ENGLISH mEN OF LETTEI^S 
 
 JOHN 1^/SKIJV 
 
ENGLISH mEN OF LETrE^S 
 
 JOHN RUSKIN 
 
 BY 
 
 FREDERIC HARRISON 
 
 \ 
 C 
 
 LONDON: MACMILLAN ^ CO., LIMITED 
 NINETEEN HUNDRED AND THREE 
 

 ^''"^nji, 
 
 Copyright in U.S.A. 
 
 First Edition, September 1902 
 
 Reprinted October and December 1902 
 
 October VM3 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 Birth and Childhood .,..,.. 1 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 First Literary Efforts 19 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 Love — Oxford — Turner 30 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 "Modern Painters" 41 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 "The Seven Lamps of Architecture" ... 52 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 "The Stones of Venice" 63 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 Society — Criticism — Lecturing 78 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 As Social Reformer , : r • % ' . 9J 
 
vr JOHN RUSKIN 
 
 PAOE 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 The Ethics of Work and of Art .... 109 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 Slade Professor — Oxford — Lectures .... 121 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 At Oxford — Work and Influence .... 138 
 
 CHAPTER Xll 
 Illness — Disappointment — Retirement . . . 151 
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 Social Experiments — Guild of St. George . . 164 
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 "FoRS Clavtgera" 181 
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 "Pr^terita" 197 
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 Last Days 207 
 
 Index 211 
 
JOHN EUSKIN 
 
 1819-1900 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 BIRTH AND CHILDHOOD 
 
 On the publication of the first volume of Modern 
 PainterSj Sydney Smith, the acknowledged oracle of 
 the Edinburgh Revieio and of cultured society, is 
 reported to have declared that "it was a work of 
 transcendent talent, presented the most original views, 
 and the most elegant and powerful language, and 
 would work a complete revolution in the world of 
 taste" (Frceterita, ii. 165). 
 
 And so it was. The writer of the Victorian era who^ 
 poured forth the greatest mass of literature upon the 
 greatest variety of subjects, about whom most was 
 written in his own lifetime in Europe and in America, 
 who in the English-speaking world left the most direct 
 and most visible imprint of his tastes and thoughts — 
 was John Euskin. For fifty years continuously he 
 wrote, lectured, and talked about Mountains, Rivers, 
 and Lakes ; about Cathedrals and Landscapes ; about 
 Geology ; about Minerals, Architecture, Painting, Sculp- 
 ture, Music, Drawing, Political Economy, Education, 
 Poetry, Literature, History, Mythology, Socialism, j 
 Theology, Morals. - J 
 
2 JOHN RUSKIN [chap. 
 
 The author of more than eighty distinct works upon 
 so miscellaneous a field, of masses of poetry, lectures, 
 letters as well as substantial treatises, was of necessity 
 rather a stimulus than an authority — an influence 
 rather than a master. As one of his foreign admirers 
 has said — the readers of Ruskin are charmed, inspired, 
 more than convinced, ^e is a moralist, an evangelist 
 — not a philosopher or a man of science. ) But the union 
 of marvellous literary power, with encyclopasdic studies 
 of Nature and of Art, both illumined with burning 
 enthusiasm as to all things moral and social, combined 
 to form one of the most fascinating personalities of the 
 nineteenth century. 
 
 The man himself issued a mass of biographical 
 matter, full of naivete, candour, and charm. And as 
 many biographies of him already exist, together with 
 scores of studies of his work and influence both in 
 English and in various European languages, it might 
 be thought that no need remained for any fresh bio- 
 graphy of any kind. But the extant materials for a 
 biography are so voluminous, so dispersive, and often 
 so much entangled with other matter, that it is believed 
 there is still room for a plain volume such as this, 
 which would condense the story in accessible form 
 and denote his place in English literature. And the 
 directors of this series could not venture to omit a 
 Man of Letters who was one of the greatest masters 
 of prose in English literature, and one of the dominant 
 influences of the Victorian epoch. 
 
 I have been asked to undertake the task, which with 
 real hesitation I accept. Though an ardent admirer 
 of the moral, social, and artistic ideals of John Ruskin 
 myself, I am sworn in as a disciple of a very difi'erent 
 
I.] BIRTH AND CHILDHOOD 3 
 
 school, and of a master whom he often denounced. 
 As a humble lover of his magnificent power of lan- 
 guage, I have studied it too closely not to feel all its 
 vices, extravagances, and temptations. I am neither 
 Socialist nor Plutonomist ; and so I can feel deep sym- 
 pathy for his onslaught on our modern life, whilst 
 I am far from accepting his trenchant remedies. I 
 had abundant means for judging his beautiful nature 
 and his really saintly virtues, for my personal acquaint- 
 ance with him extended over forty years. I remember 
 him in 1860 at Denmark Hill, in the lifetime of both 
 his parents, and in the heyday of his fame and his 
 power. I saw him and heard him lecture from time 
 to time, received letters from him, and engaged in 
 some controversies with him, both public and private. 
 I was his colleague as a teacher at the Working Men's 
 College and as a member of the Metaphysical Society. 
 And towards the close of his life I visited him at 
 Brantwood, and watched, with love and pain, the latest 
 flickering of his indomitable spirit. If admiration, 
 affection, common ideals, aims, and sympathies, can 
 qualify one who has been bred in other worlds of 
 belief and hope to judge fairly the life-work of a 
 brilliant and noble genius, then I may presume to tell 
 all I knew and all I have felt of the " Oxford graduate " 
 of 1842, who was laid to rest in Coniston Churchyard 
 in 1900. 
 
 John Ruskin, born in London, was a Scot of the 
 Scots, his father and his mother being grandchildren 
 of one John Euskin of Edinburgh. Both parents and 
 he himself passed much of their early life in Scotland, 
 where he had many Scotch cousins, and whence he 
 
4 JOHN RUSKIN [chap. 
 
 ultimately took a Scotch wife. He talked with a 
 Lowland accent, and his dominant tone of mind was 
 a mysterious amalgam of John Knox, Carlyle, andJ 
 Walter Scott. 
 
 Though the author of Prceterita assures us that he 
 knows next to nothing of his ancestry, and enlarges 
 with delightful, and perhaps somewhat studied candour, 
 about some worthy but humble relations, one family 
 being that of a tanner at Perth, and the other the 
 keeper of an inn at Croydon, the curiosity of his 
 friends and relations has discovered a very honour- 
 able descent for this Socialist Cavalier. His paternal 
 grandmother is traced back to the Adairs of South 
 Calloway, a race said to be originally Gallgaedhel, 
 Vikings of mixed Celtic and Scandinavian blood, and 
 to the Agnews, a Norman stock settled in North 
 Calloway. John Adair, the Laird of Little Genoch, 
 married Mary Agnew, a near kinswoman of the famous 
 soldier. Sir Andrew Agnew of Lochnaw, hereditary 
 sheriff of Galloway, and the hero of Dettingen. Their 
 son. Captain Thomas Adair, of Little Genoch, married 
 Jean Ross, of Bals?rroch, great-aunt of Sir John Ross, 
 the Arctic explorer, of Sir Hew Dalrymple and of 
 Field Marshal Sir Hew Dalrymple Ross. Catherine, 
 daughter of Captain Adair and Jean Ross, married 
 the Reverend James Tweddale of Glenluce ; and their 
 daughter, Catherine, married John Ruskin of Edin- 
 burgh, grandfather of the author. This James Twed- 
 dale of Glenluce, of an old family of Covenanters, was 
 the holder of the original Covenant, confided to his 
 care by Baillie of Jerviswood when on his way to 
 death in the persecution. And from the same James 
 Tweddale of Glenluce is descended Joan Ruskin 
 
1.] BIRTH AND CHILDHOOD 5 
 
 Agnew, now Mrs. Arthur Severn, a daughter of 
 George Agnew, hereditary Sheriff-Clerk of Wigtown. 
 
 All this seems to have been unknown to our author, 
 but it is put forth with full particulars in the Life 
 compiled by his own secretary under the care of the 
 family. And if it failed to interest John Euskin him- 
 self, it may furnish a mine of conjectures and inferences 
 of hereditary and race influence, when we start with 
 a family tree which embraces Vikings, Norman knights, 
 Gaelic chiefs, hereditary sherifts of Galloway, famous 
 soldiers, admirals, explorers, Covenanting ministers, 
 Puritans, and doctors — men who, in civilian and 
 martial office, appear in the history of our country. 
 It is a genealogy in which Sir Walter Scott would 
 have revelled, and may serve to explain the passion 
 of Ruskin for Scott and his gallery of characters. And 
 it is indeed somewhat curious that in his Autobiography 
 our author dilates with a sort of inverted pride on the 
 career of his mother, Margaret Cox, the daughter of 
 a Yarmouth seaman, and of the landlady of the King's 
 Head at Croydon ; of his aunt, the wife of the baker 
 of Croydon; and of his other aunt, the wife of the 
 tanner of Perth. But we may remember that an inde- 
 fatigable reader of Scott would delight in this mixture 
 of mediaeval chivalry with the domestic simplicities of 
 Perthshire and of Surrey. 
 
 Be this as it may, as the heralds say, and whether 
 the Euskins were originally Erskines, or Eoskeens, or 
 Eogerkins, or Eoughskins, certain it is, or seems to be, 
 that John Euskin, the grandfather, a handsome and 
 daring youth of twenty, ran away in 1781 with 
 Catherine Tweddale, a bright and brave girl of six- 
 teen. They lived in the Old Town of Edinburgh, 
 
6 JOHN RUSKIN [chap. 
 
 where they entertained a cultivated society, and were 
 intimate with Dr. Thomas Brown, the metaphysician, 
 and other people of mark and position. Their only son, 
 John James Ruskin, born in 1785, was sent to the 
 High School of Edinburgh under Dr. Adam, and had 
 a thorough classical education. 
 
 Early in the century, John James Ruskin, then aged 
 twenty-two, having finished his education at Edin- 
 burgh, and furnished with good advice by Dr. Thomas 
 Brown, who regarded him as a man of much promise, 
 went up to London and engaged himself as a clerk in 
 the wine trade in the famous firm of Sir W. Gordon, 
 Murphy and Co Here he made his mark, and impressed 
 so strongly hie fellow-clerk, Mr, Peter Domecq, the 
 owner of most valuable vineyards at Macharnudo, in 
 Spain, the centre of the sherry trade, that it was 
 agreed to form a new partnership. Ruskin, Telford, 
 and Domecq was the new firm, founded in 1809, wherein 
 Domecq was owner of the rich Spanish \'ineyard, 
 Telford contributed the money capital, and Ruskin 
 was senior partner and responsible head. No business 
 house could have more congenial partners, a more 
 solid basis, and more efficient management. 
 
 It was otherwise with the afi'airs of John Ruskin, 
 the grandfather, who was also in a wine business in 
 Edinburgh. "More magnificent in his expenditure 
 than mindful of his familj^," as his son wrote long 
 years afterwards, "indiscriminate and boundless in his 
 hospitalities," the elder John Ruskin ruined his health 
 and lost his fortune, and died about 1812 deeply in 
 debt. John James Ruskin, his son, toiled in London 
 to pay ofi" his father's debts, worked his firm's busi- 
 ness practically himself, undertook the correspondence, 
 
I.] BIRTH AND CHILDHOOD 7 
 
 directed the growths of sherry, and the importation 
 from time to time, and ultimately founded a very con- 
 siderable fortune. By nine years of assiduous work 
 he paid off the debts of his father, secured a com- 
 petence for himself, and became, as his son wrote on 
 his tombstone, "an entirely honest merchant." At 
 last he felt himself in a position to marry the woman 
 whom years before he had asked to be his wife. 
 
 Margaret Cox, first cousin of John James, was the 
 daughter of John Euskin's sister by Captain Cox, a 
 master mariner in the herring trade, whose widow 
 maintained herself by keeping the King's Head at 
 Croydon. The girl was brought up at the Croydon 
 day-school, tall and handsome, able and resolute, a 
 model housekeeper and a severe Bible Christian. She 
 was four years older than John James, and at the 
 age of twenty had been sent for to Scotland to keep 
 house for John E-uskin's widow, where she became 
 the counsellor and friend of her young cousin. After 
 nine years of toil and of waiting, John James went up 
 to Edinburgh, claimed his bride, overcame her remain- 
 ing doubts, and they were married February 1818, 
 very quietly and almost secretly, and came up to 
 London. There, at 54 Hunter Street, Brunswick 
 Square, on 8th February 1819, our famous WTiter 
 was born. 
 
 It is, perhaps, not idle to dwell on all the various 
 strains of heredity which may have influenced the 
 nature of this remarkable child ; and those who love 
 to trace the marks of ancestry in the offspring may 
 have unusual ground for it in this case. John Euskin 
 was an only child, the son of parents themselves first 
 cousins, who were of set character and no longer young 
 
8 JOHN RUSKIN [chap. 
 
 at his birth. He lived with his parents continuously 
 until their deaths, at the ages respectively of seventy- 
 nine and ninety. It is rare that any son is so abso- 
 lutely home-bred, home-reared, and nursed till long 
 past middle life by parents of indomitable will, who 
 devoted their whole lives to the single object of making 
 the most of their wonderful child, according to their 
 own lights. Few brains and few characters have been 
 more profoundly influenced by the circumstances, acci-; 
 dents, and bonds of their family life. The father was; 
 a man of singular prudence, patience, practical talent, 
 conventional views of life, and fine taste. The mother 
 was a woman of great power, indomitable will, harsh 
 nature, and an almost saturnine religion. His grand- 
 father Ruskin was a jovial and reckless spendthrift; 
 his grandfather Cox was a seaman who was killed by 
 an accident in riding. His grandmother Euskin was 
 a brave high-spirited woman, who made a runaway 
 match at sixteen ; his grandmother Cox was an indus- 
 trious keeper of an inn. The family tree contains stern 
 Covenanters, dashing soldiers, prudent men of trade, 
 and proud West country lau^ds. Who could have 
 imagined that the child of these canny, reckless, stern, 
 jovial men of pleasure, men of conscience, and men 
 of toil — of these plodding tradesmen and of these 
 daring spirits — would be the author of Modern Paiiders, 
 of Fors, and Unto this Lastl The fascination of 
 pedigree-hunting no doubt lies in its inscrutable 
 conundrums. 
 
 The infancy of the child has been told with curious 
 simplicity by the author himself ; and the early remin- 
 iscences in PrcBterita and Fors are an almost unique 
 revelation of the childhood of a man of genius, narrated 
 
1.] BIRTH AND CHILDHOOD 9 
 
 by a master of expression and subtle humour. It was 
 a home of narrow conventionalities, severe order, and 
 indefatigable care — almost gloomy in its rigid rules, 
 and sternly exclusive of the world without. The infant 
 was often whipped, was not allowed any pretty toys, 
 was surrounded by things forbidden, and was forced to 
 read the Bible aloud day by day. From infancy to 
 manhood he had to read two or three chapters word 
 by word to his mother, with all the genealogies and 
 hard names, not omitting the grossness of phrase.} 
 And to this daily reading of the Bible he very justly \ 
 attributes his power of taldng pains and "the best| 
 part of his taste in literature." He constantly and 
 most rightly insists on this point. And perhaps only 
 those 'who from early life have been saturated with 
 the grand music of Scripture can quite understand 
 what a matchless education in language this habit can 
 become to a serious nature and a sensitive ear. 
 
 Pope's Homer and Walter Scott were also "his 
 chosen masters," whom he read as soon as he 
 could read at all, and as often as he could get a 
 chance. On Sundays he had Hobinson Crusoe and the 
 Pilgrim's Progress. And somewhat later his father 
 read aloud to him Shakespeare, Byron, Don Quixote, 
 and Pope; and these, being a man of sound training 
 and fine taste, he read with great spirit and true efi'ect. 
 This marvellous child taught himself, by the age of 
 four or five, to read and to write — learning to read 
 by Avhole sentences, and not by letters or syllables, 
 and to write by copying print, "as other children draw 
 dogs and horses." This is no family legend, since we 
 have in the Autobiography a dated facsimile of the 
 child's composition at the age of seven, ^dth a drawing 
 
10 JOHN RUSKIN [chap. 
 
 of a mountain road. The passage is a long description 
 of a cloud which, by his "electrical apparatus," the 
 boy Harry proves to be charged with positive elec- 
 tricity, and he illustrates this by an allusion to the 
 witch of the Alps standing in the rainbow in Manfred. 
 It is rare to have such formal evidence of precocity in 
 childhood, showing correct spelling and skilful writing, 
 literary expression, scientific interest, and exact observa- 
 tion of nature. We need not wonder if the parents of 
 this enfant de miracle thought themselves blessed by 
 Heaven with an infant Samuel. 
 
 Prceterita afibrds us a real piece of psychology, as 
 it minutely describes how the child would gaze on the 
 pattern of a carpet, count the bricks on a wall, wonder 
 at the eddies of the Tay, "clear-brown over the 
 pebbles," or would watch the sea-waves hour by hour, 
 or "the rivulets in which the sand danced and minnows 
 darted above the springs of Wandel." Though born 
 in London, the child at the age of four was moved 
 with the family to Heme Hill, "a rustic eminence" 
 a few miles south of the city. Thence there was a 
 view of the Norwood Hills, of Harrow and Windsor. 
 From his earliest days, he was taken by his father in 
 his annual drives on business to the north of England, 
 and even to the Lakes and to Scotland, where he usually 
 stayed Math his aunt and cousins in Perth. In their 
 driving tours, to visit customers and collect orders for 
 sherry, the elder Euskin, who had a cultivated taste 
 in art, took the party to visit castles, cathedrals, ruined 
 abbeys, colleges, parks, country mansions, and picture 
 galleries, in which the boy, full of Scott's romances and 
 passionately fond of landscapes, nursed his chivalrous 
 fancies, and drank in beauty at every step. The child 
 
I.] BIRTH AND CHILDHOOD 11 
 
 "lisped in" Modern Painters from his Scotch nurse's 
 arms. 
 
 At the age of four he was painted by Northcote, 
 E.A. The picture of a chubby child in white frock 
 with blue sash now hangs in the dining-room at Brant- 
 wood. His mother's birch discipline had taught him 
 to sit quite still ; and when the painter, pleased by his 
 patience, asked what he would like as a background, 
 he replied, "Blue hills" — the hills he had seen from 
 Perth — of which old Anne used to sing — 
 
 " Her barefooted lassies and mountaiiis so blue." 
 
 Even before that age he preached a sermon : " People 
 be dood. If you are dood, Dod will love you ; if you 
 are not dood, Dod will not love you. People be dood." 
 His first letter bears a postmark which shows that it 
 was written when he was just turned four. It is 
 correct and natural. He complains that his uncle and 
 aunt put up the pillars of his new box of bricks "up- 
 side down. Instead of a book bring me a whip, 
 coloured red and black. To-morrow is Sabbath — I 
 would like you to come home. My kiss and my love " ; 
 and so on. In all these reminiscences and relics we 
 may see indications of that indefatigable love of nature 
 and of art, of mountains and rivers — the born evan- 
 gelist and hot-gospeller, the positive critic with his 
 rationale of building, and the literary lash of brilliant 
 device — Calvinism, self-will, and deep affection. Verily 
 the child is father of the man ! 
 
 At the age of seven he began to compose original 
 pieces, with illustrations of his own. "Harry and 
 Lucy concluded — being the last Part of Early Lessons 
 in four volumes — vol. i., with copper plates printed 
 
12 JOHN RUSKIN [chap. 
 
 and composed by a little boy, and also drawn " — such 
 is the ambitious, characteristic, veracious title-page of 
 this work, of which but one part and a quarter was 
 completed. From the age of seven he began to write 
 poems, a practice which he kept up constantly till he 
 left Oxford ; and at nine he composed a poem entitled 
 ''Eudosia: a Poem on the Universe." It was in that 
 stage that he began to lead, he tells us, "a very small, 
 perky, contented, conceited Cock-Robinson-Crusoe sort 
 of life, in the central point which it appeared to me 
 that I occupied in the universe." Such was the very 
 natural result to a child of genius, nursed, stimulated, 
 petted, and isolated from the world outside. 
 
 In a passage of curious and pathetic introspection, 
 the author himself analyses the good and evil of the 
 system on which he was brought up — "the maternal 
 installation" of his mind. At the age of seven, he 
 says, he had been irrevocably impressed with a perfect 
 understanding of three priceless gifts — Peace, Obedi- 
 ence, and Faith. To these moral lessons he adds the 
 habit of fixed attention in eyes and in mind, and an 
 extreme delicacy of the bodily senses, due to strict 
 home discipline. But these good things were mixed 
 with severe "calamities." First, he had nothing to 
 love. His parents were no more loved than the sun 
 and the moon ; they were visible powers of nature to 
 him." Nor did he love God. He had no companions, 
 no one to assist or to thank. Secondly, he had nothing 
 to endure : no danger, no pain was suffered to come 
 near him ; " his strength was not exercised, his patience 
 never tried, and his courage never fortified." Thirdly, 
 he was taught no manners ; shyness grew on him ; he 
 obtained no skill in any accomplishment, nor ease and 
 
I.] BIRTH AND CHILDHOOD 13 
 
 tact in behaviour. Lastly and chief of evils, his judo-, 
 ment was left undeveloped — " the bridle and blinkers 
 were never taken off him." It is a true, if slightly 
 overdrawn, sketch, most melancholy to read — how a 
 child, marvellously sensitive and preternaturally pre- 
 cocious, was nursed and swaddled, and isolated from 
 the buffets of the outside world and from society with 
 human beings, and almost forced by parental affection 
 and authority to regard its little self as a sublime 
 genius destined to reform, inform, and direct the 
 world. And withal, this nursing and this detachment 
 created the daring critic and the impassioned priest 
 of pure Nature and man's highest good. His mother, 
 he tells us, like Hannah, "had devoted him to God 
 before he was born." 
 
 No method of life could have been devised so favour- 
 able to bring out close attention to natural objects, the 
 cultivation of original ideas, and practical study of 
 literature. The baby spent his first summers in the 
 country, was left to toddle about in a garden, and 
 in his fourth year was taken to Scotland, of course by 
 road. There he used to play in a garden leading 
 down to the Tay ; or again in Surrey, on the banks of 
 Wandel. He saw as an infant, he says, all the high- 
 roads and most of the cross-roads in England and 
 Wales, and as far as Perth, and nearly all the noble- 
 men's houses in England. What powers of imagination 
 he possessed, he says, either fastened themselves on 
 inanimate things or soared into regions of romance. 
 He could remember no time in his life when the novels 
 of Walter Scott were not familiar to him. He had 
 hardly any books to read except the Bible and Pope's 
 Homer, Scott, and the great poets. Much of his time 
 
14 JOHN RUSKIN [chap. 
 
 was taken up in the watching of the ways of plants, 
 or in poring over minerals and specimens of rocks. 
 "By the swirls of smooth blackness, broken by no 
 fleck of foam, where Tay gathereth herself like Medusa, 
 I never passed without awe," he writes. He learned 
 to copy drawings as a child. But he could never draw 
 anything "out of his head" — without a copy. And 
 he always declares that he never could compose any 
 drawing of any kind. 
 
 From the age of seven he was constantly occupied 
 in original composition. He made a systematic diary 
 of his tours, and as often as not these experiences were 
 thrown into verse. Thousands of such lines are extant, 
 portions of which may be seen in the two volumes of 
 Poems. At the age of ten (May 1829) he presented 
 his father with an original work of his own — "Battle 
 of Waterloo: A Play in two Acts, with other small 
 Poems." Wellington and Bonaparte perorate, and a 
 chorus describes the procession of triumph. Com- 
 paring the Pyramids with Skiddaw, he ^vrites — 
 
 " The touch of man 
 Raised pigmy mountains, but gigantic tombs. 
 The touch of Nature raised the mountain's brow.'' 
 
 A boy who could write and think like that when 
 he was ten was fully qualified to profit by the con- 
 tinual joiu-neys on which he was taken. In reading his 
 own memoirs and the story of his family, it seems as if 
 their lives were passed in perpetual travelling. Not only 
 was the boy taken every year long journeys in a pos1> 
 chaise on the business visits to every part of England, 
 but even to the Continent. At five he was taken to 
 Keswick. At six to Paris, Brussels, and Waterloo. 
 At seven again to Perthshire. At fourteen he was 
 
1.] BIRTH AND CHILDHOOD '^dUfi^^ 15 
 
 taken through Flanders, along the Ehine, through the 
 Black Forest to Switzerland. It was then that he 
 first drank in his life-long passion for the Alps. He 
 describes, in a delightful episode in Frceterita, his first 
 sight of the Alps from Schafi"hausen. His youth, in 
 fact, was one constant tour in search of beautiful scenes 
 and romantic spots. His love of Nature was developed 
 far earlier than his love of art; and through life it 
 remained to him a far deeper joy and a more congenial 
 study. His interest in the great Italian art came to 
 him indeed curiously late, and in somewhat doubtful 
 ways. And to the last he speaks of his own under- 
 standing of Italian art, whether painting, sculpoure, or 
 architecture, with somewhat less of that pride and 
 sureness which mark his sense of Nature's beauty and 
 her mysteries. 
 
 A boy so precocious and sensitive, who was saturated 
 with the love of Nature, and also with the master- 
 pieces in poetry and prose, needed no pedagogic direc- 
 tion. And, as is usual in such cases, what pedagogic 
 instruction he had was, perhaps, rather a hindrance 
 than a help. At the age of eleven he was taught 
 some Latin, and less Greek, by Dr. Andrews, a genial 
 but somewhat desultory scholar, who never "grounded" 
 the incorrigible lad as he might have been grounded at 
 a regular school. Mr. Runciman was engaged as his 
 drawing-master, who, at any rate, taught him perspec- 
 tive. At twelve the boy was taught a little French 
 and some useful geometry by Mr. Eowbotham, of 
 whom the young genius wearied as a dull and plodding 
 pedagogue. At fifteen the boy was sent to the day- 
 school of the Eeverend Thomas Dale at Peckham. 
 Here he was in a rather broken course for two years, 
 
16 JOHN RUSKIN [chap. 
 
 at the end of which time he was pronounced "shaky" 
 in scholarship. He also attended lectures at King's 
 College, London, for three days a week in logic, 
 English literature, and translation. At the age of 
 seventeen he was matriculated at Oxford; and as it 
 was doubtful if he could pass the ordinary examina- 
 tion, he was allowed to enter Christ Church as a 
 gentleman-commoner. 
 
 No doubt can remain that when John went to 
 Oxford at the age of eighteen, his school teaching had 
 been desultory, and his schoolboy knowledge was poor. 
 He assures us that he never learned to write Latin 
 prose, and with difficulty managed the regulation 
 Latin verse. He knew the elements of Euclid well, 
 and some algebra. He had read little in the ancient 
 classics, and had but a smattering of French. On the 
 other hand, he had taught himself and had picked up 
 a good deal of general knowledge in elementary 
 physics, and had passionately devoted himself to 
 geology, botany, and minerals, in his own way. He 
 had worked at museums and made collections of 
 his own, which he carefully catalogued. Besides 
 this, he had seen at eighteen more of England and of 
 the Continent than most systematic tourists, and had 
 observed and thought about all this perhaps more 
 than any living man. He had, no doubt, written 
 more prose and verse than has been recorded of any 
 man of his years; and he had made himself an in- 
 defatigable student of composition, an art which 
 from infancy he had practised A^dth zeal and untiring 
 patience. 
 
 With much nervous energy and a lively temper, the 
 young John was delicate, and his parents behaved as 
 
I.] BIRTH AND CHILDHOOD 17 
 
 if his life could only be saved by unremitting care. 
 The family records are perpetually interrupted by 
 illness. At eight he had a serious attack of fever in 
 Scotland. At sixteen he was in great danger for 
 some days with pleurisy, and had to be taken away 
 from Mr. Dale's school. At twenty-one he was 
 attacked with spitting of blood, and had to be re- 
 moved from Oxford for a whole year and a half. But 
 he was no permanent invalid ; in health, a very good 
 walker, full of activity and high spirits, and always an 
 ardent worker, whose eyes and pen seldom ceased night 
 or day. But he learned no boyish games, never 
 attempted to dance, and after repeated efforts at a 
 riding school could not be taught to sit a horse. 
 
 We need not take quite literally all the confessions 
 in Frceterifa; but there can be little doubt that the 
 young Euskin had been brought up in an abnormal 
 way in a family which practised a sort of igdisme-a-trois, 
 as if it were a law of God and man. He himself calls 
 it "our regular and sweetl}^ selfish manner of living." 
 Again, "It was at once too formal and too luxurious." 
 He says he was "a conceited and troublesome little 
 monkey" — "he was safe against ridicule in his con- 
 ceit." In these Confessions of his, which in all their 
 literary charm and in their pure simplicity may be 
 contrasted with those of Eousseau — and they are 
 nearly as frank and outspoken — we see how the old 
 man could judge severely the errors of his youth, and 
 even analyse the foibles and mistakes of his parents. 
 But we must not forget all the evidence he accumulates 
 of the indulgent fondness of his father and the iron 
 devotion of his mother, all his own tenderness of 
 affection, wherever love was open to him. Nor must 
 
 B 
 
18 JOHN RUSKIN" [chap. i. 
 
 we forget that conceit was almost inevitable to one ef 
 such marvellous precocity, having so many of the 
 rarest gifts of sense and of brain, morbidly imprisoned 
 in a very small circle, where he was treated almost as 
 if he were a being of another order with a direct 
 mandate from on high. And this desultory education, 
 with incessant touring and indefatigable description 
 of all he saw, was the ideal method by which was 
 produced the evangelist of Nature and Art and the 
 consummate master of language, whilst it made it 
 impossible that he should become either a consistent 
 thinker or a rational reformer of the modern world. 
 
CHAPTER 11 
 
 FIRST LITERARY EFFORTS 
 
 It is time to give some connected account of the 
 young Ruskin's pieces earlier than the first volume of 
 Modern Painters whicli appeared in 1843 (when he was 
 twenty-four). He wrote both prose and verse almost 
 from the nursery. But as his early poetry surpasses 
 in quantity and in merit his earliest prose, and as he 
 ceased to write verses on leaving Oxford, it will be 
 best to begin with the poetry. Poetry, in the true 
 and high sense of the term, as we apply it to Shelley, 
 or Tennyson, or Arnold, John Ruskin never did achieve. 
 In the two volumes which contain selected pieces, and 
 where we may see some fourteen thousand lines, it 
 would be difficult to find a single poem, perhaps even a 
 stanza, that rises above very good work of the "minor 
 poet." One striking fact is that almost all the poems 
 are descriptions of scenery and places, which hardly 
 any one but Byron has ever made interesting. Another 
 curious fact is that the early poems are the most 
 spontaneous and the best, the very early ones amazing 
 in their precocious facility. A third point is that they 
 display no quality of Ruskin's individual mind and 
 literary power. The rhythm is correct, easy, and 
 cultivated; the form taken from the best models; 
 the phrasing pure, graceful, and picturesque ; and yet 
 
20 JOHN RUSKIN (chap. 
 
 tlie poem as a piece leaves no definite impression on 
 the mind. Thought is overborne in clouds of refined 
 language; poetry exhales in exuberant local colour. 
 And yet as a study of literary evolution, the two 
 volumes of poetry cannot be neglected. 
 
 Authentic fragments of the child's verses have been 
 preserved from the age of seven. Even at that age, 
 when few children can write or spell, there are bits 
 which are perfectly correct in rhythm and phrase, and 
 invariably accurate rhymes. Of a steam-engine em- 
 ployed in a mine he says — 
 
 " When furious up from mines the water pours, 
 And clears from rusty moisture all the ores." 
 
 He corrects (at seven) the ignorant people who cannot 
 enumerate the colours of the rainbow — 
 
 " But those that do not know about that light 
 Reflect not on it ; and in all that light 
 Not one of all the colours do they know." 
 
 The infant John could, at seven, patter oflf the colours 
 in their right order ! 
 
 Again he apostrophises a Scotch glen — in a strain of 
 Wordsworthian moralising on the analogies of mountain 
 scenery and human life — 
 
 '* Glen of Glenfarg, thy beauteous rill, 
 
 Streaming through thy mountains high, 
 Onward pressing, onward still, 
 Hardly seeing the blue sky. 
 
 " Mountain streams, press on your way, 
 And run into the stream below : 
 Kever stop like idle clay, — • 
 Hear the sheep and cattle low." 
 
11.] FIRST LITERARY EFFORTS 21 
 
 A babe who thought and wrote like this at seven 
 seemed destined either for a premature death or 
 immortality on earth. 
 
 Of Glenfarg, at the age of eight, he writes— 
 
 " Those dropping Avaters that come from the rocks, 
 And many a hole, like the haunt of a fox ; 
 That silvery stream that runs babbling along, 
 Making a murmuring, dancing song." 
 
 At nine this miraculous infant thus addressed Skid- 
 daw : — 
 
 " Skiddaw, upon thy heights the sun shines bright, 
 But only for a moment ; then gives place 
 Unto a playful cloud which on thy brow 
 Sports wantonly, — then floats away in air, — 
 Throwing its shadow on thy towering height ; 
 And, darkening for a moment thy green side, 
 But adds unto its beauty, as it makes 
 The sun more bright when it again appears. 
 Thus in the morning on thy brow these clouds 
 Rest as upon a couch, and give vain scope 
 For fancy's play. And airy fortresses. 
 And towers, and battlements, and all appear 
 Chasing the others off, and in theur turn 
 Are chased by the others. 
 
 save where the snow 
 (The fleecy locks of winter) falls around 
 And forms a white tomb for the careless swain 
 Who wanders far from home, and meets his death 
 Amidst the cold of winter." 
 
 We might pick out of the Excursion many a duller 
 passage than this ; and it would not be easy to pick a 
 single passage that would show the same precise 
 and minute watching of the clouds on a mountain, as 
 
22 JOHN RUSKIN [chap. 
 
 vnth the eye of the painter — the same pictorial dis- 
 tinctness. 
 
 There is nothing better in the two volumes of poetry 
 than this piece on Skiddaw composed at the age of 
 nine. The marvel is that at ten or twelve ("The 
 Fairies"; "The Eternal Hills," 1831) the boy Johnny 
 wrote poetry entirely equal to good average University 
 prize poems ; with that tedious facility, the imitative 
 trick, the correct and measured rhythm which mark 
 that form of composition. He could copy Pope, Scott, 
 Byron, AVordsworth — even Shelley — as well as a good 
 oleograph can 'copy an original Turner. There is 
 hardly a fault in metre, a crudity, an extravagance, or 
 a cacophony in all these boy's exercises. He never 
 did any better — even at sixty. And the verses show 
 nothing of his power except the keen observation of 
 nature and the delicate feeling; but none of the exu- 
 berance, passion, eloquence of his prose writing from the 
 first. Why a grand but tempestuous master of prose 
 for twelve years continued to indite whole volumes of 
 mellifluous but rather commonplace verse must always 
 rank as one of the curiosities of literature. 
 
 Many a prize poem has had worse couplets in the 
 Papist vein than these on Etna — 
 
 " Then Etna from his burning crater pours 
 A fiery torrent o'er Sicilia's shores. 
 While, from the crater, gaseous vapours rise ; 
 Volcanic lightnings flash along the skies ; 
 Earth gapes again ; Catania's city falls, 
 And all her people die within her walls." 
 
 This is dated 25th October 1829 {aetat. 10). 
 At the age of twelve he wrote The Iteriad — a long 
 poem in three books, a versified journal of a tour in 
 
II.] FIRST LITERARY EFFORTS 23 
 
 tke Lakes, Six or seven hundred lines have been 
 printed, of which the following is a specimen : — 
 
 " Where the pikes of Sea-fell rose so haughty and proud, 
 While its battlements lofty looked down on the cloud, — 
 WTiile its sides with ravines and dark chasms were riven, — 
 That huge mountain- wall seemed upholding the heaven ! " 
 
 He had now begun to read Byron, and was caught with 
 the ring of the Hours of Idleness. 
 
 At the age of fourteen (May 1833) he wrote a verse 
 diary of a tour on the Continent from Calais to Genoa. 
 Twenty-eight of these pieces have been published. 
 They are in imitation of Scott's Lady of the Lake. 
 Some of them were published in Friendship's Offering, 
 and were quite as good as the pieces usually printed 
 in that annual. At St. Goar on the Ehine he says — 
 
 " No marvel that the spell-bound Rhine, 
 Like giant overcome with wine, 
 Should here relax his angry frown, 
 And, soothed to slumber, lay him down 
 Amid the vine-clad banks that lave 
 Their tresses in his placid wave." 
 
 There are many tamer bits ia Tlie Lay of the Last 
 Minstrel. 
 
 At sixteen he versified his diary of a tour through 
 France to Chamouni, 1835, which he tells us was "in 
 the style of Don Juan, artfully combined with that 
 of Childe HarokV — wherein the imitation of the 
 second was more successful than that of the first — 
 though the Byronic rhymes are not bad; e.g. "the 
 place where old Tom Becket is " rhymes to " similar 
 antiquities." 
 
 At seventeen his first love affair inspires not a few 
 
24 JOHN RUSKIN [chap. 
 
 pieces, but it adds nothing either to the vigour or 
 merit of his poems. The verses "To Adele" hardly 
 rise above the level of average amatory poems. The 
 three long poems written for the Newdigate Prize at 
 Oxford, 1837, 1838, 1839, at the age of eighteen, nine- 
 teen, and twenty, are all simply very good academic 
 exercises quite up to the best Oxford standard. In 
 his first trial he was beaten by Dean Stanley ; but in 
 1839 he won the prize with "Salsette and Elephanta." 
 This piece may perhaps rank with the first class of 
 the Newdigates, and it is an almost servile imitation 
 of that ancient type : — 
 
 " 'Tis eve, and o'er the face of parting day 
 Quick smiles of summer lightning flit and play : 
 In pulses of broad light, less seen than felt. 
 They mix in heaven, and on the mountains melt ] -' 
 
 and so on and so on — 
 
 " O'er thy dark sands, majestic Dharavee ; — 
 And pause above Canarah's haunted steep ; — 
 The Indian maiden, through the scented grove 
 Seeks the dim shore, and lights the lamp of love." 
 
 After that, of course, breezes stir the peepul's sacred 
 shade. Presently we are introduced to Brahma's 
 painless brow — and Veeshnu's guardian smile. And 
 at last India is converted. She 
 
 " Deserts the darkened path her fathers trod. 
 And seeks redemption from the Incarnate God." 
 
 All this is strictly in accordance with the programme 
 of a prize poem which Goldwin Smith is said to have 
 given a friend, whose subject was "The Stuarts" — 
 " The Stuarts will never be restored — The Jews will — 
 
II.] FIRST LITERARY EFFORTS 25 
 
 Salem ! " The other pieces written in the Oxfoixi 
 period, some of which were published at the time, are 
 quite on the level of good occasional poetry, but are 
 nothing more. And as they were composed by an 
 adult at an age when many cultivated men have written 
 poetry as good, they have no special interest or value. 
 They are graceful, correct, melodious pieces ; but they 
 fail to rouse us, they have no real distinction, no 
 strong grip. They do not even interest us, as the 
 boyish effusions do from their precocious maturity. 
 
 To turn now to the earliest prose. He wrote clearly 
 and spelled correctly in 1823, at the age of four. From 
 the age of seven he wrote up his diary regularly, with 
 accurate descriptions of the places he visited. In 
 " Harry and Lucy " he writes thus : " Harry ran for an 
 electrical apparatus which his father had given him, 
 and the cloud electrified his apparatus positively. 
 After that another cloud came which electrified his 
 apparatus negatively, and then a long train of smaller 
 ones." All this is spelled accurately, and is written 
 in printed letters ; and in the same book are given a 
 multitude of observations of physical phenomena. At 
 the age of thirteen he wroto letters which are per- 
 fectly correct, easy, and lowing. 
 
 His first printed pieces appeared, when he was 
 fifteen, in Loudon's Magazine of Natural History^ 1834. 
 This contained an essay on the geologic strata of Mont 
 Blanc, a Note on the perforation of a leaden pipe by 
 rats, and inquiries into the causes of the colour of 
 Ehine- water. In 1835 the annual Friendship's Offering, 
 published by Smith, Elder and Company, printed three 
 of his poems on German scenes. Loudon's Magazine 
 
26 JOHN RUSKIN [chap. 
 
 also published, in 1836, essays of his on "The In- 
 duration of Sandstone " and " Observations on the 
 Temperature of Spring and Eiver Water." When 
 Blackwood^ s Magazine, in 1836, made an attack on 
 Turner's pictures of the year, the young art critic 
 dashed off an answer in defence of the painter. The 
 essay was not sent direct to the editor of Blackwood, 
 but was submitted to Turner himself, who expressed 
 his own contempt of the critics, and sent the essay, 
 not to the Magazine, but to the purchaser of his picture 
 — the subject of which is "Juliet at Venice." 
 
 The piece has been preserved in manuscript; and 
 it is so entirely Ruskinian in its enthusiasm, its love 
 of nature, and also in its redundancies, is so truly a 
 fore-word to Modern Painters, being dated at his age 
 of seventeen, that a bit of it deserves to be quoted : — 
 
 " His imagination is Shakespearian in its mightiness. . . . 
 Many-coloured mists are floating above the distant city ; but 
 Buch mists as you might imagine to be ethereal spirits, souls 
 of the mighty dead breathed out of the tombs of Italy into 
 the blue of her bright heaven, and wandering in vague and 
 infinite glory around the earth that they have loved. Instinct 
 with the beauty of uncertain light, they move and mingle 
 among the pale stars, and rise up into the brightness of the 
 illimitable heaven, whose soft, sad blue eye gazes down into 
 the deep waters of the sea for ever — that sea whose motionless 
 and silent transparency is beaming with phosphor light, that 
 emanates out of its sapphire serenity like bright dreams 
 breathed into the spirit of a deep sleep. And the spires of 
 the glorious city rise indistinctly bright into those living mists 
 like pyramids of pale fire from some vast altar ; and amidst 
 the glory of the dream there is, as it were, the voice of a 
 multitude entering by the eye, arising from the stillness of 
 the city like the summer wind passing over the leaves of the 
 forest when a murmur is heard amidst their multitudes." 
 
II.] FIRST LITERARY EFFORTS 27 
 
 All this is certainly trop de choses — too full of imasjes, 
 clouds, glories, and serenities which tumble over each 
 other, and read too much like a vulgar parody of those 
 purp^irei panni of the Seven Lamjis that the author so 
 bitterly regretted. But one sees how, seven years later, 
 all this might become the germ of Modern Painters. 
 In 1837, at the age of eighteen, he contributed a series 
 of papers to Loudon's Architectural Magazine. These 
 were entitled "The Poetry of Architecture; or the 
 Architecture of the Nations of Europe considered in 
 its Association with Natural Scenery and National 
 Character." As he wrote afterwards: "I could not 
 have put in fewer, or more inclusive words, the defini- 
 tion of what half my future life was to be spent in 
 discoursing of ; while the nom de plume I chose, ' Accord- 
 ing to Nature,' was equally expressive of the temper 
 in which I was to discourse alike on that and every 
 other subject." The papers were signed " Kata Phusin." 
 "These youthful essays," he adds, "though deformed 
 by assumption, and shallow in contents, are curiously 
 right up to the points they reach." They contained 
 a good deal of classical allusion, and were believed to 
 be written by an Oxford don. 
 
 The following year (1838) he engaged in a contro- 
 versy on " The Convergence of Perpendiculars " in 
 painting — on which he wrote five papers in answer to 
 Mr. Parsey. Mr. Arthur Parsey had attempted by 
 optics to upset the conventional scheme of perspective. 
 "Kata Phusin" replied that in practice the field of 
 vision in a picture is so limited that the geometric 
 aberration may be disregarded. The young critic's 
 knowledge of Optics was not quite sufficient to 
 enable him to master the whole truth; but he Avas 
 
28 JOHN RUSKIN [chap. 
 
 right in defending the current practice as that 
 which the human eye appears to see in the given 
 position. 
 
 About the same time Euskin wrote a long essay for 
 a young lady on "The Comparative Advantages of the 
 Studies of Music and Painting," wherein he places 
 painting above music as a means of education, though 
 he gives to music a greater power of stirring emotion ; 
 but, curiously • enough, he adds that its power is 
 strongest in proportion as the art is diminished. 
 
 A remarkable proof of the effect on public opinion 
 being wrought by the first appearance of the young 
 critic was afforded when the Edinburgh committee 
 were considering the form of the Scott Memorial. A 
 writer in the Architectural Magazine asked for the 
 opinion of "Kata Phusin" as one of considerable 
 importance. So challenged, "Kata Phusin" replied 
 in a paper in the Magazine (January 1839) : " Whether 
 Works of Art may, with propriety, be combined with 
 the sublimity of Nature ; and what would be the most 
 appropriate situation for the proposed Monument to 
 the Memory of Sir Walter Scott in Edinburgh." 
 After much inquiry, he rather prefers a colossal 
 monument of Scott to be placed on Salisbury Crags. 
 The committee did not adopt his yiqw, and perhaps 
 Auld Reekie would not have been pleased if they 
 had. 
 
 During this discussion the publisher Loudon him- 
 self wrote to the father this remarkable and prophetic 
 passage (November 30, 1838): "Your son is certainly 
 the greatest natural genius that ever it has been my 
 fortune to become acquainted with ; and I cannot but 
 feel proud to think that at some future period, when 
 
II.] FIRST LITERARY EFFORTS 29 
 
 both you and I are under the turf, it will be stated in the 
 literary history of your son's life that the first article 
 of his which was published was in Loudon's Magazine 
 of Natural History.''^ 
 
 Would that every young genius of nineteen could 
 find a publisher so generous and so full of insight ! 
 
CHAPTEE III 
 
 LOVE — OXFORD — TURNER 
 
 Naturally, the romantic young poet of seventeen fell 
 in love. In the year 1836 M. Domecq brought his 
 four younger daughters to England to stay with the 
 Ruskins at Heme Hill. They lived in good society in 
 Paris, and all eventually married into French families 
 of title. John fell deeply in love with Adele, the 
 eldest of the four, then fifteen, an elegant, gay, and 
 beautiful girl. He has himself told us the story with 
 infinite grace and pathos. The four beautiful girls — 
 an apparition of fairydom to the raw " conven1>bred " 
 lad, as he calls himself, reduced him to a heap of 
 white ashes in four days. "But the Mercredi des 
 Cendres lasted four years," and darkened his early life. 
 Clotilde, he says, as her sisters called her, but Adele 
 to him, because this rhymed to shell, spell, and knell, 
 
 " was only made more resplendent by the circlet of her sisters' 
 beauty ; while my own shyness and unpresentableness were 
 further stiffened, or rather sanded, by a patriotic and Protes- 
 tant conceit which was tempered neither by politeness nor 
 sympathy ; so that, while in company I sate jealously miser- 
 able like a stock fish (in truth, I imagine, looking like nothing 
 so much as a skate in an aquarium trying to get up the 
 glass), on any blessed occasion of Ute-a-Ute, I endeavoured to 
 entertain my Spanish-born, Paris-bred, and Catholic-hearted 
 SO 
 
CHAP. III.] LOVE— OXFORD-TURNER 31 
 
 mistress with my own views upon the subjects of the Spanish 
 Armada, the Battle of Waterloo, and the doctrine of Transub- 
 stantiation." 
 
 So, after fifty years, the lady being long married 
 and dead, the old lover can recount his feelings ; but it 
 is certain that they were very real at the time and 
 deeply influenced his health and his career. The two 
 fathers quite contemplated marriage — which Mrs. 
 Ruskin, as a severe Calvinist, looked on as horrible and 
 impossible. The boy, of course, resorted to poetry. He 
 began -wdth "Leoni: A Romance of Italy," a story of 
 Naples, where the bandit Leoni represents some san- 
 guinary and adventurous being, and Giuletta the per- 
 fections of his mistress. It was even printed in 
 Friendshij)^s Offering, and is a curiously clever imitation 
 of Byron — 
 
 " I do not ask a tear ; but while 
 I linger where I must not stay, 
 Oh ! give me but a parting smile. 
 To light me on my lonely way." 
 
 Adele not only smiled, but "laughed over it in rippling 
 ecstasies of derision, of which I bore the pain bravely, 
 for the sake of seeing her thoroughly amused." Yes; 
 it was the old story, when calf seventeen woos lambkin 
 fifteen, as a greater poet than Johnny Ruskin knew. 
 Then followed love poems, very good average pieces 
 for a young poet, only remarkable for their precocious 
 grace and polish, with even occasional touches of in- 
 spiration as this. Adele has gone, and is spoken of in 
 his hearing : — 
 
 " Thy gentle name doth rend apart 
 The clouds of the forgetful veil, 
 That dims the heaven of my heart." 
 
 /<^ 
 
 t 
 
32 JOHN RUSKIN [chap. 
 
 Then lie tried a romantic tale, Velasquez, the Novice, 
 and a play, MarcoUni — a compound of Shakespeare and 
 Byron — -the scene Venice, the heroine an amalgam of 
 Desdemona and Juliet, and the young Marcolini *' such 
 a man as angels love to look upon ! " 
 
 " All dazzled by the light of his own love, 
 To see strange things i' the world. 
 Such as — benevolence in misanthropes, 
 Mercy in bravoes, justice in senators, 
 And other such things incompatible ! " 
 
 But his young Helena would not see all these 
 amiabilities in our Heme Hill Marcolini. She 
 even "laughed immensely" over a letter in French 
 in seven quarto pages which he Avrote to her in 
 Paris about the solitudes of Heme Hill since she left 
 it. Two years later, she was then seventeen, and John 
 was nineteen, he saw her again in England ; but she 
 still laughed at him. M. Domecq died, and Adele was 
 engaged to the Baron Duquesne, a handsome and rich 
 young noble. John wrote "Farewell," a long and very 
 graceful poem in the vein of Shelley, which told 
 
 " The grief my \Yords were weak to tell. 
 And thine unable to console." 
 
 It is a touching piece from the circumstances, and only 
 just misses being a fine poem, by its perfection of grace 
 and smoothness ; and it is "without a touch of repining, 
 or bitterness, or even surprise. In a dream he sees 
 how her smile wakes the night-flowers at her feet — 
 
 " It fell on the cold rocks, and on the free 
 Unfeeling waves, — oh ! wherefore not on me ? " 
 
 This comes very near indeed to poetry. 
 
III.] LOVE— OXFORD— TURNER 53 
 
 Adele married Baron Duquesne in March 1840. 
 They tried to keep the news from the lover, as he was 
 now preparing for his degree at Oxford. He declares 
 (fifty years later) that the news did not crush him so 
 much as he had expected. But his health seemed to 
 belie this assertion, for he was startled with indications 
 of consumption. "Things were progressing smoothly 
 in Paris, to the abyss " (i.e. to the marriage of Adele 
 Domecq), when one night a short cough brought blood 
 into the mouth. Consultations of doctors ended in his 
 being ordered abroad ; the Dean postponed his degree, 
 the wine-merchant left his business, and the whole 
 party crossed the Continent and wintered in Eome. 
 For nearly two years John was an invalid, aimlessly 
 roving from place to place, and with mind as little 
 settled to any definite point as was his body. The 
 Duquesne marriage turned out happily. The Domecq 
 family were all brought up to love and admire Ruskin's 
 works, and to the last spoke of him with kindness. 
 "Men capable of the highest imaginative passion," he 
 writes in 1885, "are always tossed on fiery waves by 
 it." And he consigns the memory of his " absurdity, 
 pain, error, wasted aff'ection," to the dust-heap of 
 Oblivion. So be it ! But with him we may wonder 
 " what sort of a creature he would have turned out if 
 Love had been with him instead of against him." 
 i Quien sabe ? 
 
 Our author has told the story of his Oxford career 
 with the same delightful naivete, though we need not 
 take too literally all the humours and confessions of 
 Prceterita. His father, con\anced that his son was 
 destined to be a bishop, quite resolved to put him in 
 the best position, in the best college, in the best 
 
 o 
 
34 JOHN RUSKIN [chap. 
 
 university according to his own lights. And with all 
 his prudence and good sense, such was the rigid aloof- 
 ness of the whole Ruskinian world and its methods, 
 that John James would often take a course both 
 singular and unwise. Having resolved to enter his son 
 at Christ Church, the old wine-merchant was so ill 
 advised as to make the raw, shy lad a gentleman- 
 commoner, where he was thrown into the immediate 
 companionship of men of rank, wealth, and fashion. 
 These young lords and squires who rode races, betted, 
 shirked all work and got into scrapes, naturally re- 
 garded the queer poet as a butt rather than an equal. 
 One of the sur\avors of their table in 1840 tells me 
 that Ruskin was one of the gentlest creatures ever seen 
 in Oxford, more like a girl than a man, who was looked 
 on as a joke until a few men perceived his genius and 
 the rest became aware of his goodness. His fine 
 temper, his wit, his mastery of drawing, his skill in 
 chess, his hospitality, and superb sherry, won over the 
 young " bloods," who at last agreed to regard him as 
 something quite of an order by himself. And before 
 long he was admitted to the society of the best men of 
 the college. 
 
 There he made the life-long friendship with (Sir) 
 Henry Acland and (Dean) Liddell, (Sir) Charles 
 Newton and Dr. Buckland, with whom he studied 
 geology. His college tutors were the Eev. W. Brown 
 and Osborne Gordon. At Dr. Buckland's he met Dr. 
 Daubeny and Charles Darwin. "He and I got on 
 together and talked all the evening." He was called 
 up to read an essay in Hall, which he did with great 
 effect, to the scandal of the gentleman-commoners who 
 shirked essays and got their tasks done at Is, 6d. a 
 
111.] LOVE— OXFORD— TURNER 35 
 
 sheet. On the third trial he won the Newdigate Verse 
 Prize, with a poem which has been already described. 
 It was the one University honour for which he 
 seriously strove, and which he was proud to win. The 
 House was pleased at his success; and even Dean 
 Gaisford, the academic Bluebeard of the time, con- 
 descended to coach him in the parts of his poem which 
 he should recite in the theatre. Those who care to see 
 how a clever man may beat a man of genius may com- 
 pare Dean Stanley's " Gipsies " with Ruskin's. Stanley 
 was no more a poet than was Huskin, and had not a 
 tenth part of Ruskin's poetic spirit. But Stanley had 
 the journalist's /air for hitting the taste of the day and 
 appealing to the sentiments of his readers instead of 
 expatiating on his own. 
 
 One of the most amazing episodes of this girl- 
 undergraduate life was the resolution of his mother 
 to come up to lodge in Oxford during term and 
 to have John every evening to tea with her — the 
 deserted father and husband coming up solemnly (by 
 road of course) to spend Sunday. Marvellous to tell, 
 neither John, nor his father, nor the College, nor the 
 undergraduates, saw anything unusual in this proceed- 
 ing, and he declares that it was not a source of chaff. 
 But the whole story of his Oxford life must be read 
 in his own Prceterita, with its inimitable irony and 
 waggery, and we must read cum grano his gentle play 
 about his friends and himself. 
 
 John was examined for Little-go by Robert Lowe, 
 who was "very kind." In fact, he worked steadily at 
 the subjects of his course, though he came up feeling 
 for them " not the slightest interest." It is clear that 
 he read " his books " with care, and that his elementary 
 
36 JOHN RUSKIN [chap. 
 
 geometry was thoroughly good. In the end, after the 
 terrible breakdown of his health, which sent him away 
 from Oxford for a year and a half (1840-41), he did so 
 well in his-Final Examination that he received an honor- 
 ary fourth class both in Classics and in Mathematics. 
 A double honorary Fourth means that a man who seeks 
 only the ordinary degree has the unsolicited honour 
 conferred on him by the examiners in both schools. 
 It is extremely rare, and it used to be said that it was 
 equivalent to a Double First-class. It was the charac- 
 ter of Euskin to work thoroughly at everything he 
 took in hand. To know " every syllable of his Thucy- 
 dides," as he declares he did, was indeed scholarship 
 in itself. 
 
 The sojourn of Mrs. Euskin at Oxford, of which 
 we are told the sole object was to watch over John's 
 health, was in some sense justified when one night, in 
 the spring of 1840, he was attacked with hemorrhage 
 of the lungs, went round to his mother, who took him 
 to London to consult physicians, and no doubt saved 
 his life by insisting on the rest and foreign travel they 
 ordered. The journey to Italy, except that he there 
 made the acquaintance of Joseph Severn and George 
 Eichmond, did him little good, either physically or 
 morally; and he was at last restored by a summer 
 among the Alps and the dietary treatment at Leam- 
 ington by Dr. Jephson. One of the most singular of 
 the records in Frceterita is the languid interest he took 
 in the first sight of Italy, even of Florence, Siena, and 
 Eome, where neither history, art, nor romance at all 
 impressed him. No doubt his bad health affected his 
 mental interests. On his recovery he worked hard 
 with Osborne Gordon, passed his examination with 
 
III.] LOVE— OXFORD— TURNER 37 
 
 great credit, and received the degree of B.A. in May 
 1842. 
 
 It is difficult to estimate the value of Oxford to 
 Ruskin. In his violently ironical way he says, "The 
 whole time I was there, my mind was simply in the 
 state of a squash before it is a peascod," and he speaks 
 of his academic attainments with amused contempt. 
 Oxford in the end deeply interested him, and as pro- 
 fessor called forth some of his most ardent labours. 
 After all, perhaps the Thucydides and the geometry 
 were the most thorough bits of systematic study on 
 regular lines that Ruskin ever made in his life. On 
 the other hand, the curriculum then current, not ex- 
 cluding the Newdigate, the Latin prose, and the Greek 
 syntax, drew him off at a critical time from his natural 
 bent, and, along with love, wasted some of his best 
 years. Ruskin was bound in any case to be miscel- 
 laneous in his impressions and desultory in his eager- 
 ness. Perhaps Oxford would have been to him a 
 school of unmixed good if he had been able to form 
 his own occupations and his own friendships apart 
 from any degree work; if his fond parents had not 
 expected him to win the highest honours and ultimately 
 to blossom into a full-blown Bishop of the Church. 
 
 In a striking, perhaps morbid, passage in Prceterita 
 he records his feelings on finding himself at last 
 through his Oxford course, with his powers in embryo, 
 likings indulged rather against conscience, "and a dim 
 sense of duty to myself, my parents, and a daily more 
 vague shadow of Eternal Law." It is the usual lot of 
 genius at twenty-two or three. At any rate, he gave 
 up all idea of becoming a bishop, to thje lasting grief 
 
38 JOHN RUSKIN [chap. 
 
 of his parents, and he flatly declined to enter the 
 sherry trade. In a hazy way he now saw that his 
 mission was to be a prose poet of Nature and of Art. 
 And the outcome was, as usual, a journey of the whole 
 family to the Alps again. He was prose poet of 
 Nature first and foremost. Art came later, and was 
 subordinate always. " Clouds and mountains have 
 been life to me," he says. "The essential love of 
 Nature in me," he adds, was the root of all he had 
 become and the light of all he had learned. No one, 
 he thinks, can have had such rapture as he has known 
 from the mere sight of mountains. "They did not 
 haunt me 'like a passion.' They were a passion." 
 Two mountains he names "have had enormous in- 
 fluence on his whole life." The child of four who 
 asked for "blue mountains" to his portrait, who at 
 seven apostrophised Skiddaw, who on his first view 
 of the Alps from SchafFhausen could feel his "destiny 
 fixed in all of it that was to be sacred and useful,"^ 
 who at twenty-three had spent the best part of his life 
 in studying nature, was inevitably destined to become 
 the apostle of beautiful scenery to an age which Byron 
 and Wordsworth had attuned to this passion, and to 
 judge what painting had done to make us understand 
 Nature. 
 
 Euskin began to draw as a child, but always to copy 
 to make a record of things he saw before him. At 
 
 1 The present writer remembers his own first view of the 
 Alps from Schaffhausen at the end of a hard day; and after 
 some forty visits to the Alps cannot forget the emotion he 
 felt at the sudden sight, nor can he ever see the eternal snows 
 without a choking sensation in the throat. There is no home- 
 sickness, no patriotism, like that of the mountaineer. 
 
ni.] LOVE— OXFORD— TURNER 39 
 
 ten he could copy Cruikshank's illustrations; but he 
 never could compose an original design. In 1832, 
 when thirteen, he made a successful drawing of Dul- 
 wich bridge, and was presented with a copy of Hogers's 
 Italy, " which determined the main tenor of my life." 
 The vignettes by Turner filled him with delight, and 
 he set himself to imitate them as far as he could. As 
 a boy Kunciman was his first drawing-master ; and in 
 his sixteenth year he was promoted to study with 
 Copley Fielding. At twenty-two he had lessons from 
 Harding. At this time, just before taking his degree, 
 he had drawn a bit of ivy round a thorn stem at Nor- 
 wood, and this he often refers to as a revelation to 
 him that exact truth and close acceptance of Nature 
 was the basis of all real art. 
 
 When Turner, in Eogers's Italy, first burst on the 
 sight of the boy Ruskin at the age of thirteen, like 
 his first view of the Alps from Schaffhausen, he had 
 never heard of the master, except that Runciman told 
 him how "the world had been dazzled by some splendid 
 ideas of the painter." In his seventeenth year Ruskin 
 was roused to indignation, as we have seen, by Black-"^ 
 wood's attack on Turner as "out of nature," and the^ 
 furious diatribe which he wrote in defence has only* 
 turned up since his death, for it has never been printed. , 
 "The review," he says, "raised me to the height of; 
 ' black anger,' in which I have remained pretty nearly 
 ever since." In Prceterita, Ruskin calls this essay " the 
 first chapter of Modern Painters:' In 1837 his father 
 bought him his first Turner— the " Richmond, Surrey," 
 which they both triumphed over as having "trees, 
 architecture, water, a lovely sky, and a clustered 
 bouquet of brilliant figures." The second Turner in 
 
40 JOHN RUSKIN [chap. hi. 
 
 1839 was the "Gosport." On his twenty-first birth- 
 day for his rooms at Christ Church his father gave 
 him the " Winchelsea.'' And he afterwards bought 
 the " Slave Ship," " Harlech," and other pieces of the 
 master. These were "the chief recreation of my 
 fatigued hours." He had been, from his earliest recol- 
 lections, a student of the Turners collected by Mr. 
 Windus at Tottenham. This generous and admirable 
 amateur (whom the present writer well remembers as 
 a most courteous host) bought up all the drawings 
 Turner made for the engravers, and gave Ruskin the 
 run of his rooms at any time. "He was the means 
 of my "svriting Modern Painters." 
 
 At last came "what the reader might suppose a 
 principal event of my life" — John Ruskin was intro- 
 duced to " the man who beyond all doubt is the greatest 
 of the age" — the words are in the Diary under date 
 12th June 1840:— 
 
 " I found him a somewhat eccentric, keen-mannered, matter- 
 of-fact, English-minded gentleman ; good-natured e^^ddently, 
 bad-tempered evidently, hating humbug of all sorts, shrewd, 
 perhaps a little selfish, highly intellectual, the powers of the 
 mind not brought out with any delight in their manifestation, 
 or intention of display, but flashing out occasionally in a vrord 
 or a look." 
 
 Such was the way in which the undergraduate of 
 twenty-one judged the great painter whom he was 
 about a year or two later to expound, to interpret, 
 to belaud, and to immortalise in burning words to a 
 dazzled but somewhat puzzled world. 
 
CHAPTEK IV 
 
 MODERN PAINTERS 
 
 We have now reached the opening of young Ruskin's 
 career as an Apostle of Nature and Art, with that 
 book which, in spite of his own disclaimers and many 
 strong reasons to the contrary, the world has agreed to 
 regard as his central and typical work. His mission 
 was to preach the aesthetic study of Nature and to 
 justify Turner as the chief interpreter of the new 
 Nature- Worship. As soon as he returned from what 
 seems to have been his fifth visit to the Alps, and had 
 put on his bachelor's gown at Oxford, he settled down 
 at home in Heme Hill to write his Modern Painters in 
 the autumn and winter of 1842, he being then twenty- 
 three. Each piece when finished was read aloud to the 
 father and mother and cousin Mary, and would even 
 draw tears of joy from the doting parents. It was the 
 moment when the first portrait by George Richmond, 
 R.A., was made — the young poet seated at a desk with 
 pencil in hand, Mont Blanc in the background — the 
 expression charged with pensive sensibility and in- 
 spiration. These were perhaps the critical hours of his 
 life, imdoubtedly the happiest and most unclouded. 
 
 Brimful of the Alps, of the mountains, lakes, castles, 
 and churches of the Rhine, Switzerland, and Italy, 
 Cumberland, and Perthshire, the personal friend of 
 
 41 
 
42 JOHN RUSKIN [chap. 
 
 Turner, the possessor of some of his best pieces, the 
 pupil of Copley Fielding and Harding, the honorary 
 class-man of Oxford and prize poet, he now fell with 
 zeal to enlarge his Blackwood pleading for Turner, and 
 his " Kata Phusin " dogmas of the following of Nature's 
 law. But, first, the true dogmas had to be expounded 
 and old dogmas revised. And, nothing loth or timid, 
 the student of Plato, Aristotle, Euclid, and Aldrich 
 proceeded to lay down principles of Art, and right 
 expression of natural fact, in a series of trenchant pro- 
 positions, regardless of venerable axioms and popular 
 commonplace. The dominant idea of his trumpet call 
 to painters was to fling aside the traditions of the 
 Academies, to go humbly to Nature, rejecting nothing, 
 selecting nothing, scorning nothing. It was quite 
 obvious that Canaletto, Poussin, and Claude did no- 
 thing of the kind ; and they were blind leaders of the 
 blind. Our modern (English) painters — and the lad 
 certainly knew nothing of those abroad — did look hard 
 at the facts of Nature, and drew what they saw ; such 
 men as Prout, C. Fielding, Harding, Cox, though each 
 in a limited way for certain classes of facts; but 
 Turner had given all the facts — trees, rivers, sea, 
 clouds, mountains, details, colour, and impression — but 
 all transfigured with his own poetry of magical sight. 
 
 This doctrine — in the main a true doctrine, which in 
 substance has prevailed and holds the field — was 
 asserted and reasserted with a militant confidence, of 
 which only an Oxford prizeman who has just become 
 B.A. is the past master, and with a subtlety, imagina- 
 tion, and passion of which no other man then living 
 was capable. All this was infused with reminiscences 
 of Greek philosophy; of Aristotle's warning to be 
 
IV.] MODERN PAINTERS 43 
 
 certain only of what we know by proof : of Plato's war 
 against the false knowledge of the sophists and their 
 love of fine phrases instead of evidence; of Bacon's 
 revolt against the schoolmen ; and Locke's repudiation 
 of traditional "authority"; — and it was set forth with 
 a splendour of declamation and a torrent of illustration, 
 with word-pictures and word-scourges, such as had 
 never yet been dreamed of in the stolid commonplaces 
 of conventional criticism. There was something in it 
 of Eousseau bursting in with his appeal to Nature 
 against the Ancient Regimen; something of John 
 Wesley's appeal to the Spirit of Jesus against a pluralist 
 Church ; and even more of the cry of " Sartor " in his 
 wrath against shams and falsehoods, but with the un- 
 couth sarcasms of the mighty Tailor replaced by 
 gorgeous records of foreign travel, and symphonies 
 rehearsed in most majestic descant. 
 
 The book was finished in the winter, and was pub- 
 lished in May 1843. The intended title of it was to 
 be " Turner and the Ancients." But, by the advice of 
 the publishers' reader, this was changed to the title 
 which the original volume bore — " Modern Painters : 
 their Superiority in the Art of Landscape Painting to 
 all the Ancient Masters proved by Examples of the 
 True, the Beautiful, and the Intellectual, from the 
 Works of Modern Artists, especially from those of 
 J. M. W. Turner, Esq., E.A." Such was the eminently 
 veracious and characteristic sub-title of the book, 
 exactly expressing the scope of volume i. ; all the dog- 
 matism, self-confidence, fighting, and chivalrous temper 
 of the new gospel. As it was thought, especially by 
 the wary father, likely to be regarded as presumptuous 
 in a young man of twenty-four, the author's name was 
 
44 JOHN RUSKIN [chap. 
 
 suppressed, and the book was signed by " A Graduate 
 of Oxford." In spite of this economy of strict truth in 
 literature, the young knight, with his coat-of-arms 
 veiled in mystery, hung forth his challenge to defend 
 his Master against all comers in the lists of Art before 
 the judges of Beauty and Truth in the presentation of 
 Nature. 
 
 The appearance of volume i. of Modern Painters 
 produced a real sensation in the artistic, and even in 
 the literary world. The recognised organs of criticism 
 were hostile and contemptuous. The painters whom 
 he had criticised and praised were not all satisfied with 
 qualified eulogium; and Turner was rather over- 
 whelmed by the zeal of his young friend. There was 
 much in the outspoken heresy of the youthful re- 
 former to scandalise the connoisseur, the veteran 
 artist, the hack writer, and the Bible literalist. But 
 men of insight saw in it a new idea. The poet Rogers, 
 to whom John Ruskin had been presented as a boy, 
 and who asked him to his famous breakfast parties, 
 allowed the book to lie on his table. Tennyson, who 
 saw Nature so often in kindred ways^ begged for the 
 book. Sydney Smith, as we have seen, recognised its 
 power. Sir Henry Taylor thought it more deeply 
 founded than any other that he knew. Poets were the 
 first to call into their company the prose poet of 
 Nature who had placed the lasting crown on the head 
 of the colour-poet of Nature. 
 
 The world of culture, as its way is, soon caught hold 
 of a new man ; and the Oxford graduate was received 
 in society and met at dinner tables. The delighted 
 father had no scruple now in divulging the author's 
 name. He bought for his son Turner's " Slave Ship," 
 
IV.] MODEEX PAINTERS 45 
 
 a picture of tremendous power and almost ghastly 
 realism, which long hung on the dining-room wall. 
 The family had now left the Heme Hill house for a 
 more spacious abode at Denmark Hill. The present 
 writer remembers it as an ample country house of good 
 proportions standing in its own grounds of some seven 
 acres, with carriage drive, gardens, shrubbery, paddock, 
 and small farm, an airy and charming site, the walls of 
 the rooms covered mth choice specimens of Turner's 
 drawings. The family lived there until the death of 
 old Mrs. Euskin in 1871, and often dispensed a hearty 
 hospitality, ever rejoiced to show the treasures of the 
 place — no less than thirty Turners, half-a-dozen Hunts, 
 a Tintoretto, the collection of minerals ; apples, peaches 
 — "pigs especially, highly educated, who spoke ex- 
 cellent Irish." 
 
 The father, now wholly converted to Turner, and 
 become one of his regular purchasers, was eager to 
 have Modern Painters continued. It was to enlarge on 
 the principle of Truth and to give ample illustrations 
 of mountains, foliage, and clouds. And so, after the 
 father's birthday in ^lay 1844, the whole family started 
 for Switzerland for the sixth time. There John studied 
 Mont Blanc, its glaciers and aiguilles, under the care 
 of Couttet, the famous guide ; drew the forms of both 
 with marvellous precision and force — uniting for once 
 the geologist, the mountaineer, and the artist — for he 
 understood the anatomy of rocks better than any 
 painter, and could di^aw as no geologist or mountaineer 
 could do. " Many and many an hour of precious time 
 and perfect sight was spent during these years in thus 
 watching skies . . . much was learned, which is of no 
 use now to anybody ; for to me it is only a sorrowful 
 
46 JOHN RUSKIN [chap. 
 
 memory, and to others an old man's fantasy" {Prm- 
 ierita, ii. 94, 1886). 
 
 There he met Professor Forbes, studied glacier forms 
 Avith him, and became an ardent supporter of the 
 " viscous " theory. Thence on to the Italian lakes and 
 the Simplon Pass, where he made drawings and still more 
 delicious diaries of natural forms and landscapes. He 
 visited the Bel Alp and Zermatt, and wondered at the 
 Matterhorn and the Weisshorn, which seemed to him 
 inferior to Mont Blanc. And so home by Paris, which 
 he was now sufficiently cured "to bear the sight of 
 again," and visited the Louvre. And here he found a 
 great change come over the spirit of his art dream. 
 He saw much in ancient Italian art to which he had 
 hitherto been indifferent. He wonders, and we may 
 wonder, how such a man could be, at twenty-five, so 
 ignorant of early Italian painting ; indeed, so callous, 
 for at the age of twenty-two he had seen Milan, Pisa, 
 Florence, Venice, and Rome. But in the summer of 
 1844, all at once, he tells us, he saw all the greatness 
 of Titian, of Veronese, Bellini, and Perugino. He 
 found, in fact, that what the graduate of Oxford had 
 pored over so intently for ten years was but a single 
 comer of the world of art ; that very great men had 
 Hved long before Turner, and had other ideals besides 
 those of Turner ; nay, that the author of a new Gospel 
 of art should know something of the history of art — 
 and even the history of man — wherein our graduate 
 was still but a tiro. In short, the defence of Turner 
 and the Moderns must be enlarged, and the Ancients 
 must be studied anew. 
 
 The autumn and winter of 1844 was given to study, 
 mainly of mediaeval history and art, to Eio and Lord 
 
IV.] MODERN PAINTERS 47 
 
 Lindsay; and it seemed essential before continuing 
 Modern Painters to work at Pisa and Florence. 
 Accordingly, in April 1845, he started abroad, for the 
 first time without his parents, but with George, his 
 vaJet, and Couttet, his Chamouni guide. Some lines 
 written at Geneva on Mont Blanc in a deeply religious 
 strain convinced him that he could say nothing rightly 
 in verse, and (no doubt wisely) he renounced poetry 
 for ever. Lucca seems first to have opened his eyes 
 to the power of building, and the tomb of Ilaria di 
 Caretto became "a supreme guide to him ever after." 
 He now had books, and pored over Dante, in Gary's 
 translation, Sismondi's Italian Bepublics, and Lord 
 Lindsay's Christian Art. Pisa and the Campo Santo — 
 where he saw "the entire doctrine of Christianity 
 painted so that a child could understand it " — deepened 
 his enthusiasm for mediaeval art. He drank in the 
 whole Gospel in these frescoes, " straight to its purpose, 
 in the clearest and most eager way." Here at Pisa, 
 with the Spina Chapel, he saw the school of his Italian 
 studies fixed for many years, as he sat drawing with 
 intense zeal from six in the morning till four in the 
 afternoon. 
 
 From Pisa to Florence, where he flung himself into 
 monasteries and chapels, at Santa Maria Novella, 
 Santa Croce, and San Marco, absorbed in Angelico and 
 Ghirlandajo— "Lippi and Botticelli were still far be- 
 yond him " — or strolling up after dinner to Fesole or 
 San Miniato. At Florence his work was "thinking 
 and writing." Thence he went north to Macugnaga 
 under Monte Rosa— where, oddly enough, he found 
 little to interest him, except in reading, for the first 
 time seriously, Shakespeare's lioman plays j and as to 
 
48 JOHN RUSKIN [chap. 
 
 Val Anzasca, it had no interesting features ! Such 
 was his "desultory, but careful, reading, which began 
 in his mossy cell at Macugnaga." Thence he took the 
 St. Gothard route to Faido and Dazio Grande, and did 
 the work which is one of the gems of Modern Painters, 
 vol. iii. At Baveno he was joined by Harding, and 
 they toured about the lakes and to Verona — "no 
 happier epoch than it was to both." We are told 
 that "though Eouen, Geneva, and Pisa have been the 
 centres of thought and teaching to me, Verona has 
 given the colouring to all they taught." He went on 
 to Venice for Harding's sake, where for a week they 
 lounged about the markets and the boats, looking for 
 effects of light on city and on sea. But in a spare 
 hour they dropped into the Scuola di San Rocco. There, 
 of a sudden, Tintoretto revealed himself, and largely 
 determined the current of Ruskin's future life. 
 
 There have been recorded (mainly by himself) a 
 good many casual incidents which determined the 
 bent of his life — the gift of Rogers's Italy, the first 
 sight of the Alps, a bit of ivy round a thorn, the tomb 
 of Ilaria, the Campo Santo, Mont Blanc, a Veronese in 
 the Louvre — but this first -vdsion of the Tintorettos 
 of St. Roch seems to have been the most real and most 
 important of all these aesthetic conversions. But for 
 that "sunny, but luckless, day," when the porter 
 opened the door of the then neglected hall as if they 
 were the gates of Paradise, Ruskin thinks he should have 
 written the Stones of Chamouni instead of the Stones 
 of Venice. But Tintoretto swept him away into the 
 schools of Venice, forcing him to the study of the 
 history of Venice itself. This was the new heaven of 
 invention into which he was suddenly summoned. 
 
IV.] MODERN PAINTERS 49 
 
 And at the same time came on him — and on the world 
 — "a new fatality," the consequences of which he little 
 saw at the moment — the discovery of photography. 
 
 At Venice with Harding, studying pictures and 
 sunsets, they were joined by Boxall, R.A., some time 
 keeper of the National Gallery ; and they saw much of 
 Mrs. Jameson — who was "absolutely "wdthout know- 
 ledge or instinct of painting " — but candid, industrious, 
 and pleasant. A fever drove him away — evidently 
 malarious, though he will not admit it — nobody goes 
 studying in Venice without catchi^^g malaria ; and he 
 dragged himself home in deep depression, and with a 
 vision of death before him. He now, he tells us, almost 
 for the first time, prayed to God with fervent belief and 
 deep humility. And there he had the consciousness of 
 his prayer being answered. The experience did not 
 last. Little by little the sense of direct relation with 
 Heaven passed away from him. He had scarcely 
 reached home in safety before he had " sunk back into 
 the faintness and darkness of the Under- World." 
 
 In Prcetei-ita (ii. 159), Ruskin has attempted to 
 describe his religious attitude whilst writing volume ii. 
 of Modern Painters ; but we must not forget that this was 
 looking backward forty years, and the whole of these 
 Confessions are coloured by a half-ironical humbleness 
 of temper very hard to measure. 
 
 " It is extremely di£&cult to define," he says, " much more to 
 explain, the religious temper in which I designed that second 
 volume. Whatever I know or feel now of the justice of God, 
 the nobleness of man, and the beauty of nature, I knew and 
 felt then, nor less strongly : but these firm faiths were confused 
 by the continual discovery, day by day, of error or limitation in 
 the doctrines I had been taught, and folHes or inconsistencies 
 
50 JOHN RUSION [chap. 
 
 in their teachers ; -while for myself, it seemed to me quite sure, 
 since my downfall of heart on last lea^-ing France, that I had no 
 part nor.lot in the privileges of the saints ; but, on the contrary, 
 had such share only in the things of God, as well-conducted 
 beasts and serenely-minded birds had," etc., etc., etc. 
 
 Ruskin never would see, as so many persons refuse 
 to see, how largely states of temperament, of health, 
 and of grief, hope, and despair, react on spiritual 
 impressions and religious elation. ''Experiences," like 
 ghosts, are too often problems for the physician. 
 Ruskin's attitude as to religion, whilst he never became 
 a sceptic or an atheist, continually shifted, and was in 
 curiously close relation to his moral, mental, and 
 physical equilibrium at the time. 
 
 The very sentence just cited ends in some delicious 
 raillery about the coat of arms which the prosperous 
 wine merchant now chose to place upon the carriage 
 he set up at this time. It Avas varied from the family 
 coat of Ruskin : sable, a chevron between six lance-heads, 
 argent, by an addition on the chevron of three cross- 
 crosslets gules ("in case of my still becoming a 
 clergyman ! ") ; and for crest, after much poring over 
 heraldic books, a boar's head was chosen, and the 
 motto "age, quod agis" — a crest which John would 
 perversely call a pig, and himself as "Little Pig"; 
 and the motto was exchanged into " To-day." It was 
 this crest of the Boar's head which occasioned the 
 famous rhyme in Punch (?by Tom Taylor) — 
 
 " I paints and paints, 
 Hears no complaints, 
 
 And sells before I 'm dry, 
 TiU savage Euskin 
 Sticks his tusk in, 
 
 And nobody will buy." 
 
IV.] MODERN PAINTERS 51 
 
 And in further allusion to the Boar, he took as his 
 patron saint Saint Anthony of Padua, who is repre- 
 sented in solitude amongst the swine. 
 
 All the winter of 1845-46, Euskin was at work on 
 his second volume, which appeared early in the summer 
 of 1846. He had two distinct instincts to satisfy in it, 
 he writes : the first, to explain the quality of the 
 beauty in all happy conditions of living organism ; the 
 second, to illustrate two schools then unknown to the 
 British public — that of Angelico in Florence, and 
 Tintoretto in Venice. The style of the book was 
 modelled on Hooker, which was a pity. And, not 
 unnaturally, when it was ended, he felt tired. "It is 
 usually read only for its pretty passages," he thinks; 
 "its theory of beauty is scarcely ever noticed"; and 
 its praise of Tintoretto did not induce the nation to 
 buy any good example of him. But it led, he feels 
 sure, to a truer estimate of early religious art. and to 
 a deeper interest in the painters he had glorified. 
 Yes ! it did this — and it did much more. His personal 
 and literary influence turned the taste of the age 
 towards what the French call the "Primitives," and 
 secured for them an adequate place in our National 
 Gallery and public and private collections. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 THE SEVEX LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 Hardly were the last pages of Modern Painters, vol. il., 
 returned "for Press," when the tired writer and his 
 family set off again for the Alps, That unfailing 
 remedy for all ills was not tried in vain — "the power 
 of mountains in solemnising the thoughts and puri- 
 fying the heart." He records the "immeasurable 
 delight" of watching the ship plunging through the 
 waves towards Calais pier, and the prospect "of the 
 horses' heads set straight for Mont Blanc to-morrow." 
 They crossed the Mont Cenis to Turin, Verona, and 
 Venice ; and John tried, with scanty success, to convert 
 his father from Modern Painters to Venetian archi- 
 tecture. The son was impetuous ; but the father was 
 obstinate. John says that he too was "viciously 
 stubborn " as well as impetuous ; and "more and more 
 persuaded every day that everybody was always 
 wrong." But he insists that his arrogance was founded 
 not on vanity, but in sorrow. "Accuse me not of 
 arrogance," he says, "if, having walked with nature," 
 his one thought was to learn, to teach truth, not to 
 win fame. And this is absolutely true. 
 
 They all returned to Chamouni, where more studies 
 of rocks and glaciers were made with intense rapture. 
 The martinets who used to sneer at the sonorous 
 
 52 
 
v.] THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE 53 
 
 sentences of these art books as if it were clap-trap 
 word-painting, coloured to catch the groundlings, might 
 be surprised to see in the private diaries of this 
 time the same realist painting, the same overflowing 
 language. These were mere notes, jotted down at 
 night, intended for no eye but his own, to record 
 impressions ; and yet they have the precision, the glow, 
 and even the music of his finished books. Ruskin, like 
 Stephen Phillips's "Herod," "thought in gold and 
 dreamed in silver" words, even in his inmost medi- 
 tations. The jottings of his private day-book fell 
 spontaneously into magnificent imagery and glowing 
 pictures — 
 
 ^''August 23 (1840). — Eained all day — note the intense 
 scarletty purple of the shattered larch stems, wet, opposed 
 with yellow from decomposing turpentine ; the alder stems 
 looking much like birch, covered with the white branchy moss 
 that looks like coral." 
 
 This bit — much the same in words as one of Turner's 
 note-sketches — was not printed for nearly fifty years 
 after it was written do^vn. And here is another bit 
 from the diary (26th July 1854) — 
 
 " I was up by the mill-stream this evening, and climbed to 
 the right of it, up among the sloping waves of grass. I never 
 was so struck by theh* intense beauty — the masses of walnut 
 shading them with their broad, cool, clearly-formed leafage ; 
 the grey glossy stems of the cherry trees, as if bound round 
 tight with satin, twining and writhing against the shadows ; 
 the tall pollards of oak set here and there in the soft banks, as 
 if to show their smoothness by contrast, yet themselves beauti- 
 ful, rugged, and covered with deep brown and bright silver 
 moss. Here and there a chestnut — sharp, and soft, and 
 starry ; and always the steep banks, one above another, 
 melting into terraces of pure velvet, gilded with corn ; here 
 
54 JOHN RUSKIX [chap. 
 
 and there a black— jet-black— crag of slate breaking into a 
 frown above them, and mouldering away down into the gloomy- 
 torrent bed, fringed on its opposite edge, a grisly cliff, with 
 delicate birch and pine, rising against the snow light of Mont 
 Blanc. And opposite always the mighty Varens lost in the 
 cloud its ineflFable walls of crag." 
 
 Your Alpine tourist does not look in this way, does 
 not see in this way, and his diary at night is not so 
 kept. But Euskin felt like this and Avrote like this — 
 he could not help it — even to remind himself in private 
 of the vision in which he had taken such joy. 
 
 Eeturning home, the young author found himself 
 already famous and welcomed in the world of letters. 
 Miss Mitford found him "the most charming person 
 that I have ever known." John Murray sought to 
 enlist him for Albemarle Street, and Lockhart enrolled 
 him in the Quarterly Review. He was induced to write 
 a review of Lord Lindsay's Christian Art. He says he 
 knew that Lord Lindsay knew more about Italian 
 painting than he did himself, but there was another 
 motive — "one of an irresistible nature." Charlotte, 
 Lockhart's daughter, " a Scottish fairy, White Lady, 
 and witch of the fatallest sort, looking as if she had 
 just risen out of the stream in Khymer's Glen, and 
 could only be seen by favouring glance of moonlight 
 over the Eildons," was met at the house of Sir 
 Humphry Davy's widow. John naturally fell in 
 love with Sir AValter Scott's fairy grand-daughter, 
 sighed in silence, could never come to any serious 
 speech with her, "she didn't care for a word I said"; 
 and so at the dinner-table quarrelled with Mr. Glad- 
 stone about Neapolitan prisons across her, as usual did 
 his wooing by the pen, wrote on Christian Art in order 
 
v.] THE SEVEN LAATPS OF ARCHITECTURE 55 
 
 to charm her, found it hopeless, went away in despair, 
 again fell into despondency and sickness ; and Charlotte 
 Lockhart, as we know, married Hope Scott. 
 
 Reduced again to a heap of white ashes in the spring 
 of 1847, he retired to Ambleside and fell into a state of 
 despondency such as he did not know again till 1861 ; 
 and what with disappointment, dyspepsia, and the 
 tedium of his Quarterly article, he came home in such 
 a state of ill-health that his parents sent him off again 
 to be treated by Dr. Jephson at Leamington. And 
 now, failing in love, he surrendered himself to friend- 
 ship. He says, " I get distinctively attached to places, 
 to pictures, to dogs, cats, and girls" — but to a soul- 
 kinship with men he was not at all disposed. Let no 
 one suppose that John Ruskin was a man without 
 friends, and did not cherish many life-long friendships. 
 He was one of the most lovable and loving of men, 
 full of sympathy and open heart. But his friendships 
 with men were not that consuming passion as was his 
 love of mountains, seas, pets, and paintings So off he 
 went to visit Macdonald Macdonald at Crossmount 
 beneath Schehallien in the Highlands. Disgusted with 
 "sport," in melancholy mood, he dug up thistles on 
 the moor, lay awake listening to the hooting of the 
 owls, and sadly pondered upon this life — on Calvinist 
 religion — and the life to come. 
 
 Now here occurs a big gap of two years in the 
 author's autobiography ; and it must remain a gap in 
 our story. The tenth chapter of Proeterita ends with 
 the autumn of 1847; and the eleventh chapter opens 
 in July 1849. During the two years there took place 
 his marriage, the bridegroom's dangerous illness, his 
 settling in Park Street, London, and his writing the 
 
56 JOHN RUSKIN [chap. 
 
 Seven Lamps of Architecture. Of all this lie has told us 
 nothing, and what concerns the public can be told in a 
 few words. The parents came to the conclusion that 
 John's health and spirits were only to be cured by 
 matrimony; and they pressed him to marry the 
 daughter of their old Perthshire friends, the Grays. 
 Seven years before this they had been visitois at 
 Heme Hill ; and the girl had challenged John to write 
 her a fairy-story, which he cheerfully undertook. It 
 was the King of the Golden River — a medley of Grimm, 
 Dickens, and the Alps. Accordingly, somewhat 
 suddenly and perhaps unthinkingly, John Ruskin 
 was married at Perth to Euphemia Chalmers Gray on 
 10th April 1848— a day famous in the annals of London 
 Chartism. She was a grand beauty, of high spirit, 
 whom all the world knows as the triumphant wife in 
 the famous picture, "The Order for Release, " in the 
 Tate Gallery. On their way south, Ruskin caught 
 a sharp attack in the lungs whilst sketching in Salisbury 
 Cathedral, and his life was in great danger. Foreign 
 travel, the invariable panacea, and in company with 
 the whole family, was tried again ; but a fresh attack 
 in Normandy forced them back. At last they set off, 
 stopping at cathedral cities, John absorbed in archi- 
 tecture. In October the pair set up house in Park 
 Street, and Ruskin fell with fury on the compiling his 
 Seven Lamps, which occupied him the winter of 1848-49. 
 It was published in the spring of 1849; but in the 
 meantime the whole Ruskin family were off again to 
 the Alps — John with Couttet the guide and George 
 the valet, but apparently without his wife. 
 
 At any rate, her name is never mentioned in the 
 diaries of travel in the Alps, in Prceterita or Fors, nor 
 
v.] THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE 57 
 
 in the Memoirs sanctioned by the family and their 
 friends. Nor does it concern the public to tear down 
 the veil they have chosen to draw round the married 
 life of John Ruskin. It is evident that it brought no 
 happiness to either, and was but marriage in name, 
 though no suggestion of rupture or dispute has ever 
 been made known. During the whole time Ruskin 
 pursued his architectural studies with eagerness, wrote, 
 travelled, and collected materials. London and Society 
 bored him and irritated him, whilst they absorbed the 
 wife. He once took her to a ball at Venice, and to 
 Court at Buckingham Palace. In the summer of 1853 
 J. Everett Millais, aft-erwards President of the Royal 
 Academy, stayed with the Ruskins at Glenfinlas, where 
 he painted both. One day the wife left her husband 
 and returned to her parents. A suit in the Scotch 
 court for nullity of marriage was brought by the wife, 
 and was not defended by the husband. Euphemia 
 Gray then married the brilliant painter, and was well 
 known as Lady Millais in the world of London and of 
 Perthshire. John returned to his parents at Denmark 
 Hill, and remained with them there till their deaths. 
 Neither the marriage, nor the nullification of it, seriously 
 affected his habits or his books. It is not the duty of 
 a biographer to pass judgment on this miserable episode 
 in a chequered life. 
 
 The Seven Lamps of Architecture had been looked for 
 with lively expectancy by the world of culture, and it did 
 not disappoint their hopes. The book did for the art of 
 building what Modern Painters had done for the art of 
 painting : it shook conventional ideas to the root, and 
 flung forth a body of new and pregnant ideas. It was 
 marked by the same fearlessness, a dogmatism as great, 
 
58 JOHN RUSKIN [chap. 
 
 and an even more stirring eloquence. It was the first 
 of these works to appear with illustrations; and it 
 opened a brilliant series of writings, in which the critic 
 combined an irresistible gift of language with an ex- 
 quisite mastery of the pencil. It addressed also a much 
 larger world than Modern Painters could do. The 
 lovers of Turner, Hunt, Angelico, and Tintoretto were 
 at that date few. But all men could see or take 
 interest in public buildings ; and the young reformer 
 boldly laid down laws for ordinary homes and even 
 house decoration. The Lamps accordingly lighted up 
 a new region and shone across a far wider circle of 
 readers. 
 
 The Seven Lamps (and he tells us the difiiculty he 
 had to prevent their becoming eight or even nine) were 
 Truth, Beauty, Power, Sacrifice, Obedience, Labour, 
 Memory ; and to each of these moral, intellectual, and 
 spiritual ideas to be represented in stone, he devoted 
 a chapter of marvellous ingenuity, enthusiasm, and 
 eloquence. Needless to add that they bristled with 
 paradoxes, contradictions, sophisms, and wild hypo- 
 theses. It would require an entire volume to state 
 them all, and three more volumes to analyse and dis- 
 entangle them from the truths to which they clung like 
 the ivy and mosses on a tower of limestone The 
 truths were cemented into the foundations, and have 
 stood solid and unshaken for two generations. The 
 law of Truth in Art stands beside Carlyle's protest 
 against " Shams ! " That a building should look what 
 it is, and be what it is built to serve — no one now dares 
 dispute. That beauty itself comes second to truth, 
 and must be sought in the architecture of Nature her- 
 self; that the art of building reflects the life and 
 
v.] THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE 59 
 
 manners, the passions and religion, of those who build ; 
 that in building we have to consider the hands by 
 which it is wrought ; that art is not an end in itself, 
 but the instrument wherein moral, intellectual, national, 
 and social ideals are expressed ; — all this is now the 
 alphabet of sound art. 
 
 The Seven Lamps is the work which the author him- 
 self has most vehemently criticised, and in which he 
 seems to take the least interest. It is hardly referred 
 to in Prceterifa, or in Fors, except by way of disparage- 
 ment. Not, perhaps, that he specially rejects the 
 opinions there expressed, except his early Puritanism, 
 but he condemns it for the purpurei j)anni of the book, 
 its rhetoric, and display of word-painting. It must 
 be confessed that there is in it more conscious literary 
 gesticulation than in any other of his works, and its 
 whole style is in contrast with the simplicity and ease 
 of his social writings. But it is the eloquence of 
 passion, not of display ; and if it be too often splendid 
 declamation, the grandeur of the language is in har- 
 mony with the elevation of the thought. One does not 
 condemn the Sermons of Bossuet, or the diatribes of 
 Milton, because they may be accused of "eloquence." 
 I am disposed to hold that English prose has no more 
 impressive passage than the famous peroration to the 
 "Lamp of Sacrifice." It is oddly enough about 
 "Luxuriance of Ornament" — 
 
 "Ornament cannot ]>e overcharged if it be good, and is 
 always overcharged when it is had. . . . Those very styles of 
 haughty simplicity owe part of their pleasantness to contrast, 
 and would be wearisome if universal. They are but the rests 
 and monotones of the art ; it is to far happier, far higher, 
 exaltation that we owe those fair fronts of variegated mosaic. 
 
60 JOHN BUSKIN [chap. 
 
 charged with wild fancies and dark hosts of imagery, thicker 
 and quainter than ever filled the depth of midsummer dream ; 
 those vaulted gates, treUised with close leaves ; those window 
 labyrrnths of twisted tracery and starry light ; those misty 
 masses of multitudinous pinnacle and diademed tower ; the 
 only witnesses, perhaps, that remain to us of the faith and 
 fear of nations. All else for which the builders sacrificed has 
 passed away — all their living interests, and aims, and achieve- 
 ments. We know not for what they laboured, and we see 
 no evidence of their reward. Victory, wealth, authority, 
 happiness — all have departed, though bought by many a 
 bitter sacrifice. But of them and their life and their toil 
 upon the earth, one reward, one evidence, is left to us in 
 those grey heaps of deep-^vrought stone. They have taken 
 with them to the grave their powers, their honours, and their 
 errors ; but they have left us their adoration." 
 
 No man of feeling -svho has in him the echoes of this 
 funeral sermon can stand before a great mediaeval 
 cathedral without being conscious that it has gained 
 for him a new meaning, a sublimer pathos. 
 
 And what teaching there is in the famous lesson as 
 to " Chiaroscuro in Architecture " ! 
 
 " I do not believe that any building was ever truly great, 
 unless it had mighty masses, vigorous and deep, of shadow 
 mingled with its surface. And among the first habits that 
 a young architect should learn, is that of thinking in shadow, 
 not looking at a design in its miserable, liny skeleton ; but 
 conceiving it as it will be when the dawn lights it and the 
 dusk leaves it ; when its stones will be hot and its crannies 
 cool ; when the lizards will bask on the one and the birds 
 build in the other. Let him design with the sense of cold 
 and heat upon him ; let him cut out the shadows, as men dig 
 wells in unwatered plains, and lead along the lights, as a 
 founder does his hot metal ; let him keep the full command 
 of both, and see that he knows how they fall, and where they 
 fade. His paper lines and proportions are of no value ; all 
 
v.] TEE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE 61 
 
 that he has to do must be done by spaces of light and dark- 
 ness ; and his business is to see that the one is broad and bold 
 enough not to be sw'allowed up by twilight, and the other 
 deep enough not to be dried like a shallow pool by a noonday 
 
 Who can forget the hymn to Giotto's Campanile, or 
 to the porticoes of Rouen and Lucca, and the mosaics 
 of St. Mark, or the noble protest against "Restora- 
 tion," and that counsel of perfection to raise permanent 
 homes for ourselves, and to respect that "sanctity in 
 a good man's house that cannot be renewed " ? 
 
 M. Jacques Bardoux of Paris, in his excellent book 
 John Buskin, insists that his principal art works are 
 those on architecture, and that the Seven Lamps and 
 the Stones of Venice are the two of most importance. 
 So far as relates to his aesthetic teaching this is true. 
 It seems that the Seven Lamps has had more visible 
 and practical ejffect on cur modern life than any other 
 of his books, in spite of all its heresies and impractica- 
 bilities. And it must not be forgotten how saturated 
 it is Avith moral and social fervour, how inexorably it 
 forces art to find its right to exist in the moral law, 
 and how deeply it inspires in the artist the regard for 
 humanity and for duty. The gospel of the Sei}en 
 Lamps, after all, is not preached to inculcate the virtue 
 of Gothic traceries or Venetian arcades, but the 
 moralisation and the socialisation of all art — and 
 especially of the arts of building : which, in truth, 
 affect human life, domestic, social, political, and reli- 
 gious, far more constantly and more deeply than any 
 other art can do. 
 
 It was the studies and the meditation which are 
 embodied in the Seven Lamps that first turned John 
 
62 JOHN RUSKIN [chaf. v. 
 
 Kuskin from drawings to man, from wall pictures to 
 history and to social institutions — which converted him 
 at last from an aesthetic connoisseur into a moralist 
 who went forth into a scornful world to teach a new 
 Gospel of Work and a regeneration of the Social 
 Organism. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE STONES OF VENICE 
 
 Buskin's first sight of Venice was in 1835, at the age 
 of sixteen, when he was taken away from school after 
 the attack of pleurisy. In May 1841, when he was 
 twenty-two, during his Oxford career, he again spent 
 ten days in Venice. He recovered heart, he says, after 
 that melancholy winter in Eome, as the enchanted 
 world of Venice opened in front of him. He has told 
 us of his joys in those early days of the sea-city before 
 the railway was begun, "when everything, muddy 
 Brenta, vulgar villa, dusty causeway, sandy beach, 
 was equally rich in rapture, on the morning that 
 brought us in sight of Venice; and the black knot 
 of gondolas in the canal of Mestre were more beautiful 
 to me than a sunrise full of clouds all scarlet and gold." 
 How to tell, how to explain this rapture, he knows not. 
 His Venice, he says, like Turner's, had been chiefly 
 created for him by Byron ; but besides there was for 
 Ruskin " the childish passion of pleasure " in watching 
 the boats and the gondolas and marble walls rising 
 out of the salt sea, with hosts of little brown crabs on 
 them, and Titians inside. In his diary for 6th May 
 1841, he finds written :—" Thank God, I am here; it 
 is the Paradise of cities. . . . This and Chamouni are 
 my two bournes of earth." 
 
 63 
 
64 JOHN RUSKIN [chap. 
 
 It was in 1845, when he was twentj-six, that he 
 first rose to the full height of understanding Venetian 
 Art, with Harding the painter as his companion. It 
 was in his memorable visit to the School of St. 
 Roch that the power of Tintoretto's imagination first 
 impressed him, and "forced him into the study of the 
 history of Venice herself." He had made careful 
 sketches there both in 1841 and 1845; and on the 
 publication of the Seven Lamps, he resolved to write 
 the Stones of Venice, even before Modern Painters was 
 completed. The new work was to be no book on 
 Architecture, any more than Modern Painters was a 
 book on Painting. It was to be a concrete expansion 
 of the Lamps — the intimate action and reaction of 
 beliefs, ideals, and habits upon the external aspect of 
 nations, their art, their homes, and their public and 
 private buildings. It was to be a "sermon in stones," 
 addressed to the English nation, which had so many 
 historic analogies with the Venetian oligarchy — which 
 a similar career of pride, luxury^ and infidelity_3vould 
 eventually lead to the same decay. 
 
 In his second lecture in the Croivn of Wild Olive he 
 thus explains the purpose of his two main works on 
 Architecture : — 
 
 "The book I called the Seven Lamps was to show that 
 certain right states of temper and moral feeling were the magic 
 po^vers by which all good architecture without exception had 
 been produced. The Stones of Venice had, from beginning 
 to end, no other aim than to show that the Gothic architecture 
 of Venice had arisen out of, and indicated in all its features, 
 a state of pure national faith and of domestic virtue ; and 
 that its Eenaissance architecture had arisen out of, and in all 
 its features indicated, a state of concealed national infidehty 
 and of domestic corruption. ... In all mj past work, my 
 
VI.] THE STONES OF VENICE 65 
 
 endeavour has been to show that good architecture is essen- 
 tially religious — the production of a faithful and virtuous, not 
 of an infidel and corrupted people. But I have had also to 
 sho^y that good architecture is not ecclesiastical. . . . Good 
 architecture has always been the work of the commonalty, jiot 
 of the clergy. ... It is the manly language of a people inspired 
 by resolute and common purpose, and rendering resolute and 
 common fidelity to the legible laws of an undoubted Grod." 
 
 "The Stones of Venice" he wrote in the last volume 
 of Fors (1877), "taught the laws of constructive art, 
 and the dependence of all human work or edifice for 
 its beauty on the happy life of the workman." This 
 is, in truth, the keynote of Ruskin's philosophy of art, 
 and the link that binds his philosophy of art to his 
 ultimate social gospel. It embodies in essence a great 
 and most potent truth, if by "religion" we mean an 
 active reverence for a dominant moral ideal. The 
 idea is not new. For as I reminded Ruskin in 1876, 
 Auguste Comte had long before spoken of mediaeval 
 cathedrals as the most perfect expression of the ideas 
 and feelings of man's moral nature. To extend this 
 law to all forms of art, and to give it the absolute 
 character that Ruskin attempted, involves us in hope- 
 less paradox and mischievous absurdities. As I pointed 
 out to Fors Clavigera, the very pictures of Perugino, 
 Titian, and Tintoretto were painted in societies corrupt 
 and sensual to the core ; one side of Greek sculpture 
 was actually inspired by a detestable type of vice ; and 
 the triumphs of music date from times of curious 
 afi*ectation and rottenness. It never seems to have 
 occurred to Ruskin that the very works of imagina- 
 tion which he adores as almost divine were exactly 
 contemporary with others that he treats as emanation 
 
66 JOHN RUSKIN [chap. 
 
 from hell ; that many of the purest works of art were 
 produced in times of foul crime ; that some of the 
 most devout and moral of nations have expressed their 
 artistic longings in terms of vulgar commonplace. 
 
 Architecture is far the most social and national of all 
 the arts ; and, more than any other art, is affected by 
 the moral tone dominant in the society that employs it 
 and by the national ideals in vogue ; and that for the 
 simple reason that all great buildings are raised by the 
 public for the use of the public, and not by individual 
 artists for the enjoyment of a single owner. But, even 
 in architecture, these sweeping generalisations are wont 
 to burst like bubbles. Among the noblest buildings 
 ever raised by man, and those which have exerted the 
 most potent influence on after ages, we must count the 
 Parthenon, the Pantheon at Eome, the Church of 
 S. Sophia at Constantinople, and St. Paul's in London. 
 The Parthenon was nearly contemporary with the 
 comedies of Aristophanes and the Sophists of Athens 
 — not with Marathon and ^^schylus. The Pantheon, 
 now known to be of the age of Hadrian, was nearly 
 contemporary with the satires of Juvenal and the 
 epigrams of Martial. S. Sophia was built by the 
 husband of the Empress Theodora ; and St. Paul's was 
 building in the era of Charles li. and James II. Were 
 all these sublime masterpieces of the building art — 
 Parthenon, Pantheon, S. Sophia, and St. Paul's — "the 
 production of a faithful and virtuous people " ? It is 
 curious that they synchronise with some of the most 
 scathing satires upon personal and social corruption 
 that survive in Greek, Latin, Byzantine, and English 
 literature. 
 
 The author tells us of " the steady course of historical 
 
VI.] THE STONES OF VENICE 67 
 
 reading by which he prepared himself to write the 
 Stones of Venice " ; how his study of history prevented 
 him from accepting Catholic teaching, for all his 
 reverence for the Catholic art of the great ages ; how 
 about this time he made the inevitable discovery of the 
 falseness of the religious doctrines in which he had 
 been educated— what he calls " the breaking down of 
 his Puritan faith." In Prceterita he tells us the ten 
 years 1850-1860 were "for the most part wasted in 
 useless work," and he thus records the time in diary 
 fashion : — 
 
 "1851. Turner dies, while I am at first main work in 
 Venice for the Stones of Venice. 
 
 1852. Final work in Venice for Stones of Venice. Book 
 finished that winter. Six hundred quarto pages of notes of it, 
 fairly and closely written, now useless. Drawings as many — 
 of a sort — useless too." 
 
 But in this case, as in the rest of such autobiographic 
 notes, we must remember that it was written nearly 
 forty years after the events ; that his later years were 
 too often a time of sadness, of self-depreciation, of 
 recantation ; and that we cannot trust his memory or 
 take too literally what he has written of himself at any 
 date after his long illness of 1878. The Stones of Venice 
 was, in fact, one of the most rapidly executed and most 
 complete of all his works. He went to Venice in 
 November 1849, and settled there with his wife. He 
 plunged into minute study of the Ducal Palace, 
 St. Mark's, and other buildings, made exact drawings, 
 measurements, and copious notes, and sought to make 
 out by original research the dates, sources, and origin 
 of each fragment — the capitals, balustrades, colonnades 
 — literally the stones^ not the buildings, of Venice. 
 
68 JOHN RUSKIN [chap. 
 
 He remained working in Venice the four months of 
 -winter, and returned in the spring of 1850 to write the 
 first volume and to prepare the illustrations. For 
 these illustrations he employed some of the most 
 accomplished engravers of the English school before 
 its decline into photographic reproduction. These 
 exquisite pieces are still in great demand, and add to 
 the bibliographic value of the first edition. Ruskin 
 personally superintended all these engravings from his 
 own sketches, working them up to the highest point of 
 perfection, again and again having fresh touches and 
 delicate shades introduced. He founded, in truth, a 
 real school of engravers, which, in spite of its excessive 
 refinement, will always be an honour to English art. 
 And his own part, as author of the original designs, 
 also as chief master of the school which reproduced 
 them, entitles him to be considered as the real creator 
 of these fascinating pieces in their final form of 
 engravings. 
 
 Working mainly in London — where he now lived in 
 Park Street, and was even to be seen in society and at 
 court — Ruskin brought out the first volume of the 
 Stones of Venice early in 1851. In spite of the indigna- 
 tion of architects and critics not a few, the book was 
 received with applause, and undoubtedly raised his re- 
 putation Avith the world. Of course, it stirred a cloud of 
 controversies, which fastened on the social and industrial 
 heresies of the new prophet as well as on his artistic 
 dogmas. It was the year of the first Great Inter- 
 national Exhibition, when Queen Victoria and Prince 
 Albert called the world of Art, Invention, and Labour 
 to compare their works in the great glass house that 
 the gardener, Sir Joseph Paxton, had raised in Hyde 
 
VI.] THE STONES OF VENICE 69 
 
 Park. It was the crucial epoch when Early Victorian 
 sestheticism first began to ask itself whether its ideals 
 and forms were the absolute canons of taste, if the 
 Houses of Parliament and the Royal Exchange were 
 the last word in building, and if Maclise and Etty 
 really held the field of painting against all rivals. 
 
 Thomas Carlyle, then a notable force in the new 
 world that was opening, hailed the book with joy. 
 
 " A strange, unexpected, and, I believe, most true and 
 excellent Sermon in Stones, as well as the best piece of school- 
 mastering in Architectonics, from which I hope to learn in a 
 great many ways. The spirit and purpose of these critical 
 studies of yours are a singular sign of the times to me, and a 
 very gratifying one. Right good speed to you, and victorious 
 arrival on the farther shore ! It is a quite new ' Renaissance,' 
 I believe, we are getting into just now ; either towards new, 
 wider manhood, high again as the eternal stars, or else into 
 final death, and the mask of Gehenna for evermore ! " 
 
 So far Sartor ! — and we see that John Ruskin was not 
 the only writer, in the middle of the last century, who 
 used violent language and nourished big vaticinations. 
 And Charlotte Bronte wrote : " The Stones of Venice seem 
 nobly laid and chiselled. How grandly the quarry of 
 vast marbles is disclosed ! Mr. Ruskin seems to me 
 one of the few genuine writers, as distinguished from 
 book-makers, of this age." A just and clear-sighted 
 thought, worthy of Jane Eyre, with her way of seeing 
 through outward show to the soul within the husk. 
 
 In 1852 Ruskin made another long stay in Venice; 
 and, as he wrote thence to the poet Rogers, the en- 
 chantment of the city began to wane for him ; and he 
 wishes that it may become at last a ruin rather than a 
 modern Frenchified town. But he pushed on with his 
 
 LlfOg^'"^ 
 
70 JOHN RUSKIN [chap. 
 
 book, having left Park Street for Heme Hill ; and at 
 last, early in 1853, the Stones of Venice was completed, 
 and the second and third volumes published by Smith 
 and Elder. 
 
 The Stones of Venice, we have seen, was designed as 
 a concrete expansion of the Seven Lamps — to give 
 historical and material proof of the intimate reaction 
 of a noble type of public and private life on the edifices 
 erected by the nation it inspired. It is less fanciful 
 than the Seven Lamps, less discursive, much less dis- 
 figured by rhetoric, less combative, and yet quite as 
 resolute in purpose. The book is thus the most 
 coherent and organic of all Euskin's larger works, and 
 in its main aim — to draw attention to the unique 
 merits of Venetian buildings and to protest against the 
 fashionable imitation of Palladian buildings — it must be 
 pronounced to have achieved a notable success. Much 
 of all he preached as to the slavery of the modern 
 workman to his machines, as to the moral, social, and 
 aesthetic evils of mechanical handiwork, as to the 
 dreariness of the conventional imitation of woods and 
 marbles, as to the monotony of perpendicular traceries 
 and debased triglyphs, has been burnt into the minds 
 of our generation. 
 
 One of the most remarkable eifects of his study has 
 been the interest he has aroused in Byzantine archi- 
 tecture — the real parent of Venetian — 3k style which 
 our age is much more inclined to study and adapt than 
 it is inclined to study and adapt the Venetian models 
 proper. It is not apparent that Ruskin at all under- 
 stood the real relation of the buildings and arts he 
 found at Venice to their true sources in the Byzantine 
 school and in Greek invention. The half century that 
 
VI.] THE STONES OF VENICE 71 
 
 has passed since lie wrote has thrown a flood of light 
 upon the history of Byzantine art and its far-radiating 
 influence on all forms of art in the West. It is a 
 remarkable instance of Ruskin's genius that, long before 
 the special studies in Southern Italy and the Mediter- 
 ranean seaboard which have given us so much new 
 information, he does seem to have said nothing 
 which the later studies have disproved, if, indeed, he 
 does not seem from time to time implicitly to have felt 
 the truth. 
 < The fine enthusiasm with which again and again 
 in the Stones of Venice Ruskin pleads the cause of the 
 freedom of the workman from the degrading monotony 
 of mechanical repetition, has had indirect effects far 
 and wide, in places which are not devoted to debate 
 architectural styles. It is the obvious introduction to 
 his second career of Socialist reformer, which began 
 eight or ten years later ; and it is the conclusive proof 
 that one dominant idea inspired Ruskin's entire work 
 — from Modern Painters to the last letter in Fors — the 
 idea that all high art is the production of a faithful 
 and virtuous age; that religion, justice, and good 
 order are the roots of which the fine arts are but the 
 flowers. 
 
 Unluckily, in the very act of proving to the world 
 that all great art is essentially religious, John Ruskin 
 proved to himself that the Puritan type of religion in 
 which he had been trained, and which he fervently 
 believed till the full age of manhood, would not stand 
 the test ; and when he began to modify and recast it, 
 he found himself naturally in very deep waters. Writ- 
 ing from Venice in 1877 {Fors, Ixxvi.), he goes so far 
 as to say that "the religious teaching of those books, 
 
72 JOHN RUSKIN [chap. 
 
 and all the more for the sincerity of it, is misleading 
 — sometimes even poisonous; always, in a manner, 
 ridiculous." This, as usual, is rather too violent. It 
 was no doubt written at a time of excitement ; but it 
 is republished in the authorised edition of 1896. It is 
 true that in the decline of his mental stamina, Ruskin 
 emerged from the theological darkness in which he 
 groped through middle life into a rather vague lorm 
 of orthodox belief. But it is significant that a great 
 book, written to prove that all high art is produced 
 only by " fidelity to the legible laws of an undoubted 
 God," is declared by its author, at the close of his 
 career, to be based on religious teaching w^hich he now 
 finds to be misleading, poisonous, and ridiculous. 
 
 This goes very deep down to the radical defects of 
 Ruskin's entire teaching. He undertook to found a 
 comprehensive scheme of the imaginative faculties on 
 a creed which he had imbibed as a child and held with 
 childlike fervour, without any solid study of its philo- 
 sophy, or its history, or its social fruits. When all 
 this was forced on him by the prophetic homilies of 
 Thomas Carlyle, and by the facts of society and art 
 he -witnessed in CathoHc countries, and which he learned 
 about Catholic ages, his rapid imagination and his 
 sympathetic nature took fire and tore ojQf, as did Sartor 
 himself, "the rags of Houndsditch, " as Carlyle called 
 the Biblical orthodoxy of his youth. As in theology, 
 so in history ; as in art, so in economics, Ruskin was 
 perpetually constructing a priori out of his own head 
 new schemes and theories, without any serious or 
 systematic knowledge of theology or history, or 
 economics, or even art. 
 
 But having said this, let us never forget that John 
 
VI.] THE STONES OF VENICE 73 
 
 Euskin was a man of rare genius, of what one of his 
 French admirers has called "a palpitating imagina- 
 tion," and withal he was a man of delicate moral 
 sensitiveness, of acute human sympathy and vision. 
 He had some share of that Gift of the Ithuriel spear 
 by which frauds are detected, which enabled men with 
 such different spirits as Plato, St. John, and the 
 Mystics, or Burke, or Shelley, to give us wondrous 
 hints and guesses, beautiful consolations and hopes, 
 even in their fancies, their paradoxes, and their 
 illusions. 
 
 All that genius and insight could do without sys- 
 tematic learning or patient reasoning, that John Ruskin 
 did. From the point of view of a scientific historian, 
 it would need long years, not a few crowded months, 
 to master the history of Venice, much less that of 
 Italy, for the whole Middle Ages. A serious archae- 
 ologist would spend as many years as Ruskin could 
 give of months to unearth all the seaweed-overladen 
 and buried antiquities of St. Mark's, and the palaces 
 of the Grand Canal. A man who knew little of theo- 
 logy except the Bible and the volumes of sermons 
 that were admitted into a strict Calvinist house- 
 hold, was not equipped to lecture Auguste Comte, 
 Mill, Buckle, and Herbert Spencer alx)ut the evolution 
 of civilisation or the history of religion. Nor was it 
 quite decent to mock at tlie economists from Adam 
 Smith to Henry Sidgwick with no more knowledge 
 of their books than has any aesthetic curate in deacon's 
 orders. He never could be brought to understand 
 this. His education in a kind of Puritan nursery, and 
 the hard shell of egoism in which his whole early life 
 was cribbed, made this impossible. And so, John 
 
74 JOHN RUSKIN [chap, 
 
 Kuskin went forth to take up his parable against them 
 all — artists, critics, historians, philosophers, theologians, 
 and economists, with all the fervour and devotion of 
 an early Christian martyr in the Roman Empire — and 
 Avith the same result. He lived through a long life 
 of contempt, and almost of persecution. But there 
 was something in what he preached that has lived — • 
 which philosophers, theologians, and economists never 
 could altogether supply. 
 
 Although the Stones of Venice is less fanciful, less 
 discursive, less rhetorical, and less combative than 
 Modern Painters or the Seven Lamj)S, this is only in a 
 matter of degree and by comparison. There is plenty 
 of fantasy, excursion, rhetoric, and combat in the book. 
 But it may be called the most organic and coherent 
 work of a man who openly scoffed at things organic and 
 coherent. It had, of course, descriptions of scenes and 
 places not a few — some of them as true and beautiful as 
 anything that Euskin ever wrote. No man can forget 
 that exordium in the first chapter of the second volume 
 of the Stones on the first approach to Venice — a piece 
 overcharged indeed with colour and overcrowded with 
 words — but how true, how impressive! The salt- 
 breeze of the open lagoon ; the white moaning sea-birds ; 
 the masses of black weed; the sun declining behind 
 the belfry tower of the lonely island church, "St. 
 George of the Seaweed " ; the hills of Arqua in a dark 
 cluster of purple pyramids ; the chain of the Alps 
 girding the northern horizon; a wall of jagged blue, 
 vv'ith here and there a wilderness of misty precipices 
 seen through its clefts ; then the shadowy Rialto as 
 it throws its colossal curve slowly forth from behind 
 the palace of the Camerlenghi, so delicate, so adaman- 
 
VI.] THE STONES OF VENICE 75 
 
 tine, strong as a mountain cavern, graceful as a bow 
 just bent; and then the boat darts forth upon the 
 breadth of silver sea— the Ducal Palace, flushed with 
 its sanguine veins, looking to the snowy palace of Our 
 Lady of Salvation. Yes ! we know it well. All this 
 is a " purple patch " of redundant rhetoric. True ! but 
 he who wrote it out felt Venice to move him so. We, 
 too, feel it move us. And we cannot forget it. 
 
 1 am wont to recall that comparison between St. 
 Mark's and a quiet English cathedral in the fourth 
 chapter of the second volume as one of the most subtly 
 felt and mellow landscapes in words in all our litera- 
 ture. How exquisitely touched in are "the small 
 formalisms mixed with its serene sublimity" in the 
 Cathedral Close — its secluded, continuous, drowsy 
 felicities, and the influence of those dark towers on 
 all who have passed through the lonely square for 
 centuries, and on all who have seen them rising far 
 away over the wooded plain. And, then, we pass on 
 to the crowded and resonant alleys round St. Mark's, 
 with all their colour, lamps, virgins, and confusion of 
 balconies, pergolas, and awnings, till the vision of 
 St. Mark's opens on us — a multitude of pillars and 
 white domes ; a treasure-heap, partly of gold, and partly 
 of opal and mother-of-pearl; and five great vaulted 
 porches, ceiled with fair mosaic, and beset ^vith sculpture 
 of alabaster, clear as amber and delicate as ivory. True ! 
 it is all overcharged like a banquet scene by Kubens ! 
 But how vividly is it seen ; how deeply is it felt ! 
 
 And then the tomb of Doge Andrea Dandolo in the 
 Baptistery of St. Mark's (vol. ii.) and the tomb of Can 
 Grande at Verona (vol. iii.) ! Has any solemn monu- 
 ment ever been presented to our memories with pathos 
 
76 JOHN RUSKIN [chap. 
 
 so true and painting so real ? Tens of thousands go 
 yearly to look on them from what Ruskin tells them, 
 who would have passed otherwise with an incurious 
 glance and a sentence from the guide-book. And, of 
 course, though he intends to stick close to his subject 
 — the Stones of Venice — there is a great deal about 
 painting, Fra Angelico the Florentine, Rubens the 
 Fleming, who are exalted to the skies, and about 
 Murillo the Spaniard, and Salvator Rosa, the South 
 Italian, who are denounced as men who sought plea- 
 sure in what is horrible and disgusting. And all this 
 to explain the Stones of Venice. But such is our 
 author's way ; and for all its circumvolutions, it is a 
 very fascinating way, and deeply suggestive even in 
 its eccentricities and its illusions. 
 
 There is much fine moral and social edification in 
 the book too ! All that he tells us how the life and 
 work of the actual worker is after all the essence of 
 Art; the scorn that he pours on the pitiful tricks of 
 imitating the grain of fine wood and marble on plaster 
 and deal boards ; the meaning of education as distinct 
 from the cramming in of information ; the teaching as 
 to true and false ornament, as to variety in ornament, 
 as to the dignity of pure colour — this and a thousand 
 other suggestions make it, as Carlyle truly said, a 
 sermon in stones. 
 
 In the sixth chapter of the second volume is a 
 passage about the mental slavery of modern workmen 
 which may be said to be the creed, if it be not the origin, 
 of a new industrial school of thought. It is as powerful 
 in expression as it is elevated in conception. 
 
 " Men may be beaten, chained, tormented, yoked like 
 cattle, slaughtered like summer flies, and yet remain in one 
 
vi.] THE STONES OF VENICE 77 
 
 sense, and the best sense, free. But to smother their souls 
 within them, to blight and hew into rotting pollards the 
 suckling branches of their human intelligence, to make the 
 flesh and skin, which, after the worm's work on it, is to see 
 God, into leathern thongs to yoke machinery with, — this is to 
 be slave-masters indeed ; and there might be more freedom in 
 England, though her feudal lord's lightest words were worth 
 men's lives, and though the blood of the vexed husbandman 
 dropped in the furrows of her fields, than there is while the 
 animation of her multitudes is sent like fuel to feed the factory 
 smoke, and the strength of them is given daily to be wasted 
 into the fineness of a web, or racked into the exactness of a 
 Hne." 
 
 This is to wander far from the Palaces of Venice. 
 But it is to come very close to the Social Democracy of 
 to-day. 
 
CHAPTEE Yll 
 
 SOCIETY — CRITICISM — LECTURING 
 
 The period of Ruskin's life between the completion 
 of the first volume of the Stones of Venice and the 
 articles entitled Unto this Last (1851-1860) was a time 
 of varied activity and of many publications and in- 
 cidents in his career. His father collected his FoemSy 
 a work now in greater esteem at book sales than with 
 the higher criticism, as we have already noted. And 
 in 1851 he also suffered to be published The King of 
 tlie Golden Biver, which ten years before he had written 
 to amuse Euphemia Gray in her childhood. It was 
 illustrated by Doyle, and had a great success. He 
 now lived in London, and went not a little into society 
 — visiting Samuel Rogers, Lord and Lady Mount 
 Temple, Lord Houghton, Thomas Carlyle, Frederick 
 D. Maurice, the Marshalls of Leeds, Lady Davy, and 
 Dr. Whewell, the Master of Trinity College, Cambridge. 
 He was no doubt never at home in London society, 
 but he met from time to time those who became his 
 friends through life. Mr. Colling wood has printed a 
 private and humorous letter to his mother, which is 
 worthy of Dickens : — 
 
 " My dearest Mother, — Horrible party last night — stiff 
 — large — dull — fidgety — strange — run-against-everybody — 
 know-nobody sort of party. Naval people. Young lady 
 78 
 
CHAP. VII.] SOCIETY— CRITICISM— LECTURING 79 
 
 claims acquaintance with me — I know as much of her as of 
 Queen Pomare— Talk : get away as soon as I can — ask who 
 
 she is — Lady ; as wise as I was before. Introduced to a 
 
 black man with chin in collar. Black man condescending — I 
 abuse different things to black man : chiefly the House of 
 Lords. Black man says he lives in it— asks where I live — 
 don't want to tell him — obliged— go away and ask who he is 
 
 _( ) ; as wise as I was before. Introduced to a young 
 
 lady — young lady asks if I like drawing — go away and ask 
 
 who she is— Lady ( ). Keep away with back to wall and 
 
 look at watch. Get away at last. Very sulky this morning 
 —hope my father better — dearest love to you both." 
 
 And the letter to his father about a drawing-room 
 presentation at Buckingham Palace (May 1850) is 
 almost as lively : — 
 
 " The most awkward crush I ever saw in my life — the pit 
 at the Surrey may perhaps show the like — nothing else. The 
 floor was covered with the ruins of ladies' dresses, torn lace, 
 and fallen flowers. . . . The Queen gave her hand very 
 graciously, but looked bored. Poor thing ! well she might be, 
 with about a quarter of a mile square of people to bow to." 
 
 He now broke out in a new place, with a pamphlet 
 on Church organisation. Notes on the Construction of 
 Sheep/olds was not a practical manual of husbandry, as 
 some Northern farmers took it to be, and complained 
 that they had been trapped into buying it by the title. 
 It was a religious appeal to High Anglicans and strict 
 Presbyterians to find a modus vivendi in a new Eirenikon 
 — "one fold and one Shepherd" — the Anglican to 
 abate his sacerdotal pretensions, and the Presbyterian 
 no longer to stickle about the title of the Christian 
 Overseer. The pamphlet, for all its kindly advice, did 
 not accomplish the re-union of Protestant persuasions ; 
 and the benevolent herald of peace was astonished to 
 
80 JOHN RUSKIN [chap. 
 
 find how much deeper theological and ecclesiastical 
 polemics could cut into men's beliefs than ever had 
 been dreamed of in the placid philosophy of Heme 
 Hill. It was not many years before he greatly en- 
 larged his own philosophy of religion, and saw that any 
 final Eirenikon must be based on the Brotherhood of 
 Man. 
 
 In 1851 Euskin took up the defence of the new 
 movement in painting — that of the Pre-Raphaelite 
 Brethren — and wrote the pamphlet Pre-Raphaelitism. 
 The movement originated with Holman Hunt and 
 D. G. Rossetti, who were joined by Millais and 
 Burne-JoneSj and undoubtedly made a new departure 
 in English painting. The pamphlet was a vehement 
 argument that the new school had the same desire for 
 truth in natural facts, for realism in presentation, and 
 pure colour that were to be found in Turner, in the 
 painters praised in Modern PaiiUerSi as in the Primitives 
 of mediaeval Italy. There was substantial truth in 
 this eloquent defence. Much came of it, as soon as 
 men of original genius shook themselves free of any 
 formulas of art, and developed their own gifts in their 
 own way. And the misguided sect which fancied that 
 art could be regenerated by a decalogue of new 
 conventions to be extracted from Ruskinian literature, 
 conventions as unnatural and as narrowing as the 
 current conventions of the academies, gradually sank 
 into obscurity and public indifference. 
 
 It was a time of the losses of friends. Turner died, 
 December 1851, and made Ruskin one of his executors, 
 an office which he renounced. And then went William 
 Hunt and Samuel Prout. Charles Newton would 
 have taken Ruskin with him to Greece, where he was 
 
VII.] SOCIETY— CRITICISM— LECTURING 81 
 
 making researches; but the parents would not suffer 
 their John to venture his person on so perilous a 
 voyage, especially as it was to be made in a new- 
 fangled steamship. It may indeed be doubted if 
 Athens would have pleased him as much as Venice. 
 But great things might have followed if he had ever 
 seen Constantinople and the mountains of the Greek 
 continent and the ^gean Sea. 
 
 In 1853 Ruskin began that valuable series of notes 
 for the Arundel Society, explaining the Giotto frescoes 
 in the Arena Chapel at Padua. This is a delightful 
 book (now reprinted with additions, 1890). I know 
 nothing of Buskin's more admirable and more valuable 
 than this sympathetic estimate of Giotto's marvellous 
 genius and romantic life, vnth. these brief, vivid, 
 and strictly historic notes on Giotto's compositions. 
 One of the best services that Ruskin has rendered to 
 the history of art is the full appreciation of Giotto and 
 his profound reaction en the evolution of Florentine 
 art. Always vehement in his praise, Ruskin has not 
 said a word too much for Giotto. Giotto is one of the 
 few artists towards whom, in his long career as a critic 
 for forty years in varying opinions and moods, Ruskin 
 never permits himself to utter a word of disparagement. 
 He returns to him again and again. Fors is full of 
 Giotto. He compares Giotto to Dante, and quite truly ; 
 for of all the painters of the world none, unless it be 
 Leonardo and Michael Angelo, give such signs of intel- 
 lectual power as Giotto. He is free from the morbid 
 and restless spirit which places those mighty natures in 
 a world apart. And the influence exerted by Giotto 
 on his own and succeeding generations was both greater 
 and more wholesome than was that of Leonardo or of 
 
 F 
 
82 JOHN RUSKIN [chap. 
 
 Michael Angelo. Giotto was the most profound, the 
 most humane, the soundest and most balanced intellect 
 in the entire history of modern art. " Or a ha Giotto il 
 grido " — as he had in the ages of Dante. 
 
 This Ruskin was the first to teach us. His estimate 
 of Giotto's compositions is based on a sympathetic but 
 jiot a servile understanding of the apocryphal Gospels 
 current in the fourteenth century, and the quaint and 
 beautiful legends of the Virgin's life. E-uskin enters 
 into all this in the same spirit that we can conceive 
 Giotto to have used towards the myths : penetrated 
 "with their grace, tenderness, and spiritual beauty, fired 
 with their power as material for painting — taking them 
 just as they had been handed down, without doubt or 
 criticism, but without superstition, and caring for them 
 essentially on their human and emotional side, and not 
 on their transcendental or dogmatic side. And Euskin, 
 in his notes on these compositions, touches with a sure 
 and easy hand at once the legendary, the dramatic, and 
 the artistic side of each fresco. Nothing can be more 
 true and suggestive than the few strokes in which he 
 shows us "Joachim retiring to the Sheepfold," a work 
 of marvellous dramatic pathos, recalling in its severe 
 dignity an Athenian tombstone from the Cerameicos ; 
 or again, the "Angel appearing to Anna," "The 
 Meeting at the Golden Gate," "The Virgin returning 
 to her House," "The Annunciation," "The Salutar- 
 tion," "The Entombment," and "The Resurrection." 
 When we carefully study all that Euskin has written 
 about Giotto, his thought and his moods, and his 
 power of presenting human emotions, we come to rank 
 Giotto as one of the greatest forces in the entire 
 history of art. 
 
vii.] SOCIETY— CRITICISM— LECTURING 83 
 
 In the same year, 1853, so eventful in the public 
 and private life of Euskin, he commenced a new career 
 which was to be the main occupation of his later life. 
 The recluse of Heme Hill, the now illustrious author 
 of three magnificent works, the critic of the journals, 
 and the theological pamphleteer, appeared as a public 
 lecturer on the platform, "wath diagrams and illustrations 
 of his own. It was before the famous Edinburgh 
 Philosophical Institution, which has invited so many 
 men known in literature, science, and the public service 
 to appear in its hall, His acceptance of the task alarmed 
 and rather scandalised his somewhat timid, conven- 
 tional, and suburban parents. His mother thought 
 him "too young," married man of thirty-four as he 
 was; his father thought it "degrading" to expose 
 himself to newspaper comments and personal references 
 There was more in the latter remark than in the 
 former, for the moment was ill chosen for a public 
 appearance, whilst he was a party to a matrimonial 
 suit; but, of course, the lectures had been arranged 
 many months before. The lectures were a summary 
 of his views on architecture and painting, and have 
 been frequently reprinted with that title. They were 
 fiercely assailed by the conventional critics ; and it 
 cannot be said that they contained anything not found 
 in his other ^vritings, nor have they added anything 
 to his general reputation. They are interesting mainly 
 as his first appearance on the lecture platform, where 
 for thirty years he was to be heard so often and with 
 such efi'ect. 
 
 The follo^vnng year (1854) Euskin started abroad 
 again with his parents, with whom he had resumed his 
 old bachelor life in his old home. In two letters to 
 
84 JOHN RUSKIN [chap. 
 
 the Times he made an enthusiastic defence of Holman 
 Hunt's " Light of the World " — a picture which touched 
 a special chord of Christian sentiment, but is rather a 
 mediaeval rehus to the modern man-of-the-world. The 
 party went to Switzerland again, John being bound to 
 continue Modern Painters, and himself designing an 
 illustrated history of Switzerland, which, like so many 
 of his designs, ultimately found no means of publication, 
 except in the later volumes of Modern Painters. 
 
 In 1854 Frederick Denison Maurice, along with 
 Dr. Fumivall, Thomas Hughes, and Charles Kingsley, 
 founded the Working Men's College, which still 
 flourishes in Great Ormond Street in London. It 
 was the pioneer of a movement which has gro^ni 
 largely and with such good results. The idea of the 
 College was to offer workmen and others who could 
 not take advantage of the higher education open to 
 the wealthy as much of the best academic training as 
 could be given in evening classes, but to combine this 
 teaching with a real esprit de corps as developed in 
 English schools and colleges, based on the fellowship 
 of citizens and the union of social orders. The idea 
 sprang from the Chartist movement of 1848 and the 
 new school of Christian Socialists, and was the 
 eminently British and Anglican form taken by the 
 revolutionary and socialist stir in Europe from 1840 
 to 1850. Carlyle's Sartor, Kingsley 's Alton Locke, 
 Hug-hes's Tom Bromn, and Maurice's Broad Church 
 Sermons were the literary forms of the new idea — a 
 cultured, orderly, respectable type of Social Democracy. 
 
 The College has thriven and grown under the suc- 
 cessive direction of Maurice, Hughes, Sir John Lubbock, 
 and Professor Albert Dicey ; it has had amongst its 
 
VII.] SOCIETY— CRITICISM— LECTURING 85 
 
 teachers, students, and friends a crowd of men known 
 in literature, politics, and the public service. It has 
 been the parent of a long brood of colleges and 
 societies more or less like it in purpose, — Toynbee 
 Halls, Women's Colleges, Passmore Edwards Halls, 
 " University Settlements," Newton Hall, and now the 
 University Extension movement, all of them being 
 attempts to bring the best training of our universities 
 and schools to those whose business and resources 
 prevent them from entering the courses of the higher 
 education; and withal to bring together the classes 
 into which our modern English society is stiffly divided, 
 in a common social life and the pursuit of culture 
 higher than that of the current business of the day. 
 
 Into this effort, which so deeply corresponded with 
 Buskin's own views — one indeed which had largely 
 sprung from his own suggestions — Ruskin threw him- 
 self with enthusiasm, giving his time, money, and 
 advice with generous freedom. Together with Rossetti 
 and Hunt, and eventually \v^.th Burne- Jones and 
 W. Morris, he devoted his evenings to teach drawing, 
 and indeed much else. He there founded a school of 
 draughtsmen, copyists, and engravers, which has grown 
 and carried out his methods with signal success. He 
 made friends there such as George Allen, who became 
 his pubHsher, agent, and business manager, and for 
 four years his teaching and enthusiasm contributed 
 largely to the success of the College. I was myself 
 one of the lecturers there about the same time ; and 
 I had abundant reason to know the inspiring effort . 
 Ruskin gave to students and teachers alike by his ' 
 sympathetic ardour. 
 
 Ruskin has himself given us in Frceierita (iii. 13) an 
 
86 JOHN RUSKm [chap. 
 
 account of his own relations to the College — how he 
 loved Frederick Maurice, as did every one who came 
 near him, but found him " by nature puzzle-headed ; 
 and, though in a beautiful manner, wrong-hesided, while 
 his clear conscience and keen affection made him ego- 
 tistic." Elsewhere he says that Maurice reconciled 
 Biblical difficulties by turning them the other side up, 
 like railroad cushions. This is an exact account of 
 Maurice's influence, as we who listened to his sermons 
 and sat in conference with him used to feel. His 
 moral earnestness and keen sympathies with right and 
 wrong animating one of the most illogical and self- 
 contradictory minds ever met, combined to disturb, 
 not to guide the beliefs of inquiring youth. And, as 
 Ruskin and many of us felt, the College had neither 
 head, nor system, nor principles, but went on with 
 kindly, social, loose, and highly respectable orthodox 
 ideas in religion and in politics. It grew into a very 
 superior Mechanics' Institute, well supported and of a 
 most useful practical kind; but not, in any special 
 sense, Christian, and not, in any sense, Socialist, and 
 with a minimum of the real working man. 
 
 In 1857, as a summary of his teaching in drawing, 
 Ruskin published the Elements of Drawing, a little 
 manual which had an immense success with the public ; 
 but which he subsequently tried to suppress or to 
 supersede as imperfect and based on one serious error 
 — the advice not to begin by drawing in outline. 
 The author — who, we may remember, never regarded 
 anything he did or wrote as quite conclusive and 
 sufficient — was far from being altogether content with 
 this volume, -which was never intended to be used by 
 artists as a manual, and was designed to train young 
 
VII.] SOCIETY-CRITICISM— LECTURING 87 
 
 persons in the art of studying nature and observing 
 natural facts rather than to train them in the art of 
 drawing. In a subject so complex and subtle, of course 
 all kinds of criticism have been made, as they may be 
 made about any guide to drawing. But from the 
 literary point of view, the book is a masterpiece of lucid, 
 simple, apt expression in a subject of practical handling 
 most difficult to explain with clearness. The result is 
 that this little volume of three hundred pages, \vritten 
 to guide beginners how to look at things they want to 
 draw, is delightful to the general reader, who may care 
 nothing at all for drawing as an art, and may never 
 wish to take a pencil in his hand. Such is the magic 
 of style. And those who fancy that Ruskin could 
 write only in turgid tropes and sesquipedalian descants, 
 should take up this charming little series of letters to 
 "My Dear Reader," with its graceful, naive, simple 
 directions, and learn, as the Preface tells him, that " the 
 best drawing-masters are the woods and the hills." 
 
 Another delightful little book, the Harbours of 
 England, had been already published in 1856. It con- 
 tained that glorious hymn to the sea and to seafaring 
 which is one of the most rapturous that Ruskin ever 
 wrote, and is ever memorable to all who love our 
 English element and those who live by it and on it. 
 The book opens with that wonderful song of triumph to 
 the Boat which I have elsewhere noted as a masterpiece 
 of English literature—" Of all things, living or lifeless, 
 upon this strange earth, there is but one which, having 
 reached the midterm of appointed human endurance on 
 it, I still regard with unmitigated amazement." " One 
 object there is still, which I never pass without the 
 renewed wonder of childhood, and that is the bow of a 
 
88 JOHN RUSKIN [chap. 
 
 boat," etc. There is in English poetry, not even in 
 Shelley or in Byron, no more stirring ode to the magic 
 of the sea and the rapture of the seaman. And then 
 the volume, one now prized at book sales, as very rare 
 and choice, gives short descriptions of some twelve of 
 Turner's plates representing the harbours of England 
 as they were to be seen in the reign of George iv., 
 some eighty years ago, in the days of sailing ships, 
 seventy-four gun men-of-war, and wooden piers. Navies 
 and Harbours were more fitting subjects for an imagina- 
 tive artist then than they are to-day. Full of fancy 
 without extravagance, impressive without rhetoric, 
 original without paradox, these subtle notes interpret 
 Turner in one of his best moods as completely as the 
 notes on Giotto interpret the Arena frescoes. The 
 "Dover," "Sheemess," "Whitby," and "Scarborough" 
 are admirable examples of insight into the mind of an 
 original genius like that of Turner. And such a vision 
 as that of "Sheerness" in 1826 is really a document 
 in the history of England, now that the old Seventy- 
 fours are become floating steel fortresses, and a yacht is 
 become a sort of metal torpedo with two or three 
 balloons fixed on to it. 
 
 These were years of varied activity. In 1855 he 
 began the "Notes on the Pictures of the Year," which 
 caused no small excitement amongst painters and 
 critics, and gave no small delight and instruction to 
 the public. It was the hour of Ruskin's acceptance as 
 the arbiter of art with the world of culture and open 
 mind. Carlyle, the Brownings, Coventry Patmore, 
 were his close friends. He now gave frequent lectures 
 at Museums, Schools, and Literary Institutions; and, 
 though his subject was formally on some branch of art. 
 
viL] SOCIETY— CRITICISM-LECTURING 89 
 
 he was continually turning to the social condition of 
 the workman and the practical life of the craftsman at 
 home. In 1857 he lectured at Manchester on "The 
 Political Economy of Art," which is now included in 
 the volume entitled A Joy for Ever, and which is 
 definitely a part of his second career as a social re- 
 former. And he now undertook the formidable task 
 of arranging, selecting, and exhibiting the enormous 
 mass of Turner's drawings and studies which were 
 bequeathed to the nation. There were nearly 20,000 
 of these fragments in all, crammed into portfolios and 
 drawers. It was an exhausting la]x)ur of some six 
 months, a labour which perhaps no one else could have 
 performed so well. And Kuskin ultimately composed a 
 catalogue of the whole series of drawings and sketches. 
 
 All through 1858 and 1859 he was constantly 
 lecturing up and down the country, working at Oxford 
 and at Cambridge, aiding to start the University 
 Extension, and to decorate the new Museum at 
 Oxford, preaching the new Gospel of art labour at 
 Manchester, at Bradford, and Cambridge ; each lecture 
 becoming more definitely imbued with his growing 
 conviction that Art in all its forms was but a mani- 
 festation of a sound personal and social life — that the 
 life of the body politic was the dominant problem for 
 us all. 
 
 And so, labouring incessantly at home and abroad, 
 he finished his Modern Painters, of which the fifth 
 volume appeared in 1860. 
 
 And here, at the age of forty, comes the great 
 change in Euskin's career — 
 
 " Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita 
 Mi ritrovai in una selva oscura." 
 
90 JOHN RUSKIN [chap. vii. 
 
 For more than twenty years lie had been battling to 
 call men to honour — first, Turner and his fellows, 
 Eossetti and his comrades, Giotto and the Primitives, 
 Titian and the later Venetians, to send painters to 
 nature, and to make architects respect the freedom of 
 their workmen. He had won a place in the foremost 
 ranks of literature, and had a great and growing repu- 
 tation as writer, as critic, as teacher, and as draughtsman. 
 But he had been forced by his intercourse with peasants 
 abroad and workmen at home to feel how all this was 
 naught whilst our social and industrial life was full of 
 i sores. And he retired, as it were, into a wilderness to 
 \meditate — "che la diritta via era smarrita." 
 
CHAPTER YIII 
 
 AS SOCIAL REFORMER 
 
 The year 1860, the year of great crisis in the history 
 of Europe and of America, the exact middle year of 
 Ruskin's life, with forty years behind him and forty 
 years yet to come, was the year of the formal opening 
 of his career in social reform by the publication of his 
 four essays in the Cornhill Magazine^ now known as 
 Unto this Last. When published as a volume in 1862, 
 he characteristically declared these essays " reprobated 
 in a violent manner by most of the readers they met 
 with," to be, not a whit the less, "the truest, rightest- 
 worded, and most serviceable things I have ever 
 written." The real gist and aim of them being to 
 give an accurate and stable definition of Wealth, and 
 to show that its only true basis lay in certain moral 
 conditions of society ; in a word, that what is called 
 Political Economy can be nothing but a corollary from 
 a complete scheme of Sociology, or organisation of 
 human society. 
 
 It so happened that it was in the same year, 1860, 
 and in consequence of my own interest in these very 
 essays, that I first came into personal contact with 
 Kuskin himself. I had just been called to the Bar, 
 but found time to join the Working Men's College, 
 where I had lectured on the French Revolution. I 
 
 91 
 
92 JOHN RUSKIN [chap. 
 
 had read with lively sympathy the Cornhill Essays on 
 the fallacies of the conventional Plutonomy ; and being 
 full of iiidignation with the mischief of those fallacies, 
 I obtained through Dr. Furnivall an introduction to 
 Ruskin, who most kindly welcomed me one Sunday 
 to the afternoon dinner at Denmark Hill. He was 
 then living with his father and mother in their fine 
 house, standing in spacious grounds, and adorned with 
 a grand collection of Turners, Coxes, and Prouts. I 
 had long been an ardent reader of his lx)oks on Art, 
 and had just returned from a prolonged tour in North 
 and Central Italy, which I had known for many years. 
 But absorbed as I was at that time in the great indus- 
 trial struggles, and being in close touch "vvith the 
 Christian Socialists of that period, I had flung myself 
 with hearty enthusiasm into the scathing criticism of 
 Unto this Last. I thought it then, as I think it still, 
 "the most serviceable thing" that Ruskin ever gave 
 the world. 
 
 He received me with a radiant courtesy when I told 
 him that I had sought him to hear more of his thoughts 
 about Labour and Wealth. I recall him as a man of 
 slight figure, rather tall (he was five feet ten inches), 
 except that he had a stoop from the shoulders, with 
 a countenance of singular mobility and expressiveness. 
 His eyes were blue and very keen, full of fire and 
 meaning; the hair was brown, luxuriant, and curly; 
 the brows rather marked, and with somewhat shaggy 
 eyebrows. The lips were full of movement and char- 
 acter, in spite of the injury caused by the dog's bite 
 in childhood. His countenance was eminently spiriiuel 
 — winning, magnetic, and radiant. I remember him 
 then as he was drawn in coloured chalks by G. Rich- 
 
yiiij AS SOCIAL REFORMER 93 
 
 mond, in 1857, somewhat idealised, as was the wont 
 of that painter. That one of the many portraits best 
 recalls to me the sparkle and nervous restlessness of 
 his manhood, and best conveys the sense of his sym- 
 pathetic genius. How strangely different was this 
 portrait at the age of thirty-eight from that sombre 
 photograph by Hollyer in 1895 at the age of seventy- 
 six, ^^'ith the long white beard covering mouth and 
 cheek, and falling over the breast down to the folded 
 arms and clasped hands, mth its rigid profile and 
 aquiline nose, as of a man of sorro^vful memories and 
 hopes betrayed. To place the Eichmond drawing of 
 1857 beside the Hollyer photograph of 1895 is to 
 measure the immense changes which in forty years 
 stamped their impress upon that sensitive soul. 
 
 lu 1860 Ruskin was a man of slight but active figure, 
 ^Wth an air of genial bonhomie, courteous and playful 
 in his ways, inexhaustibly vivacious and voluble. He 
 wore the famous big blue neckcloth and the old- 
 fashioned frock coat and velvet collar, and was alto- 
 gether unlike a gentleman-commoner of Christ Church 
 of that or any other date. He spoke with a distinct 
 Scotch burr, especially rolling the letter r. As I said 
 at the time of his death, in Literature, Feb. 3, 1900 : 
 " He was the very mirror of courtesy, ^nth an inde- 
 scribable charm of spontaneous lovingness. It was 
 neither the old-world graciousness of Mr. Gladstone, 
 nor the stately • simplicity of Tourgenieff— to name 
 some eminent masters of courteous demeanour— it was 
 simply the irrepressible bubbling up of a bright nature 
 full to the brim with enthusiasm, chivalry, and affec- 
 tion. No boy could blurt out all that he enjoyed and 
 wanted Nvith more artless freedom ; no girl could be 
 
94 JOHN RUSKIN [chap. 
 
 more humble, modest, and unassuming. His ideas, 
 his admiration, and his fears seemed to flash out of 
 his spirit and escape his control. But (in private life) 
 it was always w^hat he loved, not what he hated, that 
 roused his interest. Now all this was extraordinary 
 in one who, in writing, treated what he hated and 
 scorned with really savage violence, who used such 
 Vjitter words even in letters to his best friends, who 
 is usually charged w^th inordinate arrogance and con- 
 ceit. The world must judge his writings as they 
 stand. I can only say that, in personal intercourse, 
 I have never known him, in full health, betrayed into 
 a harsh word, or an ungracious phrase, or an unkind 
 judgment, or a trace of egotism. Face to face, he was 
 the humblest, most willing, and patient of listeners, 
 always deferring to the judgment of others in things 
 wherein he did not profess to be a student, and 
 anxious only to learn. No doubt in all this there was 
 no little of Socratic ironeia, as when he asked me to 
 tell him what Plato had written about the order of 
 society, and in which of his works. 
 
 Not only was he in social intercourse one of the 
 most courteous and sweetest of friends, but he was 
 in manner one of the most fascinating and impressive 
 beings whom I ever met. I have talked with Carlyle 
 and Tennyson, with Victor Hugo and IMazzini, with 
 Garibaldi and with Gambetta, with John Bright and 
 with Eobert Browning, but no one of these ever 
 impressed me more vividly with a sense of intense 
 personality, with the inexplicable light of genius which 
 seemed to well up spontaneously from heart and brain. 
 It remains a psychological puzzle how one who could 
 Avrite >vith passion and scorn such as Carlyle and Byron 
 
TTji.] AS SOCIAL REFORMER 95 
 
 never reached, who in print was so often Athanasius 
 contra mundum, who opened every written assertion 
 with "I know," was in private life one of the gentlest, 
 gayest, humblest of men. 
 
 I incline to think that the violence and arrogance 
 w^hich were imputed to him came of a kind of literary 
 astru^, which he never attempted to control. He let 
 himself go, as perhaps no writer since Burke ever has 
 done. Vehement language was -svith Ruskin a literary 
 intoxication rather than a moral fault. He has paid a 
 bitter penalty for failing to overcome the tendency. To 
 paraphrase an absurd epigram about Oliver Goldsmith's 
 talk and his books, it might be said of Ruskin that he j 
 talked like an angel and wrote as if he were one of the I 
 Major Prophets. 
 
 The relations between John and his parents were 
 amongst the most beautiful things that dwell in my 
 memory. Towering as he did by his genius above his 
 parents, who neither understood nor sympathised ^vith 
 his second career (dating from Unto this Last), he 
 invariably behaved towards them ^-ith the most affec- 
 tionate deference. He submitted ^vithout a murmur 
 to the rule of the house, which, on the Sabbath day, 
 covered his beloved Turners with dark screens. This 
 man, well past middle life, in all the renown of his 
 principal works, who for a score of yeai^s had been one 
 of the chief forces in the literature of the century, 
 continued to show an almost childlike docility towards 
 his father and his mother, respecting their complaints 
 and remonstrances, and gracefully submitting to be cor- 
 rected by their worldly wisdom and larger experience. 
 John James Ruskin, the father, was a man of rare 
 force of character, shrewd, practical, generous, and, 
 
96 JOHN RUSKIN [chap. 
 
 for all his conventional and bourgeois prejudices, ^vith 
 sound ideals both in art and in life. With unbounded 
 trust in the genius of his son, he felt deeply how much 
 the son had yet to learn. He would ask an Oxford 
 scholar if he could not "put John in the way of some 
 scientific study of Political Economy," to doubt which, 
 in the old merchant's eyes, was to be sceptical as to 
 Creation. "John! John!" he would cry out, "what 
 nonsense you 're talking ! " when John was off on one 
 of his magnificent paradoxes, unintelligible as Pindar 
 to the sober Scotch merchant. Intellectually, the father 
 was the very antithesis of the son. He was strongest 
 where his brilliant son was weakest. There were 
 moments when the father seemed the stronger in 
 sense, breadth, and hold on realities. And when John 
 was turned of forty, the father still seemed something 
 of his tutor, his guide, his support. 
 
 Such was the man who, in the pages of the Cornhill 
 I Magazine, then edited by his friend Thackeray, under- 
 took, with all the sublime faith in himself of the Knight 
 I of La Mancha, to demolish the solid array of what had 
 held the field for two generations as Political Economy, 
 i.e. the consolidated and rigid doctrine of Ricardo, 
 i Malthus, and M'Culloch. Ruskin's assault was not 
 , quite strictly original. Carlyle, whom he called his 
 ' master, had continually poured forth his epigrams, 
 isarcasm, and nicknames about the "dismal science" 
 and its professors. Dickens, Kingsley, and other 
 .romancers, had fiercely inveighed against the Grad- 
 |grind philosophy of labour and the moral and social 
 'curse it involved. Maurice and the Christian Socialists 
 Were full of indignation with the plutonomy of the 
 orthodox economists from whom John Stuart Mill to 
 
vm.] AS SOCIAL REFORMER 97 
 
 a great extent had dissociated himself. The corre- 
 spondence between Mill and Comte, and Comte's own 
 Polity, show how entirely alien to plutonomic orthodoxy 
 was the Positive Philosophy ; but of this John Ruskin 
 was in 1860, and remained all his life, perfectly ignorant. 
 But he was saturated with the thought of Carlyle, and 
 he was in close touch with Maurice and his friends, 
 and both of these men were in touch with the revolu- 
 tionists and socialists whom the European events 
 between 1848 and 1860 made familiar to thoughtful 
 Englishmen. Ruskin was thus not by any means the 
 first to throw doubts over the gospel of Ricardo and 
 M'Culloch. But he was no doubt the first to open 
 fire on the very creed and decalogue of that gospel, 
 and he certainly was the first to put those doubts and 
 criticisms into trenchant literary form such as long 
 stirred the general public as with a trumpet note. 
 
 The four essays, so characteristically entitled — "The 
 Roots of Honour," "The Veins of Wealth," ''Qui 
 judicatis Terram^'' ''Ad Valorem,'' open with this 
 trenchant sentence : — 
 
 "Among the delusions which at different periods have 
 possessed themselves of the minds of large masses of the 
 human race, perhaps the most curious — certainly the least 
 creditable — is the modern soi-disant science of poUtical 
 economy, based on the idea that an advantageous code of , 
 social action may be determined irrespectively of the influence • 
 of social affection." 
 
 This crucial truth, if we understand it as meaning 
 that a science of wealth cannot be carried beyond a 
 few corollary deductions of special application, drawn 
 from a comprehensive system of social economy at 
 large, that is, a true "philosophy of society," had never 
 
 G 
 
98 JOHN RUSKIN [chap. 
 
 before been stated so boldly and so dogmatically 
 except by Auguste Comte. As Professor Ingram 
 well puts it, Comte's argument was, that " a separate 
 economic science is, strictly speaking, an impossibility, 
 as representing only one portion of a complex 
 organism, all whose parts and their actions are in 
 constant relation of correspondence and reciprocal 
 modification/' But of this, which had been stated 
 a generation before him, Euskin had never heard ; nor 
 would he have put it in any way so systematic if he 
 had heard. 
 
 E-uskin rushed at the problem wholly from the 
 mediaeval, sentimental, and social point of view; but 
 he grasped the root of the matter keenly, and argued 
 it with his glowing style. He does not deny the con- 
 clusions of the science if its assumptions are admitted. 
 But they are as void of practical interest to human 
 society as would be a science of gymnastics which 
 assumed that men had no skeletons. Modern political 
 economy, he says, assumes that human beings are all 
 skeleton, and "founds an ossifiant theory of progress 
 on this negation of a soul; and having shown the 
 utmost that may be made of bones, and constructed a 
 number of interesting geometrical figures with death's 
 heads and humeri, successfully proves the incon- 
 venience of the reappearance of a soul among these 
 corpuscular structures." 
 
 In its theory of Labour and Production, the orthodox 
 political economy, he says, assumes that the servant is 
 an engine of which the motive power is steam or some 
 calculable force. On the contrary, "he is an engine 
 whose motive power is a Soul ; and the force of this 
 ^ very peculiar agent, as an unknown quantity, enters 
 
VIII.] AS SOCIAL REFORMER 99 
 
 into all the political economist's equations, without his 
 knowledge, and falsifies every one of their results." 
 No doubt, so far as human beings, whether controlling 
 capital or controlled by it, are continuously moved by 
 some calculable force, and for the time exclude any 
 other influence, the deductions of the plutonomists are 
 sound and real. But in any healthy society of men 
 this state of things can only be temporary in duration 
 and limited in scope. 
 
 The little volume of 170 pages abounds in memor- 
 able sentences, which if not sufficient as science, are 
 curiously suggestive for reflection. What do we mean 
 by "rich "? In truth, riches act only through negation. 
 The force of your guinea depends wholly on the want 
 of it by your neighbour. If he did not want it, it 
 would be of no use to you. The art of making your- 
 self rich is the art of keeping your neighbour poor. 
 A society of universal millionaires would have to black 
 their own boots. "Riches is essentially power over 
 men." " That which seems to be wealth may in verity 
 be only the gilded index of far-reaching ruin, a 
 wrecker's handful of coin gleaned from the beach to 
 which he has beguiled an argosy." "Buy in the 
 cheapest market ^ — yes ; but what made your market 
 cheap? Charcoal may be cheap among your roof 
 timbers after a fire, and bricks may be cheap in your 
 streets after an earthquake; but fire and earthquake 
 may not therefore be national benefits. Sell in the 
 dearest ? — yes, truly ; but what made your market 
 dear ? You sold your bread well to-day ; was it to a 
 dying man who gave his last coin for it, and ^vill never 
 need bread more; or to a rich man who to-morrow 
 will buy your farm over your head ; or to a soldier on 
 
100 JOHN RUSKIN [chap. 
 
 his way to pillage the bank in which you have put 
 your fortune ? " 
 
 Then comes that passage which I have always taken 
 as a masterpiece of wit, wisdom, and eloquence. " In 
 a community regulated only by laws of demand and 
 supply, but protected from open violence, the persons 
 who become rich are, generally speaking, industrious, 
 resolute, proud, covetous, prompt, methodical, sensible, 
 unimaginative, insensitive, and ignorant. The persons 
 who remain poor are the entirely foolish, the entirely 
 wise, the idle, the reckless, the humble, the thoughtful, 
 the dull, the imaginative, the sensitive, the well- 
 informed, the improvident, the irregularly and impul- 
 sively wicked, the clumsy knave, the open thief, and 
 the entirely merciful, just, and godly person." And 
 the whole closes with the words : " There is no wealth 
 Ajj hut Life — Life, including all its powers of love, of joy, 
 j and of admiration. That country is the richest which 
 ] nourishes the greatest number of noble and happy 
 ' human beings." 
 ^ That is the Political Economy of John Euskin ; in 
 other words, the conditions producing material wealth 
 are inextricably intermingled with, the general con- 
 ditions of a healthy and worthy body politic. This 
 central and saving truth has never been illustrated 
 w4th more incisive eloquence, nor enforced with a more 
 intense conviction. It is not needful to enlarge on the 
 errors and extravagances which mark this as every 
 other vrork of Euskin. There are things fanciful, even 
 fantastic, though much less than in other pieces. The 
 attack on Mill is both ignorant and unjust ; for Mill 
 certainly strove to neutralise the narrow field on which 
 political economy is legitimate, it may be with poor 
 
Tin.] AS SOCIAL REFORMER 101 
 
 success. But Mill should never be confounded with 
 Ricardo, much less -with the Gradgrind plutonomists 
 who treated the observed facts of a morbid society as 
 having a moral and social obligation for all time. 
 
 It may be that Ruskin's definitions are too fanciful 
 to be definite. And he indulges to the full his old 
 Calvinistic habit of extorting philosophy out of texts 
 of Scripture, which are interpreted freely to suit the 
 occasion; as when he deduces the permanent anta- 
 gonism between rich and poor from the Proverbs of 
 Solomon — "a Jew merchant, largely engaged in 
 business on the Gold Coast, and reported to have made 
 one of the largest fortunes of his time." As to his 
 petulant contempt of all whom he was denouncing, it 
 is hardly fair to ask a man engaged in a battle with an 
 army to exhibit moderation. No one calls Elijah con- 
 ceited when he mocked the priests of Baal, nor was 
 John the Baptist arrogant when he reproved Herod to 
 ,his face. We must take the Reformers, the Hot-gos- 
 pellers, and Prophets ^Wth a mission as we find them, 
 and accept fx'om them what we can. ^y 
 
 The general indignation which these essays in the' 
 Cornhill aroused, induced the publishers to press 
 Thackeray to suspend their issue. This was done after 
 the fourth essay ; and they did not appear as a volume 
 until two years later. On the appearance of the 
 volume, Mr. J. A. Froude, then Editor of Fraser's 
 Magazine, admitted a new set of papers on " Political 
 Economy " (June 1862). But, again, the public opposi- 
 tion was so marked that after the fourth paper they 
 were stopped. They ultimately appeared as Munera 
 Tulveris, 1872. This volume then consisted of six 
 chapters, and was dedicated to Carlyle — " The Solitary 
 
102 JOHN RUSKIN [chap. 
 
 Teacher " of truth, justice, and godliness. It would be 
 needless to criticise the most discursive arguments and 
 apostrophes arranged under the heads of I. Definitions ; 
 II. Store-keeping; iil. Coin-keeping; IV. Commerce; 
 V. Government; vi. Mastership; and Vll. Appendices 
 about Things in General. 
 
 Munera Pulveris is the title taken from the line of 
 Horace — pulveris exigui prope litus parva Matinum munera 
 — the cryptic allusion of which so few readers under- 
 stand. It opens with the trenchant proposition that 
 Political Economy, as popularly understood, "is in 
 reality nothing more than the investigation of some 
 accidental phenomena of modern commercial opera- 
 tions." As domestic economy regulates the acts and 
 habits of a household, so Political Economy (rightly so 
 called) "regulates those of a society or State, mth 
 reference to the means of its maintenance." And on 
 this text Ruskin proceeds to lay down a number of 
 propositions, rules, and criticisms to regulate the action 
 of society, at least in its active side, according to an 
 ideal of his o^vn. The book is thus far more construc- 
 tive and more comprehensive than the former essay 
 Unto this Last, though it rests on the same general idea 
 that the orthodox economists assumed men to be 
 moved solely by interested motives, whilst in reality 
 men and societies are exceedingly complex organisms, 
 and their acts and purposes can only be rationally 
 understood when they are treated as complex 
 organisms. 
 
 At the outset Ruskin, in his vague and fanciful way, 
 does seize the root of the matter that there can be no 
 rational political economy apart from a comprehensive 
 Sociology. Of course, both the term and the idea in 
 
VIII.] AS SOCIAL REFORMER 103 
 
 its full sense are quite foreign to him and to his mode 
 of thought, but he seizes the truth. A rational political 
 economy can only be a deduction from a complete 
 philosophy of society. With astonishing wit, eloquence, 
 and ingenuity, Ruskin illustrates and enforces this text. 
 But in Munera Fulveris he goes much further. It is 
 largely constructive, and here he has to extemporise a 
 social philosophy of his own. For such a task he was 
 utterly unfitted by his very scanty learning, by habit, 
 and by the cast of his mind. He can only throw forth 
 a few suggestions, more or less echoes of Plato, the 
 Bible, mediaeval art, and Carlyle. Nothing less ade- 
 quate as a coherent and systematic synthesis of society 
 can be imagined. He, the self-taught, desultory, im- 
 pulsive student of poetry and the arts, rushes in to 
 achieve the mighty task which Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, 
 Leibnitz undertook — and failed, and which Locke, 
 Kant, Hume, and Bentham touched only in sections. 
 Looking back over the long succession of efforts to 
 construct a systematic sociology^, which as a complete 
 scheme has only in recent times been planned out by 
 Comte and by Spencer, it is difficult to abstain from 
 censuring Ruskin for toying with a subject of which 
 he was profoundly ignorant, for he knew as little of 
 the literature of philosophy as of the practical life of 
 our age. 
 
 And, unhappily, private and domestic sorrows had 
 grown on him. His father was deeply grieved and 
 disappointed at the heresy of his son, which seemed to 
 him so wanton and inexplicable. The savage insults 
 of the critics, echoing as usual the conventional opinion 
 of the time, made him reckless and defiant. He 
 became more than ever arrogant and dogmatic, and 
 
104 JOHN RUSKIN [chap. 
 
 repaid ridicule with scorn. And his habits of fantastic 
 imagery, Biblical tropes, and interminable excursions 
 were more prominent than ever. It is but too obvious, 
 if we compare the work of 1863 with that of 1860, 
 that the flame of indignation against social oppression 
 and the misery of the poor, and his brooding over a 
 state of things he was powerless to change, had already 
 begun to induce that brain disturbance from which he 
 suffered so long and so cruelly. Henceforth unto the 
 end, yet far distant, it might be said of Ruskin as 
 runs the epitaph that Swift proposed for himself, saeva 
 indignatio cor lacerahat. 
 
 And the same ideas about a reconstruction of social 
 institutions and habits were scattered, in a desultory 
 and eager way, through the twenty-five letters addressed 
 to a working cork-cutter of Sunderland in 1867, on 
 the occasion of the Reform agitation of that time, and 
 published under the title of Time and Tide. The idea 
 of this series was to urge working men to consider, 
 not merely the question of the suffrage, but the reform 
 of laws bearing upon "honesty of work and honesty 
 of exchange." As usual, he branches out into a mass 
 of startling proposals and sweeping anathemas. A 
 written statement of the principal events in the life 
 of each family was to be annually rendered to a State 
 officer; and there was to be an overseer, or bishop, 
 for every hundred families to see that such account 
 was accurately and punctually made. All goods made 
 were to be certified by the trade guild, which would 
 fix the price, and advertisement of wares was to be 
 prohibited. Lands were to be granted in perpetuity 
 to the great old families (John James, the father, surely 
 approved of this), but they were not to derive any 
 
VIII. j AS SOCIAL REFORMER 105 
 
 income from these lands, and they were to be paid by 
 the State, as the king is. In little more than two 
 hundred pages, fifty texts from the Bible are cited and 
 used to support proposed legislation. Early marriage 
 is desirable, but marriages are not to be made without 
 consent of the State, and bachelors and maidens are 
 to have as rewards permission to marry at some future 
 date. Every bachelor and girl who obtains such per- 
 mit is to have a fixed income from the State for seven 
 years from the wedding day. Large families are to 
 be condemned — as indeed the very Malthusians teach. 
 
 It is needless to continue this record of a social 
 Utopia as subversive as that of Plato, or Fourier, and 
 recalling the Jesuits in Paraguay rather than anything 
 in modern Europe. These "Letters" are indeed not 
 so much a social Utopia as the passionate sermons of 
 a religious enthusiast; and not more impracticable 
 than those of John the Baptist, Saint Francis, Savon- 
 arola, or George Fox. Sca^ttered through them are 
 noble, \dse, and memorable sayings — what Carlyle 
 called his " fierce lightning bolts " — flashed forth from 
 his " divine rage against falsity." Industrial co-opera- 
 tion "is better than unjust and tyrannous master- 
 ship"; but he doubts if "it be better than a just and 
 benignant mastership" — that is, a society in which 
 "the master, as a minor king or governor, is held 
 responsible for the conduct as well as the comfort of 
 all those under his rule." No great social change can 
 ever be accomplished quickly or violently. "If you 
 could pass laws to-morrow," he says, of the kind 
 Socialists require, "the riches of the country would 
 at once leave it, and you would perish in riot and 
 famine." What a beautiful bit is that about the draught 
 
106 JOHN RUSKIN [chap. 
 
 horse used to shunt trucks, and so chained in the rail- 
 way siding (Letter V.) — a creature whom he can never 
 see "without a kind of worship," as he says in words 
 worthy of St. Francis of Assisi. " A knave's religion 
 is always the rottenest thing about him." 
 
 The account of the four modes in which the Bible 
 is regarded in our day is true and admirably put ; and 
 here, perhaps, we get the first plain statement of the 
 extent to which he had parted with his mother's rigid 
 
 \ Calvinism. To hold that " virtue is impossible but 
 for fear of hell," is to be in a hell of your own. Was 
 
 ' the power of music ever celebrated in more beautiful 
 words than these (Letter xi.) : "Music is the nearest 
 at hand, the most orderly, the most delicate, and t^e 
 most perfect of all bodily pleasures ; it is the only one 
 which is equally helpful to all the ages of men — helpful 
 from the nurse's song to her infant, to the music, un- 
 heard of others, which so often haunts the deathbed 
 of pure and innocent spirits." A modern State is a 
 ship where "on the deck the aspect is of Cleopatra's 
 galley — under hatches there is a slave hospital," whilst 
 even those who earnestly care to do any good can, 
 Avith such difficulty, see the whole of the evil and the 
 proper remedy, " that half of their best efforts will be 
 misdirected, and some may even do more harm than 
 good." What a picture is this of the tender and 
 somewhat hysterical philanthropist, who penned words 
 so true, so sad, so wise ! 
 
 And now, as we look back across forty years upon 
 these social Utopias which were met wdth such a storm 
 of anger and ridicule, it is curious to note how many 
 of them are familiar to our age. "We are all Socialists 
 now," said a leading politician. And although Ruskin 
 
VIII.] AS SOCIAL REFORMER 107 
 
 is not a Socialist — indeed, he is rather a mediseyal 
 reactionist or an aristocratic absolutist, if label has to 
 be found for him — there is in all his social theories 
 that element of the ascendency of the State, or of 
 Society, over the individual, the precedence of moral 
 over material and practical aims, the necessity for 
 organisation of labour, and a moral and spiritual con- 
 trol over self-interest, which is the fundamental essence 
 of Socialism. Ruskin's ideal is a Sociocracy in Comte's 
 sense ; and, ^\dth Comte, he rejected both pure Demo \ 
 cracy and abstract Equality, and stood by the old world 
 institutions of Property, Grovernment, and Church. ' 
 
 •f The pedantic, pseudo-scientific Plutonomy, or Science 
 of*Wealth, which he denounced, is as dead as Alchemy 
 or Phlogiston. His notion that economic prosperity • 
 is subordinate to the wellbeing of the people is the 
 axiom of politicians as of philosophers. His idea that 
 the wise use of wealth, the distribution of products, - 
 the health and happiness of the producers, come before 
 the accumulation of wealth, is a commonplace, not of j 
 philanthropists, but of statesmen and journalists. His) 
 appeal for organisation of industry, the suppression of 
 public nuisances, and restriction of all anti-social abuses, ; 
 is a truism to the reformers of to-day. So is much of 
 what he said about national education long years 
 before Mr. Forster, about old-age pensions long years 
 before Mr. Chamberlain, about the housing of the 
 working classes long years before the Statutes, Con- 
 ferences, and Eoyal Commissions of our own genera- 
 tion. Read all he says as to the necessity of training 
 schools, technical schools, State supervision of prac- 
 tical and physical education, help to the unemployed, 
 provision for the aged, the recovery of waste lands, 
 
108 JOHN RUSKIN [chap. viii. 
 
 the qualified ownership of the soil, the reprobation of 
 men who "would put the filth of tobacco even into 
 the first breeze of a May morning" — read all these 
 glancings of a keen and pure soul from heaven to earth 
 on a multitude of things social and humane, and you 
 will recognise how truly John Ruskin forty years ago 
 was a pioneer of the things which to-day the best 
 spirits of our time so earnestly yearn to see. He is 
 forgotten now because he went forth into a sort of 
 moral wilderness and cried, "Repent and reform, for 
 the kingdom of heaven is at hand." The kingdom of 
 heaven is not yet come on us, perhaps is yet far ofi"; 
 but John was the Forerunner of that which will one 
 day come to pass. He was not, as the mocking crowd 
 said, "a reed shaken with the wind." 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE ETHICS OF WORK AND OF ART 
 
 It was in his forty-sixth year (March 1864) that a 
 great change took place in the life of Ruskin by the 
 death of his father, and his own inheritance of a large 
 fortune, the growing infirmity of his venerable mother, 
 and the arrival in the home of his cousin, Joanna 
 Ruskin Agnew, who eventually became Mrs. Arthur 
 Severn, and remained beside him till his death. The 
 seven years between his father's death and his mother's, 
 and the final removal to Coniston, where he passed the 
 last thirty years of his life, were years of varied activity 
 and incessant lecturing, travelling, and writing, of 
 domestic sorrow, of illness, increasing irritation and 
 meditation, and a perpetual brooding over the social 
 and political problems of that crowded time. 
 
 One night, early in 1864, on returning at midnight 
 from a class at the Working Men's College, he found 
 his father waiting for him to read to him some letters, 
 and in a few days the old man was dead in his seventy- 
 ninth year. He wa« buried at Shirley Church, in 
 Sun^ey, and the son inscribed upon his tomb these 
 words : "He was an entirely honest merchant, and his 
 memory is to all who keep it dear and helpful. His 
 son, whom he loved to the uttermost, and taught to 
 speak truth, says this of him." 
 
 109 
 
110 JOHN RUSKIN [chap. 
 
 By his father's death Ruskin inherited a fortune of 
 £157,000, in addition to a considerable property in 
 houses and land, the whole of which estate the elder 
 had accumulated by industry and sagacity in legitimate 
 business. He was not only an entirely honest 
 merchant, but a man of great generosity, of shrewd 
 judgment, and of persevering culture in poetry and 
 art. His erratic genius of a son, on whom he had 
 lavished his wealth and his anxieties, had long parted 
 from him in ideas of religion as well as economics. 
 But the affection between them remained unimpaired ; 
 and so, John Euskin had remained long past middle 
 life, in his father's home, as it were, an indulged but 
 dutiful lad, hardly regarded as fit to stand alone in this 
 busy and practical world. 
 
 The aged mother, now in her eighty-fourth year, 
 very infirm and Avith failing eyesight, needed some 
 companion in the great house at Denmark Hill. So 
 there came to live with her their Scotch cousin, Joanna 
 Ruskin Agnew. She was a daughter of George Agnew, 
 hereditary Sheriff-Clerk of Wigtown, by Catherine 
 Tweddale, niece of that Catherine Tweddale who, in 
 1781, had run away to marry John Buskin the grand- 
 father. It was a family of cousinship; for Joanna 
 Agnew was a cousin (in various removes, as is the 
 Scotch way) of the Buskins, the Bichardsons, and the 
 Coxes. Her brilliant gifts, bright nature, and loving 
 care soothed the last years of old Mrs. Buskin; and 
 after the marriage to Arthur Severn in 1871, she played 
 the part of a daughter to the later years of the son. 
 In Prmterita he tells us of her coming to his mother, of 
 her "real faculty and genius in all rightly girlish 
 directions," her extremely sweet voice, inventive wit, 
 
IX.] THE ETHICS OF WORK AND OF AKT 111 
 
 and sense of humour. She stayed beside him from that 
 first arrival at Denmark Hill, whether as girl or wife, 
 for twenty-nine years, "nor virtually," he wrote, "have 
 she and I ever parted since." 
 
 Having no specific work on hand, Euskin devoted 
 himself to lectures in many places, in all of which Art 
 was made subordinate to ethical and social ideals. It 
 was during this time that he gave the two lectures at 
 Manchester, in 1864, "Of King's Treasuries" and "Of 
 Queen's Gardens," which, with the Dublin lecture of 
 1868, on "The Mystery of Life and its Arts," was sub- 
 sequently kno^vn as the volume so oddly named Sesame 
 and Lilies^ 1871. Why Sesame and Lilies I have never 
 been able to unriddle. He introduces a quotation about 
 a sesame (or oil seed) cake from Lucian, and a text from 
 Isaiah about lilies blooming in the desert ; but I fail to 
 understand what " Sesame " has to do with the Royal 
 Treasury, or why a "lily " in a desert is a royal garden 
 — nor does it much signify. I remember hearing 
 Ruskin give a lecture at the London Institution, which 
 had been announced with the title of " Crystallography." 
 He opened by telling us that he was really about to 
 lecture on " Cistercian Architecture," nor did it matter 
 what the title was. "For," said he, "if I had begun to 
 speak about Cistercian Abbeys, I should have been 
 sure to get on Crystals presently ; and if I had begun 
 upon Crystals, I should have soon drifted into Archi- 
 tecture ! " 
 
 Sesame and Lilies^ in spite of its title (Ruskin's titles 
 seem to have had no purpose except to give the in- 
 ventor of them a few minutes' amusement)^ — Sesame 
 
 ^ Titles of books seem as meaningless as those of peers. The 
 Fortnightly is a monthly ; the Nineteenth Century is the 
 
112 JOHN RUSKIN [chap. 
 
 and Lilies is the most popular of all his minor works. 
 My copy (of 1900) is stated to be "the forty-fourth 
 thousand " ; and in many ways it justifies that popu- 
 larity. It contains some of his most beautiful passages, 
 some of his noblest thoughts, and especially some in- 
 most revelations of himself. It is pathetically dedi- 
 cated to 4)iX-q^ without whose help, he says, " I should 
 have written and thought no more." We now know 
 that she was Rose La Touche, the child to whom he 
 had taught drawing in 1858, who saddened his later 
 life by refusing to be his wife, and who died in 1875. 
 
 " King's Treasuries " (which, being interpreted, means 
 the use of good books, or solid education) is an 
 eloquent plea against wasting time in the reading of 
 valueless books, and the duty of making a select library 
 of good and permanent books. This is exactly the aim 
 of Auguste Comte when he published, in 1851, his 
 Fositivist Library for the Nineteenth Century, but of this 
 John Euskin had never heard. Carlyle said much the 
 same at Edinburgh a few years later; and, twenty 
 years after Euskin, Sir John Lubbock made his ex- 
 cellent collection of the "Best Hundred Books." At 
 that time, it may be remembered, Euskin explained 
 how he dissented from the selections made by Comte 
 and Lubbock, and these agreed to a great extent. 
 Euskin put in his Index Expurgatorius all the non- 
 Christian moralists and all the theology (except 
 Jeremy Taylor and Bunyan), Lucretius, the Nibelungen, 
 and the Morte d' Arthur, Eastern Poetry, Sophocles and 
 Euripides, all the modern historians, all the philoso- 
 phers, Thackeray, George Eliot, and Kingsley, Swift, 
 
 Twentieth ; the Quarterly ought to be the ' ' Grandfatherly "' ; 
 the Edinburgh has been London for some hundred years. 
 
IX.] THE ETHICS OF WORK AND OF ART 113 
 
 Hume, Macaulay, and Emerson. Euskin's "King's 
 Treasury " certainly discloses a rather meagre exchequer. 
 
 In spite of this — and it must be remembered that, in 
 1886, Euskin's brain had been more than once dis- 
 turbed, and that he had returned to some of his old 
 theological prejudices — Sesame and Lilies has many fine 
 things exquisitely said. His scathing denunciation of 
 the conventional upper class education " befitting such 
 and such station in life" — an education which shall 
 "lead to advancement in life"— meaning "the be- 
 coming conspicuous in life." " You might read all the i 
 books in the British Museum and remain an utterly 
 'illiterate,' uneducated person." How much would the \ 
 bookshelves of the United Kingdom fetch as compared 
 with their wine cellars ? " Lilies " is a sermon for 
 women. It has some beautiful thoughts on the women 
 of Shakespeare, Dante, Sophocles, and Spenser, and 
 some less obvious praise of Scott's women. He says, 
 almost exactly in the words used by Comte many 
 years before him : " Each sex has what the other has 
 not ; each completes the other, and is completed by the 
 other; they are in nothing alike, and the happiness 
 and perfection of both depends on each asking and 
 receiving from the other what the other only can give." 
 And in words of exquisite grace he sketches for the 
 girl an education, and for the woman a career, which 
 his Socialist admirers have found perilously akin to 
 that of Auguste Comte. 
 
 The last lecture, given at Dublin in 1868, well 
 entitled "The Mystery of Life and its Arts," is the 
 most important, most personal, and most thoughtful of 
 all ; indeed, its sixty pages contain much of Euskin's 
 most memorable work. It is full of sadness, of religious 
 
 H 
 
114 "" JOHN RUSKIN [chap. 
 
 musing, and of passionate exhortation to work out a 
 social reformation, to feel the mystery and the power 
 that lies dormant in each human soul, and more 
 passionate reprobation of the materialism and selfishness 
 which society breeds in our generation so as to hide 
 that mystery and to pervert that power. The homily 
 is full of personal confessions, of disappointment, and 
 failure. It is a sad tale. The ten best years of his life 
 given to Turner had proved in vain. The years he had 
 given to painting and to architecture had been wasted, 
 for the social diseases of our age had made men in- 
 curably blind to the higher uses of either art. The 
 arts can never be right unless their Tnotive is right. 
 And modern civilisation makes us insensitive to high 
 motives and apathetic to noble aims. "The reckless 
 luxury, the deforming mechanism, and the squalid 
 misery of modern cities " make great art an impossi- 
 bility, and thought given to it a mockery. 
 
 From the date of his father's death and his own 
 responsibility for a large fortune, the public rejection 
 of his social and economic teaching, the chorus of 
 ridicule poured on him when he turned from gesthetic 
 criticism to life, society, and politics, the loneliness cf 
 his life and idiosyncrasy deepened his natural turn 
 towards melancholy, and it is especially marked in 
 Sesame and Lilies. He wrote to his mother in 1867, 
 '* I have the secret of extracting sadness from all things 
 instead of joy." He wrote to C. Eliot Norton from 
 Switzerland, " The loneliness is very very great, and the 
 peace in which I am at present is only as if I had buried 
 myself in a tuft of grass on a battlefield wet with 
 blood." " Swift is very like me," he wrote in 1869 — 
 words how full of pathos and of truth. And that most 
 
IX.] THE ETHICS OF WORK AND OF ART 115 
 
 strange bit of autobiography {Sesame, Preface, 21 par.) 
 which ends, that "in my enforced and accidental 
 temper, and thoughts of things and of people," he has 
 sympathy with Dean Swift of all people. Strange 
 parallel, singular coincidences ! The most drab-coloured 
 with the most purple of all great masters of English ; 
 the most cynical with the most idealist maker of 
 Utopias ; the most foul with the most prudish of 
 writers ; the keenest politician with the most unpracti- 
 cal of dreamers; the bitterest hater with the most 
 loving sentimentalist — and yet analogies in mind and 
 in circumstance — they two so lonely in spirit, so like 
 in their genius for sarcasm, so boiling with indignation 
 for the people's wrong, so brave, so defiant, each gifted 
 with such burning speech, both such Platonic lovers, 
 yet so continually petted by good women, both once 
 so much sought, often so hotly reviled, both ending 
 in such a wreck, in something so like despair. John 
 Ruskin too, in his last years of decayed power, could 
 have said, more reverently and less arrogantly, as he 
 turned over the pages of his earlier books, " My God ! 
 what a genius I had when I wrote that I " He too 
 might have truly written as his own epitaph saeva 
 iridignatio cor lacerabat — yea, and could have added et 
 mentem conturbabaf. 
 
 All through the period between his father's death, in 
 1864, and his own retirement to Brantwood, Ruskin 
 was continually lecturing in many places and on diverse 
 texts, but practically on the one text of the moral 
 bearings of Art and Life. Sometimes it was on 
 crystals, or plants, or the geology of the Alps; now 
 it was the education of girls, or reading, or war, or 
 wages, music, dancing, or the future of England; but 
 
116 JOHN RUSKIN [chap. 
 
 it always came round to the same central lesson — 
 healthful and happy life in an industrious and well- 
 ordered society. It would be tedious to analyse all of 
 these homilies — they were usually much more the 
 sermons of a preacher than the lessons of a lecturer, 
 and they are too discursive and heterogeneous to per- 
 mit of being grouped. The Ethics of the Dust were a 
 set of rambling talks given to the girls of a young 
 ladies' school in Cheshire, professedly on crystals, but 
 on many other things. For them he wrote songs to 
 be sung whilst dancing, and with much of graceful fun, 
 for Ruskin was never so much at home as when 
 enacting the elderly playmate of young girls, much 
 as the author of Alice in Wonderland loved to do. 
 And now and then the play seemed almost like flirta- 
 tion to the old-fashioned chaperon or aunt. In any 
 case. Ethics of the Dust is full of the author's quaint 
 humour and fantasies ; and Carlyle, in his queer jargon, 
 called it "a most shining performance" — "radiant 
 Avith talent, ingenuity, lambent fire" — "with a poetry 
 that might fill any Tennyson with despair." It is not 
 recorded that the Laureate did feel the green-eyed 
 monster within him on perusing the piece. 
 
 The Crown of Wild Olive (1865-66) was a collection 
 of lectures on "Work," "Traffic," "War," and the 
 "Future of England," given to Working Men at 
 Camberwell, to the Bradford Chamber of Commerce, 
 and the last two to military students at Woolwich. 
 The wild olive was the prize of the victor in the 
 Olympic games at Greece, and in the Ruskinian cryp- 
 to<^ram it means "the crown of consummate honour 
 and of rest," as he explains in a magnificent passage 
 (Introduction, § 16). They contain some of his best 
 
IX.] THE ETHICS OF WORK AND OF ART 117 
 
 remarks on work, industry, trade, conduct, education, 
 and honour. Interspersed (mainly in the first lecture 
 given to workmen) we may find nearly sixty texts of 
 Scripture, inwoven into the argument in Ruskin's 
 figurative way. Though the whole book is more 
 serious and more coherent than some others, it does 
 contain specimens of his furious exaggeration and of 
 his mordant wit. Of the first, take the description of 
 "that great foul city of London — rattling, growling, 
 smoking, stinking — a ghastly heap of fermenting brick- 
 work, pouring out poison at every pore — a cricket 
 ground without the turf, a huge billiard-table without 
 the cloth, and with pockets as deep as the bottomless 
 pit " — all this of one of the most historic, one of the 
 most varied, and quite the most healthy city in the 
 Old or the New World. Of the second, this may 
 serve — "boiTowers are nearly always ill-spenders, and 
 it is with lent money that all evil is mainly done and 
 all unjust war protracted." How all this comes home 
 to us in 1902, in this age of Chartered Companies, 
 Monster Trusts, and War Loans ! 
 
 The Queen of the Air contains three lectures of 1869 
 on Greek Myths, Athena, Apollo, Hermes, Hercules, 
 and the rest, which are mainly interesting as giving 
 Euskin's earliest direct study of Greek Art. They 
 show, too, a knowledge of Greek mythology and a 
 familiarity with Greek poetry which are truly remark- 
 able, when we consider how broken had been his 
 education in the classics. He analyses and illustrates 
 something like one hundred allusions to Greek poetry, 
 mythology, and folklore, and quotes Homer, Hesiod, 
 ^schylus, Herodotus, Pindar, Euripides, Aristophanes, 
 Virgil, Horace, and Lucian. Much of the symbolism 
 
118 JOHN RUSKIN [chap. 
 
 that he sees in the myths — or rather, forces out of them 
 — is fanciful and ^Wthout authority, but it is almost 
 always graceful and suggestive. But in the midst of 
 purely aesthetic interpretation of Greek imagery he 
 perpetually falls back on Economics — on Capital, 
 Crime, Labour, Land, Legislation, Money, Value, and 
 Wealth. And though his topic is myths, he finds 
 room to speak of some eighty-seven different flowers, 
 half-a-dozen different animals, and more than a dozen 
 modern artists. 
 
 His final estimate of Greek Art is a wonderful proof 
 of taste and insight ; coming as it does from a man of 
 fifty who, all his life, had been a passionate devotee of 
 Fra Angelico, mediaeval cathedrals, Tintoretto, and 
 Turner. The merits of Greek art, he says, are " sound 
 knowledge — simple aims — mastered craft — vivid inven- 
 tion — strong common sense — true and wise meaning — 
 and, above all, coolness, everlasting calm." Not that 
 Greek art is so beautiful, but it is so right. All that it 
 desires to do it does, and all that it does, does well. 
 Its self-restraint is marvellous, its peace of heart, its 
 contentment; "sincere and innocent purpose, strong 
 common sense and principle, and all the strength that 
 comes of these, and all the grace that follows on 
 that strength." And yet, he will not give the crown 
 of wild olive even to the Aphrodite of Melos, "who 
 could not hold her own against a simple English 
 girl, of pure race and kind heart." And the sweet 
 cherub heads by Sir Joshua Keynolds at Kensington 
 "is an incomparably finer thing than ever the Greek 
 did." 
 
 And so these years passed in varied occupations — 
 much travellincr in France, Switzerland, and North 
 
IX.] THE ETHICS OF WORK AND OF ART 119 
 
 Italy, back again to his beloved English lakes, in 
 geologising, drawing, studying minerals, writing letters, 
 and continual lectures. In 1867 he was the Rede 
 lecturer in the Senate House at Cambridge. His 
 subject was the same topic on which he was now con- 
 tinuously absorbed — ''The Relation of National Ethics 
 to National Arts." It has not yet been published ; but 
 so far as we can judge from the reports in the journals, 
 it was composed in a more conventional style than 
 usual with him, and was more in the vein of a 
 university sermon than a professor's lecture. He 
 warned the undergraduates to remember " the infinite 
 importance of a life of virtue, and the fact that the 
 hereafter must be spent in God's presence or in dark- 
 ness." To the Dons he said their prosperity must 
 depend on their diligence in executing "the solemn 
 trust given to them in the proving of youth — 'Lead 
 them not into temptation, but deliver them from evil' " 
 We trust this appeal to heads of houses and tutors 
 was a counsel of perfection. His father always said 
 that John Ruskin "ought to have been a Bishop." In 
 spite of his own nolo episcopari, he was always and 
 everywhere the Overseer of souls, and never more than 
 in these lat^r years. But perhaps some parts of this 
 report may be the stenographer's commonplace. 
 
 In 1865-66 the sanguinary suppression of a negro riot 
 in Jamaica, and the summary execution of Gordon by 
 Grovernor Eyre, roused fierce indignation, and com- 
 mittees were formed to prosecute — and to defend 
 Mr. Eyre. Carlyle, always on the side of martial law 
 and against the slave, dragged Ruskin into the Eyre 
 defence, which he warmly supported, and to which he 
 subscribed £100. It was startling to some persons to 
 
120 JOHN RUSKIN [chap. ix. 
 
 find the author of Unto this Last, this "merciful, just, 
 and godly " person, on the side of lawless oppression 
 of the weak. But his Tory instincts and the influence 
 of Carlyle may account for this and much more. 
 
 In 1871, Miss Agnew was married to Arthur Severn 
 and left Denmark Hill. In the same year Ruskin 
 bought the house and property of Brantwood on 
 Lake Coniston, "the finest \aew in Cumberland or 
 Lancashire." In December of that year his mother 
 died at the age of ninety, infirm of body, nearly blind, 
 but still resolute in spirit, and mistress of her home. 
 The son had loved her, submitted to her, and mourned 
 her " with a surprising sense of loneliness." He buried 
 her in his father's grave at Shirley, and inscribed over 
 it, " Nor was dearer earth ever returned to earth, nor 
 purer life recorded in heaven." 
 
 Ruskin, now almost fifty-three years old, was at last 
 alone ; he withdrew to a new and distant home, and a 
 new phase of his life was begun with his career as 
 professor at Oxford, 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 SLADE PROFESSOR — OXFORD — LECTURES 
 
 In August 1869 Ruskin was elected Slade Professor 
 of Art at the University of Oxford, almost it would 
 seem as a surprise to himself. In February 1870 (he 
 was then fifty-one) he gave his first lecture in the 
 Sheldonian Theatre. The crowds to hear him had been 
 so great that the lecture had to be removed from the 
 Museum, which was not large enough to contain them. 
 In January 1873 he was re-elected for another term 
 of three years, and again in 1876 for a third term. 
 Ill-health and incapacity to fulfil his work forced him 
 then to resign. Again, in 1883 he was re-elected in 
 succession to Sir "W. Richmond, but he resigned again 
 at the end of 1884. His Oxford Professorship had 
 lasted for upwards of ten years, between 1870 and 
 1884, and this latter date was practically the last of 
 his public utterances ; and, but for Prceterita and a few 
 casual pieces, marks the last of his literary work. 
 Certain of his Oxford lectures, at least in the first 
 part of his time and for those into which he threw 
 his best, were as effective and valuable as anything he 
 ever had done. His method was unconventional, 
 familiar, oft^n humorous, and always intensely char- 
 acteristic. He usually had drawings, specimens, dia- 
 grams, and figures to illustrate his argument, and with 
 
 121 
 
122 JOHN RUSKIN [chap. 
 
 these he extemporised a rich flow of ideas, comments, 
 and fancies. At the outset of his course, and usually 
 at the opening of each lecture, he read carefully 
 written passages, such as might be found in Modern 
 Painters', but no lecture was ever left a mere essay 
 formally read. 
 
 It has been well said that E-uskin as Professor ful- 
 filled all the four conditions for which a Professorship 
 may be used — research, ornament, general instruction, 
 and professional teaching. If people outside thought 
 that the office gave* him new honours, if his family 
 and his intimates always henceforth knew him and 
 spoke of him as "The Professor," it is certain that all 
 that was best in Oxford held that his part in it con- 
 ferred an honour and a new force on the University 
 itself. His Oxford lectures were ultimately issued in 
 the books with the following titles : Lectures on Art 
 (of 1870), Aratra Pentelici (1870), Michael Angelo and 
 Tintoret (1870), the Eagle's Nest (1872), Ariadne Floren- 
 tina (1872), Love's Meinie (1873), Val d'Arno (1873), the 
 Art of England (1873), the Pleasures of England (1884). 
 And by way of professional teaching he issued, for the 
 use of travellers in Italy, a series of foreign guide- 
 books : Mornings in Florence, St. Mark's Best, the Academy 
 of Fine Arts in Venice. 
 
 Mr. Edward T. Cook, one of the Professor's most 
 distinguished pupils, and his biographer, tells us in 
 words that are best recorded in his quarto Studies in 
 Buskin, 1890— 
 
 " The charm of the Living Voice in Mr. Euskin's lectures 
 was as potent as the influence of the Living Teacher. The 
 published volumes of these lectures are amongst the more 
 important, as they are the most closely and carefully written 
 
X.J SLADE PROFESSOR— OXFORD-LECTimES 123 
 
 of his works. But they convey to the reader only a faint echo 
 of the fascination they exercised over the hearer. ['That 
 singular voice of his,' Mr. Mallock says, ' which would often 
 hold all the theatre breathless, haunts me still.'] 
 
 "Mr. Ruskin is, indeed, no orator. His eloquence Is 
 studied, not spontaneous — the eloquence of a writer, not of 
 a speaker. His voice, though sympathetic, is neither strong 
 nor penetrating. Of action he has little or none. But one 
 quality, which is essential to a successful speaker, Mr. Ruskin 
 possesses to the full— the quality of a striking personality. 
 No one who ever attended his Oxford lectures is likely to 
 forget the bent figure with the ample gown — discarded often 
 when its folds became too hopelessly involved — and the velvet 
 college cap, one of the few remaining memorials of the ' gentle- 
 man commoner.' . . . The quaintness of his costume— the 
 light home-spun tweed, the double-breasted waistcoat, the ill- 
 fitting and old-fashioned frock-coat, the amplitude of inevit- 
 able blue tie — accurately reflected something of the quaintness 
 of his mind and talk. If it were not for the peculiarly delicate 
 hands and tapering fingers, denoting the artistic temperament, 
 the Oxford professor might have been taken for an old- 
 fashioned country gentleman. In repose, Mr. Ruskin's face 
 has of recent years been furrowed into sadness ; but the blue 
 eyes, piercing from beneath thick, bushy eyebrows, have never 
 ceased to shine with the fire of genius ; whilst the smile that 
 was never long absent when he lectured, lit up his face with 
 the radiance of a singularly gracious and gentle spirit." 
 
 "The Lectures on Art," with which the Oxford 
 courses opened, were among the most serious and 
 thoughtful of Ruskin's deliverances. Art, artists, and 
 art-work formed the text, the illustrations, and the 
 digressions. In substance they were homilies on educa- 
 tion, sincerity of life, noble ideals of conduct, and the 
 spirit of religion. They are full of denunciation of 
 modern \ailgarity and avarice, of satiric touches, and 
 pathetic wailing over the hardness of heart and coarse- 
 
124 JOHN RUSKIN [ckat. 
 
 ness of tone in British society of to-day. They might 
 have "been sermons from a University pulpit rather than 
 discourses from a professor's chair. The refrain of the 
 first is the old moral that great Art cannot grow up 
 in a rotten world. Whether the title be Art and 
 Religion, Art and Morals, Art and Useful Service, it 
 is the same theme — one that the founder of the Slade 
 Professorship did not perhaps intend, but one that since 
 the close of Modern Painters Ruskin had perpetually 
 enforced, with more or less exaggeration, but with all 
 the fervour that was in him, as when he said, " You 
 live in an age of base conceit and baser servility — an 
 age whose intellect is chiefly formed by pillage, and 
 occupied in desecration ; one day mimicking, the next 
 destroying, the works of all the noble persons who 
 made its intellectual or art life possible to it." >' 
 
 After this tremendous jeremiad, the Professor turned 
 to Art; and in the course of Mich. 1870, now called 
 Aratra Pentelici, he gave six lectures, more or less 
 directly concerned with the relations of the arts to 
 each other, about Idolatry and Imagination, in other 
 words, ideals and symbols, likeness, and structure in 
 art representation, and a comparison of the distinctive 
 marks of the best work of Athens and of Florence in 
 sculpture. These lectures, graceful in expression, fertile 
 in suggestion, and original in thought, are a joy to read, 
 and were a genuine example of sound professional 
 guidance, both in the way of judgment and of research. 
 They contain also some of his wittiest and some of his 
 most eloquent sayings, and were illustrated with some 
 admirable drawings, photographs, and diagrams. " Art, 
 instead of being foreign to deep questions of social 
 duty and peril, is vitally connected with them." He 
 
X.] SLADE PROFESSOR— OXFORD— LECTURES 125 
 
 is so deeply stirred by the European war (Nov. 1870) 
 that he occupies his mind ^vith the technique of Sculp- 
 ture rather than general principles of Art. For illus- 
 tration, he holds up a breakfast plate and dilates on its 
 roundness, its rim, its ridge underneath, the one serving 
 as continuous handle, the other as continuous leg. Then 
 for ornament, the plate has six roses painted on its 
 rim, and from the breakfast plate the Professor turns 
 rapidly to the Porch of San Zenone at Verona, of which 
 he exhibits a beautiful photograph ; and thence, by a 
 transition easy only to John Euskin, we are taken to 
 the lovely coin of Syracuse, the head of Arethusa by 
 Cimon. 
 
 "There is no instance of fine sculpture being pro- 
 duced by a nation, either torpid, weak, or in decadence. 
 Their drama may gain in grace and wit; but their 
 sculpture, in days of decline, is always base." Cela 
 donne a reflSchir, when we remember that the model for 
 Praxiteles' Aphrodite was Phryne, and that Michael 
 Angelo worked for the Popes and Princes of the six- 
 teenth century. "The Greek school of sculptors is 
 formed during, and in consequence of, the national 
 effort to discover the nature of justice." One wonders 
 that the very name of the Aphrodite of Melos did not 
 remind the Professor of the horrible sentence of the 
 Athenian Demos on the Melian people. "All the arts, 
 founded on religion, and sculpture chiefly, are here in 
 England effete and corrupt to a degree which arts never 
 were hitherto in the history of mankind." This, by the 
 way, at the time that Alfred Stevens was executing the 
 grand monument of Wellington in St. Paul's Cathedral. 
 
 But in spite of these outbursts from a man whose 
 intensely sensitive nerves were being daily torn to 
 
126 JOHN RUSKIN [chap. 
 
 shreds, we need not forget how much of truth and of 
 charm is embodied in these fiery darts into the soul 
 of Greek and Florentine sculpture. "The Greeks 
 were the first people who were born into complete 
 humanity " j they looked for the first time " with their 
 children's eyes, wonderingly open, on the strange and 
 divine world." "The first thing you will ahvays 
 discern in Greek work is the first which you ought 
 to discern in all work; namely, that the object of it 
 has been rational, and has been obtained by simple 
 and unostentatious means." "The modern sculptor 
 thinks in clay instead of marble." The Greeks per- 
 fectly moulded the human body and limbs ; but they 
 did not represent the face as well as amy great Italian. 
 Whereas, the Italian painted and carved the face 
 insuperably ; but there is no instance of his having per- 
 fectly represented the body, which by command of 
 his religion it became his pride to despise and his 
 safety to mortify. One must give a very strict meaning 
 to the term "perfectly" in order to understand this 
 dictum, so as to make the head of the Olympian Zeus 
 of Pheidias short of perfect, as also the three Graces 
 of Raphael or the Venus of Titian imperfect. But 
 Ruskin evidently means that no Greek head known 
 to us had the expression of Leonardo's Christ, nor 
 had Titian'^ Bacchus or his voluptuous duchess the 
 grand forms of Theseus or of the Melian Aphrodite. 
 The Greek never expresses momentary passion ; a 
 Florentine looks to it as the ultimate object of his 
 skill. A Greek never expresses personal character; 
 a Florentine holds it to be the ultimate condition of 
 beauty. The Greeks do not give ideal beauty — the 
 Venus of Melos has dignity, simplicity, but not the 
 
X.] SLADE PROFESSOR— OXFORD— LECTURES 127 
 
 beauty of an English girl. Nor do the Greeks present 
 mystery or pathos. The strength of the Greek was 
 in Rightness — the thing portrayed in its simplicity. 
 The Greek, in a word, is the author of all broad, 
 mighty, and calm conception, and of what is subtle, 
 delicate, and varied. 
 
 The Eagle's Nest (1872), a book which Carlyle liked 
 best, was a course on the metaphysics of the aesthetic 
 and moral faculties rather than on Art proper. It was 
 so named in the same way of fancy, in that it contains 
 much about birds, at least twelve different species 
 being mentioned, and something about eagles. "What 
 eagles' nests have to do ^\ath the teaching of Art is 
 Ruskin's secret. And this perhaps few of his under- 
 graduate hearers (to whom they were specially addressed 
 as definite studies) quite succeeded in solving. But 
 as usual there is much besides birds in this course — 
 Dr. Acland's dog "Bustle," the Alabama arbitration, 
 armorial bearings and heraldic " ordinaries," two young 
 ladies studying astronomy, forty texts from the Bible, 
 the dangers of studying anatomy, dancing at the 
 Gaiety Theatre, the famine in Orissa, dwellings for 
 the working classes, drawing from the living nude, the 
 Victoria Tower at Westminster, and the battle of the 
 Lake Regillus, — all this in 240 paragraphs, and ajpropos 
 (not de hotteSj but) of Eagles. 
 
 The first five lectures are devoted to the Greek con- 
 ception of o-o^ta, ar(i}(j>po(rvvr), and auTa/OK€ia, and they 
 somewhat trespass on the preserves of the Regius 
 Professor of Greek, and of the Waynflete Professor 
 of Moral and Metaphysical Philosophy. But, given 
 
128 JOHN RUSKIN [chap. 
 
 Euskin's fanciful and discursive methods, they have 
 some suggestive thoughts in exquisite words as to the 
 relations of Science, Art, and Literature, interwoven 
 with some quaint references to Homer, Aristotle, Shake- 
 speare, Chaucer, Goethe, and Blake, and some lovely 
 fantasies about the instinct and songs of birds. The 
 argument, scintillating as it does with bright fancies 
 and allusions, is not very easy to follow ; but it 
 amounts to this : that the business of Art is to repre- 
 sent what is visible, not to give a scientific explanation 
 of what a thing is composed of, what may be inside it 
 and invisible, much less how it came about. Three 
 thousand years have passed since the age of Ulysses, 
 who resisted the temptation of the Sirens to "learn 
 new wisdom," and we are still eager to add to our 
 knowledge rather than to use it, passionate in discover- 
 ing, every day more cold in admiration and more dull 
 in reverence. And much more to the same effect, as 
 the undergraduates so often heard from the University 
 pulpit. 
 
 When it comes to advice as to drawing, Ruskin 
 earnestly protests against any intrusion of science upon 
 art ; and here he obviously means science as professed 
 in the orthodox method, for he throws in a great deal 
 of science of his own devising. That is a capital story 
 of the old sea captain who complained to Turner that 
 in a drawing of Plymouth Harbour he had given the 
 ships no port-holes. " No," said the painter, " you cannot 
 see the port-holes. My business is to draw what I 
 see, not what I know is there." " Art has nothing to 
 do," said Ruskin, "with structures, causes, or absolute 
 facts; but only ^vith appearances." Hence the study 
 of Anatomy is an impediment to graphic Art. Michael 
 
X.] SLADE PROFESSOR— OXFORD— LECTURES 129 
 
 Angelo, Botticelli, Diirer, and Mantegna were injured 
 by their scientific knowledge of the skeleton and the 
 anatomy beneath the skin of their fignres. They con- 
 tinually would draw, not what could be seen, but what 
 they knew was underneath the exterior. Mantegna 
 and Diirer "were polluted and paralysed" by their 
 study of anatomy. And even the study of the nude 
 form, beyond what is shoAvn in daily life, is injurious 
 to the art of painting or of sculpture — for instance, 
 Mulready's life studies are vulgar and abominable. 
 This, it seems, on the ground that, though such studies 
 represent what the draughtsman sees, they are not what 
 the public sees or knows; and thus they disturb the 
 mind with what is neither familiar nor pleasing. And 
 it seems that, on similar grounds, the Professor would 
 banish copying the antique from elementary drawing- 
 schools. For a young boy or girl to stare at the Elgin 
 marbles is enough to make the youthful temper "rotten 
 with afiectation, and sickly with strained and ambitious 
 fancy." It is even worse for young persons to endure 
 the horror of the dissecting-room, or be made familiar 
 with the bodily form in climates where, owing to the 
 use of clothing, the body is not perfect in shape, 
 and cannot be viewed unclothed with entirely simple 
 feeling. 
 
 When we come to Ariadne Florentina (lectures of 
 1872), we reach more strictly artistic studies; indeed, 
 they are on the technique of Wood and Metal Engrav- 
 ing. They are mainly occupied with subtle analyses 
 of the methods employed by Botticelli, Diirer, Holbein, 
 Bewick, and Tenniel. There is much of refined criti- 
 cism in all this, but it is far too technical to be here 
 
 I 
 
130 JOHN RUSKIN [chap. 
 
 examined, especially without those elaborate drawings 
 and photographs which gave such interest to the 
 spoken lectures. One shrinks from the task of reports 
 ing, or defending, or criticising the Professor's analysis 
 of the engraver's triumphs and failures — often striking, 
 sometimes fanciful, and usually suggestive, as it all is. 
 Holbein's Dance of Death is a subject in which Ruskin 
 naturally would revel. You may learn more, he says, 
 by trying to engrave the tip of an ear or the curl of 
 a lock of hair than by photographing the entire popula- 
 tion of the United States of America. Unfortunately, 
 all that the public demand of engravings to-day is 
 Ramsgate Sands, Dolly Vardens, and the Paddington 
 Station— that is the public itself. 
 
 The volume on German and Florentine engravers 
 has far less of the disquisitions on Morals and Philo- 
 sophy than the Professor's other lectures ; but there is 
 a striking passage, at the opening of the fifth lecture, 
 which sums up Ruskin's feeling about the Renascence, 
 or Eenaissance, as he -will call it, in the fifteenth cen- 
 tury. Three great passions " then perturbed or polluted 
 Europe " :— 
 
 1. The thirst for classical literature, and the proud 
 
 and false taste created by it when it assumed 
 to be the enemy of Christianity. 
 
 2. The pride of science, enforcing accuracy of per- 
 
 spective, shade, and anatomy, never before 
 dreamed of. 
 
 3. The sense of error and iniquity in the teaching 
 
 of the Christian Church. 
 
 To put it more shortly — (1) Classicism and Literary 
 Science; (2) Medicine and Physical Science; (3) The 
 
X.] SLADE PROFESSOR— OXFORD— LECTURES 131 
 
 Reformation and Religious Science. One may wonder 
 where, mthout these great polluting passions, would 
 have been Tintoretto, Titian, Turner, and Reynolds, 
 where would Oxford have been, and where would be 
 nine-tenths of the Slade Professor's own works ? 
 
 Liyve's Meinie is the written form of four Oxford 
 lectures of 1873. 'T would be a pretty game to dis- 
 cover the subject from this cryptic title, and one 
 hundred guesses would not unriddle it. In fact, it is 
 about "Greek and English birds"— the robin, the 
 swallow, and the dabchicks; and "Meinie," it seems, 
 means " a many," or a bevy, or flock, or crowd ; and to 
 understand the full sense of the phrase, we must turn 
 to the Romance of the Rose, Chaucer, St. Francis, and 
 St. Bernard. The motto of the first lecture is : — 
 
 " II etait tout convert d'oisiaulx, 
 De rossignols et de papegaux." 
 
 In any case, it is a charming book, to be read alongside 
 of Jules Michelet's Oiseau. But there is hardly one 
 word in it about art, artists, or artistic studies. Be- 
 yond a casual phrase about Carpaccio and Holbein's 
 drawing of birds, we get little about birds in Art, but 
 much about birds in Nature. Paolo Uccelli and 
 Antonio Pollajuolo are condemned as being too scien- 
 tific. Benozzo Gozzoli and fifteenth century tapestry 
 are not mentioned, nor is a word thrown to Raphael 
 for his cardellino, his doves, and his cranes. 
 
 It would be a perilous task to examine the scientific 
 accuracy of Ruskin's ornithology. He says that his 
 two hundred pages are intended to contain the cream 
 of forty volumes of scientific ornithology, and he has 
 diligently studied the standard authorities upon birds. 
 
132 JOHN RUSKIX [chap. 
 
 But his business is to speak of what we can see of birds, 
 of the visible facts of bird life, and especially of bird 
 life as the poets, ancient and modern, have known it. 
 And as a prose poet, Ruskin havS thrown together a 
 delicious body of bright thoughts about the birds 
 whom he loves as well as St. Francis himself. The 
 killing of birds is naturally the object of his most 
 'violent condemnation. The chief interest of the leisure 
 of mankind is now to be found in the destruction of 
 the creatures, not one of which can fall to the ground 
 without our Father's ^vill. It is becoming the only 
 definition of aristocracy that the principal business of 
 its life is the kilKng of birds, as Carlyle's epitaph on 
 Count Zaehdarm in Sartor runs — centum mille perdrices 
 plumbo confecitj "too often the sum of the life of an 
 English lord." 
 
 There are no less than seventy-six birds spoken of in 
 this little book; but, except quite incidentally, the 
 singing birds are hardly treated, nor is there much 
 more about the kingfisher, the swan, the pheasant, or 
 the peacock. We must take Ruskin as we find him ; 
 and if he chooses to confine himself to the visible 
 movements of a few common birds, and to a few notices 
 of them in the poets, we may be thankful and enjoy 
 what we get. The purpose of the course is to stimulate 
 careful observation of birds in motion, of their action, 
 plumage, and habits. The delight he feels in watching 
 birds on the wing, hopping, dabbling, or diving, serves 
 to draw off his mind from the cruel tale of social wrong 
 and modem vulgarity which had so long settled on 
 him. But there are moments when it breaks forth, as 
 when he solemnly reprints that fierce passage from 
 Modern Painters^ vol. ii. : how he knows not of " anv- 
 
X.] SLADE PROFESSOR— OXFORD— LECTURES 133 
 
 thing more destructive of the Christian character and 
 human intellect than those accursed sports, in which 
 man makes of himself cat, tiger, serpent, choetedon, 
 and alligator in one ; and gathers into one continuance 
 of cruelty, for his amusement, all the devices that 
 brutes sparingly, and at intervals, use against each 
 other for their necessities.'' He repeats this scathing 
 attack on sport after thirty-five years, and adds that 
 every hour of his life since has increased his sense 
 "of the bitterness of the curse, which the habits 
 of hunting and 'la chasse' have brought upon the 
 so-called upper classes of England and of France; 
 until, from knights and gentlemen, they have sunk 
 into jockeys, speculators, usurers, butchers by battue, 
 etc., etc." 
 
 One cannot understand Euskin's life, unless we 
 realise how the graceful gossip about robins and 
 swallows leads in his mind straight to this bitter 
 anathema on modern life. Only, one wonders what 
 the young gentlemen, to whom it was addressed, 
 thought of it, and also what it has to do with the 
 academic courses of a Slade Professor of the Fine Arts. 
 But one reads Ruskin to little purpose if we do not 
 feel that, to him, Art was dust and ashes, except that 
 it meant true life. It may be that some of the young 
 men listened to him more willingly than to those who 
 directly assumed to preach the Gospel, when he closed 
 this course with the words : " The inhabited world in 
 sea and land should be one vast unwalled park and 
 treasure lake, in which its flocks of sheep, or deer, or 
 fowl, or fish, should be tended and dealt with, as best 
 may multiply the life of all Love's Meinie, in strength, 
 and use, and peace." 
 
134 JOHN RUSKIN [chap. 
 
 Val d'Arno professes to be ten lectures of 1873 on 
 Tuscan Art down to the age of Dante ; but it contains 
 more about Tuscan History than Tuscan Art. Opening 
 with a fine sketch of the marvellous influences of 
 Niccolo Pisano, who brought into mediseval Europe the 
 smouldering torch of Greek art ; and then turning to 
 John of Pisa, the Professor rapidly passes into the 
 story of Florence and Pisa, Manfred and Charles of 
 Anjou, all of which is touched in a suggestive, and 
 somewhat desultory and mystical manner, with much 
 about Dante, the heraldic banners of the city quarters, 
 florins, palaces, towers, and Cyclopean masonry. A 
 typical example of Euskin's habit of discursive or 
 " jumble " lecturing may be seen by an analysis of the 
 eighth lecture on "Franchise." Franchise, of course, 
 has nothing to do with privileges or suffrages. It is 
 equivalent to lihertas, not "liberty," such as Mr. John 
 Stuart Mill's, nor is it "liberte," such as M. Victor 
 Hugo's ; but rather freedom from fear and temptation, 
 obedience to law, the truly kingly nature, as that of 
 our Edward in. or of Theseus at Athens. 
 
 The Professor begins by contrasting the Lion of 
 St. Mark's at Venice with that of Niccolo of Pisa, i.e. 
 the Byzantine with the Gothic; the Greek art being 
 pious, the Gothic profane, for the Byzantines gave law 
 to Norman license. Theseus is every inch a king as 
 well as Edward in. ; the function of a Greek king was 
 to enforce labour; that of a Gothic king to restrain 
 rage. Greek law is of Stasy, and Gothic of Ec-stasy. 
 Theseus and Edward in. are warriors, as we know; 
 but they are also theologians, didactic kings, rather 
 philologians, lovers of the Logos, by which the heavens 
 and earth were made. The Byzantine lion is descended 
 
X.] SLADE PROFESSOR— OXFORD— LECTURES 135 
 
 from the Nemean Greek lion. Theseus becomes 
 St. Athanase. If a bird flies under the reign of law 
 and a cricket sings under the compulsion of caloric, 
 perhaps the position of a college boat on the river 
 depends on law, and the Dies Irce is to be announced 
 by a steam trumpet 1 The sheets of the daily press in 
 a single year would serve to enwrap the world. Read 
 fifty-two lines from the Deserted Fillage. Greek Art is 
 all parable, but Gothic is literal. Turner belonged to 
 the Greek school ; his scarlet clouds are a sign of death. 
 Sir Walter Scott's Diana Vernon is a symbol of Fran- 
 chise — "ver non semper viret." "A\Tiat Diana Vernon 
 is to a French ballerine dancing the Cancan, the 
 'libertas' of Chartres and "Westminster is to the 
 liberty of M. Victor Hugo and John Stuart Mill." 
 
 All this is put down in pure and lucid English, 
 melodious and incisive, \Wth wonderful flashes of in- 
 sight and of sarcasm ; but it is difficult to see to what 
 it amounts in the sum, except it be a querulous diatribe 
 against all that we call liberalism or science. And it is 
 even more difficult to see how it could advance the study 
 of the Fine Arts, except by some casual phrase about a 
 carving or a picture. The incoherence of the successive 
 ideas is carried almost to the point of nonsense. The 
 separate sentences have a meaning, even if it be only 
 mystical and fanciful, indeed they often have a preg- 
 nant hint and even a true thought -vvithin them ; but 
 they flash past each other Avith the inconsequence of 
 the famous wedding party attended by the Joblillies 
 and the Great Panjandrum himself. The lecture as a 
 whole resembles the kaleidoscopic pictures of a dream, 
 wherein no single incident has any relation to that 
 which precedes it or that which follows it. It is but 
 
136 JOHN RUSKIN [cHAr. 
 
 too obrious that at this period the Professor's nervous 
 system, overstrained and morbidly excited, was driving 
 the brain at excess, and was leading this fine genius to 
 an inevitable collapse. 
 
 This is more or less the character of the later Oxford 
 courses of the Professor. The incoherence had been 
 growing from the first. He never submitted to regard 
 his chair as one in which he was to confine himself to 
 teaching or studying Art. He was to be moralist, 
 philosopher, lawgiver, prophet — or nothing. If he 
 taught dra^ving, it was only to show how drawing was 
 a school for the virtues of truth, industry, and obedience. 
 If he spoke of painters, it was to show how completely 
 independent of science great artists were, how impos- 
 sible was it to paint v,dthout loyalty, sincerity, and 
 religion. Original and heterodox as his science was, 
 we come from time to time on intuitions of scientific 
 truth, which strike us like those we meet in the poetry 
 of Shakespeare or of Goethe. 
 
 Curiously scanty and desultory as his scholarship 
 had been as a student, we are continually struck in the 
 Oxford lectures wath the range of reading, the subtle 
 comments, and the force of sympathy with which he 
 had reached the inmost soul of so many classical writers, 
 both prose and verse, Roman as well as Greek. Nor 
 has any Professor of Greek, of Poetry, or of Philo- 
 sophy, touched with a wand of such magic power so 
 many inimitable passages of Homer, Hesiod, ^Eschylus, 
 Pindar, Aristophanes, Plato, Aristotle, Xenophon, 
 Lucian; or again of Virgil, Horace, and Catullus. 
 The Slade Professor may have taught the students 
 little enough of Fine Art by his oml lectures ; but he 
 gave even the dullest and most imimaginative of his 
 
X.] SLADE PROFESSOR— OXFORD— LECTURES 137 
 
 hearers new ideas of the place of Art in Life, higher 
 ideals of both Art and Life, and an awakened interest 
 in all that Art might come to mean, if it were lifted 
 out of the meanness and trading spirit in which it is 
 too often sunk. Here and there when he does touch 
 on Art, there are some judgments on paintings and 
 painters of wonderful acuteness for all that they look 
 so paradoxical, as when he insists that Turner belonged 
 to the Greek School. And when he is not thinking of 
 art at all, there are passages of strange pathos and 
 exquisite beauty. The startling paradoxes, falling in 
 such inexplicable inconsequence, at least roused the 
 mind of his hearers, and taught them things in ways 
 impossible to the conventionally obvious. And the 
 Slade Professor, if he taught Art only by stray crumbs 
 that fell from the banquet of passionate satire on which 
 his mind fed, at least planted deep in the hearts and 
 brains of a few chosen men ardent ideals of a better 
 world, and the yearning desire to strive towards its 
 attainment. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 AT OXFORD — WORK AND INFLUENCE 
 
 These lectures, which we now have in some ten hand- 
 some volumes, charged with many hard sayings for all 
 but esoteric Ruskinians, were far from being the whole 
 of Ruskin's work at Oxford, and perhaps they are not 
 the best or the most important part of it. All that he 
 did or said at Oxford, whether from his professorial 
 chair or in his drawing school, in his college rooms, or 
 in the country round about, attracted more attention 
 and exerted a greater influence than perhaps ever fell 
 to the lot of any academic professor of that age. He 
 founded a museum of art, organised a drawing-school, 
 formed working and travelling parties, gathered 
 students around him, stimulated, advised, and reproved 
 them, more as Abailard or Roger Bacon might have 
 done in a mediaeval University, or as John Wesley 
 or John Henry Newman did in the religious world. 
 He trained some few competent draughtsmen ; he gave 
 a new outlet to the intellectual activity of Oxford ; and 
 he deeply impressed the mind of some men who have 
 made their mark in literature, such as Arnold Toynbee, 
 W. H. Mallock, E. T. Cook, W. G. Collingwood, and 
 many more. 
 
 When he opened his course of lectures in February 
 1870, the throng to hear him was such that it could 
 
 138 
 
CHAP. XI.] AT OXFORD— WORK AND INFLUENCE 139 
 
 only be seated in the Sheldonian Theatre; and, in 
 spite of the fact that undergraduates have never been 
 accustomed to attend professorial lectures at such 
 hours, and were usually occupied by a strict time-table, 
 the crowd of his hearers was continued more or less all 
 through his Professorship, even at his last term in 
 1883. Much of this eagerness to hear him was no 
 doubt curiosity, as is the case M-ith miscellaneous 
 lectures of the kind. And much of w^hat he said was 
 more or less unintelligible to some of those who came 
 seriously to learn. But every one knows that the 
 residuum of fruit in a lecture lies usually in a few 
 pregnant seeds that chance to fall on good soil, and] 
 above all in the sympathetic personality of the lecturer.! 
 E-uskin's lectures flung about broadcast pregnant seeds, 
 and his personality had a magnetic influence unsur- 
 passed by any other of his time. Hence it is that his 
 career as Slade Professor cannot be adequately judged 
 by the mere reading of the books, where too often, in 
 the absence of the voice and the illustrations, the 
 want of consecutive thought seems so crude and 
 uncomdncing. 
 
 Ruskin from the first regarded the lecturing as only 
 part of his duties. He at once undertook to organise 
 a school of drav/ing, not to train men to make in- 
 dustrial designs or patterns, or to become professional 
 artists, but to get some practical insight into the 
 history of art and the methods of the great masters; but, 
 above all, to train the mind and eye to the patient and 
 close observation of nature. For the use of his school 
 he gave a collection of Turner's drawings, and some by 
 Rossetti, Holman Hunt, Burne-Jones, and many of his 
 own, and some pictures by Tintoretto, Luini, and other 
 
140 JOHN RUSKIN [cHAr. 
 
 masters, and he added engravings and casts. Thus, 
 out of his own purse, and by his personal labour, he 
 formed a museum to be the nucleus of an adequate 
 school of drawing. The school was but a very 
 moderate success. It was not a thing which easily 
 worked into the academic habits or curriculum. And 
 from first to last the object of it was not to train 
 Oxford students to make themselves artists, but to 
 make them understand what Art can show them in its 
 relations to Nature and to Human Life. 
 
 Besides the di-awing-school which he so munificently 
 equipped, he made himself the personal friend, guide, 
 and tutor of the students who cared to come round 
 him. As he said, truly and sadly enough, of lectures 
 — the hearers come to be entertained rather than to 
 learn — "to be excited for an hour, and, if possible, 
 amused ; to get the knowledge it has cost a man half 
 his life to gather, first sweetened up to make it palat- 
 able, and then kneaded into the smallest possible pills 
 — and to swallow it homceopathically, and be wise. . . . 
 It is not to be done. A living comment quietly given 
 to a class on a book they are earnestly reading — this 
 kind of lecture is eternally necessary and wholesome." 
 
 So he gathered the men about him and got them to 
 read. He started a library of Standard Books for 
 popular reading, which he called Bihliotheca Fastorum 
 — exactly the idea of Comte's Positivist Library, as it is 
 the idea of Sir John Lubbock's Best Hundred Boolcs. 
 Kuskin chose to begin ^\ii\i Xenophon's CEconomicus, a 
 good book too much forgotten ; and this he engaged 
 two of his pupils to translate. He was made Honorary 
 Fellow of Corpus College, as well as Honorary Student 
 of Christ Church ; and Corpus installed him in a set of 
 
XI. 1 AT OXFORD— WOPwK AND INFLUENCE 141 
 
 rooms. To these rooms he sent his great Titian, his 
 Eaphael, the Turners, and Meissonier's Napoleon ; and 
 here he would keep almost open house to his intimates, 
 working, talking, and exhibiting his specimens and 
 treasures. There too he held a weekly breakfast party, 
 and many a symposium about things human and divine, 
 by day and by night. . 
 
 One of the things most talked about, but of very\ 
 small consequence, was the scheme of mending a . 
 neglected bit of road near Hinksey, out of Oxford. 
 He had always preached the value of some experience 
 of useful manual labour as part of sound education — 
 the old monkish gospel of laborare est orare, the old 
 Eoman story of Cincinnatus at the plough, the old 
 Greek honour of agriculture, and much also set forth 
 in the Professor's Aratra Pentelici. So he called forth 
 his young pupils to leave their bats and their oars for 
 a space in order to take a turn as "soldiers of the 
 ploughshare " in mending a farmer's road that nobody 
 cared to touch. The Professor bought a stock of picks 
 and shovels, sent for his gardener to show them how to 
 dig, and gallantly set forth to do a little roadmaking 
 in person. It was found to be rather Quixotic, and 
 there was a good deal of jesting, for the road was 
 rather a failure from the engineer's point of view. 
 
 There was more in the incident than was seen at 
 first sight. It showed a few young men how inferior 
 to an average navvy they were in an honest day's 
 labour; and it might have taught the Professor him- 
 self, had his ears been open to teaching, that the arts 
 and sciences cannot be improvised de twvo by an 
 amateur, however burning be his enthusiasm and 
 however righteous his purpose. But the spirit of they 
 
142 JOHN RUSKIN [chap. 
 
 Hinksey roadmaking sank deep into certain minds 
 willing to hear. "I tell you," Ruskin once said at 
 Oxford, "that neither sound art, policy, nor religion, 
 can exist in England, until, neglecting, if it must be, 
 your own pleasure gardens and pleasure chambers, you 
 resolve that the streets which are the habitation of the 
 poor, and the fields which are the playgrounds of their 
 children, shall be restored to the rule of the spirits, 
 whosoever they are, in earth and heaven, that ordain 
 and reward, with constant and conscious felicity, all 
 that is decent and orderly, beautiful and pure." 
 Mr. E. T. Cook, who was himself one of these students, 
 tells us how the conviction of this truth led shortly 
 afterwards to Toynbee's work in the East End, and to 
 the various University " settlements " which grew out 
 of it. All this was no doubt quite outside anything 
 prescribed in the endowment of the Fine Art Professor- 
 ship. But it was a work which very few academic 
 professors have ever attempted — or could possibly 
 have achieved. 
 
 The third term of the Professorship was much 
 broken by his ill-health and acute sorrow and dis- 
 turbance of mind, and after nine years of service he 
 resigned his work at Oxford. Three years later his 
 health seemed improved, and he began lectures again in 
 March 1883 %vith the Art of England, and in the fol- 
 lowing year he gave the lectures called the Pleasures 
 of England ; but the continued strain on his mind and 
 the growing irritability of his nervous system much 
 disturbed the spoken course of this year. He had 
 always regarded it as his mission to decry and oppose 
 modern science, at least the modern form of teaching 
 science, and that on grounds of morals, of art, and of 
 
XI.] AT OXFORD— WOKK AND INFLUENCE 143 
 
 religion combined. It was with him partly the opposi- 
 tion felt by all synthetic philosophers to the pedantic 
 specialism in fashion ; partly it was a religious horror 
 of the evolutionary and materialist ideas, as he under- 
 stood them, in the science of Darwin and Herbert 
 Spencer, Professor Huxley, and Dr. Haeckel ; but 
 mainly it was the cast of mind which made St. Bernard 
 denounce Abailard and the Inquisition persecute 
 Giordano Bruno and Galileo. The proposal to estab- 
 lish a physiological laboratory in the Oxford ^luseum, 
 within which he anticipated the practice of vivisection, 
 drove Ruskin wild mth indignation; and, upon the 
 vote for the laboratory being passed (December 1884), 
 he summarily resigned, and he quitted Oxford for 
 ever. 
 
 The six lectures of 1883 collected as the Art of 
 England are, in many ways, the most strictly critical 
 of art and artists, and the least encumbered ^vith 
 social moralising of any that he delivered. They 
 are practically a continuation of his Modern Painters. 
 They are marked with the same passionate admiration 
 and much of the same scathing criticism. The name 
 of Gabriel Rossetti, he says, should be placed first on 
 the list of men who have raised and changed the spirit 
 of modem Art. He was the chief intellectual force in 
 the establishment of the modern romantic school in 
 England. Rossetti is Tennyson's "greatest disciple." 
 But then Holman Hunt, in his religious pictures, is 
 even greater in sincerity and respect for physical and 
 material truth. His picture of the " Flight into Egypt " 
 bids fair to be the greatest religious painting of our 
 time. The Professor then introduces to his hearers 
 drawings by two American ladies and by two Italian 
 
144 JOHN RUSKIN [chap. 
 
 young men — more helpful and exemplary than any he 
 had yet been able to find. This lyrical praise, at least 
 of the two Italians, has hardly been accepted by the 
 world. And the lecture closed as usual with a devo- 
 tional invocation only differing from the best type of 
 sermon heard from the pulpit, in the perfect simplicity 
 of the thought and the exquisite music of the words. 
 
 Bume-Jones and G. F. Watts were the subject of the 
 second lecture. The primary virtue of the Pre- 
 Raphaelite school was the effort to conceive things as 
 they are, "thinking and feeling them quite out" — a 
 noble example of which is Millais' "Caller Herrin'." 
 Burne-Jones has command over the entire ran^e of 
 Northern and Greek mythology above all contem- 
 porary designers in Europe. With characteristic 
 subtlety and refinement the Professor touches all the 
 elements and conditions of imaginative art. Burne- 
 Jones, he says, is a chiaroscurist, whilst Rossetti 
 conceives in colour only — the former preferring 
 "subjects that appeal to the intellect and the heart 
 through intricacies of delicate line, or the dimness 
 and coruscation of ominous light." Of Mr. Watts the 
 Professor has not much to say, except that he seems to 
 have been hampered by attempting to make his work 
 on all sides perfect. But his constant reference to the 
 highest examples of Great Art in form and his sensitive- 
 ness to tenderness and breadth have ranked Watts 
 among the painters of the great Athenian days, of whom 
 Plato wrote in the sixth book of the Laws. As none of 
 these works of the painters of Athens have come down 
 to us in any form, the comparison is somewhat difficult 
 to follow. The point seems to be that Mr. Watts is 
 always trying to make things " more beautiful and more 
 
XL] AT OXFORD— WORK AND INFLUENCE 145 
 
 apparent," and indeed that is the aim of most serious 
 and conscientious artists. 
 
 The third lecture is in some ways one of the most 
 typically characteristic that Ruskin ever wrote, and it 
 is therefore worth analysing carefully. Its title is 
 "Classic Schools of Painting — Sir F. Leighion and Alma 
 Tadema." It consists of some forty pages of quarto 
 print. Of these, two are devoted to Sir F. Leigh ton, 
 and about as many to Alma Tadema. About thirty- 
 five pages are occupied with various things having no 
 reference to these painters at all. He opens vrith. a line 
 of Horace, praises W. Richmond's portraits which 
 "lead and crown the general splendour of the Gros- 
 venor Gallery." By "classic" art he means anti- 
 Gothic, and he takes Leighton and A. Tadema as good 
 representatives of the "classic" spirit. The Greeks 
 perfected the representation of the human body; the 
 Northern nations very slowly and imperfectly attained 
 to this skill. He produces facsimiles of illuminated MSS. 
 letters from Monte Cassino, and compares them with 
 copies of frescoes at Pompeii. The latter are obviously 
 the work of a nation in the jaws of death. Greek art 
 is to be studied only from Homeric days down to 
 Marathon. This excludes Pheidias and the Parthenon 
 — Gt)thic art is to be studied from Alfred to the Black 
 Prince, in England ; in France, from Clovis to St. Louis. 
 The combination of Greek and Gothic is to be found in 
 absolute balance in Nicholas of Pisa, and thencefor- 
 ward up to Perugino and Sandro Botticelli. A period 
 of decadence follows among all the nations of Europe. 
 (But what about Raphael, Titian, Tintoretto, Leonardo 1) 
 But then out of these ashes and embers the flame leaps 
 again in Rubens and Vandyke, and thence to the top- 
 
 K 
 
146 JOHN RUSKIN [chap. 
 
 most representatives of English art with Sir Joshua 
 and Gainsborough. Thereon follows much about these 
 two greatest and most English of our painters. How 
 would their sitters look painted in the classic manner, 
 with very scanty costumes 1 " The charm of all these 
 pictures is in a great degree dependent on toilette." 
 Luca della Robbia united the Gothic Avith the Classic 
 School. A little girl of three went up to an Infant 
 Christ of Luca's work in the Professor's room and 
 kissed it lovingly. Sandro Botticelli's frescoes in the 
 Louvre are also similar types in painting. At Venice too 
 the professor was able to copy the St. Ursula pictures 
 in the Academy. Portraiture was the destruction of 
 Greek design, and good Gothic painting must excel in 
 portraits. Holbein's George Guysen at Berlin is a 
 perfect portrait, and so is the portrait in the Tribune of 
 Florence, once believed to be by Raphael, but really 
 by a much more laborious master. The portraits by 
 Mr. Stacy Marks are also most valuable, and so were 
 his "Three Jolly Postboys" and his "Jack Cade." 
 
 Twenty pages before we get a word about Leighton ! 
 Even he has something of the Goth about him, for he 
 paints little girls with a soft charm peculiarly his own, 
 and the Classics never gave us little girls. The 
 Professor feels that ha had no right to speak of 
 Leigh ton's higher efiforts, " which have been the result 
 of his acutely observant and enthusiastic study of the 
 organism of the human body," with which Ruskin has 
 no sympathy. Leighton, of all our present masters, 
 delights most in softly -blended colours, and " his ideal 
 of beauty is more nearly that of Correggio than any 
 seen since Correggio's time," mth his gift of beautiful 
 vaghezza. And ^vith this diplomatic compliment to 
 
XI.] AT OXFORD— WORK AND INFLUENCE 147 
 
 the late President of the Eoyal Academy and some- 
 what ambiguous praise of his " Coireggiosity " and 
 "Vaghezza," Sir Frederick passes out of the lecture 
 altogether. 
 
 As to Alma Tadema, admitting his wonderful techni- 
 cal accuracy and minute draughtsmanship, the Professor 
 warns his pupils against his love of cool twilight instead 
 of strong sunlight. One thinks this remark must be 
 inverted by the reporter. Learn by heart, he says, the 
 seven lines of the Iliad when Achilles shows himself on 
 the rampart and Athene wrapped him in a cloud of fire. 
 The Greeks associated light and cloud in their terrible 
 mystery, as the University motto is Dominus illumincUio. 
 Now, says the Professor, Alma Tadema's pictures of 
 Roman life are always in twilight (?) This is strange 
 news! The picture called the "Pyrrhic Dance" was 
 like a detachment of black beetles in search of a dead 
 rat. Where is the Pyrrhic phalanx gone 1 " This is 
 the classic life which your nineteenth century fancy 
 sets forth under its fuliginous and cantharoid disfigure- 
 ment and disgrace." So much for Mr. Alma Tadema 
 as an exponent of the classic art ! The pretence of 
 classic study is only the "continuing poison of the 
 Kenaissance." 
 
 Alma Tadema, like Leighton, dismissed, the Professor 
 turns to other things. A thing of beauty is a law for 
 ever, whether it be sijoy is another thing. The beauty 
 of Greece depended on the laws of Lycurgus; the 
 beauty of Rome on those of Numa ;. our own on the 
 laws of Christ. Listen to the story of a Tuscan girl, 
 Beatrice, daughter of a stonemason at Melo, who, being 
 a beauty, and a fine singer, was married by a rich 
 farmer, when she showed great vocal powers. Miss 
 
148 JOHN RUSKIN [chap. 
 
 Alexander's book of Tuscan roadside songs has great 
 value. The Ford of the Ox here in Oxford is a 
 baptism as well as a ford ; and the waves of it, as the 
 sands, are holy. Your task is to cross it, staff in hand. 
 On the other side is the Promised Land, the Land of 
 the Leal — when you get your Testamur in the Schools. 
 This cavalier bowing out from the court of Art, of 
 painters like Leighton and Alma Tadema, men whose 
 immense industry and learning, consummate drawing 
 and grace in composition, are familiar to all Europe, 
 strikes us the more painfully in that it is followed by 
 such enthusiastic praise given to Mrs. Allingham and 
 Kate Greenaway, Leech, Du Maurier, and Tenniel, 
 Robson and Copley Fielding. No one grudges words 
 of hearty sympathy for all the delightful things these 
 artists have given the world ; and Euskin in his passion 
 for enfantillage truly anticipated the judgment of the 
 civilised world on Miss Greenaway's lovely children. 
 But to go into raptures over the vignettes of toybooks 
 and che woodcuts of Punchy whilst casting into limbo 
 ^vith suspicious compliments men like Leighton and 
 Alma Tadema as personifying the "poison of the 
 Renaissance," and the "fuliginous disfigurement" of 
 the nineteenth century, is indeed a melancholy example 
 of fanaticism in its dotage. Leighton is ignored on the 
 ground of his study of "classical" form — the very 
 thing for which Watts had just been praised. And so 
 Alma Tadema is an example of the "fuliginous dis- 
 fic^urement" due to the Renaissance, because he loves 
 twilight, the very thing for which Burne-Jones had 
 been praised for his loving " the dimness and corusca- 
 tion of ominous light " — whatever that means. Ruskin 
 has taste too fine and sincerity too real not to acknow- 
 
XI.] AT OXFORD— WORK AND INFLUENCE 149 
 
 ledge the splendid gifts of these two "classical" 
 masters, though in somewhat ungracious words ; but 
 he chooses to pick them out for condemnation as both 
 being men manifestly untouched by his own religious 
 sentiment. In this he reminds us of a rabid monk at 
 Naples or Seville denouncing "The Eevolution." It is 
 an offence, not so much against reason and taste as 
 against morality and fairness, which no skill in judg- 
 ment or beauty of language can excuse, and which even 
 the approach of cerebral disease can hardly palliate. 
 There is not a shadow of anything evil in any work of 
 Leighton or of Tadema, even if it were true that their 
 methods are limited or imperfect. To charge them as 
 vendors of "poison" and "disgrace," because their 
 ideas of beauty were formed on antique, and not on 
 mediaeval and biblical memories, is an ethical rather 
 than an aesthetic aberration of mind. 
 
 It was violent injustice of this kind, -vvith incessant 
 self-contradiction and incoherence, deepening all through 
 the perturbed period of Euskin's life (1871-1886), which 
 alienated men of sober and solid thought. "A voice 
 crying in the wilderness " was a part legitimate enough 
 for one who chose to face all its pain, as did Coleridge 
 and Shelley, Carlyle and Tolstoi. But a University 
 Professor of Fine Art had duties of a specific kind, and 
 had accepted a task in an organised body of teachers. 
 To make pictures and painters mere texts for a religious 
 and metaphysical propaganda exclusively his own, to 
 denounce and ridicule his colleagues conducting their 
 special studies, and to make his chair a pulpit for a 
 Neo-Christianity or Palaeo-Catholicism of his own inven- 
 tion, was unfair to the founders and managers of the 
 trust whose name he accepted. And all the more, as 
 
150 JOHN RUSKIN [chap. xr. 
 
 it was done by a man who stood outside all known 
 communions, who had no fellow-believers, and refused 
 any dogma, formula, or communion whatever. 
 
 It could have but one end. And that end was v 
 infinitely sad. "What am I," he said in 1875 {Fors, 
 Letter LVlll.), " to claim leadership, infirm and old ? 
 But I have found no other man in England, none in 
 Europe, ready to receive it. Such as I am, to my own 
 amazement, I stand — so far as I can discern — alone in 
 conviction, in hope, and in resolution, in the wilderness 
 of this modern world. Bred in luxury, which I perceive 
 to have been unjust to others, and destructive to 
 myself ; vacillating, foolish, and miserably failing in all 
 my own conduct in life — and blown about hopelessly 
 by storms of passion — I, a man clothed in soft raiment; 
 I, a reed shaken with the wind, have yet this message 
 to all men again intrusted to me. Behold, the axe is 
 laid to the root of the trees. Whatsoever tree bringeth 
 not forth good fruit, shall be hewn dowTi and cast into) 
 the fire." 
 
 W^ere words so poignant, so truthful in their self- 
 reproach and self-abasement, ever uttered by a man of 
 brilliant powers, whose whole life had been devoted to 
 generous causes and noble ideas ? Yes ; such words 
 may not have been uttered, but such despair has been 
 felt by preachers, reformers, and prophets of old time 
 and of all time — by Job, David, and Isaiah ; by John 
 the Baptist, St. Francis, Savonarola, George Fox; by 
 Tolstoi and Mazzini. Lama Sabachthani is often the 
 last cry of men whose life seems to end in ignominious 
 failure, but whose very groans have a vital force long 
 after they are gone. 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 ILLNESS — DISAPPOINTMENT — RETIREMENT 
 
 To understand the nature and development of Ruskin's 
 mind, it is essential to take note of the constant attacks 
 of illness from which he suffered, and the degree to 
 which these attacks reacted on his later literary work. 
 And the story of his Oxford lecturing bears cruel 
 evidence of the reaction of his physical weakness on 
 his mental equilibrium. He was constituted from birth 
 with a nervous organisation of abnormal delicacy, and 
 at the same time of singular elasticity. It was a 
 combination of ancestral vitality with intense sensitive- 
 ness to external shock as well as to mental impressions. 
 Hence it came about that a man who (but for a few 
 days) reached the age of eighty-one, who had been an 
 indefatigable traveller for more than sixty years, and 
 had wTitten more books than any one of his time, was 
 prostrated with alarming illness every few years of his 
 life, and for years together was incapable of continuous 
 work. 
 
 His own memoirs and those of his intimates record 
 these incessant attacks of illness. When he was eight 
 or nine, at Dunkeld, the child's life was in danger from 
 a sudden chill whilst gathering foxgloves by the river- 
 side. He seems to have had another illness at the age 
 of ten, which kept the family anxiously at home. At 
 
 151 
 
152 JOHN RUSKIN [chap. 
 
 the age of sixteen lie had a sharp attack of pleurisy, 
 and was in danger for three or four days, his life being 
 saved by his mother and one of the physicians who 
 prevented the murderous resort to bleeding which the 
 others wanted to practise on him. The early disap- 
 pointment in love for Adele Domecq brought on a state 
 of depression which ended in the alarming haemorrhage 
 from the lungs at Oxford at the age of twenty-one. 
 His University career was suddenly broken; we are 
 told that "for nearly two years he was dragged about 
 from place to place, and from doctor to doctor, in 
 search of health." When abroad he had a series of 
 fevers in Italy and in the Alps. Immediately on his 
 marriage (10th April 1848) he was seized with another 
 attack on the lungs ; and having a relapse, he remained 
 an invalid until August. The folloMdng year, in 
 Switzerland, he was attacked with a quinsy, w^hich 
 caused his parents acute anxiety. AVhen, at the age of 
 forty, he broke off his art studies to devote himseK to 
 social problems, a melancholy brooding over the evils 
 of the times took possession of him and never left him 
 again. 
 
 Henceforth he lived much alone, or in silent medi- 
 tation, for a period of many years. In 1862 he wrote 
 from Switzerland : "The loneliness is very great." "I 
 am still very unwell, and tormented between the longing 
 for rest and lovely life and the sense of this terrific call 
 of human crime for resistance and of human misery for 
 help." " It seems to me as the voice of a river of blood 
 which can but sweep me down in the midst of its 
 black clots, helpless." Then came the death of his 
 father, some years later that of his mother, and the 
 break up of his old home. The years 1870 and 1871, 
 
XII.] ILLNESS— DISAPPOINTMENT— RETIREMENT 153 
 
 during the great European war, were full of intense 
 pain to him on public grounds ; and in the summer of 
 1871 he had that acute internal inflammation which 
 nearly cost him his life, and gave his friends so violent 
 a scare, as Carlyle records in a characteristic letter : 
 "We were in a state really deserving pity on your 
 account, till the very newspapers took compassion on 
 us and announced the immediate danger to be past." 
 
 It is a painful story to rehearse ; but it is impossible 
 to form any honest conception of Ruskin's work without 
 some knowledge of the physical and moral afflictions 
 that he bore for the last thirty years of his life. And 
 the facts have been made public by his most devoted 
 admirers and most intimate friends, such as Mr. E. T. 
 Cook, Mr. Spielmann, Mr. Collingwood, and others, 
 and they are tenderly and truly described by M. de la 
 Sizeranne and by M. Jacques Bardoux in French. No 
 one can be a more faithful and loving witness than 
 Mr. E. T. Cook, the authorised editor of Euskin's 
 collected TForks, and the writer of the excellent memoir 
 in the Dictionary of National Biography. He tells us of 
 the intense strain of mind and of successive disappoints 
 ments which undermined Ruskin's health from the time 
 of the Oxford professorship of 1870. He was continu- 
 ally writing letters to the press on public incidents and 
 engaging in acute controversies and denunciations on 
 all sorts of subjects and ^\^[th every class of person. 
 Mr. Cook says : "He was like the li\dng conscience of 
 the modern world, and felt acutely the wrongs and 
 ^vrongdoings of others. In no age could his sensitive 
 heart have escaped these sorrows. ' Le pauvre enfant, 
 il ne sait pas vivre,' was the verdict of his Swiss guide 
 upon him. In an earlier age he might have become a 
 
154 JOHN RtJSKIN [chap, 
 
 saint. In his own age he spent himself, his time, and 
 his wealth in trying to illuminate and ennoble the lives 
 of others. ... 'It is not my work that drives me 
 mad,' he once said, ' but the sense that nothing comes 
 of it.'" A spirit of intense sensitiveness tormented 
 by sympathies and regrets so acute, in a body torn by 
 constant diseases, utterly lonely and disdainful of help 
 from any one on equal terms, was marked out by 
 destiny for a cruel overthrow of mental self-control. 
 
 And to this mental strain was added a private sorrow. 
 As an old man of some seventy years he gave the world 
 (in Frceferifa, iii. 51) something of the story. In 1858 
 (he was then nearly forty, and no longer a married 
 man) a lady wrote to him to beg him to come and see 
 her, and to teach her two daughters and a son how to 
 begin to draw. He went. "Eosie," the youngest, a 
 child of nine, came out of the nursery, stared at him 
 and thought him very ugly, and "gave him her hand 
 as a good dog gives its paw." She was a blue-eyed 
 fair girl, with lovely lips and pretty hair, bright, saucy, 
 and clever. She called her governess " Bun," and the 
 drawing-teacher became "Crumpet," afterwards "Saint 
 Crumpet, or "St. C," otherwise, when they studied 
 geology and extinct beasts, "Archegosaurus." The 
 next year the family went to live in Florence, whence 
 Eosie wrote letters to "Dearest St Crumpet," and 
 signed " ever your rose," as is set forth in Prceterita — 
 clearly a very clever missie of ten. 
 
 Years and years passed. John Euskin was perpetually 
 occupied with romantic friendships with young girls 
 and children, as he freely tells us with charming 
 naivete in many writings ; but when and how he again 
 saw much of the child " Eosie," he has not told us, except 
 
xii.] ILLNESS— DISAPPOINTMENT— RETIREMENT 155 
 
 that some ten years later (when he was just fifty) he 
 had " Paradisaical walks " with her in his Surrey home, 
 which she used to call "Eden-land" {Prceter. iii. 85). 
 We are told by Mr. Cook that the lady was Rose La 
 Touche, an Irish girl, and that he at last asked her 
 to marry him. She hesitated, though deeply attached 
 to him, for she was of a severely evangelical school. 
 "A little work of prose and verse published by her 
 in 1870 is expressive of a deeply religious, but some- 
 what morbid temperament." She was shocked by the 
 latitudinarian tone of Fors. ' ' She could not be unequally 
 yoked mth an unbeliever. To her the alternative was 
 plain ; the choice was terrible ; yet, having once seen 
 her path, she turned resolutely away" (Collingwood, 
 p. 299). 
 
 It was in 1872 that she definitely refused to be his 
 wife. She was twenty-four ; he was fifty-three. They 
 parted for ever. She fell into ill-health, and was 
 evidently at the point of death when, three years 
 later, he begged that he might see her once more. 
 She sent as reply the question whether he could say 
 that he loved God better than he loved her. He could 
 not say he did. She refused to see him again, and 
 died so. In presence of a tragedy so real, full of 
 excruciating pain to two souls deeply sincere, yet with 
 circumstances so morbid around it, as to which those 
 who know all and those who do not know all will 
 form different judgments, it seems best to keep silence 
 even from good words. A French writer has said : 
 "II faut s'incliner bien bas devant ces deux ames, 
 assez fortes pour sacrifier. Tune sa vie, I'autre son bon- 
 heur, a la sincerite absolue. Le grand Corneille les 
 aurait trouvees dignes de ses heros " (Bardoux, p. 139). 
 
156 JOHN RUSKIN [chap. 
 
 Whatever we think of his delicacy, of his prudence, 
 or of his good sense, there can be no doubt about the 
 bitter despair in which this clouded Ruskin's later life. 
 He plunged into work; he curbed his tendency to 
 doubt, or at least to publish his doubts. "The death 
 of Eosie," we are told, "was the greatest grief of 
 Ruskin's life. He suffered much from sleeplessness, 
 and had unnaturally vivid dreams." He now fell 
 in with spiritualists, and attended stances, where 
 "mediums" revealed to him the spirit of his dead 
 lady. Years before he had been profoundly impressed 
 by Carpaccio's picture of St. Ursula in the Academy 
 at Venice. He spent his days in copying it, then in 
 studying the life of St. Ursula. " He fell in love with 
 St. Ursula " ; she became a spiritual type of all womanly 
 virtue and grace. He lectured, he dreamed, he ^^Tote 
 about St. Ursula, who at last became mentally ab- 
 sorbed in the memory of his dead mistress. And 
 St. Ursula, w^ho fills so many pages of Fors, became I 
 to Ruskin much what Beatrice was to Dante. I 
 
 A brain of such imaginative power, bound to a heart 
 so morbidly sensitive, furiously seeking peace through 
 indefatigable work, with the ever present shadow of 
 blighted affection Avithin and passionate abhorrence of 
 the social misery around — here was a nature perilously 
 near to a crushing collapse. All through the summer and 
 autumn of 1873 he suffered from insomnia, unnatural 
 dreams, feverish work, utter prostration of body and 
 mind. In 1874 he tried another journey to Italy, 
 where he had a dangerous fever at Assisi, and dreamed 
 that he was made a brother of the third order of 
 St. Francis. It was from Assisi that he indignantly 
 refused the gold medal of the Royal Institute of 
 
XII.] ILLNESS— DISAPPOINTMENT— RETIREMENT 157 
 
 British Architects. Quaint fellowship — St. Francis, 
 John Ruskin, Sir Gilbert Scott, and the "restorers" 
 of ancient churches ! His mental condition grew more 
 feverish each year. He resolved to recast his books, 
 and to recant many of his opinions. It is a cruel 
 record — "a state of hopeless confusion of letters, 
 drawings, and work." He says, " I can't fix my mind 
 on a sum in addition ; it goes off, between seven and 
 nine, into a speculation on the seven deadly sins or 
 the nine Muses." On Christmas Day, 1876, he had 
 an attack of severe pain, followed by a sort of vision 
 of the dead lady as St. Ursula, and he felt that he 
 had recovered his lost conviction of immortality in 
 a future world. Early in 1878 he was struck down 
 by his first attack of brain fever, producing acute 
 delirium, which lasted at least two months, but from 
 which he seemed completely recovered before the 
 autumn passed. 
 
 It was but a seeming recovery. He never quite 
 shook off the terrible collapse of 1878, which the 
 strain of work, disappointment, and reveries would 
 from time to time partially renew. The pressure of 
 real work, dreams of vast work still to do, continually 
 excited that super-heated brain. At fifty-six he wrote 
 about the "various designs of which he had been 
 merely collecting material." These were — a history of 
 fifteenth century Florentine art in six octavo volumes ; 
 an analysis of the Attic art of the fifth century B.C., 
 in three volumes; an exhaustive history of northern 
 thirteenth century art, in ten volumes ; a life of Sir 
 Walter Scott, with an analysis of modern epic art, in 
 seven volumes ; a life of Xenophon, with analysis of 
 the general principles of education, in ten volumes ; 
 
158 JOHN RUSKIN [chap. 
 
 a commentary on Hesiod, with final analysis of the 
 principles of Political Economy, in nine volumes ; and 
 a general description of the geology and botany of the 
 Alps, in twenty-four volumes. Here are sixty-nine 
 volumes, to be -written by a man shattered in body and 
 mind at the end of a laborious life. They say Empire- 
 builders must "think in continents"; the distracted 
 Herod loved to "think in gold and dream in silver." 
 But John Euskin would think in Encyclopaedias, com- 
 prising Man and Nature in one library. The cata- 
 logue of volumes may have been his playful trick of 
 exaggeration. He was ever a megalomaniac, and never 
 more so than when dreaming of what he was destined 
 himself to achieve. But this mere sketch of works to 
 come which he seriously made public is highly char- 
 acteristic of the state of his mind ; and all the lectures 
 of his professorial time, Deucalion^ Proserpina^ and the 
 rest, seem but stray jottings from his notebooks 
 collected as materials for this vast encyclopaedic 
 scheme. 
 
 Early in 1879 he was forced by the state of his 
 brain to resign his Oxford Professorship ; and by way 
 of a rest he plunged into the study of glaciers in the 
 Alps, and into vehement controversy -svith Professor 
 Tyndall, which was like the fabled combat between 
 an eagle and a whale. At sixty, then, Ruskin retired 
 to peace and study at Brantwood, his lovely home on 
 Coniston Lake. It is one of the most exquisite spots 
 in the Lake country. His old-fashioned cottage, a mile 
 or so from the village of Coniston, stood on the spur 
 of headlands at the north-eastern end of the lake, across 
 which it looked on to the crags of the Coniston Old 
 Man with its firs, larches, quarries, and fells. There 
 
XII.] ILLNESS— DISAPPOINTMENT— RETIREMENT 169 
 
 he gradually formed a garden of roses, flowers, and 
 shrubs, in rough natural terraces, leading down to the 
 tiny harbour which held the boats for the lake. By 
 degrees the house was enlarged; a new dining-room, 
 studio, tower, and gateway were added ; and the copses, 
 glens, and meadows along the lake were included in 
 the property. Behind it the moors rise in a series of 
 knolls, cliflfs, and "fells," such as delight the soul of 
 those who know all the inspiration they can bring to 
 the thoughtful mind and to the jaded spirit. In this 
 delicious, simple, and yet easy retreat, the last twenty 
 years of Ruskin's life gently passed on, cherished by 
 the loving care and devotion of his cousin, his almost 
 adopted daughter, " Joanie," "Joanna," or Joan, Mrs. 
 Arthur Severn; her husband, the son of Joseph 
 Severn of Rome, the friend of Keats ; and the Severn 
 family of two sons and two daughters. None of those 
 who have ever been privileged to enter it have known 
 a home more entirely pervaded, as its very atmosphere, 
 %vith grace, simplicity, and kindness. 
 
 The house, which at last was made roomy -without 
 being imposing, quaint and old-fashioned without being 
 in the least "aesthetic" or "Morrissy" (for indeed it 
 long retained not a few traces of the Georgian and early 
 Victorian banalities), houses some exquisite remnants 
 of his great collections. First and foremost, the 
 glorious Titian, the Doge Gritti, two Tintorettos, a 
 contemporary portrait of Raphael, portraits of Turner 
 and of Reynolds in youth, each by the painter himself, 
 portraits of the old father and mother, and of the child 
 John by Northcote, -with his blue sash, blue eyes, and 
 "blue hills." Ruskin's own bedroom was entirely hung 
 with the choice specimens of Turner's dra^vings, which 
 
160 JOHN RUSKIN [chap. 
 
 were so rapturously described in his various books. 
 His 0"v\Ti library had a case of exquisite illuminated 
 manuscripts, some rare printed books, some manuscript 
 originals of Scott's romances, written with the master's 
 own hand in quarto pages at a furious pace, legible and 
 very little disfigured by erasures ; a few smaller pieces 
 of Prout, Hunt, and Burne- Jones; and cases of rare 
 specimens of minerals and precious stones. Until you 
 had closely looked at all these things — the choice 
 remains that had been saved out of the splendid collec- 
 tions of paintings, engravings, specimens, and works 
 of art which he had lavished on public museums and 
 libraries — but for these things, you would not immedi- 
 ately perceive that you were in anything but the 
 ordinary comfortable home of a retired professional 
 gentleman. Here, for twenty years, after life's fitful 
 fever, John Ruskin sought peace — and enjoyed it ; but 
 for the unforgotten memory of what he had loved and 
 hoped, of what he feared and loathed in the world, and 
 the attacks of malady, from which he had no absolute 
 respite. 
 
 Reports of the world outside, of the failure of his 
 philanthropic schemes, of the divergent ways of friends, 
 came in on him from time to time, and fired his brain 
 asrain to white heat. In 1882 he had another attack 
 of brain fever, but was able to travel in August, and to 
 work at French churches, and again in the Alps. And, 
 as his biographer tells us, in that year " the attacks of 
 brain fever had passed over him like passing storms, 
 leaving a clear sky." And accordingly his Oxford 
 friends, with the present Sir William Richmond at their 
 head, insisted on his re-election as Slade Professor, and 
 he resumed his lectures there in March 1883. During 
 
XII.] ILLNESS— DISAPPOINTMENT— RETIREMENT 161 
 
 that year lie lectured in Oxford, in London, and at 
 Ck)niston. But tliese were his last appearances in 
 public. He attempted to continue his Oxford lectures 
 during 1884. He flung himself into a rhapsody en- 
 titled "The Storm Cloud of the Nineteenth Century," 
 in which the dull winter of 1884 was presented to a 
 London audience as an outward sign, sent to reprove 
 the blasphemous iniquity in which the age was steeped. 
 His Oxford course on the "Pleasures of England" 
 seemed, as it was prepared, so erratic to his best friends, 
 that he was induced to substitute for them readings from 
 his own earlier books. And when the vote for a 
 physiological laboratory, to be attached to the Museum, 
 was passed by Convocation, he suddenly resigned his 
 Professorship for the second time, and shook from his 
 feet the dust of Oxford, of academies, and of cities. It 
 was but the warning of a new attack of brain dis- 
 turbance which left him shattered and incapable of 
 continuous thought. 
 
 Modern literature contains no outbursts of poignant 
 suffering, no revelations of self -tormenting reveries that 
 can exceed those ^vrung from Ruskin in these dark 
 hours. Nothing has been uttered more fierce, more 
 pathetic by Swift or Rousseau, by Byron or Carlyle. 
 But in the groans of Ruskin there is no trace of 
 personal shame, of wounded vanity, of cynicism, or of 
 despair. It is the torture endured by a tender spirit, 
 morbidly outraged at the sight of grossness and cruelty ; 
 it is a noble rage against vulgarity and wi'ong; a 
 resurrection of the mediaeval godliness of St. Francis 
 and a Kempis, in a world which had no place for these 
 saintly ecstasies. The mental and physical maladies 
 under which these agonies of a pure spirit have grown 
 
 L 
 
162 JOHN RUSKIN [chap, 
 
 incorporated in English literature, cannot be ignored 
 in any honest record of the abnormal life of an 
 unique genius. But it becomes not one ^yho has but 
 looked on these afflictions from without, but partially 
 informed and but half comprehending them, to describe 
 them himself. We who stand afar off read with wonder 
 his words, " like sweet bells jangled, out of tune and 
 harsh," but we cannot presume to analyse the mind 
 from whence they come. Let us leave the sad record 
 as it is told us by his chosen friend and disciple. 
 
 Mr. Collingwood was his friend, his secretary, and 
 his biographer, with special opportunities to know and 
 authority to speak. He says : " Over-stimulus in 
 childhood; intense application to work in youth and 
 middle age, under conditions of discouragement, both 
 public and private, which would have been fatal to 
 many another man; and this, too, not merely hard 
 work, but work of an intense emotional nature, in- 
 volving, in his view at least, wider issues of life and 
 death, in which he was another Jacob wrestling with 
 the angel in the wilderness, another Savonarola 
 imploring reconciliation between God and man." 
 
 "These attacks of mental disease, which at his re- 
 call to Oxford seemed to have been safely distanced, 
 after his resignation began again at more and more 
 frequent intervals. Crash after crash of tempest fell on 
 him, clearing away for a while only to return with 
 fiercer fury, until they left him beaten down at last, to 
 learn that he must accept the lesson and bow before 
 the storm." 
 
 " All that I now remember of many a weary night 
 and day is the vision of a great soul in torment, and 
 through purgatorial fires the ineffable tenderness of the 
 
XII.] ILLNESS— DISAPPOINTMENT— RETIREMENT 163 
 
 real man emerging, with his passionate appeal for 
 justice and baffled desire for truth. To those who 
 could not follow the wanderings of a wearied brain, it 
 was nothing but a horrible or a grotesque nightmare. 
 Some in those trials learned as they could not other- 
 wise have learned to know him, and to love him as 
 never before." " There were many periods of health, 
 or comparative health, even in those years." In 1888, 
 Ruskin, then in his seventieth year, made his last 
 journey abroad; but it did not revive him as the 
 journey of 1882 had done. "Now, his best hours were 
 hours of feebleness and depression ; and he came home 
 to Brantwood in the last days of the year, wearied to 
 death, to wait for the end." 
 
 So, eleven years later, but a year or so before his 
 death, I foimd him in his quiet Brantwood home — to 
 look at just like Lear in the last scene, but perfectly re- 
 poseful, gentle, and happy, taking the air of the fells 
 with delight, joining in games or reading -with the 
 family at intervals, but for the most part sitting in his 
 library and softly turning over the pages of a poem, a 
 tale of Walter Scott, or Dickens, or some illustrated 
 volume of views, himself in a bower of roses and gay 
 flowers ; silently and for long intervals together gazing 
 with a far-off look of yearning, but nb longer of eager- 
 ness, at the blue hiUs of the Coniston Old Man, across 
 the rippling lake, as if — half child again, half wayworn 
 pilgrim — he saw there the Delectable Mountains where 
 the T-vdcked cease from troubling and the weary are at 
 rest. 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 SOCIAL EXPERIMENTS — GUILD OF ST. GEORGE 
 
 It was the work at the Working Men's College in 
 Great Ormond Street which definitely turned Ruskin's 
 mind to social problems and practical remedies, though 
 strong indications of his interest in such things crop up 
 all through his earUer books, and were very marked in 
 the Stones of Venice. He had first joined the College 
 in 1854, and there he had as pupils, and soon as fellow- 
 workers, such skilled craftsmen as George Allen, W. 
 Jeffery, Arthur Burgess, and William Ward. During 
 1854, -55, -56, and -57, his lectures on Art had turned 
 largely on the forming of art workmen and the con- 
 ditions of life under which, in modern society, such 
 men could be trained. In 1857 he said, "The kind of 
 painting they most wanted in London was painting 
 cheeks red with health.^ All this drove him to face 
 the whole question of Labour and Industry under the 
 dominant Capitalist regime. In 1857 he lectured at 
 Manchester on the "Political Economy of Art," now 
 printed in a Joy for Ever, which, as we have seen, was 
 essentially an indictment of the current views of 
 Plutonomy. And all through the years 1857, -58, -59, 
 he was frequently enforcing the same lesson, that the 
 regeneration of Art could only arise out of a re- 
 organisation of industry as now practised. Unto this 
 
 164 
 
CHAP, xiii.] SOCIAL EXPERIMENTS 165 
 
 Last, in 1860, was the Biblical Contrat Social of our 
 Tory J. J. Rousseau. 
 
 All the books from the close of the Modern Painters 
 series do^vn to the retirement from London repeat and 
 expand this thought, and in the Letters addressed to 
 the workman of Sunderland (now Time and Tide) he is 
 consciously appealing to the labourer on his daily life 
 in direct advice. But it was not until his accession to 
 full control over the fortune left him by his father 
 that Ruskin began to deal in large schemes of practical 
 philanthropy. From the time when he first had money 
 to spend at all, he had been generous to the point of 
 being lavish. Rossetti, C. A. Howell, and many of whom 
 the public knew nothing, were helped by " Ruskin the 
 good Samaritan, ever gentle and open-handed," as an 
 unnamed writer called him. The Oxford Professorship 
 of 1870 first opened to him a career of the munificent 
 and pious founder. He began with forming the Ruskin 
 Art Museum, \vith Turners, Tintorettos, and drawings 
 by modern artists, which he presented to the Art 
 galleries of Oxford. 
 
 As Mr. Cook tells us, "His pensioners were num- 
 bered by hundreds ; his charities, if sometimes indis- 
 criminate, were as delicate as they were generous. He 
 educated promising artists, and gave commissions for 
 semi-public enterprises. He presented valuable collec- 
 tions of Turners to Oxford and to Cambridge. To 
 the Natural History Museum he presented several 
 mineralogical specimens ... to many schools and 
 colleges he presented cabinets of minerals or dramngs. 
 In some forms of philanthropy he was a pioneer. He 
 established a model tea-shop. He organised, for the 
 relief of the unemployed, gangs of street cleaners. 
 
166 JOHN RUSKIN [chap. 
 
 He was the first to give Miss Octavia Hill the means 
 of managing house property on the principle of helping 
 the tenants to help themselves. He shared as well as 
 gave. * He thought no trouble too great to encourage 
 a pupil or befriend the fallen." 
 
 After the capture of Paris in January 1871, Ruskin 
 joined a "Paris Food Fund," to which he gave £50. 
 In November of that year he gave the University of 
 Oxford £5000 to endow a mastership of drawing. 
 He gave a relative £15,000 to set him up in business. 
 And at Christmas he gave the tithe of his remaining 
 capital to found the St. George's Company, into which 
 so much of his money and his energies was destined 
 to be absorbed. John James Ruskin at his death in 
 1864 left to his son, we are told in Fors, Letter lxxvi., 
 £157,000 in money, besides pictures and houses. In 
 seven years the son had but half of this left after his 
 lavish gifts ; and that half not long afterwards followed 
 the first. 
 
 The first letter ot Fors Clavigera was dated from 
 Denmark Hill on 1st January 1871, and it announced 
 his descent into the arena of practical socialism. " For 
 my own part," he wrote, "I mil put up with this 
 state of things passively not an hour longer. . . . 
 I simply cannot paint, nor read, nor look at minerals, 
 nor do anything else that I like ; and the very light of 
 the morning sky has become hateful to me, because 
 of the misery that I know of, and see signs of, where 
 I know it not, which no imagination can interpret too 
 bitterly. Therefore I will endure it no longer quietly ; 
 but henceforward, -v^^th any few or many who will 
 help, do my poor best to abate this misery." On the 
 1st of May 1871, in Letter v. of Fors — a letter which 
 
xm.] SOCIAL EXPERIMENTS 167 
 
 Carlyle hailed as " incomparable ; a quasi-sacred con- 
 solation to me, which almost brings tears into my 
 eyes ! " — Ruskin expounded the scheme of St. George's 
 Company. He undertook to give a tenth of whatever 
 was then left him, and the tithe of what he might 
 earn afterwards. They were to try to make some 
 small piece of English ground beautiful, peaceful, and 
 fruitful, with no steam-engines on it, and no railroads, 
 with no untended creatures on it ; none wretched but 
 the sick; none idle but the dead — no liberty, instant 
 obedience, no equality. On this Utopian Paradise 
 society and industry were to be regulated on strict 
 lines of a newly-ordered scheme, such as was described 
 in the Laws of Fesole and in the subsequent letters of 
 Fiyrs, For this new phalanstery Sir Thomas Dyke 
 Acland and Lord Mount Temple consented to be 
 trustees of the Fund. But the public did not respond. 
 At the end of three years only £236, 13s. was added 
 to the original £7000. 
 
 He then set himself to reclaim some of the " slum " 
 dwellings in London ; and he made an experiment in 
 some nine or ten houses which he put in charge of 
 Miss Octavia Hill, who collected the rents, and in 
 course of that duty learned to know and to improve 
 the tenants. But ultimately he parted with them for 
 £3500, all of which sum he gave away to others, as 
 he said merrily, "like snaw afF a wa'." Then he took 
 a house in Paddington, and started a tea-shop, to sell 
 pure tea at a fair price, putting an old servant in 
 charge. To the tea was soon added coffee and sugar. 
 And we are told the shop did a good and sound 
 ])usiness till Miss Hill took this over also. Then 
 Ruskin stai-ted a gang of street sweepers to keep the 
 
168 JOHN RUSKIN [ckap. 
 
 streets clean. But this Augean-stable task was beyond 
 all the resources of himself, his friends, and his 
 gardener. 
 
 The famous experiment in book-selling was started 
 in 1871 with the first number of F&rs, which was not 
 to be published in the usual way, but was sold only 
 by Mr. George Allen at a village in Kent. It was not 
 advertised, there was no discount, no abatement, the 
 price was sevenpence, afterwards raised to tenpence. 
 In spite of these obstacles, thousands were sold of each 
 number. Ultimately the system wa.s extended and 
 made complete. Euskin had long complained of the 
 methods employed in the book trade by publishers and 
 booksellers and the business rules and understandings 
 in use; and, with characteristic self-\dll, he resolved 
 to be his own publisher and bookseller. His aim was 
 to offer, without any middleman, or advertisement, or 
 commendation, a sound article at a price that would 
 pay fully all the workmen employed on it, putting 
 aside all competition, trade usages, commissions, or 
 rebate. The author charged himself with obtaining 
 paper and type of special quality, and the utmost care 
 and skill in preparing the illustrative plates. Mr. 
 Allen, who had been Euskin's pupil at the Working 
 Men's College, an engraver by trade, became the 
 manager of the great business which was carried on 
 Avith marvellous success at Orpington, until to this 
 was added the Charing Cross Eoad depot as a London 
 house. 
 
 For many years the whole of Euskin's works were 
 issued from Orpington on these terms, at the very 
 high prices of thirteen shillings unbound for ordinary 
 volumes, the illustrated volumes at twenty-two shillings 
 
XIII.] SOCIAL EXPERIMENTS 169 
 
 and sixpence, and the series also in fine bindings. 
 That Fors should have been sold by thousands under 
 conditions so troublesome and unusual, that immense 
 issues of the costly volumes should have found buyers, 
 was an extraordinary tribute to the author's popu- 
 larity. As years went on, he was induced to see that 
 to publish his writings only in forms which no moderate 
 purses could meet was to exclude the very people 
 whom he most desired to reach. And at last the 
 system was modified. The books were printed in a 
 style less sumptuous, and sold at prices more modest. 
 Arrangements were made by which they could be 
 obtained through ordinary booksellers, and the business 
 of Messrs. Allen is now carried on under conditions 
 more like those of a great publishing house. \ye are 
 told that for many years the profits of Mr. Euskin's 
 complete works — and they number between forty and 
 fifty, most of these in various forms and editions — 
 amounted on an average to £4000 per annum. It 
 was indeed all that he had to live on, and to continue 
 his gifts, for he had given away the whole of his 
 capital, and but for his copyrights, he would be actu- 
 ally a pauper. 
 
 Mr. Collingwood, who has special authority to speak 
 on a personal matter of the kind, tells us that " fortu- 
 nate it was for Mr. Euskin that his bold attempt 
 succeeded. The £200,000 he inherited from his parents 
 had gone — chiefly in gifts and in attempts to do good. 
 The interest he used to spend on himself ; the capital 
 he gave away until it totally disappeared, except what 
 is represented by the house he lived in and its con- 
 tents, and a great part of that went to pensioners, to 
 whom in the days of his wealth he pledged himself 
 
170 JOHN RUSKIN [chap. 
 
 to relatives and friends, discharged servants, institu- 
 tions in which he took an interest at one time or other. 
 But he had sufficient for his wants, and no need to 
 fear poverty in his old age." 
 
 The most important of all E-uskin's social experi- 
 ments, that to which he gave his whole energy and 
 large sums for many years between 1871 and 1884, 
 was the Company, or, as it was afterwards called, the 
 Guild of St. George. The scheme is so characteristic 
 in its conception and in its form, and throws so much 
 light on Kuskin's real nature and inmost ideas, that 
 it is necessary to treat it in detail. Few apostles of 
 social reform in our age have ever sought to put their 
 Utopias in practice, or to found material institutions 
 to embody their ideas. But in 1871 Euskin, finding 
 himself independent of all ties, a man of wealth, with 
 a great reputation and powerful friends, resolved to 
 devote his resources of capital and of intellect to give 
 active examples of the New Life. 
 
 / The New Life, as Euskin conceived it, was to be — 
 / not so much an advance upon the Present as a revival 
 of the Past. It was in spirit Mediaeval, but purged 
 from the cruelty of Feudalism and the superstition 
 of Catholicism. It was to be neither Communist nor 
 Monastic ; for it was to carry to the highest point of 
 development the institutions of hereditary property 
 and of family life. It was to show the world Chivalry 
 without War, Devoutness without a Church, Nobility 
 without Luxury or Sloth, and Monarchy mthout Pro- 
 fligacy or Pride. The type was a knight's fee of the 
 thirteenth century in Tuscany — as of some idealised 
 Bellincion Berti of the Commedia — some captain re- 
 turned from the Crusades who should devote himself 
 
XIII.] SOCIAL EXPERIMENTS 171 
 
 to good works and guiding the yeomen who called hiia 
 lord. It was to be a glorified mediaeval lordship, fully 
 equipped with the order, comforts, and appliances of 
 modern existence, but purged of its vices, its frauds, 
 its base machinery, and its sordid habits. ' 
 
 The scheme rested on the central ideas on which 
 Euskin's whole philosophy was based — (1) That there j 
 could be no civilisation without practical religion; (2) 
 no prosperity apart from labour on the soil ; and (3) no 
 happiness without honesty and truth. The task of St. 
 George was to slay the dragon of Industrialism; to 
 deliver the people from all the moral and physical 
 abominations of city life, and plant them again on the 
 soil of an England purified from steam, from filth, and 
 from destitution. In this regenerated country there 
 were to be no competition, no engines, no huckstering, 
 no fraud, no luxury, no idleness, no pernicious jour- 
 nalism, no vain erudition or mechanical book-learning. 
 There were to be three essential Material things — Pure 
 Air, Water, and Earth — and three essential Immaterial 
 things — Admiration, Hope, and Love. And in Letter 
 V. of Fors (1st May 1871) he enlarges on the way to 
 reach these six requisites of rational life. 
 
 The first idea of St. George's Company was to 
 buy land which was to be cultivated by manual 
 industry, and rear a happy peasantry, with education, 
 amusements, music, and art, suitable to their intelli- 
 gence. They were to be paid at fixed rates of wages 
 till they owned their own land. Rich and poor were 
 invited to come in, if they would work hard with plain 
 living ; or to subscribe, if they would be content to see 
 their money diffusing happiness rather than bearing 
 interest. For this end the rich were exhorted to con- 
 
172 JOHN RUSKIN [chap. 
 
 tribute a tenth of their income, as the Master of the 
 Company had done; but, to his surprise and sorrow, 
 none of those on whom Providence had bestowed the 
 good things of this world took advantage of the offered 
 investment. The scheme grew, and was developed 
 and expounded for ten or twelve years in Fors; but 
 almost no funds, and very few Companions, were 
 added. 
 
 It is useless to attempt to describe in any systematic 
 way a project which could not have, perhaps was not 
 intended to have, any systematic form at all. But, to 
 gain some notion of what it meant, of all the inco- 
 herences into which his dream plunged Ruskin, as well 
 as of all the noble aims at which he was striving, it 
 may be well to analyse the Letter LVlil. in the third 
 volume of Fors, premising that it was written in the 
 autumn of 1875, in the agony of the time when he was 
 mourning the death of the girl he loved, who on her 
 deathbed had refused to see him. Letter LViii. opens 
 with the second collect at Evening Prayer : "0 God, from 
 whom all holy desires, all good counsels, and all just 
 works do proceed," which he quotes from the Catholic 
 service, complaining of its "adulteration" in the 
 English ritual (by the way, Ruskin in his own version 
 quite mangles the magnificent roll of this typical prayer). 
 He breaks out into a furious invective against those 
 Avho utter this prayer weekly, without understanding 
 it, determined to put no check on their natural 
 covetousness, to act on their own opinions, to do what- 
 ever they can make money by, to be just or unjust, and 
 to thrust themselves into the " most betrumpeted booth 
 in the Fair of the World." 
 
 In contrast with such persons, every one received into 
 
XIII.] SOCIAL EXPERIMENTS 173 
 
 the Company of St. George must write out and sign the 
 follo\\T[ng Creed : — 
 
 "I. I trust in the Living God, Father Almighty, 
 Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things and 
 creatures visible and invisible. 
 
 " I trust in the kindness of His law and the goodness 
 of His work. And I will strive to love Him, and keep 
 His law, and see His work, while I live. 
 
 " n. I trust in the nobleness of human nature, in the 
 majesty of its faculties, the fulness of its mercy, and the 
 joy of its love. 
 
 ' And I will strive to love my neighbour as myself, 
 and, even when I cannot, will act as if I did. 
 
 "III. I will labour, with such strength and oppor- 
 tunity as God gives me, for my own daily bread ; and 
 all that my hand finds to do, I vnll do with all my 
 might. 
 
 "IV. I will not deceive, or cause to be deceived, any 
 human being for my gain or pleasure ; nor hurt, or cause 
 to be hurt, any human being for my gain or pleasure ; 
 nor rob, or cause to be robbed, any human beino- for 
 my gain or pleasure. 
 
 " V. I -will not kill nor hurt any living creature need- 
 lessly, nor destroy any beautiful thing, but will strive to 
 save and comfort all gentle life, and guard and perfect 
 all natural beauty upon the earth. 
 
 "YI. I will strive to raise my own body and soul 
 daily into higher powers of duty and happiness ; not in 
 rivalship or contention ^\-ith others, but for the help, 
 delight, and honour of others, and for the joy and peace 
 of my own life. 
 
 " VII. I will obey all the laws of my country faith- 
 fully, and the orders of its monarch, and of all persons 
 
174 JOHN RUSKIN [CHAP. 
 
 appointed to be in authority under its monarch, so far 
 as such laws or commands are consistent with what I 
 suppose to be the law of God ; and if they are not, or 
 seem in any wise to need change, I will oppose them 
 loyally and deliberately, not with malicious concealment, 
 or disorderly violence. 
 
 " VIII. And with the same faithfulness, and under the 
 limits of the same obedience, which I render to the law 
 of my country and the commands of its rulers, I will 
 obey the laws of the Society called of St. George, into 
 which I am this day received ; and the orders of its 
 masters, and of all persons appointed to be in authority 
 under its masters, so long as I remain a Companion 
 called of St. George." 
 
 The author of this Creed imagined that no sincerely 
 good and religious person would refuse to profess and 
 sign these articles of belief. But this is a sanguine 
 view. The second article is the direct negation of the 
 orthodox Christian view of the desperate wickedness of 
 the human heart and the miserable feebleness of man. 
 Besides this, the nobleness of Humanity, its majesty, 
 mercy, and love, is, in a religious sense, the doctrine 
 only of Positivists, and is repudiated by most sceptics 
 and agnostics as well as by Christians. Article V. 
 would be a stumblingblock and offence, not only to all 
 who care for any form of "sport," but to almost all 
 persons outside the pale of some avowed humanitarian 
 propaganda. Whether Articles VIL and YIIL imply 
 the obedience of Jesuits to their General, perinde ac 
 cadaver^ is not evident. But the saving clause that 
 obedience is limited by what the Companion himself 
 "supposes to be law of God," would justify the most 
 stubborn resistance of any Puritan, Quaker, Covenanter, 
 
XIII.] SOCIAL EXPERIMENTS 175 
 
 or Anabaptist ; and a^ the Master of St. George himself 
 defied many of the ordinary ways of modern civilised 
 life, a considerable latitude was opened to private 
 judgment. 
 
 For example, he sought for the Company the power 
 of holding land, but would not comply with the con- 
 ditions required by law for registering the Company, 
 though these were exacted simply to prevent fraud and 
 waste. St. George was also to have its o^vn coinage, 
 though how this could be done without trenching on 
 the prerogative of "the monarch," and breaking the 
 law as to " coining," is not clear. The new coins were 
 to be pure gold and pure silver without alloy. The 
 wastage was of no consequence, though perhaps the 
 new soft coins would soon be reduced to the form of 
 boys' toy marbles. Kents were to be strictly required 
 of tenants; but then they were to be lowered, not 
 raised, upon improvements made by the tenant, and 
 entirely used for the benefit of the tenant and the 
 estate. 
 
 The great law of St. George was to be " no use of 
 steam power, nor of any machines where arms w^ill 
 serve." Tools are not forbidden; and "arms" here 
 means limbs, not weapons. The laws in general were 
 to be old English laws revived, or else Florentine or 
 Roman, but none but such as have been in use amongst 
 great nations. The Government was vested in a 
 Master, or General, with Marshals, landlords under 
 him, and ordinary Companions, the type of the land- 
 lord being Richard Cceur-de-Lion. Ultimately there 
 were to be Bishops and Centurions, but these were not 
 to take account of opinions and spiritual things, but of 
 practical ways of life and material conditions, honesty, 
 
176 JOHN RUSKIN [chap. 
 
 and conduct in general. The grand object of St. 
 George was to be the accumulation of national wealth 
 and store (the store being food, clothing, good books, 
 good works of art, the poison being expurgated out of 
 them), and the distribution to the poor instead of 
 taxation of them. Prices, and even saleable articles, 
 were to be fixed by the Government, at least a minimum 
 price and a standard of purity ; all bad food, clothes, 
 or articles were to be destroyed. There was one 
 delightfully droll law. Wine was allowed, but only 
 wine that was more than ten years old. Away with 
 your "Gladstone Clarets," "Bas Medocs," and such 
 stufif! Surely there spoke the son of the old sherry 
 merchant, " entirely honest," who would have none of 
 your modern cheap drinks. Dress would be prescribed 
 to mark distinction of classes ; hereditary orders were 
 recognised ; luxury would be made infamous ; and, if 
 jewels were used, they must be uncut. 
 
 It is needless to go through all the prescriptions of 
 St. George which are scattered over the ninety-six 
 Letters of Fors, extending over the fourteen years from 
 January 1871 to Christmas 1884. The noticeable 
 point is this : St. George is not a social Utopia, such as 
 was imagined by Plato, or Dante, Sir Thomas More, 
 or Eousseau. It Avas an actually constituted body of 
 practical reformers, into which a man of genius flung 
 his capital, his energies, his reputation, and his very 
 life ; which lasted for twenty years as a working model 
 of the New Life, and may be nominally and technically 
 at work still in some form. And it was an experiment, 
 almost impossible to classify, or to bring into com- 
 parison with any known type of social Utopia. It 
 was to be fervently religious, without any consistent 
 
XIII.] SOCIAL EXPERIMENTS 177 
 
 religious creed except a Theism, half Biblical, half 
 artistic. It was Socialist, in that it was to divert all 
 production from a personal to a public use ; but then it 
 preserved and stimulated the institution of hereditary- 
 property and the ascendency of the orders who owned 
 it. It was wildly anarchic in its defiance of all the 
 habits and appliances of modern life, and yet it inculcated 
 an obedience not found outside a religious order. It 
 was to free Labour from the tyranny of Capital in 
 order to put it under the tyranny of a discipline more 
 stringent than that of a Jesuit school. The ideal would 
 have satisfied St. Francis and St. Theresa, except that 
 there was nothing ascetic in it, and also it was essen- 
 tially concerned with laymen enjoying a hearty and 
 beautiful life. It might have satisfied those who 
 listened with rapture to the Sermon on the Mount, 
 except that it extolled the splendour of Chivalry, sub- 
 mission to the rich and the nobly born, and a general 
 zest for all innocent gaiety and beautiful things. No- 
 thing, of course, ever came of St. George. But it will 
 long live as the pathetic dream of a beautiful but lonely 
 spirit to flee from the wrath that is, and to find 
 salvation in a purer world. 
 
 One offshoot of St. George has been a real success — 
 the Sheffield Art Museum, which he founded with such 
 generous gifts and noble enthusiasm. A full account 
 of it has been given in Mr. E. T. Cook's Studies in 
 RusUn, 1890. He started this in 1875 to be a collec- 
 tion of specimens of really valuable human work; he 
 added specimens of art products to it out of his own 
 collections, or bought by his own purse ; and ultimately 
 it has been taken over in trust by the Corporation. 
 This is perhaps the only remaining result of any 
 
 M 
 
178 JOHN RUSKIN [chap. 
 
 importance of so many years of anxiety and toil, of 
 such generous sacrifices, of such noble ideals which 
 were embodied in the Utopia of St. George, the 
 mediaeval symbol of England, of chivalry, and of 
 culture of the soil. 
 
 It would be an ungracious task to record the pitiful 
 story of the industrial projects which grew out of the 
 central company. How a small knot of Secularists, 
 Unitarians, and Quakers induced the Guild to buy a 
 farm for them to start a Communist project for 
 £2287, 16s. 6d. ; how the Communists discovered they 
 could not farm ; how two acres of rock and moor were 
 given at Barmouth, and twenty acres of woodland at 
 Bewdley, and nothing grew on either ; how a homespun 
 woollen industry without steam was started in the Isle 
 of Man; how hand-spinning and hand-loom weaving 
 were carried on at Langdale ; how the May Queens at 
 Chelsea were crowned and decorated ; how, after seven 
 years, the Master came to see that all interest on realised 
 capital was usury forbidden by Scripture, an abomina- 
 tion in the sight of God and of man ; how, finally, he 
 came to act strictly on this strange delusion which, if 
 generally adopted, would destroy the bases of civilisa- 
 tion. Rent of lands remained, he held, lawful and 
 serviceable business, though rent is merely annual 
 payment for the loan of Capital, 
 
 It would need a volume to recount all his schemes, 
 projects, acts of munificence — his gifts, his indul- 
 gences and forgivenesses, his pets, his interests, his 
 gardening, and his planting, his boating and his sailing, 
 his delight at finding an old dalesman who could build, 
 but could neither read nor write, his love of animals, 
 of children, of Avomen very old and very young, his 
 
XIII.] SOCIAL EXPERIMENTS 179 
 
 inexhaustible activity, and his yet more inexhaustible 
 generosity, his power of attracting devotion from his 
 friends and assistants. Mr. Collingwood writes : "He 
 loves many things, you have found. He is different 
 from other men you know, just by the breadth and 
 vividness of his sympathies, by power of living as few 
 other men can live, in Admiration, Hope, and Love. 
 Is not such a life worth li\ang whatever its monument 
 be?" 
 
 Yes ; and we must add, whatever its errors be, what- 
 ever its failures be. The ninety-six Letters of Fors 
 contain the tale of a long career of failures, blunders, 
 and cruel disappointment. They contain, too, the 
 record of that damning perversity of mind and of 
 character which ruined Ruskin's life and neutralised 
 his powers, the folly of presuming to recast the thought | 
 of humanity de iwvo^ and alone ; to remould ci\^lisation ' 
 by mere passion without due training or knowledge; 
 attempting alone to hurl human society back into a 
 wholly imaginary and fictitious past. Yet, let us re- 
 member — 
 
 " It was a grievous fault. 
 And grievously hath Caesar answered it.'' 
 
 But there are some failures more beautiful and more 
 useful to mankind than a thousand triumphs. It is 
 impossible to weigh the value, or to judge the legiti- 
 macy, of a hopeless but heroic sacrifice. Those w^ho die 
 in a forlorn hope are remembered long years after their 
 attempts have failed. The monk Telemachus, who 
 rushed into the Arena at Rome and put an end to 
 gladiatorial shows, was called at the time a meddling 
 fanatic by the people who stoned him to death. So, 
 
180 JOHN RUSKIN [chap. xiii. 
 
 too, John Brown the abolitionist was held to be when 
 his body lay mouldering in the grave. But his soul 
 went marching along, as the herald of the cause for 
 which he gave his life. How many centuries passed 
 before the Sermon on the Mount bore fruit — long ages 
 after the Preacher had been led out to death \nth jeers 
 and spitting ! And how mixed and dubious has even 
 that fruit been found ! In things social and religious 
 it is the fervour of belief, the loathing of falsehood, the 
 abandonment of every self-interested, and even of every 
 prudential motive, which tells in the end. Magnanimity 
 owes no account of its acts to Prudence. No ; nor to 
 Common Sense. 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 FORS CLAVIGERA 
 
 The last two works of importance which Ruskin pub- 
 lished—the last of his writings, except incidental 
 lectures, notes, or memoranda — Fors Clavigera and 
 Prmterita — have a character quite unlike his main 
 treatises, a character almost unique in literature. Both 
 are mainly autobiographical; desultory, incoherent, 
 self-revealing, personal to a degree of which there is 
 hardly any equal example in our language ; and they 
 are composed in a style in strange contrast to that of 
 the art studies which made the name of Ruskin famous 
 in the whole reading world. Fors has been pronounced 
 by foreign, and by some English, readers to be "un- 
 intelligible," and by some contemporary critics to be 
 " crazy " and "grotesque." It contains much of Ruskin's 
 most typical thoughts. 
 
 That the ninety-six Letters which now fill four vol- 1 
 umes of Fors are fantastic, wayward, egoistic, as is no 1 
 other book in our language — this is perfectly true. It 
 is true also, and pity 'tis 'tis true, that some parts of 
 the series must be judged to be, at the least, on the 
 very border line that marks off rational discourse from 
 morbid wandering of mind. The series of Letters, 
 after seven years, was interrupted for some two years 
 by acute cerebral disease, and was irregularly continued 
 
 181 
 
182 JOHN RUSKIN [chap. 
 
 some time later, with diminished power. But if we 
 look calmly at all these ninety-six Letters taken to- 
 gether, we shall see a very definite purpose and plan 
 of action running through the whole : the revelation of 
 a mind of marvellous brilliancy, richness, and culture ; 
 of a nature of exquisite tenderness, generosity, and 
 candour. Fors is Ruskin's Hamlet. And if there are 
 times when incoherence seems to be passing into delu- 
 sion, these soliloquies, tirades, and confessions vivisect for 
 us a heart of rare passion and a brain of fascinating gifts. 
 
 Fors is indeed the typical work of the man John 
 Ruskin, apart from his special studies and teaching in 
 the arts. His whole soul is there unveiled to us over 
 a period of fourteen years : for the most part the epoch 
 of malady, disappointment, and decay — it may be, but 
 the epoch also of his deepest meditations ajid his most 
 ardent dreams. To his fervid disciples, his intimates, 
 his fellow-believers and fellow-workers, Fors remains 
 still his essential gospel or message to a perverse world. 
 To the cynical critic it is evidence of brain disease and 
 a nature disordered with Quixotic self-absorption and 
 querulous nostrums of his own invention. More 
 reasonable judges will agree with neither extreme. 
 They will see, self-unveiled, a noble nature and beauti- 
 ful aspirations, and they will see with pain how these 
 rare qualities were debarred from bearing fruit by 
 indomitable arrogance, and by a sort of mental and 
 moral incontinence, which habitually hovered on the 
 borders of sheer hallucination. 
 
 This is how Fors is described by Mr. Collingwood in 
 his authoritative and elaborate biography : — 
 
 "To read Fors is like being out in a thunderstorm. At 
 first, you open the book with interest, to watch the signs of 
 
XIV.] FOnS GLAVIGERA 183 
 
 the times. Whilst you climb your mountain, at unawares 
 there is a darkening of the cloud upon you, and the tension of 
 instinctive dread, as image after image arises of misery, and 
 murder, and lingering death, with here and there a streak of 
 sun in the foreground, only throwing the wildness of the scene 
 into more rugged relief ; and through the gaps you see broad 
 fields of ancient history, like lands of promise left behind. 
 By and by the gloom wraps you. The old thunder of the 
 Kuskinian paragraph, shortened now to whip-lash cracks, 
 reverberates unremittingly from point to point, raising echoes, 
 sounding deeps ; allusions, suggestions, intimations stirring 
 the realm of chaos, that ordinarily we are glad to let slumber, 
 but now terribly discern, by flashes of thought, most un- 
 expectedly arriving. Fascinated by the hammer-play of Thor, 
 berserking among Rime-giants — customs that ' hang upon us, 
 heavy as frost' — you begin to applaud ; when a sudden stroke 
 rolls your own standpoint into the abyss. But if you can 
 cKmb forward, undismayed, to the summit, the storm drifts 
 by ; and you see the world again, all new, beneath you — 
 how rippling in Thoi-'s laughter, how tenderly veiled in his 
 tears ! " 
 
 Whatever this may mean, it will serve to show that 
 the irrepressible incoherences, inconsequences, and 
 gyrations of Fors are believed to have a real and very 
 potent Gospel to expound under all their flames and 
 scintillations. And in truth they have. Fors is not 
 only Ruskin's Hamlet, but it is also his Apocalypse. 
 But anything less like Thor than Fors it is difficult to 
 imagine, or indeed anything less like the style of Fors 
 than tbe passage just cited from his biographer. But 
 the comparison of Fors to a thunderstorm has a certain 
 meaning in this way. It produces on us the effect of 
 some strange electrical disturbance in the heavens, 
 which we watch with wonder and admiration, constantly 
 struck by some unexpected flash, from whence coming. 
 
184 JOHN RUSKIN [chap. 
 
 whither going, we know not, but always beautiful and 
 profoundly impressive. 
 
 As we have seen, the style in which Fors is written 
 is utterly different from that of the earlier books on 
 Art, in that it has not a trace of rhetoric, word-painting, 
 or laboured composition in any form. It is throughout 
 a masterpiece of simple, graceful, pellucid English, like 
 the most easy and natural speech. It flows on in one 
 fascinating causerie, as it might fall from the lips of a 
 perfect master of the art of familiar conversation. In 
 a second point, it is written in a style of which there 
 is no other example in the language — a style of un- 
 measured abandon^ of surrender to any fancy, whim, 
 association of the passing moment. Nothing so utterly 
 inconsequent, so rambling, so heterogeneous exists in 
 print. And yet, the connotations of ideas are so 
 fantastic, and the transitions so original, that the effect 
 of the whole is charming as well as exciting. 
 
 The form of Fors is so singular in itself, and of a 
 perfection of its own so rare, that it may be studied in 
 detail. In the first place, in all these two thousand 
 
 I pages of the four volumes, dealing with things as 
 miscellaneous and diverse as the words in the Standard 
 
 1 Dictionary of the English language, it would be hard 
 to find a single sentence which was not quite clear and 
 obvious to the most ordinary reader. He might not 
 understand all the allusions, poetic and historical 
 references, the epigrams and the sarcasm, but he would 
 perfectly understand the meaning of the words. The 
 sentences are as clear, simple, direct as those of Swift, 
 but without the coarseness or the grittiness of the 
 fierce Dean. Fors runs on with an easy mother-speech 
 such as Bunyan, Defoe, Swift, or Goldsmith never sur- 
 
XIV.] FOBS CLA VIOERA 185 
 
 passed; but, at the same time, with a grace and a 
 ^vitche^y of fancy that the sardonic Dean of St. Patrick's 
 would have scorned to show. 
 
 In the second place, it would be hard to find in these \ 
 two thousand pages a single dull, conventional, wooden 1 
 sentence. However nonsensical in thought the remark ^ 
 may be, however childish in tone — and there are many 
 remarks both nonsensical and childish — there is a kind 
 of gentle humour, of fantastic waggery in the phrasing, 
 which is pleasing and quaint, takes it out of the ruck 
 of mere balderdash, and places it in line ^vith the play- 
 fulness of genius. The tone is at heart that of S^^dft 
 in Lilliput, or of Carlyle in Sartor, or of Thackeray in 
 the Booh of Snohs. The substance is a satire on our 
 modern vices, ignorances, and vulgarities. But the 
 form is that of child's play, badinage, musical raillery, 
 and courteous irony. 
 
 The reader of Fors must understand that the whole 
 series of Letters are cast in a tone of irony, sustained 
 pathos, profound sadness, clothed with a veil of humour- 
 and even of levity, but always free from the savage bitter- 
 ness of Swift and from the uncouth mockery of Carlyle. 
 The indignation is as deep as theirs, but it is softened 
 into fantastic playfulness. Such is the nature of the 
 man, and we m.ust take him as we find him. And if 
 Euskin contrasts himself with Theseus, it is in the 
 same spirit of sardonic irony as that in which Hamlet 
 contrasts himself Avith Hercules ; or, if Euskin gives us 
 biographic details of his childish life, it is as Hamlet 
 jests in pensive earnest with the skull of Yorick at 
 the grave of Ophelia. Fors is a satire on modern life, \ 
 cast in a form of graceful trifling. 
 
 From the literary point of view, its wonderful quality 
 
186 JOHN RUSKIN [chap. 
 
 lies in the utterly unexpected and incalculable sequence 
 of ideas. Each paragraph, each sentence, we may almost 
 say, each phrase, seems to be the last which a reader 
 would look to follow the preceding. It would seem to 
 have no connection at all till we notice the subtle, 
 often fantastic, sometimes almost verbal nexus of 
 thought which unites one passage with another. The 
 transition is so sharp, so incalculable, and yet so grace- 
 ful, at any rate so quaint, that the impression is usually 
 pleasant, and is never obscure. The reader's attention 
 is kept at a pleasing excitement, by the fact that he 
 cannot imagine what is coming next; that when the 
 next thought is presented, it seems wildly incongruous, 
 until the link of ideas is perceived. And the link shows 
 itself before the sentence is finished. 
 
 It must be admitted that the limits of playful incon- 
 sequence are at times strained or passed. There are 
 passages, no doubt, even those retained in the reduced 
 and revised "new edition" of 1896, that can hardly 
 be said to be composed b}^ a man in perfect command 
 of his own thoughts. Ever since his great cerebral 
 attack, things were wont occasionally to drop from 
 Euskin's tongue or his pen somewhat as from a man 
 under the influence of a drug, or as if he were talking 
 in his sleep. Words, sounds, or chance associations, 
 suggest a new topic, haviiig only some verbal connec- 
 tion but no logical coherence, almost like the association 
 of two punning words. He says himself (Letter LXll.) 
 that any gambolling on his part, " awkward or untimely 
 as it may have seemed, has been quite as serious, and 
 intentionally progressive, as Morgiana's dance round 
 the captain of the Forty Thieves." " If I took off the 
 harlequin's mask for a moment," he adds, "you would 
 
XIV.] FORS CLAVIGERA 187 
 
 say I was simply mad." This is in the main true ; but 
 there are times, especially when he is playing with 
 words or texts of Scripture, in which inconsequence is 
 not that of cool reason. 
 
 Let us pass Letter Lxxxii. (September 1877), which 
 opens with a reference to Baihfs Magazine and a story 
 of a race-horse and his kitten, passes to Fielding, "a 
 truly moral novelist," worth all the moderns since 
 Scott, thence to the question of Capital Punishment, 
 citing a long extract of four pages from Miiller's 
 Dorians J a propos of the jolly hanging of a high- 
 wayman with much strong beer, in the time of 
 George lli. Thence to the "modern philanthropist 
 of the 'Newgatory' school.'' Manchester produces no 
 art, no literature, but has taken "to steal and sell 
 for a profit the waters of Thirlmere and clouds of 
 Helvellyn." The true judgment of which would be 
 not that the Lake of Thirlmere should be brought to 
 the top of Manchester, but that Manchester, or its 
 Corporation, should be put at the bottom of the Lake 
 of Thirlmere. So he would like to destroy the New 
 Town of Edinburgh and the city of New York. And 
 this is serious. He did not jest about these, and he 
 does not jest about Manchester ; for the hills and vales 
 of England are the "true temples of God, and their 
 waves and clouds holier than the dew of the baptistery 
 and the incense of the altar." The Manchester robbers 
 should take note of Plato's laws forbidding crimes 
 against the gods. And there follow many pages from 
 Plato's Laws. All this, we ought to agree, is the grim 
 irony of a poet who adores the beauty of Nature, and 
 is maddened to extravagance by the disfigurement of 
 Nature by modern Industrialism. 
 
188 JOHN RUSKIN [chap. 
 
 But what can we say of Letter Lxxxvii. (March 
 1878)—" The Snow Manger '"' "? And it must be noted 
 that this 87th letter, dated March 1878, was written on 
 the verge of one of those terrible attacks which in the 
 official Life is described as "the delirium which was 
 now the chief feature of his disease " — a malady which 
 was publicly recorded by the Proctor in Convocation 
 at Oxford, and for which prayers for his recovery were 
 put up in Italy. AVhy these outpourings of his troubled 
 brain should be finally included in his works as revised 
 and published by himself and his friends, is a question 
 we cannot answer. 
 
 It is a far pleasanter duty to point to the irrepres- 
 sible playfulness, that Ariel-like — or sometimes Puck- 
 like — grace in which serious moral and spiritual 
 thoughts are -wrapped. In Letter vi., 1st June 1871, 
 he explained the scheme of these papers and their 
 "desultory form," so written, he says, that the reader 
 may take trouble. The price (sevenpence) is that of 
 "two pots of beer twelve times in the year," -with 
 postage. It has cost him twenty years of thought and 
 hard reading to learn what he has to say in these 
 pamphlets. They cost £10 to print per 1000, and 
 £5 for a picture. A thousand sixpences are £25, 
 which leaves £f> for the author and £5 for the pub- 
 lisher. This is cheap, and is legitimate business. He 
 can only write about the things he cares for, and as 
 they come into his head. For instance, he has just 
 seen the Avild hyacinths in the glades of Bagley Wood 
 "opening in flakes of blue fire," through which he 
 slinks, being afraid of the "gamekeeper of the College 
 of the gracious Apostle St. John." He fears that 
 purchasers "will throw my letter, even though it has 
 
xiY.] FORS CLAVIGERA 189 
 
 cost you sevenpence, aside at once, when I remark to 
 you that these wood hyacinths of Bagley have some- 
 thing to do with the battle of Marathon, and if you 
 knew it, are of much more vital interest to you than 
 even the Match Tax." 
 
 It would seem that inconsequence could not go 
 further, unless we accept the "gunpowder that ran 
 out of the heels of their boots"; but it is presently 
 explained, that the wood hyacinth represents the Greek 
 asphodel ; that the asphodel was the flower of the Elysiau 
 fields in which the heroes slain at Marathon went to 
 dwell ; that it would be more useful for English work- 
 men to dwell in thought upon Marathon and all it 
 meant and on the Elysium, or Heaven, to which they 
 might hope to go, than to riot about Mr. Lowe's un- 
 popular Match Tax. Theseus made lentil soup on 
 the shore for his people on his return from Crete, 
 and by hoisting a black sail, led his father to commit 
 suicide. And all this follows from the wood hyacinths 
 of Bagley, near Oxford ; and it naturally leads on to 
 reflections on the British House of Commons and the 
 terrible conflagrations in Paris in May 1871. 
 
 There is some charming harlequinade of the kind in 
 Letter xxiv., November 1872, a propos of Christmas. 
 He will not open the letter with " My friends," because 
 he is in no friendly mood, and gets no friendly answer 
 from any one. Nor -svill he sign "Faithfully yours" 
 any more, for he is not faithfully his own, and finds 
 other people far from faithfully his. Nor will he sign 
 his name, which he does not like, for it is only short 
 for "Rough Skin." He goes on: "^Vhen I got to 
 Oxford, the sky was entirely clear; the Great Bear 
 was near the ground under the pole, and the Charioteer 
 
190 JOHN RUSKIN [chap. 
 
 higli overhead, the principal star of him as bright as a 
 gas-lamp." 
 
 " It is a curious default in the stars, to my mind, that there 
 15 a Charioteer among them without a chariot ; and a Waggon 
 with no waggoner ; nor any waggon, for that matter, except 
 the Bear's stomach ; but I have always wanted to know the 
 history of the absent Charles, who must have stopped, I 
 suppose to drink, while his cart went on, and so never got 
 stellified himself. I wish I knew ; but I can tell you less 
 about him than even about Theseus. The Charioteer's story 
 is pretty however — he gave his life for a kiss, and did not get it ; 
 got made into stars instead. It would be a dainty tale to tell 
 you under the mistletoe ; perhaps I may have time next year ; 
 to-day it is of the stars of Ariadne's crown I want to speak." 
 
 And thus he is led to wonder that the stories of 
 the stars are all Greek — not Christian, ignorant or 
 forgetful, it would appear, of the obvious explanation 
 that the Greeks created astronomical science, to which 
 the mediaeval monks were indiflferent. An old lady 
 dying, bedridden, left, because she could not take it 
 with her, £200,000, which works out at fourpence a 
 minute ; so that she awoke in the morning ten pounds 
 richer than she w^ent to bed — at which " the stars, with 
 deep amaze, stood fixed Avith steadfast gaze," " for this 
 is a Nativity of an adverse god to the one you profess 
 to honour, with them and the angels, at Christmas, 
 by over-eating yourselves." Over-eating is quite an 
 essential part of the Religion of Christmas, and is about 
 the most religious thing people do in the year. \ It 
 was a sore question with Ruskin himself as a cmld 
 that he lost the pleasure of four-sevenths of his life, 
 because of Sunday ; for " a lurid shade was cast over 
 Friday and Saturday by the horrible sense that Sunday 
 was coming, and was inevitable.'^ And so we are led 
 
XIV.] FORS CLA VIGERA 191 
 
 on to Dante's ninth circle of Holiness, cold dinners on 
 Sabbath, and this leads to the Crystal Palace enter- 
 tainment on Good Friday, and this to the lake of 
 Phlegethon, described in the Inferno, and this to Usury, 
 and the Minotaur of Crete, the spirit of lust and anger. 
 The buying an illuminated Koran in MSS., though he 
 could not read it, gave him exquisite delight. Then 
 we come to the story of Theseus and his return from 
 Crete — mthout Ariadne. His vegetable soup, though, 
 would be poor Christmas cheer. 
 
 "Plum-pudding is an Egyptian dish; but have you ever 
 thought how many stories were connected with this Athenian 
 one, pottage of lentils ? A bargain of some importance, even 
 to us (especially as usurers) ; and the healing miracle of 
 Elisha ; and the vision of Habakkuk as he was bearing their 
 pottage to the reapers, and had to take it far away to one 
 who needed it more ; and, chiefly of all, the soup of the bitter 
 herbs, with its dipped bread and faithful company — ' he it is 
 to whom I shall give the sop when I have dipped it.' The 
 meaning of which things, roughly, is, first, that we are not to 
 sell our birthrights for pottage, though we fast to death, but 
 are diligently to know and keep them ; secondly, that we are 
 to poison no man's pottage, mental or real ; lastly, that we look 
 to it lest we betray the hand which gives us our daily bread." 
 
 Ruskin here, as so often, seems to retain a belief in 
 the symbolic and prophetic phrases of Scripture, when 
 he had ceased to hold any belief in the objective facts 
 that the Bible records. He searched it diligently still 
 for revelations of Divine will, or for a kind of Sortes 
 Virgilianae. 
 
 The Last Supper naturally leads him to quote from 
 the Pall Mall the last supper of Annie Redfern, of 
 Chicksand Street, Mile End, who was found dead of 
 asphyxia, as the inquest proved, from li\ang in an 
 
192 JOHN RUSKIN" [chap. 
 
 uuventilated cellar. The same newspaper urges that 
 the "career" of the Madonna, nursing her baby, is 
 too limited, and that Mr. J. Stuart Mill shows English 
 young women a more lucrative occupation, one to 
 which, it seems, Annie Redfern succumbed. The 
 Athenians kept festival in memory of Theseus's veget- 
 able soup, and sang a beautiful Easter carol. It is too 
 bad to narcotise babies to keep them quiet, as Mr. Stuart 
 Mill and modern political economy encourage mothers 
 to do that they may pursue more lucrative occupations 
 than nursing. Euskin's mother used to sing, " Hush- 
 a-bye, baby, on the tree top ! " and even as an infant 
 he objected to the bad rhyme, "^^^len the wind blows, 
 the cradle will rock." There are no cradles to rock 
 now, and we shall not long want cradle songs. 
 
 Read a carol of Chaucer's, but Mr. Mill would advise 
 mothers to work, not to sing. In old pictures of the 
 Nativity doves and rabbits are shown round the saints 
 and angels. Nowadays English gentlemen are not 
 happy unless they are massacring rabbits and doves 
 in heaps. 
 
 " Of course, all this is natural to a sporting people who have 
 learned to like the smell of gunpowder, sulphur, and gas-tar 
 better than that of violets and thyme. But, putting the baby- 
 poisoning, pigeon-shooting, and rabbit-shooting of to-day in 
 comparison with the pleasures of the German Madonna, and 
 her simple company, and of Chaucer and his carolling com- 
 pany : and seeing that the present effect of peace upon earth, 
 and well-pleasing in men, is that every nation now spends 
 most of its income in machinery for shooting the best and 
 bravest men, just when they were Ukely to have become of 
 some use to their fathers and mothers, I put it to you, my 
 friends all, calling you so, I suppose for the last time (unless you 
 are disposed for friendship with Herod instead of Barabbas), 
 whether it would not be more kind and less expensive to 
 
XIV.] FORS CLAVIGERA 193 
 
 make the machinery a little smaller, and adapt it to spare 
 opium now, and expenses of maintenance and education after- 
 wards (besides no end of diplomacy), by taking our sport in 
 shooting babies instead of rabbits ? " 
 
 Now, all this is not mere incoherent raving. The 
 irony is not more fierce and continuous than in Gulliver^ 
 Candide, or Sartor ; and it is neither gross nor crabbed. 
 It is the despairing wail of one who from infancy has 
 felt a passionate love of all things beautiful in Nature 
 and in Art and in the story of Man ; who loathes the 
 cruelty of war and the wanton torture inflicted on 
 beautiful and tender creatures by so-called "Sport," 
 the mimic of war; of one whose soul is wrung to 
 madness by the horrors, physical, moral, aesthetic, and 
 spiritual of modern Industrialism ; lastly, of a man, 
 saturated, more than any priest, mth the words of 
 Scripture and the ideal of the Gospel, and who burns 
 like any St. Francis, or Zwingli, or Latimer, to make 
 them again real guides to living men on earth. Given 
 the spirit of a Hot-gospeller like that, fired with the 
 irrepressible CEstrus of the author of Modern Painters 
 and the Seven Lamps, and you have Fors Clavigera, with 
 all its frenzy, its disorder of ideas, its noble appeals, 
 its exquisite tenderness and grace. One might in 
 fancy imagine some "blessed Glendoveer,' some 
 denizen of another planet, Mars or Mercury, wherein 
 the " Laws of Nature " as we know them do not obtain, 
 and where society is cast in forms we call " Utopian," 
 descending on our earth. Such a Martian or Mercurian, 
 perfectly ignorant of our material conditions, sublimely 
 disdainful of our mean and squalid life, profoundly dis- 
 gusted Avith our barbarous and cruel habits, might 
 deliver his soul in diatribes not wholly unlike those 
 
 N 
 
194 JOHN RUSKIN [chap. 
 
 of Fors. We should enjoy the hearing him; and it 
 would do us good. 
 
 If we fairly judge the whole series of Letters in Fors 
 
 and seek to understand their purport, we shall find a 
 
 perfectly definite scheme of ideas and a real working 
 
 aim. With a mysterious belief in the creation of all 
 
 Nature and living creatures by a loving and Almighty 
 
 God, whose eye watches the fall of every sparrow 
 
 and the opening of every leaf, mixed with an equally 
 
 active belief in the polytheistic, or fetichist, sanctity of 
 
 natural things as objects of worship in themselves,*, 
 
 Euskin had brought himself to regard the disfigure- \ 
 
 ment of natural things and the slaughter of gentle I 
 
 creatures as desecration and sacrilege, almost as a ■ 
 
 Hindoo regards the slaughter of a Brahminee cow, or i 
 
 a Greek would regard the pollution of a Fountain of 
 
 the Nymphs. Indignation at the fraudulent character 
 
 of so much in modern Trade deepened at last into a 
 
 judgment upon modern Trade itself as criminal and 
 
 degrading. The horrors of great manufacturing cities 
 
 drove him to declare himself a violent Communist, 
 
 ready to accept the Social Liquidation, or destruction 
 
 of modern society as dreamed by Anarchists. And 
 
 yet, his early training in Homer, Scott, Plato, and 
 
 Dante disposed him towards a paternal Autocracy of 
 
 the Philosopher-King. In much of all this he touched 
 
 Carlyle, Emerson, William Morris, and Tolstoi. But 
 
 it must always be remembered that Buskin was never 
 
 a political revolutionist ; he was a spiritual and moral 
 
 reformer — his fiercest imprecations dying away into 
 
 words as tender as those of Jesus when He wept at 
 
 y sight of Jerusalem. 
 
 ^ For the yearning towards a new Society, founded on 
 
XIV.] FORS CLAVIGERA 195 
 
 pure Air, Water, and Earth — on Admiration, Hope, 
 and Love, for the desperate and visionary attempt to 
 start a working model of such a new world, we may 
 forget the many follies and blunders of the prophet of 
 Fors — his incorrigible misunderstanding and reviling 
 of such men as Mill, Spencer, and Comte ; his childish 
 ignorance of facts in history, language, etymology, and 
 science ; his unfairness to friends, and his insolence 
 to opponents everywhere; his intense arrogance and 
 absorption in a sort of cocoon of egoism of his own 
 spinning. Yes ! for his great heart and his rare brain 
 were from infancy warped and perverted by two cruel 
 influences — one the isolation in which he was brought 
 up as a kind of Dalai Lama, veiled from touch or sight 
 of the world without; the other, the saturation of 
 mind by a mystical theology, which taught him to treat 
 all things as absolutely good, or absolutely true^ or 
 absolutely evil, or absolutely false, in a world where, as 
 Auguste Comte has said, all things are relative^ in a 
 world where humanity can know nothing but relative 
 truths, and can hope for nothing but relative good. 
 
 Euskin has often been called a follower of Carlyle, 
 and has often been compared to Tolstoi. He claims 
 likeness himself with Swift, and he has certain analo- 
 gies with Eousseau. But in a great many judgments 
 of history, and in most of his schemes of a social i 
 Utopia, he has reached curious coincidences with one of' 
 whom he knew nothing, and of whom he spoke with 
 abhorrence and contempt, one to whom in habits of 
 mind and life he was in violent contrast. I often had 
 occasion to remind him, in public and in private, that 
 most of his social doctrines had been anticipated by 
 Auguste Comte. It seems a paradox to mention in 
 
196 JOHN RUSKIN [chap. xiv. 
 
 the same sentence the most systematic and the most 
 unsystematic of all modern writers, the most scientific 
 with the most metaphysical, the philosopher with the 
 poet, the most organic of modern thinkers with the 
 most anarchic. Comte had never heard of Ruskin, 
 and Ruskin never mentioned Comte, unless in some 
 grotesque parody of what he fancied Comte might 
 have said, though he actually had said the contrary. 
 The fact remains that Comte and Euskin are substan- 
 tially agreed in their view of Greek poetry and religion, 
 mediaeval history, Catholicism, the great poets, in their 
 honour of Dante, of Scott, of Gothic architecture, of 
 Italian art ; and also in their disbelief in all that is 
 offered by modern Industrialism, by political economy, 
 by the emancipation of women, by democracy, by 
 parliamentarism, by the dogmatism of scientific hypo- 
 theses. A follower of Comte, as well as a companion 
 of St. George, might subscribe to the famous vows 
 in Letter lviil, mutatis mutandis^ and might accept, 
 with the same reserves, the sixteen aphorisms in 
 Letter lxvii. The poetic, sentimental, metaphysical 
 nephelococcygia of Fors may find ample analogies and 
 confirmation in the systematic science and the historic 
 religion of the Positive Polity, 
 
CHAPTEE XV 
 
 PRJETERITA 
 
 The last work of Ruskin, dated from his early home, 
 May 1885, in his sixty-seventh year, is certainly the 
 most charming thing that he ever gave to the world, 
 and is one of the most pathetic and exquisite Con- 
 fessions in the language. After the great cerebral 
 disturbance of 1884 and his final retirement from 
 Oxford, his friend. Professor Eliot Norton, suggested 
 that he should occupy his mind with jotting down 
 reminiscences of his own life, at least, down to the 
 crisis of 1875 ; and this he began to do at intervals of 
 restored activity. These, with the fragments called 
 Bileda, are now collected in three volumes, and were 
 composed at odd times down to as late as 1889, in 
 Ruskin's seventy-first year. 
 
 " I have written these sketches," he says, " frankly, garru- 
 lously, and at ease " — and indeed nothing more naively frank, 
 more sweetly garrulous, more easy to read, exists in our lan- 
 guage. " I write," he goes on, " on my father's birthday [his 
 father had then been dead twenty-one years, his mother also 
 fourteen years], in what was once my nursery in his old 
 house, to which he brought my mother and me, sixty-two 
 years since, I being then four years old. What would other- 
 wise in the following pages have been Uttle more than an old 
 man's recreation in gathering ^dsionary flowers in fields of 
 youth, has taken, as I wrote, the nobler aspect of a dutiful 
 
 197 
 
198 JOHN RUSKIN [chap. 
 
 oflFering at the grave of parents who trained my childhood to 
 all the good it could attain, and whose memory makes declining 
 life cheerful in the hope of being soon again with them." 
 
 "I am, and my father was before me," he begins, "a 
 violent Tory of the old school — Walter Scott's school, 
 that is to say, and Homer's — they were ni}^ own two 
 masters." Scott's novels, he says, and Pope's Iliad 
 w^ere his daily readings, as a child, with Eobinson Crusoe 
 and the Pilgrim's Progress on Sundays. Here we have 
 the germ of John Euskin. Greek heroes, myths, kings, 
 and all natural objects peopled with supernatural 
 beings; mediseval chivalry, knights, ladies, priests, 
 yeomen, and burghers ; the solitary castaway, reduced 
 to primitive simplicity and bare life in a cabin, detached 
 from modern civilisation ; lastly, the mystical theology 
 of Puritanism, with its phantom world of Biblical 
 images made real and ever present. Cold mutton, he 
 says, on Sundays prevented him from adopting the 
 career his mother longed for — that of an evangelical 
 clergyman. He did, however, end in being something 
 of an unattached hedge-preacher, with a Salvation 
 Army of his own devising, of which he was at once the 
 director, the staff, and the whole congregation. 
 
 I'rom the daily reading of the Bible aloud to his 
 mother, continued up to manhood, he learned, he says, 
 much of his general power of taking pains and the 
 best part of his taste in literature. Then he gives us 
 those delightful portraits of his father, mother, aunts, 
 cousins, and servants, the severe schooling of his child- 
 hood, and the curious habits of touring about the 
 country in which his eyes were trained, how he taught 
 himself to read and write, and how he picked up 
 knowledge of plants, minerals, skies, and hills. The 
 
XV. ] PRjE TERITA 1 99 
 
 story of the Domecq family, and of the hopeless passion 
 of the lad for Adele, has been already given from his 
 own memoir. Nothing is more delicious than the 
 story of Anne, his nurse, who had "a natural gift for 
 doing disagreeable things ; above all, the service of a 
 sickroom; so that she was never quite in her glory 
 unless some of us were ill." She had an equal gift for 
 saying disagreeable things, and took the darkest view 
 of any subject, before seeking to mend it, so that old 
 Mrs. Ruskin would say, gravely, that if ever a woman 
 in this world were possessed by the Devil, Anne was 
 that woman. And note the companion portrait of old 
 Mause, the very type of Mause Headrigg, who was 
 shocked to see some crumbs thrown out of window, 
 and would dine on potato skins, to give her own dinner 
 away to a poor person. Young John remembered in her 
 the Scottish Puritan spirit in its perfect faith and force, 
 giving to it "the reverence and honour it deserves." 
 
 How racy is the story of the travelling carriages and 
 their tours in England and on the continent ! First, it 
 was the old chariot, with its "dickey" for the nurse 
 and boy, wherein they visited almost all that was best 
 worth seeing in England. Then it grew into the 
 luxurious travelling carriage of foreign tours, with all 
 its conveniences and charms. Those of us who can 
 remember the vetturino of the Alps, Italy, or the Riviera, 
 have memories which the globe-trotter of to-day cannot 
 recall ; and some day hereafter, when all locomotion is 
 performed by electricity or in balloons, these garrulous 
 pages of Ruskin's memoirs will have a rare savour : — 
 
 " The poor modern slaves and simpletons who let themselves 
 be dragged like cattle, or felled timber, through the countries 
 they imagine themselves visiting, can have no conception 
 
200 JOHN RUSKIN [chap. 
 
 whatever of the complex joys, the ingenious hopes, connected 
 with the choice and arrangement of the travelling carriage in 
 old times — the little apartment which was to be one's home 
 for five or six months." 
 
 The British tourist in charge of Mr. Cook may 
 envy or despise the story of the spacious mttura that 
 sheltered six persons and was drawn by four stout 
 trotters, the postillions, the courier, the inns advised 
 of company beforehand, the "change of horses," the 
 fifty miles a day of journey, the morning and the 
 evening rest, and stroll round village, or to castle or 
 church. And then after the long daily "trek" from 
 Calais, and through the Black Forest, to Schaffhausen, 
 there burst on the lad, like a vision of heaven, the 
 first view of the snowy Alps — " clear as crystal, sharp 
 on the pure horizon sky, and already tinged with rose 
 by the sinking sun." The sight was a revelation to 
 the young genius — a " call," a destiny. 
 
 "I went down that evening from the garden terrace of 
 Schaifhausen with my destiny fixed in all of it that was to 
 be sacred and useful. To that terrace, and the shore of the 
 Lake of Geneva, my heart and faith return to this day, in 
 every impulse that is yet nobly alive in them, and every 
 thought that has in it help or peace." 
 
 The record of these early tours, of his home in 
 Surrey, and his visits to the Lakes and the Highlands, 
 is an ample explanation of the formation of his powers ; 
 of what Mazzini called "the most analytic mind in 
 Europe"; what Euskin himself very justly claims to 
 have — " patience in looking and precision in feeling — 
 a thirst for A^sible fact at once so eao:er and so 
 methodic." That is a true bit of self- vivisection. And 
 so, too, is the confession that Don Quixote, over which, 
 
XV.] PEjETERITA 201 
 
 as a boy, lie could laugh to ecstasy, is now become 
 "one of the saddest and, in some things, the most 
 offensive of books to me." Alas! there was in John 
 Kuskin a strain of the Knight of La Mancha, and he, 
 too, had to learn that in this world and in our age 
 knight-errantry however chivalrous in spirit, mediaeval 
 romance however beautiful as poetry, will not avail 
 to reform the world ^vith nothing but a rusty lance 
 and a spavined charger. It is magnificent, it may be 
 war ; but it is not a real social philosophy, nor is it a 
 possible religion. 
 
 He seems to see something of this himself, at least 
 he lets us see it through his sighs and groans over the 
 mistakes made in his early training, in his isolation 
 from all fatigues, risks, companions, and pain, so that 
 boys looked on him as an innocent and treated him 
 as a girl; for "the fountain of pure conceit" in his 
 own heart sustained him against chaff. If only, he 
 says, his parents had given him a shaggy scrap of a 
 Welsh pony, and left him in charge of a Welsh guide 
 and his wife instead of coddling him at home, "the}^ 
 would have made a man of me there and then." And 
 this leads to his delicious story of the efforts made to 
 teach him to ride in a riding-school in Moorfields, and 
 how he would fall off when he turned a corner, till at 
 last his fond parents gave up that part of his educa- 
 tion, consoling themselves with the thought that "his 
 not being able to learn to ride was the sign of his being 
 a singular genius." 
 
 Delightfully naive, too, is the story of how John 
 James wooed Margaret Cox "with the same kind of 
 serenity and decision ^vith which afterwards he chose 
 his clerks " ; how they waited nine years, and then 
 
202 JOHN RUSKIN [chap. 
 
 " were married in Perth one evening after supper, the 
 servants of the house having no suspicion of the event 
 until John and Margaret drove away together next 
 morning to Edinburgh." John James was certainly 
 more deliberate in love than his mercurial son — and 
 also more constant. We have already seen how the 
 son, at the age of sixty-six, looked back on his own 
 first love at seventeen. 
 
 " I had neither the resolution to win Adele, the courage to 
 do without her, the sense to consider what was at last to come 
 of it all, or the grace to think how disagreeable I was making 
 myself at the time to everybody about me. There was really 
 no more capacity nor intelligence in me than in a just fledged 
 owlet, or just open-eyed puppy, disconsolate at the existence 
 of the moon." 
 
 We have seen, too, how he describes his matricula- 
 tion at Christ Church, and how he disappointed the 
 hopes of his fond parent that he should " take all the 
 prizes every year, and a double first to finish with; 
 marry Lady Clara Vere de Vere; write poetry as 
 good as Byron's, only pious ; preach sermons as good as 
 Bossuet's, only Protestant ; be made, at forty, Bishop 
 I of Winchester, and, at fifty, Primate of England." 
 'There was no fear of his gambling, for he looked on 
 dice as people look on dynamite. No fear of the 
 strange woman, for he was in love, and never out after 
 half-past nine. No fear of debt, for there were no 
 Turners to be had in Oxford, and he cared for no 
 other possession. No fear of a fall out hunting, for 
 he could not sit a hack. No fear of ruining himself at 
 races, for he had no wish to win anybody's money. 
 Besides, he had to go to tea every evening with his 
 mother. 
 
XV.] PRETERIT A 203 
 
 Nothing in Prceterita is more fascinating and also 
 illuminating than the author's description of his own 
 passion for nature. " I had, in my little clay pitcher, 
 vialfuls, as it were, of AVordsworth's reverence, Shelley's 
 sensitiveness. Turner's accuracy, all in one. A snow- 
 drop was to me, as to Wordsworth, part of the Sermon 
 on the Mount ; but I never should have ^vritten sonnets 
 to the celandine, because it is of coarse yellow and 
 imperfect form. With Shelley, I loved blue sky and 
 blue eyes, but never in the least confused the heavens 
 with my own little Psychidion. ... I did not weary 
 myself in wishing that a daisy could see the beauty 
 of its shadow, but in trying to draw the shadow 
 rightly myself." 
 
 "Nobody," he says in 1839, "cared for Turner but 
 
 the retired coachmaker of Tottenham and I." I can 
 
 only say, for myself, that in the earliest forties I had 
 
 been trained by my father to admire Turner, and used 
 
 to be taken every May to admire them in Trafalgar 
 
 Square. One of the paradoxes of Ruskin's mind is 
 
 the indifference he felt towards Italy and Italian art 
 
 as a youth. He was taken to Florence and Rome from 
 
 Oxford in 1840, in his twenty-second year; and he 
 
 says, quite truly, that he was "in total ignorance of 
 
 what early Christian art meant." He felt "grievous 
 
 disappointment" in Florence; all sacred art was "a 
 
 mere zero"; and the Tribune of the Uffizi "an 
 
 unbecoming medley, got together by people who 
 
 knew nothing, and cared less than nothing, about the 
 
 arts." As they reached Rome the Calvinist parents 
 
 observed with triumph that the "nearer to Rome the 
 
 road got worse." The Forum, St. Peter's, the Coliseum, 
 
 the Capitol, were all equally "uninteresting." The 
 
204 JOHN RUSKIN [chap. 
 
 " Transfiguration " of Eaphael was an "ugly" picture. 
 The "Stanze" could give nobody any pleasure. He 
 was again " disappointed " with Naples and everything 
 around it. To us in the twentieth century it seems 
 incredible that sixty years ago a young man of real 
 genius for art, who had studied art, and had written 
 on art from childhood, could have been in such a state 
 of callous ignorance on his first visit to Italy. But 
 we may remember all the changes of view that, in 
 these sixty years, Modern Painters and the Seven Lamps 
 have produced on us. We may remember also that 
 John was in bad health — sent abroad to save his life. 
 He tells us that Rome was the very worst place he 
 could have been sent to; and that he was, all that 
 time, " simply a little floppy and soppy tadpole." 
 
 Return to the Alps, the glaciers and lakes of 
 Switzerland restored health to the wearied brain and 
 delicate frame. It is a wonderful story of the mira- 
 culous efi'ect on Ruskin of mountains, as he tells us in 
 Prceterita — a story worth the attention of psychologists 
 and physicians. Some of his most exquisite word- 
 pictures of scenery are to be found in these volumes ; 
 often extracted from his diary at the time, and intended 
 for no eye but his own ; such as the grand view from 
 the D61e— from the Col de la Faucille {Pnet. i. 193). 
 I saw it myself at sunrise in 1851, on one of the most 
 magnificent crimson morning skies before storm that 
 ever eye beheld. Another wonderful bit is of the 
 Rhone below Geneva {Pnvt. ii. 90), one of the most 
 superb pictures that Ruskin ever drew in prose, or 
 again the glacier torrent of the Triolet (Prcet. ii. 221). 
 An interesting record for us is that in 1849 (cetai. 
 thirty) it was the sight of the hard lot of the Alpine 
 
XV.] PR^^TERITA 205 
 
 peasant which first turned him to meditate on the 
 social question — was the origin of the design of St. 
 George's Guild, "closed his days of youthful happi- 
 ness, and began his true work in the world — for what 
 it is worth." 
 
 Prceterita gives us, with Fors, a complete account of 
 the gradual development of religious thought in 
 Ruskin's mind. Brought up a strict Evangelical and 
 Biblical Christian from childhood, he retained belief 
 in that faith till manhood, though it is clear that he 
 did not feel for it deep and spiritual sympathy. His 
 long studies of foreign people and of mediaeval art 
 gradually weaned him from Evangelical views ; and as he 
 says in 1845 (a3tat. twenty-six), they were being replaced 
 by m.ore Catholic sympathies. "Why did I not 
 become a Catholic then 1 " he asks ; and replies, " Why 
 did I not become a Fire-worshipper 1 " — loving the sun 
 so much. He tells us that his visit to Italy in 1858 {cetat. 
 thirty-seven) marked his " final apostasy from Puritan 
 doctrine." Intimacy with Carlyle, Froude, and others 
 led him to very latitudinarian views of all dogmatic 
 theology, without impairing his intense hold on the 
 conception of God's Providence and the spiritual 
 meaning of Scripture. The tragedy of his life — 
 repudiation by Eose La Touche and her death — 
 turned him back to a more definitely Christian con- 
 dition, and in this mood the last twenty years of his 
 fast-ebbing life were passed, wholly detached from 
 any formal church or doctrinal school. A passage in 
 Prceterita (iii. 7) well expresses the root religion of 
 his life— 
 
 " While these convictions [condemnation of all forms of 
 monasticism] prevented me from being ever led into accept- 
 
206 JOHN RUSKIN [chap. xv. 
 
 ance of Catholic teaching by my reverence for the Catholic 
 art of the great ages, — and the less, because the Catholic art of 
 these small ages can say but little for itself, — I grew also daily 
 more sure that the peace of God rested on all the dutiful andj 
 kindly hearts of the laborious poor ; and that the only constant! 
 form of f)ure religion was in useful work, faithful love, andl 
 stintless charity." 
 
 Well 1 that is the essence of the religion of 
 Humanity. 
 
CHAPTEE XVI 
 
 LAST DAYS 
 
 The last ten years of Kuskin's long life (1889-1899) 
 were passed in close retirement and in complete 
 rest, broken only by a rare visit from an intimate, a 
 few words about his publications and the works of 
 others, and from time to time the loss of a dear friend. 
 He enjoyed life, could walk, play chess, listen to a 
 reading, turn over the pages of a book he loved, suck 
 up the fragrance of his roses, and gaze wistfully across 
 the lake at the Coniston Old Man. Slowly his strength 
 ebbed away without suffering or illness, till at last he 
 became an invalid in a Bath chair, passing most of his 
 time in his bedroom and study, with but the company 
 of one or other of the Severn family, who watched 
 over him with tender care. 
 
 His eightieth birthday (8th February 1899) was 
 celebrated with a shower of letters, telegrams, addresses, 
 flowers, and gifts from all parts of the country, and 
 even of the world. The greet address, illuminated on 
 vellum, signed by the Prince of Wales and a crowd 
 of official personages, was presented by a deputation. 
 The University of Oxford, the London Ruskin Society, 
 the Coniston Parish Council, sent similar addresses; 
 private friends poured in their congratulations, and 
 the press joined in with hearty sympathy, One night 
 
 207 
 
208 JOHN RUSKIN [chap. 
 
 he stood looking at the portrait of Sir Edward Burne- 
 Jones, and gazing, said, " That 's my dear brother Ned." 
 Next day the artist died, and this was the worst blow the 
 old man had to bear. All that autumn and winter he 
 remained very feeble, but clear in mind, and at peace. 
 
 In January 1900 influenza raged in Coniston, and 
 at last reached Brantwood. On 18th January he was 
 seized, rallied next day, but on the 20th the heart 
 failed, and he sank softly asleep surrounded by his 
 dear ones, in the room hung round with his beloved 
 Turners. Without a word or a struggle he had passed 
 into his last sleep. He died within two weeks of his 
 eighty-first birthday. The world at large, the world of 
 letters, the press, and the many Societies connected 
 with his name and work, sounded his praises and 
 rehearsed his good deeds in words that were fit, but 
 somewhat too late. 
 
 By his own express desire, the family caused him to 
 be buried in Coniston Churchyard, and they declined 
 the offer of a grave in Westminster Abbey. A bronze 
 medallion, by OnsloAr Ford, R.A., was raised there by 
 a large body of his friends and admirers, and a place 
 chosen for it in Poets' Corner in the Abbey, close 
 beside the bust of Walter Scott. It was unveiled by 
 Mrs. Severn on his birthday, 8th February 1902. 
 With a simple village funeral, and with a gathering 
 of relations and intimates, he was laid in a grave 
 beside his old friends, the Beevers, beneath a fir tree, 
 close to the children's school. The only unusual 
 feature in the burial was the presence of rich colours, 
 and the absence of all black, which he so hated even in 
 mourning. The pall upon his coffin was of bright 
 crimson silk, embroidered with his favourite wild 
 
XVI.] LAST DAYS 209 
 
 roses on a grey field, and inscribed with the motto, 
 Unto this Last. The chancel was filled with wreaths, 
 white, green, and violet ; and foremost of all was the 
 great cross laid there by his cousin, Joan Severn, con- 
 sisting of the red roses he loved. 
 
 "There was no black about his burying, except what 
 we wore for our own sorrow," says his friend, secretary, 
 and biographer, who has left so fine a tribute, in the 
 Life, to the memory of his master. 
 
 Let there be no black about our memory of him, say 
 all of us who love a beautiful nature and honour a rare 
 
INDEX 
 
 Abailard, 138. 
 Acland, Sir H., 34. 
 
 Sir T. D., 167. 
 
 Adair, family, 4. 
 Agnew, family, 4, 110. 
 
 Joan, see Mrs. Severn. 
 
 Alexander, Miss, 148. 
 
 Alice in Wmiderland, 116. 
 
 Allen. G., 85, 164, 168. 
 
 AUingham, Mrs., 148. 
 
 Alps, the, 15, 38, 41, 45, 52, 204. 
 
 Andrews, Dr., 15. 
 
 Angelico, Fra, 47, 51, 76, 118. 
 
 Anne, nurse, 11, 195. 
 
 Aquinas, 103. 
 
 Aratra Fentelici, 124. 
 
 Arena Chapel, 81. 
 
 Arethusa, 125. 
 
 Ariadne, 190. 
 
 Ariadne Florentina^ 129. 
 
 Aristotle, 42, 103, 128. 
 
 Arnold, Matthew, 19. 
 
 Art of England, 142-144. 
 
 Arundel Society, 81. 
 
 Assisi, 156. 
 
 Athens, 81, 82. 
 
 Bacon, Roger, 138. 
 
 Francis, 43. 
 
 Baily's Magatine, 187. 
 Bardoux, Jacques, 61, 153, 155. 
 Beever, Misses, 208. 
 
 Bentham, 103. 
 
 Bernard, St., 131. 
 
 Be^vick, 129. 
 
 Bible, 9, 13, 101, 103, 198. 
 
 Bihliotheca Pastortim, 140. 
 
 Birds, 131. 
 
 Blackioood's MagazinCy 26. 
 
 Blake, 128. 
 
 Boss\iet, 59. 
 
 Botticelli, 47, 129, 145, 146. 
 
 Boxall, R. A., 49. 
 
 Bradford, 116. 
 
 Brantwood, 120, 158, 163, 207. 
 
 Bright, John, 94. 
 
 Bronte, Charlotte, 69. 
 
 Brown, Dr. Thomas, 6. 
 
 John, 180. 
 
 Browning, Robert and Mrs., 88, 94. 
 
 Buckland, Dr., 34. 
 
 Buckle, 73. 
 
 Bunyan, 9, 198. 
 
 Burgess, A., 164. 
 
 Burne-Jones, 80, 85, 144, 160, 208. 
 
 Byron, 9, 22, 23, 34, 63, 88. 
 
 Byzantine Art, m, 70, 71, 81, 134. 
 
 Calais, 23, 52, 200. 
 
 Calvinism, 55, 101, 106. 
 
 Cambridge, 89, 119, 165. 
 
 Canaletto, 42. 
 
 Carlyle, T., 4, 43, 58, 69, 72, 76, 84, 
 
 88, 96, 101, 112, 127, 132, 153, 
 
 167, 194, 205. 
 
 2U 
 
212 
 
 JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
 Carpaccio, 131, 156. 
 
 Cervantes, Don Quixote, 9, 96, 200. 
 
 Chamberlain, Mr. J., 107. 
 
 Chancer, 128, 131, 192. 
 
 Christ Church, 16, 34, 35, UO. 
 
 Christmas, 190. 
 
 Claude, 42. 
 
 Collingwood, Mr. W. G., 78, 138, 
 
 153, 162, 169, 179, 182, 209. 
 Comte, Augnste, 65, 73, 99, 101, 
 
 112, 195. 
 Coniston, 158. 163, 207. 
 Constantinople, 81. 
 Cook, Mr. E. T., 122, 138, 142, 153, 
 
 155, 165, 177. 
 Cornhill Magazine, 91, 
 Corpus Christi College, 140. 
 Correggio, 146. 
 Couttet, 45, 56, 153. 
 Cox, Margaret, 5, 7, 8, and see Mrs. 
 
 J. J. Ruskin. 
 
 Family, 5, 7. 
 
 Cruikshank, G., 39. 
 
 Dale, Eev. T., 15. 
 
 Dandolo, Doge, 75. 
 
 Dante, 47, 81, 89, 134, 170, 176, 191. 
 
 Darwin, C, 34, 143. 
 
 Daubeny, Dr., 34. 
 
 Davy, Lady, 54, 78. 
 
 Defoe, 9, 198. 
 
 Democracy, 77. 
 
 Denmark Hill, 3, 45, 57, 92, 110. 
 
 Deucalion, 158. 
 
 Dicey, Professor A. , 84. 
 
 Dickens, 96, 163. 
 
 Dilecta, 197. 
 
 Dole, 204. 
 
 Domecq family, 6, 30-33. 
 
 Adele, 30, 33, 202. 
 
 Dublin, 113. 
 Diirer, A., 129. 
 
 Eagle's Nest, The, 127. 
 Early Lessons, 11, 
 Edinburgh, 3, 5, 28, 83, 187. 
 Edinburgh Philosophical Institu- 
 tion, 83. 
 Edinburgh Mevieiv, 1. 
 Elements of Drawing, 86. 
 Eliot, George, 112. 
 Emerson, 113, 194. 
 Ethics of the Dust, 116. 
 Etna, 22. 
 
 Endosia, a poem, 12. 
 Eyre, Governor, 119. 
 
 Fesole, Laws of, 167. 
 
 Fielding, Copley, 39, 148. 
 
 Florence, 47, 61, 129, 203. 
 
 Forbes, Professor, 46, 
 
 Ford, Onslow, R.A.,208. 
 
 Fors Clavigera, 166, 181-196. 
 
 Forster, W. E., 107. 
 
 Fox, G., 105. 
 
 Francis, St., 105, 132, 156, 177, 
 
 193. 
 Eraser's Magazine, 101. 
 Friendship's Offering, 23, 25. 
 Froude, J. A., 101, 205. 
 Furnivall, Dr., 84, 92. 
 
 Gainsborough, 146. 
 
 Gambetta, 94. 
 
 Garibaldi, 94. 
 
 George, St., Company of, 166, 170- 
 
 178, 196. 
 Ghirlandajo, 47. 
 Giotto, 61, 81, 82, 90. 
 Gladstone, Mr., 54, 93. 
 Glenfarg, 21. 
 Goethe, 128. 
 Gordon, Osborne, 36. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 213 
 
 Gothic art, 59, 65, 135, 145. 
 Gozzoli, Benozzo, 131. 
 Gray family, 56. 
 
 E. C, 56, 57, 78. 
 
 Greenawav, Kate, 148. 
 
 Greek Art, 66, 113, 118, 126, 134, 
 
 135, 165. 
 Greek Poetry, 113, 124, 128. 
 
 H 
 
 Haeckel, Dr., 143. 
 
 Harbours of England, 87. 
 
 Harding, 39, 49. 
 
 Headrigg, Mause, 199. 
 
 Heme Hill, 10, 30, 40, 45, 83, 197. 
 
 Herod, 53, 158. 
 
 Hill, Miss Octavia, 166, 167. 
 
 Hinksey, Road of, 141. 
 
 Holbein, 129, 130, 146. 
 
 Hollyer, Photograph by, 93. 
 
 Hoiner, 9, 13, 128. 
 
 Hooker, 51. 
 
 Houghton, Lord, 78. 
 
 Hughes, T., 84. 
 
 Hugo, v., 94, 134. 
 
 Hume, 103, 113. 
 
 Hunt, Holman, 80, 84, 85, 143. 
 
 W., 160. 
 
 Huxley, Professor, 143. 
 
 Ilaria di Caretto, 47. 
 Ingram, Professor, 9 
 Iteriad, The, 22. 
 
 Jamaica Committee, 119. 
 Jameson, Mrs., 49. 
 Jeffery, W.,164. 
 Jephson, Dr. , 36, 55. 
 Jesuits, 105, 177. 
 Joy for Ever, 89, 164. 
 
 K 
 
 Kant, 103. 
 
 Kempis, A, 161. 
 
 King of the Golden River, 78. 
 
 King's College, London, 16. 
 
 Kingsley, 84, 96, 112. 
 
 Knox, John, 4. 
 
 Latimer, 193. 
 Leech, John, 148. 
 Leibnitz, 103. 
 Leigh ton, SirF., 145. 
 Leonardo, 81. 
 Liddell, Dean, 34. 
 Lindsay, Lord, 47, 54. 
 Lippi, 47. 
 Locke, John, 43. 
 Lockhart, 54. 
 
 Charlotte, 54, 55. 
 
 Loudon, 28. 
 
 Loudon's Architectural Magazine ^ 
 
 27. 
 Loudon's Magazine, 25. 
 Love's Meinie, 131. 
 Lowe, Robert, 35, 189. 
 Lubbock, Sir J., 84, 112. 
 Luca della Robbia, 146. 
 Lucca, 47. 
 
 M 
 
 Macaulay, 113. 
 
 M'Culloch, 97. 
 
 Macdonald, M., 55. 
 
 Macugnaga, 47. 
 
 Mallock, W. H., 123, 138. 
 
 Malthusians, 105. 
 
 Manchester, 164, 187. 
 
 Mantegna, 129. 
 
 Marathon, 189. 
 
 Mark's, St., 75. 
 
 Marks, Stacy, 146. 
 
 Marriage of Ruskin's parents, 7. 
 
214 
 
 JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
 Marriage of J, Ruskin, 55-57. 
 
 Marshall, family, 78. 
 
 Maurice, Rev. F. D., 78, 84, 86, 96. 
 
 Maurier, Du, 148. 
 
 Mazzini, 94, 200. 
 
 Meissonier, 141. 
 
 Melos, 125. 
 
 Michael Augelo, 81, 129. 
 
 Michelet, Jules, 131. 
 
 Milan, 46. 
 
 Mill, J. S., 73, 96. 100, 134, 192, 
 
 195. 
 Millais, Sir J. E., 57, 80, 141. 
 
 Lady, 57. 
 
 Milton, 59. 
 
 Mitford, Miss, 54. 
 
 Modern Painters, 1, 41-51. 
 
 More, SirT., 176. 
 
 Morris, W., 85, 194. 
 
 Mount Temple, Lord, 78, 167. 
 
 Miiller, Dorians, 187. 
 
 Mulready, R. A., 129. 
 
 Munera Fulveris, 101. 
 
 Murillo, 76. 
 
 Murray, John, 54. 
 
 Museum, Oxford, 89, 138, 139. 
 
 N 
 
 Naples, 204. 
 New York, 187. 
 Newdigate Poem, 24, 35. 
 Newton Hall, 85. 
 
 SirC, 34, 80. 
 
 Niccola Pisano, 134, 145. 
 Northcote, R. A., 11, 159. 
 Norton, C. Eliot, 114, 197. 
 Notes on the Pictures of the Year, 
 88. 
 
 
 
 Olive, Crown of Wild, 64, 116. 
 Oxford, 16, 24, 33-37, 89, 121-150, 
 160, 166, 202. 
 
 Padua, 81. 
 
 Pantheon, 66. 
 
 Paris, 46, 166. 
 
 Parthenon, 66, 129, 145. 
 
 Passmore Edwards, 85. 
 
 Patmore, Coventry, 88. 
 
 Paul's, St., 66, 125. 
 
 Paxton, Sir J., 68. 
 
 Perugino, 145. 
 
 Pheidias, 126, 145. 
 
 Pisa, 46, 47. 
 
 Plato, 43, 94, 103, 144, 176, 187. 
 
 Pleasures of England, 142. 
 
 Pollajuolo, Antonio, 131, 
 
 Pompeii, 145. 
 
 Pope, A. , 9, 22. 
 
 Poussin, 42. 
 
 Prmterita, 1, 4, 8, 10, 15, 17, 33, 
 
 87, 49, 197-206. 
 Praxiteles, 125. 
 Pre-Raphaelitism, 80. 
 Proserjnna, 158. 
 Prout, 42, 80, 160. 
 
 Q 
 
 }ueen of the Air, 117. 
 
 R 
 
 Raphael, 126, 131, 159. 204. 
 Rede Lecture, 119. 
 Renascence, 66, 130, 148. 
 Reynolds, Sir J., 118, 131, 146. 
 Ricardo, 96, 97, 101. 
 Richard Coeur de Lion, 175. 
 Richmond, George, 36, 41, 92. 
 
 William, Sir, 121, 145, 16C. 
 
 Robson, 148. 
 Rogers, 44, 69, 78. 
 Rogers' Italy, 39. 
 Roman Art, 66. 
 Rome, 36, 63, 203. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 215 
 
 Rose La Touche, 112, 154-156, 205. 
 
 Rose, Romance of the, 131. 
 
 Ross, family, 4. 
 
 Rossetti, D. G., 80, 85, 90, 143, 
 144, 165. 
 
 Rousseau, 17, 43, 165, 176, 194. 
 
 Rowbotham, 15. 
 
 Rubens, 76, 145. 
 
 Runciman, Mr., 15. 
 
 Ruskin, John, born, 7 ; infancy, 9 ; 
 first sermon, 11 ; first poems, 14 ; 
 early travels, 10, 14, 15, 16 ; 
 schools, 15-17; Ulnesses, 17, 33, 
 151-158, 160, 188; poetry, 19, 
 20-24; Rata Phusin, 27, 2S ; 
 vetturino travelling, 199 ; first 
 love, 30-33; last love, 154-156, 
 205; at Oxford, 33-37; degree, 
 36 ; religious views, 12, 49, 71, 72, 
 205 ; Oxford professor, 121-161 ; 
 arms of, 50 ; marriage, 55-57 ; por- 
 trait of, 92-96 ; last days, 207-209; 
 eightieth birthday, 207 ; burial, 
 208 ; memorial medallion placed 
 in Poets' Corner, Westminster 
 Abbey, 208. 
 
 Ruskin, John James, father, 3, 6, 
 7. 9, 12, 33, 45, 83, 95, 96, 109, 
 166, 197, 201. 
 
 Mrs. John James, mother, 3, 
 
 5, 7, 9, 12, 17, 35, 36. 83, 94, 110, 
 192, 201. 
 
 Art Museum, 165. 
 
 famHy, 4-8, 52, 95. 
 
 family, arms of, 50. 
 
 Salvator Rosa, 76. 
 Savonarola, 105, 162. 
 Schaffhausen, 14, 38, 200. 
 Scotland, 3, 13, 55. 
 Scott, Sir W., 4, 5, 9, 23, 28, 113, 
 157, 163, 208. 
 
 Sir Gilbert, 157. 
 
 Sesame and Lilies, 111, 113. 
 
 Seven Lamps, 52-62. 
 Severn, Arthur, 109. 
 
 Joseph, 36. 
 
 Mrs. A., 4, 109, 110, 120, 159, 
 
 208, 209. 
 Shakespeare, 9, 26, 32, 47, 113, 128. 
 Sheep/olds, Construction of, 79. 
 Sheffield, Art Museum, 177. 
 Shelley, 19, 32, 88, 203. 
 Sidgwick, H., 73. 
 Sizeranne, M. de la, 2, 153. 
 Skiddaw, 14, 21. 
 Slade Professorship, 121, 133, 138, 
 
 149, 160, 161. 
 Smith, Adam, 73. 
 
 Sydney, 1, 44. 
 
 Sociocracy, 107. 
 
 Solomon, 101. 
 
 Sophia, S., 66. 
 
 Sophocles, 113. 
 
 Spencer, Herbert, 73, 101, 143, 195. 
 
 Spenser, Edmund, 113. 
 
 Spielmann, 153. 
 
 "Sport," 133, 192. 
 
 Stanley, Dean, 24, 35. 
 
 Stevens, A., 125. 
 
 Stones of Venice, 63, 65-77. 
 
 Swift, 104, 112, 114, 115. 
 
 Tadema, Alma, R.A., 145, 147,148. 
 Tay, 10, 13, 14. 
 Taylor, SirH., 44. 
 Telemachus, Monk, 179. 
 Tenniel, 129, 148. 
 Tennyson, 19, 44, 94, 116. 
 Thackeray, 96, 112. 
 Theresa, St., 177. 
 Theseus, 134, 189, 192. 
 Thucydides, 36. 
 Time and Tide, 104, 165. 
 Tintoretto, 48, 51, 64, 65, 118, 131, 
 
 159. 
 Titian, 46, 90, 126. 131, 159. 
 
216 
 
 JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
 Tolstoi, 149, 194. 
 Tourgenieflf, 93. 
 Toynbee, Arnold, 138. 
 
 Hall, 85. 
 
 Turner, Death of, 80. 
 
 introduced, 40 ; praised, 42, 
 
 43. 
 Paintings, 39, 40, 119, 128, 
 
 131, 159, 203. 
 
 Rogers' Italy, 39. 
 
 Ruskin's first defence of, 26. 
 
 Tweddale, family, 4, 5. 
 Tyndall, Professor, 158. 
 
 U 
 
 Uccelli, Paolo, 131. 
 
 "University Extension," 85, 89. 
 
 "Settlements," 85. 
 
 Unto this Last, 91-101, 165, 209. 
 Ursula, St., 156, 157. 
 
 Val d'Arno, 134. 
 
 Venice, 46, 48, 49, 61, 63, 69, 74, 75, 
 
 156. 
 Vernon, Diana, 135. 
 Verona, 48, 75, 125. 
 Victoria, Queen, 68, 79. 
 Victorian Art, Early, 69. 
 Vivisection, 143. 
 
 W 
 
 Wandel, The, 10, 13. 
 Ward, W.,164. 
 Waterloo, 14. 
 Watts, G. F., R.A., 144. 
 "Wealth," 91, 100. 
 Wellington, Monument, 125. 
 Wesley, J., 43, 138. 
 Westminster Abliey, 208. 
 Whewell,Dr., 78. 
 Wordswortli, 21, 22, 203. 
 Working Men's College, 84, 91, 109, 
 164. 
 
 Zwingli, 193. 
 
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