-NRLF 
 
 SB 155 357 
 
GIFT OF 
 MICHAEL REESE 
 
 k 
 
THEWORK90F 
 
 JOHN RUSKIN 
 
 ITS INFLUENCE UPON MODERN 
 THOUGHT AND LIFE 
 
 BY 
 CHARLES WALDSTEINi.e.\ 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 HARPER AND BROTHERS 
 
Copyright, 1893, by HARPER & BROTHERS 
 All rights reserved, 
 
 * 
 
 
 
W/5 
 
 MA 
 
 TO 
 
 H. F. B. L. 
 
 AND 
 
 Go tbe Aemorg of 
 W. R. C. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 INTRODUCTION I 
 
 I. RUSKIN AS A WRITER ON ART 27 
 
 II. RUSKIN AS THE FOUNDER OF PHENOMENOL- 
 OGY OF NATURE 65 
 
 III. RUSKIN AS A WRITER AND PROSE PORT . . 88 
 
 IV. RUSKIN AS A WRITER ON SOCIAL, POLITICAL, 
 
 AND ECONOMICAL QUESTIONS Ill 
 
 V. MR. RUSKIN AND THE SPORTS AND PASTIMES 
 
 OF ENGLAND 169 
 
CNIVERSIII j 
 
 ^^^^ ; ? 
 
 THE WORK OF JOHN' RUSKIN 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 ^HE claims of criticism to prac- 
 tical utility are not establish- 
 ed beyond a doubt. If we 
 run our eyes over a list of 
 books about books, of criti- 
 cal reviews and commentaries on the pub- 
 lished works of remarkable men, which 
 every day seem to grow in bulk, we must 
 at times have asked : " Is it not a mistake 
 thus to block up the way between the 
 reading public and the great books, and 
 to occupy any portion of the small amount 
 of time which the most studious can hard- 
 ly find sufficient to devote to the reading 
 of the great works themselves ?" Even in 
 cases where the abstruseness of the sub- 
 ject or the obscurity of style in the writer 
 
might make some commentary accepta- 
 ble, it may fairly be questioned ; whether 
 it be not better for the reader to be forced 
 .to make ,the salutary effort at grasping 
 ,the meaning' p| c & n y writer (in himself 
 worth listening to) u'naided by paraphras- 
 ing, in the process of which much of the 
 original author may be lost, while much 
 may be acquired from the transcriber, 
 not always to be considered gain ? 
 
 And as regards the critical review of 
 the works of great men, in which an at- 
 tempt is made at assigning to each work 
 its position in the general series of similar 
 efforts, of throwing light upon the origin 
 and surrounding causes of its existence 
 and its form, and finally of pointing out 
 what is good and what is bad, what is 
 ephemeral and what is lasting, what ought 
 to be confirmed and prolonged in its ex- 
 istence or refuted and hastened to its 
 descent into oblivion in one word, the 
 sifting of the literary wheat from the chaff 
 the utility of even this function of liter- 
 ary criticism may be questioned. The 
 good and true have in themselves the 
 power of vitality and persistency ; while 
 
the negative character in the bad and the 
 untrue is the weakness at the very heart 
 of such work, and necessarily, from its 
 own nature, leads to annihilation. It may 
 thus be held that time and the general 
 reading public are the surest and fairest 
 judges. And it is further held that no one 
 man in one given period of time can be 
 an adequate substitute for the judgment 
 of the reading public in the course of 
 ages. However many instances may be 
 adduced in support of this doubt, careful 
 consideration will not confirm it in its 
 absolute form. When we come to con- 
 sider what is meant by " time " and the 
 "general reading public," instances abound 
 in which the verdict referred to them 
 cannot be recognized as unquestionably- 
 just. Time is a very elastic term ; and 
 merit has been known to sleep unac- 
 knowledged for centuries, until at last it 
 was brought into recognition by the trum- 
 pet of quickening truth and justice. We 
 cannot help realizing that centuries are 
 a very long time ; and it must make us 
 shudder in our conscience when we face 
 the possibility that there are many works 
 
and men whose merits at the present lie 
 thus unrecognized, and may be so for- 
 ever.* And when we inquire how the 
 trumpet thus awakened them from sleep, 
 we find that it was sounded by one man. 
 In the reading public there is neither 
 
 * The duty to remember the living workers can hard- 
 ly be put more eloquently than has been done by Mr. 
 Ruskin himself in the following passage from Modern 
 Painters (vol. i., end of chap, i.) : " I do not say that this 
 veneration is wrong, nor that we should be less atten- 
 tive to the repeated words of time : but let us not forget 
 that if honor be for the dead, gratitude can only be for 
 the living. He who has once stood beside the grave, to 
 look back upon the companionship which has been for- 
 ever closed, feeling how impotent there are the wild 
 love, or the keen sorrow, to give one instant's pleasure to 
 the pulseless heart, or atone in the lowest measure to the 
 departed spirit for the hour of unkindness, will scarcely 
 . for the future incur that debt to the heart, which can 
 only be discharged to the dust. But the lesson which 
 men receive as individuals they do not learn as nations. 
 Again and again they have seen their noblest descend to 
 the grave, and have thought it enough to garland the 
 tombstone when they had not crowned the brow, and to 
 pay the honor to the ashes which they had denied to the 
 spirit. Let it not displease them that they are bidden, 
 amid the tumult and the dazzle of their busy life, to lis- 
 ten for the few voices, and watch for the few lamps, 
 which God has toned and lighted to charm and to guide 
 them, that they may not learn their sweetness by their 
 silence, nor their light by their decay." 
 
unity of spirit nor force of initiative ; but 
 it, for the most part, only receives rec- 
 ognizable consistency in its judgment 
 through the leading or summarizing pow- 
 er of one critical writer. We must fur- 
 ther realize that often it is one striking 
 fault or one palpable and salient virtue 
 which engrosses the attention of the read- 
 ers who judge, the adherents who follow, 
 and the opponents who combat the whole 
 varied and multiform life-work of some 
 great man. This one feature is then sub- 
 stituted for the whole play of his intellect- 
 ual physiognomy : for praise or for blame, 
 the isolation and consequent exaggera- 
 tion of one side of a man's work, that may 
 be accidental and not essential, counter- 
 act just appreciation, or at best retard it 
 indefinitely. Finally, the workers them- 
 selves are not always able to indicate by 
 due proportion and emphasis what in 
 their life-work is essential and what is 
 accidental. When we carefully consider 
 and weigh all that these questions sug- 
 gest, we cannot help thinking that there 
 is a call upon those who conscientiously 
 feel themselves qualified for the task, to 
 
lead or to direct the judgment of the 
 reading public, and to interfere with 
 the course of fatalistic and indifferent 
 time. 
 
 Still graver doubts may be felt as re- 
 gards the propriety or advisability of deal- 
 ing critically with the work of a living 
 man. Good taste, on the one hand, is in 
 danger of being affected by the personal 
 character which might be assumed by 
 contemporary criticism ; while, on the 
 other hand, the claim of time might be 
 still more strongly urged as a necessary 
 agent in giving due proportion to merit 
 and influence. Yet even here we feel 
 that historical fatalism and intellectual 
 laissez faire may retard the certainty of 
 progress. It will, in every case, greatly 
 depend upon the amount of obvious im- 
 portance which such work actually has 
 before we determine whether it is desir- 
 able to fix and to confirm its existence 
 by insisting upon what is good and by 
 pointing out what is not. If only criti- 
 cism is not personal, but dispassionate 
 and sincere, it can but lead to a strength- 
 ening and a support of good work. The 
 
price of immortality is contemporary crit- 
 icism. 
 
 This is the spirit in which the writer 
 proposes to approach his subject, which 
 (considering the general spread of a de- 
 sire for artistic education, and the impor- 
 tant position which in this respect Mr. 
 Ruskin has held, holds, and will- hold) ap- 
 pears worthy of critical treatment in the 
 present day. 
 
 In dealing with John Ruskin at all, we 
 must, from the very outset, be aware that 
 we are dealing with a striking personality 
 and with a great life-work. To sum these 
 up positively and shortly, we should say 
 that the central feature of the greatness 
 of the personality consists in the bold in- 
 stance he presents of a man who has 
 dared to live his thoughts. And if we 
 should feel that there are inconsistencies 
 in his life, these do not arise from the 
 usual cause of such inconsistency, name- 
 ly, the discrepancy or contradiction be- 
 tween practice and profession, between 
 the actual course and the theory of life : 
 when mystical, ascetic, and other-worldly 
 
preachers shine in the ball-room and spec- 
 ulate on the stock-exchange ; when phi- 
 losophers, historians, and scients, whose 
 vision penetrates down to the principles 
 of all things, soars over countless ages 
 in the history of nations, and traces the 
 links that bind things animate and inani- 
 mate together, crouch before an ephem- 
 eral prejudice or fashion ot a petty lo- 
 cality ; and when economists and social 
 reformers pen the gospel of socialism over 
 oysters and champagne. If Ruskin's life 
 appears inconsistent, the contradictions 
 are to be sought for in his thoughts and 
 theories. 
 
 The positive aspect of his work, and 
 the debt which England, and through it 
 the civilized world, owes to him, might 
 be summed up in the following survey : 
 
 The great change which appears to 
 have been effected in the history of con- 
 temporary civilization in England during 
 the generation preceding our own is to be 
 found mainly in the diffusion of culture, 
 or at least of a desire and need for it, 
 among the mass of the middle and lower 
 classes, owing to changes in the condi- 
 
tions of these classes, physical, political, 
 and social, which in their previous state 
 maintained the aristocratic constitution 
 of Britisli society. Culture, in its refined 
 form, was in England the possession of 
 one section of the nobility and of the 
 higher professional and literary classes; 
 and its possession was here more exclu- 
 sively confined to this limited group than 
 in any other of the occidental countries 
 of Europe. The other sections of the 
 community, as well as those members of 
 the nobility and gentry in the country 
 who were addicted chiefly to field sports* 
 or whose means did not permit of the 
 acquisition of a library and of frequent 
 visits to the metropolis, as well as the 
 bulk of the merchant class and the trades- 
 men, whose type Dickens has fixed, only 
 possessed for the satisfaction and suste- 
 nance of their spiritual and intellectual 
 life of higher emotions the ministrations 
 and usages of the Church. And the 
 higher educational institutions, such as 
 the universities, which in Germany, to- 
 gether with the national theatres, devel- 
 oped the secular side of moral life and 
 
supplemented the religious education from 
 their completely emancipated position, 
 were in England, if not quite an ancillary 
 appendage to the Church, at least direct- 
 ly subject to her influence. While, on 
 the one hand, this absorption on the part 
 of the Church of the higher side of moral 
 and artistic life, and the exclusive sway 
 which she exercised for centuries, have 
 retarded the domestication of these in- 
 dependent forms of civilization as such, 
 she has, on the other hand, in her modi- 
 fied form, nurtured these needs in the 
 hearts of the people. We must, for in- 
 stance, recognize that the Puritanic wave, 
 which might have completely submerged 
 and dissipated the current of popular 
 music among what I venture to consider 
 a naturally musical people, was to a cer- 
 tain degree arrested in its destructive 
 advance by the opportunities which the 
 Church offered for the continuous study 
 and progressive flow of English church 
 music. Thus, while popular and secular 
 music have continuously degenerated, and 
 have been repressed into the shallow re- 
 gions of vulgarity and false sentiment, to 
 
our present day of a promising revival, 
 the compositions of English church music 
 manifested an unbroken strong vitality, 
 in which not even the tyrannical and ex- 
 clusive reign of the giant Handel could 
 quite extirpate a native characteristic 
 force. At the same time, furthermore, 
 under its protection, with all classes of 
 Englishmen the appreciation for music 
 (though narrow) has been fostered, and 
 the ability to sing intelligently has been 
 given to vast numbers in whom other- 
 wise such an accomplishment would not 
 have been expected. The same may ap- 
 ply to the interest in architecture, which 
 appears to me to be more wide-spread in 
 an intelligent form among all classes of 
 Englishmen than in any other country. 
 While it is thus undoubtedly the case, 
 that the Church in England has been, 
 and is still for the greater part of its pop- 
 ulation, the only means of sustaining or 
 reviving the higher needs of culture and 
 of providing a flower-garden amid the 
 endless monotony of fields for the pro- 
 duction of bread - stuff and moors for 
 grouse -shooting, the fact remains that, 
 
owing chiefly to her influence, the classes 
 referred to have been and are still, in 
 their intellectual education, in the variety 
 and diversity of their moral resources, 
 and in their appreciativeness of the prod- 
 ucts of literature, science, and art, far be- 
 low the bourgeoisie of Germany. With- 
 in the last decades a marked change has 
 taken place in this respect. < The middle 
 classes in the country and in the towns, 
 and even large portions of the laboring 
 classes, have in every direction mani- 
 fested their desire for the acquisition of 
 the higher fruits of culture, and have 
 made heard their claim to share in the 
 birthright which previously had been as- 
 signed but to the few. Nay, the strength 
 of the movement has been so great, its 
 impetus has been so powerful and rapid, 
 that, as is so often the case, it may tem- 
 porarily have overshot its proper mark, 
 and landed in the district that lies be- 
 yond the boundaries of sincerity and 
 moderation, the sphere of the grotesque 
 and ridiculous. Yet we may venture upon 
 the paradox that no movement is really 
 progressing unless it can occasionally be 
 
laughed at, that no social or political in- 
 novation can be made, unless the rapid- 
 ity of its advance has been occasionally 
 checked in a salutary degree by the pow- 
 erful pages of that important teacher 
 Punch. Amid the numerous causes which 
 might be adduced for the consummation 
 of this great change in English life, the 
 direct efforts of individual men must be 
 noted, and among these I hold that no 
 two men have been as efficient in their 
 work as Matthew Arnold and Ruskin. 
 Of the nature of Mr. Ruskin's work in 
 this direction, of its faults, and at the 
 same time its peculiar effectiveness, I 
 shall treat in the succeeding portions of 
 this essay. 
 
 Another distinctive characteristic mark- 
 ing the life of the English people in the 
 present day is the growing feeling of eco- 
 nomical responsibility. It manifests itself 
 in the extension of the laws of morality, 
 which had hitherto, as it were, been only 
 valid for and applicable to the domestic 
 life, or the life of disinterested social in- 
 tercourse, to the spheres of economical 
 life. And this movement has penetrated 
 
into the body of economical theory itself, 
 and has made those views of writers on 
 this subject, who but a short time ago 
 put economy and ethics as absolutely dis- 
 tinct if not opposed spheres, appear com- 
 pletely antiquated. But though the inner 
 development of economical study and the 
 reaction against the Manchester school 
 may have contributed to this salutary 
 change in economical doctrine, the change 
 is not entirely the outcome of theoretical 
 study, but has mainly been caused by the 
 final introduction into theory of what 
 practically has been a constant growth in 
 the moral organization of social life in 
 England. Here again the causes for this 
 change have been numerous and varied, 
 but the efforts of individuals can be dis- 
 cerned ; and among them we may (in 
 spite of some of his economical theories) 
 point to the spirit in the work of Mill 
 himself, to the influence of Kingsley and 
 Maurice, to the works of George Eliot, 
 and to the main spirit of the preaching 
 of Ruskin. 
 
 As he has been a contributor to the 
 general advance in the intellectual and 
 
social life of England, he has to a still 
 higher degree been an active factor in 
 producing a change in the more special 
 sphere of art. It is here that he of all 
 men has been the most prominent in 
 bringing about a diffusion of the taste 
 for art among the classes previously re- 
 ferred to, and that he has greatly elevated 
 the standing of the profession of an artist 
 itself. On the one hand we must con- 
 sider (judging from past personal experi- 
 ence, or present inference based upon the 
 study of the picture the literary records 
 give us, and the extant traces and sur- 
 vivals) the dryness and joylessness of the 
 domestic life among the greater number 
 of the English people fifty years ago, the 
 vulgarity of taste, the meanness or taw- 
 driness of domestic architecture and dec- 
 oration, the wanton ravages and destruc- 
 tion of the great monuments of man's 
 life and artistic efforts in past ages. On 
 the other hand we must become aware 
 of the fact that now, at least the desire 
 for artistic decoration (not always rightly 
 guided), for the adornment of houses, 
 for the preservation of artistic remains, 
 
i6 
 
 has penetrated through all classes ; that 
 the homes of the merchant, the trades- 
 man, the city clerk, and even the artisan, 
 all make some pretence and manifest 
 some desire towards the raising of their 
 tastes, and the consequent embellishment 
 of their surroundings ; that even the ath- 
 letic undergraduate haunts the curiosity- 
 shop ; that not only the Academy exhibi- 
 tion in London but those of provincial 
 towns form an important staple of con- 
 versation (not always judicious or even 
 sincere) for so large a portion of the com- 
 munity. When we compare these facts we 
 cannot help but realize the great change 
 that has come over English life. And 
 this, again, is in great part due to the ef- 
 forts of John Ruskin, and of some other 
 workers, like William Morris. 
 
 Ruskin has done much in raising the 
 appreciation of art in general, more espe- 
 cially the art of painting, most in bring- 
 ing into proper prominence the depart- 
 ment 'of landscape - painting. This de- 
 partment was not appreciated sufficiently, 
 and even now is not valued enough by 
 the greater number of people, as compared 
 
with third-rate works of historical and of 
 genre painting. 
 
 It is difficult to estimate how much 
 Ruskin has done directly for the artists 
 themselves in the pursuit of their voca- 
 tion. But there can be no doubt that he 
 has powerfully impressed upon them the 
 seriousness and responsibility of their life- 
 work, and has raised their enthusiasm ; 
 that he has done much to deepen and 
 elevate the general tone prevailing among 
 them, which often, among the followers of 
 that high craft, tends towards social disso- 
 nance. He has waged relentless warfare 
 against the fetich of false genius erected 
 on the central height of the international 
 country of Bohemia. He has opposed 
 the fatal superstition that the positive 
 power of artistic inventiveness was in- 
 creased and intensified by an unsocial in- 
 dulgence, by a life that differed in its ap- 
 pearance and in its laws of conduct from 
 those that hold good for all members of 
 a well-organized society possessed of dig- 
 nity the superstition which caused a 
 second-rate painter to taunt the simple 
 violin-maker Stradivarius with the com- 
 
parison of their pursuits in mouthing 
 that 
 
 "higher arts 
 
 Subsist on freedom eccentricity 
 Uncounted inspirations influence 
 
 That comes with drinking, gambling, talk turned wild, 
 Then moody misery and lack of food 
 With every dithyrambic fine excess : 
 These make at last a storm which flashes out 
 In lightning revelations. Steady work 
 Turns genius to a loom; the soi^l must lie 
 Like grapes beneath the sun till ripeness comes 
 And mellow vintage." 
 
 He has thus contributed his share in 
 giving to the painter of England the 
 somewhat exceptional social position 
 which he holds, owing to the general es- 
 timate the public has of his profession, 
 which makes him a highly respected mem- 
 ber of the community. 
 
 A further great merit of Ruskin, and 
 one for which the world cannot be suffi- 
 ciently grateful to him, is found in the 
 fact that he has opened out to many, who 
 would otherwise not have been possessed 
 of it, the appreciation of Turner. It may 
 perhaps be wrong to suppose that the 
 merits of Turner were unrecognized when 
 Ruskin wrote his brilliant defence of him. 
 
That this could not have been entirely 
 the case is perhaps borne out by the sim- 
 ple fact of the material success he had as 
 a painter, coupled with the exceptionally 
 early age at which he was admitted into 
 the body of the Royal Academicians, and 
 the two hundred and forty paintings he 
 exhibited on the walls of the Royal Acad- 
 emy. Still the fact remains that the new- 
 ness and boldness of the departure in 
 landscape-painting did not, and does not 
 always even now, make him easily acces- 
 sible to the greater number of people 
 whose standards of taste are based upon 
 and developed by the canons of art con- 
 tained in the landscapes of previous mas- 
 ters, and who are not in the habit of care- 
 fully and lovingly observing nature in her 
 broad features and in her varied changes. 
 Yet, I hold that no man, not even he who 
 is by nature and circumstance prepared 
 to appreciate works of art, and in the 
 habit of so doing, can approach the works 
 of Turner after he has read Ruskin with- 
 out having his perceptive sense quicken- 
 ed, so that new beauties and truths are 
 manifest to him that were before hidden. 
 
And this faculty of appreciating Turner, 
 which becomes a lesson in the more care- 
 ful observation of all landscape-painting 
 nay, all pictures and works of art has 
 been strengthened and widened by Rus- 
 kin in the guidance which he gives for 
 a revived and intensified observation of 
 nature herself in a new spirit and with a 
 new method. 
 
 It is here that I believe Ruskin's great- 
 est achievement is to be found, and one 
 with which his name will ever have to be 
 associated. He has endowed man with 
 a new habit of mind, and has laid the 
 foundation for a new class of observation, 
 which I believe to be midway between 
 science and art, or rather overlapping 
 into both. I shall call this new intel- 
 lectual discipline Phaenomenology of Nat- 
 ure. It is the summing-up of a scale 
 of effort beginning with Byron, passing 
 through Shelley and Wordsworth, and 
 leading to Ruskin, strongly modified and 
 directed, on the one hand, by the pre- 
 dominant wave of observation in modern 
 natural science, and, on the other hand, 
 by the development of landscape-painting^ 
 
especially since Turner. I do not mean 
 that in Ruskin the ultimate consumma- 
 tion of this method of observing nature 
 has been reached ; on the contrary, I con- 
 sider his merit to consist in the founding 
 of it. But I believe that the promises it 
 gives, if pursued in the course he has in- 
 dicated, while perhaps it may never be 
 accompanied by the power and beauty of 
 his eloquence of exposition, has not been 
 fully realized by those who have consid- 
 ered it purely from the point of view of 
 art or purely of science. 
 
 This power of eloquence and expression 
 brings us to the last point, in which the 
 undoubted virtue of Ruskin will always 
 call for the gratitude of the English-speak- 
 ing nations. Jrle appears to me the great- 
 est of English prose poets. And if his 
 writing be criticised as prose for its being 
 too much like poetry, and as poetry for 
 evading its definite forms in being clad in 
 the apparel of prose, this merely means, 
 as has ever been the case, that our cri- 
 teria of what is admissible or praise- 
 worthy are too narrow or not sufficiently 
 numerous, that new tests will have to be 
 
applied to new things, and that those 
 whose tastes have been formed exclusive- 
 ly on old standards, will have to enlarge 
 their sympathies and to adapt themselves 
 to the new objects they would appreciate 
 or judge. 
 
 These are, to my mind, the main posi- 
 tive deeds and works for which the world 
 is indebted to Ruskin, and, as such, they 
 have the power of prevailing, and it is to 
 be hoped will be justly recognized. I 
 have here singled out what I consider to 
 be the main features of the good he has 
 done, and I have not attempted to weigh 
 accurately the influence which his work 
 has had and may have upon contempo- 
 rary life and thought. To do this at all 
 adequately requires a fuller critical ex- 
 amination, which, from its difficulty, must 
 call forth the diffidence of him who un- 
 dertakes it. There is hardly a figure in 
 the history of contemporary thought in 
 England the intellectual and social influ- 
 ence of which it is so difficult to gauge 
 as that of John Ruskin. This difficulty 
 is owing to the complex nature of his 
 
work and of his personality. With the 
 latter we are only concerned in so far 
 as it throws light upon the work, as the 
 knowledge of it is merely derived indi- 
 rectly from the character of his work, or 
 more directly in what he himself has per- 
 mitted us to see in his published confes- 
 sions, and in so far as through his work, 
 or in connection with it, it influenced men. 
 The difficulty of forming a just esti- 
 mate of the influence of Mr. Ruskin, 
 owing to the complexity of his work, is 
 to be found, first, in the variety of sub- 
 jects with which he has dealt, ranging 
 over most of the important spheres that 
 actuate human life ; secondly, in the fact 
 that, within this width of range, the mark- 
 ed distinction which generally serves to 
 classify intellectual workers into two 
 broad groups, namely, the practical and 
 / theoretical, does not hold good in his 
 case. For his activity lays claim to both 
 spheres. And the complication is in- 
 creased by the fact that, when he himself 
 claims to be theoretical or scientific (and 
 in the superficial appearance of it is so), 
 there is an actual predominance of the 
 
practical or ethical aim, not only as the 
 immediate motive and ultimate goal of 
 his endeavor, but constantly interfilleted 
 and interwoven with the theoretical tis- 
 sue, and often interfering with and con- 
 fusing its consistency, and diminishing or 
 destroying its unity of structure and effec- 
 tive service. On the other hand, the man- 
 ifestly practical works often suffer from 
 an apparent and obtrusive predominance 
 of preconceived general maxims, resting 
 upon foundations the materials for which 
 seem to be drawn out of the domain of 
 pure theory, and thus have not upon them 
 the impress of the sympathetic observa- 
 tion of practical life. In addition to^hese 
 broader recognizable causes of complexity, 
 there are, in each separate department 
 and individual instance of his work, simi- 
 lar intricacies and often confusions in 
 the detailed elaboration of tasks and prob- 
 lems, which at times make any attempt 
 at a just appreciation of the work (not to 
 speak of an estimate of its influence) ap- 
 pear almost hopeless. There is much 
 that is good absolutely ; still more that is 
 good when severed from its general con- 
 
text ; more still that is admirable when 
 considered as an individual flash of in- 
 spiration or thought or description ; and 
 much that is bad, merely because of the 
 false position in which it is put ; even 
 some things that are bad absolutely. 
 And, throughout, the student or sympa- 
 thetic reader (and the two ought to be 
 synonymous) feels that he ought con- 
 stantly to shift his position and alter his 
 focus in viewing and considering the con- 
 nected portions of any given work, look- 
 ing upon a part as a piece of sober criti- 
 cism and philosophy, wltile the apparent 
 next link in tlTe chain ought, if real jus- 
 tice were done it, to be considered a 
 painting transcribed into words, or a poem, 
 or a portion of a sermon, or a fairy tale. 
 And one must feel that true justice would 
 only be done to the works of Ruskin if, 
 with infinite labor, some sympathetic and 
 congenial spirit, possessed of much so- 
 briety and system, were to rearrange the 
 whole of the works, and to distribute 
 passages taken from them all under new 
 heads, with a simple, intelligible, and or- 
 derly classification. 
 
In attempting to estimate Ruskin's/in- 
 fluence, we must needs be critical of his 
 work. Nor do I in any way propose, 
 even if I were fitted for it, to attempt the 
 task of reorganization suggested above. 
 But for our purpose it is necessary to 
 view the man and his work under several 
 heads. 
 
 First, then, I shall consider Ruskin as 
 a writer on art ; second, as the founder 
 of the phaenomenology of nature ; third, 
 as a writer and prose poet ; fourth, as a 
 writer on social, political, and economical 
 questions ; and finally, I shall endeavor 
 to give a summary of the influence of his 
 work and of the example of his life, as he 
 has made them manifest to the public. 
 
RUSKIN AS A WRITER ON ART 
 
 RUSKIN'S strongest points and greatest 
 achievements are not, I maintain, to be 
 found in the domain of the theory and 
 criticism of art. Though he has shown 
 himself to be possessed of the most re- 
 fined power of observation and apprecia- 
 tion of even hidden beauties, I believe 
 that this appreciation and refinement of 
 taste are directed, on the one hand, more 
 to nature, on the other, more to the ethi- 
 cal world ; and that art as such does not 
 respond to the natural bent of his mind. 
 He is primarily a lover and minute ob- / 
 server of nature and a moral preacher ; 
 and the predominance of these two atti- 
 tudes of mind often stands in the way of 
 the right understanding of art. Before 
 we begin to consider Ruskin's general 
 theory of art, I must point to two acci- 
 
28 
 
 dental impediments which would increase 
 the difficulty of his constructing a sound 
 theory of art. The one is to be found in 
 the accepted common meaning or deno- 
 tation of the term art in England ; the 
 other, in the accidental origin and re- 
 stricted purpose of Ruskin's first general 
 book on art, perhaps his greatest work, 
 namely, Modern Painters! 
 
 Many people in England, when they 
 speak of art, merely have in their minds 
 paintings and painters, many include 
 sculpture, many architecture ; but few go 
 beyond this. It is perhaps due to the 
 concrete and inductive spirit of the Eng- 
 lish people, which has also manifested 
 itself, I believe harmfully, in the restrict- 
 ed use of the term science in ordinary 
 parlance, commonly used as synonymous 
 and coextensive with natural science, in- 
 cluding, perhaps, the so-called exact sci- 
 ences. That art includes not only the 
 formative arts, such as painting, sculpt- 
 ure, and architecture, but also all forms 
 of music and poetry, down to the very 
 novel in fact all man's work so far as 
 it is directly meant to produce aesthetic 
 
2 9 
 
 pleasure is not present to the minds of 
 most people when they use the term. At 
 all events, the predominance which is 
 given to painting in any consideration of 
 art is very marked, and this general use 
 of the term, which has not been effective- 
 ly altered by those who have written on 
 the theory of art, has limited and nar- 
 rowed and often distorted the range of 
 vision of critics, and has vitiated the 
 soundness of general theory at the very 
 first approach to the main problems. 
 
 The accidental fact that Ruskin's gen- 
 eral and most fundamental work on art 
 dealt predominantly; not only with paint- 
 ing, but chiefly with one side of painting, 
 and that it had a fixed immediate apolo- 
 getic aim of vindicating the right, not 
 only of modern painters in general as op- 
 posed to their classic predecessors, but 
 of one great modern painter in especial, 
 Turner, has, I believe, hampered him in 
 his general views on art ever after, even 
 f, by disposition and training, he had 
 been more fitted to solve with the sub- 
 lime sobriety of well-balanced, systematic 
 thought the great problems of aesthetics. 
 
3 
 
 The first fact which he who would at- 
 tempt to elaborate a systematic theory of 
 art must constantly bear in mind is that 
 he is dealing with the theory of art, and 
 not with art itself; that he is aiming at 
 the complete and systematic apprehen- 
 sion of facts which are to satisfy the need 
 and craving for truth, and not with the 
 creation of that which is to produce aes- 
 thetic pleasure and satisfy man's need for 
 beauty. The confusion of the spirit in 
 which we are to approach the theory of a 
 pursuit with the spirit of the pursuit itself 
 is most easily made and most fatal in its 
 results. In other words, the temptation 
 is always great on the part of the art 
 theorist or critic (and the expectant atti- 
 tude of the public with regard to his work 
 increases this danger) to cast aside the 
 measured sobriety of analysis required for 
 criticism and the establishment of theory 
 the moment the subject with which he is 
 dealing happens to partake of the emo- 
 tional nature of artistic creation. It 
 must be confessed that the attitude of 
 mind of a writer on the theory and criti- 
 cism of art is no more that of a painter, 
 
poet, or musician than that of a historian 
 carefully sifting his facts from all avail- 
 able records is that of a general fighting 
 a battle, or than that of a zoologist study- 
 ing the nature and development of animal 
 form is that of a breeder of cattle. Yet 
 the main attitude of mind actuating the 
 writer on the theory of art is to be the 
 same as that of the sound historian or 
 biologist, however different the objects 
 with which they deal may be among each 
 other, and he must equally guard nay, 
 from the nature of his subject, must be 
 more on his guard against the easy in- 
 sinuation of alien interests and tempt- 
 ing forms of inaccurate diction. He must 
 study carefully and minutely the nature 
 of man's aesthetic feelings and the causes 
 which produce them, and must consider 
 with equal thoroughness the common 
 features of man's works whose chief pur- 
 pose it is to appeal to these feelings. He 
 may have to ask himself whether there 
 are any universally accepted and intelli- 
 gible causes for these feelings, whether 
 art and the beautiful are not purely a 
 matter of more or less individual taste or 
 
32 
 
 opinion, whether aesthetics is not purely 
 what Plato called 86ga, or whether there 
 is any universally admitted ground for it, 
 making it what Plato would call eViori^ij. 
 Then, having ascertained that art does 
 not rest upon mere individual taste and 
 opinion, but is grounded upon the funda- 
 mental constitution of man's senses and 
 emotion and intellect, in tjieir normal and 
 sane development, he must set to work, 
 by a very wide but none the less careful 
 and exhaustive analysis, induction, and 
 even experiment, to examine man's nat- 
 ure and his work in their relation to har- 
 mony, beauty, or art ; and he must, above 
 all, always hold before his eyes the su- 
 preme aim, upon which all his powers 
 ought to be jealously concentrated, of ar- 
 riving at the truth, and nothing but the 
 truth, independent of all other or further 
 considerations. This will in itself be a 
 high moral act, pleasing to God. 
 
 Now it is in this necessary, fundament- 
 al, and leading attitude of mind that Rus- 
 kin fails, from the very outset, in dealing 
 with the theory of art; and the radiation 
 from this false centre of vision has put 
 
out of focus many of the points with 
 which he deals in detail. 
 
 According to him all art is revelation 
 and all art is praise. This at once gives 
 a religious bias to scientific investigation, 
 I call it bias, because considerations that 
 might be introduced ultimately, when the 
 main facts have been established, are here 
 prematurely presented, thus fatally re- 
 tarding and distorting the just apprehen- 
 sion of the facts themselves. From a 
 purely religious point of view all actions 
 may be and ought to be viewed in their 
 relation to eternity, to the wholeness of 
 the universe, and to God ; and it may be 
 right, for some habitually, and for others 
 occasionally, to dwell upon and to ponder 
 over this higher interrelation of things 
 and acts. But this is none the truer of 
 art than it is of science or politics, or even 
 of the acquisition of wealth. Yet our 
 progress would surely -be retarded if we 
 distracted our attention from the indi- 
 vidual thing we were doing, and directed 
 it towards the ethical, metaphysical, or 
 theological considerations of its possible 
 ultimate bearings. The task, in itself 
 
 3 
 
34 
 
 arduous, of the scientific apprehension of 
 relations that subsist, or that may exist, 
 between a complicated variety of things, 
 is, to say. the least, not furthered by the 
 introduction of that which is still remoter, 
 more incomprehensible, and incapable of 
 demonstrable test. And we must, above 
 all, be ever mindful of the fact that the 
 insinuating obtrusivenesa of the personal 
 equation is more likely to assert itself 
 successfully in these remote and ultimate 
 regions of thought than in the nearer and 
 more familiar fields of pure scientific in- 
 quiry. The solution of the main prob- 
 lems of art is as little advanced by the 
 introduction of theological considerations 
 as the cause of biology or chemistry would 
 be furthered by it. George Eliot's violin- 
 maker, in the pride of his humble craft, 
 was fully conscious of the godliness of his 
 good work when he said : 
 
 " My work is mine, 
 
 And, heresy or not, if my hand slacked 
 I should rob God since He is fullest good 
 Leaving a blank instead of violins. 
 I say, not God himself can make man's best 
 Without best men to help Him. I am one best 
 Here in Cremona, using sunlight well 
 
To fashion finest maple till it serves 
 More cunningly than throats for harmony. 
 'Tis rare delight: I would not change my skill 
 To be the Emperor with bungling hands, 
 And lose my work, which conies as natural 
 As self at waking." 
 
 But, on the other hand, he knew that 
 whatever his hand found to do he was to 
 do it with his might, and not to dissipate 
 his strength by looking for praise or rev- 
 elation ; and as the aim of his art was to 
 make the best violins from the point of 
 view of violin-making, or, at most, violin- 
 playing, the praise was contained in the 
 good violins as violins, and not in any 
 way as indirect and obscure sermons or 
 songs. 
 
 "And as my stomach, so my eye and hand, 
 And inward sense that works along with both, 
 Have hunger that can never feed on coin. 
 Who draws a line and satisfies his soul, 
 Making it crooked where it should be straight? 
 An idiot with an oyster-shell may draw 
 His lines along the sand all wavering, 
 Fixing no point or pathway to a point; 
 An idiot one remove may choose his line, 
 Straggle and be content ; but God be praised 
 Antonio Stradivari has an eye 
 That winces at false work and loves the true, 
 
With hand and arm that play upon the tool 
 As willingly as any singing bird 
 Sets him to sing his morning roundelay, 
 Because he likes to sing and likes the song.'* 
 
 I therefore say that Ruskin premature- 
 ly introduces religious and ethical consid- 
 erations, and in dealing with the theory 
 of art he does not direct all his concen- 
 trated forces towards the answering of 
 the question "what is true?" but "what 
 is holy," or "good," or "good for," or 
 better," or " worse ?" 
 
 The results of this make themselves 
 felt from the very outset. He will not go 
 dispassionately to the foundation of hu- 
 man feelings and the earliest and simplest 
 sensations of man, not only in his highest 
 state of civilization, but in his crudest 
 stage of intellectual development. He 
 appears to dwell with reluctance upon the 
 nature of sensation, and he dislikes the 
 very term itself, substituting theoria for 
 aisthesis. For him the early sensations 
 are not the simple fundamental factors 
 with which the theorist has to deal dis- 
 passionately ; but they are viewed in the 
 light of the moral teacher to whom they 
 
37 
 
 are the lower as compared with the higher 
 thoughts and feelings, which latter often 
 really are mystical and fanciful rhapso- 
 dies. His fundamental and introductory 
 chapters on the theory of art, in Part III. 
 of the second volume of Modern Painters, 
 are either rhetorical (often very beautiful) 
 preachings, or attempts at defining "the 
 distinctions of dignity among pleasures 
 of sense." The really fundamental ques- 
 tions concerning the nature of our sense- 
 perceptions in their relation to our feel- 
 ings of form and beauty he slurs over 
 hastily in a few pages, and then takes up 
 his favorite strain in dealing with "the 
 temper by which right taste is formed," 
 rather than with the real question, what 
 right taste is or ought to be. It surely 
 brings us no further to say that " we may 
 indeed perceive, as far as we are acquaint- 
 ed with the nature of God, that we have 
 been so constructed as in a healthy state 
 of mind to derive pleasure from whatever 
 things are illustrative of that nature." If 
 he could undertake soberly and adequate- 
 ly to define the nature of God, we might 
 then test the healthy state of man's mind 
 
by it. But this he does not do. In the 
 same chapter (Book II., chap, iii.) he brings 
 the problem to a point : " Hence there 
 arise two questions, according to the sense 
 in which the word right is taken the first, 
 in what way an impression of sense may 
 be deceptive, and therefore a conclusion 
 respecting it untrue; and the second, in 
 what way an impression of sense, or the 
 preference of one, may be a subject of 
 will, and therefore of moral duty or delin- 
 quency." To the first of these (a really 
 fundamental one) he devotes a short para- 
 graph, referring us to " the common con- 
 sent of man " (which man, or men, or race, 
 or age?). But the second question ad- 
 mits of preaching, and he dwells upon it 
 with fervent eloquence. 
 
 This religious bias manifests itself fur- 
 thermore in the mystical tendency appar- 
 ent in his headings and subdivisions. Take, 
 for instance, his types of beauty : " Infin- 
 ity, or the Type of Divine Incomprehensi- 
 bility ; Unity, the Type of Divine Compre- 
 hensiveness ; Repose, the Type of Divine 
 Permanence ; Symmetry, the Type of Di- 
 vine Justice ; Purity, the type of Divine 
 
Energy " (why not Divine Purity ?) ; " Mod- 
 eration, the Type of Government by Law." 
 This mystical admixture vitiates the char- 
 acter of his Seven Lamps of Architecture, 
 in which much is said of real value, while 
 in the " Lamp of Sacrifice," forming the 
 first chapter, it leads him to the most ab- 
 surd jugglery, from the artistic and his- 
 torical point of view. Nay, we cannot help 
 feeling that, even from a theological point 
 of view, his formalistic mysticism has 
 often led him away from the moderation 
 of good taste into serio-comic niceties 
 which remind us of one of the class of in- 
 judicious preachers who thought he had 
 found a good example of gratitude in the 
 brute creation when he referred to/the 
 duck that looks up to thank its Afaker 
 when drinking water, whereas this invol- 
 untary movement depends entirely upon 
 the formation of its throat. But it makes 
 itself felt in its disturbing influence even 
 in his definite estimate of technical as- 
 pects of landscape - painting, as, for in- 
 stance, the importance he attaches to 
 luminous backgrounds of pictures as sug- 
 gestive or expressive of infinity. This 
 
leads him^to say (Modern Painters, II., 
 chap, v.) that he knows " not any truly 
 great painter 'of any time who manifests 
 not the most intense pleasure in the lu- 
 minous space of his backgrounds, or who 
 ever sacrifices this pleasure where the 
 nature of his subject admits of its attain- 
 ment, as, on the other hand, I know not 
 that the habitual use of dark backgrounds 
 can be shown as having ever been con- 
 sistent with pure and high feeling, and, 
 except in the case of Rembrandt (and 
 then under peculiar circumstances only), 
 with any high power of intellect." 
 
 It is owing to this theory of art as a 
 revelation that I believe Ruskin has for- 
 mulated his own theory with regard to the 
 relation between art and nature ; though, 
 perhaps, the zeal with which he defended 
 Turner against the charge of violating in 
 his paintings truth to nature, which gave 
 a stimulus to his first effort in his art 
 writings, may have had some influence 
 in thus fixing his views. To Ruskin the 
 function of art is to be the intermediator 
 between man and nature, or rather is to 
 reveal to man the divine spirit in nature. 
 
The great artist is he who cag thus per- 
 ceive most fully this divine spirit which 
 pervades the world, and who has the pow- 
 er of reproducing adequately the revela- 
 tion thus made to him, and of. enabling 
 other denser souls to be pervaded with, 
 and illumined by, this heaven-born light. 
 
 It is exceedingly difficult to ascertain 
 exactly what is Ruskin's theory of the re- 
 lation of art to nature. It would be easy 
 to show that he holds different views at 
 different times, continually contradicting 
 one another. But I believe it would be 
 fairest to him and to his work to put in 
 simple terms what I consider his principal 
 view, and the one most in keeping with 
 the best he has said on other topics. 
 
 To him nature is pervaded with the 
 divine spirit, and there is no evil in her. 
 He is distinctly teleological. There is, he 
 believes, always a divine spirit in nature, 
 provided only we do not interfere with 
 her, and, as artists, have the power of dis- 
 cerning it. Now the true artist is he who 
 can thus perceive the divine element in 
 nature most fully, and his function is to 
 enable others, by means of his work, to 
 
4 2 
 
 perceive this spirit, which otherwise they 
 could not apprehend. The artist is most 
 likely to fulfil this supreme function if 
 he studies nature simply, earnestly, and 
 truthfully, reproduces adequately what he 
 thus sees, and does not cast the " dark 
 shadow of himself and his personality 
 over her," attempting " to improve upon 
 nature." 
 
 Now, even granting his teleological 
 premise that all nature is pervaded with 
 this divine spirit, which is ever good and 
 beautiful, and that the supreme task rests 
 with the artist in discerning and repro- 
 ducing it, we are then but at the beginning 
 of the whole problem of art and its rela- 
 tion to nature. For the different artists, 
 in search of this divine spirit, will see it 
 in different parts and lights and aspects, 
 according to their personal, moral, intel- 
 lectual, or artistic characters ; and even 
 the same artist will see a different spirit 
 in the same scene in his varying moods, 
 or under the different aspects which he 
 chooses to accentuate. A Titian, a Rem- 
 brandt, a Turner, a J. F. Millet, may all 
 have believed, or claimed, to have seized 
 
43 
 
 the divine revelation in the nature they 
 reproduced. But surely the spirit of the 
 work lay in this personal element which 
 they added or infused, the unity of soul 
 which welded together into a necessary 
 whole the infinite multiplicity of phe- 
 nomena before them and the innumerable 
 possibilities of scenes to be reproduced. 
 What makes it art is this human organi- 
 zation of the facts of nature. Or may 
 not this be considered the really divine 
 element, breathed by God through man's 
 best effort into inanimate or insentient 
 nature ? 
 
 Ruskin and many others have made 
 the mistake of attempting to solve the 
 fundamental principle of all art in deal- 
 ing with painting or with any imitative 
 art. Ruskin himself {Modern Painters, 
 II., chap, i.) has once stated that architect- 
 ure is not so pure an art as sculpture and 
 painting, because of the alien considera- 
 tions of construction and utility mixing 
 with the " theoretic " or aesthetic side of 
 art. On similar grounds I maintain that, 
 for the discovery of the principles of all 
 art, those arts which reproduce known 
 
44 
 
 forms of nature, such as sculpture and 
 painting, and must thus appeal fully and 
 powerfully to man's sense of truthful ap- 
 prehension and comparison before they 
 can act upon or satisfy his sense of form 
 and harmony, are not so likely to yield 
 satisfactory results as the more purely 
 decorative arts and the early forms of 
 music, and are not so clearly expressive 
 of man's artistic instinct. But to this 
 sober, and on the face of it humble, point 
 of departure Ruskin's impetuous or impa- 
 tient flights of inspiration and enthusias- 
 tic rhetoric will not descend. To ascer- 
 tain the fundamental principle of art, we 
 proceed more safely the less the art is 
 imitative, and appeals to truth as well as 
 beauty, or to beauty through truth. I do 
 not mean to say that art ends there ; on 
 the contrary, it rises and grows more 
 complex, appealing to all the highest 
 thoughts and aspirations as it mixes with 
 truth and goodness. But for the discov- 
 ery of its fundamental principles, the early 
 traces of man's creative artistic efforts 
 nay, their origin in the constitution of 
 the human senses are the only safe field 
 
45 
 
 of investigation. It is only as these are 
 studied dispassionately and thoroughly 
 that we arrive at the true principles un- 
 derlying our highest artistic experiences. 
 Ruskin is thus necessarily not quite 
 clear in his conception of the distinction 
 between art and science when he illus- 
 trates their difference in saying that " sci- 
 ence informs us that the sun is ninety- 
 five millions of miles distant from and 
 one hundred and eleven times broader 
 than the earth, that we and all the planets 
 revolve round it, and that it revolves on 
 its own axis in twenty-five days, fourteen 
 hours, and four minutes. With all this 
 art has nothing whatever to do. It has 
 no care to know anything of this kind. 
 But the things which it does care to 
 know are these : that in the heavens God 
 has set a tabernacle for the sun, which is 
 as a bridegroom coming out of his cham- 
 ber, and rejoiceth as a strong man to run 
 a race. His going forth is from the end 
 of the heaven, and his circuit unto the 
 ends of it; and there is nothing hid from 
 the heat thereof." Art, according to him, 
 does not only deal with truths of aspect, 
 
4 6 
 
 but its main function is to discover truths 
 of essence, and hence it is much vaster in 
 its field and scope, as the soul is larger 
 than the material creation. This is fair 
 neither to science nor to art. Science is 
 chiefly concerned with the truths of es- 
 sence, the inner constitution, causes of 
 change, origin, future destiny of objects 
 that lie below what can actually be per- 
 ceived by the senses. Above all, the 
 causes of existence and change are the 
 true province of science. Art, on the 
 other hand, does, above all, deal with the 
 form and aspect of things ; and there is a 
 soul and spirit to be found in this aesthet- 
 ic side of things, as it is to be found in 
 their scientific, philosophical, ethical, and 
 religious side. 
 
 This being Ruskin's conception of the 
 relation between art and nature, we can 
 quite understand how he sets as the su- 
 preme task of the artist the realization 
 of truth ; and though he widens out the 
 term truth to comprehend much that 
 would ordinarily be summarized under a 
 different head, still he is enabled often to 
 go to the very root of things, and to de- 
 
stroy many superstitions and fallacies 
 that have prevailed in criticism, and that 
 have misdirected practice. Still, the fact 
 remains that the ultimate aim of science 
 is truth, the ultimate aim of art is the 
 production of aesthetic pleasures by means 
 of what we must at present call harmony 
 or beauty. This harmony, corresponding 
 to a fundamental need and longing for 
 design and order in the human mind, 
 rooted in the nature and development of 
 man's simplest sensations, and growing 
 and flowering into his highest spiritual 
 aspirations, man wishes to project into 
 nature, and to realize in the confused web 
 of the multitudinous disordered events 
 in life that crowd in upon his attention. 
 In his artistic efforts he is thus driven to 
 select, rearrange, or compose things and 
 facts in nature in accordance with the 
 need of this essential quality of his own 
 mind. But we can quite well understand 
 how Ruskin is strongly opposed to this 
 view of its being the function of art to 
 select, or, as he would call it, to improve 
 upon nature ; and it is one of the leading 
 features of his personality, no doubt influ- 
 
encing also his social and political views, 
 that he has a sacred horror of the act of 
 man's hand in defiling nature as she is. 
 Still, as regards art, it would be nearer 
 the truth to say that man's artistic efforts 
 have their origin in his opposition to nat- 
 ure than in his following her, though 
 both would be overstated. But should 
 Ruskin's view of the position of truth in 
 art hold good, however he may choose 
 to define truth, the necessary and consist- 
 ent consequence would lead him to mi- 
 nute and accurate photographic reproduc- 
 tion as the highest consummation of art, 
 however much he would be the first to 
 shrink from and condemn such a result. 
 He would certainly be astonished to find 
 that the same fundamental principles are 
 adopted by Zola, and have served him as 
 the theoretical justification of the aber- 
 rations in his work. Zola makes his au- 
 thor speak with a fervor and a largeness 
 of vision and power of diction which do 
 justice to that view. " No, no ; they do 
 not know ; they ought to know. ... I, 
 every time that a professor tried to force 
 truth upon me, felt the opposition of mis- 
 
49 
 
 trust in thinking, ' He is mistaken, or is 
 misleading me.' Their ideas exasperate 
 me ; it appears to me that truth is wider 
 than all that. . . . Ah ! how beautiful it 
 would be to give one's whole existence 
 to a work in which one would endeavor 
 to put things and animals and man, the 
 immense arc, not in the order of the phil- 
 osophical manuals, according to the stu- 
 pid hierarchy in which our pride cradles 
 itself, but in the full flow of universal life, 
 a world in which we should only be an 
 accident, where the dog that passes, nay, 
 down to the stone on the road-side, would 
 supplement and explain our existence, in 
 short, the great all, without high or low, 
 without soiled or clean, just as it lives 
 and has its function ! . . . Surely to sci- 
 ence the novelists and poets must turn ; 
 she is to-day the only possible source. 
 Ah ! but what are we to take from her, 
 how walk beside her ? I immediately feel 
 that I flounder. . . . Ah ! if I knew how, 
 if I knew how, what a series of books I 
 should fling at the head of the mob !" 
 Yes, indeed, if one knew how to deal with 
 truths. But here begins the whole task 
 
of art. And he makes his truth -loving 
 painter say : " Ah ! life, life ! To feel her 
 give herself in her reality, to love her for 
 her own sake, eternal and ever changing, 
 not to have the foolish idea of ennobling 
 her in enfeebling her, to realize that the 
 would-be uglinesses are only juttingsforth 
 of character, and to cause to live, and to 
 make men, the only way of being a 
 god !" 
 
 Be all this as it may, with regard to 
 Ruskin's general theory and much of its 
 application, the fact remains that in his 
 chapters on truth he has succeeded in 
 setting a new standard in many depart- 
 ments of what with a barbarous word we 
 might call the typology of nature. He 
 
 has shown for all times, for instance, that 
 
 % 
 
 man and animals and costumes and build- 
 ings are not the only subjects which de- 
 serve careful observation and adequate 
 rendering by the painter, but that the 
 configuration of the soil, and the profile 
 of mountains, and the different trees and 
 shrubs and flowers, nay, leaves and twigs, 
 have all a distinct character that has a 
 claim upon our careful attention, and 
 
ought to be adequately rendered, and not 
 caricatured, in a painting. 
 
 He justly calls our attention to the fact 
 that we all turn in indignation from a 
 painter who draws a horse, even in the 
 background of his picture, so that we 
 might mistake it for a man or a cow or 
 a rock, while in many much-admired pict- 
 ures by old masters trees and rocks have 
 not only been robbed of their individual- 
 ity, but endowed with a monstrous com- 
 pound character made up of the unintel- 
 ligible confusion of traits belonging to 
 different bodies. We must feel that the 
 more the observing power of the public 
 grows in this direction, fostered by the 
 higher standards of truth in the landscape- 
 painters, or forcing them to raise their 
 standard, the higher will the art of land- 
 scape-painting grow in this direction, not 
 only with regard to correct drawing, but 
 also with regard to the treatment of light 
 and shade and color, freeing these from 
 the restricting bondage of a uniform 
 studio light. 
 
 The introduction of the elements which 
 thus disturb the purely scientific spirit of 
 
5 2 
 
 his inquiry (all of which may be summed 
 up in the phrase, the intrusion of the per- 
 sonal equation) has also diminished the 
 value of Ruskin as a historian of art. In 
 fact it is here that his range of sympa- 
 thies is particularly narrow narrowed 
 by those views of personal predilection 
 which he himself would suppose were di- 
 rected by his general ruling passion for 
 moral and religious principles. But even 
 if we admit the justness of the introduc- 
 tion of these considerations into the sober 
 work of a true historian, it remains pos- 
 sible and even probable that many false 
 steps will be made in the application of 
 these moral and religious tenets to the re- 
 mote facts of past history (in themselves 
 difficult to apprehend in truth and clear- 
 ness); and it appears to me, for instance, 
 to require a great deal of imaginative skill 
 to summarize much of Venetian history 
 and art under definite moral heads, even 
 if the facts were clearer than they really 
 are. I venture to believe that in his deal- 
 ings with history, as well as with art, he 
 has unconsciously, owing to these precon- 
 ceived unscientific interests and motives, 
 
clipped and arranged and forced facts 
 into a grouping for which these facts had 
 not the remotest natural predisposition 
 or elective affinity. This unhistoric and 
 unscientific prejudice of mind, one of 
 Bacon's idols, manifesting a desire to see 
 facts in the order in which his personal 
 moral consciousness would like them to 
 have been, is often patent and naively 
 manifest ; as when, for instance, he says, 
 in a passage on Venetian history in Stones 
 of Venice : " I sincerely trust that the in- 
 quirer would be disappointed who should 
 endeavor to trace any more immediate 
 reasons for their adoption of the cause of 
 Alexander III. against Barbarossa than 
 the piety which was excited by the char- 
 acter of their suppliant, and the noble 
 pride which provoked the insolence of 
 the Emperor." 
 
 When a historical age, or an old mas- 
 ter, or one of their works, or one side 
 and feature of the age, master, and 
 work, correspond to the leading feature 
 of Ruskin's moral nature, then his sym- 
 pathy grows deep and searching, and he 
 is enabled to discover hidden beauties 
 
that were not evident before, and to shed 
 a brilliant and glowing light over that 
 which was wrapped in cold gloom. In 
 other words, Ruskin must admire in order 
 to be just in his treatment. His mind is 
 thus diametrically opposed to the ideally 
 scientific mind summarized epigrammati- 
 cally by Spinoza in the words, neque flere, 
 neque ridere, neque admtrari, neque con- 
 temnere sed intelligere " neither to 
 weep nor to laugh, neither to admire nor 
 to despise, but to understand." And I 
 cannot help believing that Ruskin's treat- 
 ment of history, more especially of the 
 history of art, as far as it has had in- 
 fluence, has retarded the progress of the 
 really scientific investigation of the past, 
 which in other countries, especially in 
 Germany, has been fully established and 
 developed, and has produced such rich 
 harvest. Great as has been the share 
 which England has had in the establish- 
 ment of scientific method in the natural 
 sciences, the historical sciences, with some 
 notable exceptions of individual efforts, 
 have traditionally been retarded in their 
 growth by the intermixture of interests, 
 
55 
 
 literary, political, or ethical, foreign to and 
 destructive of the supreme end, namely, 
 the acquisition of methodical knowledge. 
 With regard to the study of the history 
 of art, the result has been that those who 
 have been inspired by Ruskin have thus 
 spurned sober historical inquiry and scien- 
 tific observation, while the really scientific 
 inquirers in other departments of knowl- 
 edge have not credited the subject with 
 the capability of sober methodical treat- 
 ment, and so, for instance, the introduc- 
 tion of these studies into the recognized 
 homes of inquiry the universities as 
 topics of serious thought has been de- 
 layed. 
 
 Though, as we shall see, Ruskin in the 
 main drift of his treatment of nature is 
 not romantic, in his treatment of man 
 and his works in the present and in the 
 past he distinctly is. I think it impor- 
 tant for the understanding of what fol- 
 lows that this term " romantic," used so 
 loosely and frequently, should be more 
 clearly defined. 
 
 The romantic spirit has ever arisen in 
 times when people were discontented with 
 
the then existing state of affairs. It pri- 
 marily manifests itself in its negative char- 
 acter, in the spurning of what is living 
 and present, and in the attempt at blind- 
 ing the eye to what is actual, and in so 
 far ungainly. There is therefore always 
 a touch of unreality about the romantic. 
 This negative repulsion from the actual 
 and present also gives essential color to 
 its positive features, namely, in making 
 whatever comes within its pale essentially 
 different from what is habitually present 
 in the living. The romanticist thus looks 
 upon the past because it is past and not 
 present, and upon the works of fancy be- 
 cause they are fanciful and not real ; but 
 both must have the power of carrying 
 him away from the oppressive reality to 
 that which is different from it. 
 
 Another essential attribute of the ro- 
 mantic spirit is the desiring attitude of 
 mind. Though the romanticist looks for 
 the past because it is past, and upon the 
 fanciful because it is not real, he does not 
 look upon them dispassionately, but long- 
 ingly, with the futile desire, of which he 
 is half conscious, to make them present 
 
57 
 
 and actual. And while, on the one hand, 
 disporting himself in Rousseauesque nu- 
 dity, or wrapping himself closely in the 
 sable cloak of Werther, he weakens the vi- 
 tality of the present and actual by means 
 of his morbidly powerful imagination, on 
 the other hand, his desires have not di- 
 minished the remoteness of the past and 
 of the realms of fantasy. Having shed 
 over both the particular light natural to 
 him personally in his fervent longings, 
 and having destroyed his clearness of 
 sight with regard to the present, and 
 disturbed its just proportion, he has not 
 gained in the power of penetrating into 
 the past, which he has also robbed of its 
 true consistency in emasculating his en- 
 ergy of dispassionate retrospection. 
 
 The romantic must not be confounded 
 with the historical. I believe that it is 
 not very long that we have emerged out 
 of the romantic period, and that one of 
 the main intellectual features of the age 
 of which ours is the beginning will be 
 the historical habit of mind. It has often 
 been said that the age in which we live is 
 primarily scientific, chiefly marked by the 
 
habit of mind produced and encouraged 
 by careful observation of the living things 
 that surround us, and by inductive rea- 
 soning. Though this be true, it appears 
 to me none the less true that our age is 
 intellectually also marked by the con- 
 sideration of the past, and is historical 
 as much as it is scientific and humani- 
 tarian. We also look to the past, per- 
 haps more than any preceding age, yet 
 distinctly not in the romantic spirit. 
 There is no desire mixed up with this in- 
 terest in the past, no attempt at fleeing 
 to it, away from the present ; for we have 
 made the past ever present, a real and 
 actual part of our mental possessions, in 
 which we can take purely intellectual or 
 emotionally sympathetic delight as much 
 as in the living realities before us. More 
 and more the feeling is spreading among 
 all people that the knowledge of the past 
 is a common heritage, and it is becoming 
 an essential part of the consciousness of 
 all thinking people, without which no 
 mind will be considered completely de- 
 veloped and educated. To instance poe- 
 try, the nearest field where romanticism 
 
59 
 
 has disported itself, it appears to me that 
 Robert Browning in his treatment of the 
 past strongly marks the turning-point of 
 this new historical attitude. To him the 
 past with its life is a great mine, from 
 which treasures may be brought to the 
 surface of the present, adding to the in- 
 tellectual and artistic wealth of our own 
 days without diminishing the working 
 capital of our moral and useful mental 
 industry. And because he thus breaks 
 through the gates of the past, unburdened 
 by the melancholy weight of morbid de- 
 sires, he can really penetrate to the depths, 
 whence he returns with genuine jewels, 
 and not with theypotsherds and bits of 
 glass and paste tfi^t lie this side the gate 
 in the vague unreality of /the misty land 
 of romanticism. The less we are roman- 
 tic, the less we are thus fearful of or op- 
 posed to^the present, the more likely are 
 we to do justice to history. 
 
 Now it appears to me that Ruskin is 
 still strongly enslaved by romanticism, as 
 well in his want of real sympathy with 
 the present, with that which actually is, 
 as in his incapacity to throw off his per- 
 
sonal predilections when dealing with 
 past ages or with ancient works of art. 
 So, for instance, he seems to me incapa- 
 ble of appreciating, and wilfully closes his 
 eyes to, the spirit of ancient Hellas. The 
 moral and intellectual life of the Greeks 
 does not appear to him to furnish that 
 which he personally desires to find, and 
 therefore he has not been able justly to 
 appreciate their history nor to feel their 
 art. And when, as in the Queen of the 
 Air, he does deal with one of their re- 
 ligious works, he transforms, and I must 
 say often caricatures, it into a lay-figure 
 hung all over with mystical tinsel. The 
 healthy brightness and cheerfulness of 
 this artistic race have not increased his 
 rich treasure-house with any of its re- 
 splendent jewels. Nay, it appears to me 
 that it is partly owing to this want of his- 
 torical sympathy that, in architecture, his 
 powerful yet exclusive praise of the Goth- 
 ic should at the same time have driven 
 him to the abuse of the Hellenic elements 
 in Renaissance building. The same feel- 
 ing has led him to draw such arbitrarily 
 hard and fast lines between what he con- 
 
6i 
 
 siders periods of high development and 
 periods of absolute decline in the life and 
 arts of political communities, as it has 
 also in part been effective in blinding him 
 to the great beauties in the art of whole 
 nations, such as the Dutch. It has led 
 him, and with him many others, because 
 they see the undoubted beauty in child- 
 like simplicity (which the others can ap- 
 preciate as well as the romanticist), to 
 exaggerate and to hold up for odious 
 comparison, distorting truthful relation, 
 the merits of the early struggling efforts 
 of incomplete art incomplete not only 
 in execution, but often (but for the sugges- 
 tion of simplicity contained in the effort, 
 and not in the work itself) even in lofti- 
 ness of true artistic conception. And it 
 is the romantic projection of his personal 
 religious prejudice which makes him con- 
 sider imperfection as such, which un- 
 doubtedly prevails in all things terrestrial, 
 an artistic virtue, as he does in 25, chap, 
 vi., Vol. II., in Stones of Venice. We 
 meet with much misguided judgment and 
 superficial cant nowadays with regard to 
 the qualities of more savage art, and the 
 
62 
 
 beauty in the imperfections of technique, 
 and this turbid wave of taste has had a 
 deleterious effect upon art production 
 and manufacture. There may be some 
 rude quality in the early stages of more 
 " savage art," and we may admire these 
 qualities, but in so far as they are "sav- 
 age" we must never forget they are im- 
 perfect. The early or archaic periods 
 of art are full of interest and a cer- 
 tain kind of beauty ; but considered from 
 the highest artistic point of view they 
 are certainly inferior to the most de- 
 veloped forms. However capable, for 
 instance, we may be to appreciate the 
 qualities of the work of an early Greek 
 sculptor, such as Onatas, the highest spir- 
 itual expression of this current of human 
 effort is still to be found in the works of 
 Phidias, towards which the earlier endeav- 
 ors tend. This is the case in the works 
 of all branches and periods of art. And 
 the fashion which has existed, and is still 
 current, of paradoxically magnifying the 
 merit of the quaint forms of less perfect 
 art, at the cost of the works belonging to 
 the advanced stages, is either due to in- 
 
sincere cant or a mistake in assign ing the 
 proper place and proportion to some indi- 
 vidual virtue or cause of preference. Still 
 more common appears to be the favor 
 which imperfections of technique find. 
 If certain pieces of Venetian glass-work 
 are undoubtedly superior to the machine- 
 work of the present day, it is not due to 
 the " imperfection " of the work of the 
 hand, nor to the obtrusion of man's labor 
 in executing it, but because the lines are 
 less hard, and the work of man really ap- 
 pears to produce finer linear effects and 
 more beautiful refractions of light. But 
 to reproduce actual faults of structure, 
 which the benighted workers in past ages 
 would gladly have improved upon if they 
 had had the implements and known the 
 processes, to vitiate the healthy life of 
 architecture in new buildings by the wan- 
 ton reproduction of pathological accidents 
 of time in ancient edifices, constantly to 
 dilute the " architectural " by a superficial 
 infusion of the " pictorial " as is so fre- 
 quently done now is a morbid state of 
 taste in support of which the misguided 
 public and artists can find many a passage 
 
6 4 
 
 in the writings of Ruskin. In dealing 
 with the history of art, with the works of 
 nations and periods and individuals, the 
 golden rule for the general treatment of 
 Ruskin's works applies more powerfully 
 than ever follow him when he admires, 
 and fly from him when he disapproves. 
 
II 
 
 RUSKIN AS THE FOUNDER OF *PH^NOM- 
 ENOLOGY OF NATURE 
 
 THE term romantic is also applied to 
 nature, and here it has fundamentally the 
 same meaning as when applied to history. 
 The romantic attitude of mind with re- 
 gard to nature is again distinguished by 
 the* shunning of the reality that imme- 
 diately surrounds man ; and though in 
 the case of nature it is not possible, as it 
 
 * I have had much hesitation in choosing this term, 
 which, no doubt, has a pedantic sound. The first word 
 which suggested itself was " Morphology," which would 
 have accentuated the study of form as such. But this 
 term has been seized by modern biologists, and would 
 thus have been ambiguous. The word <- Phsenomenol- 
 ogy," I am aware, was in use by mediaeval schoolmen. 
 But the remoteness and obscurity of scholastic writings 
 made me hesitate less to adopt it in the new and modern 
 acceptation I have ventured to give it, especially as the 
 scholastic antithesis between Phenomena and Noou- 
 mena helps to mark the essential meaning of the term 
 Phsenomenology as here used. 
 5 
 
66 
 
 is in the case of history and of the world 
 of imagination, to modify or distort what 
 bears its testimony in itself and is present 
 to the senses, still this negative tendency 
 of romanticism manifests itself in the se- 
 lection which is made among the scenes 
 of nature. And this romantic scenery is 
 selected because it has something out of 
 the common, something that differs from 
 the actual surroundings of man in his 
 daily life, and in so far leads him away 
 from the reality which he dislikes or fails 
 to appreciate. The gentle rolling pasture, 
 the stretches beyond the trim flower-gar- 
 den, reverberating with the busy life of 
 the village close at hand, are not roman- 
 tic, excepting, perhaps, by relative grada- 
 tion, to the dweller in the metropolis ; 
 they are too familiar and actually living. 
 But the distant lonely crag and ravine, 
 with the uncommonness of their jagged 
 outline, set in a scene of desolation, with- 
 out any suggestion of present human life, 
 are, apart from the quality of sublimity 
 which they may possess, and the undoubt- 
 ed specific charm of novelty which unfamil- 
 iarity adds to their intrinsic form, more 
 
likely to be considered romantic. This is 
 because of their antithesis to the scenes 
 that are associated with familiar life, and 
 their admixture of unreality, owing to their 
 unfamiliarity, and the absence of associa- 
 tions which tie the imagination of the 
 present-weary romanticist in his flight 
 away from what is before him. 
 
 There is, furthermore, the element of de- 
 sire in the attitude of mind when the ro- 
 manticist endeavors to appreciate nature. 
 It here manifests itself in that he must 
 needs project himself that is, man into 
 the nature that he thus admires. As he 
 did not give an unprejudiced ear to the 
 voice of the past, so he does not permit 
 nature to give the fulness of her story in 
 her own language. There is a predomi- 
 nance of human associations, be it with 
 regard to man's fate in the present or in 
 the past, in this view of nature ; and the 
 romanticist is not able to receive com- 
 pletely and unalloyed all the impressions 
 of form and color and concentrated life 
 which give a distinct spiritual organiza- 
 tion to natural scenery undisturbed by 
 alien considerations. 
 
68 
 
 Both these elements in the romanticist's 
 selection of natural scenery have added to 
 them the further factor that he admixes 
 with his appreciation of nature those asso- 
 ciations from the sphere of human inter- 
 est that we have before defined as roman- 
 tic; that he prefers those scenes and effects 
 of nature which, in so far as they do sug- 
 gest human associations, recall those that 
 are not of the present, but belong to the 
 desired and preferred section of the past. 
 Then it is not the rock jutting over the 
 sea that is admired in itself, but this only 
 claims his attention as a firm foundation 
 for the ruined castle in which proud and 
 chivalrous knights and fair ladies dwelt ; 
 not the field, with its waving ears of corn 
 and its hedge-rows with all the delicate 
 colors and the world of graceful lines of 
 the growth within it, belted by wood and 
 dale, but the field upon which Round- 
 heads and Cavaliers fought for the Parlia- 
 ment or King Charles ; spring-tide is not 
 dressed in its potent and rich transforma- 
 tion for its own inner beauty, but it is the 
 season of love ; autumn is at most likened 
 to man's incipient decay ; clouds only har- 
 
6 9 
 
 bor under their swelling robes the shafts 
 of lightning that bode destruction ; and 
 the atmosphere is bright, is clear or dis- 
 mal, as it best suits the lonely horseman 
 muffled in his cloak. 
 
 But in Ruskin we have indeed a reve- 
 lation of nature in a new light ; and this 
 attitude of mind is distinctly modern, and 
 in its main development has been chiefly 
 English. Perhaps, as running parallel 
 with Wordsworth, the American poets 
 Bryant, Longfellow, Whittier, Emerson, 
 Lowell, and, above all, Thoreau and Bur- 
 roughs, with their intercourse with nature, 
 and their love for and intimacy with the 
 wealth of beautiful trees in which the 
 New England and Middle States abound, 
 may be quoted. But they, as well as 
 Keats, Southey, and Tennyson, do not 
 form the distinct landmarks which the 
 four names here following indicate. The 
 Greeks, though they were in nowise ro- 
 mantic in fact were distinctly opposed to 
 that frame of mind were so thoroughly 
 and pronouncedly human in their whole 
 mental organization that they did not de- 
 velop this form of appreciation. They 
 
constantly projected man though actual, 
 present man into nature, and endowed 
 her with life like their own, so vivid that 
 they could always hold friendly commun- 
 ion with her. Further, she harbored the 
 life of their gods, and their gods were 
 thus familiarly present to them. But to 
 study and admire her for her own inner 
 beauty of form and color, as they studied 
 and admired the human form for its own 
 pure sake, was a stage of .aesthetic develop- 
 ment to which they did not attain. And in 
 the whole range of literature, down to our 
 own days, so far as I am acquainted with 
 it and as I have been able to recall its 
 treatment of nature, there is no manifes- 
 tation of the habitual and sustained effort 
 of describing and dealing with nature for 
 her own sake, independent of human as- 
 sociations. Spring and summer, valleys 
 and mountains, meadows and flowers, rain 
 and sunshine, are indeed dealt with ; but 
 in the dealing with them there is no mani- 
 festation of real observation of their form, 
 nor is there a pure and concentrated inter- 
 est in them for their own sake. If they 
 are not themselves anthropomorphic, his- 
 
torical, or romantic, they are at most bu- 
 colic or idyllic in their treatment. 
 
 The beginnings of this new epoch are 
 quite recent, and they are, as I believe, to 
 be found in a writer who in his main feat- 
 ures is considered the arch - romanticist, 
 namely, Byron, in one of his works, 
 " Childe Harold." Of course in this poem 
 we have much description of scenery 
 which would be classed under the head 
 of romantic, and I only mean that in him 
 we have the beginnings of a designed and 
 concentrated desire of dwelling upon the 
 scenes, making their own inner harmony 
 the chief point of artistic interest. The 
 next stage in this development I find in 
 Shelley ; and though in him the warmth 
 of his humanitarian interest, which gives 
 its stamp to his lyrical genius, always 
 makes its strength felt, especially in the 
 human imagery he uses in describing nat- 
 ure, still we feel the genuine touch of the 
 true sympathetic observer, whether it be 
 in the awful stillness of the mountain 
 heights, or in the rush of the west wind 
 driving the withered leaves, or even in the 
 fantastic description of Alastor's mount- 
 
ain chasm. And the next marked step is 
 made by Wordsworth, who trains the eye 
 to watch and perceive even the petals of 
 simple little flowers ; though in him, again, 
 there is a preponderance of the didactic 
 habit. But the highest stage yet reached 
 in this direction, a new departure, in fact, 
 in the character of man's observation, is 
 made by Ruskin. These four men appear 
 to me to mark the advance. The claims 
 of many have been considered, and have 
 been rejected as either not falling under 
 this head at all, or not marking distinct 
 steps in this progression. I have careful- 
 ly considered, for instance, the claims of 
 Scott ; but I have felt that his descriptions 
 are either romantic, or, at least, that they 
 are always marked by a subordination to 
 some main human interest or event in 
 the poem or story. And it is especially 
 curious to note that there is great diffi- 
 culty in including among their number any 
 of the German, French, or Italian poets. 
 And though Goethe is less romantic in 
 his description than Schiller or Uhland, 
 his descriptive lyrics are more directly 
 expressions of moods evoked by, or cast- 
 
ing their light over, the objects described ; 
 while Lamartine and Victor Hugo strike 
 me as romantic, idyllic, or didactic. The 
 chief developers of this habit of mind are 
 thus all English ; and when the important 
 position which England has held in the 
 development of the art of landscape- 
 painting in its highest form is taken into 
 account, I may venture to give my indi- 
 vidual experience in a case where it is 
 difficult to collect data to a degree suffi- 
 cient to warrant the formulating of a 
 generalization with any pretense to scien- 
 tific weight of evidence. Having directed 
 my attention to the question, I have found 
 in my travels that, whereas the non-Eng- 
 lish travellers I met would only comment 
 upon more striking and uncommon scenes, 
 and would generally be seeking for and 
 dwelling upon historical associations or 
 features of human or poetical or scien- 
 tific interest, the English travellers corre- 
 sponding to them would manifest a more 
 penetrating interest in all classes of sce- 
 nery, and a more habitual power of ob- 
 serving, and thus of appreciating, forms 
 themselves. They seem to have in their 
 
memory a store of lines and colors and 
 trees and plants and cloud forms and days 
 of various qualities of light which enable 
 them to differentiate more intelligently 
 what is before their eyes. This may be 
 due to the fact that the more educated 
 classes of Englishmen have in great num- 
 bers been bred and have lived in the coun- 
 try, where the occupation in the garden 
 and especially the familiar frequent ac- 
 complishment of water -color drawing, 
 where the walks of the women and the 
 field-sports of the men, have encouraged 
 such observation. Furthermore, the fact 
 that the English are a travelling nation 
 must have contributed to this power; and 
 finally, perhaps, also the importance which 
 atmospheric changes have in a country 
 where they are as frequent as they are ex- 
 pected, and are of importance to the lei- 
 sure occupations of the dwellers in the 
 country, may have directed their atten- 
 tion to these facts, and led to the forma- 
 tion of a habit and to the growth of a 
 faculty which could be utilized in a pure- 
 ly artistic spirit without any further inter- 
 est of personal comfort or use. 
 
75 
 
 As the true landscape-painter has given 
 us pleasure in the new harmonious soul 
 he has infused into the nature he pre- 
 sents by his truthfully executed compo- 
 sition, and has added a new genus of pic- 
 torial art to sacred, mythical, historical, 
 genre, and portrait painting, so Ruskin 
 has insisted upon and developed a new 
 form and habit of observation of nature 
 which can make of us landscape-painters 
 for the nonce, gaining all the delight 
 which is inherent in great pictures them- 
 selves, without any of the painful effort 
 necessary for the execution of these works 
 by the brush or the pencil. He has thereby 
 increased our capital of ennobling pleas- 
 ures, opening out to us fields of delight 
 in the things that are before us, without 
 diminishing their inherent virtue or util- 
 ity, and without thereby infringing upon 
 the possible good which our neighbors 
 may derive from them. I feel confident 
 that whoever has read the works of Rus- 
 kin will thereafter approach nature with a 
 new faculty of appreciation, will have his 
 attention directed to what he before passed 
 by with indifference, and \vill discover 
 
what before was hidden; and that even 
 those who possessed this habit of mind 
 before will have it intensified and enlarged 
 by the guidance which he will have given 
 them. And this will not be only with re- 
 gard to the beauties of the Alps or the 
 stormy sea, but they will be able to ex- 
 tract elevating pleasure out of each flower 
 that blooms before their window in the 
 summer, and even out of the graceful 
 tracery-work of the bare branches of the 
 tree, deadened by the cold winter, that 
 stands in dreary loneliness at the back of 
 their town house or in the city square. 
 And whether it be bright or misty, wheth- 
 er it mean sunshine or rain, each cloud 
 will become to them a fountain of unself- 
 ish joy, having before merely been the 
 source of anxiety or anticipation. 
 
 " It is a strange thing," he says, "how little 
 in general people know about the sky ; it is the 
 part of creation in which nature has done more 
 for the sake of pleasing man, more for the sole 
 and evident purpose of talking to him and 
 teaching him, than any other of her works, and 
 it is just the part in which we least attend to 
 her. There are not many of her other works 
 
in which some more material or essential pur- 
 pose than the mere pleasing of man is not an- 
 swered by every part of their organization ; but 
 every essential purpose of the sky might, so far 
 as we know, be answered, if once in three days 
 or thereabouts a great, ugly, black, round cloud 
 were brought up over the blue, and everything 
 well watered, and was left blue again till next 
 time, with perhaps a film of morning and even- 
 ing mist for dew. And instead of this there is 
 not a moment of any day of our lives when 
 nature is not producing scene after scene, pict- 
 ure after picture, glory after glory, and work- 
 ing still upon such exquisite and constant prin- 
 ciples of the most perfect beauty that it is quite 
 certain it is all done for us and intended for 
 our perpetual pleasure. And every man, wher- 
 ever placed, however far from the other sources 
 of interest or beauty, has this doing for him 
 constantly. The noblest scenes of the earth 
 can be seen and known but by few; it is not 
 intended that man should live always in the 
 midst of them, he injures them by his presence; 
 he ceases to feel them if he be always with 
 them ; but the sky is for all ; bright as it is, it 
 is not * too bright, nor good, for human nat- 
 ure's daily food ;' it is fitted in all its functions 
 for the perpetual comfort and exalting of the 
 heart, for the soothing it and purifying it from 
 
7 3 
 
 its dross and dust. Sometimes gentle, some- 
 times capricious, sometimes awful, never the 
 same for two moments together ; almost human 
 in its passions, almost spiritual in its tender- 
 ness, almost divine in its infinity, its appeal to 
 what is immortal in us is as distinct as its min- 
 istry of chastisement or of blessing to what is 
 mortal or essential. And yet we never attend 
 to it, we never make it a subject of thought, 
 but as it has to do with our animal sensations ; 
 we look upon all by which it speaks to us more 
 clearly than to brutes, upon all which bears wit- 
 ness to the intention of the Supreme, that we 
 are to receive more from the covering vault 
 than the light and the dew which we share 
 with the weed and the worm, only as a succes- 
 sion of meaningless and monotonous accidents, 
 too common and too vain to be worthy of a 
 moment of watchfulness or a glance of admira- 
 tion If in our moments of utter idleness or 
 insipidity we turn to the sky as a last resource, 
 which of its phenomena do we speak of ? One 
 says it has been wet, and another it has been 
 windy, and another it has been warm. Who 
 among the whole chattering crowd can tell one 
 of the forms and precipices of the chain of tall 
 white mountains that girded the horizon at 
 noon yesterday? Who saw the narrow sun- 
 beam that came out of the south and smote 
 
upon their summits until they melted and 
 mouldered away in a dust of blue rain ? Who 
 saw the dance of the dead clouds when the sun- 
 light left them last night, and the west wind 
 blew them before it like withered leaves ? All 
 has passed unregretted as unseen ; or if the 
 apathy be ever shaken off, even for an instant, 
 it is only by what is gross or what is extraordi- 
 nary ; and yet it is not in the broad and fierce 
 manifestations of the elemental energies, not in 
 the clash of the hail nor the drift of the whirl- 
 wind, that the highest characters of the sub- 
 lime are developed. God is not in the earth- 
 quake nor in the fire, but in the still small 
 voice. They are but the blunt and the low 
 faculties of our nature which can only be ad- 
 dressed through lampblack and lightning. It 
 is in quiet and subdued passages of unobtrusive 
 majesty, the dry and the calm, and the perpet- 
 ual that which must be sought ere it is seen, 
 and loved ere it is understood things which 
 the angels work out for us daily and yet very 
 eternally, which are never wanting and never 
 repeated, which are to be found always, yet 
 each found but once ; it is through these that 
 the lesson is chiefly taught, and the blessing of 
 beauty given. These are what the artist of 
 highest aim must study ; it is these by the com- 
 bination of which his ideal is to be created ; 
 
8o 
 
 these, of which so little notice is ordinarily 
 taken by common observers that I fully be- 
 lieve, little as people in general are concerned 
 with art, more of their ideas of sky are derived 
 from pictures than from reality, and that if we 
 could examine the conception formed in the 
 minds of most educated persons when we talk 
 of clouds, it would frequently be found com- 
 posed of fragments of blue and white reminis- 
 cences of the old masters." ^Modern Painters, 
 vol. i., sec. iii., chap. i. 
 
 Thus it is, despite the didactic strain in- 
 troduced here and elsewhere, that Ruskin 
 can make non-painting painters of every 
 man and woman. In our leisure walks, 
 as well as in proceeding from one task to 
 another through fields, and, for that, even 
 through streets (and he and others with 
 him would devoutly wish that the hand 
 of man would give more opportunity for 
 this pleasure in the streets of towns), we 
 can create for ourselves these pictures 
 within our own minds. It is true, its direct 
 purpose is merely to give him personal 
 pleasure. Although, beyond this, he may 
 transmit this habit to those about him, 
 and be a unit of what may be formed into 
 
a national characteristic; still it does 
 not diminish the pleasure-giving capac- 
 ity or use of what has thus caused him 
 delight, nor does he thereby interfere 
 with the pleasure and activity of his 
 neighbor. 
 
 All this concerns the purely artistic 
 attitude of mind with regard to nature. 
 But original and fundamental as may 
 have been Ruskin's work in this direc- 
 tion, it is still more so in the further out- 
 come of this line of thought, in which, it 
 appears to me, he has made the beginning 
 for a quite new sphere of mental disci- 
 pline a sphere that lies, as I have before 
 said, on the border line between art and 
 science, overlapping into both. For want 
 of a better term, I should call this Phae- 
 nomenology of Nature. The main drift 
 and character of this species of observa- 
 tion is perhaps artistic ; yet it is also 
 markedly cognitive and wittingly system- 
 atic, and thus within the range of sci- 
 ence. It differs from science not only in 
 that it has the essential attribute of pro- 
 ducing aesthetic pleasure, but especially in 
 that it is concerned, above all things, with 
 
 6 
 
the actual appearance and form of what 
 presents itself to man's perceptive faculties 
 as he uses them in ordinary life. He then 
 perceives, unaided by the mechanical de- 
 vices which are to strengthen his senses 
 beyond their ordinary capacity, such as the 
 microscope and telescope (and, for that, 
 even instantaneous photography), and in 
 not making his perception ancillary and 
 subservient to the primarily scientific aims 
 of discovering laws and controlling cau- 
 sality. It is thus not Nooumenology, but 
 Phsenomenology , and if it should ad- 
 vance to the establishment and recog- 
 nition of " laws," these laws, or rather the 
 generalization from individual experi- 
 ences and the recognition of constancy 
 within multiplicity and variety, will al- 
 ways be essentially concerned with the 
 form and appearance as such, and not in 
 any way primarily with the process of or- 
 igin, growth, and development. Ruskin, 
 as far as his work in this sphere is con- 
 cerned, would consider the nature of the 
 configuration of the earth's surface, the re- 
 lation between the valley and the mount- 
 ain and the plain and the shore, endeavor- 
 
ing to discover what is constant within its 
 manifoldness, considering only its form 
 and appearance as such, not as the geolo- 
 gist, whose chief attention must be di- 
 rected towards the apprehension of the 
 causes which underlie changes. And 
 wherever Ruskin has unwittingly desert- 
 ed this chief vocation, to which his genius 
 has called him for the world's good, and 
 has confused the clearness of his original 
 attitude of mind by the feeble intrusion 
 of that of the geologist and the man of 
 science in general, he has tarnished the 
 pure metal of his work, has desecrated the 
 shrine of true science, and has created an 
 artificial antithesis between his own view 
 of things and that of the professed and 
 conscientious scientist, which has lowered 
 the sphere of each in the eyes of the fol- 
 lowers of either. So also Ruskin can ex- 
 amine the form and color of rocks and 
 stones, and can dwell upon their con- 
 stancy, without in the least being a min- 
 eralogist, nor deserving censure when 
 judged as such, in spite of what he has 
 done to deserve it ; and so with regard to 
 plants, animals, and man, without being a 
 
scientific botanist or biologist or an an- 
 thropologist. 
 
 And as regards the sky, he turns his 
 and our observation to its phenomena, 
 not as the physicist nor as the meteor- 
 ologist would do, not to prognosticate 
 fine or fair weather, or to record the 
 causes of its changes, nor to rob the uni- 
 verse of the secret of its unseen funda- 
 mental laws of motion, not to deal with 
 atoms and molecules ; but to discover, if 
 such there be, the laws of harmony and 
 of continuousness in the changes of its 
 form as such, and carefully to use in all 
 this, if it be fitting to do so, the knowl- 
 edge which science gives from its own 
 deeply moral point of view. 
 
 I am not justified, from lack of sufficient 
 observation on my own part, to estimate 
 critically the exact degree in which in 
 every instance Ruskin's observations in 
 this respect are thorough and careful; 
 and from the general tenor of much of 
 his reasoning in other spheres, I cannot 
 help fearing that he may at times have 
 been carried away in his recording of 
 general phenomena, for the perception of 
 
which he undoubtedly has such excep- 
 tionally favorable predisposition. But 
 be this as it may, so much is clear to me, 
 that he has pointed out to the observer 
 a fertile field of inquiry of a new order 
 and a new department of knowledge ; and 
 there is no reason why, in the future, 
 those whose pursuits lie absolutely in the 
 spheres of science, yet who thus have ex- 
 ceptional material opportunities for obser- 
 vation, such as geologists, biologists, and 
 still more the workers of our meteoro- 
 logical stations, should not take up and 
 follow out this class of observation in the 
 main spirit of Ruskin. Take, for instance, 
 his division of the clouds into their three 
 regions of the sky, the upper region of 
 the cirrus, the central region of the stratus, 
 the lower region of the rain cloud, and 
 his classification of their distinctive forms 
 and colors, and their movement and 
 change, as he beautifully describes them 
 in section iii. of the first volume of Modern 
 Painters, which will fully exemplify what 
 I here mean. His work in this depart- 
 ment alone will secure for him a position 
 in the company of the world's great ben- 
 
86 
 
 efactors which will have vitality to out- 
 live and outlast all the shortcomings 
 which block his way to the gates of unre- 
 served approbation and acceptance ; and 
 the sooner we can dissipate the dross of 
 his failings from the gold of his virtues, 
 the sooner will the world realize its own 
 gain. And it is thus even in this sphere 
 of his greatest work that I must again 
 point to a limitation, again consisting in 
 the inopportune introduction of his re- 
 ligious and didactic bias, which darkens 
 the lucidity of his observation, and often 
 counteracts the good effects his teaching 
 would otherwise have. I have before 
 pointed to the good which every reader 
 of Ruskin must derive from his works, in 
 having his eyes turned towards a fuller 
 appreciation of nature. But I cannot 
 help feeling the danger which his rapid 
 and lawless incursions into the province 
 of science may have in encouraging that 
 great vice of the general public, namely, 
 dilettanteism in the study of the Phaenom- 
 enology of Nature. I cannot help feeling 
 also that much good as may be done to 
 children in producing in them the love 
 
and faculty of observation, and in reading 
 to them selected passages from his works 
 (among which I should carefully avoid 
 all those that have the morbidly didactic 
 tone in his books for children and girls), 
 one must guard against the danger of 
 blunting their faculty for and reverence 
 of accurate truthfulness, in mixing up 
 fancy with systematic truth, as is done, 
 for instance, with regard to flowers in his 
 Proserpina. An undisguised fairy tale 
 on the one hand, and a botanical primer, 
 or, still better, an intelligent and sympa- 
 thetic companion in the garclen and in 
 country walks, on the other, would avoid 
 the danger I apprehend. But with these 
 reservations, which I have thought it 
 right to make, this portion of his work 
 remains of the greatest value, and its value 
 is increased by the opportunities it has 
 afforded him for the production of those 
 works of literary power seen at its fullest 
 height in his treatment of nature as a 
 writer and prose poet. 
 
Ill 
 
 RUSKIN AS A WRITER AND PROSE POET 
 
 IT may be felt by superficial readers of 
 his works that his power of diction and 
 unsurpassed command over words and 
 their musical quality has been used at 
 the expense of his power of describing 
 with accuracy. Yet it is one of the most 
 astonishing and admirable qualities of 
 his best passages that, with all their al- 
 literation and the harmony of sound 
 which pervades his ordered array, the de- 
 scription is most minute and accurate ; 
 and no better words, no words encircling 
 and penetrating the meaning of things 
 more fully and promptly, could have been 
 chosen. We are inclined to approach 
 such passages with the primary doubt 
 that they are too good to be true, that 
 they are too fine in form, too much 
 adorned and bedecked, to serve the hard 
 
every -day use of adequate transmission 
 of meaning. Yet if we compare any one 
 thing we know familiarly with Ruskin's 
 description of it, if we attempt before- 
 hand to transcribe it into sober accurate 
 words, devoid of form and rhythm, and 
 then compare our own description with 
 that of Ruskin, from the point of view of 
 their respective adequacy of transmission 
 of meaning, we shall find that Ruskin's 
 description, in addition to the beauty of 
 form, contains also a more exhaustive 
 enumeration of attributes, and a better 
 selection of the features that give dis- 
 tinctive essence to the thing described. 
 In the range of all his writings I can 
 hardly think of a more illustrative pas- 
 sage than one, published quite recently 
 in his Prceterita, describing the Rhone : 
 
 " For all other rivers there is a surface, and 
 an underneath, and a vaguely displeasing idea 
 of the bottom. But the Rhone flo\vs like one 
 lambent jewel ; its surface is nowhere, its ethe- 
 real self is everywhere, the iridescent rush and 
 translucent strength of it, blue to the shore and 
 radiant to the depth. 
 
 ' ' Fifteen feet thick, of not flowing but fly- 
 
ing water ; not water, neither melted glacier, 
 rather, one should call it. The force of the ice 
 is with it, and the wreathing of the clouds, the 
 gladness of the sky, and the continuance of 
 Time. 
 
 "Waves of clear sea are, indeed, lovely to 
 watch, but they are always coming or gone, 
 never in a taken shape to be seen for a second. 
 But here was one hiighty wave that was always' 
 itself, and every fluted swirl of 5 it constant as 
 the wreathing of a shell. No wasting away of 
 the fallen foam, no pause for gathering of pow- 
 er, no hopeless ebb of discouraged recoil ; but 
 alike through bright day and lulling night, the 
 never-pausing plunge, and never-fading flash, 
 and never-hushing whisper, and while the sun 
 was up, the ever-answering glow of unearthly 
 aquamarine, ultramarine, violet blue, gentian 
 blue, peacock blue, river-of-paradise blue, glass 
 of a painted window melted in the sun, and the 
 witch of the Alps flinging the spun tresses of it 
 forever from her snow. 
 
 ' ' The innocent way, too, in which the river 
 used to stop to look into every little corner. 
 Great torrents always seem angry, and great 
 rivers too often sullen ; but there is no anger, 
 no disdain, in the Rhone. It seemed as if the 
 mountain stream was in mere bliss at recover- 
 ing itself again out of the lake sleep, and raced 
 
because it rejoiced in racing, fain yet to return 
 and stay. There were pieces of wave that 
 danced all day as if Perdita were looking on to 
 learn ; there were little streams that skipped 
 like lambs and leaped like chamois ; there were 
 pools that shook the sunshine all through them, 
 and were rippled in layers of overlaid ripples, 
 like crystal sand; there were currents that 
 twisted the light into golden braids, and inlaid 
 the threads with turquoise enamel ; there were 
 strips of stream that had certainly above the 
 lake been mill-streams, and were looking busi- 
 ly for mills to turn again ; there were shoots 
 of stream that had once shot fearfully into the 
 air, and now sprang up again laughing that 
 they had only fallen a foot or two : and in the 
 midst of all the gay glittering and eddied lin- 
 gering, the noble bearing by of the midmost 
 depth, so mighty, yet so terrorless and harm- 
 less, with its swallows skimming instead of pe- 
 trels, and the dear old decrepit town as safe in 
 the embracing sweep of it as if it were set in a 
 brooch of sapphire." 
 
 Critics of the stereotyped order may 
 doubt whether such lyrical prose is at all 
 justifiable, or whether alliteration is not 
 a blemish in prose writing. They may 
 
measure with their joiner's rod and weigh 
 in their chemist's scale ; but the fact re- 
 mains that so far as written words have 
 a justification, their sound and sequence 
 have or ought to have a function in con- 
 veying adequately the meaning, as much 
 as their immediate grammatical symbol- 
 ism. 
 
 Lessing, in his fundamental, though 
 somewhat narrow, work on criticism, 
 Laokoon y in which he defines the prov- 
 ince of the various arts, especially paint- 
 ing and poetry, has drawn attention to 
 the chief distinctive means of expression 
 of the various arts, which necessarily de- 
 fine and modify their different provinces. 
 Painting and sculpture find expression by 
 means of material form and color, litera- 
 ture and poetry by means of words. The 
 pictorial and plastic arts are the arts of 
 space-continuity, and thus differ essential- 
 ly from the literary arts, which deal with 
 time-succession, in which words are read 
 and heard. Whereas the chief character- 
 istic of pictorial art in its description is 
 the harmony of things as they actually 
 coexist at any given time, the chief ele- 
 
93 
 
 ment of description in words is succes- 
 sion, and this succession can only inad- 
 equately reproduce the complete impres- 
 sion of actual coexistence. Lessing thus 
 maintains that, in conformity with this 
 essential nature of word description, the 
 best and most successful endeavors must 
 correspond to it ; and whereas sculpture 
 and painting are not most adapted to the 
 rendering of movement and action, and 
 can only attain this by the most expressive 
 and life -suggesting moments of repose, 
 poetic description is not best adapted, on 
 its side, to the conveyance of images the 
 essence of which is the complete unity of 
 their parts in the repose of each moment. 
 When poetry does attempt to describe 
 things in repose, it does it best by means 
 of the manifestation of the unity of the 
 body or scene, and the interrelation of 
 their parts in movement and action. He 
 is no doubt right when he considers the 
 dramatic form of description most natu- 
 rally adapted to literature ; but he appears 
 to me to overshoot the mark in too em- 
 phatically excluding the enumeration of 
 the individual features of the object de- 
 
scribed, which can be done in a really lit- 
 erary and poetic manner. We must not 
 forget that the habit of looking upon 
 paintings has, in the course of ages, given 
 a pictorial faculty to our mind as a whole, 
 and that modern man, without an effort, 
 can reconstruct into a new picture of the 
 inner eye the detached portions of the im- 
 age which are transmitted to him through 
 the ear, provided there is added another 
 sensuous vehicle, tending towards this so- 
 lidification, and directly producing unity 
 in his general mood, in the color of which 
 the disjointed sound-units will naturally 
 be united. This accompanying sensuous 
 element I should characterize in one 
 word as the lyrical factor, whether in 
 poetry or prose. It is this element which 
 supplies the requisite insisted upon by 
 Lessing in his " dramatic character of 
 word description " when he points out 
 that we are, for instance, more likely to 
 receive an adequate impression of the ap- 
 pearance of a man if, as poetry can best 
 do, the-impression which his person and 
 his actions make upon others is given, 
 rather than the enumeration of his indi- 
 
vidual features, such as the color of his 
 eyes, the shape of his nose, and the pro- 
 portions of his figure. In this dramatic 
 form of description the element of sym- 
 pathy is called into play, which produces 
 definite moods in us, and sensualizes and 
 solidifies the vague units of sounds in time 
 and succession into the actual consistency 
 of an image. Now I hold that with re- 
 gard to scenes in nature in especial this 
 sympathetic chord of inner mood (Stim- 
 mung) is supplied by that element of 
 sound in which the quality of the word 
 and the expressive harmony of the con- 
 text, together with general rhythm and 
 structure directly, sensuously (like a mu- 
 sical accompaniment), create a sympa- 
 thetic mood, which lasts through the suc- 
 cession of time in which the description 
 is read or heard, and gives its bodily uni- 
 ty and tangibility to each word-unit that 
 would otherwise die the moment its actual 
 sound is ended. I think that one of the 
 model instances of the poetic power in 
 description of nature with all these ele- 
 ments combined is contained in the short 
 yet powerful description of Moldavian 
 
scenery in the opening of Browning's 
 " Flight of the Duchess." Ruskin in his 
 best descriptions of nature does also use 
 movement as the central energy of his 
 descriptive motive. Clouds are not mere- 
 ly square or round or multiform, but they 
 move, swing, sweep, or hang to and in 
 their various shapes ; their colors are 
 growing or fading in intensity, or assert- 
 ing some relation to one another; nay, 
 even the shape of each rock and stone and 
 leaf and twig is described in the varied 
 motion of its lines. He also appeals to 
 dramatic sympathy in recalling the an- 
 alogies of human or animal life. But 
 above all, he has succeeded in breaking 
 into Lessing's forbidden boundaries of 
 enumeration, because his progressive ac- 
 count is fixed and chained into unity and 
 harmony by this lyrical character of his 
 prose. Take, for instance, his poetic ren- 
 dering of Turner's picture of Babylon, 
 and in this accurate enumeration we feel 
 that there is a justifiable and adequate 
 transliteration of the details of a scene. 
 
 41 Ten miles away, down the Euphrates, 
 
where it gleams last along the plain, he gives 
 us a drift of dark elongated vapor, melted be- 
 neath into a dim haze which embraces the hills 
 on the horizon. It is exhausted with its own 
 motion, and broken by the wind in its own 
 body into numberless groups of billowy and 
 tossing fragments, which, beaten by the weight 
 of storm down to earth, are just lifting them- 
 selves again on wearied wings, and perishing 
 in the effort. Above these, and far beyond 
 them, the eye goes back to a broad sea of white 
 illuminated mist, or rather cloud melted into 
 rain, and absorbed again before that rain has 
 fallen, but penetrated throughout, whether it 
 be vapor or whether it be dew, with soft sun 
 shine turning it as white as snow. Gradually, 
 as it rises, the rainy fusion ceases ; you cannot 
 tell where the film of blue on the left begins 
 but it is deepening, deepening still and the 
 cloud, with its edge first invisible, then all but 
 imaginary, then just felt when the eye is not 
 fixed on it and lost when it is, at last rises keen 
 from excessive distance, but soft and mantling 
 in its body as a swan's bosom fretted by faint 
 wind, heaving fitfully against the delicate deep 
 blue, with white waves, whose forms are traced 
 by the pale lines of .opalescent shadow, shade 
 only because the light is within it and not upon 
 it, and which break with their own swiftness 
 
9 8 
 
 into a driven line of level spray, winnowed into 
 threads by the wind, and flung before the fol- 
 lowing vapor like those swift shafts of arrowy 
 water which a great cataract shoots into the 
 air beside it, trying to find the earth. Beyond 
 these, again, rises a colossal mountain of gray 
 cumulus, through whose shadowed sides the 
 sunbeams penetrate in dim, sloping, rain- like 
 shafts, and over which they fall in a broad 
 burst of streaming light, sinking to the earth, 
 and showing through their own visible radiance 
 the three successive ranges of hills which con- 
 nect its desolate plain with space. Above, the 
 edgy summit of the cumulus, broken into frag- 
 ments, recedes into the sky, which is peopled 
 in its serenity with quiet multitudes of the 
 white, soft, silent cirrus, and under these again 
 drift near the zenith disturbed and impatient 
 shadows of a darker spirit, seeking rest and 
 finding none." Modern Painters, vol. i., chap, 
 iii., sec. 16. 
 
 No doubt the effectiveness of such a 
 description depends to a great extent 
 upon the movement which he puts into 
 every part of his description ; but besides 
 that, the whole is transferred from life- 
 less enumeration to a vivid image before 
 the eyes of the spectator, because of the 
 
99 
 
 assistance of that lyrical element in 
 which the quality of the words, such as, 
 " drift of dark elongated vapor," " billowy 
 and tossing fragments," " film of blue," 
 " keen from excessive distance," " swan's 
 bosom fretted by faint wind," " broad 
 burst of streaming light," "quiet multi- 
 tudes of the white, soft, silent cirrus," 
 gives sensuous consistency to the mo- 
 mentary sound - suggestion of a word. 
 Further, the very succession of sounds 
 themselves is used to evoke actual emo- 
 tional sympathy in the hearer with un- 
 emotional nature ; so that when after the 
 rain the rainy fusion melts into blue, and 
 he introduces the parenthetical phrases 
 telling us of its " deepening, deepening 
 still," this repetition causes the reader, by 
 the effort of catching the same sound 
 twice over, to experience an inner process 
 corresponding to the gradual gradation 
 in the tone and color which Turner gives 
 at once in material presence. Further- 
 more, the general rise and fall and cadence 
 of the rhythm help in the same way to 
 express sensuously what the words them- 
 selves could only give in their inadequate 
 
disjointed manner ; as when, in the sen- 
 tence with regard to the background be- 
 ginning, " Above these and far beyond 
 them," the first two-thirds move upward 
 in a stronger impetus, suggesting the 
 varied restlessness in line and color of 
 rain clouds, the movement is, as it were, 
 turned downward again towards repose, 
 and conciliated in the rhyttim of the end- 
 ing parts of the period beginning, " but 
 penetrated throughout ; " and this down- 
 ward movement or lower notes that com- 
 plete the whole of this description har- 
 monize with the final image of the " dark- 
 er spirit seeking rest and finding none." 
 If one were further to analyze passages 
 like this, one would find that in the struct- 
 ure of the whole, in the rise and fall of 
 rhythm, and the composition of these con- 
 tinuous waves of sound, they correspond 
 to and enforce the definite meaning and 
 import of the thoughts and scenes con- 
 veyed. 
 
 Yet, in my opinion, in no passage has 
 he succeeded so completely in giving ar- 
 tistic organization and life to the phenom- 
 ena of nature as such, as in his descrip- 
 
tion of the sky's history during one day, 
 viewed from the Alps. 
 
 4 ' Stand upon the peak of some isolated 
 mountain at daybreak, when the night mists 
 first rise from off the plains, and watch their 
 white and lake-like fields as they float in level 
 bays and winding gulfs about ihe islanded sum- 
 mits of the lower hills, untouched yet fry niore' 
 than dawn, colder and more quiet than a wind- 
 less sea under the moon o^ v friiVlnighJt*; 'watch 
 when the first sunbeam is sent upon the silver 
 channels, how the foam of their undulating sur- 
 face parts and passes away ; and down under 
 their depths the glittering city and green past- 
 ure lie like Atlantis between the white paths of 
 winding rivers, the flakes of light falling every 
 moment faster and broader among the starry 
 spires as the wreathed surges break and vanish 
 above them, and the confused crests and ridges 
 of the dark hills shorten their gray shadows 
 upon the plain. Wait a little longer and you 
 shall see those scattered mists rallying in the 
 ravines, and floating up towards you along the 
 winding valleys, till they couch in quiet masses, 
 iridescent with the morning light, upon the 
 broad breasts of the higher hills, whose leagues 
 of massy undulation will melt back and back 
 into that robe of material light, until they fade 
 
away, lost in its lustre, to appear again above, 
 in the serene heaven, like a wild, bright, im- 
 possible dream, foundationless and inaccessi- 
 ble, their very bases vanishing in the unsub- 
 stantial and mocking blue of the deep lake be- 
 low. Wait yet a little longer and you shall see 
 those mists gather themselves into white tow- 
 ers, and stand like fortresses along the promon- 
 tories, mas.^y and motionless, only piled with 
 every instant higher and higher into the sky, 
 swidtca'stikg lorgcr .shadows athwart the rocks; 
 and out of the pale blue of the horizon you will 
 see forming and advancing a troop of narrow, 
 dark, pointed vapors, which will cover the sky, 
 inch by inch, with their gray net-work, and 
 take the light off the landscape with an eclipse 
 which will stop the singing of the birds and the 
 motion of the leaves together ; and then you 
 will see horizontal bars of black shadow form- 
 ing under them, and lurid wreaths create them- 
 selves, you know not how, along the shoulders 
 of the hills ; you never see them form, but when 
 you look back to a place which was clear an in- 
 stant ago, there is a cloud on it, hanging by the 
 precipices, as a hawk pauses over his prey. And 
 then you will hear the sudden rush of the awak- 
 ened wind, and you will see those watch-tow- 
 ers of vapor swept away from their foundations, 
 and waving curtains of opaque rain let down to 
 
the valleys, swinging from the burdened clouds 
 in black bending fringes, or pacing in pale col- 
 umns along the lake level, grazing its surface 
 into foam as they go. And then as the sun 
 sinks you shall see the storm drift for an instant 
 from off the hills, leaving their broad sides 
 smoking, and loaded yet with snow-white, torn, 
 steam-like rays of capricious vapor, now gone, 
 now gathered again, while the smouldering 
 sun, seeming not far away, but burning like a 
 red-hot ball beside you, and as if you could 
 reach it, plunges through the rushing wind and 
 rolling cloud with headlong fall, as if it meant 
 to rise no more, dyeing all the air about it with 
 blood. And then you shall hear the fainting 
 tempest die in the hollow of the night, and you 
 shall see a green halo kindling on the summit 
 of the eastern hills, brighter, brighter yet, till 
 the large white circle of the slow moon is lifted 
 up among the barred clouds, step by step, line 
 by line ; star after star she quenches with her 
 kindling light, setting in their stead an army 
 of pale, penetrable, fleecy wreaths in the heav- 
 en, to give light i*pon the earth, which move 
 together, hand in hand, company by company, 
 troop by troop, so measured in their unity of 
 motion that the whole heaven seems to roll 
 with them, and the earth to reel under them. 
 And then wait yet for one hour, until the east 
 
again becomes purple, and the heaving mount- 
 ains, rolling against it in darkness like waves 
 of a wild sea, are drowned one by one in the 
 glory of its burning ; watch the white glaciers 
 blaze in their winding paths about the mount- 
 ains, like mighty serpents with scales of fire ; 
 watch the columnar peaks of solitary snow, 
 kindling downward, chasm by chasm, each in 
 itself a new morning ; their long avalanches 
 cast down in keen streams brighter than the 
 lightning, sending each its tribute of driven 
 snow-like altar smoke up to heaven ; the rose- 
 light of their silent domes flushing that heaven 
 about them or above them, piercing with purer 
 light through its purple lines of lifted cloud, 
 casting a new glory on every wreath as it pass- 
 es by, until the whole heaven one scarlet can- 
 opy is interwoven with a roof of waving flame, 
 and tossing, vault beyond vault, as with the 
 drifted wings of many companies of angels ; 
 and then, when you can look no more for glad- 
 ness, and when you are bowed down with fear 
 and love of the Maker and Doer of all this, tell 
 me who has best delivered* this His message 
 unto men !" Modern Painters, vol. i., end of 
 chap. iv. 
 
 Ruskin as a writer of English stands 
 unrivalled, except perhaps by Shelley, for 
 
the completeness and wealth of his vo- 
 cabulary (which we must marvel at still 
 more when we are told by him in his 
 Prater it a that he always wrote easily, 
 without any struggle), and for his feeling 
 for the quality of words. It is to be re- 
 gretted that he sometimes chooses to give 
 paradoxical significance and restricted de- 
 notations of his own to ordinary words, 
 especially in his more sober and theoreti- 
 cal expositions, as when, in chapter iii. 
 of Vol. i., Modern Painters, he calls the 
 words mystery and inadequacy elements 
 of power, or uses the word particular 
 where he means essential ; or speaks of 
 historical truths where he means essential 
 truths, or defines excellent or pretty or 
 any other ordinary term in an extraordi- 
 nary manner. But these irritating con- 
 fusions, which also apply to the titles of 
 his books, generally occur in his more 
 scientific disquisitions, where, it is true, 
 they do incalculable harm in misleading 
 him as well as his readers ; and I feel cer- 
 tain that the use that he makes of the 
 word imperfection or particular and 
 many others is at the bottom of many 
 
io6 
 
 fallacies into which he has been led and 
 leads others. But where he is purely de- 
 scriptive this does not happen to the 
 same degree. 
 
 Within the variety of rhythmical 
 changes which he introduces in harmony 
 with the meaning he conveys, there is one 
 general rhythm peculiarly his own ; it 
 has, if I may so say, a gentle undulating 
 character, swelling gradually to a point 
 of general position, and then dying away 
 into what almost appears a minor key in 
 a negative limitation, with which minor 
 key his periods generally end. That there 
 is such a general character to the rhythm 
 of his writings can here be illustrated by 
 comparing in this respect parts of the 
 passage, from which I have quoted, on the 
 open sky with some in the description of 
 the Rhone. Compare, for instance, with 
 regard to their rhythmical arrangement, 
 the passage on the Rhone beginning, 
 " For all other rivers there is a surface," 
 etc., and then its limitation down to " radi- 
 ant to the depth," with the passage on the 
 sky beginning with " The noblest scenes 
 of the earth, "and ending with " purifying 
 
io 7 
 
 it from its dross and dust." Compare, 
 again, this last passage, from its beginning 
 down to "what is mortal or essential," 
 with another paragraph in the Rhone de- 
 scription beginning with " Waves of clear 
 sea are," and ending with " forever from 
 her snow," and I am sure my meaning 
 will be clear. This beautiful rise and fall 
 of cadence is probably due to his early 
 and constant reading of the Bible, and 
 especially the rhythmical responsion in 
 the Psalms ; and there is no doubt that 
 his feeling for words and much of his 
 grand style originally are derived from 
 the same source. He is often quite bibli- 
 cal in the character of his diction, espe- 
 cially when he is preaching. Take, for 
 instance, the passage from paragraph 5 
 to 8 in the chapter on the Theoretic Fac- 
 ulty in the second volume of Modern 
 Painters, where he inveighs against "the 
 vine-dressers and husbandmen who love 
 the corn they grind and the grapes they 
 crush better than the gardens of the angels 
 upon the slopes of Eden ; hewers of wood 
 and drawers of water, who think that the 
 wood they hew and the water they draw 
 
io8 
 
 are better than the pine forests that cover 
 the mountains like the shadow of God, 
 and than the great rivers that move like 
 His eternity," etc. No doubt he owes 
 much of the beauty of his style to his early 
 Bible-reading, and we feel its powerful in- 
 fluence especially where he is solemn or 
 divinely simple in his description. Even 
 his simplicity is thus biblical and weighty. 
 But its influence has not always been for 
 the good ; for it has sometimes counter- 
 acted clearness and sobriety of diction in 
 ordinary language, and in its quasi-archaic 
 character it is not really simple in the 
 modern sense, though it be simple in its 
 primitive weightiness. And often, when 
 he means to be sober and analytical, his 
 mood becomes exalted, and is carried to 
 a high pitch, leading to a diction that is 
 too strongly lyrical and antithetical, when 
 he ought to be merely simple, lucid, and 
 sober. His apparent sobriety is then al- 
 most ironical sobriety, and has the appear- 
 ance of trembling with sustained emotion. 
 This habit is not conducive to the best 
 work when he means to be purely theo- 
 retical. On the other hand, there are pas- 
 
sages of powerful sober antithesis, such 
 as we find in his warning to young art- 
 ists against brilliancy of execution or ef- 
 forts at invention, in the 2oth paragraph 
 of chapter iii., section 6, Part II., of Mod- 
 ern Painters ; and here also he manifests 
 his power of epigram, which the more 
 diffuse character of his writings would 
 not lead us to expect. But when he does 
 indulge in aphorisms, they are very good, 
 as, for instance, his epigrammatic defini- 
 tion of symmetry as contrasted with pro- 
 portion : " Symmetry is opposition of equal 
 quantities to each other, proportion the 
 connection of unequal quantities with each 
 other." Or another : " All copyists are 
 contemptible, but the copyist of himself 
 is the most so, for he has the worst origi- 
 nal." The latter epigram also has a touch 
 of ironical humor, which he often mani- 
 fests, as when he reviles Gaspar Poussin's 
 picture of a storm : " Storms, indeed, as 
 the innocent public insist on calling such 
 abuses of nature and abortions of art as 
 the two windy Caspars in our National 
 Gallery, are common enough massive 
 concretions of ink and indigo wrung and 
 
twisted very hard, apparently in a vain ef- 
 fort to get some moisture out of them, 
 bearing up courageously and successfully 
 against a wind whose effects on the trees 
 in the foreground can be accounted for 
 only on the supposition that they are all 
 of the India-rubber species." But genuine 
 light humor is not made to his hand, and 
 there are more traces of it in his latest 
 work, Prceterita, than in any of his previ- 
 ous writings. For this he has not suffi- 
 cient sympathy with the real healthy life 
 that surrounds him ; and in spite of his 
 noble humanitarian preaching and his still 
 nobler philanthropic life and example, his 
 works tlo not set before us a man of wide 
 and real sympathies with the life about 
 him. The publication of his Prceterita 
 shows how deficient his education was in 
 encouraging this side in him. This makes 
 him all the greater; yet it must have 
 hampered him frequently in the just con- 
 sideration of social, economical, and po- 
 litical questions. 
 
IV 
 
 RUSKIN AS A WRITER ON SOCIAL, POLITI- 
 CAL, AND ECONOMICAL QUESTIONS 
 
 IN the field of practical ethics and poli- 
 tics Ruskin's tendency to preach finds a 
 more suitable and just scope than in the 
 more theoretical spheres of his literary 
 activity. And his great literary power of 
 diction has enabled him to give new form 
 and emphasis to principles that have al- 
 most been adopted by us as moral com- 
 monplaces, however little they may have 
 been acted upon, and do show in glaring 
 light the contradiction which obtains be- 
 tween the higher moral and religious ten- 
 ets and the ordinary working traditions 
 of modern society. He has thus become 
 one of the foremost writers on what might 
 be called practical sociology or economic 
 ethics. And there does appear to be a 
 great and ever-growing need for this form 
 
of activity. At present we only have the 
 spiritual guidance of the clergy, or the 
 theories of scientific and philosophical 
 writers. On the one hand, we have the 
 ministers of religion, who claim that the 
 basis of their theory and practice is di- 
 rectly inspired and supranatural, and who 
 appeal to the highest human emotions, 
 namely, the religious feelings. The re- 
 sult is that, in the minds of those who are 
 to be influenced, the step from the lofti- 
 ness of these thoughts and emotions to 
 the humbleness and minute multiplicity 
 of the ordinary acts of daily life is not 
 always readily or efficiently made ; while 
 the ministers of the inspired Word, speak- 
 ing from their elevated position, are not 
 always credited by the plain and practical 
 listeners with experience of the needs and 
 demands of daily life, with being able to 
 guide them soundly and soberly within 
 this realm. On the other hand, students 
 of ethics have hitherto been too much 
 taken up with the purely theoretical prin- 
 ciples of human action, more especially 
 with the broadest fundamental principles 
 of right and wrong, to have produced a 
 
really practical guide to the conduct of 
 modern life. Even those writers on 
 ethics and sociology who claim to fol- 
 low the inductive method have directed 
 their observation either towards the psy- 
 chology of man, or have examined him 
 historically or politically in large groups; 
 but they have never ventured, in their at- 
 tempts at generalization, to attack the act- 
 ual social and domestic ethics of the life 
 that is before us, entering into the duties 
 of definite professions and occupations, of 
 the employer to the employed, the master 
 to the servant, the housewife to the house- 
 hold, and other similar relations, the ma- 
 terials for the observation of which are 
 constantly before our eyes. Ethical in- 
 quiry seems chiefly to rotate round the 
 fundamental principles of transcendental- 
 ism and utilitarianism, egoism, altruism, 
 and other problems concerning the actual 
 or desirable motives to human action in 
 general. It may be that these complex 
 facts of simple daily life are as yet beyond 
 the reach of sound classification and sci- 
 entific apprehension ; yet we cannot help 
 feeling their great practical use. How- 
 
 ^l" 
 
ever imperfect it may at first be, we can- 
 not doubt the gain to scientific ethics of 
 an attempt at exposition or codification 
 of the principles and rules that guide or 
 ought to guide our immediate conduct, 
 based upon the careful and systematic ob- 
 servation of this daily life, if made by one 
 trained in theoretical ethics, and other- 
 wise qualified by sympathy, experience, 
 and power of exposition to observe and to 
 record the results of his observation in 
 this sphere of ethical induction. Much 
 that is now scattered among the writings 
 of our essayists and in the religious and 
 secular maxims of wise men, much of the 
 writings of the casuists among the school- 
 men, all brought together under the con- 
 tinuous and concentrated effort of one 
 line of systematic thought, would then 
 become the work of this modern ethician 
 and sociologist. He would be a bold man 
 who would undertake the task ; but, if at 
 all well done, however far from present- 
 ing us with an absolute canon, it would 
 undoubtedly be a great profit to man-x 
 kind. 
 
 Between the priest, on the one hand, 
 
and the theoretical ethician, on the other, 
 lies the activity in the sphere of sociology 
 and economics of writers like Ruskin. 
 He has, like Carlyle, whose disciple he 
 claims to be, boldly attacked the leading < 
 vice of our age, which he would consider 
 to be the predominance of the mercenary 
 and commercial spirit, and a correspond- j 
 ing and consequent lowness of all our 
 ideals of life. Against this persistent vi- 
 cious force nothing, however lofty, how- 
 ever holy, can hold its ground in the esti- 
 mation of our majorities as a chief incen- 
 tive to action. In his drastic manner he 
 has described this spirit of cupidity in the 
 most powerful terms, but in none more 
 pithily than in the passage in Fors 
 Clamgera relating to the benevolence 
 leading to railway enterprise : " The be- 
 nevolence involved in the construction of 
 railways amounts exactly to this much 
 and no more that if the British public 
 were informed that engineers were now 
 confident, after their practice in the Cenis 
 and St. Gothard tunnels, that they could 
 make a railway to hell, the British pub- 
 lic would instantly invest in the concern 
 
to any amount, and stop church building 
 all over the country for fear of diminish- 
 ing the dividends." 
 
 There can be no doubt that the ideals 
 arising out of this predominant merce- 
 nary and commercial spirit have eaten 
 at the marrow of many of the cardinal 
 virtues of the past, of those demanded by 
 the tasks of the present, and of those to 
 be hoped for in order that we may create 
 a progressive future. There are number- 
 less people who consider themselves virt- 
 uous, and are recognized to be so by their 
 neighbors, to whom the "getting on" 
 ideal is ultimately the highest and lead- 
 ing motive of their life. Stories of ex- 
 ceeding parsimony, of the continued res- 
 ignation of all other aims in life to the 
 toilsome wrestling with untoward cir- 
 cumstance, until step by step men shall 
 have advanced in the social scale and in 
 wealth (or rather in wealth, and there- 
 fore in the social scale), at the cost of all 
 other instincts of human life, that are re- 
 pressed or extirpated in view of the one 
 golden or gilt beacon-light of success, are, 
 in the simplicity of a low moral standard, 
 
held up as instances of virtue worthy of 
 emulation; while cringing public honor 
 and consideration are based upon those 
 signs and tokens which are impressed 
 upon the metal by a mint recognized in 
 the market-place. However much insin- 
 cere cant there may often be in those 
 who inveigh in a romantic spirit against 
 the industrial life of modern times, com- 
 paring it with the life of the past, there 
 does appear to me to be one symptom 
 of disease marking our moral life in 
 which we differ from other periods. This 
 is perhaps the necessary concomitant of 
 this period of transition in which we live. 
 It is to be found in the want of clearness 
 and singleness in our moral ideals with 
 regard to the position of wealth, and the 
 vacillation in our standard of moral ap- 
 probation as professed and as followed by 
 our ruling majorities. In more barbarous 
 ages, or in the periods of chivalry, person- 
 al valor, however brutal in its results, 
 was recognized as a virtue actuating the 
 efforts and filling the life of the aspirant 
 to honors. This the striving man hon- 
 estly and fully believed to be good, and 
 
u8 
 
 public esteem followed the realization of 
 his virtuous effort. 
 
 In our highest moral moods we consid- 
 er the " man's the gowd for a' that," and 
 affect contempt for worldly goods and 
 advancement, admiring the unworldly 
 worker who substitutes the wealth of his 
 own moral or intellectual life for the dross 
 of riches ; while the general public esti- 
 mation, the public consciousness, as the 
 Germans call it, still shows HS approval 
 of social consideration to the acquisition 
 or possession of great wealth. This con- 
 tradiction in our moral life is a feature 
 distinguishing our age from those that 
 have preceded us. The future will work 
 out this problem, either by reconciliation 
 of the two contending factors or by dis- 
 solution of the one or the other. It is 
 against this idol that Ruskin hurls his 
 most powerful invective, and he preach- 
 es with convincing strength and direct- 
 ness on the inner virtues which outshine 
 the false light of the " getting on " ideal. 
 He urges strongly and forcibly that the 
 excellence of man does not depend upon 
 the standing or scale of his profession or 
 
occupation, but upon his standing in his 
 profession or occupation, whatever it may 
 be ; and he impresses upon every man the 
 duty not to rise out of his profession into 
 another supposedly higher one, but to 
 make himself and his vocation better and 
 higher by his noble efforts within its ? 
 sphere. In his domestic life he has, be- 
 fore all, to find his house and fix his home, 
 embellishing it and enlarging it, if needs 
 be, but not shaking its moral foundations 
 by an ever-present degrading hope of 
 moving to a larger one. Whatever ele- 
 ments of communism or socialism there 
 may be in Ruskin's writings, there is in 
 this side of them a strong individualistic 
 ground, in which the domestic life of the 
 family is held by him to form one of the 
 main pillars of social and political wel- 
 fare. He also endeavors to define the 
 province of woman in this well-regulated 
 life ; and though his manner here often 
 has a touch of flowery condescension or 
 unsimple simplicity, he assigns to her the 
 deeply important function of the true 
 woman and mother. 
 
 But his ethical teaching does not only 
 
apply to the life of individuals ; he has also 
 turned his attention to the life of the na- 
 tion as a whole, and in this national life 
 he has also pointed out the predominance 
 of the mercenary and commercial spirit. 
 He has shown what undue proportion and 
 engrossing interest are given to the mere 
 
 i / 1 commercial and financial aspect of a 
 country ; and he has levelled his satire 
 and invective against the " period of un- 
 precedented prosperity" which formed the 
 staple of the speeches of statesmen touch- 
 ing upon the inner national life of a peo- 
 
 ^ pie. He has pointed out at what cost this 
 commercial prosperity may be bought, 
 not only to the advancement of the nation 
 as a whole, but to the citizens who pro- 
 duce this prosperity, in their moral and 
 intellectual as well as their physical life. 
 He has pointed out the vicious one-sided- 
 ness of the " political economists," whose 
 teachings form the only theoretical and 
 scientific groundwork for the practical 
 politician of the day, and he has denied 
 to these economists the designation of 
 political economists, distinguishing be- 
 tween political economy, which "con- 
 
sists simply in the production, preserva- 
 tion, and distribution, at fittest time and 
 place, of useful and pleasurable things," 
 . . . and mercantile economy, which sig- 
 nifies "the accumulation in the hands 
 of individual^ of legal and moral claim 
 upon or power over the labor of others, 
 every such claim implying precisely as 
 much poverty and debt on one side as it 
 implies riches or right on the other." It 
 is not possible here, even if the writer 
 felt himself better qualified to enter upon 
 the discussion of definite problems of 
 political economy, to consider Ruskin's 
 views of co-operation, distribution, usury, 
 etc. Suffice it to say that he has been 
 one of the most powerful exponents of 
 the view now admitted into the most 
 sober and technical systems of political 
 economy : that this science or art is not 
 only concerned with the human motive 
 power and incentive to action which lies 
 in the immediate possessing and accu- 
 mulating instinct of man, and the blind 
 working of these forces in contending in- 
 terests (a view which takes man in a 
 monstrous and one-sided aspect), but, as 
 
it deals with the life of man, it must also 
 and primarily take into account, and 
 weigh and balance, as far as this is possi- 
 ble, the moral desires and needs of civil- 
 \ ized human beings. In one word, he has 
 1 reconciled morality and economy, which 
 the old school of economists had di- 
 vorced. 
 
 It appears to be a natural phase of ev- 
 ery young science in modern times, aris- 
 ing out of a desire to approach in method 
 the exact sciences, whether pure, such as 
 mathematics, or experimental, such as 
 chemistry and physics, to follow them in 
 their process of isolation of facts and phe- 
 nomena, which no doubt facilitates the 
 exactness of their results and the sure- 
 ness of their advance. But at later phases 
 they will have to recognize that, where 
 with mathematical figures or with chem- 
 ical elements it is possible to isolate phe- 
 nomena without impairing their essential 
 quality, as we rise to the scale of organic 
 life, and finally to human thoughts and 
 feelings, the isolation of phenomena does 
 not in the same way insure certainty of 
 scientific procedure, but, from the very 
 
organic or moral nature of the factors 
 with which the moral and historical sci- 
 ences have to deal, alters, disfigures, and 
 vitiates the essence of the phenomena 
 thus isolated. The new life which has 
 been given of late to the study of politi- 
 cal and constitutional history may have 
 led to this youthful exaggeration of so- 
 called scientific method ; and it may have 
 to be recognized that, in dealing with the 
 life of the past, the isolation of certain as- 
 pects within one period, such as the com- 
 mercial life, or the foreign policy, or the 
 party influence, when carried out in any- 
 thing like the manner in which this is 
 done with regard to the physical proper- 
 ties of solid or elastic bodies, may distort 
 and disfigure facts and their relation. This 
 is so because in the events of political life 
 other varied interests, often of a very dif- 
 ferent nature, are inseparably interwoven 
 with these broad currents of national ac- 
 tion ; and the pleasures of a prince or 
 the intrigues of a woman, or, happily, a 
 moral or religious idea, may modify and 
 strengthen the course or divert the cur- 
 rent of economical or foreign policy. To 
 
assume that in political economy moral 
 considerations have not, and will not have, 
 a great regulating influence, is as false to 
 fact as the views of many doctrinaires, 
 who would entirely eliminate the moving 
 power of material interest, are Utopian. 
 There can be no doubt that the one-sided- 
 ness with which the old schools of econo- 
 my proceeded in this direction only had 
 to lead to a reaction within the body of 
 the economists themselves, and the main 
 elements of this reaction are to be found 
 strongly put among all the writings of 
 men like Mill, whom Ruskin would re- 
 gard as one of the chief culprits in this 
 one-sided development of the study. And 
 though the works of many modern writ- 
 ers dealing directly or only remotely 
 with such questions, such as the Comt- 
 ists, Kingsley, Maurice, George Eliot, and 
 many others, have paved the way for this 
 healthy revulsion, Ruskin's merit in this 
 direction is incontestably great, and may 
 in the future grow in the recognition of 
 those who can look more dispassionately 
 upon his exaggerations, and with more 
 patience upon his violent petulance. 
 
125 
 
 He has attacked the vicious fallacies in 
 the very localities of their growth, the 
 manufacturing centres of England, and 
 has preached powerful sermons, which 
 have undoubtedly had the effect of con- 
 verting a few, of stimulating the moral 
 fibre of many, and of causing many more 
 to seek for some justification in the course 
 they had before been following under the 
 assumption that what they were doing 
 was wholly right. He has shown to many 
 what the real humanitarian spirit of Chris- 
 tian charity in its present form is, and 
 how far it differed from their convenient 
 belief that it was ordained by Providence 
 that the circumstances of their lives 
 should be so favorable to happiness, where- 
 as those of their neighbors were so preg- 
 nant with misery. He has shaken the 
 merchant and manufacturer out of their 
 lazy and convenient dulness, in which their 
 vocation had but the one goal of increas- 
 ing their personal wealth, and has made 
 them realize that they are also an inte- 
 gral member of organized society and the 
 state, in which their function and duty in 
 every stage of their vocation tend to ef- 
 
126 
 
 feet the well-being of the whole organiza- 
 tion. He has insisted upon the fact that 
 they have duties beyond the mere increase 
 of their personal wealth in the following 
 of their own vocation, as much as the sol- 
 dier or the doctor or the teacher or the 
 priest, who could not consider their ef- 
 forts to be exclusively directed towards the 
 acquisition of their pay or fee or salary. 
 He considers that the merchant and man- 
 ufacturer have primarily the duty as mas- 
 ters to the servants whom they employ, 
 the master necessarily becoming in the 
 course of his business the overseer and 
 governor of large masses of men in the 
 most direct way, so that upon him falls 
 in a great part the responsibility for the 
 kind of life they lead. After this primary 
 duty is seen to, the main task of the mer- 
 chant is to provide for the proper distri- 
 bution of goods and wealth, and of the 
 manufacturer to produce the best and 
 most serviceable goods. Nay, according to 
 him, the manufacturer exists for the sake 
 of the workmen employed by him, and 
 is responsible to a considerable extent for 
 the bodies and souls of his employes, as 
 
well as for the fabric they produce. The 
 overstatement of this aspect of duty, which 
 may be a literary quality, and may in its 
 strong colors serve to attract attention, is 
 nevertheless to my mind fatal in its influ- 
 ence, as, on the one hand, causing the 
 votary who naturally would tend in this 
 moral direction to become unbalanced in 
 his enthusiasm, and unable efficiently to 
 cope with the practical exigencies of life ; 
 and on the other, from its exaggerated 
 inaccuracy, strengthening the doubt of 
 the hardened self-seeker, and giving him 
 justification for a disbelief in such " un- 
 practical ideals." 
 
 These injunctions concerning our mut- 
 ual happiness and dignity, and of the fur- 
 thering of the common social aims, ought 
 certainly to be a negative guide in check- 
 ing the positive current of individual in- 
 terest, or they may even be raised into 
 great positive ideals. But the self-interest 
 of the merchant and manufacturer in gain- 
 ing their own livelihood, and in increasing 
 the possibilities of their own efficiency and 
 happiness, limited by the due regard for 
 public honesty and the welfare of those 
 
with whom they are to co-operate or to 
 deal, ought to be recognized as an impor- 
 tant and legitimate incentive to effort. It 
 might be said that this is self-evident, and 
 need not be preached. There may be no 
 necessity to preach it, but we do desire 
 that it be acknowledged and accredited 
 as being worthy of admission within the 
 recognized code of social ethics. Themis- 
 fortune has been and ever is, as it appears 
 to the writer, that the natural instincts of 
 self - preservation, physical, moral, and 
 aesthetic, are taken for granted as being 
 self-acting, and only requiring to be re*- 
 pressed ; they are never raised within 
 the respectable company of moral tenets. 
 When they obtrude themselves upon the 
 attention, their existence and active power 
 being thus taken for granted, a disingen- 
 uous attempt is ever being made by well- 
 meaning preachers and moralists, either 
 to ignore them, or to hasten by them with 
 a sigh at the unfortunate necessity of 
 their existence and their claims, or to take 
 notice of them only by repressing or com- 
 bating them where they appear to assert 
 themselves too vigorously or stand in the 
 
way of what is considered more worthy 
 of endeavor. We are untruthful to our- 
 selves, and turn the whole of conduct into 
 most harmful dissonance, in thus ignor- 
 ing and shirking to deal with the natural 
 instincts and desires for self-preservation 
 and delectation as worthy to be admitted 
 into our rules of conduct ; whereas we 
 ought to train them into their proper re- 
 lation and proportion to our more altruis- 
 tic duties, and ennoble them into a virtue 
 by the countenance morality gives them 
 as one of its tributary provinces, instead 
 of degrading them to the position of for- 
 eign and barbarous regions outside the 
 boundaries of the land of morality, with 
 a superadded falsehood of the feigned 
 negation of their existence. 
 
 So in the case of merchants and man- 
 ufacturers we ought to dwell and insist 
 upon the just motive of self-preservation 
 and delectation, but we ought to add the 
 other altruistic duties, now barely recog- 
 nized at all in practice, because the really 
 active motive of individual gain has been 
 absolutely discountenanced by the high 
 moralists, and the people remain satisfied 
 
 9 
 
with considering these vocations as out- 
 side the pale of the higher occupations, 
 with no laws whatever to govern them. 
 
 In the youthfulness of our moral awak- 
 ening we seem inclined to exaggerate the 
 claims of morality, as our predecessors 
 exaggerated the claims of utility ; and we 
 shall have to introduce into political econ- 
 omy, as well as into wider spheres, the 
 consideration of the playful and artistic 
 side of life, if we wish to be truthful to 
 fact, and if we would not bring about the 
 impoverishment and drought of the chief 
 springs of an elevated human existence, 
 We shall have to recognize that the ele- 
 vating pleasures and delights, physical 
 and intellectual, in so far as they are not 
 essentially unsocial, and destroy or stand 
 in the way of common advancement, are 
 not only (and will be for incalculable 
 time) important motives to human effort, 
 but ought to be maintained as such, and 
 thus recognized within the province of all 
 serious consideration of social matters. 
 
 Nay, I would go further, without wish- 
 ing to discuss the fundamental principles 
 of ethics, and maintain that the present 
 
altruistic wave of humanitarianism which 
 we can trace in the lives of the good peo- 
 ple among us is unbalancing the lives of 
 these earnest people, and may lead to 
 justified reactions which will retard sane 
 progress. \Our duty to our neighbors, 
 and the duty of fully constituting our- 
 selves as fit and useful members of or- 
 ganized communities, are insisted upon to 
 the exclusion of any. claim to self-indul- 
 gence, without any acknowledgment of 
 a well-founded duty to self. And in the 
 ideal of these earnest people we have pre- 
 sented a picture which, in its fantastic 
 and hazy distortions of unrea^ty, has a 
 profoundly tragic element. It H a world 
 in which the centrifugal efforts of good 
 men and women, restlessly active for the 
 pleasure and gratification of their neigh- 
 bors, are directed into empty space, seek- 
 ing for consistent bodies upon which they 
 are to spend their beneficent virtue ; but 
 they never reach them, because each in- 
 dividual is surrounded by an impene- 
 trable circle of the same centrifugal force 
 of altruism, and the circles and forces 
 emanating from each personal centre 
 
clash and absorb each other in the vain 
 endeavor at reaching the consistent cen- 
 tre of a human being that can feel and be 
 delighted, a'nd not only act and distribute 
 blessings. And meanwhile the angels 
 that contemplate things human are weep- 
 ing bitter tears at the virtuous folly of 
 their human counterparts, who, in the 
 emulation of angelic sweetness, have mis- 
 taken the shadows for the essence, be- 
 cause of the glowing light of goodness 
 that prevails above ; and the ugly little 
 gnomes of hatred and selfishness, that dog 
 the steps of even good men, are chuckling 
 with suppressed titters of ironical laughter 
 at the general misery which unselfishness 
 can produce. Surely we can and ought - 
 to train, or at least not to ignore in false- 
 hood, the more passive life of man's soul, 
 in which we can appreciate and feel de- 
 light in the good and great things that 
 others provide for us, and that we can 
 produce for ourselves and in ourselves. 
 And perhaps this appeal may come home 
 to the stern moralist if he realizes that 
 one great virtue, gratitude, will die of in- 
 anition without the grace of receiving 
 
favors in this world, and that pride is 
 likely to come where gratitude has no 
 home. 
 
 Ruskin has taken a great part in bring- 
 ing people to lead more unselfish lives, 
 but he has also done much to give this 
 one-sided tendency to moral activity, es- 
 pecially in his efforts to counteract the 
 idea of play which happily still exists in 
 England. To put it in the form of a ple- 
 onasm : If play loses its playfulness, it has 
 lost its spirit and virtue ; and if playful 
 occupation is to be absorbed in the useful- 
 ness of its outcome, its own spirit and the 
 salutary effect of training and feeding the 
 passive side of mind is destroyed. The 
 idea of finding our recreation in the pro- 
 duction of some useful object thus in it- 
 self destroys the essence of play. Rus- 
 kin's opposition to the athletic pastimes 
 and sports of England can be accounted 
 for more readily in his own education 
 than it can be justified in its effect. We 
 do not mean to maintain that there are not 
 many forms of it that in themselves are 
 degrading in their influence, many that 
 are unsocial in character, many, though 
 
good in themselves, that have acciden- 
 tally developed into forms that under- 
 mine the moral health of the nation ; and 
 against these it is right that good men 
 should bring their influence to bear. But 
 in themselves they are one of the heir- 
 looms which the Englishmen of old have 
 handed down to their children, though 
 in many cases, from the excjusiveness of 
 the love bestowed upon them, they led to 
 a more or less brutal form of life. And 
 this heirloom ought to be cherished and 
 purified rather than impoverished and 
 destroyed. And if we examine into the 
 judgments of Ruskin and similar writers 
 on these matters, we shall find that they 
 have their own forms (though they may 
 be few) of play, in which they would in- 
 dulge and have others indulge, and that 
 ultimately it depends upon their personal 
 predilections upon which form they would 
 put the signet of their moral approbation. 
 You will find some, whose physical vital- 
 ity is low by nature or education (or its 
 want), who would only admit spiritual en- 
 joyments within the rightful recreations 
 of men and women. Others look with 
 
extreme and self-satisfied displeasure and 
 disapproval upon him who expends some 
 of his time and substance upon the adorn- 
 ment of his person in the way of clothes 
 that correspond to the modern standard 
 of taste, and not to that of the ancient 
 Greek, mediaeval Frank, or the Norwegian 
 Viking, whose dress he would like to re- 
 vive ; while they would feel justified in 
 expending the same time and substance 
 upon the binding of their books (apart 
 from their contents) or upon the choice 
 of their dinner-service. It is no doubt 
 desirable to encourage good book-binders, 
 but why not good tailors ? Others, again, 
 will rightly expend considerable sums 
 upon their pictures and other works of 
 art, yet will disapprove of the expenditure 
 devoted to the acquisition of beautiful 
 horses. They do not recognize the legit- 
 imate pleasure to be derived from the 
 sight as well as the use of an animal, and 
 as far as their action is concerned they 
 would make the world the poorer by the 
 extirpation of one of its most beautiful 
 creations. 
 
 Perhaps it would be wise and just if 
 
136 
 
 moralists, economists, social reformers, 
 and political philosophers, of whatever 
 shade of opinion, would write in a con- 
 spicuous place in their studies the monk's 
 memento mori : " Do not make the world 
 poorer, materially, intellectually, moral- 
 ly, and artistically, by anything your 
 writings or preachings may lead men to 
 do." And much of the wholesale con- 
 demnation of whole spheres of life and 
 activity, in which one side or aspect has, 
 from one point of view, been recognized 
 to be bad, may be checked before it is 
 hurled into the market-place. 
 
 A harmful outcome of the efforts, part- 
 ly justified, of all such moralists as Rus- 
 kin and Carlyle in the England of to-day 
 has been the stereotyping of differences 
 in various sections of the social commu- 
 nity. Among these I would except the 
 most moderate and right-minded social 
 reformer of the day, Matthew Arnold, 
 whose influence must be, as it has been, 
 ultimately for the world's good. They 
 have created a marked antithesis between 
 on the one side, a class of people who are 
 supposed (or sometimes only suppose 
 
themselves) to have serious and engross- 
 ing moral aims in existence, and, on the 
 other, those who apparently are carried 
 on in the broad current of ordinary life 
 without any consciousness, or at least any 
 assertion, of higher social duties and 
 moral ideals. The result is the creation 
 of not only an unnatural and unjustifiable 
 gulf between these two sections, which 
 counteracts a proper fusion and mutual 
 influencing of their currents, but it has 
 led to a mutual contempt for one another, 
 implying much self-glorification on either 
 side, and it has confirmed and hardened 
 each of the two sections in the peculiar 
 vices and shortcomings to which it is 
 prone. The thoughtless or fashionable 
 man retaliates the moral haughtiness of 
 the world-reformer by the assertion of his 
 superiority in his own domain, expressed 
 either by a vain contempt or at least ap- 
 athetic desistence from intercourse ; and 
 he is met in the same way by the votaries 
 of the other section. Occasionally it may 
 happen that the extremist on the worldly 
 side finds that his social opposite is not 
 entirely devoid of sympathy with and ca- 
 
pacity for the life which he considers a 
 desirable one ; while the world-reformer 
 may realize that his fashionable friend is 
 neither a fool nor a bad man, and has 
 often thought, and acted up to his 
 thoughts, upon the problems and duties 
 of our life. 
 
 It thus appears to me that the real nat- 
 ure of recreation and its position in a 
 well-regulated life has not been properly 
 conceived by Ruskin, and it is, I believe, 
 owing to this want that he and other so- 
 cial reformers have somewhat overstated 
 the abuses inherent in the occupation of 
 the modern factory hand. . It is to be 
 found in the powerful invective against 
 the thought-killing work of the mass of 
 our laboring classes work in which 
 there is food for neither their intellectual 
 nor moral qualities. "You must either 
 make a tool of the creature or a man of 
 him," he says ; " you cannot make both. 
 Men were not intended to work with the 
 accuracy of tools, to be precise and per- 
 fect in all their actions. If you will have 
 that precision out of them, and make their 
 fingers measure degrees like cog-wheels, 
 
and their arms strike curves like compass- 
 es, you must inhumanize them. All the 
 energy of their spirit must be given to 
 make cogs and compasses of themselves. 
 All their attention and strength must go 
 to the accomplishment of the mean act. 
 The eye of the soul must be bent upon the 
 finger-point, and the soul's force must 
 feel all the invisible nerves that guide it, 
 ten hours a day, that it may not err from 
 its steady precision, and so soul and sight 
 be worn away, and the whole human be- 
 ing be lost at last a heap of sawdust, so 
 far as its intellectual work in the world is 
 concerned ; saved only by its heart, which 
 cannot go into the forms of cogs and com- 
 passes, but extends, after the ten hours 
 are over, into fireside humanity. ... It is 
 verily this degradation of the operative 
 into the machine which more than any 
 other evil of the times is leading the mass 
 of the nations everywhere into vain, inco- 
 herent destruction, struggling for a free- 
 dom of which they cannot explain the nat- 
 ure to themselves. ... It is not that men 
 are ill-fed, but that they have no pleasure 
 in the work by which they make their 
 
bread, and therefore look to wealth as the 
 only means of pleasure. . . . We have 
 much studied and much perfected of late 
 the civilized invention of the division of 
 labor, only we give it a false name. It is 
 not, truly speaking, the labor that is di- 
 vided, but the men divided into mere 
 segments of men broken into small frag- 
 ments and crumbs of life ;' so that the lit- 
 tle piece of intelligence that is left in a 
 man is not enough to make a pin or a 
 nail, but exhausts itself in making the 
 point of a pin or the head of a nail. Now 
 it is a good and'desirable thing, truly, to 
 make many pins in a day ; but if we could 
 only see with what crystal sand their 
 points were polished sand of human 
 soul, which has to be magnified before 
 it can be discerned for what it is we 
 should think there might be some loss in 
 it also. And the great cry that rises from 
 all our manufacturing cities, louder than 
 their furnace blast, is all in very deed for 
 this that we manufacture everything 
 there except men." 
 
 And this misery, he says, can only be 
 met " by a right understanding on the 
 
part of all classes of what kinds of labor 
 are good for men, raising them and mak- 
 ing them happy, by a determined sacri- 
 fice of ^such convenience or beauty or 
 cheapness as is to be got only by the 
 degradation of the workmen, and by 
 equally determined demand for the prog- 
 ress and results of healthy and ennobling 
 labor." 
 
 Now noble as is this appeal to our con- 
 sideration of the dignity and happiness of 
 our fellow-men, and desirable as it may 
 be that we should ever bear these duties 
 in mind, I believe that there is much beg- 
 ging of the main question in these elo- 
 quent words, which may finally result in 
 fatal conclusions. The one important 
 question that will have to be considered 
 carefully, and cannot be met by rhetoric, 
 is the conception of ennobling and de- 
 grading work. In itself the attempt at 
 acquiring " the accuracy of tools, to be 
 precise and perfect in all their actions," 
 is not degrading, however unattainable it 
 may be ; nor is it a " mean act " in itself 
 " to bend the eye of the soul upon the 
 finger-point, and the soul's force feel all 
 
the invisible nerves that guide it, that it 
 may not err from its steady precision." 
 The true point perhaps really lies in the 
 " ten hours a day " of such occupation. 
 It is a question of degree, not of kind. 
 And if the amount of such work is dele- 
 terious to body and mind, it is against it 
 that the crusade ought to be waged. Nor 
 is there anything especially degrading in 
 the division of labor, if it also tends to 
 encourage, or at least not to destroy, the 
 possibility of the desirable division of 
 man's conscious life into work and posi- 
 tive effort and relaxation from w r ork and 
 more passive recreation. It is practically 
 impossible, and perhaps ideally undesira- 
 ble, that work should be completely puri- 
 fied from the element of constraint and 
 continuous effort which distinguishes it 
 from play. Its real spiritual vitality and 
 ennobling incentive will ever be forth- 
 coming in the consciousness that the 
 immediate results of the effort meet the 
 need of society. Now if we are justified 
 in believing, as Ruskin does, that " it is a 
 good and desirable thing truly to make 
 many pins in a day," this consciousness 
 
ought to prevent the laborer's moral effort 
 from tending towards his own degrada- 
 tion. Nay, the subjugation and disci- 
 pline of his own faculties and instincts 
 for unbounded freedom would ever be a 
 type to him of the great and inspiriting 
 law which holds a perfectly organized so- 
 ciety together, always provided that the 
 duration of this effort does not exceed the 
 limits of the proper conditions of phys- 
 ical and moral health, and that time and 
 opportunities for the culture of the rec- 
 reative side of his existence are offered. 
 There is hardly any occupation seriously 
 carried on which we can at present con- 
 ceive of, that does not necessarily carry 
 with it that which in plain words is called 
 drudgery. The writer has known stu- 
 dents and literary men who, in choosing 
 avocation, preferred to the immediate 
 profession representative of their favorite 
 studies the drudgery of an office in the 
 civil service, where their business chiefly 
 consisted in adding up or controlling the 
 additions of the small salaries of soldiers 
 and officers in the army and navy. But 
 it may be added that this their daily 
 
pursuit, which at no too great cost gave 
 them the feeling of having done their le- 
 gitimate day's work, and furnished the 
 grateful prospect of subsequently prose- 
 cuting their favorite studies, was not too 
 long in duration of time ; and I may add 
 that it was the very mechanism and 
 thoughtlessness of their occupation which 
 constituted one element of their prefer- 
 ence. 
 
 Without wishing to deny the existence 
 of much misery and of much that is 
 wrong among the factory hands, or the 
 general desirability of making work as 
 interesting as its efficient production will 
 admit, it appears to me that the main- 
 spring of Ruskin's opposition to factory 
 work lies in his opposition to the mechan- 
 ical production, more especially steam- 
 manufactured goods. Let us at once 
 touch and meet the central doctrine by 
 stating a proposition which may, to 
 many, appear as evident as it undoubt- 
 edly is directly opposed to the chief views 
 expressed or implied in most of the writ- 
 ings of Ruskin and his allies and his dis- 
 ciples, namely : that if the best is good, 
 
the second best is not necessarily bad ; ( 
 and that if the production of the best is/ 
 in every way to be encouraged, this en- 
 couragement does not necessarily absorb 
 or exclude the desirability of fostering 
 the production of the second best, which is 
 not to be confounded with the second rate. 
 If a bronze repousse or chased casket the 
 making of which took an artist-craftsman 
 five years of his most skilled labor could 
 only be bought by a petty prince four hun- 
 dred years ago, and to-day perhaps only 
 by a national museum, then let this cas- 
 ket be made, and be made as well as 
 human hands guided by an inspired im- 
 agination can make it. But if, by the gal- 
 vano-plastic process, and by calling in the 
 aid of steam machinery, this masterpiece 
 can be reproduced at a trifling cost, so 
 that, where only the princeling could pos- 
 sess such a work four hundred years ago, 
 in hundreds of humble households the re- 
 productions could adorn the room or sanc- 
 tify use by beauty, there can but be much 
 gain in every direction. And even if the 
 lines be not quite as precise and sharp in 
 the reproductions as they are in the origi- 
 
i 4 6 
 
 nal, and the work is thus not best,* the 
 best still exists in the original, and what 
 so closely approaches it can only be el- 
 evating to the artistic taste of humble 
 people when constantly before their eyes ; 
 and the universal growth of public appre- 
 ciation, needs, and demands in this direc- 
 tion, arising out of the distribution of such 
 second-best gems, will naturally lead to the 
 increased demand for the best originals. 
 Let us suppose (which is hardly conceiva- 
 ble) that the advance of mechanical skill 
 should enable us to dispense entirely with 
 human intelligent work, then it will be 
 right for such human activity to become 
 an interesting matter of historical contem- 
 plation and study, and this, to all but ro- 
 manticists, will justly be considered as a 
 blessing. No healthy mind really con- 
 cerned about the welfare of humanity need 
 ever be appalled at the Promethean ad- 
 
 * The price and limited editions of Raskin's books 
 have, in spite of all he may say, appeared to me a grave 
 contradiction, which is, however, to be accounted for by 
 the fallacious reasoning here pointed out. The adver- 
 tisement of limited editions of books and engravings, ap- 
 pear to me to mark an appeal to one of the most unso- 
 cial, and thus immoral, instincts of modern society. 
 
vance in human skill. The reasoning of 
 many of these Ruskinians, earnest men or 
 shallow exquisites, in this half-moral, half- 
 aesthetic realm, is misleading and insid- 
 ious, because of the accompanying flavor 
 of high morality and refinement. So, for 
 instance, I have heard the antique system 
 of casting bronze, known as a cire perdu, 
 in which a mishap in the casting would 
 destroy the wax model, and with it all the 
 beauty, the result of so much inspired 
 effort, commended as manifesting the 
 high artistic earnestness and enthusiasm 
 of the artists of old, as contrasted with 
 the mercenary timidity or cowardice of 
 modern artists, who, at best, would adopt 
 means, while using the wax model, to as- 
 sure the possibility of its reproduction. 
 There was not only praise for the artistic 
 enthusiasm of the artist of old, but blame 
 to the modern artist for his desire to ob- 
 viate, if possible, the absolute loss of his 
 model. This is one of the worst forms 
 of practical romanticism. Now if this 
 process of casting a cire perdu does pro- 
 duce a more beautiful surface in the 
 bronze work than any other form (which 
 
i 4 8 
 
 it does), we ought by all means to possess 
 such works, and to revive the process. 
 But the loss of a beautiful statue by Dona- 
 tello or Cellini is a loss to the world ; and 
 it is an unsocial feeling which leads us to 
 admire less an artist who will strive to 
 discover, or will be gratified at the dis- 
 covery of, some means of avoiding the 
 complete destruction of hi$ ideas and la- 
 bor as materialized in his model. The 
 perfecting and cheapening of reproduc- 
 tive art, whether good hand-made or me- 
 chanical copies, will invariably tend tow- 
 ards the increase for the demand of the 
 original artist's work in every direction. 
 There is at bottom an unsocial element 
 in this whole class of feelings among these 
 exquisites ; it is artistic pharisaism. The 
 main enemy in Ruskin's warfare against 
 modern industry is the steam-engine. 
 And it is here that his romanticism and 
 the unconscious workings of an unsocial 
 exclusiveness are the main motive powers 
 to his opposition. How much, from an 
 economical point of view, there may be 
 of truth in his idea that it would be best, 
 after using human hands, to exhaust nat- 
 
ure's power of wind and water, and only 
 in the utmost extremity, after these have 
 been properly used, to turn to more arti- 
 ficial aids, I am unable to judge. But we 
 cannot help feeling that in his absolute 
 condemnation of the factory and railway 
 there is a strong element of romanticism, 
 which on the one hand wilfully blinds 
 its vision against the good that lies in one 
 great side of actual modern life, while it 
 is longingly directed towards a past which 
 to the people living in those ages was un- 
 doubtedly fraught with great evils and 
 miseries, and which probably never ex- 
 isted as depicted by the romanticist. The 
 constant juxtaposition of the life of the 
 Swiss or the Tyrolese peasant with the 
 English farmer or laborer, giving rise to 
 a comparison in his words so much to the 
 detriment of the physical and spiritual 
 welfare of the modern toiler, strikes us as 
 being as far removed from the reality of 
 things as many romantic descriptions in 
 old-fashioned novels of the happiness of 
 the rural life of old, or the depiction, or 
 rather costume - painting, of the " Salon 
 Tyroler" is removed from truth. Hap- 
 
piness and simplicity, if they really did 
 or do exist in these regions, may be con- 
 founded with animal restriction of wants 
 and brutal limitation of the means of sat- 
 isfying them. And it is well for us care- 
 fully to question ourselves, when we com- 
 plain of the loss of picturesqueness which 
 modern improvements bring in their train t 
 whether unconsciously we are not speak- 
 ing from gross selfishness, in which the 
 lives and happiness of living human be- 
 ings are looked upon by us, in the con- 
 sciousness of our intellectual or artistic 
 refinement, as scenes over which we smack 
 our lips as if we were reading a book or 
 seeing a play. And as it is with the com- 
 parison of lives, so it may also be with 
 the comparison of institutions and things. 
 The preference which is given to the 
 windmill over the factory chimney may, 
 to a great extent, be purely romantic. We 
 can conceive of a romantic knight some 
 centuries ago issuing from his castle gate 
 and complaining of the disfigurement to 
 the good scene of old caused by the sug- 
 gestive structure with outspread wings 
 cutting the horizon line that bounded his 
 
vast domain, as centuries hence we can 
 conceive of another romanticist who, long- 
 ing with praise for the restoration of the 
 good old factory chimneys, complains of 
 the new structures erected to meet the 
 new wants of an advancing civilization. 
 The factory chimney is in itself, apart 
 from romantic associations, not necessa- 
 rily more unbeautiful in line than the 
 windmill, and there is no "reason why its 
 form should not be still more improved. 
 There is a truth strongly put by Ruskin 
 for which he would have gained more 
 universal recognition if the statements of 
 it had been more moderate and in con- 
 formity with fact, namely, the duty of 
 maintaining the land which we inhabit in 
 the conditions conducive to health, and 
 with the careful guarding and preserva- 
 tion of the natural and historical beauties, 
 which are, to omit all their spiritual qual- 
 ifications, real national possessions of the 
 highest economical value. To allow the 
 smoke from the chimneys to turn pure 
 air into pestilential miasmata, to see beau- 
 tiful Ireams and rivers defiled, to witness 
 the most lovely and unique scenes ruth- 
 
lessly robbed of their chief charms of nat- 
 ural beauty these are losses which, if 
 they do bear comparison with actual in- 
 dustrial loss to individual members or 
 groups of the community, will outweigh 
 them heavily. The day may come when 
 one of the most important functions of 
 the government concerned with the in- 
 ternal affairs of a nation will be to secure 
 and guard the public lands for the pur- 
 poses of national health and of national 
 delectation. 
 
 But when Ruskin complains that the 
 delightful silence which reigned in some 
 rural districts is now disturbed by the life 
 of industry, and that portions of Switzer- 
 land, which he and other kindred spirits 
 could once enjoy in comparative seclu- 
 sion are vulgarized by numbers of unedu- 
 cated tourists ; when he complains of the 
 very facility of approach to many of these 
 sacred haunts brought about by the rail- 
 ways, and the picnics which do not agree 
 with the exquisite musings of the solitary 
 votary of nature, we cannot help feeling 
 that this arises not only from a romantic 
 but from an essentially unsocial spirit. 
 
153 
 
 There can be no doubt that our enjoy- 
 ment must be impaired by the reduction 
 of what stimulates our highest emotions 
 to a commonplace ; but we must willing- 
 ly make this sacrifice when we consider 
 the great gain accruing to hundreds or 
 thousands where before it but reached 
 units. 
 
 At bottom it is one and the same spirit 
 of exclusiveness and exquisiteness which 
 we before traced as influencing his views 
 on other social and economical matters, 
 and which we can trace at once in the 
 intensity of admiration and the violence 
 of denunciation in matters of art. And 
 when in his followers, or in those influ- 
 enced by him, this is coupled with dog- 
 matism, we can see how this leads to the 
 formation of a group of people whose 
 belief in their own infallibility of taste 
 and judgment is in potency only equalled 
 by the narrowness of their vision. They 
 believe and hold that they have found 
 the true ideals of life, and that all others 
 are idolatrous ; that they possess the true 
 touchstone of taste, and only admire what 
 is best, and that all else is bad or vulgar. 
 
And the worst is that apparent intensity 
 of feeling does not always insure absolute 
 sincerity of conviction ; nay, that an un- 
 balanced mind devoid of moderation is 
 likely to mar the trueness of its own 
 scales of veracity. And out of these con- 
 scious exquisites of mind and their ensu- 
 ing opposition to the current of ordinary 
 life there will naturally ariose the desire 
 and the habit of manifesting distinctions 
 in outer appearance and conduct ; and it 
 is thus that it may be in great part ow- 
 ing to this influence that the movement 
 which in its best sides has been produc- 
 tive of much good, but which has natural- 
 ly and rapidly degenerated into the in- 
 sincere forms that happily are dying the 
 death of innocent ridicule, the movement 
 the votaries of which have been called 
 cesthetes, has come to life. Though at the 
 beginning of this paper attention was 
 drawn to the fact that it w r as one of the 
 great merits of Ruskin to have success- 
 fully waged war against Bohemianism 
 among the artist community, his influ- 
 ence has tended to produce a far less 
 repulsive and obnoxious form of Bohe- 
 
155 
 
 mianism. This is a very curious phe- 
 nomenon. For the essential characteris- 
 tic of Bohemianism (and in this it is 
 related to romanticism) has ever been 
 negative, namely, its protest against ex- 
 isting ideals as manifested in the current 
 habits of life among the ruling majority. 
 Now it depends very much upon the 
 nature of the ideals and customs of this 
 ruling majority what form the Bohemian- 
 ism of the day will take. The Philistine 
 of the German student, and that of the 
 dishevelled gentleman of the Latin Quar- 
 ter, and that of the modern aesthete, are 
 all very different people nay, sometimes 
 they are diametrically opposed to one an- 
 other. The modern English Bohemian 
 may be the Philistine pur sang in the es- 
 timation of the Bohemian of Heidelberg, 
 or of the streets abutting on the Paris 
 Pantheon. From a positive point of 
 view he certainly has a more moral or 
 artistic origin in his opposition to the 
 Philistine. There are three shadings 
 which we can distinguish among them, 
 all more or less degenerated practical 
 caricatures of the theories of their intel- 
 
i 5 6 
 
 lectual parents. The first, deriving its 
 intellectual stimulus from Matthew Ar- 
 nold, is more closely related in its antipa- 
 thies to the Continental prototype, espe- 
 cially that of Germany, inasmuch as the 
 Philistine here marks an uncultured bour- 
 geois, or the unintellectual country squire. 
 The second, arising out of Carlyle, is the 
 anti-Belgravian Bohemianism, and is more 
 directly opposed to the gilt world of fash- 
 ion. And the third, the Ruskinian form, 
 comprising elements of both the previous 
 bodies, is anti-athletic, and draws its visi- 
 ble inspirations chiefly from the pictu- 
 resque side of art. The great good as 
 incentives that these extreme movements 
 were capable of doing, they have perhaps 
 already done, and the desirable part of 
 their vitality has probably spent itself. 
 Every Bohemian movement has the germs 
 of decay in itself, because of its essentially 
 negative nature. Very soon the ideals, in 
 so far as they were positive, lose consis- 
 tency ; and only the dissenting forms re- 
 main. The mass of this community gen- 
 erally groups round some originator who 
 dissents from strong inner motives ; but 
 
157 
 
 these motives have not their root in the 
 inner life of the followers, who tend tow- 
 ards formal exaggeration. And further- 
 more, the conventionality to which they 
 oppose themselves has one strong central 
 support, the very obtrusion of which the 
 Bohemian struggles against, namely, its 
 laws ; while the opponents, on the other 
 hand, have not this to sustain them, and 
 thus readily run riot. An analogous case 
 is presented in the history of some relig- 
 ious sects of which the founder may have 
 been a fervent mystic ; but the sect, as 
 such, has often degenerated into weak- 
 ness, and becomes a malignant excres- 
 cency when constituted into an organized 
 body, making a rite and convention of 
 the very unconventionality of its spirit- 
 ual founder, and the mystical fervor has 
 often degenerated into a frenzied luxuri- 
 ous dissipation, leading to the very oppo- 
 site extreme of the spirit which moved 
 the leader. So here it would not be as- 
 tonishing if sestheticism were gradually 
 to degenerate into a form of coarseness, 
 the very opposite of its refined origin. 
 
The possible danger of Ruskin's influ- 
 ence, to which reference has just been 
 made, far removed from the intended pur- 
 port of his books, is not counteracted by 
 a prominent tone of sobriety in his own 
 works ; nay, it is here that the dogmatic 
 exquisite will find many instances of a 
 prevailing spirit of narrow dogmatism. 
 But in the life of this great man it can 
 be accounted for and morally justified, 
 which cannot be said of the unintelligent 
 followers. It is the result of a life too 
 much shut up in itself, and not sobered 
 down by the constraint of fixed disci- 
 pline, and widened out by continuous 
 intercourse with people of equal calibre 
 following different pursuits, and not nec- 
 essarily responsive to his own views. It 
 is a mind too much concerned with its 
 own substance, revolving too much round 
 one centre, and reflecting too much its 
 own inner lights, rather than the di- 
 rect lights from without. No doubt in 
 his autobiography and in his works he 
 dwells upon himself with an apparent im- 
 partiality most remarkable, and in so far 
 unselfish; but still it is never free from 
 
egotism, and may be the height of it. He 
 almost smacks his lips over himself as a 
 thing to be studied, and appears at times 
 touchingly humble and modest; but he 
 is, after all, constantly busied about him- 
 self, and cannot forget it for work or in 
 work. This is not only the case in Prcc- 
 terzta, or to be noticed in the introduc- 
 tion of biographical matter into the Fors 
 and many other of his writings, but 
 smaller side lights show the same failing : 
 as when he thinks it worth printing that 
 a poem was written on New- Year's Day, 
 1828, in the Queen of the Air ; when he 
 thinks it proper to remark that he has a 
 finer appreciation of nature than most 
 people. His proffering remarks as to the 
 extent he has worked upon a subject, how 
 convinced he is of the truth, or the weight 
 it has or ought to have, and the degree 
 of earnest consideration it deserves in 
 short, the frequent mention of " I " where 
 it should be " it " all this is the result of 
 a mind which, shut up in itself, drops into 
 a kind of intellectual provincialism. 
 
 This exaggeration of the importance of 
 one's own thoughts is often due to the 
 
neglect of reading what others have writ- 
 ten on the very subject of our thoughts. 
 Now a doubt must often have come to the 
 original student or writer as to whether it 
 can be of much advantage, if he has any- 
 thing to say, to spend much time in see- 
 ing how others have said it, and to quote 
 their views and encumber his own with 
 foot-notes and the other customary forms 
 that characterize a scholar's work. It 
 may perhaps be better at times to work 
 straight on and write what one has to say, 
 for fear of otherwise never writing at all. 
 Still it will be found that the student be- 
 comes wider in following this old plan, 
 and generally without the loss of origi- 
 nality ; he becomes maturer, clearer, and 
 more condensed. Besides this, there is 
 the question of honesty and moral regard 
 for previous work ; for it must be remem- 
 bered that general progress would be re- 
 tarded if each student and writer would 
 have to begin anew, and not consider the 
 successful efforts of previous generations 
 and individuals. And I venture to think 
 that if Ruskin had followed this more, 
 and had been more like the German pro- 
 
fessor he appears to despise, we should 
 not have lost much of his originality, 
 while I certainly hold that we should have 
 had more system, more careful delibera- 
 tion, and more moderation. There would 
 have been fewer instances of dilettante- 
 ism in his works, and the great good that 
 is in them would have stood out clearly, 
 undimmed by the hasty exaggerations of 
 a fatally facile pen and the immoderate- 
 ness of a self-indulged imagination. But 
 this painful tendency towards eccentric- 
 ity, turning to habitual, and thus uncon- 
 scious, exaggeration of mind and diction, 
 is often fostered by the vicious influence 
 of a selfish society, especially of idle and 
 fashionable dilettanti. Just as (and here 
 with more justification, perhaps) they 
 will force a painter who has successfully 
 drawn one kind of dog to paint nothing 
 but this dog, so, seeing a new and strik- 
 ing side in a literary man, they will, 
 urged by their unassuageable thirst for 
 amusement, gradually force him to bring 
 out that side in his ordinary intercourse, 
 and thus turn originality into mannerism, 
 into stereotyped epigrammatic exaggera- 
 
162 
 
 tions, until they may succeed in produc- 
 ing the worst and most tragic form of a 
 hypocrite, namely, the unconscious actor 
 of a part, the dupe of a thumping insin- 
 cere conscientiousness, of rude eccentric- 
 ity. The result in many cases is the loss 
 of dignity in many good men of some 
 native power, who are often thus con- 
 verted into serious jesters by the selfish 
 requirements of a thoughtless society. 
 One of the greatest dangers to all genius 
 is that of being robbed of its vital strength 
 by velvety-pawed lion-hunters. 
 
 In the case of Ruskin, and in the case 
 of his master in some departments, Car- 
 lyle, the prevalence of the relentless, ex- 
 aggerated, denunciatory frame of mind 
 and form of expression has often beguiled 
 them away from the noble course of so- 
 ber and conscientious search after truth, 
 absorbing much of the energies that are 
 painfully needed to reduce to order the 
 tangled web of the innumerable facts ^ 
 that crowd round the narrow gateways 
 of conclusions justified by truth. It has 
 kept them from curbing subjective im- 
 pulses, strong desires and passions and 
 
i6 3 
 
 prejudices, and of bending their ener- 
 gies to the service of the stern-browed 
 goddess ; it has lured them on to the 
 riotous chase of the maenad whom they 
 mistake for a muse. The prophetic de- 
 nunciatory tone in its resounding flow 
 may prove to be an easy means of shirk- 
 ing and avoiding the great task of declar- 
 ing to men the hard-won truths that are 
 announced in simple, diffident, nay, halt- 
 ing words, but still penetrate and endure 
 in their far-reaching quality of sound. 
 And ultimately the result upon such men t 
 themselves, and a baneful influence upon 
 all who come within the circle of their ' 
 power, is a general blunting of the keen 
 edge of what we must call intellectual 
 morality, that moral and mental habit 
 which makes it impossible for any man 
 to state as an undoubted fact whatever he 
 has not conscientiously tested and exam- 
 ined in all its bearings. 
 
 There is nothing we would plead for 
 more earnestly than moderation in mat- 
 ters intellectual. We are often told that 
 exaggeration is demanded to reach and 
 move the masses, in order that a general 
 
 UNIVEBSITT 
 
1 64 
 
 truth might become practically effectual 
 and leave the spheres of pure thought. 
 We are informed that minute and careful 
 balancing of truth finds its place in the 
 silent study ; but that, when we go out 
 into the market-place and thoroughfares 
 of actual life, we need direct and forcible 
 statements, figures of prophets and movers 
 of men who stand out strongly as types 
 of the one idea which they incorporate 
 comparative coarseness of intellectual 
 fibre and passionate boldness of expres- 
 sion. Luther moved men, we are told, 
 not Melancthon and the humanists. It 
 has almost become a commonplace to 
 say : not the sober student, but the pro- 
 phetic enthusiast is required to effect great 
 changes in the world's history. I will not 
 attempt here to answer the question 
 whether, if we look into history carefully, 
 we shall not find that, after all, the mod- 
 erate student was not more efficient in 
 turning the world's current into lasting 
 and beneficent channels than the violent 
 enthusiast, and that the latter really only 
 became influential when he made himself 
 the mouth-piece of the former. I should 
 
further suggest the question whether each 
 exaggerated movement does not bring 
 with it a corresponding reaction, corre- 
 sponding in strength to the degree of ex- 
 aggeration, and acting, in the long-run, 
 as a retarding force to human progress, 
 quite out of proportion to any temporary 
 gain apparent at the time of the exagger- 
 ation ? If we must needs have strong 
 preaching, then there is one topic for the 
 moralist and world-reformer in which ex- 
 aggeration is least likely to be harmful 
 the gospel of Sanity and Moderation. 
 
 Ruskin has often allowed his feelings to 
 run counter to the workings and injunc- 
 tions of this higher duty. In the preface 
 to the Seven Lamps there are " cases in 
 which men feel too keenly to be silent, and 
 perhaps too strongly to be wrong ;" he 
 ought to have guarded most jealously 
 against the strong feelings as often making 
 it more probable that we may go wrong. 
 The use of superlative adjectives condemn- 
 ing or praising, with him and with Carlyle, 
 points to the samebluntness of intellectual 
 morality. One thing or work is wholly 
 " bad," another at once all that is " good." 
 
i66 
 
 He passes judgment not only upon all 
 forms of art, but upon the works of great 
 and sober men of science, on the problems 
 of these departments of science them- 
 selves, whether it be the works of an 
 Agassiz or of a Darwin, the purport of 
 whose work he had never trained himself 
 to realize. Such exaggerations may, alas, 
 from a literary point of view appear to be 
 innocent, but in their effect they certainly 
 are not. He will, for instance, in Prceterita 
 II., page 298, tell us, with the emphatic 
 terms of a convinced authority, speaking 
 of Sydney Smith's Elementary Sketches on 
 Moral Philosophy, that " they contain in 
 the simplest terms every final truth which 
 any rational mortal needs to learn on this 
 subject." We must ask what right his 
 reading of that vast subject called philos- 
 ophy has given him to pass judgment in 
 any way upon it. And so, in almost every 
 chapter of all his books, we cannot help 
 feeling that this is a positive blemish, the 
 influence of which cannot be good ; and 
 we turn with pure gratitude to his de- 
 scriptive passages, where there is no scope 
 for this intellectual vice, and where the 
 
i6 7 
 
 good that is in him has brought forth fruit 
 that will be the delight and profit of all 
 the ages in which the English language is 
 read. If, as far as intellectual example is 
 concerned, we turn from the prophetic 
 and denunciatory violence of Carlyle and 
 Ruskin to the charitable and unselfish 
 statement of a great continuous effort in 
 a long laborious life, beautiful as it is sim- 
 ple, we cannot help feeling that, besides 
 the results of the actual research of 
 Charles Darwin, his literary and scientific 
 example as a writer can but have a last- 
 ing and elevating influence upon the minds 
 of all those who read him for generations 
 to come. No amount of denunciatory 
 sermons can replace the unconscious 
 preaching contained within the work and 
 its results of the student who has honestly 
 mastered a subject, however narrow its 
 range. This is the highest form of preach- 
 ing, if only for the supreme effect, the 
 suppression of impulse and passion for an 
 end that has no immediate bearing upon 
 our own interests, and does not flatter 
 our vanity in the elevation of our own 
 position to that of a direct teacher or 
 
i68 
 
 chastiser of foolish humanity, and above 
 all in the jealous custody and possible re- 
 finement of our feeling for truth.* It ap- 
 pears to me one of the greatest blemishes 
 in the work of men like Ruskin and Car- 
 lyle that, however high the position they 
 may themselves assign to truth in their 
 moral scales, the actual tenor of their 
 work has counteracted rather than favor- 
 ed this desirable consummation. Bear- 
 ing this in mind, we can recognize the 
 good that is in Ruskin's work, and there 
 will be enough of merit remaining to 
 make him one of the great benefactors of 
 mankind. 
 
 * The development of this intellectual morality as a 
 habit in individuals, and as a tradition in a nation and in 
 an age, is intimately connected with practical morality 
 and truthfulness ; and there appears to me to be a strong 
 moral and disciplinary bearing in the methods of research 
 as applied to the natural sciences within our days, to 
 which Charles Darwin has chiefly contributed. It is 
 true, the inductive method was recommended by Bacon 
 and insisted upon by Hume ; but it has only become a 
 fact in Darwin ; and through his efforts and those of his 
 numerous followers and co-operators the general habit of 
 mind which is developed by their methods of work has 
 not only penetrated into other regions of thought and 
 study, but it is modifying and raising our general stand- 
 ard of truth even in our practical daily life. 
 
MR. RUSKIN AND THE SPORTS AND PAS- 
 TIMES OF ENGLAND 
 
 THE field-sports and pastimes of Eng- 
 land play so important a part in the life 
 of the English people, and might so 
 well serve as an example to other na- 
 tions, that I do not think the most se- 
 rious thought we may spend upon them 
 wasted. Nay, I hold that a serious treat- 
 ment of the subject is called for the more, 
 as the weight of personality and earnest- 
 ness of moral purpose which writers and 
 thinkers such as Mr. Ruskin have thrown 
 into the scales may cause the balance to 
 fall on what to my mind is the wrong and 
 harmful side. 
 
 The first fallacy seems to me to consist 
 in the view taken by Mr. Ruskin and his 
 followers that these sports are essential- 
 ly characteristic of the upper or leisured 
 
1 7 o 
 
 classes of England, as opposed to the 
 working - classes, and in so far act as a 
 severing element. Now, in opposition to 
 this view, I strongly hold that these in- 
 stitutions have occupied a conspicuous 
 place in the history of the English people 
 as a uniting element: that they have 
 brought the people together, have given 
 a tangible unity of character to the English 
 nation, and have been one of the most 
 important factors in hitherto mitigating 
 the antagonisms of class feeling which, 
 from other conditions of life, might 
 have become most marked and stereo- 
 typed. 
 
 In the first place, I deny that sport in 
 England is in any way limited to the up- 
 per or leisure classes, in contradistinction 
 to the working - classes. There may be 
 and there no doubt are some men who 
 do no work (though both in England and 
 America these are not always men who 
 take to sport) ; there are no doubt those 
 who only live to hunt, and do not hunt 
 to live. But it is unfair to take this ex- 
 aggerated type as the centre of attack 
 upon the institution as a whole. 
 
To begin with young people, both in 
 the schools and in the universities the 
 athlete and the sportsman are very fre- 
 quently the reading men who work hard- 
 est. This is markedly the case in the 
 universities with regard to rowing men, 
 cricketers, and foot -ball players. No 
 doubt, both in schools and universities, 
 many instances may be found in which 
 the games have been abnormally devel- 
 oped and have received excessive consid- 
 eration. But in every institution, however 
 good and noble its purpose, exaggerations 
 and abnormalities can always be pointed 
 out. 
 
 In the later periods of men's lives, when 
 they have left the schools or the univer- 
 sities, I would again maintain that the 
 majority of the men who play cricket or 
 foot-ball, who row, who shoot, or fish, who 
 climb the Alps, and even those who hunt, 
 are busy men, hard workers in their sev- 
 eral vocations. Nothing but actual sta- 
 tistics could absolutely prove the one or 
 the other assertion. But, from my own 
 experience and the means I have of esti- 
 mating the numbers, I would challenge 
 
I 7 2 
 
 those who assert the contrary to prove 
 their statement. 
 
 I have said " even those who hunt," for, 
 from the nature of this sport, it would ap- 
 pear that it might readily be limited to 
 the few who could devote a considerable 
 portion of their time and energies to ride 
 in pursuit of the fox. Among a few packs 
 in the midland counties of England, where, 
 from the nature of this grass country and 
 its fences, hunting is exceptionally good, 
 while requiring the most expensive mounts 
 to see a good day's sport, there may be a 
 large proportion of men whose means are 
 so ample that they would not be forced 
 in any way to exert themselves to provide 
 for their maintenance. But even there, 
 with these few packs of hounds, I do not 
 think there is a large proportion of men 
 whose whole time is spent in seeking for 
 personal distraction and enjoyment, and 
 who have not some definite, serious voca- 
 tion in life. But when we leave these 
 packs, in considerably over a hundred 
 hunts scattered over England alone, the 
 case is a very different one. We have an 
 adequate picture of national life, and per- 
 
haps national life at its best. Many classes 
 are here represented. There may be a 
 peer or two, a few squires, farmers, doc- 
 tors, lawyers, tradesmen, the butcher and 
 baker on his horse, boys and girls on their 
 ponies, old men and young men and all 
 mixing in a spirit of comradeship and 
 good-fellowship, with the health -giving 
 life of a day in the open country on 
 horseback (and sometimes off it), with 
 no thought of the rivalry of clashing in- 
 terests in the great greed of gain. A for- 
 eigner coming to England cannot under- 
 stand this. His question is: "Who has 
 invited these people ?" With him some 
 great nobleman would for any similar 
 function have invited a few select guests, 
 and admission into this magic circle would 
 at once confer social distinction. But here 
 is a real national holiday, and whoever de- 
 sires to do so can join in the sport, and 
 will be properly treated by all other sports- 
 men, provided he behaves properly. The 
 rebuke administered to the successful 
 London tailor who had taken to hunting 
 will illustrate the spirit in which any at- 
 tempt at establishing exclusiveness is met. 
 
174 
 
 This sportsman -tailor was riding home 
 after a day's hunt with a well - known 
 duke, and after commenting upon the 
 day's sport, he remarked to his noble 
 companion that the company was rather 
 mixed. " You wouldn't have them all tai- 
 lors, would you?" was the duke-s reply. 
 
 We must feel that in this respect the 
 conditions of " shooting " in England are 
 unfavorable. 
 
 In the first place, from the nature of 
 land-tenure and of the distribution of 
 game, the opportunities of shooting are 
 limited to a great extent to people of con- 
 siderable wealth. It is more and more 
 becoming the sport of the rich in this 
 densely populated country. Then it dif- 
 fers from hunting and most sports and 
 games in that only a limited number of 
 people or " guns " can take part in any 
 shooting -party; and such parties are 
 thus closely defined and distinct from 
 the less fortunate lovers of sport. And, 
 finally, considerable ill-feeling has been 
 engendered, on the one hand, by the strict 
 preserving of whole districts and the 
 quarrels to which it leads ; on the other 
 
hand, by the numerous cases of severe 
 judgments passed by magistrates upon 
 the offenders against the game-laws. 
 
 Against these facts it may be urged 
 that the rich landlord does not shoot in 
 solitary state, but that he invites a num- 
 ber of people who could not afford to keep 
 up preserves themselves, representing the 
 various classes and occupations ; that re- 
 cent legislation concerning " hares or rab- 
 bits" has given extensive rights to the 
 tenant-farmer ; and that there would very 
 soon be no game at all in England if there 
 were not those to preserve it. 
 
 In spite of what may be said, the fact 
 remains that this form of sport is more 
 likely to act as a severing element than 
 the other games and sports, and that it 
 certainly does not in the same way tend 
 to unite the classes. Still the conditions 
 are accidental and not essential to the 
 sport itself. 
 
 But taking the sports and pastimes as 
 a whole I am convinced of their influence 
 in binding the classes together rather than 
 severing them. The fact that England is 
 and has been more consistently and con- 
 
1 7 6 
 
 tinuously aristocratic in constitution than 
 any other country in Europe, and at the 
 same time in its actual national character 
 in many aspects more democratic, is, I 
 maintain, in great part due to the existence 
 of these games and pastimes. They .pro- 
 vide for the people as a whole a common 
 language and a field of mutual under- 
 standing and sympathy, so that the aris- 
 tocrat has not become estranged from the 
 simple laboring man to the same degree 
 as in Germany. The British laborer, the 
 artisan, the villager, the tradesman, the 
 soldier and sailor, have all become infused 
 with this modern survival of chivalry, 
 which is to a great degree wanting, say 
 in the German, his nearest in kin in Eu- 
 rope. The village cricket-field, the foot- 
 ball match, the rowing race, the games in 
 the regiments and among the crews and 
 officers of a man-of-war, the hunting- 
 field all these are places where the differ- 
 ent classes have met in common spirit 
 and with comparative freedom and inti- 
 macy. When the manifestations of physi- 
 cal strength and skill become the main 
 central object of exertion, evoking inter- 
 
est and bringing p. estige, there is no 
 chance to obtrude or to maintain the set 
 differences of class. The village hobble- 
 dehoy who plays well in a good match 
 becomes a hero for the day along with 
 the young peer, the private soldier no 
 less than his officer, and the butcher who 
 " rides straight " as well as the master of 
 hounds. And so it is in every sphere of 
 this healthy physical life. 
 
 Without these institutions, what would 
 the English schools be ? The danger that 
 the poison of snobbishness which ema- 
 nates from such social centres as London 
 might vitiate the early impressionable nat- 
 ure of boys is very great. But, though 
 the exaggeration of athleticism may cre- 
 ate a school-snobbishness of its own, still 
 this new physical criterion of estimation 
 established among boys is a healthy coun- 
 teractant in early youth to the effects of a 
 worldly society in after life. The same 
 applies to the universities in which the 
 range of these causes of distinction is 
 healthily widened by deeper and more 
 lasting objects of estimation. But all 
 these influences join to counteract the 
 
i 7 8 
 
 stereotyping of social classes based upon 
 wealth or other adventitious grounds. 
 Outside England the fact can hardly be 
 realized that in the schools there are foot- 
 ball matches between the masters and the 
 pupils, that in the colleges of the great 
 universities there are matches between 
 the members and " dons " of a college and 
 the college servants. J\nd surely we need 
 not insist upon the fact that such inter- 
 course, though not affecting the discipline 
 necessary for the practical purposes of 
 life, is most salutary in bringing together 
 and in effecting a healthy rapprochement 
 among these distinct bodies of men. 
 
 No two Englishmen, though they be 
 of the opposite poles in the social world, 
 need be at a loss to find a common 
 ground of conversation if they both take 
 interest in some form of sport. And it 
 would be difficult to find an Englishman, 
 to whatever class he may belong, who, 
 from bicycle-riding, or foot-ball, or row- 
 ing, or sailing, or fishing, or hunting on- 
 ward, does not take some interest in one 
 or the other of these athletic games. 
 
 Of course national life would be still 
 
more perfect if the highly-educated man 
 could converse with the country-laborer 
 about the latest literary publication or the 
 different divisions of intellectual work. 
 In this the Germans, from the long tradi- 
 tion of their school education, are far 
 ahead of the English. The writer can re- 
 member with what pleased surprise he 
 listened to the landlord of a small inn of 
 a remote hamlet in the Black Forest, 
 when he visited this district on a tramp 
 during his student days at a German 
 university. This peasant (for such he was) 
 at once asked us whether we belonged to 
 the juridical, philosophical, or theological 
 faculties, or whether we were students of 
 medicine. He had a clear notion of the 
 distinctions between the different lines 
 of university study, and fully realized the 
 theoretical aspect and worth of higher 
 scientific pursuits. One could hardly 
 meet with such a man in England. But 
 in Germany there would be no bond of 
 sympathy in that region of life and inter- 
 est to which sport belongs. While ac- 
 knowledging that the presence of both 
 elements of union is necessary for a per- 
 
i8o 
 
 feet national life, we must at the same 
 time rejoice that in England we can at 
 least point to the existence of one. 
 
 The Germans do not possess this spirit 
 on which chivalry rests: the emotional 
 and physical sympathy arising out of the 
 near intercourse of men joined together 
 by the free and expansive spirit of phys- 
 ical play. And this implies a communion 
 and acquaintance which common intellec- 
 tual interests cannot supply. We can sym- 
 pathize with the Irish officer in an Eng- 
 lish regiment, who, on being reproached 
 by his brother officers for talking volubly 
 and at length with an Irish visitor, whereas 
 he did not converse freely with them, an- 
 swered : " Sure, and he knew a hoss that 
 I was acquointed with." The Oriental, 
 when he wishes to express the fact that 
 he knows a man intimately, says, " I have 
 travelled with him." We might with the 
 same object say, " He was in the eleven 
 with me." 
 
 We can hardly overestimate the train- 
 ing which those who fill the humbler 
 walks of life in the country in England 
 have gained from this intercourse with 
 
those who have had better opportunities 
 for refined training. It has improved their 
 manners, it has increased their pluck and 
 self-control, it has refined their social 
 feeling. Nay, the " professionals " in Eng- 
 land, those who have made a business of 
 games, especially cricket, have often over- 
 come the dangers which attend such ex- 
 clusive occupation, and have maintained 
 a higher and more refined standard of 
 life by the aid of their constant associa- 
 tion with men of high and noble character 
 who cultivate these games in England. 
 
 Even horse-racing has furnished a bond 
 of sympathy between all classes of the 
 people in England and Ireland. No one 
 could deplore more the base mercenary 
 element of betting, which has become at 
 times almost indissolubly connected with 
 this sport. It is so great an evil as to 
 counterbalance all the good that the in- 
 stitution itself undoubtedly possesses ; and 
 one would like to see it swept away, to 
 avoid the accidental evil which has pene- 
 trated into the very heart of its life. But 
 as regards the interest in the racing itself, 
 one need but go to the Derby or to 
 
1 82 
 
 Punchestown in Ireland to see what a 
 national binding element it is. 
 
 I feel sure that the most patriotic and 
 far-sighted of the Germans, their present 
 emperor at the head, would make any 
 sacrifice, if they could but create the same 
 intense interest in the whole of the Ger- 
 man people as now moves England when 
 the sixteen representatives of the two 
 great universities vie with one another 
 in their annual boat-race. 
 
 Surely these institutions do not keep 
 the classes asunder. The wrong comes, 
 and the hateful side is turned uppermost, 
 when men cultivate these sports to gain 
 social distinction by them, and to impress 
 their less fortunate neighbors with the 
 advantages which material accidents have 
 placed in their own way. I maintain that 
 these are not real sportsmen, as little as 
 the long-haired aesthete who consciously 
 draws a distinction between himself and 
 the less fortunate Philistine is a real lover 
 of art. 
 
 It is wrong to create artificial antago- 
 nisms and to counteract what is, when 
 soberly and impartially considered, one 
 
of the greatest boons in these not too 
 bright times of ours. 
 
 And if now we consider the influence 
 of these institutions upon the individual 
 man in maintaining and increasing physi- 
 cal and moral health of normal life, I would 
 here again hold them to be the greatest 
 boon to England. When Jorrocks calls 
 hunting : " The sport of kings, the image 
 of war without its guilt, and only five- 
 and- twenty per cent, of its danger," 
 the jesting tone cannot wholly hide the 
 deep truth that lies beneath. These 
 games and sports cultivate the physical 
 side of our soul, our pluck, power of emo- 
 tiveness and vigor of impulse, together 
 with the potency of self-control. We can- 
 not conceive of a perfect man without 
 physical courage. It is true the question 
 may be asked whether, by directing our 
 minds and bodies into other channels that 
 have no taint of the savageness of the 
 prehistoric man, we cannot equally fortify 
 this impulse to action and feeling and 
 thought. It is true it may require as 
 great an expenditure of will-power, of self- 
 control, of pluck, or whatever else we 
 
1 84 
 
 might call it, to check the impulse of irri- 
 tation in our ordinary life and intercourse, 
 or to force ourselves to do a small, hum- 
 ble piece of work, when indolence drags 
 us the other way, as it requires to scale a 
 high mountain or to face a stiff fence in 
 the hunting- field. But I do not think that 
 in these complex calls upon our inner 
 nervous system which ordinary civilized 
 life in towns and rooms brings to us 
 we obtain so pure and direct a training 
 of the side of our nature which corre- 
 sponds to physical courage as in those oc- 
 cupations which are purely and directly 
 the outcome of undepraved physical vi- 
 tality. 
 
 We do not wish to return to the 
 prehistoric savage. We have certainly 
 "evolved" out of those primary condi- 
 tions of man's soul, as we have " evolved " 
 out of those conditions of life. But, 
 "evolve" as much as we may, and as 
 high as we can, out of the stage of savage 
 man, we cannot conceive, within appre- 
 ciable time, our "evolving" away from 
 the conditions of man. And as yet, in all 
 our conceptions of the most perfect man 
 
even for the remote future the element 
 of physical courage, of 0vpo$, as Plato 
 would call it, is an essential factor. And 
 I maintain emphatically that there is no 
 sphere in which these virtues can be more 
 efficiently and beneficially cultivated and 
 fostered than in the exercise of games 
 and sports. The vicious impulse of an- 
 tagonism, which, from the instinct of 
 self-preservation, seems to be imbedded 
 in man, which led to the fight and the 
 slaughter of his fellow-men; the almost 
 savage predominance of other emotions 
 and passions which, though blended with 
 our highest and noblest impulses, may de- 
 stroy their nobility and bring misery upon 
 our fellow-beings these are led into more 
 harmless channels, are subdued to their 
 right and healthy measure, and, without 
 the barren attempts at extirpation which 
 bring disease to the soul's life, they are 
 subordinated, as parts of an organic ex- 
 istence, to the highest aim of the life of 
 every human being. 
 
 It !s especially the intellectual man, the 
 brain-worker, who often neglects this side 
 of his life until the prevailing nevrose 
 
1 86 
 
 eats at the heart of his soul's forces. He 
 it is whom we ought to meet in the hunt- 
 ing-field, on the river, at cricket and foot- 
 ball. And, fortunately, in no country more 
 than in England are these men votaries 
 of these noble pastimes. But it is not only 
 in this quasi-utilitarian spirit, in which we 
 regard these forms of play simply as means 
 to fit us the better for the more serious 
 tasks of life, that I wish to view them : 
 they are a direct end in themselves. We 
 do not wish to join the " liver brigade " 
 who ride in the park in the morning to 
 regulate their digestion. We wish to see 
 young and healthy people riding for the 
 pleasure of riding, and not only to fit them 
 for work. Mr. Ruskin has in one passage 
 entered into the spirit and the nature of 
 play when, in the Crown of Wild Olive, 
 page 20, he says : " First, then, of the dis- 
 tinction between the classes who work 
 and the classes who play. Of course we 
 must agree upon a definition of these 
 terms work and play before going fur- 
 ther. Now, roughly, not with vain sub- 
 tlety of definition, but for plain use of 
 the words, ' play ' is an exertion of body 
 
i8 7 
 
 or mind, made to please ourselves, and 
 with no determined end ; and work is a 
 thing done because it ought to be done, 
 and with a determined end. You play, as 
 you call it, at cricket, for instance. That 
 is as hard work as anything else ; but it 
 amuses you, and it has no result but the 
 amusement. If it were done as an ordered 
 form of exercise, for health's sake, it would 
 become work directly. So, in like man- 
 ner, whatever we do to please ourselves, 
 and only for the sake of the pleasure, not 
 for an ultimate object, is ' play,' the ' pleas- 
 ing thing,' not the useful thing. Play may 
 be useful in a secondary sense (nothing is 
 indeed more useful or necessary) ; but the 
 use of it depends on its being spontane- 
 ous." 
 
 The general tenor, however, of his re- 
 marks upon play, especially the field 
 sports, is in direct opposition to this 
 view. When, for instance, in another 
 passage in the Fors, he says that, " if in- 
 stead of taking the quantity of exercise 
 made necessary to their bodies by God, 
 they take it in hunting or shooting, they 
 become ignorant, irreligious, and finally 
 
1 88 
 
 insane, and seek to live by fighting as 
 well as by hunting ; whence the type of 
 Nimrod in the circle of the Hell towers 
 which I desire you to study in Dante." 
 
 He objects to these games on the 
 ground of waste, and would like to see 
 the energy and money now spent in them 
 turned into more immediately productive 
 channels. It is especially' against hunt- 
 ing and shooting that his opposition is 
 aroused. Thus he says again, in the Fors, 
 " Our next English game (he has been 
 speaking of money -making as the first 
 game), however, hunting and shooting, is 
 costly altogether, and how much we are 
 fined for it annually in land, horses, game- 
 keepers, and game-laws, and all else that 
 accompanies that beautiful and special 
 English game, I will not endeavor to 
 count now : but not only that, except for 
 exercise, this is not merely a useless game, 
 but a deadly one to all connected with 
 it. . . ." 
 
 And, again, his letter on the subject of 
 fox-hunting, to the Daily Telegraph, of 
 London, republished in the Arrows of the 
 Chase, p. 118 : " Reprobation of fox-hunt- 
 
ing on the ground of cruelty to the fox is 
 entirely futile. More pain is caused to 
 the draught-horses of London in an hour 
 by avariciously overloading them than to 
 all the foxes in England by the hunts of 
 the year; and the rending of body and 
 heart in human death, caused by neglect, 
 in our country cottages, in any one win- 
 ter, could not be equalled by the death- 
 pangs of any quantity of foxes. 
 
 " The real evils of fox-hunting are that 
 it wastes the time, misapplies the energy, 
 exhausts the wealth, narrows the capacity* 
 debases the taste, and abates the honor 
 of the upper classes of this country ; and, 
 instead of keeping, as your correspondent 
 ' Forester ' supposes, ' thousands from the 
 workhouse,' it sends thousands of the. 
 poor both there and into the grave. 
 
 " The athletic training given by fox- 
 hunting is excellent ; and such training 
 is vitally necessary to the upper classes. 
 But it ought always to be in real service 
 to their country ; in personal agricultural 
 labor at the head of their tenantry, and 
 in extending English life and dominion 
 in waste regions against the adverse pow- 
 
ers of nature. Let them become Captains 
 of Emigration, hunt down the foxes that 
 spoil the Vineyard of the World, and keep 
 their eyes on the leading hound in Packs 
 of Men." 
 
 Mr. Ruskin's practical experiment while 
 he was at Oxford to direct the surplus 
 energy of healthy men into what he con- 
 sidered the proper channels is well known. 
 He endeavored to persuade the serious- 
 minded young students of Oxford that, 
 instead of expending their energies in 
 games, they should find their physical 
 amusement in making roads and doing 
 other manifestly useful tasks in the open 
 air. 
 
 Now I maintain that these views are 
 based upon the fundamental misunder- 
 standing of the nature of play of its posi- 
 tion in the economical as well as generally 
 in the ethical life of the healthy civilized 
 man of modern times a misunderstand- 
 ing strange in view of the correct defini- 
 tion of play quoted above. 
 
 From an economical point of view, I 
 claim that the needs which the games 
 supply are for us as fundamental as any 
 
of the other goods of life. Nor do I see 
 how their cessation throughout a country 
 like England could be in any way a reme- 
 dy for the economical diseases, the causes 
 of which lie much deeper, and cannot be 
 palliated by their disuse. Even if it could 
 be shown that by the complete destruc- 
 tion of these institutions an appreciable 
 amount of sustenance or comfort could 
 be distributed among all the individual 
 members of a community, I should say 
 that our community, or country, or age 
 would, as a whole, be impoverished in the 
 resources of its life. If we were to turn 
 all our capital and efforts into the direc- 
 tion of producing wheat ^and potatoes, 
 there is no doubt we might produce more 
 wheat and potatoes ; but what would be- 
 come of the flower-gardens and the wild- 
 flowers, so injurious to the farmer's hay 
 crop, but for the preservation of which 
 Mr. Ruskin is such a warm advocate. He 
 likes flower-gardens, others like fox-hunt- 
 ing, others like both ; and the world is the 
 richer for their tastes. He is wrong when 
 he makes the absurd and unfair compari- 
 son between the life suggested by the 
 
picture of a mediaeval Madonna and a 
 caricatured account of modern sport, and 
 when he says (Fors, letter xxiv.) : " Of 
 course all this is quite natural to a sport- 
 ing people who have learned to like the 
 smell of gunpowder, sulphur, gas-tar, bet- 
 ter than that of violets and thyme. But, 
 putting the baby-poisoning, pigeon-shoot- 
 ing, and rabbit-shooting of to-day in com- 
 parison with the pleasures of the German 
 Madonna and her simple company, and 
 of Chaucer and his carolling company," 
 etc., etc. If he wishes to inveigh against 
 pigeon-shooting or unsportsmanlike rab- 
 bit-shooting, let him do it ; or if he wishes 
 to praise the simplicity of life suggested 
 by these mediaeval types, he can do it elo- 
 quently. But why indulge in this un- 
 called-for and distorting juxtaposition 
 and contrast ! He is thus wrong, both 
 theoretically and practically, when he puts 
 in glaring opposition the misery and the 
 material wants of the destitute ; when, 
 after giving a harrowing picture of the 
 misery in poor London, he says, " And 
 the double and treble horror of all this, 
 note you well, is that not only the tennis- 
 
playing and railroad - flying public trip 
 round the outskirts of it," etc., etc. 
 
 If the very foundations of our whole 
 economical and social life are to be al- 
 tered so as to right the wrongs and to 
 equalize the cruel inequalities in our 
 midst, then the right-minded among us 
 will be prepared for this, and will hail 
 with joy any reforms which would bring 
 justice into the world. But meanwhile 
 let us not impoverish the world and lower 
 our ideals of perfect life, moral, intellec- 
 tual, and physical. The world without 
 " tennis " would be the poorer for it. 
 
 If such reasoning is fallacious econom- 
 ically, it is still more so ethically and as 
 regards the proper understanding of the 
 essential nature of play. Play is to our 
 physical life what art is to our intellectual 
 and moral life. Both arise out of the 
 healthy vigor of human society that has 
 risen beyond the stage of animal instincts 
 and barbarity. When man 's thoughts and 
 exertions are not merely bent upon self- 
 preservation and production of the mere 
 necessaries for physical subsistence, his 
 healthy mind and his healthy body turn 
 
to spheres where there is exertion (not 
 passive vegetating existence) which re- 
 freshes and elevates, and has no ulterior 
 object. Active exertion, in which action 
 itself becomes the end, without further re- 
 flection and remote considerations, which 
 would counteract and vitiate the reviving 
 influence of such activity this leads to 
 art and to play. The mind revels in the 
 contemplation of the beauties of nature 
 or in a picture, or a statue, or a poem, or 
 a drama, or a symphony, or a beautiful 
 tower, as the body revels in a brisk walk 
 in the country, in a swift ride on a bicycle, 
 in a fast pull on the river, in a good game 
 of cricket, of base-ball, of foot-ball, or a 
 good run across country. As modern civ- 
 ilized society has evolved art, and needs 
 it, as the civilized and properly educated 
 man and woman require the satisfaction 
 of the aesthetic side of their soul, in order 
 that it shall be healthy ; so civilized life 
 has developed those games and sports, 
 and the. healthy man and woman require 
 the satisfaction of their physical vitality 
 in these directions, in order that they may 
 remain sound and normal beings. And, 
 
195 
 
 as Mr. Ruskin himself has recognized, to 
 add an ulterior aim of utility to such ef- 
 forts destroys the very essential nature of 
 these acts. Road -making, excepting in 
 the first few attempts, when it is looked 
 upon as a " joke," cannot satisfy that side 
 of our nature which makes for play. 
 
 Mr. Ruskin's opposition to these games 
 and sports can, I believe, be easily ex- 
 plained in him : they come, on the one 
 hand, from what I have called his ethical 
 bias, on the other hand from his roman- 
 ticism. To our mind his ethical bias has 
 even vitiated his proper conception of art. 
 Still more can we feel how his earnest 
 sympathy with men of all ranks, his deep 
 pity for misery, his passionate resentment 
 of the wrongs which strike great classes 
 of men, should have made him overshoot 
 the mark and ignore the good which lies 
 in so simple a phase of human existence 
 as is covered by the idea of play. And it 
 is always an ungracious task to plead for 
 what may appear trite in the light of the 
 great absorbing issues of a lofty human 
 life, to sound the gentle pipe when there 
 is the blast of the trumpet in our ears, to 
 
hang one's simple picture of a country 
 lane in the morning mist, green and gray 
 and light blue, beside the great imagery 
 of the setting sun in all his golden, crim- 
 son, purple glory, or beside the picture 
 of a battle-scene with a blood-red back- 
 ground to it. But from the point of 
 view of completeness, normality, and 
 health of social life, the claims of the 
 one have the same right as those of the 
 other. 
 
 Mr. Ruskin's romanticism shows itself 
 in his treatment of sport, especially in the 
 manner in which he approaches some 
 forms of it. , So, for instance, in Fors, vol. 
 i., p. 119, he speaks of riding and sailing: 
 " You little know how much is implied in 
 the two conditions of boys' education 
 that I gave you in my last letter that 
 they shall all learn either to ride or sail : 
 nor by what constancy of law the power 
 of highest discipline and honor is vested 
 by nature in the two chivalries of the 
 Horse and the Wave. Both are signifi- 
 cative of the right command of man over 
 his own passions ; but they teach, further, 
 the strange mystery of relation that exists 
 
between his soul and the wild natural ele- 
 ments on the one hand and the wild lower 
 animals on the other." 
 , He then dwells upon the gentleness of 
 chivalry, and quotes the Iliad for the con- 
 ception of the horse, there manifested in 
 the sorrow of the divine horses at the 
 death of Patroclus. " Is not that a pret- 
 tier notion (p. 120) of horses than you will 
 get from your betting English chivalry on 
 the Derby day? We will have, please 
 Heaven, some riding, not as jockeys ride, 
 and some sailing, not as pots and kettles 
 sail, once more on English land and sea ; 
 and out of both, kindled yet again, the 
 chivalry of heart of the Knight of Athens, 
 and Eques of Rome, and Ritter of Ger- 
 many, and Chevalier of France, and Cav- 
 alier of England chivalry gentle always 
 and lowly, among those who deserved 
 their name of knight ; showing mercy to 
 whom mercy was due, and honor to whom 
 honor." 
 
 See further the definition of a squire : 
 "first it means a rider; or, in more full 
 and perfect sense, a governor of beasts, 
 . . . which is the primal meaning of chiv- 
 
i 9 8 
 
 airy, the horse, as the noblest, because 
 trainablest, of wild creatures, being taken 
 for a type of them all." And further 
 (Fors, Ixxv., p. 415), " And of all essential 
 things in a gentleman's bodily and men- 
 tal training, this is really the beginning 
 that he should have close companionship 
 with the horse, the dog, and the eagle. 
 Of all birthrights and bookrights this is 
 his first. He needn't be a Christian 
 there have been millions of Pagan gen- 
 tlemen ; he needn't be kind there have 
 been millions of cruel gentlemen ; he 
 needn't be honest there have been mill- 
 ions of crafty gentlemen. He needn't 
 know how to read, or to write his own 
 name. But he must have horse, dog, and 
 eagle for friends. If, then, he has also 
 Man for his friend, he is a noble gentle- 
 man ; and if God for his friend, a king. 
 And if, being honest, being kind, and hav- 
 ing God and Man for his friends, he then 
 gets these three brutal friends, besides his 
 angelic ones, he is perfect in earth, as for 
 heaven. For, to be his friends, these 
 must be brought up with him, and he 
 with them. Falcon on fist, hound at 
 
foot, and horse part of himself Eques^ 
 Ritter, Cavalier, Chevalier. 
 
 " Yes ; horse and dog you understand 
 the good of ; but what's the good of the 
 falcon, think you ? 
 
 " To be friends with the falcon must 
 mean that you love to see it soar ; that is 
 to say, you love fresh air and the fields." 
 
 Here we no doubt have love of the 
 horse, and of animals, and of fresh air, 
 and of exercise. But Mr. Ruskin will 
 forgive me if I venture really to doubt 
 whether it is not in the clothing of the 
 mediaeval palfrey that he actually loves 
 the steed. I do not think that he in his 
 heart loves the horse as a rider loves him. 
 His words involuntarily make me believe 
 that it is not the habit of mind formed by 
 the boy whose taste for sport is bred in 
 his early games with other boys in the 
 open field ; but it smacks of the nursery 
 and the school-room, perhaps the garden ; 
 and the chase and the hunt have a flavor 
 of the in-door dust which comes from the 
 books on the shelf, with their accounts 
 of the knight and the tourney. One who 
 would measure sport by the exploits of 
 
the Knight, the Ritter, the -Eques, the 
 Cavalier, the Chevalier, can feel no sym- 
 pathy (if he does not feel antipathy) with 
 a modern gentleman in top-hat, breeches 
 made by Tautz, and boots by Peel. 
 
THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE 
 STAMPED BELOW 
 
 AN INITIAL FINE OF 25 CENTS 
 
 WILL BE ASSESSED FOR FAILURE TO RETURN 
 THIS BOOK ON THE DATE DUE. THE PENALTY 
 WILL INCREASE TO 5O CENTS ON THE FOURTH 
 DAY AND TO $I.OO ON THE SEVENTH DAY 
 OVERDUE. 
 
 APR 15 1933 
 
 f> I ' " 'A 
 
 AUG 10 1938 
 JUL 6 19. 
 
 7 Marl 
 
 PA 
 
 APR 23 
 
 JAN1I1954LU 
 
 0. 8Jul'57FK[; 
 
 REC'D LD 
 
 i 25 1957 
 
USE 
 
 U. C. BERKELEY LIBRARIES 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY