife of 
 lodging-hunting was too sore, and only now that I can sit down 
 for a minute without self-reproach do I allow my thoughts to let 
 go south-aspects, warm bedrooms, and the like, and begin as you
 
 200 THE LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
 see. For the deepnesses you think you discern, may they be 
 more than mere blacknesses ! For the hopes you entertain of 
 what may come of subsequent readings, all success to them ! 
 For your bewilderment more especially noted how shall I help 
 that ? We don't read poetry the same way, by the same law ; it 
 is too clear. I cannot begin writing poetry till my imaginary 
 reader has conceded licences to me which you demur at altogether. 
 I know that I don't make out my conception by my language ; all 
 poetry being a putting the infinite within the finite. You would 
 have me paint it all plain out, which can't be ; but by various 
 artifices I try to make shift with touches and bits of outlines which 
 succeed if they bear the conception from me to you. You ought, I 
 think, to keep pace with the thought tripping from ledge to ledge 
 of my ' glaciers,' as you call them ; not stand poking your alpen- 
 stock into the holes, and demonstrating that no foot could have 
 stood there ; suppose it sprang over there? \nprose you may 
 criticise so because that is the absolute representation of portions 
 of truth, what chronicling is to history but in asking for more 
 ultimates you must accept less mediates, nor expect that a Druid 
 stone-circle will be traced for you with as few breaks to the eye 
 as the North Crescent and South Crescent that go together so 
 cleverly in many a suburb. Why, you look at my little song as 
 if it were Hobbs' or Nobbs' lease of his house, or testament of 
 his devisings, wherein, I grant you, not a ' then and there,' c to 
 him and his heirs,' ' to have and to hold,' and so on, would be 
 superfluous ; and so you begin : ' Stand still, why ? ' * For the 
 reason indicated in the verse, to be sure to let me draw him 
 and because he is at present going his way, and fancying nobody 
 notices him, and moreover, ' going on ' (as we say) against the 
 injustice of that, and lastly, inasmuch as one night he'll fail us, 
 as a star is apt to drop out of heaven, in authentic astronomic 
 records, and I want to make the most of my time. So much may 
 be in ' stand still.' And how much more was (for instance) in 
 that 'stay !' of Samuel's (I. xv. 16). So could I twit you through 
 the whole series of your objurgations, but the declaring my own 
 
 * Referring to the poem " Stand still, true poet that you are," with the line 
 " and Hobbs, Nobbs, Stokes, and Nokes combine."
 
 " MODERN PAINTERS " CONTINUED. 2OI 
 
 notion of the law on the subject will do. And why, I prithee, 
 friend and fellow-student, why, having told the Poet what you 
 read, may I not turn to the bystanders, and tell them a bit of 
 my own mind about their own stupid thanklessness and mis- 
 taking ? Is the jump too much there ? The whole is all but a 
 simultaneous feeling with me. 
 
 " The other hard measure you deal me I won't bear about my 
 requiring you to pronounce words short and long, exactly as I 
 like. Nay, but exactly as the language likes, in this case. Fold- 
 skirts not a trochee ? A spondee possible in English ? Two of 
 the ' longest monosyllables ' continuing to be each of the old 
 length when in junction ? Sentence : let the delinquent be 
 forced to supply the stone-cutter with a thousand companions 
 to ' Affliction sore long time he bore,' after the fashion of ' He 
 lost his life by a pen-knife ' ' He turned to clay last Good 
 Friday,' ' Departed hence nor owed six-pence^' and so on so 
 would pronounce a jury accustomed from the nipple to say lord 
 and landlord, bridge and Cambridge, Gog and Magog, man and 
 woman, house and workhouse, coal and charcoal, cloth and broad- 
 cloth, skirts and fold-skirts, more and once more, in short ! 
 Once more I prayed ! is the confession of a self-searching pro- 
 fessor ! ' I stand here for law ! ' 
 
 " The last charge I cannot answer, for you may be right in 
 preferring it, however unwitting I am of the fact. I may put 
 Robert Browning into Pippa and other men and maids. If so, 
 peccavi : but I don't see myself in them, at all events. 
 
 " Do you think poetry was ever generally understood or can 
 be ? Is the business of it to tell people what they know already, 
 as they know it, and so precisely that they shall be able to cry 
 out ' Here you should supply this that, you evidently pass 
 over, and I'll help you from my own stock ' ? It is all teaching, 
 on the contrary, and the people hate to be taught. They say 
 otherwise, make foolish fables about Orpheus enchanting stocks 
 and stones, poets standing up and being worshipped, all nonsense 
 and impossible dreaming. A poet's affair is with God, to whom 
 he is accountable, and of whom is his reward : look elsewhere, 
 and you find misery enough. Do you believe people understand
 
 202 THE LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
 Hamlet"? The last time I saw it acted, the heartiest applause 
 of the night went to a little by-play of the actor's own who, to 
 simulate madness in a hurry, plucked forth his handkerchief 
 and flourished it hither and thither : certainly a third of the play, 
 with no end of noble things, had been (as from time immemorial) 
 suppressed, with the auditory's amplest acquiescence and bene- 
 diction. Are these wasted, therefore ? No they act upon a very 
 few, who react upon the rest : as Goldsmith says, ' some lords, my 
 acquaintance, that settle the nation, are pleased to be kind.' 
 
 " Don't let me lose my lord by any seeming self-sufficiency or 
 petulance : I look on my own shortcomings too sorrowfully, try 
 to remedy them too earnestly : but I shall never change my point 
 of sight, or feel other than disconcerted and apprehensive when 
 the public, critics and all, begin to understand and approve me. 
 But what right have you to disconcert me in the other way? 
 Why won't you ask the next perfumer for a packet of orris-root ? 
 Don't everybody know 'tis a corruption of iris-root the Florentine 
 lily, the giaggolo, of world-wide fame as a good savour? And 
 because ' iris ' means so many objects already, and I use the old 
 word, you blame me ! But I write in the blind-dark and bitter 
 cold, and past post-time as I fear. Take my truest thanks, and 
 understand at least this rough writing, and, at all events, the real 
 affection with which I venture to regard you. And ' I ' means 
 my wife as well as 
 
 "Yours ever faithfully, 
 
 "ROBERT BROWNING." 
 
 That Mr. Ruskin was open to conviction and conversion 
 could be shown from the difference in his tone of thought 
 about poetry before and after this period ; that he was 
 the best of friends with the man who took him to task 
 for narrowness, may be seen from the following letter, 
 written on the next Christmas' Eve. 
 
 " MY DEAR MR. RUSKIN, Your note having just arrived, 
 Robert deputes me to write for him while he dresses to go out
 
 " MODERN PAINTERS " CONTINUED. 203 
 
 on an engagement. It is the evening. All the hours are wasted, 
 since the morning, through our not being found at the Rue de 
 Crenelle, but here and our instinct of self-preservation or self- 
 satisfaction insists on our not losing a moment more by our own 
 fault. 
 
 "Thank you, thank you for sending us your book, and also 
 for writing "my husband's name in it. It will be the same thing 
 as if you had written mine except for the pleasure, as you say, 
 which is greater so. How good and kind you are ! 
 
 " And not well. That is worst. Surely you would be better if 
 you had the summer in winter we- have here. But I was to write 
 only a word Let it say how affectionately we regard you. 
 
 " ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING. 
 
 " 3, RUE DU COLYSEE, 
 
 " Thursday Evening, 2$th " [Dec. 1855]. 
 
 So it was true was it ? 
 
 X 
 
 " I've a Friend, over the sea ; 
 I like him, but he loves me. 
 It all grew out of the books I write. . . .'
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART. 
 (1857-1858.) 
 
 " Pitch thy behaviour low, thy projects high. " 
 
 George Herbert. 
 
 THE humble work of the drawing-classes at Great 
 Ormond Street was teaching Mr. Ruskin even more 
 than he taught his pupils. It was showing him how far 
 his plans were practicable ; how they should be modified ; 
 how they might be improved ; and especially what more, 
 beside drawing-classes, was needed to realise his ideal. It 
 brought him into contact with uneducated men, and the 
 seamy side of civilisation, as it is usually thought to be 
 poverty and ignorance, and, most difficult of all to treat, 
 the incompetence and the predestinated unsuccess of too 
 many an ambitious nature. That was, after all, the great 
 problem which was to occupy him ; but meanwhile he was 
 anxiously willing to co-operate with every movement, to 
 join hands with any kind of man, to go anywhere, do 
 anything that might promote the cause he had at heart. 
 
 Already at the end of 1854 he had given three lectures, 
 his second course, at the Architectural Museum, specially 
 addressed to workmen in the decorative trades. His sub- 
 jects were design and colour, and his illustrations were 
 
 204
 
 THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART. 2O5 
 
 chiefly drawn from mediaeval illumination, which he had 
 long been studying. His father did not care about his 
 lecturing, then rather looked down upon as "little better 
 than play-acting," which was distinctly not the occupation 
 of a gentleman. So these were informal, quasi-private 
 affairs, which nevertheless attracted notice owing to the 
 celebrity of the speaker. It would have been better if his 
 addresses had been carefully prepared and authentically 
 published ; for a chance word here and there raised replies 
 about matters of detail, in which his critics thought they 
 had gained a technical advantage, which added weight to 
 his father's desire not to see him " expose himself " in this 
 way. There were no more lectures until the beginning 
 of 1857. 
 
 On January 23rd, 1857, he spoke before the Architec- 
 tural Association upon The Influence of Imagination in 
 Architecture, repeating and amplifying what he had said at 
 Edinburgh about the subordinate value of mere proportion, 
 and the importance of sculptured ornament based on 
 natural forms. This of course would involve the creation 
 of a class of stone-carvers who could be trusted with the 
 execution of such work. Once grant the value of it, and 
 public demand would encourage the supply, and the work- 
 men would raise themselves in the effort. 
 
 A louder note was sounded in an address at the St. 
 Martin's School of Art, Castle Street, Long Acre (April 
 2nd, 1857), where, speaking after George Cruikshank, his 
 old friend practically his first master (see p. 40) and an 
 enthusiastic philanthropist and temperance advocate, Mr. 
 Ruskin gave his audience a wider view of art than they 
 had known before : " the kind of painting they most 
 wanted in London was painting cheeks red with health."
 
 206 THE LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
 This was anticipating the standpoint of the Oxford Lec- 
 tures, and showed how the inquiry was beginning to take 
 a much broader aspect. 
 
 Another work in a similar spirit, the North London 
 School of Design, had been prosperously started by a circle 
 of men under Pre-Raphaelite influence, and led by Thomas 
 Seddon. He had given up historical and poetic painting 
 for naturalistic landscape, and had returned from the East 
 with the most valuable studies completed, only to break 
 down and die prematurely. His friends, among them 
 Mr. Holman Hunt, were collecting money to buy from the 
 widow his picture of Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives, 
 to present it to the National Gallery as a memorial of him ; 
 and at a meeting for the purpose, Mr. Ruskin spoke 
 warmly of his labours in the cause of the working classes. 
 " The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church," said 
 the early Christians, and this public recognition sealed 
 the character of the Pre-Raphaelite philanthropic move- 
 ment ; though at what cost, the memoir of Thomas Seddon 
 by his brother too amply proves. 
 
 The next step in the propaganda was of a still more 
 public nature. In the summer of 1857 the Art Treasures 
 Exhibition was held at Manchester, and Mr. Ruskin was 
 invited to lecture. The theme he chose was The Political 
 Economy of Art. He had been studying political economy 
 closely for some time back, but, as we saw from his letter 
 to Carlyle, he had found no answer in the ordinary text- 
 books for the questions he had to put. He wanted to 
 know what Bentham and Ricardo and Mill, the great 
 authorities, would advise him as to the best way of em- 
 ploying artists, of educating workmen, of elevating public 
 taste, of regulating patronage ; but these subjects were not
 
 THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART. 2O/ 
 
 in their programme. And so he put together his own 
 thoughts into two lectures upon Art considered as Wealth : 
 first, how to get it ; next, how to use it. 
 
 He compared the body politic to a farm, of which the 
 " economy," in the original sense, consisted, not in sparing, 
 still less in standing by and criticising, but in active 
 direction and management. He thought that the govern- 
 ment of a state, like a good farmer or housekeeper, should 
 not be content with laissez faire, but should promote 
 everything that was for the true interests of the state, and 
 watch over all the industries and arts which make for 
 civilisation. It should undertake education, and be re- 
 sponsible for the employment of the artists and craftsmen 
 it produced, giving them work upon public buildings, as 
 the Venetian state used to do. Meantime he showed what 
 an enlightened public might aim at, what their standards of 
 patronage should be : how, for example, each and all might 
 help the cause by preferring artistic decorative work, in 
 furniture and plate and dress, to the mechanical products of 
 inartistic manufacture ; how they might help in preserving 
 the great standard buildings and pictures of the past not 
 without advantages to their own art-production how they 
 might deal directly with the artist rather than the dealer ; 
 and serve the cause of education by placing works of art 
 in schools. And he concluded by suggesting that the 
 mediaeval guilds of craftsmen, if they could be re-established, 
 would be of great service, especially in substituting a spirit 
 of cooperation for that of competition. 
 
 There were very' few points in these lectures that were 
 not vigorously contested at the moment, and conceded 
 in the sequel, in some form or other. The paternal 
 function of government, the right of the state to interfere
 
 208 THE LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN 
 
 in matters beyond its traditional range, its duty with 
 regard to education, all this was quite contrary to the 
 prevailing habits of thought of the time, especially at 
 Manchester, the headquarters of the laissez faire school : but 
 to Mr. Ruskin, who, curiously enough, had just then been 
 referring sarcastically to German philosophy, knowing 
 it only at secondhand, and unaware of Hegel's political 
 work, to him this Platonic conception of the state was 
 the only possible one, as it is to most people nowadays. 
 In the same way, his practical advice has been accepted, 
 perhaps unwittingly, by our times. We do now under- 
 stand the difference between artistic decoration and 
 machine-made wares ; we do now try to preserve ancient 
 monuments, and to use art as a :means of education. And 
 we are in a fair way, it seems, of lowering the prices of 
 pictures, as he bids us, to " not more than 500 for an oil 
 picture and 100 for a water-colour." 
 
 From Manchester he went with his parents to Scotland ; 
 for his mother, now beginning to grow old, wanted to 
 revisit the scenes of her youth. They went to the High- 
 lands and as far north as the Bay of Cromarty, and then 
 returned by way of the Abbeys of the Lowlands, to look 
 up Turner sites, as he had done in 1845 on the St. Gothard. 
 From the enjoyment of this holiday he was recalled to 
 London by a letter from Mr. Wornum saying that he could 
 arrange the Turner drawings at the National Gallery. 
 
 Mr. Ruskin's first letter on the National Gallery, in 
 1847, has been noticed. He had written again to the 
 Times (Dec. 29th, 1852), pressing the same point namely, 
 that if the pictures were put under glass, no cleaning nor 
 restoring would be needed ; and that the Gallery ought 
 not to be considered as a grand hall, decorated with
 
 THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART. 2OO, 
 
 pictures, but as a convenient museum, with a chronological 
 sequence of the best works of all schools, every picture 
 hung on the line and accompanied by studies for it, if 
 procurable, and engravings from it. 
 
 Now, in 1857, question was raised of removing the 
 National Gallery from Trafalgar Square. The South 
 Kensington Museum was being formed, and the whole 
 business of arranging the national art treasures was gone 
 into by a Royal Commission, consisting of Lord Broughton 
 (in the chair), Dean Milman, Prof. Faraday, Prof. Cockerell, 
 and Mr. George Richmond. Mr. Ruskin was examined 
 before them on April 6th, and re-stated the opinions he 
 had written to the Times, adding that he would like 
 to see two National Galleries, one of popular interest, 
 containing such works as would catch the public eye 
 and enlist the sympathy of the untaught ; and another 
 containing only the cream of the collections, in pictures, 
 sculpture and the decorative crafts, arranged for purposes 
 of study. This was suggested as an ideal ; of course, it 
 would involve more outlay, and less display, than any 
 Parliamentary vote would sanction, or party leader risk. 
 
 Another question of importance was the disposal of the 
 pictures and sketches which Turner had left to the nation. 
 Mr. Ruskin was one of the executors under the will ; but, 
 on finding that, though Turner's intention was plain, there 
 were technical informalities which would make the admini- 
 stration anything but easy, he declined to act. It was 
 not until 1856 that the litigation was concluded, and 
 Turner's pictures and sketches handed over to the trustees 
 of the National Gallery. Mr. Ruskin, whose want of legal 
 knowledge had made his services useless before, now felt 
 that he could carry out the spirit of Turner's will by 
 VOL. I. 14
 
 210 THE LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
 offering to arrange the sketches ; which were in such a 
 state of confusion that only some person with knowledge 
 of the artist's habits of work and subjects could, so to 
 speak, edit them ; and the editor would need no ordinary 
 patience and skill and judgment, into the bargain. As 
 Mr. Ruskin was, I suppose, the only man in the world 
 fully qualified and at leisure for such a work, his offer was 
 accepted, the more readily, no doubt, as he would work 
 for nothing. 
 
 Meanwhile, for that winter (1856-7) a preliminary exhi- 
 bition was held of Turner's oil-paintings, with a few water- 
 colours, at Marlborough House, then the headquarters of the 
 Department of Science and Art, soon afterwards removed 
 to South Kensington. Mr. Ruskin wrote a catalogue, 
 with analysis of Turner's periods of development and 
 characteristics ; which made the collection intelligible 
 and interesting to curious sight-seers. They showed their 
 appreciation by taking up five editions in rapid succession. 
 
 Just before lecturing at Manchester, he wrote again on 
 the subject to the Times ; and in September his friend 
 R. N. Wornum, Director of the National Gallery in suc- 
 cession to Eastlake and Uwins, wrote as we saw that 
 he might arrange the sketches as he pleased. He returned 
 from Scotland, and set to work on October /th. 
 
 It was strange employment for a man of his powers ; 
 almost as removed from the Epicurean Olympus of " cul- 
 tured ease " popularly assigned to him, as night-school 
 teaching and lecturing workmen. But, beside that it was 
 the carrying out of Turner's wishes, Mr. Ruskin has always 
 had a certain love for experimenting in manual toil ; * and 
 
 * For instance, when he scrubbed the stairs at the hotel at Sixt, 
 because his mother complained of their dirty condition ; and when he
 
 JOHN RUSK.IN. 
 By George Richmond, R.A. 1837. 
 
 [Vol. I., p. 210.]
 
 THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART. 211 
 
 this was work in which his extreme neatness and deftness" 
 of hand was needed, no less than his knowledge- and 
 judgment. During the winter, for full six months, he and 
 his two assistants worked, all day and every day, among 
 the masses of precious rubbish that had been removed 
 from Queen Anne Street to the National Gallery. 
 
 Turner used to sketch frequently on thin paper which 
 he folded across and across for packing, or rolled in tight 
 bundles to go into his pockets. When he got his sketches 
 home, as they were only pour servir and of no value to 
 any one but himself, they were crammed into drawers, 
 anyhow, and left there, decade after decade. His sketch- 
 books had rotted to pieces with the damp, their pages 
 pressed together into mouldering masses. Soft chalk lay 
 loose among the leaves, crushed into powder when the 
 book was packed away. He economised his paper by 
 covering both sides, and of course did not trouble to " fix " 
 his sketches, still less to mount and frame them, as the 
 proud amateur is careful to do. 
 
 Among the quantities so recklessly thrown aside for dust, 
 damp, soot, mice and worms to destroy some 15,000 Mr. 
 Ruskin reckoned at first, 19,000 later on there were many 
 fine drawings, which had been used by the engravers, and 
 vast numbers of interesting and valuable studies in colour 
 and in pencil. Four hundred of these were extricated 
 
 took regular lessons, later on, in crossing-sweeping, stone-breaking, 
 carpentry and house-painting. His neatness runs almost to excess 
 when, in signing a drawing or inscribing a book for presentation, he 
 rules triple lines and prints, as he used to do in his boyhood, name 
 and date, and all the rest, in elaborate Roman script ; instead of the 
 scrabbled cheque-signature which is fashionable in such cases. The 
 orderliness of his bookshelves and mineral drawers is quite unexcep- 
 tionable : his own sketches he leaves in dusty confusion.
 
 212 THE LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
 from the chaos, and with infinite pains cleaned, flattened, 
 mounted, dated and described, and placed in sliding frames 
 in cabinets devised by Mr. Ruskin, or else in swivel frames, 
 to let both sides of the paper be seen. The first results 
 of the work were shown in an Exhibition at Marlborough 
 House during the winter, for which Mr. Ruskin wrote 
 another catalogue. Of the whole collection he began a 
 more complete account, which was too elaborate to be 
 finished in that form ; but in 1881 he published a Catalogue 
 of the Drawings and SketcJies of J. M. W. Turner, R.A., 
 at present exhibited in tJie National Gallery, so that his plan 
 was practically fulfilled. 
 
 The collection a monument of one great man's genius 
 and another's patience is still housed in the cellars of 
 Trafalgar Square, and it has never been so honourably 
 viewed and so freely used as Mr. Ruskin once hoped. But 
 in proportion to the means at the disposal of the powers 
 that be, Turner is well treated. The sketches can at least 
 be got at by those who know about them and care to study 
 them, and the pictures are now far better shown than 
 formerly. The historical arrangement of the various 
 schools, also, has been improved with every successive 
 rehanging ; and the primitive masters, once neglected, have 
 now almost the lion's share of the show. Such are Time's 
 revenges. 
 
 During 1858 Mr. Ruskin continued to lecture at various 
 places on subjects connected with his Manchester addresses, 
 the relation of art to manufacture, and especially the 
 dependence of all great architectural design upon sculpture 
 or painting of organic form. The first of the series was 
 given at the opening of the South Kensington Museum, 
 January I2th, 1858, entitled "The Deteriorative Power of
 
 THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART. 213 
 
 Conventional Art over Nations " ; in which he showed that 
 naturalism, as opposed to meaningless pattern-making, was 
 always a sign of life. For example, the strength of the 
 Greek, Florentine and Venetian art arose out of the search 
 for truth, not, as it is often supposed, art of striving after 
 an ideal of beauty ; and as soon as nature was superseded 
 by recipe, the greatest schools hastened to their fall. From 
 which he concluded that modern design should always be 
 founded on natural form, rather than upon the traditional 
 patterns of the east or of the mediasvals. 
 
 On February i6th he spoke on " The Work of Iron, in 
 Nature, Art and Policy," at Tunbridge Wells ; a subject 
 similar to that of his address to the St. Martin's School of 
 the year before, but amplified into a plea for the use of 
 wrought iron ornament, as in the new Oxford Museum, 
 then building. 
 
 The Oxford Museum was an experiment in the true 
 Gothic revival. There had been plenty of so-called Gothic 
 architecture ever since Horace Walpole ; but it had aimed 
 rather at imitating the forms of the Middle Ages than at 
 reviving the spirit. The architects at Oxford, Sir Thomas 
 Deane and Mr. Woodward, had allowed their workmen to 
 design parts of the detail, such as capitals and spandrils, 
 quite in the spirit of Mr. Ruskin's teaching, and the work 
 was accordingly of deep interest to him. So far back as 
 April 1856, he had given an address to the men employed 
 at the Museum, whom he met, on Dr. Acland's invitation, 
 at the Workmen's Reading Rooms. He said that his 
 object was not to give labouring men the chance of 
 becoming masters of other labouring men, and to help the 
 few at the expense of the many, but to lead them to those 
 sources of pleasure, and power over their own minds and
 
 214 THE LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
 hands, that more educated people possess. He did not 
 sympathise with the socialism that had been creeping into 
 vogue since 1848. He thought existing social arrange- 
 ments good, and he agreed with his friends the Carlyles, 
 who had found that it was only the incapable who could 
 not get work. But it was the fault of the wealthy and 
 educated that working people were not better trained ; it 
 was not the working-men's fault, at bottom. The modern 
 architect used his workman as a mere tool ; while the 
 Gothic spirit set him free as an original designer, to gain 
 not more wages and higher social rank, but pleasure and 
 instruction, the true happiness that lies in good work well 
 done. 
 
 That was his view in those times. The Oxford Museum 
 prospered, and Dr. Acland and he together wrote a small 
 book, reporting its aims and progress in 1858 and 1859, 
 illustrated with an engraving of one of the workmen's 
 capitals. It was no secret, then, that the Museum was an 
 experiment ; and, like all experiments, it left much to be 
 desired ; but it paved the way, on the one hand, to the 
 general adoption of Gothic for domestic purposes, and on 
 the other, to the recognition of a new class of men the art- 
 craftsmen. 
 
 Parallel with this movement for educating the " working- 
 class " there was the scheme for the improvement of middle- 
 class education, which was , then going on at Oxford the 
 beginning of University Extension supported by the Rev. 
 P. Temple (now Bishop of London), and Mr. (afterwards 
 Sir) Thomas Dyke Acland. Mr. Ruskin was heartily for 
 them ; and in a letter on the subject, he tried to show how 
 the teaching of Art might be made to work in with the 
 scheme. He did not think that in this plan, any more
 
 THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART. 21$ 
 
 than at the Working Men's College, there need be an 
 attempt to teach drawing with a view to forming artists ; 
 but there were three objects they might hold in view : the 
 first, to give every student the advantage of the happiness 
 and knowledge which the study of Art conveys ; the next, 
 to enforce some knowledge of Art amongst those who were 
 likely to become patrons or critics ; and the last, to leave 
 no Giotto lost among hill shepherds. The study of art- 
 history he considered unnecessary to ordinary education, 
 and too wide a subject to be treated in the usual curricu- 
 lum of schools ; but the practice of drawing might go hand 
 in hand with natural history, and the habit of looking 
 at things with an artist's eye would be invaluable. He 
 proposed a plan of studies, interweaving the art-lessons 
 with every other department, instead of relegating them to 
 a poor hour a week of idling or insubordination under a 
 master who ranked with the drill-sergeant. Something 
 has been done, both by the delegates for local examina- 
 tions (whom this movement created), and by the schools 
 themselves, to improve the teaching of drawing ; but 
 nothing like Mr. Ruskin's proposal has been attempted 
 simply because it would involve the employment of 
 schoolmasters who could draw ; and the introduction of 
 the object-lesson system into the higher forms. 
 
 This intercourse with Oxford and willingness to help, 
 even at the lower end of the ladder, is a pleasant episode 
 in the life of a man struggling in the wider world against 
 Academicism and the various fallacies of traditional creeds 
 and cultures. There was nothing of the Byronic in Mr. 
 Ruskin's attitude, nor did he try to advertise his indi- 
 viduality by a childish petulance toward poor old Alma 
 Mater.
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 "MODERN PAINTERS" CONCLUDED. 
 (18581860.) 
 
 " So the dreams depart, 
 So the fading phantoms flee, 
 And the sharp reality 
 Now must act its part." 
 
 WESTWOOD'S " Beads from a Rosary." 
 
 OXFORD and old friends did not monopolise Mr. 
 Ruskin's attention : he was soon seen at Cambridge 
 on the same platform with Mr. Richard Redgrave, R.A., 
 the representative of Academicism and officialism at the 
 opening of the School of Art for workmen on October 
 29th, 1858. His Inaugural Address struck a deeper note, 
 a wider chord, than previous essays ; it was the forecast of 
 the last volume of Modern Painters, and it sketched the 
 train of thought into which he had been led during his 
 tour abroad, that summer. 
 
 Mr. Ruskin is morally Conservative, intellectually Radical. 
 His instincts cling to the past, his intelligence leads him 
 ahead of his time. The battles between faith and criticism, 
 between the historical and the scientific attitudes, which 
 had been going on in his mind, were taking a new form. 
 At the outset, we saw, the naturalist overpowered respect 
 
 216
 
 "MODERN PAINTERS" CONCLUDED. 217 
 
 for tradition, in the first volume of Modern Painters ; then 
 the historical tendency won the day, in the second volume. 
 Since that time, the critical side had been gathering 
 strength, by his alliance with progressist movements and 
 by his gradual detachment from associations that held him 
 to the older order of thought. And just as in his lonely 
 journey of 1845 ne fi rst took independent ground upon 
 questions of religion and social life, so in 1858, once more 
 travelling alone, he was led by his meditations, freed 
 from the restraining presence of his parents, to conclu- 
 sions which he had been all these years evading, yet 
 finding at last inevitable. 
 
 He went abroad for a third attempt to write and illus- 
 trate his History of Swiss Towns. The drawings of the 
 year were still in the style of fine pen-etching combined 
 with broadly gradated and harmonious tints of colour ; or, 
 when they were simply pen or pencil outlines, they were 
 much more refined than those of ten years earlier. He 
 spent May on the Upper Rhine between Basle and Schaff- 
 hausen, June in the neighbourhood of the Swiss Baden, 
 July at Bellinzona. In reflecting over the sources of Swiss 
 character, as connected with the question of the nature 
 and origin of art in morality, he was struck with the 
 fact that all the virtues of the Swiss did not make them 
 artistic. Compared with most nations they were as 
 children in painting, music and poetry. And, indeed, they 
 ranked with the early phases of many great nations 
 the period of pristine simplicity " uncorrupted by the 
 arts." 
 
 From Bellinzona he went to Turin on his way to the 
 Vaudois Valleys, where he meant to compare the Walden- 
 sian Protestants with the Swiss. Accidentally he saw
 
 2l8 THE LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
 Paul Veronese's " Queen of Sheba " and other Venetian 
 pictures ; and so fell to comparing a period of fully ripened 
 art with one of artlessness ; discovering that the mature 
 art, while it appeared at the same time with decay in 
 morals, did not spring from that decay, but was rooted in 
 the virtues of the earlier age. He grasped a clue to the 
 puzzle, in the generalisation that Art is the product of 
 human happiness ; it is contrary to asceticism ; it is the 
 expression of pleasure. But when the turning point of 
 national progress is, once reached, and art is regarded as 
 the laborious incitement to pleasure, no longer the 
 spontaneous blossom and fruit of it, the decay sets in 
 for art as well as for morality. Art, in short, is created 
 ^"pleasure, not for pleasure. 
 
 And so both the ascetics who refuse art are wrong, 
 and the Epicureans who make it a means of pleasure- 
 seeking : the latter obviously and culpably, because in 
 their hands it becomes rapidly degraded into a mere 
 sensational or sensual stimulus, and loses its own finest 
 qualities technically as well as morally. But the ascetics 
 are wrong, too ; because we cannot place ourselves at the 
 fountain head again, and resume the pristine simplicity 
 of nascent society. Such was the claim of the Modern 
 Vaudois whom he had gone forth to bless, as descendants 
 of those " slaughtered saints whose bones lay scattered on 
 the Alpine mountains cold." He found them keeping but 
 the relics and grave-clothes of a pure faith ; * and that at 
 
 * I think I owe it to some who will be pained by this paragraph to 
 say here, once for all, that I am trying to give them Mr. Ruskin's Life and 
 Work, not my opinions. And, consequently, I write as if the reader 
 had no personal feelings. It is surely possible to admire a great man, 
 though one differs from him (as I do from Mr. Ruskin) in everything
 
 " MODERN PAINTERS " CONCLUDED. 2Ip 
 
 the cost of abstention from all service to the struggling 
 Italy of their time, at the cost, too, of a flat refusal to 
 reverence the best achievements of the past. No doubt 
 there were exemplary persons among them ; but the 
 standard of thought, the attitude of mind of the Walden- 
 sians, Mr. Ruskin now perceived to be quite impossible for 
 himself. He could not look upon every one outside their 
 fold as heathens and publicans ; he could not believe that 
 the pictures of Paul Veronese were works of iniquity, nor 
 that the motives of great deeds in earlier ages were lying 
 superstitions. He took courage to own to himself and 
 others that it was no longer any use trying to identify his 
 point of view with that of Protestantism. He saw both 
 Protestants and Roman Catholics, in the perspective of 
 history, converging into a primitive, far distant, ideal unity 
 of Christianity, in which he still believed ; but he could 
 take neither side, after this. 
 
 The first statement of the new point of view was, as 
 we said, the Inaugural Lecture of the Cambridge School of 
 Art. The next important utterance was at Manchester, 
 Feb. 22nd, 1859, where he spoke on the Unity of Art, by 
 which he meant not the fraternity of handicrafts with 
 painting, as the term is used nowadays but that, in what- 
 ever branch of Art, the spirit of Truth or Sincerity is the 
 same. In this lecture there is a very important passage 
 showing how he had at last got upon firm ground in the 
 question of art and morality : " / do NOT say in the least 
 that in order to be a good painter you must be a good man ; 
 but I do say that in order to be a good natural painter 
 
 that goes to make prejudice ; in nationality, to begin with, and in all 
 the associations of religion, politics, and art. I can only ask the reader 
 to take the same standpoint, and to read on to the end.
 
 220 THE LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
 there must be strong elements of good in the mind, how- 
 ever warped by other parts of the character." So emphatic 
 a statement deserves more attention than it has received 
 from readers and writers who assume to judge Mr. Ruskin's 
 views after a slight acquaintance with his earlier works. He 
 was well aware himself that his mind had been gradually 
 enlarging, and his thoughts changing ; and he soon saw as 
 great a difference between himself at forty and at twenty- 
 five, as he had formerly seen between the Boy poet and the 
 Art critic. He became as anxious to forget his earlier 
 great books, as he had been to forget his verse-writing ; 
 and when he came to collect his " Works," these lectures, 
 under the title of TJie Two Paths, were the earliest admitted 
 into the library. 
 
 In 1859 tne l as t Academy Notes, for the time being, 
 were published. The Pre-Raphaelite cause had been fully 
 successful, and the new school of naturalist landscape was 
 rapidly asserting itself. Old friends were failing, such as 
 Stanfield, Lewis, and Roberts : but new men were growing 
 up, among whom Mr. Ruskin welcomed G. D. Leslie, 
 F. Goodall, J. C. Hook, who had come out of his " Pre- 
 Raphaelite measles " into the healthy naturalism of " Luff 
 Boy ! " Clarence Whaite, Henry Holiday, and above all 
 John Brett, who showed the " Val d'Aosta." Mr. Millais' 
 " Vale of Rest " was the picture which attracted most 
 notice : something of the old rancour against the school 
 was revived in the Morning Herald, which called his works 
 " impertinences," " contemptible," " indelible disgrace," and 
 so on. It was the beginning of a transition from the 
 delicacy of the Pre-Raphaelite Millais to his later style ; 
 and as such the preacher of " All great art is delicate " 
 could not entirely defend it. But the serious strength of
 
 " MODERN PAINTERS " CONCLUDED. 221 
 
 the imagination and the power of the execution he praised 
 with unexpected warmth. 
 
 He then started on the last tour abroad with his parents. 
 He had been asked, rather pointedly, by the National 
 Gallery Commission, whether he had seen the great 
 German museums, and had been obliged to reply that 
 he had not. Perhaps it occurred to him or to his father 
 that he ought to see the pictures at Berlin and Dresden 
 and Munich, even though he heartily disliked the Germans, 
 with their art and their language and everything that 
 belonged to them, except Holbein and Diirer. By the 
 end of July the travellers were in North Switzerland ; and 
 they spent September in Savoy, returning home by 
 October 7th. 
 
 Old Mr. Ruskin was now in his seventy-fifth year ; and 
 his desire was to see the great work finished before he died. 
 There had been some attempt to write this last volume of 
 Modern Painters in the previous winter, but it had been put 
 off until after the visit to Germany had completed Mr. 
 Ruskin's study of the great Venetian painters especially 
 Titian and Veronese. Now at last, in the autumn of 1859, 
 he finally set to work on the writing. 
 
 He had to do for Vegetation, Clouds, and Water, what 
 Vol. IV. had done for Mountains ; and also to treat of the 
 laws of Composition. To do this on a scale corresponding 
 with his foregoing work, would have needed four or five 
 more volumes. As it was, the author dropped the section 
 on Water, with promises of a book which he never wrote, 
 and the rest was only sketched somewhat ampler in detail 
 than corresponding parts of the Elements of Drawing, but 
 still inadequately and half-heartedly, as an artist would com- 
 plete a work when the patron who commissioned it had died.
 
 222 THE LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
 The whole book had been simply the assertion of 
 Turner's genius plucky and necessary in the young man 
 of 1843, but superfluous in 1860, when his main thesis was 
 admitted, and his own interests, as well as the needs of 
 a totally different period, had drifted far away from the 
 original subject. Turner was long since dead, his fame 
 thoroughly vindicated ; his bequest to the nation dealt 
 with, so far as possible. The Early Christian Art was 
 recognised almost beyond its claims ; for Angelico and 
 his circle, great as they were in their age, had begun to 
 lead modern religious painters into affectation. The Pre- 
 Raphaelites and naturalistic landscapists no longer needed 
 the hand which Modern Painters had held out to them by 
 the way. Of the great triad of Venice, Tintoret had been 
 expounded, Veronese and Titian were now taken up and 
 treated with tardy, but ample, recognition. 
 
 And now, after twenty years of labour, Mr. Ruskin had 
 established himself as the recognised leader of criticism 
 and the exponent of painting and architecture. He had 
 created a department of literature all his own, and adorned 
 it with works of which the like had never been seen. He 
 had enriched the art of England with examples of a new 
 and beautiful draughtsmanship, and the language with pas- 
 sages of poetic description and eloquent declamation, quite, 
 in their way, unrivalled. As a philosopher, he had built 
 up a theory of art, as yet uncontested, and treated both its 
 abstract nature and its relations to human conduct and 
 policy. As a historian, he had thrown new light on the 
 Middle Ages and Renaissance, illustrating, in a way then 
 novel, their chronicles by their remains. He had beaten 
 down all opposition, risen above all detraction, and won 
 the prize of honour only to realise, as he received it, that
 
 " MODERN PAINTERS " CONCLUDED. 223 
 
 the fight had been but a pastime tournament, after all ; 
 and to hear, through the applause, the enemy's trumpet 
 sounding to battle. For now, without the camp, there were 
 realities to face ; as to Art " the best in this kind are but 
 shadows."
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
 225
 
 APPENDIX TO VOL. I. 
 
 CHRONOLOGY. 
 
 (18191860.) 
 
 1819. Feb. 8. John Ruskin born: 54, Hunter St., 
 
 Brunswick Sq. London. 
 
 1822. To Scotland, Perth. Portrait by North- 
 Age 3. cote 
 
 1823. Summer tour in S.W. of England. Removed 
 
 Age 4. to (No. 28) Herne Hill. 
 
 1824. Tour to the Lakes. Stayed at Kesvvick and 
 
 Age 5. Perth 
 
 1825, age 6. To Paris, Brussels, Waterloo 
 
 1826. In January wrote first poem, " The Needless 
 
 Age 7. Alarm." Visited Hastings 
 
 Summer tour to the Lakes and Perth. Began 
 
 Latin grammar at 
 
 1827. Summer at Perth; fever at Dunkeld; autumn 
 Age 8. wrote " Papa, how pretty those icicles are ! " 
 1828. Summer in West of England. Mary Richard- 
 Age 9. son adopted by his parents 
 
 1829. Summer in Kent. Wrote dramatic poem on 
 
 Age 10. "Waterloo" , 
 
 1830. Tour to the Lakes. " Iteriad." Began Greek. 
 
 Age II. Copied Cruikshank 
 
 1831. First drawing lessons from Runciman. First 
 
 Age 12. sketching from nature 
 
 ,, Summer tour in Wales. Began mathematics 
 
 under Rowbotham 
 1832. Summer tour in Kent. Wrote "Mourn, Miz- 
 
 Age 13. raim, mourn " 
 
 227
 
 228 APPENDIX. 
 
 1833. Wrote " I weary for the torrent." First Turner 
 
 Age 14. study in Rogers' " Italy " Herne Hill. 
 
 ,, Introduced by Pringle to Hogg and Rogers ... 
 
 ,, May ii Sept. 21. Tour to the Rhine and ... Switzerland. 
 
 ,, Copied Rembrandt Paris. 
 
 ,, Wrote poetical journal of tour. Went to 
 
 school to Rev. T. Dale while living at ... Herne Hill. 
 1834. First study of Alpine geology in Saussure. 
 
 Age 15. First published writings 
 
 ,, Summer tour to West of England. Returned 
 
 to school 
 
 1835. Left school owing to attack of pleurisy in the 
 
 Age 16. spring 
 
 ,, June 2 Dec. 10. Tour to Switzerland and Italy. 
 First Published Poems. Wrote the "Don 
 
 Juan" Journal, etc Herne Hill. 
 
 1836. Visit of the Domecqs. First Love-poems, and 
 
 Age 17. study of Shelley 
 
 ,, Lessons from Copley Fielding. Attended 
 
 Lectures at King's College, London 
 ,, July at Richmond. Wrote " Marcolini " and 
 
 Defence of Turner ... 
 Tour to the South Coast, after matriculating at 
 
 Christ Church Oxford. 
 
 1837. Jan. 14. Went into residence at Oxford : wrote 
 
 Age 1 8. " The Gipsies " 
 
 Summer ..tour to the Lakes and Yorkshire : 
 
 began "Poetry of Architecture " Herne Hill. 
 
 Began papers on " The Convergence of Per- 
 pendiculars " Oxford. 
 
 1838. Jan., to Oxford; returned (June 28) to ... Herne Hill. 
 
 Age 19. Wrote Essay, " Comparative Advantages of 
 
 Music and Painting" 
 July 3 Sept. 3. Tour with parents to the 
 
 Lakes and Scotland. 
 
 Oct. Dec., Oxford. Dec., visit of the 
 
 Domecqs Herne Hill. 
 
 1839. Jan. to Oxford. Recited " Newdigate <: at 
 Age 20. Commemoration ... ... ... ... Oxford. 
 
 Tour with parents : Cheddar, Devon, and ... Cornwall. 
 ,, Sept., read with Osborne Gordon. Wrote 
 
 "Farewell" Herne Hill. 
 
 Kept Michaelmas Term at Oxford.
 
 CHRONOLOGY. 
 
 229 
 
 1 1840. Jan., to Oxford. Threatened with consump- Oxford. 
 
 Age 21. tion (May) 
 
 ,, Sept. 25. Travelled with parents by the 
 
 Loire and Riviera to (Nov. 28) Rome. 
 
 1841. Jan. 9 March 17, at Naples ; March 22 
 
 Age 22. April 18, at 
 
 May i, Bologn'a; May 6 17, Venice; June 5, at Geneva. 
 June 12, Basle ; returning by Laon and Calais 
 
 to (June 29) , Herne Hill. 
 
 ,, Aug., Wales. Sept. 2 Oct. 21, under Dr. 
 
 Jephson at Leamington. 
 
 Reading with O. Gordon ; drawing lessons 
 
 from Harding Herne Hill. 
 
 1842. May, passed final examination, and took B.A. 
 
 Age 23. degree at Oxford. 
 
 ,, Saw Turner's Swiss sketches : study of Ivy Herne Hill. 
 ,, May 24 Aug. 19, tour with parents : France, 
 
 Switzerland Germany. 
 
 Wrote " Modern Painters," vol. i., during 
 
 winter at , Herne Hill. 
 
 1843. Removed from Herne Hill to (No. 163) ... Denmark Hill. 
 
 Age 24. Oct. 28, took M. A. degree Oxford, 
 
 1844. May 14, tour with parents ; June, with Couttet, 
 Age 25. Chamouni ; July 16, met Forbes at Simplon ; 
 
 July 19, with Gordon at Zermatt Switzerland. 
 
 ,, Aug. 17, 1 8, studying old masters at the Louvre Paris. 
 ,, Aug. 24, to Denmark Hill. Dec. 12 to ... Hastings. 
 
 1845. Jan. 10 to Denmark Hill. 
 
 Age 26. April, first tour alone ; June 9, to Pisa ; last 
 poems ; first study of Christian art, Lucca 
 and Florence ; July, Macugnaga and St. Got- 
 hard ; end of August, Italian Lakes ; with 
 J. D. Harding at Verona, and studying 
 
 Tintoret at Venice Italy. 
 
 ,, During the winter wrote " Modern Painters," 
 
 vol. ii. Denmark Hill. 
 
 1846. April 2, with parents through France and the 
 Age 27. Jura to Geneva ; April 27, Mont Cenis ; 
 
 May 4, Vercelli ; May 10, to Verona ; May Italy. 
 14, to Venice ; June 3, to Bologna ; June 7, 
 to Florence; Aug. 15, Geneva; Aug. 23, 
 Chamouni ; 'Aug. 31, to the Oberland 
 Oct. 6 returned to Denmark Hill.
 
 230 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 1847. June, at Oxford, and Ambleside; July at ... Leamington. 
 
 Age 28. Aug., tour in Scotland ; Sept. at Crossmount. 
 
 ,, Nov., Folkestone ; Dec. at ... Denmark Hill. 
 
 1848. April 10, married at Perth ; thence to ... Keswick. 
 
 Age 29. Summer, attempted pilgrimage to English 
 
 cathedrals Salisbury. 
 
 Aug. Oct., tour to Amiens, Paris, and ... Normandy. 
 Winter, writing "Seven Lamps "at 3 1, Park St., London. 
 1849. April 1 8, tour with parents through France 
 Age 30. and Jura; June i, Vevey; June at Cha- 
 
 mouni; July, St. Martin's and Zermatt ... Switzerland. 
 
 Nov., settled for the winter at Venice. 
 
 1850. Studying architecture till end of Feb. at 
 Age 31. Began the study of missals; wrote "Stones 
 
 of Venice," vol. i Park St 
 
 1851. "Notes on Sheepfolds;" acquaintance with 
 
 Age 32. Carlyle and Maurice 
 
 May, First defence of the Pre-Raphaelites . . . 
 ,, Aug. 4, with Mr. Moore through ,France ; 
 Aug. n, met Mr. Newton, Les Rousses ; 
 Aug. 14, Chamouni ; 19, Geneva ; 22, Great 
 St. Bernard; Sept. I, settled for winter at Venice. 
 (Dec. 19, J. M. W. Turner died.) 
 1852. Until the end of June studying architecture 
 Age 33. During autumn and winter writing " Stones 
 
 of Venice," vols. ii. and iii., at (No. 29) ... Herne Hill. 
 1853. Aug., with Dr. Acland and Mr. Millais at ... Glenfinlas. 
 Age 34. Nov. i 18, " Lectures on Architecture and 
 
 Painting" Edinburgh. 
 
 1854. June 4, with parents at Geneva. 
 
 Age 35. June, drawing for proposed work on Swiss 
 
 Towns, at Thun. 
 
 Jury 2, Lucerne, Chamouni ; Aug Mont Cenis. 
 
 Oct. 30, Working Men's College inaugurated Denmark Hill. 
 Nov. 1 8 Dec. 9, Lectures to Decorative 
 Workmen ... . . . / 
 
 1855. May, Academy Notes begun 
 
 Age 36. July and Aug., Tunbridge Wells ; and study- 
 ing shipping at Deal. 
 
 During this year writing "Modern Painters," 
 
 .vols. iii. and iv Denmark Hill. 
 
 1856. April 15. Address to workmen of the 
 Age 37. Museum ... Oxford.
 
 CHRONOLOGY. 231 
 
 1856. May 14, tour with parents: Amiens, Basle; 
 Age 37- June 10 23, Interlaken ; July 29, with 
 
 Messrs. Norton, Simon & Trench, Cha- 
 
 mouni ; Aug., drawing for Swiss Towns at 
 
 Fribourg Switzerland. 
 
 Winter, writing " Elements of Drawing " at Denmark Hill. 
 1857. Jan. 23, Lect. to Archit. Assoc. : " Imagi- 
 
 Age 38. nation in Architecture" 
 
 April 3, Address, St. Martin's School of Art ... 
 April 6, Evidence before National Gallery 
 
 Site Commission 
 
 May 6, Address on Thomas Seddon (at 
 
 Society of Arts) 
 
 July 10, 13, Lectures, " Political Economy 
 
 of Art" .,, Manchester. 
 
 Aug. and Sept., tour with parents in ..." ... Scotland. 
 Oct., address to Working Men's College on 
 
 "France" Denmark Hill. 
 
 During the winter arranging Turners at 
 
 Nat. Gall 
 
 1858. Jan. 13, Lect. "Conventional Art," S. Ken- 
 Age 39. sington Mus. 
 
 Feb. 16, Lect. "Work of Iron" (Sussex 
 
 Hotel) Tunbridge Wells. 
 
 ,, March 27, Official Report on Turner Bequest Denmark Hill. 
 April 16, Address, "Study of Art" (St. 
 
 Martin's School) Denmark Hill. 
 
 May 13, tour alone to draw for "Swiss 
 
 Towns"; May 18, ... Rheinfelden. 
 
 June 9, Bremgarten, Baden ; July to Aug. i^ Bellinzona. 
 
 ,, Aug., studying Paul Veronese at Turin. 
 
 ,, Sept. I, Mont Cenis, returning to Denmark Hill. 
 
 Oct. 29, Inaugural address to School of 
 
 Art Cambridge. 
 
 1859. Feb. 22, Lect. "Unity of Art" (Royal In- 
 
 Age 40. stitution) Manchester. 
 
 ,, March i, Lect. " Modern Manufacture and 
 
 Design" Bradford. 
 
 May 2, Address, "Switzerland" (Work. 
 
 Men's Coll.) Denmark Hill. 
 
 ,, May 14, last tour with parents : Diisseldorf 
 
 and Berlin ; June, Dresden, Nuremberg ; 
 
 July, Munich Germany.
 
 232 APPENDIX. 
 
 1859. Aug. I, Schaffhausen ; Aug. 18, Thun ; Sept. 4, 
 Age 40. Bonneville ; Sept. 10, Lausanne ; ten days 
 
 or a fortnight at St. Michael, Mont Cenis Switzerland. 
 
 Oct. 7 Denmark Hill. 
 
 ,, Nov. r, Wilmington ; winter, writing 
 
 "Modern Painters," vol. v. 
 
 1860. March 8, Address, "Religious Art" (Work. 
 
 Age 41. Men's Coll.) 
 
 March 26, Evidence before Committee on 
 
 Public Institutions 
 
 " Modern Painters " finished .
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 (1834186(3.) 
 
 THE Book-lover and collector of Editions will consult "A Bibliography 
 of the Writings in Prose and Verse of John Ruskin, LL.D., edited by 
 Thomas J. Wise, London. Printed for subscribers only, 1889 1892"; 
 an elaborate work, of which Vol. I. and five parts of Vol. II. (329 + 161 
 pages) have appeared up to September 1892. The general reader 
 will be content with short notices, briefly recording Mr. Ruskin's literary 
 activity. With permission from Mr. Wise and his co-editor, Mr. James 
 P. Smart, Jun., to avail myself of their work, I have rearranged the titles 
 of Mr. Ruskin's writings, whether issued separately or in periodicals, 
 under the dates of their first appearance in print ; and I have omitted 
 several mere compilations not actually edited by him, and reports of 
 lectures not furnished by him, as well as minor letters given in " Arrows 
 of the Chace " and " Ruskiniana," or mentioned in the great Biblio- 
 graphy as uncollected. 
 
 The publisher's name is given in brackets after each work : English 
 editions only are named. Works without name of magazine or publisher 
 were printed for private circulation. 
 
 1834. "Enquiries on the Causes of the Colour of the Water of the 
 Rhine"; "Note on the Perforation of a Leaden Pipe by Rats": 
 and " Facts and Considerations on the Strata of Mont Blanc,"etc. 
 (Loudon's " Mag. of Nat. Hist." for Sept., Nov., and Dec.), 
 reprinted in " On the Old Road." 
 
 1835. Saltzburg, and Fragments from a Metrical Joiimal (" Friend- 
 ship's Offering," Smith, Elder and Co.).* 
 
 1836. " The Induration of Sandstone"; "Observations on the Causes 
 which occasion the Variation of Temperature between Spring 
 and River Water" ('Loudon's "Mag. Nat. Hist." for Sept. and 
 Oct.), reprinted in " On the Old Road." 
 
 * All the poems their titles are given in italics were reprinted in "The Poems 
 of John Ruskin" 1891 ; and all except those of 1835 in "Poems J. R.," 1850. 
 
 233
 
 234 APPENDIX. 
 
 1836. The Months (" Friendship's Offering"). 
 
 1837. The Last Smile (" Friendship's Offering "). 
 
 1837. "Leoni," a legend of Italy ("Friendship's Offering"), reprinted 
 separately with preface in 1 868. 
 
 1837-8. " The Poetry of Architecture " ; a series of articles (" Loudon's 
 Architectural Magazine"), reprinted 1892 (George Allen). 
 
 1838. "The Convergence of Perpendiculars," five articles; and "The 
 Planting of Churchyards" (Loudon's "Arch. Mag"). 
 
 1838. The Scythian Grave, Remembrance, and Christ Church, Oxford 
 (" Friendship's Offering "). 
 
 1839. "Whether Works of Art may, with Propriety, be combined with 
 the Sublimity of Nature ; and what would be the most appropriate 
 Situation for the Proposed Monument to the Memory of Sir 
 Walter Scott, in Edinburgh " (Loudon's "Arch. Mag." for January). 
 
 1839. Song We care not what Skies : song Though thou hast not 
 a Feeling: Horace Iter ad Brundusium ("London Monthly 
 Miscellany " for January). 
 
 1839. Memory, and The Name ("London Monthly Misc." for Feb.). 
 
 1839. Canzonet The Winter's Chill: Fragments from a Meteoro- 
 logical Journal : canzonet There's a Change: and The Mirror 
 ("London Monthly Misc." for March). 
 
 1839. Song of the Tyrolese ("London Monthly Misc." for April). 
 
 1839. Salsette and Elephanta (Newdigate prize poem), printed 
 separately and in " Oxford Prize Poems " (J. Vincent), new 
 edition, 1879 (Allen). 
 
 1839. "Remarks on the Present State of Meteorological Science" 
 (Trans. Met. Soc.), reprinted in " Monthly Met. Mag.'' for April 
 1870; and in "On the Old Road." 
 
 1839. Scythian Banquet Song (" Friendship's Offering "). 
 
 1840. The Scythian Guest ("Friendship's Offering"), reprinted with 
 preface, 1849. 
 
 1840-43. The Broken Chain ("Friendship's Offering"). 
 
 1840. To \Adele~\ ("Friendship's Offering"). 
 
 1841. The Tears of Psammenitus : The Two Paths: The Old Water- 
 wheel: Farewell: The Departed Light; and Agonia ("Friend- 
 ship's Offering "). 
 
 1842. The Last Song of Arion, and The Hills of Carrara ("Friend- 
 ship's Offering "). 
 
 1843. "Modern Painters, Vol. I." Seven editions of this volume were 
 published separately up to 1867 (Smith, Elder & Co.) For 
 subsequent editions see under 1860. 
 
 1844. The Battle of Montenotte, and A Walk in Chamouni (" Friend 
 ship's Offering ").
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 235 
 
 1845. La Madonna delVAcqua (Heath's "Book of Beauty"). 
 
 1845. The Old Seaman; and The Alps, seen from Marengo (" Keep- 
 sake "). 
 
 1846. "Modern Painter's, Vol. II." Five editions of this volume were 
 published separately up to 1869 (Smith, Elder). Also rearranged 
 edition in 2 vols., of which there have been four issues (Allen). 
 For other editions see under 1860. 
 
 1846. Mont Blanc; and The Arue at Cluse (" Keepsake"). 
 
 1846. Lines written among the Basses Alpes; and The Glacier (Heath's 
 "Book of Beauty"). 
 
 1847. Lord Lindsays." Christian Art " (" Quarterly Review " for June), 
 reprinted in " On the Old Road." 
 
 1848. Eastlake's "History of Oil Painting" ("Quarterly Review" for 
 March), reprinted in " On the Old Road." 
 
 1849. " Samuel Prout " (" Art Journal " for March), reprinted separately 
 1870, and in " On the Old Road." 
 
 1849. "The Seven Lamps of Architecture," two editions (Smith, 
 Elder), and four subsequent issues (Allen). 
 
 1850. "Poems J. R."; containing the above-mentioned, with additions. 
 
 1851. "The King of the Golden River" (written 1841), seven editions 
 (Smith, Elder), and three subsequent editions (Allen). 
 
 1851. " The Stones of Venice," Vol. I., two editions of this volume pub- 
 lished separately (Smith, Elder), for other editions see under 1853. 
 
 1851. "Examples of the Architecture of Venice" (Smith, Elder, & 
 Co., and Colnaghi), reissued 1887 (Allen). 
 
 1851. "Notes on the Construction of Sheepfolds " : two editions 
 (Smith, Elder), and two subsequent reissues (Allen), also reprinted 
 in " On the Old Road." With this may be named : 
 
 "Two letters concerning Notes, etc.," addressed to the Rev. F. 
 D. Maurice, 1851 : printed by Dr. F. J. Furnivall, 1889. 
 
 1851. " Pre-Raphaelitism," two editions (Smith, Elder), reprinted in 
 " On the Old Road." 
 
 1852. "The National Gallery" (letters to "The Times"), printed 
 separately; also in "Arrows of the Chace." 
 
 1853. "The Stones of Venice," Vols. II. and III., two editions of each 
 published separately (Smith, Elder). The three vols. were 
 published together in 1874, the so-called "Autograph" edition 
 (Smith, Elder), and reprinted iS86 (Allen). In 1879 appeared the 
 Travellers' edition, abridged ; four issues (Allen). With this may 
 be named : " On the Nature of Gothic, etc." (from " Stones of 
 Venice"), printed by F. J. Furnivall, 1854; two issues (Smith, 
 Elder), and reprinted in antique form by William Morris, 1892 
 (Allen).
 
 236 APPENDIX. 
 
 1853-60. "Giotto and his Works in Padua" in three parts; collected 
 
 into one vol. 1877 (Arundel Society). 
 1854. "Lectures on Architecture and Painting" (Edinburgh, Nov. 
 
 1853); two editions (Smith, Elder), new edition, 1891 (Allen). 
 1854. "Letters to the Times on the Principal Pre-Raphaelite Pictures 
 
 in the Exhibition": printed separately, reprinted 1876, also in 
 
 " Arrows of the Chace." 
 1854. "The Opening of the Crystal Palace," etc (Smith, Elder); 
 
 reprinted in " On the Old Road." 
 1855. "Notes on some of the Principal Pictures in ... the Royal 
 
 Academy " ; three editions (Smith, Elder). 
 1856. "Notes on ... the Royal Academy, etc.," No. II., six editions 
 
 (Smith, Elder). 
 1856. "Modern Painters," Vols. III. and IV.: two editions of each 
 
 (Smith, Elder) ; for subsequent issues see under 1860. 
 1856. " The Harbours of England," two editions (E. Gambart & Co.) ; 
 
 edition 3 (Day & Son) ; edition 4 (T. J. Allman) ; edition 5 dated 
 
 1877, (Smith; Elder). 
 1857. "Notes on ... the Royal Academy, etc.," No. III., two editions 
 
 (Smith, Elder). 
 1857. "Notes on the Turner Gallery at Marlborough House"; five 
 
 editions variously revised (Smith, Elder). 
 1857. "Catalogue of the Turner Sketches in the National Gallery," 
 
 Part I. ; also enlarged edition, 1857. 
 1857. "Catalogue of the Sketches and Drawings by J. M. W. Turner, 
 
 R.A., exhibited at Marlborough House," 1857-8; also enlarged 
 
 edition, 1858. 
 1857. " The Elements of Drawing " : eight " thousands " (Smith, Elder) ; 
 
 new edition, 1892 (Allen); partly reprinted iin "Our Sketching 
 
 Club " by the Rev. R. St. J. Tyrwhitt ; four editions (Macmillan). 
 1857. "The Political Economy of Art," three editions (Smith, Elder); 
 
 reprinted in "A Joy for Ever (and its Price in the Market)," three 
 
 editions (Allen) : which includes the following pamphlets : 
 "Education in Art," 1858 (Trans. Nat Assoc. for the Promotion 
 
 of Social Science) ; " Remarks addressed to the Mansfield Art 
 
 Night Class," 1873; an d "Social Policy," etc. (a paper for the 
 
 Metaphysical Society), 1875. 
 1858. Notice respecting some artificial sections illustrating the Geology 
 
 of Chamouni (Proc. Royal Soc. of Edinburgh). 
 1858. "Notes on ... the Royal Academy," etc., No. IV. (Smith, 
 
 Elder). 
 1858. " Inaugural Address at the Cambridge School of Art " (Deighton, 
 
 Bell, & Co., and Bell & Daldy) ; another edition printed for the
 
 BLIOGRAPHY. 237 
 
 Committee of the School; republished separately, 1879 (Allen), 
 and reprinted in " On the Old Road." 
 
 1859. "The Oxford Museum," by Henry W. Acland, M.D., etc., and 
 John Ruskin ; various issues forming four editions (Parker, and 
 Smith, Elder.) Mr. Ruskin's contributions were reprinted in 
 "Arrows of the Chace." 
 
 1859. "Notes on ... the Royal Academy," etc., No. V. (Smith, 
 Elder). 
 
 1859. " The Two Paths" (Smith, Elder) and three subsequent editions 
 (Allen). The work includes: "The Unity of Art" (lecture at 
 Manchester, Feb. 22, 1859), privately printed. 
 
 1859." The Elements of Perspective " (Smith, Elder). 
 
 1860. "Sir Joshua and Holbein" (" Cornhill Mag." for March); 
 reprinted in " On the Old Road." 
 
 1860. "Modern Painters," Vol. V. (Smith, Elder). The five volumes 
 of " Modern Painters " were published together in the issue 
 known as the autograph edition in 1873 (Smith, Elder). They 
 were reprinted with additions and index in 1888, and again in 
 1892 (Allen). With these may be named : " Frondes Agrestes " 
 (selections from " Modern Painters " by Miss Susanna Beever), 
 edited by Mr. Ruskin, 1875; of which ten issues, totalling 18,000, 
 copies, have been published (Allen). " In Montibus Sanctis, 
 Studies of Mountain Form and its Visible Causes, collected and 
 completed out of Modern Painters " : two parts only appeared, 
 1884-5 (Allen) ; and " Creli Enarrant, Studies of Cloud Form, etc.,'' 
 1885 (Allen). 
 
 The well-known " Selections from the Writings [above-named] 
 of John Ruskin" were published in 1861 (Smith, Elder). .
 
 CATALOGUE OF DRAWINGS BY MR. RUSKIN. 
 
 (18291859.) 
 
 THIS list contains only the more important and dated drawings. A 
 full catalogue raisonne would be almost as elaborate a work as the 
 great Bibliography ; but the following entries will serve to show 
 Mr. Ruskin's industry in practical art, and the development of his 
 style of draughtsmanship. 
 
 1829. Maps, of which a specimen was shown at the 
 
 Fine Art Society's Galleries, 1878 Brantwood. 
 
 1 830. Copies from Cruikshank's ' ' Grimm " 
 
 1831. Canterbury Cathedral (first architectural study), 
 
 and Battle Abbey Miss Gale. 
 
 Sevenoaks ; Rocks at Tunbridge Wells ; Canterbury ; 
 
 Battle Abbey " Brantwood. 
 
 First study of clouds (pen and pencil) : Dover 
 
 1832. Tunbridge Castle (pencil, " drawing master's style ") 
 
 1833. [First Swiss tour; vignettes on grey paper worked 
 up in pen from sketches] Mont Blanc ; Aiguilles ; 
 Wetterhorn and Bernese Alps ; Jungfrau, etc., 
 Sempach ; Rhine, Sargans and Coire ; Pissevache 
 and Bex ; Lille ; Spliigen ; Domo d'Ossola ; between 
 Novi and Genoa ; Mediterranean ; Dijon Church ; 
 and other vignettes. Watch-tower at Andernach 
 (Poems, 1891). In pencil: Cassel, Hotel de Ville ; 
 a Facade; a Tree 
 
 1834. Twenty-eight original vignettes on white paper in 
 
 imitation of Turner's vignettes in Rogers' Poems ; 
 
 of which " The Jungfrau," published in Poems, 1891, 
 
 is a specimen ; with others from Prout and Turner 
 
 St. Mary's, Bristol (dated 1833), Proutesque ... G. Holt, Esq. 
 
 1835. [Second Swiss tour; pencil drawings in Prout's 
 style] Dover ; Calais ; Rouen (Poems, 1891) ; Rouen, 
 238
 
 CATALOGUE OF DRAWINGS BY MR. RUSKIN. 239 
 
 facade, Arc de 1'Horloge and street ; Rouen, Butter- 
 tower ("Mag. of Art," Jan. 1888); Sens; Nancy 
 (Poems, 1891); Tete Noir; Bex; La Halle, Neu- 
 chatel ; Baden, Switzerland ; a Turret ; Zug 
 (" Poetry of Architecture," 1892) ; St. Gothard ; 
 Amsteg ; Meyringen ; Rosenlaui; St. Gall ... Brantwood. 
 
 Main street of Innsbruck Dr. Pocock. 
 
 Zirl ; Stelvio ; St. Anastasia, Verona ; Vicenza (?) ; 
 
 St. Mark's; Ulm ("Poetry of Architecture," 1892) Brantwood. 
 
 Strasburg; Chateau, Thun Oxford. 
 
 [The following are in pen] Rouen, Cathedral Spire ; 
 Montreuil ; Bonneville ; Mont Velan (Poems, 1891) ; 
 Fortress in Val d'Aosta (Poems, 1891); Ancienne 
 Maison (Poems) ; Hospital, Pass of St. Gothard 
 
 (Poems); Grimsel Brantwood. 
 
 1836. Richmond 
 
 1837. [Still in the Proutesque style, but more advanced; 
 quarto imperial size] Brougham Castle ; Furness 
 Abbey ; Ruin near Ambleside (Poems) ; R. Brathay ; 
 
 Rydal (Poems) ; Choir of Bolton Abbey 
 
 West end of Bolton Abbey; High Tor, Matlock ... Mrs. Talbot. 
 Rocks above Strid ; Matlock ; Ashby ; Peterborough ; 
 
 Lichfield Cathedral ; Dorchester, and niche ... Brantwood. 
 
 Cottage in Troutbeck (line and wash) G. Holt, Esq. 
 
 Also drawings for " Poetry of Architecture," as the 
 
 "Cottage near Aosta" (re-engraved 1892) ... 
 
 1838. [Same style and size.] Lodgings at Oxford ... Brantwood. 
 Stirling ; Stirling from Cambuskenneth Abbey . . . Mrs. Talbot. 
 Palace of Stirling ; Edinburgh from Castle Rock ; 
 
 Roslin, Prentice's pillar ; Haddon Hall (Poems) ... Brantwood. 
 1839. St. Michael's, Cornwall (pencil and white) 
 1840-41. [New style based on David Roberts, pencil and 
 tint, half imperial size ; of these fine drawings the 
 chief are] : Chateau de Blois ; St. Pierre, Avignon ; 
 Nice (" Poetry of Architecture) " ; Pisa, Spina chapel 
 Pisa, Spina Chapel (another) at St. George's Museum Sheffield. 
 Ponte Vecchio, Florence; Palazzo Vecchio, Florence; 
 Piazza S. M. del Pianto, Rome ("Amateur's Port- 
 folio," 1844); Quattro Fontane, Rome; Fountain 
 at Rome ; the Aventine ; Street of Trinita di Monte ; 
 Aqueducts of Campagna ; La Riccia (see " Modern 
 Painters," vol. i., p. 153); Naples, Gate; Castel 
 del Uovo ; Street Architecture ; Windows, Street,
 
 240 , APPENDIX. 
 
 and Bay (" Poetry of Architecture," 1892); Castel 
 Vecchio and other drawings. Pompeii ; Castle of 
 Itri (see " Praeterita," ii., p. 91) ; Bologna ; Fountain 
 at Verona ; Piazza d'Erbe, Verona ; and Giant's 
 Staircase, Venice (Verona Exhibition, 1870) ; Venice, 
 Ca' Contarini Fasan Brantwood. 
 
 Also several water-colour sketches in style of Copley 
 Fielding 
 
 [On returning to England, autumn 1841, produced 
 coloured drawings in imitation of Turner's vig- 
 nettes ; Wendlebury Church (given to the Rev. 
 Walter Brown) ; and Amboise ; Coast of Genoa ; 
 and Glacier des Bois (Poems)^] 
 
 1842. [After lessons from Harding : first naturalistic 
 study, the sketch of Ivy, and Aspen at Fontaine- 
 bleau (now lost ?) ; and last Proutesque drawings.] 
 Tree at Dulwich (Poems) ; Calais : Town-hall, 
 Belfry and Lighthouse ... ' 
 
 Study at Chamouni (pencil, wash and white, quarto 
 
 imperial) Sir J. Simon. 
 
 Great square at Cologne (given to Miss Pritchard) ; 
 
 St. Quentin ; Antwerp; Bruges ... ... ... 
 
 Perhaps this year, Falls of Schaffhausen (12 x 7^) 
 the study Turner liked and sketch of same sub- 
 ject ; Sketch-book (6J X 8 in.) with journal of 
 tour ; and the two first studies of early sacred art : 
 St. Peter, attributed to Cimabue ; and Virgin, attri- 
 buted to Duccio, Christ Church, Oxford ... Prof. C. E. Norton. 
 1844. [First diagrammatic sketching, giving up the attempt 
 to make pictures ; studies of geology and botany 
 for " Modern Painters " at Chamouni.] 
 
 Panorama of Simplon and Bernese Alps ... Sheffield Museum. 
 Fletschhorn and Weisshorn, at Simplon ... 
 
 Some drawings at Chamouni, Aiguille Verte ... Brantwood. 
 
 1845. [After study of Turner's "Liber Studiorum," using 
 strong outline in pen or pencil, and wash in full 
 colour or chiaroscuro.] 
 
 Towers at Montbard Herne Hill. 
 
 Lucca: San Michele ... ... ... ... ... Oxford. 
 
 Pisa: Duomo; Baptistery; studies in Campo Santo Brantwood. 
 
 Pisa : Sta. Maria della Spina Sheffield Museum. 
 
 Florence: San Miniato (6J x 3^ in.) Prof. Norton. 
 
 Florence : Garden of San Miniato ; Avenue of Porta
 
 CATALOGUE OF DRAWINGS BY MR. RUSKIN. 24! 
 
 Romana ; View of Arno and Town ; Fiesole ; Copy 
 of Angelico's Annunciation (" Modern Painters ") ; 
 Vogogna. Milan : Eve and the Serpent (" Seven 
 Lamps") Brantwood. 
 
 Study of Tree (Aug. 4th) ..." ... Oxford. 
 
 Torrent in Val Anzasca (half imp., colour) ... ... Brantwood. 
 
 Studies on St. Gothard 
 
 Some at Brantwood, one owned by Prof. Norton. 
 
 Baveno : Mill and Sunset (Poems, 1891). Brescia : 
 Twilight (copied for " Storm Cloud " lecture, 1884) ; 
 Verona ; Vicenza, windows and interior (pencil) ; 
 Venice, Ca d'Oro ; Ca' Foscari ; copies, etc. . . . Brantwood. 
 
 Capitals at Venice, sketch on brown paper (8J x 6 in.) Prof. Norton. 
 
 Perhaps this year, two sketches of Ponte Vecchio, 
 
 Florence F. W. Milliard, Esq. 
 
 1846. [Bold and clear tinting with full brush over outline.] 
 Calais Belfry ; the Cathedral- before Restoration, 
 and other drawings at Sens Brantwood. 
 
 Perhaps this year, " Mountain Gloom at St. Jean de 
 
 Maurienne" Sir J.Simon. 
 
 Porch of Duomo, Verona ; St. Mark's after rain, Venice Oxford. 
 
 Griffin at Verona (" Modern Painters ") ; Window, 
 Ca' Foscari, Balcony and Capital (" Seven Lamps") ; 
 Cottage Gallery, Pistoja (?) (" Poetry of Architec- 
 ture"); Lauterbrunnen Cliffs Brantwood. 
 
 St. Urbain, Troyes ; Ferrara Cathedral (" Seven 
 Lamps") Sir J.Simon. 
 
 Perhaps this year, Folkstone from the Pavilion Hotel 
 
 (sepia, quarto) 
 
 1848. Caen, main street; St. Lo, Cathedral (both half 
 
 imperial) Prof. Norton. 
 
 Caudebec, flamboyant sculpture Harvard College. 
 
 Also drawings and sketches for "Seven Lamps" ... Brantwood. 
 1849. Annecy, houses and bridge (pen and tint, 6 x 4f in.) Prof. Norton. 
 
 Mountains from Vevey ; several drawings of the 
 Matterhorn Brantwood. 
 
 Matterhorn, for "Modern Painters" (colour, quarto 
 imperial) ; perhaps this year " Woodland, Rock, and 
 Cloud, in the byway to the Chapeau, Chamouni" 
 (sepia, lox 15 in.) ; and Church tower, Courmayeur 
 (colour, 10 x 6 in.) Sir J.Simon. 
 
 Camera lucida drawing of Chamouni ; detail of Doge's 
 
 Palace, and other drawings for " Stones of Venice " Brantwood. 
 VOL.1. -16
 
 242 APPENDIX. 
 
 1851-2. Further drawings for "Stones of Venice " ... Brantwood. 
 
 Also (Feb. 24th, 1852) Vicenza (colour, 10 X 5 in.) ; 
 
 and perhaps Capitals of St. Mark's (colour, 6x4 in.) Sir J. Simon. 
 
 Sketch of Tintoret's Annunciation (3^ X 4^ in.) ... Prof. Norton. 
 
 Sarcophagus of Can Mastino II. ; and detail of Ducal 
 
 Palace Verona Ex., 1870. 
 
 1853. Gneiss rock in Glenfinlas lampblack (Cook's 
 
 " Studies in Ruskin ") Oxford. 
 
 Perhaps this year, Granite boulder (colour, 12 x 185 in.) Prof. Norton. 
 1854. Outlines of Turner's two Nottinghams and other 
 drawings for " Modern Painters," III. and IV. 
 
 Jib of Calais boat ("Praeterita") Brantwood. 
 
 Perhaps this year : Lake of Brientz (9^ x 6J in.) ; and 
 "Old Hall in Worcestershire or Herefordshire" 
 (quarto) Prof. Norton. 
 
 Perhaps this year : Towers of Fribourg and copy of 
 Turner's "St. Gothard" ("Modern Painters" IV.) 
 
 Mrs. W. H. Churchill. 
 
 Also Pine forest at St. Michel ; and Glacier des 
 
 Bossons, Chamouni (Cook's "Studies in Ruskin") Oxford. 
 
 1855. Deer's head engraved on bone (British Museum) Prof. Norton. 
 1856. Amiens Porch (" Bible of Amiens ") Oxford. 
 
 Thun, for " Swiss Towns," (13 X 18 in.) or in 1854 ; 
 Fribourg, drawings for " Swiss Towns " Brantwood. 
 
 Fribourg (Cook's " Studies in Ruskin ") Oxford. 
 
 Perhaps this year the following coloured drawings : 
 Old Houses at Geneva on the Rhone Island 
 (15 x 13 in.) ; At the Foot of the Mole, near Bonne- 
 ville (14 x 12 in.) ; Rocks and Lichen below Les 
 Montets, Chamouni (14 X 1 1 in.) ; Cascade de la 
 Folie, Chamouni (12x9 in.) ; Head of the Lake of 
 Geneva (14x6 in.) ; Wayside near Bonneville 
 
 (14 X 9 in.) Sir J.Simon. 
 
 1857. About this time, Bird drawn at the Working Men's 
 
 College Mr. W. H. Hooper. 
 
 Drawings of leaves (Cook's "Studies in Ruskin") 
 
 and others Oxford. 
 
 1858. Enlargements from St. Louis' Psalter, and others ; 
 
 Hotel Dessin, Calais Brantwood. 
 
 Basle ; Rheinfelden ; Hapsburg (Cook's " Studies ") Oxford, 
 
 Several studies at Baden, Hapsburg, Bellinzona, 
 Turin ; Storm clouds on Mt. Cenis, and other sketches Brantwood.
 
 CATALOGUE OF DRAWINGS BY MR. RUSKIN. 243 
 
 Rheinfelden, pen sketch ; Head of Veronese's Solo- 
 mon (11 x I4i in-) Prof. Norton. 
 
 Perhaps this year, Lauffenburg (body colour on gray, 
 
 10 x 8 in.) Sir J.Simon. 
 
 1859. Kempten Tower, two sketches ; Field of corn, 
 Munich ; Lauterbrunnen ; Dawn at Neuchatel 
 (perhaps this year) Prof. Norton. 
 
 Kempten, pen outline Harvard Coll. 
 
 Nuremberg, Dormers, and Street ; sketch at Munich Brantwood. 
 Nuremberg, Moat (" Modern Painters ") 
 
 Copy from Vandyck at Munich Herne Hill. 
 
 Lauffenburg ; Bridge of Constance Brantwood. 
 
 END OF VOL. I.
 
 A LIST OF NEW BOOKS 
 
 AND ANNOUNCEMENTS OF 
 
 METHUEN AND COMPANY 
 
 PUBLISHERS : LONDON 
 
 1 8 BURY STREET - 
 
 W.C. 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 FORTHCOMING BOOKS, . . . . . 2 
 
 POETRY, I . . . . . . . ' 6 
 
 HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY, . . . . ' 7 
 
 GENERAL LITERATURE, . .*'.... 8 
 
 WORKS BY S. BARING GOULD, . . . , ' 9 
 
 FICTION, 
 
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 BOOKS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS, ... 
 
 ENGLISH LEADERS OF RELIGION, 
 UNIVERSITY EXTENSION SERIES, 
 SOCIAL QUESTIONS OF TO-DAY, 
 
 OCTOBER 1892
 
 OCTOBER 1892. 
 
 MESSRS. METHUEN'S 
 
 AUTUMN ANNOUNCEMENTS 
 
 GENERAL LITERATURE 
 
 Rudyard Kipling. BARRACK-ROOM BALLADS ; And 
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 W. G. COLLINGWOOD, M.A., late Scholar of University College, 
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 This important work is written by Mr. Collingwood, who has been for some years 
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 Guardian. 
 
 Tomson. A SUMMER NIGHT, AND OTHER POEMS. By 
 GRAHAM R. TOMSON. With Frontispiece by A. TOMSON. Fcap. 
 8vo. 2 s ' 6d. 
 Also an edition on handmade paper, limited to 50 copies. Large crown 
 
 8vo. los. 6d. net. 
 
 ' Mrs. Tomson holds perhaps the very highest rank among poetesses of English birth. 
 This selection will help her reputation.' Black and White.
 
 MESSRS. METHUEN'S LIST 7 
 
 Langbridge. A CRACKED FIDDLE. Being Selections from 
 the Poems of FREDERIC LANGBRIDGE. With Portrait. CroivnSvo. 5^. 
 
 Langbridge. BALLADS OF THE BRAVE : Poems of Chivalry, 
 Enterprise, Courage, and Constancy, from the Earliest Times to the 
 Present Day. Edited, with Notes, by Rev. F. LANGBRIDGE. 
 Crown 8z>o. 
 
 Presentation Edition, 3*. 6d. School Edition, 2s. 6d. 
 
 'A very happy conception happily carried out. These "Ballads of the Brave" are 
 intended to suit the real tastes of boys, and will suit the taste of the great majority. 
 Spectator. 'The book is full of splendid things.' World. 
 
 History and Biography 
 
 Gladstone. THE SPEECHES AND PUBLIC ADDRESSES 
 OF THE RT. HON. W. E. GLADSTONE, M.P. With Notes 
 and Introductions. Edited by A.' W. HUTTON, M.A. (Librarian of 
 the Gladstone Library), and H. J. COHEN, M.A. With Portraits. 
 Sz<0. Vol. X. 12s. 6d. 
 
 Russell. THE LIFE OF ADMIRAL LORD COLLING- 
 WOOD. By W. CLARK RUSSELL, Author of ' The Wreck of the 
 Grosvenor.' With Illustrations by F. BRANGWYN. %vo. los. 6d. 
 
 'A really good book.' Saturday Review. 
 
 ' A most excellent and wholesome book, which we should like to see in the hands of 
 every boy in the country.' St. J. antes' s Gazette. 
 
 Clark. THE COLLEGES OF OXFORD : Their History and 
 their Traditions. By Members of the University. Edited by A. 
 CLARK, M.A., Fellow and Tutor of Lincoln College. 8v0. \zs. 6d. 
 
 ' Whether the reader approaches the book as a patriotic member of a college, as an 
 antiquary, or as a student of the organic growth of college foundation, it will amply 
 reward his attention.' Times. 
 
 'A delightful book, learned and lively.' Academy. 
 
 ' A work which will certainly be appealed to for many years as the standard book on 
 the Colleges of Oxford.' Atheneeum. 
 
 Hulton. RIXAE OXONIENSES : An Account of the Battles 
 of the Nations, The Struggle between Town and Gown, etc. By 
 S. F. HULTON, M.A. Crown 8vo. $s. 
 
 James. CURIOSITIES OF CHRISTIAN HISTORY PRIOR 
 TO THE REFORMATION. By CROAKE JAMES, Author of 
 ' Curiosities of Law and Lawyers. ' Crown %vo. "js. 6d.
 
 8 MESSRS. METHUEN'S LIST 
 
 Clifford. THE DESCENT OF CHARLOTTE COMPTON 
 
 (BARONESS FERRERS DE CHARTLEY). By her Great-Granddaughter, 
 ISABELLA G. C. CLIFFORD. Small 4/0. los. 6d. net. 
 
 General Literature 
 
 Bowden. THE IMITATION OF BUDDHA: Being Quota- 
 tions from Buddhist Literature for each Day in the Year. Compiled 
 by E. M. BOWDEN. With Preface by Sir EDWIN ARNOLD. Second 
 Edition. i6mo. 2s. 6d. 
 
 Ditchfield. OUR ENGLISH VILLAGES : Their Story and 
 their Antiquities. By P. H. DiTCHFiELD, M.A., F.R.H.S., Rector 
 of Barkham, Berks. Post %vo. 2s. 6d. Illustrated. 
 
 'An extremely amusing and interesting little book, which should find a place in 
 every parochial library.' Guardian. 
 
 Ditchfield. OLD ENGLISH SPORTS. By P. H. DITCH- 
 FIELD, M.A. Crown $>vo. 2s. 6d. Illustrated. 
 'A charming account of old English Sports.' Morning Post. 
 
 Burne. PARSON AND PEASANT: Chapters of their 
 Natural History. By J. B. BURNE, M.A., Rector of Wasing. 
 Crown %vo. $s. 
 
 ' " Parson and Peasant ' is a book not only to be interested in, but to learn something 
 from a book which may prove a help to many a clergyman, and broaden the 
 hearts and ripen the charity of laymen. " ' Derby Mercury. 
 
 Massee. A MONOGRAPH OF THE MYXOGASTRES. By 
 G. MASSEE. 8vv. iSs. net. 
 
 Cunningham. THE PATH TOWARDS KNOWLEDGE : 
 Essays on Questions of the Day. By W. CUNNINGHAM, D.D., 
 Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, Professor of Economics at 
 King's College, London. Crown 8v0. <\s. 6d. 
 Essays on Marriage and Population, Socialism, Money, Education, Positivism, etc. 
 
 Anderson Graham. NATURE IN BOOKS : Studies in Literary 
 Biography. By P. ANDERSON GRAHAM. Crown 8vo. 6s. 
 
 The chapters are entitled : I. ' The Magic of the Fields ' (Jefferies). II. ' Art and 
 Nature' (Tennyson). III. 'The Doctrine of Idleness' (Thoreau). IV. 'The 
 Romance of Life ' (Scott). V. ' The Poetry of Toil' (Burns). VI. 'The Divinity 
 of Nature ' (Wordsworth).
 
 MESSRS. METHUEN'S LIST 9 
 
 Works by S. Baring Gould. 
 
 Author of ' Mehalah,' etc. 
 
 OLD COUNTRY LIFE. With Sixty-seven Illustrations by 
 W. PARKINSON, F. D. BEDFORD, and F. MASEY. Large Crown 
 8vo, cloth super extra, top edge gilt, los. 6d. Fourth aiid Cheaper 
 Edition. 6s. [Ready. 
 
 '"Old Country Life," as healthy wholesome reading, full of breezy life and move- 
 ment, full of quaint stories vigorously told, will not be excelled by any book 
 to be published throughout the year. Sound, hearty, and English to the core.' 
 World. 
 
 HISTORIC ODDITIES AND STRANGE EVENTS. Third 
 
 Edition, Crown 8v0. 6s. 
 
 ' A collection of exciting and entertaining chapters. The whole volume is delightful 
 reading. ' Times. 
 
 FREAKS OF FANATICISM. (First published as Historic 
 Oddities, Second Series. ) Third Edition. Crown 8vo. 6s. 
 
 ' Mr. Baring Gould has a keen eye for colour and effect, and the subjects he has 
 chosen give ample scope to his descriptive and analytic faculties. A perfectly 
 fascinating book. Scottish Leader. 
 
 SONGS OF THE WEST: Traditional Ballads and Songs of 
 the West of England, with their Traditional Melodies. Collected 
 by S. BARING GOULD, M.A., and H. FLEETWOOD SHEPPARD, 
 M.A. Arranged for Voice and Piano. In 4 Parts (containing 25 
 Songs each), Parts /., //., ///., 3^. each. Part IV., $s. In one 
 Vol., roan, \$s. 
 
 ' A rich and varied collection of humour, pathos, grace, and poetic fancy.' Saturday 
 Review. 
 
 YORKSHIRE ODDITIES AND STRANGE EVENTS. 
 fourth Edition. Crown &vo. 6s. 
 
 SURVIVALS AND SUPERSTITIONS. Crownlvo. Illustrated. 
 
 [In the press. 
 
 JACQUETTA, and other Stories. Crown^vo. 3s.6d. Boards, 2s. 
 
 ARM I NELL: A Social Romance. New Edition. Crown 8v0. 
 
 3-y. 6d. Boards, 2s. 
 
 'To say that a book is by the author of " Mehalah" is to imply that it contains a 
 story cast on strong lines, containing dramatic possibilities, vivid and sympathetic 
 descriptions of Nature, and a wealth of ingenious imagery. All these expecta- 
 tions are justified by "Arminell." Speaker.
 
 IO 
 
 MESSRS. METHUEN'S LIST 
 
 URITH: A Story of Dartmoor. Third Edition. CrownZvo. y.bd. 
 
 ' The author is at his best.' Times. 
 
 ' He has nearly reached the high water-mark of " Mehalah." ' National Observer. 
 
 MARGERY OF QUETHER, and other Stories. Crown 81/0. 
 35. 6d. 
 
 IN THE ROAR OF THE SEA : A Tale of the Cornish Coast. 
 
 New Edition. 6s. 
 
 Fiction 
 
 Author of 'Indian Idylls.' IN TENT AND BUNGALOW: 
 Stories of Indian Sport and Society. By the Author of ' Indian 
 Idylls.' Crown Svo. $s. 6d. 
 
 Fenn. A DOUBLE KNOT. By G. MANVILLE FENN, Author 
 of ' The Vicar's People,' etc. Crown %vo. 3^. 6< 
 
 Pryce. THE QUIET MRS. FLEMING. By RICHARD PRYCE, 
 Author of 'Miss Maxwell's Affections,' etc. Crown Sz>o. $s. 6d. 
 Pictttre Boards, 2s. 
 
 Gray. ELSA. A Novel. ByE. M'QUEEN GRAY. Crown^vo. 6s. 
 
 'A charming novel. The characters are not only powerful sketches, but minutely 
 and carefully finished portraits.' Guardian. 
 
 Gray. MY STEWARDSHIP. By E. M'QUEEN GRAY. 
 
 Crown Svo. 3$. 6d. 
 Cobban. A REVEREND GENTLEMAN. By J. MACLAREN 
 
 COBBAN, Author of ' Master of his Fate,' etc. Crown 8vo. qs. 6d. 
 ' The best work Mr. Cobban has yet achieved. The Rev. W. Merrydew is a brilliant 
 
 creation.' National Observer. 
 'One of the subtlest studies of character outside Meredith.' Star. 
 
 Lyall. DERRICK VAUGHAN, NOVELIST. By EDNA 
 LYALL, Author of 'Donovan.' Crown 8vo. $ist Thousand. 
 35. 6d. ; paper, is. 
 
 Linton. THE TRUE HISTORY OF JOSHUA DAVIDSON, 
 Christian and Communist. By E. LYNN LINTON. Eleventh and 
 Cheaper Edition. Post 8vo. is. 
 
 Grey. THE STORY OF CHRIS. By ROWLAND GREY, 
 
 Author of ' Lindenblumen,' etc. Crowti 8vo. $s. 
 Dicker. A CAVALIER'S LADYE. By CONSTANCE DICKER. 
 
 With Illustrations. Crown %vo. y. 6d.
 
 MESSRS. METHUEN'S LIST 
 
 n 
 
 Dickinson. A VICAR'S WIFE. By EVELYN DICKINSON. 
 Crown 8vo. 6s. 
 
 Prowse. THE POISON OF ASPS. By R. ORTON PROWSE. 
 
 Croiun %vo. 6s. 
 
 Taylor. THE KING'S FAVOURITE. By UNA TAYLOR. 
 Croivn 8z'0. 6s. 
 
 Novel Series 
 
 3/6 
 
 MESSRS. METHUEN will issue from time to time a Series 
 of copyright Novels, by well-known Authors, handsomely 
 bound, at the above popular price of three shillings and six- 
 pence. The first volumes (ready) are : 
 
 1. THE PLAN OF CAMPAIGN. By F. MABEL ROBINSON. 
 
 2. JACQUETTA. By S. BARING GOULD, Author of ' Mehalah, 
 
 etc. 
 
 3. MY LAND OF BEULAH. By Mrs. LEITH ADAMS (Mrs. 
 
 De Courcy Laffan). 
 
 4. ELI'S CHILDREN. By G. MANVILLE FENN. 
 
 5. ARMINELL: A Social Romance. By S. BARING GOULD, 
 
 Author of ' Mehalah,' etc. 
 
 6. DERRICK VAUGHAN, NOVELIST. With Portrait of 
 
 Author. By EDNA LYALL, Author of ' Donovan,' etc. 
 
 7. DISENCHANTMENT. By F. MABEL ROBINSON. 
 
 8. DISARMED. By M. BETHAM EDWARDS. 
 
 9. JACK'S FATHER. By W. E. NoRRIS. 
 
 10. MARGERY OF QUETHER. By S. BARING GOULD. 
 
 11. A LOST ILLUSION. By LESLIE KEITH. 
 
 12. A MARRIAGE AT SEA. By W. CLARK RUSSELL. 
 
 13. MR. BUTLER'S WARD. By F. MABEL ROBINSON. 
 
 14. URITH. By S. BARING GOULD. 
 
 15. HOVENDEN, V.C. By F. MABEL ROBINSON. 
 
 Other Volumes will be announced in due course.
 
 4 
 
 12 MESSRS. METHUEN'S LIST 
 
 NEW TWO-SHILLING EDITIONS 
 
 Crown %vo, Ornamental Boards. 
 
 ARMINELL. By the Author of ' Mehalah.' 
 ELI'S CHILDREN. By G. MANVILLE FENN. 
 DISENCHANTMENT. By F. MABEL ROBINSON. 
 THE PLAN OF CAMPAIGN. By F. MABEL ROBINSON. 
 JACQUETTA. By the Author of ' Mehalah.' 
 
 Pictttre Boards. 
 
 A DOUBLE KNOT. By G. MANVILLE FENN. 
 THE QUIET MRS. FLEMING. By RICHARD PRYCE. 
 JACK'S FATHER. By W. E. NORRIS. 
 A LOST ILLUSION. By LESLIE KEITH. 
 
 Books for Boys and Girls 
 
 Walford. A PINCH OF EXPERIENCE. By L. B. WAL- 
 FORD, Author of 'Mr. Smith.' With Illustrations by GORDON 
 BROWNE. Crown 8vo. 6s. 
 
 ' The clever authoress steers clear of namby-pamby, and invests her moral with a 
 fresh and striking dress. There is terseness and vivacity of style, and the illustra- 
 tions are admirable.' Anti-Jacobin. 
 
 Molesworth. THE RED GRANGE. By Mrs. MOLESWORTH, 
 Author of 'Carrots.' With Illustrations by GORDON BROWNE. 
 Crown 8vo. 6s. 
 
 'A volume in which girls will delight, and beautifully illustrated.' Pall Mall 
 Gazette. 
 
 Clark Russell. MASTER ROCKAFELLAR'S VOYAGE. By 
 W. CLARK RUSSELL, Author of ' The Wreck of the Grosvenor,' etc. 
 Illustrated by GORDON BROWNE. Crown t>vo. 35. 6d. 
 
 'Mr. Clark Russell's story of "Master Rockafellar's Voyage" will be among the 
 favourites of the Christmas books. There is a rattle and " go " all through it, and 
 its illustrations are charming in themselves, and very much above the average in 
 the way in which they are produced. Guardian. 
 
 Author of Mdle. Mori.' THE SECRET OF MADAME DE 
 Monluc. By the Author of 'The Atelier du Lys,' ' Mdle. Mori.' 
 Crown 8vo. %s. 6d. 
 ' An exquisite literary cameo.' World.
 
 MESSRS. METHUEN'S LIST 13 
 
 Manville Fenn. SYD BELTON : Or, The Boy who would not 
 
 go to Sea. By G. MANVILLE FENN, Author of ' In the King's 
 Name,' etc. Illustrated by GORDON BROWNE. Crown &vo. 35. 6d. 
 
 ' Who among the young story-reading public will not rejoice at the sight of the old 
 combination, so often proved admirable a story by Manville Fenn, illustrated 
 by Gordon Browne ! The story, too, is one of the good old sort, full of life and 
 vigour, breeziness and fun. Journal of Education. 
 
 Parr. DUMPS. By Mrs. PARR, Author of ' Adam and Eve,' 
 ' Dorothy Fox,' etc. Illustrated by W. PARKINSON. Crown 8vo. 
 35. 6d. 
 
 ' One of the prettiest stories which even this clever writer has given the world for a 
 long time.' World. 
 
 Meade. A GIRL OF THE PEOPLE. By L. T. MEADE, 
 Author of ' Scamp and I, ' etc. Illustrated by R. BARNES. Crown 
 8vo. 35. 6d. 
 'An excellent story. Vivid portraiture of character, and broad and wholesome 
 
 lessons about life.' Spectator. 
 'One of Mrs. Meade's most fascinating books." Daily News. 
 
 Meade. HEPSY GIPSY. By L. T. MEADE. Illustrated by 
 
 EVERARD HOPKINS. Crown 8vo, 2s. 6J. 
 
 ' Mrs. Meade has not often done better work than this,' Spectator. 
 
 Meade. THE HONOURABLE MISS : A Tale of a Country 
 Town. By L. T. MEADE, Author of ' Scamp and I,' ' A Girl of the 
 People,' etc. With Illustrations by EVERARD HOPKINS. Crown 
 8v0, 35. 6d. 
 
 Adams. MY LAND OF BEULAH. By MRS. LEITH ADAMS. 
 
 With a Frontispiece by GORDON BROWNE. Crown 8vo, 35. 6d. 
 
 English Leaders of Religion 
 
 Edited by A. M. M. STEDMAN, M. A. With Portrait, crown 8v0, 2s. 6d. 
 
 A series of short biographies, free from party bias, of the . .. 
 
 most prominent leaders of religious life and thought in this r\ lf~\ 
 and the last century. ^/ ^~s 
 
 The following are already arranged 
 
 CARDINAL NEWMAN. By R. H. HUTTON. [Ready. 
 
 1 Few who read this book will fail to be struck by the wonderful insight it displays 
 into the nature of the Cardinal's genius and the spirit of his life." WILFRID 
 WARD, in the Tablet. 
 
 'Full of knowledge, excellent in method, and intelligent in criticism. We regard it 
 as wholly admirable.' Academy.
 
 14 MESSRS. METHUEN'S LIST 
 
 JOHN WESLEY. By J. H. OVERTON, M.A. {Ready. 
 
 1 It is well done : the story is clearly told, proportion is duly observed, and there is 
 no lack either of discrimination or of sympathy." Mane/tester Guardian. 
 
 BISHOP WILBERFORCE. By G. W. DANIEL, M.A. [Ready. 
 CHARLES SIMEON. By H. C. G. MOULE, M.A. [Ready. 
 JOHN KEBLE. By W. LOCK, M.A. [Nov. 
 
 F. D. MAURICE. By COLONEL F. MAURICE, R.E. 
 THOMAS CHALMERS. By Mrs. OLIPHANT. 
 CARDINAL MANNING. By A. W. HlTTTON, M.A. [Ready. 
 Other volumes will be announced in due course. 
 
 University Extension Series 
 
 A series of books on historical, literary, and scientific subjects, suitable 
 for extension students and home reading circles. Each volume will be 
 complete in itself, and the subjects will be treated by competent writers 
 in a broad and philosophic spirit. 
 
 Edited byj. E. SYMES, M.A., 
 
 Principal of University College, Nottingham. 
 
 Crown &vo. 2s. 6d. 
 The following volumes are ready : 
 THE INDUSTRIAL HISTORY OF ENGLAND. By H. DE 
 B. GIBBINS, M.A., late Scholar of Wadham College, Oxon., Cobden 
 Prizeman. Second Edition. With Maps and Plans. [Ready. 
 
 ' A compact and clear story of our industrial development. A study of this concise 
 but luminous book cannot fail to give the reader a clear insight into the principal 
 phenomena of our industrial history. The editor and publishers are to be congra- 
 tulated on this first volume of their venture, and we shall look with expectant 
 interest for the succeeding volumes of the series. ' University Extension Journal. 
 
 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH POLITICAL ECONOMY. By 
 L. L. PRICE, M.A., Fellow of Oriel College, Oxon. 
 
 PROBLEMS OF POVERTY : An Inquiry into the Industrial 
 Conditions of the Poor. By J. A. HOBSON, M. A. 
 
 VICTORIAN POETS. By A. SHARP. 
 
 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. By J. E. SYMES, M.A. 
 
 2J6
 
 MESSRS. METHUEN'S LIST 15 
 
 PSYCHOLOGY. By F. S. GRANGER, M.A., Lecturer in Philo- 
 sophy at University College, Nottingham. 
 
 THE EVOLUTION OF PLANT LIFE : Lower Forms. By 
 G. MASSEE, Kew Gardens. With Illustrations. 
 
 AIR AND WATER. Professor V. B. LEWES, M.A. Illustrated. 
 
 THE CHEMISTRY OF LIFE AND HEALTH. By C. W. 
 KIMMINS, M.A. Camb. Illustrated. 
 
 THE MECHANICS OF DAILY LIFE. By V. P. SELLS, M.A. 
 
 Illustrated. 
 ENGLISH SOCIAL REFORMERS. H. DE B. GIBBINS, M.A. 
 
 ENGLISH TRADE AND FINANCE IN THE SEVEN- 
 TEENTH CENTURY. By W. A. S. HEWINS, B.A. 
 
 The following volumes are in preparation : 
 NAPOLEON. By E. L. S. HORSBURGH, M.A. Camb., U. E. 
 
 Lecturer in History. 
 ENGLISH POLITICAL HISTORY. By T. J. LAWRENCE, 
 
 M.A., late Fellow and Tutor of Downing College, Cambridge, U. E. 
 
 Lecturer in History. 
 
 AN INTRODUCTION TO PHILOSOPHY. By J. SOLOMON, 
 M.A. Oxon., 'ate Lecturer in Philosophy at University College, 
 Nottingham. 
 
 THE EARTH : An Introduction to Physiography. By E. W. 
 SMALL, M.A. 
 
 Social Questions of To-day 
 
 Edited by H. DE B. GIBBINS, M.A. 
 
 Crown 8vo, zs. 6d. O \r~\ 
 
 A series of volumes upon those topics of social, economic, I ^"^ 
 
 and industrial interest that are at the present moment fore- 
 most in the public mind. Each volume of the series will be written 
 by an author who is an acknowledged authority upon the subject 
 with which he deals. 
 
 The following Volumes of the Series are ready : 
 TRADE UNIONISM NEW AND OLD. By G. HOWELL, 
 M.P., Author of c The Conflicts of Capital and Labour.'
 
 16 MESSRS. METHUEN'S LIST 
 
 THE CO-OPERATIVE MOVEMENT TO-DAY. By G. J. 
 
 HOLYOAKE, Author of ' The History of Co-operation.' 
 
 MUTUAL THRIFT. By Rev. J. FROME WILKINSON, M.A., 
 Author of ' The Friendly Society Movement.' 
 
 PROBLEMS OF POVERTY : An Inquiry into the Industrial 
 Conditions of the Poor. By J. A. HOBSON, M.A. 
 
 THE COMMERCE OF NATIONS. By C. F. BASTABLE, 
 M.A., Professor of Economics at Trinity College, Dublin. 
 
 THE ALIEN INVASION. By W. H. WILKINS, B.A., Secretary 
 to the Society for Preventing the Immigration of Destitute Aliens. 
 
 THE RURAL EXODUS. By P. ANDERSON GRAHAM. 
 LAND NATIONALIZATION. By HAROLD Cox, B.A. 
 
 A SHORTER WORKING DAY. By H. DE B. GIBBINS 
 (Editor), and R. A. HADFIELD, of the Ilecla Works, Sheffield. 
 
 The following Volumes are in preparation : 
 
 ENGLISH SOCIALISM OF TO-DAY. By HUBERT BLAND 
 
 one of the Authors of ' Fabian Essays. ' 
 
 POVERTY AND PAUPERISM. By Rev. L. R. PHELPS, M.A., 
 Fellow of Oriel College, Oxford. 
 
 ENGLISH LAND AND ENGLISH MEN. By Rev. C. W. 
 STUBBS, M. A., Author of ' The Labourers and the Land.' 
 
 CHRISTIAN SOCIALISM IN ENGLAND. By Rev. J 
 CARTER, M.A., of Pusey House, Oxford. 
 
 THE EDUCATION OF THE PEOPLE. By J. R. DIGGLE, 
 M.A., Chairman of the London School Board. 
 
 WOMEN'S WORK. By LADY DILKE, Miss BEILLEY, and 
 Miss ABRAHAM. 
 
 RAILWAY PROBLEMS PRESENT AND FUTURE. By 
 R. W. BARNETT, M.A., Editor of the 'Railway Times.' 
 
 Printed by T. and A. CONSTABLE, Printers to Her Majesty, 
 at the Edinburgh University Press. 

 
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