UC-NRLF 
 
 B 3 311 7M2 
 
 
 
 
M^m 
 
STUDIES IN RUSKIN: 
 
 SOME ASPECTS 
 
 OF THE 
 
 WORK AND TEACHING OF JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
LIB^ 
 
 Cf THE 
 
 IVEESITY 
 
JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
 {From the bust h Sir J. E. Bochm, R.A., in the Rttsiin Drau^ing 
 School, Oxford.) 
 
STUDIES IN RUSKIN:, 
 
 SOME ASPECTS 
 
 WORK AND TEACHING OF JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
 EDWARD T. COOK, M.A., 
 
 AUTHOR Ol- 
 A POPULAR HANDBOOK TO THE NATIONAL GALLERY. 
 
 / 
 
 GEORGE ALLEN, 
 
 SUNNYSIDE, ORPINGTON, 
 AND 
 
 8, BELL YARD, TEMPLE BAR, LONDON, 
 1890. 
 
 [A /I rights reserved.^ 
 
/ Q 
 
 ^^ 
 
 ^^^3^' 
 
 PiiiilLcl by lluzcll, Wulbon, <ic Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbury, 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 The object of the First Part of this little book 
 is not, it will be seen, critical or controversial, 
 but expository. My desire has been to discuss 
 not how, but wJiat, Ruskin has written. For 
 several reasons, such definition seemed to me a 
 thing worth attempting at this time. Mr. Ruskin 
 has of late years written so voluminously, and 
 on subjects so multifarious, that the accidental 
 and the temporary have been Hke to overlay 
 what is essential and permanent in his teaching. 
 His writings open a vista into a great forest, 
 but there has been some danger of not seeing 
 the forest for the trees. This danger, which 
 always exists when an author spreads himself 
 over a large area, has probably been increased 
 by the increasing popularity of Mr. Ruskin's 
 
Vi PRH.FACE. 
 
 works, and by the cult which has grown up 
 around his personaHty. The most ardent are 
 not always the most discriminating of readers. 
 "The fact is," Mr. Ruskin somewhere says, 
 " that I have always had three different ways of 
 writing — one, with the single view of making 
 myself understood, in which I necessarily omit 
 a great deal of what comes into my head ; 
 another, in which I say what I think ought 
 to be said ; and my third way of writing is to 
 say all that comes into m}^ head, for my own 
 pleasure." Amongst the things that come 
 most freely into Mr. Ruskin's head, and that 
 give him most pleasure, are somewhat wilful 
 paradoxes, uttered often, it would seem, with 
 the single view of making himself misun- 
 derstood. On the other hand, what sel- 
 dom comes into Mr. Ruskin's head, or what, 
 if it does come, is generally dismissed as 
 giving him no pleasure, is the desirability of 
 saving clauses and qualifying statements. The 
 consequence is that nothing is easier for a 
 captious critic than to convict Mr. Ruskin of 
 inconsistencies, and for a superficial reader 
 than to fall into bewilderment. It has seemed 
 
PREFACK. Vll 
 
 to me, therefore, that I might be doing a real 
 service, in these days of Ruskin Societies and 
 Ruskin Reading Guilds, by attempting to set 
 forth what appeared to me to be the main 
 and essential drift of his teaching. 
 
 The pages devoted to this object were 
 originally written to form part of a series of 
 articles on " Modern Gospels," contributed by 
 different hands to a daily periodical. Having 
 decided to republish the '' Gospel according 
 to Ruskin," I thought it might be well to 
 carry the design of the " Gospel " chapters 
 a step farther, by appending some account 
 of Mr. Ruskin's Acts. Mr. Ruskin, like his 
 master, Carlyle, has loudly proclaimed him- 
 self a Moral Teacher, and in the case of 
 moral teachers one has a right to inquire 
 how far they have practised what they 
 preach. I have not, however, attempted any 
 estimate of Mr. Ruskin's life and character, 
 a task for which the time has happily not 
 arrived. My object has only been to show 
 such aspects of Mr. Ruskin's public work as 
 are in themselves of public interest, and inci- 
 dentally throw light on his teaching. The 
 
Vni PREFACE. 
 
 best claim, indeed, to honour consists, in Mr. 
 Ruskin's case, as in that of all great teachers, 
 not so much in what he has himself done, as 
 in what he has enabled others to think, and 
 feel, and do. The highest tribute to Mr. Rus- 
 kin's Gospel is to be found in the thoughts 
 he has inspired and in the characters he has 
 helped to mould. Nevertheless, many of Mr. 
 Ruskin's own schemes have in themselves a 
 positive value in their generation. They may 
 serve as sign-posts, pointing the way to social 
 progress, and they have shown how practical 
 realization may be given to what the late Prince 
 Leopold truly and eloquently described as the 
 last and greatest precept in Mr. Ruskin's Gospel 
 — the precept, namely, "that the highest wisdom 
 and the highest treasure need not be costly or 
 exclusive ; that the greatness of a nation must 
 be measured, not alone by its wealth and ap- 
 parent power, but by the degree in which its 
 people have learned together, in the great world 
 of books, of art, and of nature, pure and enno- 
 bling joys." 
 
 December 315/, 1889. 
 
CONTENTS, 
 
 PAGE 
 PREFACE V 
 
 PART I. 
 ''THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO RUSKINr 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 PRINCIPLES OF ART 1 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 APPLICATIONS TO LIFE ....... 22 
 
 PART II. 
 SOME ASPECTS OF MR. RUSKIN'S WORK. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 MR. RUSKIN AND OXFORD 3^ 
 
X CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER IT. 
 
 PAGE 
 THE RUSKIN DRA\^INXt SCHOOL . , . . .62 
 
 CHAPTER ni. 
 
 MR. RUSKIX AND THE WORKING MEN"s COLLEGE . .122 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 MR. RUSKIn"s " MAY QUEENS "..... 127 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 THE ST. George's guild (with some accnjtnf of the 
 
 '^ Rjiskin Mftsemn" at Sheffield^ . . . .140 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 SOME INDUSTRIAL EXPERIMENTS l6l 
 
 § I. The Langdale Linen Industry . . .164 
 § 2. " .St. George's '" Cloth . . . -173 
 
 § 3, "George Thomson & Co." . . . .178 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 MR. RUSKIN AND THE BOOKSELLERS .... 184 
 
 APPENDICES. 
 
 NOTES OX MR. RUSKIN' S OXFORD 
 LECTURES. 
 
 I. " READINGS IN ' MODERN PAINTERS ' " . . . 205 
 
CONTENTS. XI 
 
 PAGE 
 
 II. "the pleasures of England" . . . .211 
 
 III. A LECTURE ON PATIENCE 264 
 
 IV. " BIRDS, AND HOW TO PAINT THEM '" . . . 272 
 V. A LECTURE ON LANDSCAPE 28^ 
 
 295 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 I. John Ruskin. From a bust by Sir J. E. 
 
 Boelitu, R.A. .... Frontispiece 
 
 II. The Ruskin Drawing School : Interior 
 
 To face page 73 
 
 III. The May Queen's Gold Cross. After a design 
 
 by Arthur Severn . . To face page 129 
 
 IV. The May Queen's Procession. From a draiving 
 
 by Edith Capp.r .... Page 132 
 
 V. The St. George's Museum, Walkley : Ex- 
 terior .... To face page 146 
 
 VI. The St. George's Museum, Walkley : In- 
 terior .... To j ace page 148 
 
 Vll. The Ruskin Museum, Meersbrook Park : Ex- 
 terior .... To face page 158 
 
XIV LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 VIII. The "Bishop's House," Meersbrook Park 
 
 To face page 159 
 
 IX. The Ruskix Museum, Meersbrook Park : In- 
 terior OF Picture-gallery To face page 160 
 
 X. Peasant-woman Spinning. From a dyan'ing 
 
 by Edith Capper .... Page 166 
 
 XI. "St. Martin's," Langdale. From a drawing 
 
 by Edith Capper .... Page 168 
 
 XII. "Old John," the Weaver. From a drawing 
 
 by Edith Capper .... Page 1 71 
 
 XIII. St, George's Mill, Laxey, Isle of Man (with 
 fac-simile of Mr. Ruskin's Inscription) 
 
 To face page 175 
 
NOTE. 
 
 Several chapters in this book originally appeared in the 
 Pall Mall Gazette. To the proprietors of that journal I am 
 indebted for kind permission to reprint them here. For 
 the chapter on "The Langdale Linen Industry" I am 
 indebted to my friend Mr. Albert Fleming. 
 
 The Illustrations of the Walkley Museum, Meersbrook 
 Park, etc., are from photographs kindly taken for me by 
 Mr. B. Carr and Mr. C. Bradshaw, under the supervision 
 of Mr. William White, the Curator of the Ruskin Museum. 
 For permission to engrave Sir J. E. Boehm's bust of Mr. 
 Ruskin and the Interior of the Ruskin Drawing School — as 
 well as for other kind offices — I am indebted to Mr. A. 
 Macdonald, the Master ot the School. 
 
PART I. 
 
 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO 
 RUSKINy 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 PRINCIPLES OF ART. 
 
 Is there a Gospel accordins^ to Ruskin at all ? is there a 
 The very genius of Mr. Ruskin as a writer ^^Jj^' ^o^- 
 makes the question necessary. Darwin * was 
 no orator as Mr. Ruskin is. There was no gla- 
 mour of fine writing, no film of ingenious rhe- 
 toric, to lend factitious importance or interest 
 to the " Origin of Species." Darwin was the 
 deliverer of a gospel, or he was nothing. But 
 Mr. Ruskin may be a giant of prose writing, 
 and yet have no gospel to deliver. All is not 
 
 * The preceding article in the series of which this paper 
 formed part was on "The Gospel according to Darwin." 
 
2 " THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO RUSKIN. 
 
 gold in thought that glisters in words. It is 
 
 with fine words as Mr. Ruskin says of painted 
 
 drapery, " As long as they are in their due 
 
 service and subjection — while their folds are 
 
 formed by the motion of men, and their lustre 
 
 adorns the nobleness of men — so long the lustre 
 
 and folds are lovely. But cast them from the 
 
 human limbs — golden circlet and silken tissue 
 
 are withered; the dead leaves of autumn are 
 
 ■ more precious than the3\" How, then, is it 
 
 with the golden circlets of Mr. Ruskin's periods 
 
 and the silken tissues of his phrases ? He has 
 
 shown us a new instrument of expression, but 
 
 has he opened any new field of thought or 
 
 touched an}^ fresh spring of action ? Is it 
 
 possible to speak of a " Gospel according to 
 
 Ruskin " in anything approaching the same 
 
 sense as that in which we speak of a " Gospel 
 
 according to Darwin " ? Are there Ruskinians 
 
 as well as Darwinians ? Mr. Ruskin's own 
 
 [/ answer to the question, when put in that 
 
 form, is a decided negative. Many men, he 
 
 says, have " hope of being remembered as the 
 
 discoverers of some important truth, or the 
 
 founders of some exclusive system called after 
 
 their own names. But I have never applied 
 
PRINCIPLES OF ART. 3 
 
 myself to discover anything, being content to 
 
 praise what had already been discovered ; so 
 
 that no true disciple of mine will ever be a 
 
 Ruskinian." But now hear some other opinions. 
 
 " Do you look out," wrote George Eliot to her 
 
 friend Miss Sarah Hennell, " for Ruskin's books 
 
 whenever they appear ? . . . I venerate him as 
 
 one of the great teachers of the age. . . . He 
 
 teaches with the inspiration of a Hebrew 
 
 prophet." '' Do you read Ruskin's ' Fors Cla- ^ 
 
 vigera'?" Carlyle asked of Emerson. ''If you 
 
 don't, do, I advise you. Also . . . whatever 
 
 else he is now writing. There is nothing going 
 
 on among us as notable to me." 
 
 These estimates of Mr. Ruskin himself onAnoidGos- 
 
 the one side, and of his admirers on the other, new appli- 
 cations. 
 are not contradictory. The Gospel according 
 
 to Ruskin is one of glad tidings, but not of 
 "news." What George EHot admired was his 
 teaching of "Truth, Sincerity, and Nobleness." 
 This is an " old, old story." But every age 
 requires the old story to be applied to its new 
 interests and its new temptations. The great- 
 ness of Mr. Ruskin depends on the degree in 
 which he has met this twofold need. He took 
 the Gospel of Truth, Sincerity, and Nobleness 
 
4 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO RUSKIN. 
 
 as he had learned it from Carlyle, and applied 
 it to a new sphere untouched by Carlyle and 
 of increasing importance in this time. And 
 secondly, founding his Gospel of Art upon 
 Principles of Life, he re-applied that Gospel in 
 its turn to counteract the besetting materialism 
 and commercialism of his age. In this chapter 
 an attempt will be made to set out, as far 
 as possible in the preacher's own words, the 
 Ruskinian Gospel of Art; whilst in a second 
 chapter some of its leading applications to poli- 
 tical and social questions will be considered. 
 The origin It has bccn said of Carlyle, by one of his 
 
 of Art: 
 
 imitation latcst bioefTaphers, that his taste in art was 
 
 touched " ^ ' 
 
 with praise, ^^^^y '< t]-,at of any Auuandalc peasant." Then 
 the Annandale peasant must have a great fac- 
 ult}^, as indeed the natural man often does have, 
 for going to the root of the matter, '' In all 
 J true Works of Art," says Carlyle in ''Sartor," 
 '* if thou know a Work of Art from a Daub of 
 Artifice, wilt thou discern Eternity looking 
 through Time ; the Godlike rendered visible." 
 "Art in all times," he says, in "Shooting 
 Niagara," "is a higher synonym for God Al- 
 mighty's Facts, — which come to us direct 
 from Heaven, but in so abstruse a condition. 
 
PRLNXIPLES OF ART. 5 
 
 and cannot be read at all till the better intellect 
 interpret them. All real Art is definable as 
 Fact, or say as the disimprisoned Soul of 
 Fact." In these two passages (the latter of 
 which, however, was of course long subsequent 
 to ''Modern Painters") is contained the germ 
 of all Mr. Ruskin's Gospel of Art. What is 
 Art ? From what instinct in man does it spring ? 
 To what faculties does it appeal ? By what 
 rules is it to be judged ? What purpose does 
 it serve ? The Ruskinian Gospel answers 
 these fundamental questions with no uncertain 
 sound. " The art of man," such is the first 
 article of faith as defined in '' The Laws of 
 Fesole," "is the expression of his rational and 
 disciplined delight in the forms and laws of 
 the creation of which he forms a part." Mr. 
 Ruskin's theory of the origin of Art is thus the 
 old theory of imitation, with a " rider : " Art 
 arises out of imitation, but of imitation touched 
 with delight. Both are necessary. Thus " a 
 lamb at play, rejoicing in its own life only, 
 is not an artist." But the child who, looking 
 at the lamb and liking it, tries to imitate it on 
 his slate, is an artist. This is the theory 
 which all Mr. Ruskin's historical studies in 
 
O THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO RUSKIN. 
 
 Art serve to illustrate. " All great Art is 
 Praise," The perfection of the Art of the Greeks 
 was the expression of their delight in God's 
 noblest work — the disciplined beauty of the 
 human body. The perfection of early Italian 
 Art was its delight in '' saints a-praising God." 
 It is with architecture as with painting : those 
 fair fronts of mouldering wall were filled with 
 sculpture of the saints whom the cathedral 
 builders worshipped and of the flowers they 
 loved. 
 Thefacui- Such bcins^, on the Ruskinian theory, the 
 origin of Art, it is easy to see to what faculties 
 in man it appeals. '' Like is known of like : " 
 from delight in the forms and laws of God's 
 creation Art comes ; to that delight it appeals. 
 This is the central idea of the chief book of 
 Ruskin's Gospel. " In the main aim and prin- 
 ciple of 'Modern Painters,'" he says, "there 
 is no variation from its first syllable to its last. 
 It declares the perfectness and eternal beauty 
 of the work of God, and tests all work of 
 man by concurrence with or subjection to that." 
 Thus, the greatest picture, he says, is that which 
 conveys the greatest number of the greatest 
 ideas. The ideas that can be received from Art 
 
 ties to 
 which Art 
 appeals : 
 "ideas of 
 imitation 
 and of 
 power." 
 
PRINCIPLES OF ART. J 
 
 are fivefold : ideas of power, ideas of imitation, 
 ideas of truth, ideas of beauty, and ideas of 
 relation (that is, everything productive of ex- 
 pression, sentiment, and character). Of these 
 five sets of ideas, the first two may be classed 
 as one, and soon dismissed — not because they 
 are unimportant, but because the recognition 
 of their importance is included in every Gospel 
 of Art that was ever sanely preached, and 
 besides is felt by every one who ever looked 
 at a picture. " How like it is ! " is always 
 the first remark of the unsophisticated critic 
 when he is confronted by a competent picture, 
 and feels a perception of gentle surprise at 
 seeing a piece of canvas covered with pigments 
 looking like a field or a face. The idea of 
 imitation is the first received from a picture ; 
 the idea of power — the recognition, that is, of 
 the painter's skill — is perhaps the last. 
 
 In this aspect of pictures what artists are so The duty of 
 
 *■ ^ choosing- 
 
 fond of saying — namely, that only artists have "^bjects 
 the right to criticize them — is true. In one 
 sense it is only the chef of the Cafe Anglais 
 who can " do justice " to a dinner at the Cafe 
 RicJie ; for it is only he who knows how much 
 skill in composition and delicacy in handling 
 
5 'THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO RUSKIN. 
 
 are involved in producing the dinner. But no 
 one has yet pretended that you have no right 
 to discuss a good dinner unless you could 
 yourself cook it — and why not ? Because the 
 dinner itself is to be enjoyed, as well as the 
 skill which produced it to be admired. And 
 so it is with pictures : they must be like what 
 they represent ; of course they must ; and a 
 spectator may or may not know how difficult 
 it is to attain even that, but the more he knows 
 how difficult is the mastery, the more he will 
 insist, if he be logical, upon the aim being 
 worthy. According to Mr. Frith, Turner once 
 said to Mr. Ruskin, " My dear sir, if you only 
 knew how difficult it is to paint even a decent 
 picture, you would not say the severe things 
 you do of those who fail." As applied to Mr. 
 Ruskin's criticism o{ technique, the remark may 
 have been trenchant ; as applied to his criticism 
 of subjects, it cuts precisely the other way. 
 " The life so short," says Chaucer, '' the craft 
 so long to learne ; " then, for God's sake, do iipt 
 waste your hard-won skill and scanty time in 
 painting a boor instead of a gentleman, or an 
 '' impression " of a ballet-girl instead of a vision 
 of angel choirs. 
 
PRINCIPLES OF ART. Q 
 
 And thus we come to the other ideas which ■^y^^'^'^ °* 
 pictures may convey — ideas of truth, of beauty, 
 of relation. Ideas of truth need not detain us. 
 It is a chapter of the Gospel which is indeed 
 supremely important, but also extremely obvi- 
 ous. It was not so when Mr. Ruskin first 
 taught it. The man who in the pre-Ruskinian 
 era was the High Priest among connoisseurs 
 was Sir George Beaumont ; and Sir George, 
 admirable man as he was in other respects, 
 when he looked at a landscape, asked, not 
 whether it was true to the facts of nature, but 
 whether it accorded with the fictions of con- 
 vention. '' But where is your brown tree ?^" 
 he asked of Constable when that painter gave 
 in his adherence to the then revolutionary 
 course of proclaiming that trees were green. 
 No part of Mr. Ruskin's Gospel has won wider 
 acceptance, and in so doing effected a greater 
 revolution in Art, than his vindication of truth 
 in landscape. And one sees whence his success 
 came. '' Out of the fulness of the heart the 
 mouth speaketh." To the man who has walked 
 with nature, and seen in it " God Almighty's 
 facts," the conventions of the ideal school are 
 flat blasphemy. " No other man in England," 
 
lO * THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO RUSKIX. 
 
 said Carlyle of Mr. Ruskin's political economy, 
 " has in him the same divine rage against 
 falsit3^" But false wares may be passed in 
 pictures as well as in trade, and Mr. Rus- 
 kin's "divine rage" was spent against both 
 alike. 
 "Ideas of But it must not be supposed that in preach- 
 Ruskin at jnor Truth in Art he is^nores the function of 
 
 once a '-' ^ 
 
 rpaimer'^ Beauty. On the contrary, it is as an inter- 
 preter of Beauty that Mr. Ruskin has probably 
 attracted most readers. The peculiarities of 
 his education have in this respect given him a 
 unique position and insight. He is at once a 
 Puritan and a painter, an Evangelical by train- 
 ing, a Catholic by taste. Hence he has resisted 
 both the Philistinism of Evangelical religion 
 and the frivolity or false sentiment of popular 
 art. To the " aesthetes " in particular he has 
 ever been a deadly enemy, and there is not a 
 line in his books which does not give the lie 
 to the principle, or a rebuke to the practice, 
 of that school. According to it, the essence 
 of Art is beauty, and the essence of beauty 
 consists in its appeal to the senses. This is 
 the theory of the matter which is responsible 
 for all the sensuality and all the frivolity in Art 
 
PRINCIPLES OF ART. I I 
 
 which made the Puritans banish it as the 
 accursed thing. 
 
 Mr. Ruskin's theory of the function of Art The ob- 
 is diametrically opposite. According to him, Berutl%^ °^ 
 " there is no other definition of the Beautiful, 
 nor of any subject of delight to the aesthetic ^ 
 faculty, than that it is what one noble spirit 
 has created, seen and felt by another of similar 
 or equal nobility. So much as there is in 3'ou 
 of ox, or of swine, perceives no beauty and 
 creates none : what is human in you, in exact 
 proportion to the perfectness of its humanity, 
 can create it and receive." Art, he says, is 
 no recreation — it is ''not a mere amusement, a 
 minister to morbid sensibilities, a tickler and 
 fanner of the soul's sleep." And this, not be- 
 cause Art is not to give pleasure : on the con- 
 trary, it is not Art unless it does ; but because 
 the pleasures to which Art should appeal are 
 the pleasures of the mind, and not of the senses. 
 That such pleasures of the mind are the highest 
 prerogative of man is no new Gospel. It is as 
 old as Aristotle, who defined happiness as " a 
 sort of energy of contemplation." Thus, ac- 
 cording to Mr. Ruskin, beauty is " the expres- 
 sion of the creating Spirit of the universe." 
 
12 "the gospel according to ruskin. 
 
 Neither is this statement a new one. It was 
 partly taught by Plato, and more clearly by 
 Spenser, when he said — ■ 
 
 "That Beauty is not, as fond men misdeem, 
 An outward show of things, that only seem ; " 
 
 and when he bade the hearts of men 
 
 " Lift themselves up higher, 
 And learne to love with zealous humble dewty 
 Th' eternal fountaine of that heavenly beaut3^" 
 
 It is the detailed proof of this conclusion — oc- 
 cupying three volumes and a half of " Modern 
 Painters " — that is the pith of Ruskin's Gospel. 
 There is, he begins by arguing, an objective 
 standard of beauty. It is not, as Keats so 
 prettily but so absurdly said, the true; for the 
 " mirage of the desert is fairer than its sands." 
 Nor is it the useful ; unless the most beautiful 
 products of art are spades and millstones. Nor 
 does it depend on custom : Gower Street may 
 become less ugly to you if you are used to it, 
 but it is not custom that is the cause of the 
 beauty of Giotto's Tower. Nor does it depend 
 on association of ideas. Associations are a 
 source of pleasure ; so is beauty ; but beauty is 
 
 / 
 
\J 
 
 PRINCIPLES OF ART. 1 3 
 
 not therefore association. No ; beauty consists, 
 says Riiskin, (i) in certain external qualities of 
 bodies which are typical of Divine attributes ; 
 (2) in the appearance of felicitous fulfilment of 
 function in vital things. 
 
 Any reader who wants to get at the evi- "Typical' 
 
 -' and 
 
 dences of Ruskin's Gospel must study closely g^^f. 
 the chapters in which the above propositions ^-^^p^^'"^^- 
 are worked out. All that can be done here is 
 to take an illustration or two to show the line 
 of argument adopted. Every one has heard of 
 the repose of true beauty ; why is repose 
 beautiful ? Because it is " a type of Divine 
 permanence," and satisfies 
 
 " The universal instinct of repose, 
 The longing for confirmed tranquillity, 
 Inward and outward, humble and sublime — 
 The life where hope and memory are one." 
 
 That is what is meant by typical beauty. Again, 
 every one recognizes the beauty of " the ideal ; " 
 but wherein does this beauty consist ? Why 
 is the skylark beautiful ? Because it so per- 
 fectly fulfils the bird-ideal, so happily performs, 
 that is, the highest functions of the songsters 
 of the sky. Why is the face of an ideal man 
 
14 " THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO RUSKIX. 
 
 more beautiful than that of the man in the 
 street ? Because Art is " the pure mirror that 
 can show the seraph standing by each human 
 body, as signal to the heavenly land." That is 
 what is meant by vital beauty. There is no 
 beauty that cannot ultimately be traced back 
 to one or other of these causes, and no work 
 of art which should not be judged by its 
 compliance with them. Turner's work is more 
 beautiful than that of other men, only in the 
 degree in which it shows more clearly than 
 they '^ the disimprisoned soul of fact," and sets 
 forth more surely "the glory of God." And 
 so with architecture. ''The law which it has 
 been my effort chiefly to illustrate," sa3^s Mr. 
 Ruskin, " is the dependence of all noble design 
 on the sculpture of organic form." One school 
 of architecture sets itself to lines and propor- 
 tions and conventional ornaments ; the other 
 chooses the suggestion of natural laws, the 
 imitation of natural forms. Let the architects 
 pause, says Mr. Ruskin, with all the seriousness 
 of a moral teacher, at the parting of " the Two 
 Paths," before they '' vvilfull}^ bind up their eyes 
 from the splendour, wilfully turn their backs 
 upon all the majesties, of Omnipotence." 
 
PRINCIPLES OF ART. I 5 
 
 One sees from this passage how serious and Art and 
 
 ^ ° Religion. 
 
 sacred is the mission to which Ruskin's Gospel 
 summons Art as the interpreter of Beauty. No 
 question has been more often debated than 
 the relation of Art to Religion. According to 
 Mr. Ruskin, Art is Religion. By Religion is 
 meant '' the feelings of love, reverence, or dread 
 with which the human mind is affected by its 
 conceptions of spiritual being."' Recognise this 
 spiritual being, and '' name it as you will : " if 
 you recognise it, and recognising revere, you 
 are religious ; and Art, as the interpreter of 
 Beaut}^, is the prime agent in showing you 
 noble grounds for such noble emotion. Hence 
 also the true artist is necessarily a man of true 
 religion. The world of Beauty is like the Beryl 
 in Rossetti's ballad^ 
 
 "None sees here but the pure alone." 
 
 That such has in fact been the case is the 
 burden of all Mr. Ruskin's books on the history 
 of artists and art schools. It is the decadence 
 of the art of architecture, corresponding with a 
 decay of vital religion, that he finds written on 
 the " Stones of Venice ; " the clearness of early 
 faith that he finds reflected in the brightness of 
 
Art and 
 Morality 
 
 the pictures of Florence ; the gladness of Greek 
 religion that gives for him its sharpness to the 
 '^ Ploughshare of Pentelicus." 
 ''Ideas of Bi^it in the Gospel according to Ruskin Art 
 
 Relation : ^ o 
 
 t is not only Religion ; it is Morality also. To 
 understand how this conclusion is reached we 
 must go back to " ideas of relation," which, it 
 will be remembered, were the last (and highest) 
 source of pleasures in Art. The meaning and 
 sphere of these ideas can be seen in a moment 
 by any one who will go into the National 
 Gallery and look at Turner's '' Building of 
 Carthage," which he bequeathed to the country 
 to hang side by side with Claude's " Queen of 
 Sheba." In the foreground Turner puts a group 
 of children sailing toy boats. " The choice of 
 this incident, as expressive of the ruling pas- 
 sion which was to be the source of future great- 
 ness, in preference to the tumult of busy masons 
 or arming soldiers, has nothing to do with the 
 technicalities of painting ; a scratch of the pen 
 v/ould have conveyed the same intellectual idea 
 as an elaborate realizaLion by colour." Yet this 
 " idea of relation " gives at once an interest to 
 the picture which no beauty of forms or colours, 
 no skill of workmanship, could give. And not 
 
PRINCIPLES OF ART. 1/ 
 
 only that, but it actually enhances the beauty. 
 Take another illustration, and this fact will be 
 seen more clearly. In Turner's '* Pass of Faido" 
 the painter introduces a post-chaise in the fore- 
 ground. He was criticized for so doing, on the 
 ground that he thereby destroyed the majesty 
 of desolation in his picture. Not so ; he enhanced 
 it. ''The full essence and soul of the scene, 
 and consummation of all the wonderfulness of 
 the torrents and Alps, lay in' that post-chaise." 
 And why ? Because, without the suggestion 
 of the human element, nature loses in the in- 
 stant its power over the human heart. Mr. 
 Ruskin has illustrated this point in a famous 
 passage in the " Seven Lamps," descriptive of 
 a scene in the Jura : — 
 
 " It would be difficult to conceive one less dependent 
 upon any other interest than that of its own secluded 
 and serious beauty ; but the writer well remembers 
 the sudden blankness and chill which were cast upon 
 it when he endeavoured, in order more strictly to arrive 
 at the sources of its impressiveness, to imagine it, for 
 a moment, a scene in some aboriginal forest of the New 
 Continent. The flowers in an instant lost their light, 
 the river its music ; the hills became oppressively deso- 
 late ; a heaviness in the boughs of the darkened forest 
 showed how much of their former power had been 
 dependent upon a life which was not theirs, how much 
 
 2 
 
i8 "the gospel according to ruskin." 
 
 of the glory of the imperishable, or continually renewed, 
 creation is reflected from things more precious in their 
 memories than it, in its renewing. Those ever-spring- 
 ing flowers and ever-flowing streams had been dyed 
 by the deep colours of human endurance, valour, and 
 virtue, and the crests of the sable hills that rose against 
 the evening sky received a deeper worship, because 
 their far shadows fell eastward over the iron wall of 
 Joux and the four-square keep of Granson." 
 
 Great Art Herein is another fundamental article in the 
 
 the type 
 
 an^nobfe Gospcl according to Ruskin. It is the function 
 of Art, as we have seen, to declare the beauty 
 of God ; but man's soul is the mirror of God's, 
 and hence all the power of nature depends on 
 its subjection to the human soul. " In these 
 books of mine," says Ruskin, in a central pas- 
 sage of '' Modern Painters," '' their distinctive 
 character as essays on Art is their bringing 
 everything to a root in human passion or hu- 
 man hope. Every principle of painting which 
 I have stated is traced to some vital or spi- 
 ritual fact ; and in my works on Architecture 
 the preference accorded finally to one school 
 over another is founded on a comparison of 
 their influences on the life of the workman 
 — a question by all other writers on the subject 
 of Architecture wholly forgotten or despised." 
 
PRINCIPLES OF ART. 1 9 
 
 The artist, then, and the amateur are not to 
 live in rapt contemplation of a beauty apart 
 from the world of man and the interests of 
 every-day life, but mixing freely in that world 
 and sharing in those interests, are to show 
 the things that sustain man's spiritual life, and 
 the conditions that minister to his peace. '' We 
 live by the sweat of our brow or by the clink 
 of our machinery," says the man of business. 
 " We live not by bread alone, but by ' admira- 
 tion, hope, and love,' " says the artist. Thus 
 it is that " great Art is nothing else than the \ 
 
 type of strong and noble life ; " for it first 
 '* seizes natural facts, and then orders those facts 
 by strength of human intellect, so as to make 
 them, for all who look upon them, to the utmost 
 serviceable, memorable, and beautiful ; " and 
 hence, too, it is that so far from Art being 
 immoral, " little else than Art is moral ; for if 
 life without industry is guilt, industry without 
 art is brutality." 
 
 Such is the Ruskinian Gospel of Art. What Sig^nificance 
 
 of the fore- 
 is the value of the message to the present ^'?'j"s f^j^' 
 
 generation ? To answer that question one has P^'^^entage 
 
 to remember the materialism which, owing to 
 
 modern science and modern industry, is the 
 
20 "the gospel according to ruskin. 
 
 besetting danger of the age. The Riiskinian 
 Gospel has sometimes been spoken of as 
 wholly contradictory of both these factors in 
 modern life. If so, it is so much the worse 
 for the Gospel. But in fact, it is not con- 
 tradictory, but corrective of them. Mr. Ruskin 
 came at the " psychological moment," when 
 science had reduced all life to physical elements, 
 and industry all men to machines, to correct 
 this tendency by showing the other side of 
 truth. Science teaches us that the stars stink, 
 Art that they twinkle ; Science that the clouds 
 are " a sleety mist," Art that they are " a golden 
 throne." For Science is of essences, Art of 
 aspects. The one, be it observed, is as much 
 a study of facts as the other. It is as much 
 a fact to be noted in the constitution of things 
 that they produce such and such an effect 
 upon the eye or heart, as that they are made 
 up of certain atoms of matter. And similarly 
 with the conditions of modern industry as with 
 the conclusions of modern science. The drift of 
 modern society under the pressure of economic 
 forces is all towards materialism also — towards 
 the material prosperity of money-getting and 
 the material misery of poverty. The drift of 
 
PRINCIPLES OF ART. 21 
 
 Mr. Ruskin's teaching is to relieve the pres- 
 sure of poverty by diverting the race after 
 wealth. The world of industry, with science 
 to do its bidding, placed happiness in wealth 
 " It got the clouds packed into iron cylinders, 
 and made them carry its wise self at their own 
 cloud pace. It got weavable fibres out of the 
 mosses, and made clothes for itself cheap and 
 fine, and thought that here was happiness." And 
 all the while, as Mr. Ruskin came to preach, 
 " the real happiness of man was placed in the 
 keeping of the little mosses of the wayside 
 and of the clouds of the firmament" — in the 
 keeping of these and in the doing of justice 
 and ministering of mercy. Amid the turmoil 
 of trade and anarchy of competition, Mr. Ruskin 
 proclaimed that '' Art still has truth," and bade 
 men " take refuge there." What kind of truth 
 his Gospel teaches in trade and politics, and 
 what kind of refuge it provides, will be shown 
 in the next chapter. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 APPLICATIONS TO LIFE. 
 
 Ruskin's ^ No ^osDcl is ^ood for anything which is not 
 
 "inquire o i o ^ o 
 
 within prood for everythinsr. Confront the novice with 
 
 upon every- ^ jo 
 
 thing.' some experimental problem upon which your 
 gospel is silent, or with some logical conclusion 
 for which it is not prepared, and what authority 
 is left to you ? For you cannot label a gospel 
 like a bale of glass, " This side up only." It 
 must stand four-square to every wind that 
 blows, or it cannot stand at all. It is one of 
 the characteristics of Mr. Ruskin as a writer 
 that he is permeated with a sense of this neces- 
 sity. ''Throughout Ruskin's whole work," says 
 a French critic of to-day, "we find the applica- 
 tion of developed theories," and his writings are 
 thus '' one of the greatest works achieved by 
 the mind of man." " The teaching of Art," says 
 Mr. Ruskin himself, " is the teaching of all 
 things." And in the fulfilment of this conception 
 
APPLICATIONS TO LIFE. 23 
 
 of his calling there is no word in his Gospel 
 of Art which he has not driven home to its 
 utmost application to life, no interest or sphere 
 of life which he has not related to some prin- 
 ciple of art. He has laid down the law with 
 equal decision upon Giotto's painting and goose 
 pies ; upon Bible and bicycles ; upon railways 
 and Reynolds ; upon the clouds of heaven and 
 the circles of hell. A complete index to Mr. 
 Ruskin's works would be a formidable rival to 
 Mrs. Beeton : you could " inquire within upon 
 everything." 
 
 This enormous multiplicity of topics touched Distinction 
 
 ^ -^ ^ between the 
 
 upon by the preacher makes two general re- ^^yfhjf^ 
 marks necessary. In the first place, no disci- "ianrhfs"' 
 pie — even of the straitest sect — is bound to °^^'' " 
 accept as gospel every word that falls from 
 the " Master's " lips. A man may be a sincere 
 and consistent Ruskinian without abjuring to- 
 bacco or waiting seven years before he marries 
 his betrothed. For, be it observed, there are 
 things which appertain to the Gospel, and 
 things which do not. The Pope is infallible, 
 but only when he speaks from the chair and 
 utters the voice of the Church. The judge's 
 word is law, but only when he delivers the 
 
24 
 
 judgment of the court, and not when he amuses 
 himself with obiter dicta. But on the other 
 hand, this Hberty of rejection is strictly limited 
 to such things as are not of the faith. A 
 disciple may not chop a gospel up into mor- 
 sels, to eat or refuse at his pleasure. This is 
 precisely, however, what most people do with 
 the Gospel according to Ruskin. There has 
 been a curious instance of it in some recent 
 criticisms. In art, says the Edinburgh, Mr. 
 Ruskin is often right ; in pohtical economy he 
 is always wrong. As a social philosopher, 
 says the Century, Mr. Ruskin is above praise ; 
 as an art critic, he is beneath contempt. From 
 the point of view of Mr. Ruskin's Gospel both 
 criticisms must necessarily be wrong. For 
 if the teaching of Art be the teaching of 
 everything, "unfaith in aught is want of faith 
 in all." 
 po"fticsr ^" order to appreciate the point of contact 
 
 To workout between Art and life, consider for a moment 
 
 his own , , . , , . 
 
 salvation, the Only true and vital kind of " historical " 
 art — the art, that is, which represents the 
 living forms and daily deeds of its own time. 
 Teach noble art in this sense, and you be- 
 come at once a teacher of morality as well. 
 
APPLICATIONS TO LIFE. 25 
 
 " Remember," said Mr, Riiskin, in one of the 
 earliest of his pubHc lectures, " that it is not 
 so much in buying pictures as in being pictures 
 that you can encourage a noble school." In 
 seeking for beauty of form in a marble image, 
 you necessarily seek also for beauty of character 
 in a living person. " On all the beautiful 
 features of men and women, throughout the 
 ages, are written the solemnities and majesty 
 of the law they knew, with the charity and 
 meekness of their obedience." The importance 
 of individual character, the value of work in , 
 forming it, the supremacy of duty in directing 
 it : these are some of the leading moral lessons 
 which Mr. Ruskin, hke Carlyle, has had to 
 teach, but to which he has given a new turn 
 by adding the sanction of Art. It used to be 
 thought that the " condition of England ques- 
 tion " would be solved by the ballot-box, by 
 fresh liberties, by new laws. Not so, said 
 Carlyle. Not so, says Mr. Ruskin. In life, as 
 in Art, the only liberty worth having is founded \/ 
 on personal discipline. This iS why Mr. 
 Ruskin lays so much stress on the dignity and 
 usefulness of manual labour. " To succeed to 
 my own satisfaction," he says, "in a manual 
 
Each man 
 to be his 
 brother's 
 keeper. 
 
 piece of work is life — to me, as to all men." 
 " Little else except Art," he elsewhere says, 
 "is wise; all knowledge unaccompanied by a 
 habit of useful action is too likely to become 
 deceitful, and every habit of useful action must 
 resolve itself into some elementary practice of 
 manual labour." The free hand of the artist 
 is one (he says) that moves in absolute obe- 
 dience to felt laws; and the free man is he 
 who has his passions most perfectly in sub- 
 jection. And the only way of arriving at this 
 freedom, in life as in art, is by apprenticeship 
 to toil. "To do good work whether we live 
 or die " is the first article of faith which Mr. 
 Ruskin demands of his disciples. " Be sure 
 that you can obey a good law before 3'ou seek to 
 unmake a bad one," was his first injunction to the 
 " workmen and labourers of Great Britain." 
 
 That every man must work out his own sal- 
 vation is the first article of all moral gospels ; 
 but it requires to be immediately corrected by a 
 second one, that each man is his brother's keeper. 
 The growing recognition of this truth is the 
 leading feature in the social movements of our 
 generation. By few men has it been enforced 
 so earnestly as by Mr. Ruskin ; by no one, so 
 
APPLICATIONS TO LIFE. 2/ 
 
 eloquently. No one has shown such powerful 
 imagination as he in lifting the veil which hides 
 the grim realities of poverty from the gay dreams 
 of wealth, or such fearless satire in mocking 
 the Churches for " dining with the rich and 
 preaching to the poor." It is only the lack of 
 imagination, Mr. Ruskin argues, that has ever 
 caused the question of Cain to be seriously 
 asked. But if any doubt still linsfered, if any How these 
 
 •^ o 7 ^ maxims 
 
 sanction on the other side were still needed, the 5^I,'siJ^„'^g'^'" 
 Gospel of Art would supply it. For Art, to be ff'iS'''' 
 reall}^ fine, must, as we have seen, be the repre- 
 sentation of beautiful realities, and be pursued 
 in a spirit of delight. And where such con- 
 ditions are not present, the teacher of Art is 
 necessarily also a social reformer. It is not 
 that he wants to be ; he simply cannot help 
 it. There is a passage in " Fors Clavigera," 
 written from Venice, of much interest in this 
 connection : — 
 
 " Here is a little grey cockle-shell lying beside me, 
 which I gathered the other evening out of the dust of 
 the island of St. Helena, and a brightly spotted snail- 
 shell, from the thirsty sands of Lido ; and I want to 
 set myself to draw these, and describe them in peace. 
 Yes, and all my friends say that is my business ; why 
 can't I mind it and be happy ? . . . But, alas ! my j)riident 
 
28 "the gospel according to ruskin." 
 
 friends, little enough of all that I have a mind to may- 
 be permitted me. For this green tide that eddies by 
 my threshold is full of floating corpses, and I must 
 leave my dinner to bury them, since I cannot save, 
 and put my cockle-shell in cap and take my staff in 
 hand to seek an unencumbered shore." 
 
 It would indeed be possible for the artist to 
 build himself a misery-proof studio, as Carlyle 
 built himself a noise-proof study. But no great 
 work is on such terms possible. For either 
 the artist must bury himself in idle unrealities 
 — but " it is the vainest of affectations to try 
 to put beauty into shadows, while all real 
 things that cast them are left in deformity 
 and pain," — or he must be heartless and want- 
 ing in sensibility — but that is to be wanting 
 in just those qualities which distinguish the 
 best art ; for fine art is that " in which the 
 hand, the head, and the heart go together." 
 And thus it is that Compassion for the Poor 
 is the last word of Mr. Ruskin's books on Art, 
 as well as of those on Morals. " 1 tell 3'OU," he 
 said to the Oxford students, as the conclusion of 
 his Art teaching, '* that neither sound art, policy, 
 nor religion can exist in England until, neglect- 
 ing, if it must be, your own pleasure-gardens 
 
APPLICATIONS TO LIFE. 29 
 
 and pleasure-chambers, you resolve that the 
 streets which are the habitation of the poor, 
 and the fields which are the play-grounds of 
 their children, shall be again restored to the 
 rule of the spirits, whosoever they are, in earth 
 and heaven, that ordain, and reward, with con- 
 stant and conscious felicity, all that is decent 
 and orderly, beautiful and pure." 
 
 But the applications of Mr. Ruskin's Gospel Ru^^'"'^ 
 
 ^^ ^ Political 
 
 of Art do not stop with these general counsels ^[^^eR-^ 
 of benevolence. They furnish a system of eco- weSth?* 
 nomics, as well as a standard of morals and 
 a code of social duty. Mr. Ruskin's Political 
 Economy — alternately adopted and abused — 
 follows immediately and vitally from his Art 
 teaching. The point of connection will come out 
 most clearly if we consider the National Ideal 
 which is logically deducible from the orthodox 
 Political Economy and the tendencies of modern 
 commerce. This Political Economy taught (or 
 what is the same thing, was believed to teach*) 
 
 * Herein is to be found, I think, the true justification 
 of Mr. Ruskin's economic writings. His Political Economy 
 has been condemned and contemned as based on a com- 
 plete misunderstanding. He has attacked the science, 
 it is said, as if it were not a science, but an art. This 
 is true; but the misconception of the nature and scope of 
 
that the road to national prosperity Hes in the 
 unchecked and competitive pursuit of material 
 wealth ; and the commercial tendencies of the 
 time make England become more and more 
 every day the workshop of the world, until (as 
 Mr. Ruskin puts it) we shall soon arrive at " the 
 state of a squirrel in a cage or a turnspit in a 
 wheel, fed by foreign masters with nuts and 
 dog's meat." Now, it is obvious that a National 
 Ideal such as this is absolutely and entirely 
 
 Political Economy did not begin with Mr. Ruskin. On the 
 contrary, it began with a certain school of politicians who 
 were eager to interpret the " laws " of Political Economy 
 (i.e.. conclusions drawn from abstract assumptions), as if 
 they were laws enforcing political action. As against this 
 perversion of the science, Mr. Ruskin has done great 
 service by insisting (l) "that Political Economy can 
 furnish sound laws of national life and work only when 
 it respects the dignity and moral destiny of man ; (2) that 
 the wide use of wealth, in developing a complete human 
 life, is of incomparably greater moment, both to men and 
 nations, than its production or accumulation, and can alone 
 give these any vital significance; (3) that honourable per- 
 formance of duty is more truly just than rigid enforcement 
 of right ; and that not in competition but in helpfulness, 
 nut in self-assertion but in reverence, is to be found the- 
 power of life." I take this enumeration of Mr. Ruskin's 
 economic principles from the address presented to him 
 at Christmas, 1885, by a large body of his admirers, in- 
 cluding most of the literary and artistic celebrities of 
 the day. 
 
APPLICATIONS TO LIFE. 3 1 
 
 incompatible with any National Art such as 
 Mr. Ruskin understands. It is incompatible both 
 in temper and in external conditions. Hence 
 Mr. Ruskin was driven to the statement both of 
 a new basis for Political Economy and a new 
 definition of wealtJi. And just as his theory of 
 Art led him up to the problem, so also did it 
 give him the clue to its solution. The greatest 
 work in Art, he found, had always been done, 
 not in competition, but in co-operation, not to 
 ^sell, but to keep. The application of this idea 
 /tb economics is the secret of his system. The 
 well-being of individuals and nations alike con- 
 sists, according to him, not in the multitude of 
 things they possess, but in their virtues and 
 joys. '^ The wealth of any country," he laid 
 down, "is the portion of its possessions which 
 feeds and educates good men and good women. 
 The strength and power of a country depend 
 on the quantity of good men and women in it." 
 
 How under existing conditions is the wealth Practical 
 
 conse- 
 
 of Ensjland in this sense to be advanced ? In quences 
 
 ^ therefron 
 
 three ways principally. First, by the adoption 
 in politics of the great principle of " Property to 
 whom proper" — of land and tools to those who 
 can use them. Secondly, by planting firmly on 
 
2,2 "the gospel according to ruskin. 
 
 English land (including the colonies) as many 
 men and women as it will support ; by the 
 recognition of '' Soldiers of the Ploughshare as 
 well as Soldiers of the Sword ; " and generally 
 by the substitution of the rest of satisfaction 
 for the unrest of ambition. " The most helpful 
 and sacred work which can at present be done 
 for humanity," says Mr. Ruskin, " is to teach 
 people, not how to better themselves, but how 
 to satisfy themselves." Follow out these two 
 ideas of co-operation instead of competition, of 
 living instead of getting, and you will see how 
 Mr. Ruskin's economics would release the 
 pressure upon poverty. So much for the ac- 
 quisition of wealth. In its distribution he is 
 no Socialist, no equalizer. He teaches not 
 the wickedness of riches, but their use. Thus, 
 thirdly and lastly, the National Wealth is to 
 be promoted by the wise direction of expendi- 
 ture. Happiness is only to be got out of 
 honesty, food only out of the ground. These 
 are two of his leading principles in economics ; 
 but the third is that money is essentially not a 
 medium of exchange, but a token of right. 
 And it makes all the difference in the world 
 whether you use your right to grow " grapes 
 
APPLICATIONS TO LIFE. 33 
 
 or grapeshot," and whether when you have 
 got them you use them to preserve Hfe or to 
 destroy. And that being so, just as "that 
 country is the richest which nourishes the 
 greatest number of noble and happy beings," 
 so "that rpan is richest who, having perfected 
 the functions of his own Hfe to the utmost, has 
 also the widest and most helpful influence, both 
 personal and by means of his possessions, over 
 the lives of others/' In such a conception of, 
 national economy it is easy to see the large 
 sphere that Art must play — Art that dignifies 
 industry and adorns daily life. " The treasures 
 of true kings," says Mr. Ruskin, in "Sesame 
 and Lilies," " are the streets of their cities ; and 
 the gold they gather, which for others is as the 
 mire of the streets, changes itself for them and 
 their people into a crystalline pavement for 
 evermore." 
 
 And now havinsr completed the circle ofT^ereia- 
 
 *^ ^ tion of 
 
 Ruskin's Gospel, having set out from Art, and Sj.S'to^ 
 having been brought back to it, we are in a ^^^ 
 position to note in conclusion the relation of 
 the different " sacred books " one to the other. 
 " Modern Painters " taught, on the testimony of 
 the graphic arts, " the claim of all lower nature 
 
 3 
 
34 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO RUSKIN. 
 
 on the hearts of men ; of the rock, and wave, 
 and herb as a part of their necessary spirit Hfe." 
 The "Stones of Venice" taught, on the testimony 
 of architecture, '' the dependence of all human 
 work or edifice, for its beauty, on the happy 
 life of the workman." "Unto this Last" and 
 " Munera Pulveris " taught the law^s of that life, 
 and the dependence of National Wealth upon 
 the principles of justice, mercy, and admiration. 
 ''Sesame and Lilies" "showed that in a state 
 of society founded on these principles Women 
 will be the guiding and purifying power." In 
 his "Oxford Lectures" Mr. Ruskin preached 
 the necessity that the national life should be led 
 by the upper classes, and '' the gracious laws 
 of beauty and labour recognized by them no 
 less than the lower classes of England ; " and 
 finally " Fors Clavigera " " showed the relation 
 of these to each other, by declaring first what is 
 visibly salutary — namely, that children should 
 have enough to eat, and their skins be washed 
 clean ; and secondly, what is invisibly salutary" 
 — namely, that " in admiration is the chief joy 
 and power of life ; admiration for all that is 
 gracious among the living, great among the 
 dead, and marvellous in the Powers that cannot 
 
APPLICATIONS TO LIFE. 35 
 
 die." And with all this there is scattered up 
 and down Mr. Ruskin's books, and finally col- 
 lected and concentrated in " Fors Clavigera," 
 an imperious call to all men who believe the 
 Gospel to purge their consciences from dead 
 works and join together in helping their 
 fellow-men. 
 
 In which connection it will not be imper- Raskin's 
 
 ^ preaching 
 
 tinent to turn for a moment from Mr. Ruskin's tice.^"^"^'' 
 Gospel to Mr. Ruskin's life, or rather from the 
 Gospel in words to the Gospel in works ; for 
 Mr. Ruskin is Kke Chaucer's Parson, who — 
 
 " Christes lore, and His Apostles twelve, 
 He taughte, but first he folwede it himselve." 
 
 A detailed examination of some aspects of Mr. 
 Ruskin's works is to be the subject of the 
 following pages ; but here it may be stated 
 generally that he has spent not a tithe, nor 
 a half, but the whole of a large fortune in 
 public and private charities. He has set Miss 
 Octavia Hill to manage his London property 
 on principles which have since been adopted 
 as one of the essentials of latter-day philan- 
 thropy. He has given his most treasured 
 drawings and minerals to public galleries and 
 
T)6 "the gospel according to ruskin." 
 
 museums. He has revived village industries 
 and inspired co-operative undertakings, and 
 he has established and endowed a Guild which 
 has for its primary object the redeeming of 
 waste lands and establishment thereon of well- 
 ordered lives. Some works are great for what 
 they accomplish, others for what they suggest. 
 At present Mr. Ruskin's fame stands on his 
 achievement as a writer. Twenty years hence 
 it is conceivable that he may be best remem- 
 bered for his experiments as a social reformer. 
 B-ut in Mr. Ruskin's life, as in his Gospel, 
 the artistic and the social elements cannot be 
 severed. He is a social reformer because he 
 is an Art teacher ; and whatever is essential 
 and characteristic in his Art teaching comes 
 from his social enthusiasm. In Ruskin's Gos- 
 pel there are diversities of gifts, but it is the 
 same spirit. 
 The sane- And what, it may be asked, is the sanction, 
 
 tionofthe ) J f 
 
 Gol'^d^^'' what the reward of this Gospel ? The sanction 
 is to be found only in its logical completeness, 
 the only sure reward in the experience of its 
 own fulfilment ; for as for rewards beyond the 
 grave, the virtue which Mr. Ruskin has prin- 
 cipall}' taught is that of the Greeks, " whose 
 
APPLICATIONS TO LIFE. 37 
 
 notion of heroism was giving one's life for a 
 kiss, and not getting it." And the " Crown " that 
 he promises to his disciples is but of " Wild 
 Olive : "— 
 
 " The tree that grows carelessly, tufting the rocks 
 with no vivid bloom, no verdure or branch ; only with 
 soft snow of blossom, and scarcely fulfilled fruit, mixed 
 with grey leaf and thorn-set stem ; no fastening of 
 diadem for you but with such sharp embroidery ! But 
 this, such as it is, you may win, while yet you live ; 
 type of grey honour, and sweet rest. Free-heartedness, 
 and graciousness, and undisturbed trust, and requited 
 love, and the sight of the peace of others, and the 
 ministry to their pain; these, and the blue sky above 
 you, and the sweet waters and flowers of the earth be- 
 neath ; and mysteries and presences, innumerable, of 
 living things, — may yet be here your riches ; untor- 
 menting and divine ; serviceable for the life that now 
 is ; nor, it may be, without promise of that which is to 
 come." 
 
PART II. 
 
 SOME ASPECTS OF MR. RUSKIN'S WORK. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 MR. RUSKIN AND OXFORD. 
 
 A TRENXHANT Writer in the Edinburgh Review 
 (October, 1889) has recently called attention to 
 four different views which may be, and have 
 been, held of the Professorial Office. A Pro- 
 fessor at Oxford or Cambridge may be ap- 
 pointed for the purpose of Research, or by way 
 of ornament, or in order to give General In- 
 struction, or lastly with a view to Professional 
 Teaching. Mr. Ruskin's tenure of the Slade 
 Professorship of Fine Art has illustrated each 
 and all of these different, but not necessarily 
 conflicting, functions. In the first instance he 
 was no doubt elected as the man best able to 
 combine them all. When he was reappointed 
 
MR. RUSKIN AND OXFORD. 39 
 
 after an interval of some years, in 1S83, his elec- 
 tion was due in large measure to the " eminent- 
 man theory" of the professorial office. The 
 inclusion of Mr. Ruskin amongst the Profes- 
 soriate conferred honour, it was felt, upon the 
 University.* The public, it is curious to note, 
 seems to have thought that such honour as there 
 is in the matter was conferred on Mr. Ruskin, 
 rather than on the University. Even to this 
 day, when he has no longer any claim to the 
 title, he is commonly spoken of and written 
 about as " Professor Ruskin ; " whilst amongst 
 his neighbours and friends he is almost uni- 
 versally known as "the Professor." I am not 
 aware what view Mr. Ruskin himself takes of 
 the distinction thus conferred upon him. Let 
 us hope he values the title more highly than 
 
 * " Every one will be delighted to hear that Mr. Ruskin 
 has been re-elected to the Slade Professorship of Art at 
 Oxford. Before it was known that there was any chance 
 of his being willing to resume the office, various excellent 
 suggestions were made for recasting its duties ; but when 
 once Mr. Ruskin consented to stand, there could be only 
 one opinion, which has been expressed by his unanimous 
 election. Genius is not an over-common quality in the 
 occupants of professorial chairs, and any academical body 
 would do itself honour by accepting a man like Mr. Ruskin 
 on his own terms."— Pn// Mall Gazette, January 17th, 1SS3. 
 
40 SOME ASPECTS OF MR. RUSKIX S WORK. 
 
 another famous Oxford Professor, who was 
 '' always shy of assuming that honourable style, 
 because," said he, "this is a title I share with so 
 many distinguished men — Professor Pepper, Pro- 
 fessor Anderson, Professor Frickel, and others 
 — who adorn it, I feel, much more than I do." * 
 
 But Mr. Ruskin's Professorship was very far 
 indeed from being only titular or honorary. He 
 spent himself freely in carrying out the other 
 functions of a Professor also — the functions of 
 Research, of Education (in the wider sense of 
 that term), and of Professional Teaching. 
 
 Under the first of these three heads it is 
 unnecessary to say anything here, for the re- 
 sults of the studies in art history and criticism 
 which Mr. Ruskin undertook in connection with 
 the Slade Professorship are for the most part 
 contained in already published works. The 
 following is a list of the books which were origi- 
 nally written for his Oxford Lectures : — 
 
 " Lectures on Art." ( Hilary Term, 1870.) 
 
 " .Vatra Pentelici." (Michaelmas Term, 1870.) 
 
 "The Relation between M ichael Angelo and Tintoret." f 
 
 ♦ Matthew Arnold (at that time Professor of Poetry at 
 Oxford), in the original Preface to "Essays in Criticism." 
 
 f This lecture, published separately in pamphlet form, 
 for the convenience of travellers, was the last of the pre- 
 ceding course. 
 
MR. RUSKIN AND OXFORD. 4 1 
 
 " The Eagles Nest." (Lent Term, 1872.) 
 " Ariadne Florentina." (Michaelmas Term, 1872.) 
 " Love's Meinie." (Lent Term, 1873.) 
 " Val d'Arno." (Michaelmas Term, 1873.) 
 "The Art of England." (Michaelmas Term, 1883.) 
 "The Pleasures of England." (Michaelmas Term, 
 1884.) 
 
 Besides these lectures delivered at Oxford, 
 Mr. Ruskin undertook in connection with his 
 Professorship a series of Foreign Guide-books. 
 '' It seems to me/' he said (" Mornings in 
 Florence," p. i), '' that the real duty involved 
 in my Oxford Professorship cannot be com- 
 pletely done by giving lectures in Oxford only, 
 but that I ought also to give what guidance 
 I may to travellers in Italy." The books 
 issued in execution of this self-imposed duty 
 are — 
 
 " Mornings in Florence." Six chapters of " Simple 
 
 Studies of Christian Art for English Travellers." 
 " St. Mark's Rest." An essay in " The History of 
 
 Venice, Written for the Help of the Few Travellers 
 
 who still Care for her Monuments." 
 " Guide to the Principal Pictures in the Academy of 
 
 Fine Arts at Venice. Arranged for English 
 
 travellers." 
 
 To which should perhaps be added the "Separate 
 
42 SOME ASPECTS OF MR. RUSKIN's WORK. 
 
 Travellers' Edition " of chapter iv, of the "Bible 
 of Amiens/' being a guide-book to Amiens 
 Cathedral. This is not the place for entering 
 upon any critical estimate of Mr. Ruskin's later 
 writings upon Art, but the foregoing lists will 
 show that in point of quantity Mr. Ruskin has 
 a creditable record of Research to show for 
 the ten years of broken health during which 
 he held his Oxford Professorship. 
 
 But it is not only, or chiefly, in virtue of his 
 professorial writings that Mr. Ruskin's connec- 
 tion with Oxford has left an enduring monu- 
 ment behind it. The writer in the Edinburgh 
 Review^ above quoted, condemns the educa- 
 tional theory of professorships, no less than 
 the *' eminent-man theory," as an obsolete sur- 
 vival from mediaeval days ; and Carlyle said 
 that " the true University of these days is a 
 Collection of Books " ('' Heroes," Lecture V.). 
 There is a large element of truth in this point 
 of view : larger, perhaps, than the Universities 
 have as yet recognised. But however wide 
 may be the dispersion of books, there will 
 always remain a place in the educational sys- 
 tem for the Living Teacher and the Living 
 Voice. Mr. Ruskin's Professorship at Oxford 
 
MR. RUSKIN AND OXFORD. 43 
 
 was notable for the full use he made of these 
 two opportunities. No professor, I suppose, 
 has had more power of personal influence over 
 his pupils, or has used it more for good, than 
 Mr. Ruskin.* One of the methods which he 
 adopted for gathering a circle of ardent young 
 men around him, and impregnating them with 
 his spirit, was the subject of much sarcastic 
 comment. This was the famous road-digging 
 experiment. No one was more alive to the 
 
 * Amongst other well-known men who were much under 
 Mr. Ruskin's influence at Oxford were Mr. W. H. Mallock 
 and the late Prince Leopold. Mr. Ruskin somewhere 
 refers to Mr. Mallock's "Is Life Worth Living?" as "fault- 
 lessly logical; '" and Mr. Mallock described Mr. Ruskin, in 
 " The New Republic," under the disguise of " Mr. Herbert " 
 — the only portrait in that clever book which is not also a 
 caricature. "He is almost the only man of these days," 
 some one is made to say of "Mr. Herbert," "for whom I 
 feel a real reverence — almost the only one of our teachers 
 who seems to me to speak with the least breath of inspira- 
 tion." Prince Leopold also entertained a warm admiration 
 for and friendship with Mr. Ruskin, to whose work the 
 Prince, in his first public address, paid the following high 
 tribute : — 
 
 " It is not only at Cambridge that it will be felt that men 
 of culture and of learning hardly have a worthier aim than 
 to carry their higher thoughts and more cultivated know- 
 ledge into many homes which perhaps have no other ways 
 of making progress. Of such aims we, at Oxford, have a 
 great and striking example. We have seen a man in whom 
 
44 SOME ASPECTS OF MR. RUSKIN S WORK. 
 
 amusing side of the affair than Mr. Ruskin 
 himself. The road which his pupils made is, 
 he has been heard to admit, about the worst 
 in the three kingdoms, and for any level places 
 in it he gives the credit to his gardener, whom 
 he incontinently summoned from Brantwood. 
 Nevertheless the experiment, even from the 
 point of view of road-making, was by no means 
 barren. An inch of practice is worth a yard 
 of preaching ; and Mr. Ruskin's road-digging 
 at Hincksey gave a powerful stimulus to the 
 
 the highest gifts of refinement and of genius reside, who 
 yet has not grudged to give his best to others ; who has 
 made it his main effort — by gifts, by teaching, by sympathies 
 — to spread among the artisans of villages and the labourers 
 of our English fields the power of drawing a full measure 
 of instruction and happiness from this wonderful world, 
 which rich and poor alike gain from. We have seen such 
 a man in Professor Ruskin ; and among all the lessons 
 which those who have had the privilege of his teaching 
 and his friendship must have carried with them for life, 
 none, I think, can have sunk deeper than the last : that 
 the highest wisdom and the highest treasure need not be 
 costly or exclusive ; that the greatness of a nation must be 
 measured, not alone by its wealth and apparent power, but 
 by the degree in which its people have learned together, in 
 the great world of books, of art, and of nature, pure and 
 ennobling joys." (Speech at the Mansion House, in sup- 
 port of the London Society for the Extension of University 
 Teaching, Februar}- 19th, 1879.) 
 
MR. RUSKIN AND OXFORD. 45 
 
 Gospel of Labour,* of the same kind as the 
 later and independent stimulus of Count Tolstoi, 
 of whom Mr. Ruskin has spoken gratefully in 
 recent years as his successor. But the fact 
 is that most of the Oxford road-diggers were 
 attracted to the work, not for its own sake, but 
 for the reward of it — the reward of the subse- 
 quent breakfast-party and informal talks in 
 Mr. Ruskin's rooms at Corpus. It was in Mr. 
 Ruskin's Oxford Lectures and these supple- 
 mentary enforcements of their teaching that the 
 seeds were sown, or watered, of that practical 
 interest in social questions which is the "Ox- 
 ford movement " of to-day. Among the under- 
 graduate road-diggers was Arnold Toynbee, 
 who rose by his zeal to the rank of foreman. 
 " He was thus entitled," adds his biographer, 
 " to appear frequently at those breakfasts which 
 Mr. Ruskin gave to his young friends, and 
 enlivened with quaint, eloquent conversation. 
 Upon men like Toynbee intercourse with Mr. 
 Ruskin had a stimulating effect more durable 
 than the actual improvement of the road near 
 Hincksey. Toynbee came to think very 
 
 * See, for instance, an article on " The New School," in 
 the Pall Malt Gazette, August 26th, 1889. 
 
46 SOME ASPECTS OF MR. 
 
 differently from Mr. Ruskin upon many subjects, 
 and especially upon democracy, but always re- 
 garded him with reverence and affection." * It 
 is impossible to say in how many leaders and 
 followers of the '^ young Oxford " movement 
 Mr. Ruskin's influence worked directly or indi- 
 rectly as a stimulus and an inspiration. What 
 is certain is that the actual course taken by that 
 movement has followed the principles preached 
 by Mr. Ruskin. " I tell you," said the Pro- 
 fessor of Fine Art, at the close of one of his 
 lectures, " that neither sound art, policy, nor re- 
 ligion 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 chil- 
 dren, shall be again restored to the rule of the 
 spirits, whosoever they are, in earth and heaven, 
 that ordain and reward, with constant and con- 
 scious felicity, all that is decent and orderly, 
 beautiful and pure." It is the conviction of 
 this truth that has led to the Universities' 
 Settlements in East London. " My University 
 
 * "Arnold Toynbee." By F. C. Montague. (Baltimore: 
 Johns Hopkins University.) 
 
MR. RUSKIN AND OXFORD. 47 
 
 friends came to me," says Mr. Ruskin, "at the 
 end of my Inaugural Lectures, with grave faces, 
 to remonstrate against irrelevant and Utopian 
 topics being introduced." * Now that the Uto- 
 pia is beginning to be realized, the relevance of 
 it is more apparent. Sermons, like trees, must 
 be judged by their fruits. 
 
 Mr. Ruskin's first professorial lecture at 
 Oxford, it may be interesting to say, was an- 
 nounced for the theatre in the Museum, but so 
 great was the crowd that the Professor and 
 his audience adjourned tg the large Sheldonian 
 Theatre. This, however, was an exception, 
 and the usual lecture-room was in the Museum.! 
 The crowd was always very great, and it was 
 necessary to be outside the doors an hour 
 beforehand to secure a good seat. At the 
 
 * Mr. Mallock has " taken oft'" such remonstrances very 
 cleverly in " The New Republic." " What a dreadful 
 blowing-up Mr. Herbert gave us," he makes one of the 
 characters say. " Now that, you know, I think is all very 
 well in a sermon, but in a lecture, when the things are 
 supposed to be taken more or less literally, I think it is a 
 little out of place." 
 
 t This is the " Oxford Museum," in the formation and 
 building of which Mr. Ruskin took so lively an interest. 
 See "Arrows of the Chace," i. 181-213, and "The Oxford 
 Museum" (i860). 
 
48 SOME ASPECTS OF MR. RUSKIn's WORK. 
 
 first lecture of his second Professorship there 
 was a large sprinkling of ladies ; subsequently 
 tickets were issued, which were confined (with 
 a few exceptions) to members of the Univer- 
 sity. On many occasions Mr. Ruskin repeated 
 his lectures twice in the week, in order to give 
 every one who wished to hear him a chance. 
 The attendance of undergraduates was invari- 
 ably very large. This was the more remark- 
 able as the lectures were always given in 
 the afternoon, which is ordinarily at Oxford 
 devoted to other purposes than the pursuit of 
 learning. Mr. Ruskin's lectures were further 
 remarkable for the number, comparatively large, 
 of graduates which they attracted. At the first 
 lecture of his second Professorship the then 
 Vice-Chancellor (Professor Jowett) attended 
 in state with the proctors, and rose at the end 
 to say a few graceful words of welcome and 
 thanks, which were received with a storm of 
 applause. 
 
 But the charm of the Living Voice in Mr. 
 Ruskin's lectures was as potent as the in- 
 fluence of the Living Teacher. The published 
 volumes of these lectures are amongst the more 
 important, as they are the most closely and 
 
MR. RUSKIN AND OXFORD. 49 
 
 carefully written, of his works. But they 
 convey to the reader only a faint echo of the 
 fascination they exercised over the hearer.* 
 
 Mr. Ruskin is, indeed, no orator. His elo- 
 quence is studied, not spontaneous — the elo- 
 quence of a writer, not of a speaker. His voice, 
 though sympathetic, is neither strong nor pene- 
 trating. 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 hope- 
 lessly involved — and the velvet college cap, one 
 of the few remaining memorials of the '* gentle- 
 man commoner." Mr. Ruskin is a great believer 
 in the importance of distinctive dress. t The 
 
 * " I. have heard him lecture several times at the Royal 
 Institution," says Mr. Mallock, in "The New Republic," 
 "and that singular voice of his, which would often hold all 
 the theatre breathless, haunts me still, sometimes. There 
 was something strange and aerial in its exquisite modu- 
 lations, that seemed as if it came from a disconsolate spirit, 
 hovering over the waters of Babylon and remembering 
 Sion." 
 
 t See, for instance, " Eagle s Nest," p. 212 ; "Two Paths," 
 p. Ill;" Fors," 1872, xv., p. 9 ; and " Val d'Arno," p. 82, in 
 
 4 
 
50 SOME ASPECTS OF MR. RUSKIn's WORK. 
 
 habit with him does, or should, show the man. 
 And certainly in his own case 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 inevitable 
 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,t piercing from 
 beneath thick, bushy eyebrows, have never 
 
 which latter passage Mr. Ruskin argues, with an clement 
 of truth, that the history of the world might have been diffe- 
 rent if soldiers had always been dressed in black instead 
 of in red, and monks in red instead of in black. I have 
 heard amusing stories told of the too literal adoption 
 of " the Master's " views on costume by some of his 
 disciples. 
 
 * The following is an item from "Affairs of the Master." 
 as given in " Fors " (1876, p. 297) : — 
 
 "July 16. Geoghegan (blue neckties) . . . £4. o o." 
 f Speaking of portraits of him, Mr. Ruskin says, in 
 " Pr£3eterita " (ii. 73), " I will be thus far proud as to tell the 
 disappointed spectator, once for all, that the main good of 
 my face, as of my life, is in the ej'es — and only in those 
 seen near.'" 
 
MR. RUSKIN AND OXFORD. 5 I 
 
 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. 
 
 Mr. Ruskin has sometimes been accused of 
 lack of humour — an accusation made of most 
 men who are in earnest. That the Professor 
 of Fine Art took both himself and his subjects 
 seriousl}' was very obvious ; but not less ob- 
 vious to any one who ever heard him lecture 
 was his saving sense of humour. Just as an 
 ever-recurring smile relieved an expression of 
 prevailing sadness, so a play of humour relieved 
 the sternness of teaching. " As solid as the 
 lecture of a University Professor " was a com- 
 parison recently applied to the discourse of 
 some politician. Mr. Ruskin's earlier Oxford 
 Lectures had much solid stuff in them, but no 
 lecturer knew better than he how to relieve 
 the strain by supplying those diverticula amccna 
 — those pleasant digressions — which are the 
 salt of oral discourse. Mr. Ruskin's fads and 
 fancies have often been laughed at, but by no 
 one more heartily than by himself. It was the 
 frequent digressions in the form of self-depre- 
 catory egoism that gave a peculiar charm to 
 
52 SOME ASPECTS OE MR. RUSKIN S WORK. 
 
 Mr. Ruskin's Lectures, by investing them with 
 what the French call iiitiniitc, with the per- 
 sonal note of familiar conversation. A lecture 
 delivered some years ago, at the London Insti- 
 tution (December 4th, 1882), afforded at the 
 very outset a case in point. The subject origi- 
 nally announced was '' Crystallography," but it 
 had subsequently been changed to "Cistercian 
 Architecture," and one of the newspapers had 
 remarked that " no doubt either title would do 
 equally well." Mr. Ruskin began by referring 
 to this remark, and admitted that there was a 
 good deal of truth in it, for " in the proposed 
 Itcture on Crystallography there would certainly 
 have been allusions to Cistercian Architecture, 
 while it had required all his powers of self- 
 denial to keep Crystallography out of the lecture 
 he was actually delivering. He was not equally 
 successful in including Cistercian Architecture, 
 and he was amused to find that his lecture was 
 five-parts written before any allusion to the 
 architecture in question came in. However, 
 stones had always been interesting to him only 
 as expressing the minds of their builders ; and 
 the main part of the lecture was occupied with a 
 delightful sketch of the principles and methods 
 
IMR. RUSKIN AND OXFORD. 53 
 
 of the Benedictine monks, with their gospel of 
 manual labour, and their good work in agri- 
 culture and letters. Then followed an equally 
 charming description (illustrated by diagrams) 
 of the Monastery of Cluny, which was con- 
 trasted, in Mr. Ruskin's manner, with a picture 
 of our modern rural economy — with a parson 
 looking on at the ' restoration ' of his church, 
 while the squire was busy with plans for 
 agricultural machinery, which would send the 
 people off to America." * At Oxford, where he 
 spoke '* among friends, with the chaff of the 
 citizens winnowed out," Mr. Ruskin permitted 
 himself greater license in colloquial banter. 
 He was often behindhand with the preparation 
 of his lectures, and sometimes he could not 
 even get through the regulation hour by Charles 
 Lamb's expedient of making up for beginning 
 late by ending early. I remember one occa- 
 sion, during the course on '' The Pleasures of 
 England," when he found some difficulty in 
 eking out the time, even with the help of co- 
 pious extracts from himself and Carlyle ; but 
 
 * Pall Mall Gazette, December 5th, 1882. A fuller 
 report of the lecture, with plan, appeared in the A7-t 
 Jou?-nalior 1883, pp. 46-9. 
 
54 SOME ASPECTS OF MR. RUSKIN S WORK. 
 
 he kept his audience in good humour by con- 
 fessing to some " bad shots " in previous lec- 
 tures ; by telhng them that all pretty girls were 
 angels; by abusing " the beastly hooter" that 
 woke them every morning, and assuring them 
 that, in spite of appearances, he really was not 
 humbugging them. The digressions and in- 
 terpolations in Mr. Ruskin's Oxford Lectures 
 were, however, by no means confined to pretty 
 fooling ; often they were passages of serious 
 and teUing eloquence. I remember one such in 
 the lecture on ''The Pleasures of Faith" (see 
 p. 223), when he turned aside from his manu- 
 script notes to refer to General Gordon as a 
 Latter-day Saint whose life still illustrates the 
 age of faith. We are too much in the habit, 
 Mr. Ruskin had been saying, of " supposing 
 that temporal success is owing either to worldly 
 chance or to worldly prudence, and is never 
 granted in any visible relation to states of re- 
 ligious temper" — as if the whole story of the 
 world, read in the light of Christian faith, 
 did not show " a vividly real yet miraculous 
 tenour " in the contrary direction ! " But what 
 need," Mr. Ruskin broke off to .say, ''to go 
 back to the story of the world when you can 
 
MR. RUSKIN AND OXFORD. 55 
 
 see the same evidence in the history of to- 
 day — in the Hves and characters of men hke 
 Havelock and Gordon ? " Often, too, the lec- 
 turer would lay aside his manuscript at some 
 important point, and giving free play to his 
 feelings, drive it home in burning passages 
 of extempore irony. Hence the published lec- 
 tures, printed from his manuscript, often differed 
 greatly from the lectures as actually delivered ; 
 and therefore I have thought it might be in- 
 teresting to give, in an appendix, besides 
 some notes of unpublished lectures, my ab- 
 stracts, made at the time, of a few published 
 ones. 
 
 Another thing which gave special interest to 
 the Spoken Lecture, as distinct from the Printed 
 Word, does not, unhappily, admit of similar sam- 
 pling. This is the copious illustration of the 
 lectures by means of drawings, diagrams, and 
 pictures, upon which Mr, Ruskin used at Oxford 
 to spend incredible pains. Those who have 
 heard his lectures in London will be already 
 familiar with this characteristic. At the Royal 
 Institution, for instance, when lecturing on Flam- 
 boyant Architecture, Mr. Ruskin prepared quite 
 a considerable exhibition of pictures, drawings, 
 
S6 SOME ASPECTS OF MR. RUSKIn's WORK. 
 
 and photographs.* On a more recent occasion, 
 too, at t-he London Institution, it will be remem- 
 bered how the lectures on ''The Storm-cloud 
 of the Nineteenth Century " were illustrated by 
 a series of coloured pictures executed by Mr. 
 Arthur Severn from drawings by Mr. Ruskin 
 (" kept bottled like his father's sherries "), and 
 thrown on a screen by means of Mr. Wilson 
 Barrett's limelight. But at Oxford, where Mr. 
 Ruskin had the double purpose of illustrating 
 his lectures and enriching the University collec- 
 tions, his system of illustration was yet more 
 lavish and elaborate. The specimens which he 
 was in the habit of exhibiting in his lectures 
 may be divided into two classes — (i) standard 
 and permanent works of art, and (2) diagrams, 
 copies, and enlargements prepared speciall}' to 
 illustrate or enforce some passing point. Many 
 specimens of the former sort, and a few of the 
 latter, may still be seen in the cabinets of the 
 " Ruskin Drawing School " (see next chapter). 
 
 * A catalogue of " References to the Series of Paintings 
 and Sketches, from Mr. Ruskin's Collection, shown in Illus- 
 tration of the Relations of Flamboyant Architecture to 
 Contemporary and Subsequent Art, at the Evening Meeting 
 of the Royal Institution, Friday, January 29th, 1869," is 
 one of the rarer Ruskin pamphlets. 
 
MR. RUSKIN AND OXFORD. 57 
 
 For purposes of illustration in this sort Mr. 
 Ruskin had the University galleries as well as 
 his own collections to draw upon, and any stu- 
 dent who attended all the Slade Professor's lec- 
 tures had the advantage of examining at one 
 time or another a large and unique gallery of 
 art under the immediate guidance of the great 
 critic. The large table in the theatre and the 
 wall behind were generally covered with draw- 
 ings and pictures ; most of these would be re- 
 ferred to in the course of the lecture, whilst at 
 the end there would be a rush to the front, and 
 the Professor would hold an informal '' class " 
 (as the University Extensionists call it) for fur- 
 ther explanation and criticism of the pictures to 
 such students as cared to stay. But it was the 
 ingenuity expended in the preparation of tem- 
 porary illustrations that gave unique interest to 
 Mr. Ruskin's Oxford Lectures. The few illus- 
 trated volumes of these lectures that have been 
 published will give the reader some idea of the 
 care which the Professor bestowed on this por- 
 tion of his teaching. But only a few of the 
 diagrams and pictures exhibited at the lecture- 
 room have ever been reproduced in book form. 
 Mr. Macdonald, the talented and zealous master 
 
58 SOME ASPECTS OF MR. RUSKIN's WORK. 
 
 of the Ruskin Drawing School, must have a 
 large collection of them, for it was upon his 
 willing hands that the work of preparing the 
 Professor's whimsical illustrations mostly fell. 
 References to some of these will be found in 
 the reports of the lectures on " The Pleasures 
 of England " which are given in the Appendix. 
 Many more were exhibited during the preceding 
 course on ''The Art of England." The Fifth 
 Lecture, for instance — that on "John Leech 
 and John Tenniel " — was illustrated by the 
 original drawing for the frontispiece of Punchy 
 and by several enlarged reproductions of Mr. 
 Du Maurier's drawings — some photographed 
 by Miss Kate Greenaway's brother, and others 
 " drawn more faithfully than any photographer 
 could do, by Mr. Macdonald." There was al- 
 ways a large element of the unexpected in Mr. 
 Ruskin's illustrations (as there is in his writ- 
 ings). Generally amongst the pictures placed 
 beforehand on the wall behind the lecturer, 
 there would be one with its face turned to the 
 wall, or two or three would be brought in at 
 the last moment, carefully covered up, by Mr. 
 Ruskin's servant. The audience would always 
 smile in anticipation on such occasions, for they 
 
MR. RUSKIN AND OXFORD. 59 
 
 knew that some pretty jest or curious fancy 
 was in store. Great w^as the amusement on 
 one occasion when a hidden treasure was dis- 
 closed in the shape of a sketch from Tintoret's 
 " Paradise," which the Professor— by chance or 
 design — held out wrong side up. " Ah, well," 
 he said, joining in the general laughter, '' what 
 does it matter ? for in Tintoret's ' Paradise ' 
 you have heaven all round you." In the last 
 lecture of " The Art of England " also there 
 was a characteristic incident. Mr. Ruskin was 
 contrasting the way in which modern French 
 art looks at the sky with that in which Turner 
 saw and drew " the pure traceries of the vault 
 of morning." "See," he said, '' what the French 
 artistic imagination makes of it," and a drawing 
 done by Mr. Macdonald from a French hand- 
 book was disclosed, showing the clouds grouped 
 into the face of a mocking and angry fiend. 
 When the audience had had their look and 
 their laugh, Mr. Macdonald modestly proceeded 
 to turn his sketch with its back to the wall 
 again. '' No, no," interposed Mr. Ruskin, 
 " keep it there, and it shall permanently re- 
 main in your school, as a type of the loath- 
 some and lying spirit of defamation which 
 
60 SOME ASPECTS OF MR. RUSKIN's WORK. 
 
 Studies man only in the skeleton and nature 
 only in ashes." 
 
 But perhaps the most effective piece of vvhat^ 
 may be called the lecturer's stage-play was one 
 which occurred in the " Readings in ' Modern 
 Painters ' " (see Appendix I.). Mr. Ruskin was 
 expatiating, as was his wont, on the vandalism 
 of the modern world. On an easel beside him 
 was a water-colour drawing by Turner of (I 
 think) Leicester. "The old stone bridge is pic- 
 turesque," he said, " isn't it ? But of course you 
 want something more ' imposing ' nowadays. 
 So you shall have it." And taking his paint-box 
 and brush, Mr. Ruskin rapidly sketched in on 
 the glass what is known in modern specifications 
 as a " handsome iron structure." " Then," he 
 continued, " you will want, of course, some tall 
 factory chimneys, and I will give them to you 
 galore." Which he proceeded to, in like fashion. 
 " The blue sky of heaven was pretty, but you 
 cannot have everything, you know." And Mr. 
 Ruskin painted clouds of black smoke over the 
 Turner sky. " Your ' improvements,' " he went 
 on, "are marvellous 'triumphs of modern indus- 
 try,' I know ; but somehow they do not seem to 
 produce nobler men and women, and no modern 
 
MR. RUSKIN AND OXFORD. 6 1 
 
 town is complete, you will admit, without a 
 gaol and a lunatic asylum to crown it. So 
 here they are for you." By which time not an 
 inch of the Turner drawing was left visible 
 under the " improvements " painted upon the 
 glass. '' But for my part," said Mr. Ruskin, 
 taking his sponge, and with one pass of the 
 hand wiping away those modern improvements 
 against which he has inveighed in vain in so 
 many printed volumes — " for my part, I prefer 
 the old." 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE RUSKIN DRAWING SCHOOL. 
 
 In the previous chapter some account has been 
 given of Mr. Ruskin's Oxford Professorship so 
 far as his lectures and general educational in- 
 fluence were concerned. It remains to say 
 something of his Professional Teaching in the 
 criticism and practice of Art. Mr. Ruskin, it 
 should be remembered, had in this matter to 
 create his own duties. The Professorship of 
 Fine Art was founded in 1869, in pursuance of 
 the will of Mr. Slade, and Mr. Ruskin was the 
 first Professor elected. It fell to him, therefore, 
 to organize a new study in the University on 
 his own lines. The conception which he 
 formed of his duties was clearly defined in his 
 Inaugural Lectures, and in the less accessible 
 catalogues referred to therein. " A youth is 
 sent to the Universities," he said, " not to be 
 apprenticed to a trade, nor even always to be 
 
THE RUSKIN DRAWING SCHOOL. 6^ 
 
 advanced in a profession, but always to be ^ 
 made a gentleman and a scholar." He con- 
 ceived it, therefore, to be "the function of this 
 Professorship to establish both a practical and 
 critical School of Fine Art for English gentle- 
 men : practical, so that if they draw at all, they 
 may draw rightly ; and critical, so that they 
 may both be directed to such works of existing 
 art as will best reward their study, and en- 
 abled to make the exercise of their patronage 
 of living artists delightful to themselves by their 
 consciousness of its justice, and to the utmost 
 beneficial to their country, by being given only 
 to the men who deserve it." It was in order to 
 carry out this double function of the Slade Pro- 
 fessorship that the " Ruskin Drawing School" 
 was established. The school has two sides : 
 first, it includes a large, unique, and very valu- 
 able collection of works of art ; secondly, it is 
 a School of Art, under a master appointed by 
 Mr. Ruskin. The formation of the collections 
 was necessary in order — as Mr. Ruskin ex- 
 plained to his pupils — " to call your attention, 
 b}^ precision of copying, to the qualities of good 
 art, and to give you, yourselves, such power of 
 delineation as may assist your memory of visible 
 
64 SOME ASPECTS OE MR. RUSKIN's WORK. 
 
 things, and enable you to explain them intelli- 
 gibly to others." The estabUshment of a School 
 of Art under a special master was necessary in 
 order to carry out Mr. Ruskin's special theories 
 of Art education. ''After carefully considering," 
 he wrote in 1871, "the operation of the Ken- 
 sington system of Art-teaching throughout the 
 country, and watching for two years its effects 
 on various classes of students at Oxford, I be- 
 came finally convinced that it fell short of its 
 objects in more than one vital particular ; and 
 I have, therefore, obtained permission to found 
 a separate Mastership of Drawing in connection 
 with the Art Professorship at Oxford ; and 
 elementary schools will be opened in the Uni- 
 versity galleries, next October, in which the 
 methods of teaching will be calculated to meet 
 requirements which have not been contemplated 
 in the Kensington system" (** Fors Clavigera," 
 1871, ix., p. 19). These two sides of the 
 Drawing School— the School of Art and the 
 collection of specimens — were developed by 
 Mr. Ruskin with characteristic zeal and gene- 
 rosity. He began to accumulate his specimens 
 immediately on his appointment to the Profes- 
 sorship, and he added to them throughout his 
 
THE RUSKIN DRAWING SCHOOL. 6$ 
 
 tenure of it. In 1872 the University assigned 
 the western wing of its galleries in Beaumont 
 Street to the purpose of the Ruskin Drawing 
 School, and Mr. Ruskin on his side gave to the 
 University a sum of ^5,000 for the school's 
 endowment. The Master of Drawing appointed 
 by Mr. Ruskin was Mr. Alexander Macdonald, 
 to whose steady teaching the Professor bore 
 repeated testimony, and who happily still occu- 
 pies the post. 
 
 As a School of Art for University students 
 the Ruskin Drawing School has not been a 
 success. Its founder did not, indeed, begin 
 with any great expectations. He was more 
 anxious, as every University Professor should 
 be, to lay down standard principles of teaching 
 than to attract large numbers of scholars. " It 
 matters comparatively little," he said, " whether 
 few or many of our students learn to draw; but it 
 matters much that all who learn should be taught 
 with accuracy" C'A.ratra Pentelici," p. viii.). 
 But those who learned were, I fear, fewer than 
 Mr. Ruskin hoped even in his least sanguine 
 moments. " As for the undergraduates," he said 
 in 1883, "I never succeeded in getting more than 
 two or three of them into my school, even in its 
 
 5 
 
66 SOME ASPECTS OF MR. RUSKLn's WORK. 
 
 palmiest days."* In the preface to the new 
 edition of his Inaugural Oxford Lectures (1887), 
 Mr. Ruskin ascribes the failure to faults, or 
 circumstances, in him. '' It would have been 
 necessary to my success," he says, ''that I 
 should have accepted permanent residence in 
 Oxford, and scattered none of my energy in 
 other tasks. But I chose to spend half my 
 time at Coniston Waterhead, and to use half 
 my force in attempts to form a new social 
 organization — the St. George's Guild — which 
 made all my Oxford colleagues distrustful of 
 me, and many of my Oxford hearers contemp- 
 tuous." He does not, he added at the same 
 time, retract one word of hope for the success 
 of other masters. I have not heard, however, 
 that the other Slade Professors have made any 
 more progress than did Mr. Ruskin in esta- 
 blishing a practical School of Art amongst the 
 Oxford students. Unless and until Fine Art is 
 added to the University curriculum, and to the 
 schools in which degrees may be obtained, any 
 
 .* On a recent visit to the Drawing School I found these 
 palmy days continuing. In the morning there was a full 
 class of ladies. In the afternoon, set apart for undergradu- 
 ates, the number of students was two. 
 
THE RUSKIN DRAWING SCHOOL. 6/ 
 
 such hope is chimerical. Moreover, the atmo- 
 sphere of the Universities does not seem con- 
 ducive to excellence in the arts. How very 
 few of our artists have come, either in the past 
 or in the present, from the Universities ! * But 
 though the undergraduates held back, the young 
 ladies of Oxford came forward, and from the 
 institution of the school until now it has been 
 largely and regularly attended by them. The 
 system of teaching carried out by Mr. Mac- 
 donald, under Mr. Ruskin's instructions, is that 
 defined in the Inaugural Lectures (see es- 
 pecially Lecture V.). Its distinctive feature, it 
 will be remembered, is that whereas students 
 generally learn to draw details first, and to 
 colour and mass them afterwards, in the Ruskin 
 Drawing School they learn to arrange broad 
 masses and colours first, and to put in details 
 afterwards. With regard to the order in which 
 difterent objects are studied, the following " Note 
 by Professor Ruskin " was issued on his re- 
 sumption of the Slade Professorship in 1883 : — 
 " I leave for the present to Mr. Macdonald's experi- 
 ence and judgment the direction of the junior students 
 
 * Amongst eminent living artists I can think of none who 
 was educated at the University besides Mr. Briton Riviere 
 and Mr. Burne-Jones. 
 
68 SOME ASPECTS OF MR. RUSKIN's WORK. 
 
 in the Riiskin scliools, and have arranged the following 
 scheme of work for students of either sex entering our 
 classes from the age of sixteen and upwards, adapting 
 the exercises enforced especially to the conditions of 
 University life, but yet arranging them with the collateral 
 view of their probable introduction in schools where more 
 consistent attention to the subject of Art could be given 
 than is possible in connection with the courses of read- 
 ing at present necessary to distinction in Oxford. The 
 pass certificates, however, will ultimately be given only 
 to students who have attained such a degree of skill 
 as must imply their having attended in the school with 
 steadiness during the whole period of their residence in 
 the University, giving at least a couple of hours in each 
 week out of their best and untired time, and supple- 
 menting the work done in residence by some consistent 
 practice during vacations. 
 
 " In the first year the student will be required to 
 attain steadiness and accuracy in the outline of simple 
 forms, and ease in the ordinary processes of pure water- 
 colour painting ; that is to say, he must learn to lay 
 smooth tints within spaces of complex shape without 
 transgressing their limits, and over spaces of large 
 extent with equality and smoothness. The actual exer- 
 cises given will be primarily map-drawing, witli the 
 necessary projections of the sphere, and such colouring 
 and shading as may sufficiently express the character 
 of the country ; next, the delineation of the primary 
 types of good architectural construction ; and, in associa- 
 tion with these, exercises in the elements of ornamental 
 design in colour and form ; the drawings being carried 
 forward to approximate completion in light and shade. 
 
 " The second year will be given to the study of 
 landscape, completing in connection with it that of 
 
THE RUSKIN DRAWING SCHOOL. 69 
 
 architecture, so as to form the student's taste and judg- 
 ment in that art, and to increase to the utmost degree 
 possible his enjoyment of the historic buildings, the 
 natural phenomena, and the organic beauty of the 
 inanimate vv^orld. 
 
 " In the third year he will be required to draw from 
 the beautiful forms of life, distinguishing the characters 
 in which such beauty consists from those of awkward- 
 ness or deformity, and to copy a certain number of 
 examples of figure-painting, such as may sufficiently 
 direct, and in part form, his taste is the highest walks 
 of art, while he is assisted and encouraged at the same 
 time in the rapid sketching, both of animals and figures, 
 from nature, so as to give him interest in familiar 
 scenes and daily mcidents." 
 
 This note proved, however, somewhat of a 
 briitiu)! fiihnen. The Professor had given orders 
 — so he explained in the course of the first 
 lecture on *'The Pleasures of England" — that 
 no pupils should be admitted who were not 
 prepared to conform to his edict ; but this 
 " modest ordinance " having had the effect of 
 emptying the school of its former pupils, and 
 not having tempted new scholars, it was sub- 
 sequently withdrawn, and the young ladies of 
 Oxford were once more to be admitted "to copy 
 Turner in their own way." Whether owing to 
 this licence or to other causes, the Drawing 
 School is now well attended by them. Probably 
 
/O SOME ASPECTS OF MR. RUSKIN S WORK. 
 
 if the exceptional advantages of it were better 
 known, it would be better attended still. In 
 Mr. Macdonald the school has a most capable 
 and conscientious master. In Mr. Ruskin's 
 collections, which will presentl}^ be described, 
 there is a series of educational examples un- 
 rivalled by any other in the country. The 
 adjoining University galleries are rich in old 
 masters, in antique sculptures, and in vases and 
 other similar objects. They contain, moreover, 
 partly by gift from Mr. Ruskin, partly on loan 
 from the National Gallery, a superb set of Turner 
 drawings ; while the collection of drawings in 
 pen and chalk by Michael Angelo and Raphael 
 is one of the finest in Europe. There is, further- 
 more, in the galleries an adequate Fine Art 
 Library ; whilst the eminently practical lectures 
 and demonstrations given by the present Slade 
 Professor, Mr. Herkomer, A.R.A., afford oppor- 
 tunities for instruction which few (if any) schools 
 of art offer on similarly easy terms. On its 
 practical side the Ruskin Drawing School de- 
 serves far greater success than it commands. 
 
 The same remark applies with equal force to 
 the collections contained in the school. These 
 collections have all been catalogued by Mr. 
 
THE RUSKIN DRAWING SCHOOL. Jl 
 
 Ruskin, who has added explanatory or descrip- 
 tive notes to many of the items, and referred at 
 length to several others, in his writings. But 
 the catalogues are so scarce and little known 
 that some general account of the collections, 
 based on a personal examination, may be of 
 interest to students of Mr. Ruskin. Of the 
 pictures and drawings placed on the walls of 
 his school, Mr. Ruskin gives the following 
 account : — 
 
 " In the alcove I have placed one of my own studies 
 from a fresco of Luini's at Milan ; * with two original 
 designs by Edward Burne Jones, ' Love Bringing back 
 Alcestis from the Grave,' and ' The Two Wives of 
 Jason.' These two drawings and the original of my 
 study are consummate in dignity and purity of concep- 
 tion, and the best examples I can give of the forms of 
 highest art which I think should be held, for standard 
 and scope, by English students. 
 
 " On the west side of this portion of the room is 
 
 * Speaking of the colour of gules — a full soft scarlet, not 
 dazzling, but warm and glowing — Mr. Ruskin says, " It is 
 used, in opposition to darker purple, in large masses, in the 
 fresco painting of later Rome ; is the dominant colour of 
 ornamental writing in the middle ages (giving us the eccle- 
 siastical term rubric), and asserts itself finally, and most 
 nobly, in the fresco paintings of Ghirlandajo and Luini, 
 I have tried to represent very closely the tint of it Luini 
 has given to St. Catherine's mantle, in my study in your 
 schools" ("Eagle's Nest,"' § 226). 
 
J2 SOME ASPECTS OF MR. RUSKIn's WORK. 
 
 Tintoret's sketch for his picture of the Doge Avice 
 Mocenigo praying. This sketch, once belonging to Baron 
 Rumohr, is full of interest and of exemplary qualities. 
 The other paintings or drawings on the walls have been 
 made under my direction for the illustration of archi- 
 tecture ; except the Copley Fielding at the end of the 
 room, which is an instructive example of water-colour 
 painting of the old school, executed by washed tints ; 
 and my own study from the Castel-barco tomb at Verona, 
 on the right-hand side of the door, in going out, which 
 is left in its unfinished state to show the mode of striking 
 colour at once frankly on the white paper which I wish 
 the students more generally to adopt. 
 
 " None of these paintings or drawings are, as yet, 
 formally presented to, or accepted by, the University. 
 Some do not deserve any permanent position ; and I 
 retain for the present the power of removing any of 
 them, either for the substitution of others or for my 
 own occasional use ; but if the collections are found 
 serviceable in the form ultimately proposed for them, 
 and the system of teaching in accordance with which 
 they have been arranged is sanctioned by the approval 
 of the University, and recognized as a part of its edu- 
 cational curriculum, the entire series of examples would 
 remain at the disposal of the University authorities. In 
 the event of my death I mean them to be so left, in 
 their present form ; left, that is to say, to the Uni- 
 versity, if it accept them on the condition of not altering 
 their arrangement. I do not speak of them in my will ; 
 if this public statement of my intention be not clear 
 enough to stand in law, it may fall, and I shall not 
 disturb myself. ( " Instructions in the Preliminary Exer- 
 cises Arranged for the Lower Drawing School,"' 1S73, 
 PP- 2, 3-) 
 

THE RUSKIN DRAWING SCHOOL. J T^ 
 
 Unfortunately, Mr. Ruskin parted from the 
 University in anger, as we shall presently see, 
 and the Drawing School has been considerably 
 dismantled since the above passage was written. 
 The only notable additions are a water-colour 
 copy of Carpaccio's '^ St. Ursula's Dream/' * 
 and some copies made for Mr. Ruskin, by Mr. 
 Fairfax Murray, from frescoes by Botticelli. 
 
 But far more curious and important than the 
 works of art hung on the walls of the Drawing 
 School are the collections contained in the cabi- 
 nets arranged round the room. The construc- 
 tion of these cabinets is unique and deserves 
 a word of explanation. They are of polished 
 mahogany, and externally resemble somewhat 
 a set of office washing-stands. Each of them 
 holds either twelve or twenty-five drawings. 
 The drawings are all framed — some in plain 
 oak frames, others in a gilt beading of Mr. 
 
 * Fully described, and often referred to, in " Fors ; " e.g., 
 1872, XX., p. 13 ; 1876, pp. 329, 340, 350, 357, 381 ; 1878, 
 p. 182. See also Appendix II. to this book, p. 4. It used 
 sometimes to be an Oxford pleasantry to ask of diligent 
 i/iiendants at Mr. Ruskin's Lectures what new " greatest 
 painter in the world " the Professor had discovered that 
 day. The earliest reference to Carpaccio as " consum- 
 mate," occurred I believe, in his 1872 Lectures ("Ariadne 
 Florentina,' p. 94). 
 
74 SOME ASPECTS OF MR. RUSKIN S WORK. 
 
 Raskin's design* — and each frame fits into a 
 groove, an ivory label giving the number, and 
 a small leather strap for taking out being fitted 
 to one side of the frame. The contrivance 
 combines in an ingenious way security from 
 exposure to light and dust with handiness for 
 reference. The main collections are three in 
 number, entitled respectively, (i)the Standard, 
 or Reference Series, (2) the Educational Series, 
 and (3) the Rudimentary Series. Some account 
 of the meaning of these several titles will be 
 given presently. Speaking of them generally, 
 one notes — first and last — that they are all alike 
 strictly and essentially educational. The his- 
 torical significance or artistic quality in each 
 specimen is what is thought of, not its artistic 
 finish or material value. Hence that quaint 
 unexpectedness which has been noticed as cha- 
 racteristic of Mr. Ruskin's lectures meets one at 
 almost every turn in these collections. ''Price- 
 less" Turner drawings are arranged cheek by 
 jowl with coloured prints from old books of 
 travels. Exquisite studies from nature by Mr. 
 
 * This design, easily recognized when once seen, often 
 enables one to identify as having once belonged to Mr. 
 Ruskin's drawings on view in sale-rooms or exhibitions. 
 
THE RUSKIN DRAWING SCHOOL. 75 
 
 Riiskin and his assistants keep company with 
 faded photographs. One passes from early 
 '' states " of choice engravings to common 
 prints from cheap magazines. One soon finds, 
 nevertheless, that each specimen sufficiently ful- 
 fils its special purpose ; and any curators or 
 committees who are organizing educational col- 
 lections of fine art upon limited resources would 
 find a visit to the Ruskin Drawing School of 
 great interest. To the casual visitor the sudden 
 contrasts in the collections will be perhaps their 
 principal charm. If there are pleasures of 
 desultory picture-seeing as well as " pleasures 
 of desultory reading," the Ruskin Drawing 
 School — in spite of its elaborate systems — is 
 the place to enjoy them. 
 
 To offer guidance to a desultory reader is 
 absurd ; and most desultory visitors will prefer 
 to browse upon the Ruskin collections at their 
 own sweet v/ill. But it may be worth while 
 to note one or two points which will be found 
 of special interest by students of Mr. Ruskin's 
 work and writing. The first is the evidence, 
 continually recurring in each of the collections, 
 of the great labour spent by Mr. Ruskin upon 
 this part of his Professorial duties. And 
 
76 SOME ASPECTS OF MR. RUSKLn's WORK. 
 
 herein I am speaking not only of the labour — 
 hea\y though that must have been — involved in 
 collecting, arranging, cataloguing, and describ- 
 ing nearly nine hundred specimens, but also of 
 the amount of Mr. Ruskin's own handiwork con- 
 tained in his cabinets. Of the drawings, some 
 hundred and seventy are by Mr. Ruskin's own 
 hand, and of these a very large number were 
 done expressly for his Oxford work. The 
 quantity of Mr. Ruskin's literary productions 
 is extraordinary ; but his industry is amazing 
 when one takes count of his work as a draughts- 
 man as well.* Moreover, the quality of his 
 artistic work is as fine as the quantity of it is 
 large. In many places in his writings Mr. 
 Ruskin has spoken, in terms which have some- 
 times seemed absurdly exaggerated, of the 
 
 * The secret of Mr. Ruskin's enormous output appears to 
 be his habit of early rising. "In summer,"' he says, "I 
 have been always at work, or out walking, by six o'clock, 
 usually awake by half-past four" (" Praeterita," ii. 217). 
 And not onl^' in summer ; for I have heard him say that 
 much of his literary work has throughout his life been done 
 by morning candle-light. In one of his Oxford Lectures 
 Mr. Ruskin charged his pupils to remember that "all the 
 vital functions rise and set with the sun. . . . Sol illuuiiiiatio 
 nostra est ; Sol salus nostra ; Sol sapioiiia nostra " ("Eagle's 
 Nest," § 104 ; see also "Two Paths," § 137 ; " Fors,"' 1873, 
 xxviii., p. 8 ; xxxiv., p. 31 ; 1875, p. 332). 
 
THE RUSKIN DRAWING SCHOOL. J J 
 
 amount of time spent by him upon rendering 
 details in his drawings. In copying Veronese's 
 " Queen of Sheba " at Turin it took him six 
 weeks, he tells us, '' to examine rightly two 
 figures," and one day he was " upwards of two 
 hours vainly trying to render with perfect accu- 
 racy the curves of two leaves of the brocaded 
 silk" (''Cambridge Inaugural Address," p. 12). 
 " I've been two whole days at work," he writes 
 at another time, '' on the purple marsh orchis 
 alone" (" Fors," 1876, p. 172). '' No one has 
 the least notion," he complains, "of the quantity 
 of manual labour I have to go through to dis- 
 charge m}^ duty as a teacher of Art. Look at 
 the frontispiece to Letter 20th ['' Part of the 
 Chapel of St. Mary of the Thorn, Pisa "], which 
 is photographed from one of my architectural 
 sketches ; and if you can draw, copy a bit of 
 it ; try merely the bead moulding with its 
 dentils, in the flat arch over the three small 
 ones, lowest on the left. Then examine those 
 three small ones themselves. You think I have 
 drawn them distorted, carelessly, I suppose. 
 No. That distortion is essential to the Gothic 
 of the Pisan school ; and I measured every one 
 of the curves of those cusps on the spot, to 
 
78 SOME ASPECTS OF MR. RUSKIn's WORK. 
 
 the tenth of an inch" (" Fors," 1875, p. 255). 
 Every one who examines Mr. Ruskin's handi- 
 work in the Drawing School will soon form a 
 very clear notion of the quantity of manual 
 labour he went through in the discharge of his 
 duty as a teacher of Art. That measuring of 
 curves to the tenth of an inch — conspicuous 
 enough already in the illustrations to the 
 " Stones of Venice" and in the '' Examples of 
 Venetian Architecture " — is here seen applied 
 not to architecture only, but to every natural 
 form. " If you can paint one leaf," says Mr. 
 Ruskin, in " Modern Painters" (vol. v., pt. vi., 
 ch. 5, § 2), "you can paint the world." Mr. 
 Ruskin lays no claim to be able to paint the 
 world, or indeed to any high rank as a painter 
 at all, but he has at least gone through loyal 
 apprenticeship in the painting of leaves. Look, 
 for instance, at the exquisite care in his 
 "Peacock's Feather" (Reference Series, No. 
 114), with so much patient drawing of every 
 detail of form and every shadow of colour ; 
 or in his "San Michele, Lucca" (Educ, S^) ] 
 or in the pieces of rolled gneiss (Educ, 276) 
 and of quartz (Educ, 277), showing with 
 the last degree of accuracy every vein and 
 
THE RUSKIX DRAWING SCHOOL. 79 
 
 weather-Stain ; or in the plumage of partridge 
 (Rudim., 178). No matter what the subject 
 may be, whether it be as lofty as the towers of 
 Lucca or as lowly as the grass of the field, the 
 same infinite patience is conspicuous everywhere. 
 Not that Mr. Ruskin's work is inartistic from 
 excess of finish, from painting what he knows 
 by microscopic examination to be there rather 
 than what he sees. In many cases, indeed, 
 he does break this great artistic canon ; but he 
 does so deliberately, in order to make his speci- 
 mens lessons in collateral science as well as 
 examples of draughtsmanship. To Mr. Ruskin, 
 as we have seen (p. 23), the teaching of Art 
 is the teaching of everything. One great rea- 
 son for the method adopted by him in teach- 
 ing drawing (see above, p. 6^) was, he says, 
 that '' it enables me to show you many things 
 besides the art of drawing. Every exercise 
 that I prepare for you will be either a portion 
 of some important example of ancient art or 
 of some natural object. However rudely or un- 
 successfully you may draw it, you will never- 
 theless have learned what no words could have 
 as forcibly or completely taught you, either re- 
 specting early art or organic structure ; and I 
 
80 SOME ASPECTS OF MR. RUSKIN's WORK. 
 
 am thus certain that not a moment you spend 
 attentively will be altogether wasted, and that, 
 generally, you will be twice gainer by every 
 effort." " The first principle," he says again, 
 " of all I wish to enforce in my system here 
 at Oxford is, that you shall never make a 
 drawing, even for exercise, without proposing 
 to learn some definite thing in doing so ; nay, 
 I will even go so far as to say that the drawing 
 will never be made rightly unless the making 
 it is subordinate to the gaining the piece of 
 knowledge it is to represent and keep " ('* Cata- 
 logue of the Rudimentary Series," p. 30). 
 
 Something of this double gain will accrue to 
 the visitor who studies Mr. Ruskin's exquisitely 
 delicate rendering of natural objects, and reads 
 his discourses upon them in the catalogues. 
 Especially interesting are the studies in flowers 
 and leaves, with the system of mythological 
 reference which Mr. Ruskin attaches to them 
 (see, for instance, Educ, 4-15, and Rudim., 
 I, 227). But in many of Mr. Ruskin's draw- 
 ings there is high artistic merit as well as sci- 
 entific interest. Indeed, the best of them are 
 chiefly remarkable for the success with which 
 breadth of general effect is combined with wealth 
 
THE RUSKIN DRAWING SCHOOL. 8 I 
 
 of local detail. As examples in this kind the 
 drawings of the Grand Canal at Venice (Ref , 66) 
 and of the market-place of Abbeville (Ref., 6i) 
 may be mentioned. The latter, being a very 
 elaborate study of one of Mr. Ruskin's '' mother 
 cities," is of especial interest. Many of the 
 architectural drawings are valuable for their 
 minutely faithful record of buildings since 
 "restored."* It is in Mr. Ruskin's architec- 
 tural sketches with the silver-point that his 
 artistic gift is seen at its best, but the range of 
 his studies is very wide. Besides the drawings 
 of architecture and flowers already referred to, 
 there are numerous studies of clouds, in water- 
 colour {e.g., Educ, 3) ; etchings from Turner 
 drawings {e.g., Educ, lOi) ; many studies of 
 animals {e.g., Educ, 153-7); sketches of shells 
 and fish, of Japanese enamels, of birds and 
 
 * Mr. Ruskin's sketch (Educ, 26) of the north porch of 
 the west front of Amiens Cathedral, made in 1856, before its 
 restoration, is a case in point. "The colour, in 1856, was," 
 he says, "an exquisitely soft grey, touched with golden 
 lichen ; and the sheltered sculpture was as fresh as when 
 first executed, only the exposed parts broken or mouldering 
 into forms which made them more beautiful than if perfect. 
 All is now destroyed, and even the sharp, pure rose mould- 
 ing (of which hardly a petal was injured) cut to pieces, and, 
 for the most part, replaced by a modern design.'' 
 
 6 
 
82 SOME ASPECTS OF MR. RUSKIn's WORK. 
 
 beasts innumerable (see, especially, the " King- 
 fishers," Rudim., 201-5); many admirable land- 
 scapes, especially of Swiss scenes (e.g., Educ, 
 296, 297) ; and studies in heraldic design (e.g., 
 Rudim., 8-1 1 ). It is amusing, after noticing 
 the evidence afforded by these cabinets of Mr. 
 Ruskin's long and various study of Art, to recall 
 the criticisms which have spoken of the Slade 
 Professor as ''learned in many matters, and of 
 much experience in all, save his subject," and 
 as " talking for forty years of what he has never 
 done."* 
 
 * Mr. Ruskin refers to this criticism b}' anticipation in 
 the Preface to the third volume of " Modern Painters." 
 " There are two general principles to be kept in mind,'" he 
 says, " in examining the drawings of any writer on Art : the 
 first, that they ought at least to show such ordinar}- skill in 
 draughtsmanship as to prove that the writer knows what 
 the good qualities of drawing ai-e ; the second, that they are 
 never to be expected to equal, in either execution or con- 
 ception, the work of accomplished artists — for the simple 
 reason that in order to do a«>'thing thoroughly well the 
 whole mind, and the whole available time, must be given 
 to that single art. . . . As, however, it is sometimes alleged, 
 by the opponents of my principles, that I have never (/one 
 anything, it is proper that the reader should know exactly 
 the amount of work for which I am answerable in these 
 illustrations, etc." It is interesting to note that though 
 many opponents of Mr. Ruskin's principles do allege (like 
 Mr. Whistler) that he has " never done anj^thing," the latest 
 and (next t« Mr. Whistler) the most violent opponent takes 
 
THE RUSKIN DRAWING SCHOOL. 83 
 
 To the student of Mr. Ruskin's books this 
 collection of his drawings presents, however, 
 many points of interest besides their artistic 
 merit. Here, for one thing, are the original 
 drawings for many of the plates with which 
 every one is familiar in his published books. 
 Readers of " Proserpina," in particular, will re- 
 cognize many old friends in ''Studies of Wayside 
 Flowers ; " and here, too, are '' The Dryad's 
 Crown " and the '' Purist Landscape," engraved 
 in '' Modern Painters " (Educ, 264, 269). 
 
 a precisely contrary line. " In one respect only." says the 
 Edhiburgh Review (January, i888), "we are prepared to 
 give Mr. Ruskin nearly unqualified admiration, namely, in 
 regard to his own artistic work as far as it has gone : with 
 the exception of those unhappy illustrations to the * Seven 
 Lamps,' his own drawing, of architecture especially, is ad- 
 mirable. When two or three of his own landscapes were 
 exhibited some years ago in Bond Street, along with his 
 Turners, our impression at the time was that they were 
 equal to most of the Turner drawings in that collection ; 
 at all events his drawings of portions of St. Mark's, exhibited 
 more recently at the Society of Water-colours Exhibition, 
 were of the highest class, and such as, indeed, of their kind, 
 it would not be possible to surpass." The reviewer mighi 
 have added some reference to the admirable plates in 
 " Modern Painters " of the Matterhorn and the Chamonix 
 Aiguilles, " in which Mr. Ruskin (to quote an ex-President 
 of the Alpine Club), to whom all mountain-lovers owe a 
 debt of gratitude that can never be sufficiently acknow- 
 ledged, set an example to future draughtsmen." 
 
84 SOME ASPECTS OF MR. RUSKIX'S WORK. 
 
 The drawings are rich, too, in autobiographi- 
 cal interest. The quaUty of iiitiuiitc which has 
 been noticed ah^eady as characteristic of Mr. 
 Ruskin's Lectures, and which is the cause at once 
 of his attraction and repulsion — attraction to 
 those who, being in full sympathy with an author, 
 like to be brought near to his personality ; repul- 
 sion to those who, being without such sympathy, 
 resent the personal note as ''arrogant egotism " 
 — this intimate quality is strongly marked in 
 the collection of drawings at Oxford. Some- 
 times, indeed, Mr. Ruskin has framed actual 
 leaves of his travelling diaries — diaries com- 
 posed partly of written notes, partly of rough 
 sketches. Thus the frame No. 172 in the 
 Reference Series contains some leaves from 
 the diary of an Italian tour in 187 1.* The 
 leaves are inserted for the sake of their archi- 
 tectural studies from the tombs of Roger the 
 First and Frederick the Second at Palermo ; but 
 they are interspersed with travellers' notes such 
 as ^he following : " Segni, west of line, quarter- 
 hour past Velletri, worth stopping. Just past 
 
 * Some references to this tour, and especially to Palermo, 
 will be found in "Ariadne Florcntina," § 165. See also 
 Appendix II. to this book, p. 238. 
 
THE RUSKIN DRAWING SCHOOL. 85 
 
 Segni Station, west portico of temple on hill, very 
 important. Sparagla, magnificent hill town." 
 Indeed, a devoted and diligent Ruskinian might 
 almost compile an autobiography of the Master's 
 wanderings from these Oxford drawings. Of 
 his Venetian visits, and of the amount of work 
 he did in careful architectural study, there is 
 abundant evidence in several cabinets. Else- 
 where w^e find him at Lucca (Educ, 83-85). A 
 drawing of San Michele, containing much ex- 
 quisite detail, is dated " 1845. J. R." This 
 was the year of the visit to Lucca and Pisa 
 which marked an epoch in Mr. Ruskin's mental 
 and artistic development. ''The inlaying of 
 San Michele," he tells us, ''opposed to Gothic 
 pierced lace-work (which was all I cared for in 
 Gothic at that time), and the fine and severe 
 arcades of finely proportioned columns at San 
 Frediano, doing stern duty under vertical walls, 
 as opposed to Gothic shafts with no end, and 
 buttresses with no bearing, struck me dumb 
 with admiration and amazement " (Epilogue to 
 small edition of " Modern Painters," vol. ii. ; see 
 also " Praeterita," xviii. and xix., and " Fors," 
 1874, p. 192). "Dumb with admiration and 
 amazement," but not paralyzed ; and here, in 
 
S6 • SOME ASPECTS OF MR. RUSKIn's WORK. 
 
 these Oxford drawings, we have the tirst-fruits 
 of that course of architectural stud}' which (says 
 Mr. Ruskin) " reduced under accurate law the 
 vague enthusiasm of my childish taste, and has 
 been ever since a method with me, guardian of 
 all my other work in natural and moral philo- 
 sophy." Another Italian city, connected with 
 another epoch in Mr. Ruskin's mental history, 
 is Assisi. It was there, in 1 874, he tells us, that 
 he '' discovered a fallacy which had underlain all 
 his Art teaching since the year 1858 " (" Fors," 
 1877, p. loi) — the fallacy, namely, that ''reli- 
 gious artists were weaker than irreligious." 
 From that time forward Mr. Ruskin's critical 
 estimates of the Italian painters were largely 
 modified, and the visit to Assisi seems to have 
 made, as w^as natural, a great impression on 
 his mind. ''Fors Clavigera " for 1874-5-6-7 is 
 full of allusions to the sacristan's cell in which 
 he worked, and he gave an annual gift of ^^25 
 to the monastery. Here (Ref., 297) is a sketch 
 of tiie very cell, which is described at length in 
 one letter (see "Fors," 1874, p. 223), and so 
 often referred to in others. In like manner, 
 one might follow the vein of autobiographical 
 interest in many another sketch of foreign travel 
 
THE RUSKIN DRAWING SCHOOL. 8/ 
 
 — tracing Mr. Ruskin's course, as one turns over 
 the contents of these cabinets, to Rheinfelden 
 (Ref., 93), to Fribourg (Educ, 1 14), to Lucerne, 
 (Educ, 1 16), or to " the Rock of Arona " (Ref., 
 92). But it is never for long that we find him 
 away from his country home — studying the 
 flowers and mosses of the wayside. Here, for 
 instance (Educ, ll), is an exquisitely faithful 
 drawing in colour of a wild strawberry plant, 
 thus inscribed : — 
 
 " The Rose of Demeter.* 
 
 Spring in a cleft of her rocks. 
 
 J. Ruskin. Brantwood, June, '73." 
 
 Still more interesting, perhaps, to those who 
 are in S3'mpathy with the author of '* Modern 
 Painters " is another drawing in the same cabinet 
 (Educ, 6), a '' study of a few blades of grass 
 as they grew." '' Examine for a minute, quietly, 
 
 * " I give the strawberry-blossom to Demeter because it 
 is the prettiest type of the uncultured and motherly gifts 
 of the earth. Also, I take the blossom as the kindest and 
 usefuUest representative of, the Rose tribe, and in a sort 
 the most central ; for if I took RosaCanina instead, it would 
 not suggest the great groups of the potentillas and tor- 
 mentillas; nor the relation to the anemone through the 
 Dryas ; but this strawberry-blossom expresses the place 
 of all these, and yet is itself clearly a little white rose." — 
 Catalogue of the Educational Series, p. 30. 
 
88 SOME ASPECTS OF MR. RUSKIn's WORK. 
 
 its narrow, sword-shaped strip of fluted green. 
 Nothing, as it seems, there, of notable goodness 
 or beauty. A very httle strength, and a very 
 little tallness, and a few delicate long lines meet- 
 ing in a point — ^not a perfect point neither, but 
 blunt and unfinished, by no means a creditable 
 or apparently muchcared-forexampleof Nature's 
 workmanship ; made, as it seems, only to be 
 trodden on to-day, and to-morrow to be cast 
 into the oven ; and a little pale and hollow stalk, 
 feeble and flaccid, leading down to the dull brown 
 fibres of the roots. And 3'et, think of it well, 
 and judge whether of all the gorgeous flowers 
 that beam in summer air, and of all strong and 
 goodly trees, pleasant to the eyes or good for 
 food — stately palm and pine, strong ash and 
 oak, scented citron, burdened vine — there be 
 any by man so deeply loved, by God so highly 
 graced, as that narrow point of feeble green. 
 . . . Consider what we owe merely to the mea- 
 dow grass, to the covering of the dark ground 
 by that glorious enamel, by the companies of 
 those soft, and countless, and peaceful spears. 
 . . . Go out, in the spring-time, among the 
 meadows that slope from the shores of the 
 Swiss lakes to the roots of their lower mountains. 
 
THE RUSKIN DRAWING SCHOOL. 89 
 
 There, mingled with the taller gentians and 
 the white narcissus, the grass grows deep and 
 free ; and as you follow the winding moun- 
 tain paths, beneath arching boughs all veiled 
 and dim with blossom — paths that for ever 
 droop and rise over the green banks and mounds, 
 sweeping down, in scented undulation, steep to 
 the blue water, studded here and there with 
 new-mown heaps, filling all the air with fainter 
 sweetness — look up towards the higher hills, 
 where the waves of everlasting green roll silently 
 into their long inlets among the shadows of the 
 pines ; and we may, perhaps, at last know the 
 meaning of those quiet words of the hundred 
 and forty-seventh Psalm, ' He maketh grass to 
 grow upon the mountains.' " 
 
 The contents of the Ruskin Drawing School 
 are not, however, ''precious" only for the sake 
 of Mr. Ruskin himself. The specimens are 
 selected, as has been explained, for their appro- 
 priateness in an educational series ; but they 
 include, by Mr. Ruskin's generosity, many en- 
 gravings and drawings of great interest and 
 value in themselves. Among the former, Mr. 
 Ruskin notifies the woodcuts by Hans Burg- 
 kmair (Rudim., 26-38), as ''entirely perfect 
 
go SOME ASPECTS OF MR. RUSKIN S WORK. 
 
 examples of execution with the pure blaclv Hne." 
 But there are also several by Durer, as well as 
 a curious photographic enlargement of a Ma- 
 donna's head by him (Ref., 144), very instruc- 
 tive as bringing prominently before the student 
 the distinctive character of wood-cutting. In 
 which connection it is interesting to find in an 
 adjacent cabinet the frame of cheap modern 
 woodcuts referred to by Mr. Ruskin in the ''Art 
 of England " lectures, in which he maintained 
 that '* while no entirely beautiful thing can be 
 represented in a woodcut, every form of vul- 
 garity or unpleasantness can be given, to the 
 life." In illustration of this proposition we 
 have here (Ref., 164) "a collection of woodcuts 
 out of a scientific survey of South America, pre- 
 senting collectively, in designs ignorantly drawn 
 and vilely engraved, yet with the peculiar ad- 
 vantage belonging to the cheap woodcut, what- 
 ever, through that fourth part of the round 
 world from Mexico to Patagonia, can be found 
 of savage, sordid, vicious, or ridiculous in 
 humanity" ("Art of England," p. 169). After 
 which it will be well, perhaps, to turn for relief 
 to some of Durer's engravings again (e.g., Educ, 
 74, 75), which "show his power over human 
 
IHE RUSKIN DRAWING SCHOOL. 9 1 
 
 character and expression, and are full of sugges- 
 tions of thought." 
 
 Passing next from engravings to copies and 
 transcripts from natural forms, we shall come 
 across a great deal of very beautiful work by 
 Mr. Ruskin's assistant, the -late Arthur Burgess. 
 His work meets us, indeed, in nearly every 
 cabinet, and we cannot, therefore, notice it in 
 detail. The reader may be referred to the 
 general account which Mr. Ruskin recently gave 
 of his friend in the " Century Guild Hobby 
 Horse" (vol. ii., 46-53). *' During the years," 
 he says, " when I was lecturing, or arranging 
 the examples in my schools, Mr. Burgess was 
 engaged at fixed salary, executing either the 
 woodcuts necessar3^to illustrate my lectures, or 
 drawings to take permanent place in the school 
 examples. So far as I was able to continue 
 ' Proserpina,' the woodcuts were alwa3^s exe- 
 cuted by him; and indeed I was wholly depend- 
 ent on his assistance for the effectual illustra- 
 tions of my most useful books. Especially those 
 in ' Ariadne Florentina ' and ' Aratra Pentelici ' 
 are unequalled, whether in precision of facsimile 
 or the legitimate use of the various methods of 
 wood engraving according to his own judgment." 
 
92 SOME ASPECTS OF MR. RUSKIn's WORK. 
 
 In addition to this work, Mr. Burgess had be- 
 fore, in 1869, been to Verona with Mr. Ruskin, 
 studying the Scala tombs, and of these drawings 
 also many examples are to be seen in the Edu- 
 cational Series : "he drew," says Mr. Ruskin, 
 ''as architecture had never been drawn before." 
 Another series of architectural drawings of great 
 interest, historical as well as artistic, are those 
 by another of Mr. Ruskin's assistants — the late 
 Mr. Bunney.* The drawings of Lucca and 
 Verona (Ref., 76-83) are good examples of 
 "the unwearied care and perseverance" of that 
 conscientious artist. Mr. Ruskin's affection for 
 Prout and W. Hunt is well known, and his Draw- 
 ing School is rich in examples by both those 
 painters. - Drawings by Prout will be found in 
 Educ, III, 129, 133-35, ai^d in Rudim., 25, 
 85, 136, 137; drawings by Hunt in Educ, 
 168, 192, 213 ; and in Rudim., 59, 60, 179, 180. 
 Amongst the Prouts special attention may be 
 called to the drawing of Mayence (Rudim., 136), 
 both as an admirable example of his fine pencil 
 
 * An interesting and sympathetic memoir of ]\Ir. Bunne}^ 
 from the pen of Mr. A. Wedderburn (" An O.xford Pupil ""), 
 was prefixed to the " Catalogue of the Exhibition held at 
 the Fine Art Society in 1882." 
 
THE RUSKIN DRAWING SCHOOL. 93 
 
 work, and as a record of a singularly pic- 
 turesque scene now swept away by modern im- 
 provements. Mr. Ruskin has written so much, in 
 so many places, about " old William Hunt " that 
 it is unnecessary to refer to his drawings here. 
 It may be interesting, however, to mention more 
 particularly a study of ''Peach and Grapes" 
 (Educ, 213), which Mr. Ruskin contrasts, in 
 virtue of its '' general look of greengrocery and 
 character of rustic simplicity," with the grave 
 refinement of the Italian designers illustrated 
 elsewhere in the same series. '' Generally 
 speaking," adds Mr. Ruskin, ''you will find our 
 best modern art has something of this quality 
 — it looks as if done by peasants or untrained 
 persons, while good Italian work is visibly by 
 accomplished gentlemen. . . . ' I like to see a 
 thing fudged out,' said William Hunt once to 
 me. Yes, but to see it felt out, and known, 
 both out and in, is better still." All the Prout 
 and Hunt drawings in these cabinets have been 
 presented to the University by Mr. Ruskin, who 
 has further enriched them with several drawings 
 by Turner. Of these the most important are 
 Nos. 2 and 3 in the Reference Series. Speaking, 
 in his first lecture at Oxford, of " the instinctive 
 
94 SOME ASPECTS OF MR. RUSKIx's WORK. 
 
 love of landscape " which is characteristic of 
 English art, Mr. Ruskin reminded his hearers 
 that '* a nation is only worthy of the soil and 
 the scenes that it has inherited when, by all its 
 acts and arts, it is making them more lovely 
 for its children." The first three specimens 
 selected for the Reference Series were, there- 
 fore, of landscape scenes. The first — '' Brignal 
 Banks, on the Greta, near Rokeby " — is an en- 
 graving only (the original drawing by Turner 
 having been destroyed by fire), but is " a per- 
 fect type of the loveliest English scenery, 
 touched by imaginative associations." The 
 second example — the ''Junction of the Greta 
 and Tees " — is a real drawing by Turner — " of 
 all I have," said Mr. Ruskin, "the one I had 
 least mind to part with. It is," he added, " a 
 faultless example of Turner's work at the time 
 when it is most exemplary." 
 
 The third Turner — a scene on the Loire, 
 never engraved — is an introduction to the Loire 
 Series, previously presented by Mr. Ruskin to 
 the University galleries. "Though small, it 
 is," he says, "very precious, being a faultless, 
 and, I believe, unsurpassable example of water- 
 colour painting." As for its place in the 
 
THE RUSKIN DRAWING SCHOOL. 95 
 
 Reference Series, it was "chosen in further illus- 
 tration of the pensiveness of the chiaroscurist 
 school. It is painted wholly in solid colour, as 
 No. 2 is painted wholly in transparent ; and 
 the two drawings together show the complete 
 management of colours soluble in water or thin 
 liquid of any kind " (Oxford " Lectures on 
 Art," § 25, '' Catalogue of the Reference Series," 
 pp. 2-4). In the Rudimentary Series (No. 
 300) is another Turner drawing, to which in a 
 different way Mr. Ruskin attaches special im- 
 portance. This is a ''Pen and Sepia Sketch 
 for Unpublished Plate of Liber Studiorum " — 
 " unique among Turner's sepia sketches for its 
 grace and ease." These are the most important 
 Turner drawings in the collection, but there are 
 many others of considerable, though slighter, 
 value. Especially interesting, as showing the 
 detailed drawing which Turner put into a sketch 
 before laying on colour, is an unfinished study of 
 a ruined abbey (Educ, 102) — "a witness to you, 
 once for all," says Mr. Ruskin, "of the right 
 way to work : doing nothing without clearly 
 formed intention, nothing in a hurry, nothing 
 more wrong than you can help ; all as tenderly 
 as you can, all as instantly as you can; all 
 
Cj6 SOME ASPECTS OF MR. RUSKIN's WORK. 
 
 thoughtfully, and nothing mechanically." Far- 
 ther on, in the same series, are three pencil 
 sketches (the last with colour begun) by Turner 
 (Educ, 126-128) ; the first, an early sketch and 
 rough ; the second, later and full of detail ; the 
 third, specially interesting for an exquisitely 
 rendered thistle in the foreground. In the same 
 cabinet are several of Turner's architectural 
 sketches ; in another are studies of fish, birds, 
 and cattle (Educ, 181-3, 185) ; and in the last 
 one, a few sketches of clouds and hills (Educ, 
 292, 293, 300). These are of the same general 
 character as the numerous studies in the National 
 Gallery. A further batch of Turner's drawings 
 meets us in the Rudimentary Series. Very in- 
 teresting, as a specimen of work not common 
 with Turner, is the Farnley interior (Rudim., 
 14), a careful study of armour and bric-a-brac. 
 This is signed "Turner, R.A., 1815." Some 
 other drawings in these series were included in 
 the exhibition held at the Fine Art Society's 
 galleries in 1878, and a simple reference to 
 those numbers (126-31) will therefore suffice 
 here. In the cabinet containing these drawings 
 there are also some of the wonderful copies of 
 Turner executed for Mr. Ruskin by Mr. William 
 
THE RUSKIN DRAWING SCHOOL. 9/ 
 
 Ward * (145-149). The Turner drawings de- 
 scribed above are, it should be remembered, en- 
 tirely distinct from the other series of sixty-one 
 drawings which were presented by Mr. Ruskin 
 to Oxford some years before, and which hang 
 in the University galleries above the Drawing 
 School, t Furthermore, the Trustees of the 
 
 * Of these copies Professor Ruskin says, " They are 
 executed with extreme care, under my own eye, by the 
 draughtsman trained by me for the purpose, Mr. Ward. 
 Ever3-thing that can be learned from the smaller works of 
 Turner may be as securely learned from these drawings. 
 I have been more than once in doubt, seeing original and 
 copy together, which was which, and I think them about 
 the best works that can now be obtained for a moderate 
 price, representing the authoritative forms of art in land- 
 scape." — Catalogue of the Fine Art Dcpartniciif, Harvard 
 University. 
 
 f Mr. Ruskin's gifts, to various institutions, of Turner 
 drawings alone, must represent a money value of several 
 thousand pounds. (Some years ago he assessed his gifts 
 to Oxford and "St. George" at ;£'i 5,000.) The series of 
 Turners given to the Oxford University galleries is es- 
 pecially fine. Nor was the gift a money sacrifice only. 
 " When," he says somewhere, incidentally, " I gave away 
 my Loire series of Turner drawings to Oxford, I thought 
 I was rational enough to enjoy them as much in the Uni- 
 versity gallery as in my own study. But not at all ! I 
 find I can't bear to look at them in the gallery, because 
 they are 'mine' no more." Elsewhere he makes lighter of 
 the gift. " It is a woeful fault of this collection of mine, 
 considered as illustrative of his life, that there arc no 
 
 7 
 
98 SOME ASPECTS OF MR. RUSKIn's WORK. 
 
 National Gallery have placed on loan in the 
 same galleries a large number of sketches from 
 those bequeathed to the nation ; * so that the 
 collection of Turner drawings and sketches at 
 Oxford is now second, in importance and in- 
 terest, only to that at the National Gallery 
 itself. 
 
 Finally, we must not forget to mention among 
 the treasures of the Ruskin School several 
 drawings by distinguished living artists. Some 
 studies of flowers by Mr. A. McWhirter (Educ, 
 258-61) and landscapes by Mr. A. Goodwin 
 (Rudim., 139-42) are well worth looking at. 
 There is a very interesting pencil drawing of a 
 lemon tree by Sir Frederick Leighton, done at 
 Capri, and signed '' L. 59." The delicac}^ with 
 which every piece of fruit and foliage is rendered 
 is unsurpassable. It is an example which 
 
 Venetian sketches in it. I gave all I had to Cambridge and 
 Oxford, not generously, but because to think of Venice now 
 is mere misery to me " (Notes on his " Drawings by Turner," 
 p. 105). The Cambridge gift consisted of twenty-five Turner 
 drawings, again very choice specimens, to the Fitzwilliam 
 Museum at Cambridge. 
 
 * The loan comprises two hundred and fifty drawings, 
 arranged by Mr. Ruskin into twenty-five series, and eight 
 sketch-books. 
 
THE RUSKIN DRAWING SCHOOL. 99 
 
 "determines without appeal," says Mr. Ruskin, 
 " the question respecting necessity of delineation 
 as the first skill of a painter. Of all our present 
 masters, Sir Frederick Leighton delights most 
 in softly blended colours, and his ideal of beauty 
 is more nearly that of Correggio than any seen 
 since Correggio's time. But you see by what 
 precision of terminal outline he at first re- 
 strained, and exalted, his gift of beautiful 
 vaghezza ("The Art of England," pp. 97-8). 
 Equally exemplary are the pencil drawings of 
 Mr. Burne-Jones. " His outline," said Mr. 
 Ruskin, in the same course of lectures (p. 65), 
 " is the purest and quietest that is possible to 
 the pencil. Nearly all other masters accentuate 
 falsely, or in some places, as Richter, add 
 shadows which are more or less conventional ; 
 but an outline by Burne Jones is as pure as 
 the lines of engraving on an Etruscan mirror, 
 and I placed the series of drawings from the 
 story of Psyche in your school as faultlessly 
 exemplary in this kind. Whether pleasing or 
 displeasing to your taste, they are entirely 
 masterful ; and it is only by trying to copy these 
 or other such outlines that you will fully feel 
 the grandeur of action in the moving hand, 
 
100 SOME ASPECTS OF MR. RUSKIN S WORK. 
 
 tranquil and swift as a hawk's flight, and never 
 allowing a vulgar tremor or a momentary im- 
 pulse to impair its precision or disturb its 
 serenity." The Psyche drawings referred to in 
 this passage are to be found in the Educational 
 Series, Nos. 64-72, & 223. The last one is par- 
 ticularly noted by Mr. Ruskin, in his catalogue, 
 as the best possible example of " refinement in 
 design obtained by perfectly simple and firm 
 equality of outline, and of the decorative placing 
 and arranging of every accessory. There is not 
 a cluster of grass, nor are there two leaves set 
 side by side, throughout the drawing, without 
 perfectly invented decorative relation to each 
 other." There are also, by Mr. Burne-Jones, 
 a "Study for Head of Danae" (Educ, 224) 
 and two studies from Tintoret (Educ, 225, and 
 Rudim., 1 1 3). Lastly, in a separate cabinet are 
 "XII. Drawings by Francesca Alexander, given 
 to Oxford by John Ruskin, 1883." These are 
 the original drawings for the " Roadside Songs 
 of Tuscany," by the American lady Miss 
 Francesca Alexander, to whose art gift Mr. 
 Ruskin has of late years paid the highest tri- 
 butes, and whose drawings have been placed 
 in his school " to be standards of method, in 
 
THE RUSKIN DRAWING SCHOOL. lOI 
 
 drawing from the life, to students capable of 
 a determined industry." * 
 
 The desultory account, now completed, of 
 the drawings in Mr. Ruskin's School, will have 
 given the reader some idea of the wealth of in- 
 terest to be found in its cabinets. But the visitor 
 who wishes to derive from them their full edu- 
 cational value should examine them in the 
 order and upon the system devised by Mr. 
 Ruskin for his pupils. In order to understand 
 this system, it is necessary to remember, in the 
 first place, the double purpose which Mr. Ruskin 
 had in view. His principal object was to esta- 
 blish in the University a School of Criticism ; 
 his second, to establish a School of Art. With 
 the former object in view, he collected the 
 Standard or Reference Series of examples ; with 
 the latter object in view, the Educational and 
 the Rudimentary Series. The scope of the 
 former series is sufficiently indicated by its 
 
 * Miss Alexander's graceful sketches of the Tuscan pea- 
 santf}' — both in pen-drawing and in writing — will be familiar 
 to many readers in "The Story of Ida," "The Roadside 
 Songs of Tuscany," and "Christ's Folk in the Apennine." 
 An interesting description of the lady herself was recently 
 published in the New York Critic and summarized in the 
 Pall Mall Gaz:tlc (May 13th, 1887). 
 
I02 SOME ASPECTS OF MR. RUSKIn's WORK. 
 
 title; it was to be a series of ''standards to 
 which you may at once refer on any question- 
 able point, and by the study of which you may 
 gradually attain an instinctive sense of right, 
 which will afterwards be liable to no serious 
 error. . . . The real utility of the series will 
 depend on its restricted extent— on the severe 
 exclusion of all second-rate, superfluous, or even 
 attractively varied examples — and on the con- 
 fining the students' attention to a few types of 
 what is insuperably good " (Oxford " Lectures on 
 Art," § 2i). This Standard Series was origin- 
 ally intended by Mr. Ruskin to comprise four 
 sections of a hundred pieces each — illustrating, 
 severally, (i) the schools of painting in general, 
 (2) the sculpture and allied arts of the Gothic 
 races, (3) the sculpture and allied arts of the 
 Greeks, and (4) the special skill of modern times. 
 This, however, remains ''a counsel of perfec- 
 tion." Mr. Ruskin has always been one of 
 those (to use a vulgar but expressive phrase) 
 whose " eyes are bigger than their stomachs." 
 All that he actually arranged was the first of the 
 four sections above enumerated, and even there 
 he only reached half-way through his task. 
 The ''schools of painting in general" were, in 
 
THE R.USKIN DRAWING SCHOOL. IO3 
 
 their turn, to have been subdivided into two 
 sections, of fifty each, containing severally, (a) 
 standards for illustration o( methods, (d) forms of 
 thought in Christian painting. It is the first of 
 these tw^o sub-sections only which got itself 
 arranged. It is to be found in the pieces num- 
 bered 1-50, contained in the first two of the large 
 cabinets which occupy the alcove of the Draw- 
 ing School. The following rough anal^^sis of 
 their contents, with occasional references to Mr. 
 Ruskin's lectures, etc., may possibly be of in- 
 terest to the student (pp. 104-5). 
 
 Here, as above explained, the so-called " Stan- 
 dard Series " breaks off; the remaining large 
 cabinets, placed in the alcove, contain the 
 '' Reference Series," which is described by Mr. 
 Ruskin as being of " quite mixed character." 
 There are, moreover, a great many blanks in it ; 
 but although arranged in no very systematic 
 order, these cabinets cover to a large extent the 
 second and third groups mentioned above (see 
 p. 102), namely, the art of the Gothic races and 
 of the Greeks respectively. Thus they include 
 (i) a large number of specimens of " the archi- 
 tecture which depends chiefly for its effect on 
 the sculpture or colouring of surfaces, as opposed 
 

 
 
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I06 SOME ASPECTS OF MR. RUSKIN's WORK. 
 
 to that which depends on construction or pro- 
 portion of forms," and (2) several designs from 
 vases, etc., illustrative of the essential features 
 of Greek Art. But it would be useless to look 
 for systematic arrangement where none was 
 intended. The Reference Series was intended 
 for miscellaneous reference only. It should 
 be studied in connection with Mr. Ruskin's 
 lectures. In these lectures he illustrated his 
 arguments point by point — historical, moral, or 
 technical — by reference to actual examples of 
 art : this Reference Series was to be the gradu- 
 ally accumulated collection of such examples, 
 and in the Oxford '^ Lectures on Art " the reader 
 will find it continually referred to in this way. 
 
 With the Educational and the Rudimentary 
 Series, which now remain to be explained, the 
 case is different. These collections were ar- 
 ranged with a view rather to use in a working 
 School of Art than for reference in critical lec- 
 tures. The Educational Series was the first to 
 be arranged, and was intended for the compara- 
 tively mature University students whom Mr. 
 Ruskin originally hoped to attract. It soon, 
 however, became evident that Mr. Ruskin's 
 pupils would be mainly young ladies, and for 
 
THE RUSKIN DRAWING SCHOOL. lO/ 
 
 their benefit the Rudimentary Series was next 
 arranged. The two series are, thus, nearly 
 parallel, the latter being slightly more elemen- 
 tary than the former. Each series consists of 
 twelve cabinets, and each cabinet contains (or 
 should contain) twenty-five specimens. The 
 general arrangement of the cabinets is as 
 follows (p. io8). 
 
 In the following analysis some description is 
 given of the specimens selected, and of the 
 method of their arrangement. I go thus into 
 detail because Mr. Ruskin's Drawing School 
 may well, I think, afford valuable hints for the 
 arrangement of school museums and elementary 
 Art galleries — such as should exist in every 
 town, if not in every school. 
 
 The Educational Series. 
 
 I. I ntrodudory : Exercises in Flowers. 
 
 These are elementary exercises in outline and flat- 
 tint. But Mr. Ruskin designedly makes them 
 exercises also in elementary botany and mytho- 
 logy. He selects, for copying, sketches of the 
 tribes of flowers "which have had the strongest 
 influence on the human mind in all ages " — e.g.^ 
 the amaryllids (Christ's " lily of the field '), the 
 irids (the ion of Ionia and the fleur-de-lis of 
 
:08 SOME ASPECTS OF MR. RUSKIn's WORK. 
 
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THE RUSKIN DRAWING SCHOOL. I OQ 
 
 Christian Europe), the asphodels (the Greek 
 flower of immortaHty), and the HHes (the Hly of 
 the Annunciation). 
 The actual examples here are mostly drawings by 
 Mr. Ruskin or his assistant. 
 
 II. Elementary G?'eek Design. 
 
 Examples of architecture, vase-painting, etc., illus- 
 trative of the strictness of Greek design. This 
 cabinet includes engravings of the Parthenon 
 and the Erechtheium, sketches of the foliage on 
 Greek coins, and engravings of mythological 
 designs on Greek vases. 
 
 III. Norther7i Gothic Design : (i) iJi Architecture, 
 (2) in its Resultajit Art. 
 
 The object of this cabinet is to illustrate "the 
 course of the arts in the North of Europe, from 
 the development of their first perfect elementary 
 school of round-arched architecture to the con- 
 summate work of German artists in the sixteenth 
 century." 
 
 The examples are arranged in the following order : — 
 Architecture : (i) the primary form of ecclesias- 
 tical architecture — photograph of Norman chapel 
 near Abbeville ; (2) a central type of pure 
 Gothic sculpture — photograph of Chartres Cathe- 
 dral ; (3) " a quite balanced example of perfect 
 Gothic, uniting all its elements (figure-sculptures, 
 diaper surface-ornament, foliation, absolute sim- 
 plicity of mechanical structure in gable and 
 arch)" — photograph of small north door of 
 Notre Dame ; (4) characteristic English Gothic, 
 when it separated itself from German and 
 
no SOME ASPECTS OF MR. RUSKIX S WORK. 
 
 French — Prout's drawings of York Minster and 
 of the chapel on the bridge of Wakefield ; (5) 
 "the grandest achievement of Gothic architec- 
 tural science " — photograph of the spire of Stras- 
 burg Cathedral ; (6) the relation of Late Gothic 
 to domestic life— photographs of Hotel Bourg- 
 theroude, Rouen, and of wooden houses at 
 Abbeville. Resultant Art: engravings from 
 Diirer and Holbein, etc. 
 
 IV. Italiaii Gothic Design .• (i) in Architecture, (2) iti 
 its Resultant Ai't. 
 
 The corresponding object of this cabinet is to 
 illustrate " the course of Southern (that is to say, 
 essentially of Italian) Art, from its first asser- 
 tion of itself as a distinct style in the thirteenth 
 century to its perfect results in the sixteenth." 
 The last cabinet illustrated also, in the work of 
 Holbein and Diirer, the intellectual power in the 
 North which led to the Reformation. This "ex- 
 hibits the full force of pure Catholicism in Italy, 
 and of the highest Christian Art, which is its 
 expression." 
 
 The examples given are — of Architecture, several 
 drawings by Mr. Ruskin from Verona, Lucca, 
 Como, Padua, and Venice (also a photograph of 
 the famous Colleone statue) ; of Resultant Art, 
 photographs of Filippo Lippi's "Annunciation'" 
 and " Nativity " at Florence, and Luinis " Adora- 
 tion of the Magi." 
 
 \'. & VI. Landscape. 
 
 The examples here are not arranged on any easily 
 discernible system, Mr. Ruskin being guided, no 
 
THE RUSKIN DRAWING SCHOOL. I I I 
 
 doubt, in their selection, b}'^ his own preferences 
 and by his possession of Turner drawings. The 
 landscape examples begin with an etching from 
 Turner's " Banks of the Loire " (in the Oxford 
 University Galleries), "because it illustrates the 
 chief motive in sentiment with Turner, and with 
 all the great landscapists — rest, in clear air and 
 by sweet waters, after the day's due labour. 
 (Compare the saw left in the wood, here, with 
 the plough in the last vignette to Rogers's 
 poems, ' Datur hora quieti.')" 
 
 VII. & VIII. Elemefita?y Zoology. 
 
 "Illustrations of the treatment of animal form by 
 the higher methods of sculpture and painting." 
 Most of the examples here are drawings by 
 Turner, Hunt, and Mr. Ruskin. But the follow- 
 ing studies or photographs from old masters, 
 etc., are included: " Pulpit at Siena," with sup- 
 porting animals ; Diirer's " St. Jerome and Lion ; " 
 "The Lion of St. Mark's;" Carpaccio's "Red 
 Parrot " (from the " St. George " Series) ; * and 
 Giovanni Pisano's " Eagle " at Pisa. 
 
 * "A beautiful scarlet — 'parrot' (must we call him?), 
 conspicuously mumbling at a violet flower under the steps ; 
 him also — finding him the scarletest and mumblingest parrot 
 I had ever seen — I tried to paint, in 1872, for the Natural 
 History Schools of Oxford — perhaps a new species, or 
 extinct old one, to immortalize Carpaccio's name and mine. 
 When all the imaginative arts shall be known no more, 
 perhaps in Darwinian Museums, this scarlet Epops Carpaccii 
 may preserve our fame " ("St. Mark's Rest," "The Shrine 
 of the Slaves," p. 9). The " Epops Carpaccii " is Educ, 161. 
 
112 SOME ASPECTS OF MR. RUSKIN S WORK. 
 
 IX. Connection between Decorative and Realistic 
 Desig?i. 
 
 " Many of the photographs and engravings in the 
 first eight cabinets are for study only, not for 
 copying ; but all in the last four are intended 
 for exact guidance in practice." The examples 
 in this cabinet include thirteenth and fourteenth 
 century missals, the sculpture on the angles of 
 the Ducal Palace, and Mr. Burne Jones's Psyche 
 drawings. 
 
 X. Etcliing, Eng?'avi?ig, and Ontline Drawing. 
 
 The models selected by Mr. Ruskin for tliese 
 branches of art are Holbein, Diirer, Leonardo, 
 and Turner; whilst Rembrandt's "Angels Ap- 
 pearing to the Shepherds" is given as "an 
 example of every kind of badness." 
 
 XI. Foliage. 
 
 Here, again, are several engravings from Turner 
 ("Florence from Fiesole," " Buckfastleigb,"" Aske 
 Hall," " Rokeby," " Kirkby Lonsdale ") ; also pho- 
 tographs or sketches from Botticelli ("Spring") 
 and Raphael (" Madonna of the Tribune "). 
 
 XI I. Rocks, IVate?', and Clouds. 
 
 Here the examples are almost entirely of Turner's 
 work. Mr. Ruskin w^as able to include many 
 originals, and has added some of his own 
 studies ; but any reader of " Modern Painters " 
 will know what engravings or photographs from 
 l^urncr would best illustrate the subject. 
 
THE RUSKIN DRAWING SCHOOL. II3 
 
 The Rudimentary Series. 
 
 This series follows so closely the lines of the Educa- 
 tional that it does not seem worth while to describe it 
 in detail. The following points may, however, serve 
 as supplementary suggestions for the formation of any 
 similar collection of examples. Under Division I., 
 above, Hans Burgkmair's woodcuts representing the 
 Triumph of Maximilian I., and photographs or sketches 
 of many royal shields and tombs, are added. Under 
 Divisions VII. and VIII. the prints of Gould's " English 
 Ornithology '' are given: "Entire dependence may be 
 placed," says Mr. Ruskin, " on their accuracy of repre- 
 sentation, and I believe even a few examples will be 
 greatly useful in exciting the interest of the younger 
 students in ornithology, and especially in the living 
 birds." Some plates from Curacci's " Natural History " 
 and Le Vaillant's " Birds of Paradise " are also given. 
 The examples of Grasser, etc., are taken from " Florae 
 Danicte'" and Mr. Loudon's " Bulbous Plants," 
 
 The inventory of the Ruskin Drawing School 
 which has now been completed will, I hope, 
 have given the reader some idea of its curious 
 and unique interest. It is interesting as things 
 are ; but if all had gone well with Mr. Ruskin, 
 it would have been more interesting still, and 
 even now it might be made far more interesting 
 than it is. In its present condition the Draw- 
 ing School, on its exhibition side, is little more 
 than an outline. There is enough to show 
 
114 SOME ASPECTS OF MR. RUSKIN S WORK. 
 
 what Mr. Ruskin intended to make of it, but his 
 intentions are to a large extent left unfulfilled. 
 The explanatory catalogues remain half un- 
 written^ and the cabinets are left either imper- 
 fectly filled or altogether empty. '' I must 
 myself," he wrote in 1870, *' make several more 
 careful drawings, to take the place of hurried 
 ones ; and, especially in the supplementary ex- 
 amples of rock and tree drawing, some of the 
 engravings will be ultimately changed, or have 
 drawings put in their place." " The greater 
 number of examples I shall choose," he said, in 
 his first lecture at Oxford, " will not at first be 
 costly. But in process of time I have good 
 hope that assistance will be given me by the 
 English pubHc in making the series here no less 
 splendid than serviceable." During his first 
 tenure of the Slade Professorship these pur- 
 poses steadily advanced, though most of the 
 "splendid" specimens added to the collections 
 were the result, I fancy, of Mr. Ruskin's un- 
 aided generosity. When he resumed the Pro- 
 fessorship in 1883 he resumed also his work 
 upon the Drawing School. A rearrangement 
 of the specimens was begun, and Mr. Ruskin 
 placed many fresh treasures at the service of 
 
THE RU5KIN DRAWING SCHOOL. I I 5 
 
 his pupils. In April, 1885, however, Mr. Ruskin 
 abruptly resigned his post, and resigned it 
 — as will be seen from the following letter of 
 explanation — in bitterness and vexation of 
 spirit :— 
 
 " MR. RUSKIN AND THE SLADE 
 PROFESSORSHIP. 
 
 " To the Editor of the Pall Mall Gazette. 
 
 " Sir, — By mischance I have not till to-day seen your 
 kindly meant paragraphs on my resignation of the Slade 
 Professorship at Oxford. Yet permit me at once to 
 correct the impression under which the}' were written. 
 Whatever may be my failure in energy or ability, the 
 best I could yet do was wholly at the service of Oxford ; 
 nor would any other designs or supposed duties have 
 interfered for a moment with the perfectly manifest 
 duty of teaching in Oxford as much Art as she gave her 
 students time to learn. I meant to die in my harness 
 there, and my resignation was placed in the Vice- 
 Chancellor's hands on the Monday following the vote 
 endowing vivisection in the University, solely in conse- 
 quence of that vote, with distinct statement to the 
 Vice-ChancelloT, intended to be read in Convocation, of 
 its being so. This statement I repeated in a letter in- 
 tended for publication in the University Gazette, and 
 sent to its office a fortnight since. Neither of these 
 letters, so far as I know, has yet been made public. It 
 is sufficient proof, however, how far it was contrary to 
 my purpose to retire from the Slade Professorship, that 
 
I 1 6 SOME ASPECTS OF MR. RUSKIN's WORK. 
 
 I applied in March of last year for a grant to build a 
 well-lighted room for the undergraduates, apart from 
 the obscure and inconvenient Ruskin School ; and to 
 purchase for its furniture the two Yorkshire drawings by 
 Turner of " Crook of Lune " and " Kirkby Lonsdale " — 
 grants instantly refused on the plea of the University's 
 being in debt. 
 
 " I am, Sir, your obedient servant, 
 
 "John Ruskin. 
 
 " Brantwood, April 2\th, 1885." 
 
 The refusal of the University to meet Mr. 
 Ruskin's lavish generosity in any corresponding 
 spirit undoubtedly had something to do with his 
 resignation.* But whatever may have been the 
 
 * I had some conversation with Mr. Ruskin on this sub- 
 ject a few months afterwards. " Double motives," he said, 
 " are very useful things ; you can do a thing for two that 
 you could not do for one." The vivisection vote was per- 
 haps the principal motive of his resignation ; but chagrin at 
 what he thought the niggardliness of the University was a 
 secondary one. Immediately on resuming the Professor- 
 ship in 1883, he; had given expression to this grievance. 
 " He noticed in his lecture yesterday," said the Pall Mall 
 Gazette, Nov. 8th, 1883, "as characteristic of the scientific 
 tendencies of the present da}', that while the University 
 will spend ^^100,000 or even ;^i 50,000 in decorating, in a 
 style as incorrect as it is un-English, rooms for the torture 
 of her students, she gives her art-workers nothing better 
 than a cellar to draw in, and her Art Professor no other 
 place for the storage of his models than a corner of his 
 private office in the gallery. Mr. Ruskin might have added 
 
THE RUSKIN DRAWING SCHOOL. 11/ 
 
 cause, the fact is certain that he parted from his 
 old University in anger. He removed from 
 the Drawing School most of such interesting 
 specimens as were not included in his previous 
 deed of gift, and it is unlikely — especially now 
 that the Ruskin Museum at Sheffield has as- 
 sumed definite shape — that they will ever be re- 
 stored. The contemplated rearrangement was 
 abandoned, and the specimens that remained 
 were put back into their old places — with the 
 result that there are a great many gaps in most 
 of the cabinets. 
 
 It is a thousand pities that something should 
 not be done to bring the collections into a more 
 completed order, and to make them more gene- 
 rally useful. I do not doubt that the University 
 
 what must have occurred to most of his closely packed and 
 half-stifled audience, that it was a pity the Slade Professor 
 had no better place to lecture in than the theatre of the 
 museum. Meanwhile the study of figure' drawing set on 
 foot by Mr. Richmond is impossible, Mr. Ruskin said, until 
 the University makes the ' indispensable additions ' to the 
 Ta^^lorian buildings." Recently', I may add, the University 
 has made considerable enlargements to its galleries, and it 
 was proposed to accommodate the Ruskin Drawing School 
 in one of the new rooms. It has been decided, however, to 
 retain the genius loci, and leave it in its original quarters, 
 the chief inconvenience of which is that the room is lighted 
 entirel}- from the east. 
 
Il8 SOME ASPECTS OF MR. RUSKIN's WORK. 
 
 had good reasons for refusing the considerable 
 expenditure for which Mr. Ruskin asked. But 
 having in its possession collections of great 
 value, it is surely false economy to grudge the 
 trifling expenditure necessary to make those 
 possessions capable of yielding their full return 
 in usefulness. The University galleries them- 
 selves (and not the Ruskin Drawing School only) 
 stand in need of overhauling — there is not even 
 so much as a complete catalogue of the pictures, 
 and the proper course, therefore, would seem to 
 be to appoint some one to the duty of organizing 
 and supervising both collections." The work 
 which such an expert might do in the Ruskin 
 Drawing School is very simple, but very useful. 
 The Standard Series should be revised and 
 completed on the general lines laid down by 
 Mr. Ruskin. The Educational and Rudimen- 
 tary Series should be amalgamated. An ex- 
 planatory and descriptive catalogue should then 
 be prepared, in the compilation of w^hich Mr. 
 
 * At Cambridge, Mr. Middleton, the Slade Professor, has 
 just been appointed Curator also of the Universit}- galleries. 
 The Curators of the University Galleries at Oxford are a 
 large board. The Keeper is Mr. Macdonald, whose work, 
 however, is already too heavy to leave him time for any 
 such task of reorganization as is suggested above. 
 
THE RUSKIN DRAWING SCHOOL. IIQ 
 
 Raskin's own catalogues would of course prove 
 of great value, but which might well give more 
 systematic and historical treatment than it was 
 within his purpose to attempt. The service 
 which the Ruskin Drawing School, thus re- 
 organized, might render to the cause of artistic 
 education throughout the country is very great. 
 Whether Oxford is ever likely to produce a 
 flourishing School of Art may well be doubted ; 
 but there is no reason whatever why it should 
 not set a standard for schools and museums of 
 art elsewhere. What Manchester with inferior 
 resources has recently tried to do," Oxford has 
 unique means of doing to much greater effect. 
 The hope and endeavour of all those v/ho be- 
 lieve in the humanizing mission of Art is that 
 an Art Gallery — small but select, and simple 
 though complete within its range — should be 
 established in every town, and even in every 
 school. The essential purposes of such collec- 
 tions must be those which Mr. Ruskin had in 
 view in arranging his Drawing School — to ex- 
 hibit what is best in each department of Art, to 
 
 * See an interesting letter from Mr. T. C. Horsfall, 
 Treasurer of the Manchester Art Museum, in the Times of 
 November 26th, 18S9. 
 
T20 SOME ASPECTS OF MR. RUSKIN's WORK. 
 
 illustrate historical development, to stimulate 
 or suggest the love of the natural objects por- 
 trayed, and to arrange such a course of practical 
 study as shall incidentally conduce to the pre- 
 vious purposes. Of collections of this kind 
 Oxford might well set the standard. In each 
 University generation there are many young 
 men at Oxford who in after life will have op- 
 portunities not only for the patronage of Art in 
 the sense of private picture-buying, but for the 
 popularization of Art by bringing it within the 
 reach of the people. The Ruskin Drawing 
 School, efficiently arranged and catalogued, 
 might become a valuable storehouse of sugges- 
 tions for the utilization of such opportunities. 
 Every year, too, the University is coming into 
 closer contact with the provinces, and the num- 
 ber of earnest men and women, eager for the 
 extension of University teaching in all kinds, 
 who visit Oxford on the occasion of the " Sum- 
 mer Meetings," is already very considerable. 
 To them, too, the Ruskin Drawing School is 
 capable of being made a source of very useful 
 inspiration. Moreover, if the collections were 
 once properly completed, the fame of them 
 would soon be noised abroad, and any committee 
 
THE RUSKIN DRAWING SCHOOL. 12 1 
 
 or individual, desirous of doing something to 
 bring Art into schools or villages, would turn 
 to Oxford as the natural quarter for guidance 
 and example. This reorganization of the 
 Ruskin Drawing School would be the best na- 
 tional purpose to which the University could 
 turn the treasures committed to its charge. It 
 would also be the best way of honouring the 
 giver of them. Mr. Ruskin's connection with 
 the School is already commemorated — as well 
 as in its name — by a marble bust of himself, 
 executed by Sir J. E. Boehm.* But the gene- 
 rosity and self-devotion of the founder of the 
 School is surely deserving also of that more 
 acceptable memorial which consists in giving 
 wider fulfilment of his purposes. 
 
 * See frontispiece. The bust bears the following inscrip- 
 tion : — 
 
 " Hanc 
 
 JoHANNis Ruskin 
 
 Hujusce scholae fundatoris 
 
 Effigiem 
 
 Amici posuerunt 
 
 1881." 
 
y 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 MR. RUSKIN AND THE WORKING MEN's COLLEGE. 
 
 Mr. Ruskin's services to National Education 
 have b}^ no means been confined to his work at 
 Oxford. Of his deep interest in the subject, no 
 reader either of '' Modern Painters " or of " The 
 Stones of Venice " will need to be reminded.* 
 Some years ago Mr. Ruskin announced it as 
 " probable that a volume especially devoted to 
 the subject of Education may be composed of 
 passages gathered out of the entire series of 
 my works " (Preface to '' In Montibus Sanctis "). 
 This probability has not yet become an accom- 
 plished fact, perhaps because of the super- 
 abundance of material which would await the 
 composer of such a volume.f 
 
 * See, especially, " Modern Painters," vol. iv., Appendix 3, 
 and " Stones of Venice," Appendix 7. 
 
 f The passages in " Fors Clavigera" "especially dcv'otcd 
 to the subject of Education " arc enumerated in Mr. 
 Faunthorpe's excellent index. The enumeration occupies 
 nearl}' seven pages. 
 
THE WORKING MEN's COLLEGE. 123 
 
 In this matter, as in others, Mr. Ruskin has 
 practised what he preached. He has not merely 
 propounded theories on the subject of education, 
 but has never lost an opportunity of putting them 
 into practice. Readers of " Fors Clavigera " 
 and of some others of his later books will recall 
 many allusions to educational experiments made 
 by Mr. Ruskin at the village school of Coniston. 
 What in his old age he does at Brantwood he 
 did long ago in his prime at Denmark Hill. 
 The new Bibliography shows us how indefati- 
 gable a lecturer he has been, and most of his 
 minor books were originally composed with 
 direct educational purpose. "The Political 
 Economy of Art " was delivered as lectures at 
 Manchester. "The Elements of Drawing " was 
 a school text-book ; and true to the principle 
 explained in the last chapter, that the teaching 
 of Art is the teaching of everything, the text- 
 book contained instructions on what books to 
 read, as well as on what lines to draw. "The 
 Two Paths," "Sesame and Lilies," and "The 
 Crown of Wild Olive " were all written as lec- 
 tures ; whilst " The Ethics of the Dust " was 
 written for a girls* school. But the chief of 
 Mr. Ruskin's earlier educational efforts was in 
 
124 SOME ASPECTS OF MR. RUSKIx's WORK. 
 
 connection with the Working Men's College. 
 Of his work there, thirty years ago, and of his 
 relations with F. D. Maurice, the founder of the 
 College, some account was given in a recent 
 chapter of " Praeterita " (vol. iii., ch. i.). The 
 following further reminiscences are supplied by 
 a friend who himself, too, has done yeoman's 
 service to the same institution. " The other 
 da}^," he says, " I was in the room of an old Art 
 pupil of Mr. Ruskin's, at the Working Men's 
 College. Seeing a very clever sketch of a dead 
 bird, in carmine lake, on the wall, I admired it, 
 and asked whose it was. ' John Ruskin's,' said 
 my friend. ' You know he used to come up to 
 our easels, one after the other, and tell us where 
 we were right, with a word of praise, and where 
 wrong, with a " Look here ! this is the way to 
 do that." Well, that bird which you've just 
 admired Ruskin did one night, on the edge of 
 my drawing-paper, in less than ten minutes, to 
 give me a hint. He dashed the sketch in as 
 fast as brush would go, and the breast, which is 
 so effective, he did by dabbing the inside of his 
 thumb on the wet paint. I wouldn't part with 
 it for anything. A year or two ago he came 
 to see me, and I showed him his sketch, and 
 
THE WORKING MKN's COLLEGE. 125 
 
 reminded him of when and how he did it. Of 
 course he'd forgotten all about it. But he 
 looked at it, and said, smilingly, " Well, it's very 
 well done." And so it is.' It was in the 
 drawing-room of the Working Men's College," 
 continues the same writer, " that Mr. George 
 Allen, Mr. Ruskin's publisher and engraver, then 
 a working carpenter and joiner, was trained ; 
 and no loyaller or better pupil ever lived. There, 
 too, the late Mr. Bunney, whose Venice paint- 
 ings are so well known, got his teaching and 
 the support of Mr. Ruskin. Mr. William Ward, 
 the skilful copyist of Turner, was another pupil. 
 It is pleasant to hear Mr. Ruskin's old students 
 talk of him ; even if they do not agree with 
 his political economy, they do with his art." 
 Another devoted '^ Ruskinian," whose disciple- 
 ship began at the Working Men's College, was 
 the late Mr. Henry Swan, the first Curator of 
 the St. George's Museum. 
 
 Mr. Ruskin's services to the College were not 
 confined to his own work as an Art-teacher. 
 It was at his prompting * that D. G. Rossetti 
 also acted for some years (1857-60) in the 
 
 * See Mr. W. M. Rossetti's life of his brother, p. 145, 
 and " Praeterita," vol. iii., p. 27. 
 
126 SOME ASPECTS OF MR. RUSKIN's WORK. 
 
 same capacity. Amongst those encountered by 
 Rossetti, at the College, was Mr. Smetham, who 
 was then a pupil in the drawing-class. Mr. 
 Ruskin has spoken two or three times in terms 
 of disappointment of the work of the College, 
 but if all its old teachers influenced so many 
 capable men, and left such pleasant memories 
 behind them, as did Mr. Ruskin, then the 
 leaven of Maurice's institution must have gone 
 very far. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 MR. RUSKIN's may QUEENS. 
 
 Next to the organization of his Oxford Schools, 
 the most systematic attempt Mr. Ruskin has 
 made to put his educational theories into 
 practice has been in connection with the St. 
 George's Museum, which was expressly in- 
 tended to illustrate his view of the educational 
 function of the ideal museum. Of this attempt 
 we shall speak in the next chapter. Mean- 
 while we miay pass to notice another educational 
 scheme of Mr. Ruskin's, which has been in actual 
 operation for some years, and has already done 
 much useful service. Much of Mr. Ruskin's 
 work, it is said, is only in the air ; but the 
 scheme which we have now to describe is on 
 the solid earth, sweetening with its presence the 
 hard realities of a college in connection with 
 the State. Some ten years ago, the Rev. J. P. 
 Faunthorpe, the President of the Whilelands 
 
128 SOME ASPECTS OF MR. RUSKIN's WORK. 
 
 Training College in Chelsea, chanced to fall 
 into correspondence with Mr. Ruskin. He had 
 noted some passage in " Fors Clavigera," be- 
 tokening, he thought, undue despondency at 
 the existing machinery of National Education. 
 Mr. Ruskin was keenly interested in what Mr. 
 Faunthorpe had to tell him, and was constant 
 in counsel and encouragement. Would Mr. 
 Ruskin present the College, Mr. Faunthorpe 
 asked, with a prize ? No ; Mr. Ruskin did not 
 approve of prizes, at least not if there were any 
 taint of competition a^iput, them ; but he would 
 be proud to present the College with a set of 
 his works. The offer was warmty accepted ; and 
 Mr. Ruskin, ever avaricious of giving, asked to 
 be allowed to present the College with the means 
 for organizing a " May Queen " Festival. In 
 each year he would present the queen with a 
 gold cross for herself, and with some forty 
 bound volumes, more or less, of his books for 
 her to award to her fellows at her will and 
 pleasure. Mr. Faunthorpe cheerfully undertook 
 the organization of the scheme, which was first 
 carried out in 1 88 1, and has since been con- 
 tinued year by year. From time to time there 
 have been some slight modifications in the 
 
THE MAY queen's GOLD CROSS (l88S). 
 {Designed by Arthur Severn.) 
 
MR. RUSKIN's may QUEENS. 129 
 
 ceremonial. The queen's gown, for one thing, 
 has been altered two or three times. Miss Kate 
 Greenaway designed one, but Mr. Ruskin did 
 not like it ; it was a mere robe, he said, and 
 made its wearer look like "Madge Wildfire." 
 The new gown has been designed by Mrs. 
 Faunthorpe, and when Mr. Ruskin sees it, will, 
 let us hope, meet with greater acceptance. The 
 cross, too, is of different workmanship each 
 year, being designed sometimes by Mr. Burne- 
 Jones, sometimes by Mr. Arthur Severn, some- 
 times by other artists. One year the cross was 
 composed out of a wild rose, and Mr. Ruskin 
 complained because there was no thorn, " as if 
 a true queen's crown could ever be without its 
 thorn." But in all essentials the May Queen 
 Festival at Whitelands has been the same from 
 year to year ; and the following account of 
 the ceremony in 1885, written at the time, may 
 serve as well as another to show the spirit and 
 the scope of this characteristic scheme, designed 
 by the " unpractical " Mr. Ruskin : — 
 
 " The celebration of May Day is one of the glories 
 which have pretty well passed away from the earth by 
 this time. The world is too much with us ; and as for 
 sports on the merry green, we arc too old for tliat 
 
 9 
 
130 SOME ASPECTS OF MR. RUSKIN S WORK. 
 
 sort of thing. Indeed, did not Piers say long ago, in 
 ' The Shepherd's Calendar ' — 
 
 ' For younkers, Palinode, such follies fitte, 
 But we tway bene well of elder witt ' 'i 
 
 And according to an authority which is always worth 
 consulting as a sort of ' prosometer,' as a test of how 
 far the power of prosaic utterance can go, ' the only 
 people now interested in the maintenance of May sports 
 are the chimney-sweepers ; for as the commencement 
 of summer deprives them in a considerable degree 
 of their business occupation, they naturally seek to 
 avail themselves of the customary liberality of festive 
 meetings.' 
 
 "But the poetry of May Day still lingers here and 
 there, even in London. There is Whitelands College, at 
 Chelsea, for instance, which held high festival yester- 
 day, and presented a spectacle such as can only be seen 
 else in Spenser's poems or Miss Greenaway's drawings. 
 Whitelands is a Training College for Girls, and the 
 ' old girls,' whose v\ ork now lies in country parishes, 
 do not forget the First of May, but send up large 
 hampers of spring flowers for decorating the ' dear old 
 school.' You pass in through the iron gate in the 
 King's Road, and find yourself in such a company of 
 sweet flowers as you will not see the like of anywhere 
 else in the town. Chapel and hall are alike bedecked, 
 and ' themselves the sweetest flowers among them all ' 
 are the young girls, dressed all of them in their smartest 
 gowns (there were no bishops present, in lawn sleeves, 
 to detect the sinful satin shoes), and each wearing 
 bunches and carrying baskets of flowers. Very pretty 
 it is to see the fresh young faces of the girls, a hundred 
 
MR. RUSKIn's may QUEENS. I3I 
 
 and fifty, perhaps, or more, gathered thus together in 
 the chapel, ' not taken out of the world in monastic 
 sorrow, but kept from its evil in shepherded peace.' 
 They are possessed now with common interests and 
 common hopes, and the sweet voice that sings, ' Oh, rest 
 in the Lord' is speaking for them all. But there are 
 ' more variations in women's life than any one would 
 imagine from the sameness of women's coiffure ; ' and 
 as one's eye lights on the saints in the painted windows 
 one turns to wonder which may be a St. Theresa in 
 the congregation below. 
 
 " But it is only after the chapel service is over that the 
 Whitelands peculiar festival begins. It is a festival, 
 held this year for the fifth time, which was instituted 
 and is maintained by Mr. Ruskin, and which realizes 
 in very quaint and pretty fashion many of his ' romantic 
 impossibihties ' about education. When the girls are 
 assembled in the hall they are bidden to proceed at 
 once to the business of the day — the election of one 
 among them to be May Queen. There is much sweet 
 excitement, delightful to behold, to know on whom the 
 choice will fall, for the voting is secret (is that, by tlie 
 way, quite Ruskinian ?) ; and it is only when May Day 
 comes round that the teachers discover who the school 
 favourite is. This year it is a beautiful brunette, but 
 she is chosen not for her beauty nor for learning, but, 
 like the Rosiere of Nanterre, simply because in the 
 ' fierce white light ' of her schoolfellows she has done 
 her duty and made herself beloved. The election is 
 ratified by much clapping of hands, and the Queen then 
 retires to be robed and crowned. Among her hand- 
 maidens is last year's Queen, the ' Dowager,' now 
 crowned only with forget-me-nots. The girls form in 
 procession, and when the Queen has taken her place on 
 
132 SOME ASPECTS OE MR. RUSKIN S WORK. 
 
 the throne, pass, two and two, in front of her, and make 
 their obeisance. Mr. Ruskin was not present yester- 
 day himself, and the gold cross which he gives each 
 year to the May Queen was presented for him by Mrs. 
 Bishop. But a true queen takes more pleasure in 
 giving than receiving, and it is her turn next to dis- 
 
 
 THE MAY QUEEN S PROCESSION. 
 (Fro)ii a draiv'nig by Edith Capper.') 
 
 tribute thirty-four volumes of Mr. Ruskin's works, given 
 by the author, bound in sumptuous purple calf, to those 
 of her subjects whom she chooses. There is no com- 
 petition about these prizes. One girl receives a prize 
 ' because she is faitliful to her friends,' another ' be- 
 cause she is fond of music,' another ' for licr sunny 
 
MR. RUSKIN's may QUEENS. 133 
 
 temper," another just ' because the May Queen likes 
 her.' It was particularly pretty to notice the smile of 
 recognition that the Queen — pale and nervous else — 
 would give as some particular friend came up to kiss 
 hands on receiving a prize ; but, indeed, in every way 
 the scene was as pretty as could be, as delicately 
 worked out and as full of suggestion as a sentence in 
 one of Mr. Ruskin's books themselves. 
 
 " Mr. Ruskin's festival gives, it is clear, a great deal of 
 innocent pleasure, and certainly they repay him at 
 Whitelands College with their best. His motto, ' To- 
 da}^' was placed on their walls ; they prayed for him 
 in their chapel service ; and in the address which Mr. 
 Faunthorpe, the Principal, delivered to the girls yester- 
 day, they were taught to regard him as one of the major 
 prophets, as doing for this age what Plato, Aristotle, 
 and Bacon have done for others. A hundred years 
 hence, Mr. Faunthorpe told them, the nineteenth century 
 will be remembered only or chiefly because Ruskin 
 lived and wrote in it — which is giving him a victory 
 with a vengeance over his enemies the steam-engines 
 and the railways. However that may be, the girls who 
 go out from Whitelands College to teach throughout 
 the country could take no better friends with them than 
 Mr. Ruskin's books. Those who know most of the 
 deficiencies of our educational curriculum will appre- 
 ciate best the value to young teachers of so spiritual 
 and stimulating an influence." * 
 
 The influence of the May Day Festival at 
 Whitelands soon made itself felt elsewhere. 
 
 * Pail Mall Gazette, May 2nd, 1885. 
 
134 
 
 The May Queens and other pupils who go out 
 from Chelsea to be teachers in National schools 
 carry with them the traditions of the place, and 
 become themselves centres of similar sweetness 
 and light. Not a year passes, Mr. Faunthorpe 
 tells me, without his hearing of some new May 
 Day Festival, and in many a country village 
 wealthy friends have been found to follow 
 Mr. Ruskin's generous example. But the most 
 interesting of these derivative festivals is in 
 Ireland, where Mr. Ruskin himself again plays 
 the earthly providence. One of the Whitelands 
 governesses, Miss Martin, was appointed a few 
 years ago to be Head Mistress of the High 
 School for Girls in Cork, and Mr. Ruskin at 
 once acceded to her request to establish a simi- 
 lar festival there. The Queen in this case — for 
 reasons which readers of ''Praeterita" will guess 
 — is a Rose Queen, instead of a Queen of the 
 May ; but Mr. Ruskin presents her in each year 
 with a gold cross and with a series of his works 
 for presentation to her chosen Maids of Honour, 
 as at Whitelands.* Mr. Ruskin has also 
 presented Miss Martin's school with a case 
 
 * A full and interesting account of the festival appeared 
 in the Cork Conslitiitioii, May 2nd, 1888. 
 
MR. RUSKIN S MAY QUEENS. I35 
 
 of rare and costly minerals, stones, and gems. 
 The case includes specimens of Mocha stone, 
 agate, jasper, flint, diamonds, gold, silver, mica, 
 quartz, amethysts, beryls, and other precious 
 stones. Some of the specimens are exceed- 
 ingly rare and exquisitely beautiful. There 
 are five uncut Brazilian diamonds, which are 
 probablyworth;^ 40, showing variations of colour 
 — white, pale yellow, green, and steel grey ; a 
 really fine nugget of gold in quartz, weighing 
 about two ounces, and a tress of native silver 
 with a trace of copper and some other metal. 
 There are several specimens of amethysts and 
 quartz, from Brazil, and three from the Ballin- 
 temple *' diamond " quarry, Blackrock. Mr. 
 Ruskin has, in addition, presented the school 
 with eighteen of his original drawings, made 
 for the illustration of ''The Stones of Venice," 
 and four of the originals of the plates in the 
 chapters on Vegetation in *' Modern Painters." 
 He has also given an illuminated cover for an 
 ancient Persian missal. The design is in gold 
 and colours, of conventional flower and leaf 
 work. A further gift was a hand-painted orna- 
 ment, consisting of two panels from the " Book 
 of Kells." Accompanying Mr. Ruskin's gift 
 
136 
 
 was the following description of twelve of the 
 specimens : — 
 
 " (i) The best external beginning of Mocha stone I 
 ever saw, but they may, perhaps, be common at this 
 locahty. You can find out at leisure. 
 
 " (2) Agate, interrupted by quartz veins, which I have 
 described at greater length somewhere. It cannot be 
 too carefully looked at with pocket lens, and may 
 some day be a classical stone. 
 
 " (3) Jasper with green coating. I believe Scottish, 
 of quite infinite interest, and infinitely multiplied into 
 infinite interest. By the time the youngest pupil in the 
 school is ninety she may know something about it. 
 
 " (4) Banded agate and jasper. Scotch ; beat it in 
 Ireland if you can. 
 
 " (5) Jasper passing into lake agate, an articular 
 agate. Scotch also ; but perhaps you may beat it at 
 the Giant's Causeway. 
 
 "(6) Undulating jasper. I never thought to part 
 with it, but it will be better at Cork. 
 
 " (7) Common black-handed flint. A rolled pebble. 
 
 " (8) Uncommon handed flint, price i^. 6d. ; but I 
 don't think you will get the like of it for 2s. 6d. 
 
 " (9) Globulce mica, the American fashion ; but it 
 will never make such good mountain as the old- 
 fashioned mica. 
 
 " (10) Straight amianthus in quartz. Pretty, but the 
 value of the specimen is in the three unpolished plains, 
 with endlessly complex and with extremely minute 
 cavities, looking like spots. 
 
 "(11) Five stories of fairy amethyst mountain. Ex- 
 tremely rare and beautiful. 
 
MR. RUSKIN S MAY QUEENS. 1 37 
 
 "(12) The last specimen I have of Sidmouth rock 
 chert, becoming jasper by infusion of colour, reds and 
 yellow oxides of iron. Everywhere a beautiful enigma." 
 
 But Mr. Ruskin's interest in Whitelands 
 College, and influence upon the successive gene- 
 rations of its scholars, are not confined to the 
 May Day Festival. He has presented the in- 
 stitution with many valuable pictures, books, 
 minerals, and manuscripts, all of which are care- 
 fully arranged for use by the girls, and for some 
 of which Mr. Ruskin himself has written de- 
 scriptive notes. The presence of all these 
 beautiful things in the different rooms of the 
 College lends a very attractive appearance to 
 the place. The walls of the Refectory are 
 covered with interesting pictures and prints, 
 including several copies from Carpaccio, a few 
 drawings by Prout, some plates from the ^' Liber 
 Studiorum," and a series of coloured prints from 
 Bettoni's " Birds of Lombardy," all presented by 
 Mr. Ruskin. In the Governesses' Room there 
 are further gifts of the same kind ; to the Sick 
 Room Mr. Ruskin has presented a little collec- 
 tion of books of his own choosing ; whilst the 
 '' Ruskin Library " comprises not only many of 
 Mr. Ruskin's own books, but a collection of other 
 
138 SOME ASPECTS OF MR. RUSKIN S WORK. 
 
 books bought for the College by him. But the 
 chief Pvuskin treasures are in the room of the 
 Principal, who every Sunday evening during 
 term time calls in some of the girls to examine 
 the books and pictures with him. Amongst 
 the books is a very fine copy of Bishop Gawin 
 Douglas's " English Virgil " — 
 
 "Imprinted at London in 1553," 
 
 to which Mr. Ruskin has added, in printing of 
 his own hand — 
 
 "And given 
 
 To the College for training of English maids 
 
 at Chelsea on Thames, 
 
 by 
 
 John Ruskin, 
 
 On the Christmas Day of 1880." 
 
 Another very interesting book is an Arabic 
 Koran, in silken satchel with a gold cord, every 
 page being profusely ornamented inflowerscrolls 
 and gold. Three large folio volumes, contain- 
 ing water-colour copies m.ade for Mr. Ruskin 
 by hand from Rinio's "Erbario," show the lavish 
 generosity with which he has enriched the 
 College. The Ruskin Cabinet, containing sixty 
 pictures — illustrative of the work of Richter, 
 
MR. RUSKIn's may QUEENS. 1 39 
 
 Diirer, and Turner — framed and mounted in the 
 same way as the examples in the Ruskin Draw- 
 ing School, is of great interest and value. Mr. 
 Ruskin wrote some notes for this cabinet, which 
 have been published in the Ritskin Reading 
 Guild Journal for 1889. The College, it is 
 pleasant to know, has met Mr. Ruskin's gene- 
 rosity in a corresponding spirit. Everything 
 that he has given is well cared for, and made 
 available for every-day use and influence. Every- 
 where, too, throughout the College, the educa- 
 tional value of beautiful things is recognized 
 and enforced, and not one class-room or dormi- 
 tory is without its exemplary picture. White- 
 lands is a College where the teachers of to- 
 morrow are themselves taught, and the influence 
 for good which Mr. Ruskin's work there has set 
 on foot throughout the country must be very 
 great. The Oxford Drawing School is the 
 practical realization of Mr. Ruskin's ideal for 
 Schools of Art. Whitelands College shows in 
 practice the ideal of the movement towards pro- 
 viding '^ Art for Schools." * 
 
 * The address of the " Art for Schools Association " (of 
 which Mr. Ruskin is the President, and to which his writ- 
 ings gave the initial impetus) is 29, Queen Square, W.C. 
 
CHAPTER v. 
 
 THE ST. George's guild. 
 
 ( With some Account of the " Riiskin Museum " at 
 Sheffield) 
 
 Mr. Ruskin's experiments as a Social Reformer 
 were, as we have seen (p. 27), a necessary con- 
 sequence of his Principles of Art. *' No great 
 arts are practicable," he says, " by any people, 
 unless they are living contented lives, in pure 
 air, out of the way of unsightly objects, and 
 emancipated from unnecessary mechanical occu- 
 pation. It is simply one part of the practical 
 work I have to do in Art teaching to bring, 
 somewhere, such conditions into existence, and 
 to show the working of them " ('' Fors Clavi- 
 gera," 1871, ix., p. 20). It was the determina- 
 tion to carry out this duty that led to the 
 formation of the St. George's Guild — the best- 
 known and most-discussed of all Mr. Ruskin's 
 practical works. The ideas underlying the 
 
THE ST. GEORGES GUILD. I4I 
 
 Guild were, indeed, no new development in his 
 mind. For many years past he had been ex- 
 horting " the gentlemen of England " to become, 
 as he w^as fond of expressing it, " soldiers of 
 the ploughshare." But few or none had listened 
 to his exhortations. '' However, this," he said, 
 " is partly my own fault for not saying more 
 clearly what I want, and for expecting people 
 to be moved by writing, instead of by personal 
 effort. The more I see of writing, the less I 
 care for it ; one may do more with a man by 
 getting ten words spoken to him face to face 
 than by the black-lettering of a whole life's 
 thought" C'Fors," 1872, xvii., p. 5). Giving 
 up, then, his reliance on mere writing, he set 
 himself first to talking face to face with such as 
 had ears to hear^ — in " Fors Clavigera " — and 
 secondly to practising what he preached. 
 
 It was in May, 1871, that the scheme was first 
 made public. In the ^* Fors " for that month 
 Mr. Ruskin called on any landlords to come and 
 help him ''who would like better to be served 
 by men tiian by iron devils," and any tenants and 
 any workmen who could vow to work and live 
 faithfully for the sake of the joy of their homes. 
 Any such as joined St. George's standard were 
 
142 SOME ASPECTS OF MR. RUSKIn's WORK. 
 
 to do as Mr. Ruskin undertook henceforth to 
 do, and give the tenth of what they had and 
 what they earned, not to emigrate with, but to 
 stay in England with, and make a Happy 
 England of her once more. And this was how 
 the happy days that are no more were to be 
 restored : — 
 
 "We will try,"' said Mr. Ruskin, "to make some 
 small piece of English ground beautiful, peaceful, and 
 fruitful. We will have no steam-engines upon it, and 
 no railroads ; we will have no untended and unthought- 
 of creatures on it ; none wretched, but the sick ; none 
 idle, but the dead. We will have no liberty upon it, 
 but instant obedience to known law and appointed 
 persons ; no equality upon it, but recognition of every 
 betterness that we can find, and reprobation of every 
 worseness. When we want to go anywhere we will 
 go there quietly and safely, not at forty miles an hour, 
 at the risk of our lives ; when we want to carry any- 
 thing anywhere we will carry it either on the backs of 
 beasts or on our own, or in carts or boats ; we will have 
 plenty of flowers and vegetables in our gardens, plenty of 
 corn and grass in our fields — and few bricks. We will 
 have some music and poetry ; the children shall learn 
 to dance in it and sing in it — perhaps some of the old 
 people, in time, may also. We will have some art, 
 moreover ; we will at least try if, like the Greeks, we 
 can't make some pots. The Greeks used to paint pic- 
 tures of gods on their pots ; we probably cannot do as 
 much, but we may put some pictures of insects on 
 them, and reptiles — butterflies and frogs, if nothing 
 
THE ST. George's guild. 143 
 
 better. There was an excellent old potter in France 
 who used to put frogs and vipers into his dishes, to 
 the admiration of mankind ; we can surely put some- 
 thing nicer than that. Little by little, some higher art 
 and imagination may manifest themselves among us, 
 and feeble rays of science may dawn for us. Botany, 
 though too dull to dispute the existence of flowers ; and 
 history, though too simple to question the nativity of 
 men ; nay, even perhaps an uncalculating and un- 
 covetous wisdom, as of rude Magi, presenting, at such 
 nativity, gifts of gold and frankincense." 
 
 In taking stock of what Mr. Ruskin has ac- 
 tually done towards realizing this Utopia it is 
 important to remember the limitations which 
 he expressly made to his enterprise. He had 
 no thought of setting himself up as leader in 
 any large movement. He did not even devote 
 all his time to the work. On the contrary, he 
 went into it during the very years when, as we 
 have already seen, he was busily engaged at 
 Oxford. His socialistic work was, to use a 
 current piece of political slang, a payment of 
 "ransom." He wanted to ease his conscience, 
 and to feel free once more to devote himself 
 single-hearted to the arts and sciences. His 
 object was to quit himself of responsibility by 
 showing what each man might do, '' My march- 
 ing days," he said, " may perhaps soon be over, 
 
144 SOME ASPECTS OF MR. RUSKIN's WORK. 
 
 and the best that I can make of myself be a 
 faithful sign-post. But what I am, or what I 
 fail to be, is of no moment to the cause. The 
 two facts which I have to teach, or sign, though 
 alone, as it seems, at present, in the signature, 
 that food can only be got out of the ground, and 
 happiness only out of honesty, are not alto- 
 gether dependent on any one's championship, 
 for recognition among mankind" ('Tors," 
 Syz, XXX., p. 19). 
 '' That food can only be got out of the ground, 
 and happiness out of honesty." These were 
 the first two facts which the Guild of St. George 
 was established to demonstrate ; and the third 
 was the fact (to cite once more Prince Leopold's 
 felicitous words) that ''the highest wisdom and 
 the highest treasure need not be costly or ex- 
 clusive" (see p. 44, ;/.). The enforcement of these 
 three facts leads us, it will be seen, to three cor- 
 responding experiments, of (l) an agricultural, 
 (2) an industrial, and (3) an artistic character, 
 respectively. The first and the second cannot, 
 indeed, be very trenchantly distinguished ; but 
 it will be more convenient to treat separately 
 the distinctively industrial part of " St. George's" 
 scheme : that will form the subject of the next 
 
THE ST. GEORGES GUILD AND MUSEUM. 1 45 
 
 chapter. In the present chapter we must no- 
 tice briefly Mr. Ruskin's experiments under the 
 other two heads. 
 
 The agricultural experiments of the St. 
 George's Guild have not been a brilliant suc- 
 cess. Perhaps they have not been given a fair 
 chance. Perhaps the times and seasons have 
 been unpropitious. But whatever explanations 
 or excuses there may be, the fact remains that 
 the St. George's farms have produced very 
 little except a plentiful crop of disappointments. 
 Mr. Ruskin has drawn many charming pictures, 
 such as the one given above, of his ideal settle- 
 ments ; but the realities have for the most part 
 been either grim or grotesque, or (more often) 
 both. The Guild is, however, the owner of 
 several acres of land in different parts of the 
 country, and there is some reason to hope that 
 past failures will lead to future successes. If 
 there are any disciples of Count Tolstoi who, 
 having decided "what to do," are casting about 
 for plots of ground on which to do it, they 
 should communicate with the Trustees of St. 
 George's Guild.* 
 
 * Particulars of some of the agricultural experiments 
 referred to above will be found in many places throughout 
 
 10 
 
146 SOME ASPECTS OF MR. RUSKIn's WORK. 
 
 Meanwhile it is pleasant to turn to a branch 
 of St. George's work which, within its appointed 
 range, has been completely successful already, 
 and which is now destined to be more widely 
 useful. This is the St. George's Museum, 
 hitherto housed in a cottage at Walkley, situ- 
 ated upon a hill two miles out of Sheffield. It 
 was intended to be not a show place, but rather 
 a model of the Museum which might profitably 
 and practically be established in every town, 
 and the lowly aspect of the building at Walkley 
 is in keeping with the modest object of the in- 
 stitution. Mr. Ruskin has himself explained 
 why he selected Sheffield to be the site of his 
 experiment : — 
 
 "The answer is a simple one — That I acknowledge 
 iron -work as an art necessary and useful to man, and 
 English work in iron as masterful of its kind. . . . 
 Therefore it is fitting that of the schools (of St. George) 
 for the workmen and labourers of England, the first 
 should be placed at Sheffield. Besides this merely 
 systematic and poetical fitness, there is the further 
 practical reason for our first action being among this 
 
 % 
 " Fors.' The " Master's Reports " contain further informa- 
 tion. Mr. Ruskin's "General Statement, Explaining the 
 Nature and Purposes of St. George's Guild," may be ob- 
 tained from Mr. George Allen (6d.). 
 
THE ST. GEORGES GUILD AND MUSEUM. I47 
 
 order of craftsmen in England, that in cutler's iron-work 
 we have (in the town of Sheffield) at this actual epoch 
 of our history the best of its kind done by English hands, 
 unsurpassable, I presume, when the workman chooses 
 to do all he knows, by that of any living nation ; not 
 for this reason only, however, but because Sheffield is 
 in Yorkshire, and Yorkshire is yet in the main temper 
 of its inhabitants Old English, and capable, therefore, 
 yet of the ideas of honesty and piety by which Old 
 England lived ; finally, because Sheffield is within easy 
 reach of beautiful natural scenery, and the best art of 
 English hands, at Lincoln, York, Durham, Selby, Foun- 
 tains, Bolton, and Furness. For these great primary 
 reasons, including many others, I have placed our first 
 Museum there, in good hope also that other towns, far 
 and near, when they see how- easily such a thing can 
 be done, will have their museums of the same kind, as 
 no less useful to them than their churches, gasometers, 
 or circulating libraries." 
 
 Sheffield, it may be added, has justified Mr. 
 Ruskin's choice by meeting his generosity in 
 an admirably practical fashion, as we shall pre- 
 sently see. 
 
 As for the contents of the Museum in general, 
 the following description is given in the Cata- 
 logue prepared by Mr. Howard Swan, son of 
 the late Curator : — 
 
 "The Museum contains specimens, copies, casts, etc., 
 selected by John Ruskin, of the truly greatest of human 
 art of the times of the highest development in each 
 
148 SOME ASPECTS OF MR. RUSKIn's WORK. 
 
 branch, and from those parts of the world where they 
 best flourished, so arranged and explained as to be — 
 first, a readil}' accessible repository of specimens of 
 the finest work hitherto done, whether in painting, 
 illumination, engraving, drawing, or sculpture, etc., and 
 of the finest natural productions, in the shape of cr3-stal- 
 ized gems and precious stones ; it will have nothing in 
 it but what deserves respect in art or admiration in 
 nature ; secondly, a guide to the rise and development 
 of nations, as evidenced in their art ; thirdly, a school 
 of drawing and painting, with examples and instruc- 
 tions, after the manner of tlie old Tuscan masters, as 
 set forth in ]\Ir. Ruskin's ' The Laws of Fesole,' in 
 which things interesting in natural history or in legend 
 are utilized as drawing copies, while a true system 
 of training the eye and hand is taught." 
 
 The reader who wishes for more detailed in- 
 formation about the contents will find all he 
 wants in the Catalogue just cited.* For the 
 purposes of a desultory look round, we cannot 
 do better than put ourselves in Mr. Ruskin's 
 hands. In 1879 the late Prince Leopold spent 
 some time at the Museum, and Mr. Ruskin 
 pointed out to him the chief objects of interest. 
 From the account of this visit published in the 
 Sheffield Independent I borrow the following 
 particulars. Mr. Ruskin first drew attention 
 
 * It may be obtained of Mr. George Allen, price \s. 
 
^ 
 

THE ST. GEORGES GUILD AiND MUSEUM. I49 
 
 to Verocchio's " Madonna and Child," the only 
 specimen of that master in this country,* and 
 "given to me," added Mr. Ruskin, "in Venice 
 by a gracious fortune, to show to the people of 
 Sheffield," to whom, he explained, it was espe- 
 cially appropriate, since, besides being an un- 
 rivalled painter, Verocchio was also a great 
 worker in iron. Mr. Ruskin dwelt with enthu- 
 siasm on the teachings and technical merits of 
 this picture — on its lessons of the reverence 
 that is due to woman, and the reverence that 
 all Christianity, through that, its purest element, 
 shows (in the kneeling Virgin) to Christ. That 
 picture, he said, was an answer to the inquiry 
 often addressed to him, " What do you want to 
 teach us about Art ? " It was perfect in all 
 ways — in drawing, in colouring ; on every part 
 the artist had worked with the utmost toil man 
 could give. He drew especial attention to the 
 beauty and detail of the Virgin's girdle of em- 
 bossed gold. A copy, by Mr. Ruskin, of Car- 
 
 * I do not know the genealogy of Mr. Ruskin's Verocchio. 
 But in the National Gallery there are two pictures (296 
 and 781) ascribed cither to Verocchio or to Pollajuolo. See 
 my "Popular Handbook to the National Gallery'* (Mac- 
 millan), under 296 (in Room I.). 
 
150 SOME ASPECTS OF MR. RUSKIN S WORK. 
 
 paccio's *' St. Ursula " next attracted attention. 
 The power of that Museum would, Mr. Ruskin 
 went on to say, depend upon its giving pleasure, 
 and by the attractions of beauty, but as the 
 foundation from which all teaching must start, 
 they had there the most perfect specimens of 
 the Bible — the Baskerville, the German Zurich 
 Bible, with plates mostly by Holbein and Diirer 
 — which are unequalled for perfect illustration 
 of the meaning of the Scriptures. Then there 
 were elaborate specimens of English illuminated 
 MSS. of the Vulgate, and following these the 
 first perfect copy of Holbein's ''Dance of Death." 
 After that again came Carpaccio's ''Death of St. 
 Jerome," the translator of the Bible into Latin ; 
 and then St. George. 
 
 Turning from these illustrative keys to the 
 teachings of his Museum, Mr. Ruskin drew 
 Prince Leopold's attention to his unique collec- 
 tion of minerals and precious stones — to the 
 specimens of gold and virgin silver, amethyst, 
 onyx stone, and many o<"her unrivalled examples 
 of the wonders of mineralogy. " I want," said 
 he, "to get everything beautiful;" and in an- 
 swer to a question, he added, " I am proud to 
 say that, unlike other collectors, I never spare 
 
THE ST. GEORGE S GUILD AND MUSEUM. I 5 I 
 
 cutting my specimens, always looking to that 
 which will best show texture. My main aim 
 is to get things to show their beauty." Then 
 passing from the upper case of precious stones 
 and minerals, Mr. Ruskin showed man}^ of the 
 treasures in the drawers, beginning with the 
 simple flint pebble, and passing on in natural 
 succession to jasper and agates, to specimens 
 of which, showing all the wondrous laws of 
 their structure, he called attention ; then on 
 to quartz and felspar ; " and so we get," said 
 he, " the constituents of granite ; and getting 
 that, you go on to the constituents of everything 
 else." Then there were amethysts, cut so as 
 to show their stellar form, and opals and crystals, 
 with their perfectly natural facets — types of a 
 beauty with which it is Mr. Ruskin's hope to 
 attract working men to an interest in the struc- 
 ture of such things. 
 
 Turning next to the cabinets, in which are 
 stored his etchings and photographs, Mr. Rus- 
 kin show^ed a photograph from that earliest 
 church in Venice on which is inscribed his 
 favourite legend, enjoining on the merchants to 
 be just, and to have their weights true. That, 
 said Mr. Ruskin, was the beginning of the whole 
 
152 SOME ASPECTS OF MR. RUSKIN's WORK. 
 
 commercial prosperity of Venice ; from that came 
 the pure gold of the Venetian zecchiiii (ducats). 
 Mr. Firth would, he thought, be interested to 
 know that when he was daguerreotyping in 
 Venice, and wanted absolutely pure gold for his 
 plates, he could get nothing so pure as these 
 old Venetian coins; and all the city's prosperity 
 was the outcome of that honest thoroughness. 
 A series of photographs from Venice, showing 
 the various forms of the Greek acanthus, was 
 exhibited, Mr. Ruskin drawing especial atten- 
 tion to the variety introduced by the play of 
 the workman's hand, no one leaf being like an- 
 other. In drawings of his own which he pro- 
 duced, Mr. Ruskin said his object had been to 
 show how our English leaves were adapted to 
 the same treatment — the oak leaf, for instance. 
 He hoped to show a series of rude carvings by 
 Sheffield boys and girls, from natural leaves. 
 He was going to have a series carved in wood, 
 and the cabbage or kale would be the first, for 
 that w^as the vegetable which in the North was 
 the origin of our most beautiful sculptures. Mr. 
 Ruskin showed with pride a cast of one of the 
 vine leaves from the Ducal Palace, displaying 
 admirably, with a fidelity that nothing could 
 
THE ST. GEORGE'S GUILD AND MUSEUM. 1 53 
 
 rival, the patient skill of the workman of the 
 fourteenth century, and an edge than which 
 nothing could be finer or clearer. 
 
 Next Mr. Ruskin drew attention to a rough 
 block of sandstone — a specimen showing the 
 pure cleavage of the sands of England, " which, 
 thanks again to ' Fors,' I was able to take from 
 Brantwood." The lesson herein was character- 
 istic of the whole teaching of the Museum — a 
 leading up from the simplest thing to those 
 greater things on which he had been discours- 
 ing ; and turning to the Prince, Mr. Ruskin 
 observed, " You, sir, said in your most excel- 
 lent address that England is the mother of great 
 nations. May we not teach her to remember 
 also that she has great ancestors ? " With re- 
 ference to his projects in regard to the Museum, 
 Mr. Ruskin said he did not want to build an- 
 other room until he got that one room into 
 perfect condition. Then, when that room was 
 made the vestibule, and in this way showing the 
 source of all beauty, as he got power — having 
 been quietly acquiring the necessary land — he 
 hoped to make reading-rooms for the work- 
 men, which they could use in connection with 
 this room. Drawing his Royal Highness's 
 
54 
 
 attention to the beautiful view from the win- 
 dows, now lighted up by gleams of sunlight, 
 Mr. Ruskin continued, '' I hope always to have 
 pretty things for them to see, and light to read 
 by, and fitting everything close as I do so. 
 And I hope it may be filled by workmen who 
 will join to scientific teaching this study of art 
 and nature, and that it will be felt by the town 
 worth making an effort to fill the rooms with 
 books." *'If anything now fails," added Mr. 
 Ruskin, modestly, ''it will be my fault;" but 
 he was understood to say that the town autho- 
 rities would find him in every way obedient to 
 their desires — as his Royal Highness would do 
 him the justice of admitting that he was ever 
 submissive to the powers of the land, as repre- 
 sented by her most Gracious Majesty and her 
 royal children. 
 
 A king's treasury such as this which was 
 disclosed to the Prince is worth walking a mile 
 or two, Mr. Ruskin thought, to see, and hence 
 it was that the Museum was set some little way 
 out of the town, perched on a hill, and in the 
 midst of green fields.* For the peculiarity of 
 
 * An illustrated article on the Walkley Museum, with 
 some particulars supplied by Mr. Swan, appeared in the 
 
THE ST. George's guild and museum. 155 
 
 Sheffield among manufacturing towns is the 
 close proximity to it of some of the most beau- 
 tiful scenery in England. From the front door 
 of the Walkley Museum to the right is an ex- 
 tensive view of the Valley of the Don, with the 
 woods of Wharncliffe Crags far away in the 
 distance ; while to the left, and also to be seen 
 from the Museum windows, is that Rivelian 
 valley which Elliot, the Corn-law rhymer, made 
 his favourite resort : — 
 
 " Oh that I were a primrose, 
 
 To bask in sunny air, 
 Far away from the plagues that make 
 
 Town-dwelhng men s despair ! 
 Or like a rainbow laughing 
 
 O'er Rivelin and Don, 
 When misty morning calleth up 
 
 Her mountains one by one." 
 
 In the visitors' book it is interesting to note 
 the places from which pilgrims have come — 
 London, Leeds, Hull, Manchester, Chester, Bir- 
 mingham, Canada, New York, Australia, and 
 
 Pall Mall Gazette, May 14th, 1886. From that article I have 
 borrowed the following few paragraphs. Some reminis- 
 cences of the late Mr. Swan, " the faithful steward of the 
 Ruskin Museum," appeared in the Pall Mall Gazette, April 
 2nd and 3rd, 1889. 
 
156 SOME ASPECTS OF I\IR. RUSKIn's WORK, 
 
 even China. Some of these pilgrims have lodged 
 in neighbouring cottages, and visited the Mu- 
 seum day after day for as long as six weeks 
 together. The secret of the attractiveness of 
 Mr. Ruskin's Museum is its adherence to two 
 golden rules, which are too often ignored in 
 more imposing institutions. In the first place, 
 there is no confusing mass of heterogeneous ob- 
 jects. In quantity there is very little, and every- 
 thing is co-ordinated in an intelligible scheme 
 of artistic education. And in the second place, 
 whatever there is, is beautiful and good of its 
 kind. The result is, Mr. Ruskin assures us, 
 that every visitor, of whatever class, to the little 
 Walkley Museum, who has any real love for 
 Art, has acknowledged the interest and value 
 of the things collected in its single room. 
 
 The Corporation of Sheffield have through- 
 out shown the warmest interest in the Museum 
 which Mr. Ruskin thus located near their town." 
 Some time ago they proposed to build a grand 
 new casket for these art treasures, and the 
 negotiations with Mr. Ruskin were nearly 
 
 * The following paragraphs arc mostly borrowed from 
 an article on the Mccrsbrook Park, by " F.," in the Pall Mall 
 Gazette, January 6th, 1890, 
 
157 
 
 successfully carried through, until the Corpora- 
 tion made it a condition that the treasures should 
 be secured to the town in perpetuity, where- 
 upon Mr. Ruskin waxed wroth, and took to 
 drawing Anagallis tcncUa (or was it wild straw- 
 berry ?), and would have no more to do with 
 Mayor or Corporation. But that was long ago, 
 and since then the Guild has fallen on evil 
 days ; its honoured Master has been stricken 
 with illness ; its farms have gone the way of 
 most farms ; but through good report and evil 
 report the faithful Corporation has ever been 
 ready to help the afflicted Guild. At last it be- 
 came evident that the present building could 
 no longer be tolerated. Every year hundreds 
 of pilgrims were '' symbolically instructed " by 
 struggling up that awful hill, and the complaints 
 were loud and many ; besides, Walkley could 
 not hold half the treasures. Mr. Baker (one of 
 the trustees) had piles of drawings at Bewdley, 
 many were still at Brantwood, and at Sheffield 
 itself the town clerk's office was idealized by 
 quantities of pictures and minerals, poured out 
 unexpectedly one day at the feet of the corpora- 
 tion by the all-generous Master. The public 
 had an opportunity a few years ago of seeing 
 
158 SOME ASPECTS OF MR. RUSKIn's WORK. 
 
 at the Fine Art Society's galleries several speci- 
 mens of the drawings which Mr. Ruskin had in 
 recent years commissioned on behalf of the 
 St. George's Guild.* 
 
 But there was no room for them in the Mu- 
 seum. Indeed, already it had been found ne- 
 cessary to put up a wooden shed in the garden, 
 in order to accommodate the large picture of 
 the facade of St. Mark's which Mr. Ruskin had 
 bought from the late Mr. Bunney. Now, by 
 happy chance Sheffield has lately bought a park 
 just on the outskirts of the town, and in it 
 stands a fine old Georgian mansion. In every 
 way it seems suitable for the Ruskin Museum. 
 Tram-cars run from the heart of the town to 
 the edge of the park, then a pleasant walk of 
 three minutes, up an avenue of old trees, brings 
 the student to Meersbrook Park. The rooms 
 are spacious, well proportioned, and admirably 
 lighted. There is a long gallery, with three 
 large windows, and a smaller one excellently 
 adapted for lectures and classes. Then there 
 are quiet, airy rooms where students can copy 
 drawings or study missals, and up-stairs is a 
 
 * Ma}', 1886. A catalogue of this exhibition, with a 
 prefatory note by Mr. Ruskin, was pubh'shed. 
 
159 
 
 complete set of living rooms for the curator. 
 All is solid, dr}^, quiet, and well removed from 
 smoke and dirt. Close to the hall is its fine 
 old garden, enclosed in red brick walls, and 
 stocked with an abundance of flowers, fruit, 
 and vegetables. 
 
 Norw^ere these the only features which seemed 
 to mark out Meersbrook Park as the ideal 
 home for the Museum of the St. George's Guild. 
 Did not the Master write hopefully of a '' cloistral 
 inn," holy tavern, or other ideal hostelry which 
 (with a no less ideal hostess) w^as to form part 
 of the Museum ? Here, then, is the hope real- 
 ized, for at the end of a little woodland path 
 is a beautiful open-timbered house, dating back 
 to the earl}^ part of the fifteenth century. Two 
 bishops were born there, and the old building 
 is known still as the Bishop's House. I do not 
 presume to judge of the requirements of a 
 cloistral inn, but the old house seems well fitted 
 to comfortably lodge students and visitors. This 
 time the negotiations have been brought to a 
 triumphant ending. The Corporation offered the 
 hall, garden, and Bishop's House to the Guild, 
 conditionally on the art collection being secured 
 to them for twenty years, and the trustees 
 
l60 SOME ASPECTS OF MR. RUSKIN's WORK. 
 
 joyfully accepted the offer (August, 1889). It 
 is a rule of the Guild " that the Master must 
 not be bothered," so the matter was briefly laid 
 before Mr. Ruskin, and his cousin, Mrs. Severn, 
 promptly forwarded his ratification of the scheme. 
 The mansion has been suitably decorated ; the 
 collections have been transferred to it, and the 
 new Museum was opened by the Earl of Carlisle 
 on April 15th, 1 890. A greatly enlarged career 
 of usefulness has thus been opened up for the 
 Ruskin Museum, which will long remain, we 
 may hope, as a monument of the Acts promoted 
 by Mr. Ruskin's '' Gospel." * 
 
 * The Curator of the Museum is Mr. Wilh'am White, 
 from whom all particulars with regard to its rules, hours of 
 opening, etc., may be obtained. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 SOME INDUSTRIAL EXPERIMENTS. 
 
 The place occupied in Mr. Ruskin's schemes of 
 practical endeavour by the industrial experi- 
 ments of the St. George's Guild cannot be better 
 described than in Mr. Ruskin's own words. 
 " The notices which I see," he wrote in January, 
 1886, "in the leading journals, of efforts now 
 making for the establishment of industrial vil- 
 lages, induce me to place before the members 
 of the St. George's Guild the reasons for their 
 association, in a form which may usefully be 
 commended to the attention of the general public. 
 The St. George's Guild was instituted with a 
 view of showing, in practice, the rational organi- 
 zation of country life, independent of that of 
 cities. All the efforts, whether of the Government 
 or the landed proprietors of England, for the help 
 or instruction of our rural population, have been 
 made under two false suppositions : the first, 
 
 II 
 
1 62 SOME ASPECTS OF UR. RUSKIN's WORK. 
 
 that country life was henceforward to be sub- 
 ordinate to that of towns ; the second, that the 
 landlord was, for a great part of the year, to 
 live in the town, and thence to direct the man- 
 agement of his estate. Whatever may be the 
 destiny of London, or Paris, or Rome in the 
 future, I have always taught that the problem of 
 right organization of country life was wholly in- 
 dependent of them ; and that the interests of the 
 rural population, now thought, by the extension 
 of Parliamentary suffrage, to be placed in their 
 own keeping, had always been so, and to the 
 same degree, if they had only known it. 
 Throughout my writings on social questions I 
 have pointed to the former life of the Swiss (re- 
 presented with photographic truth by Jeremias 
 Gotthelf),* and to the still existing life of the 
 Norwegians and Tyrolese, perfectly well known 
 to every thoughtful and kind-hearted traveller in 
 their respective countries, — as examples, nearly 
 perfect, of social order independent of cities : — 
 but with Carlyle, I have taught also that in the 
 English, French, and Italian natures there was, 
 superadded to the elements of the German and 
 
 * Sec, e.^., his "Ulric the Fann-scrvant,'" translated by 
 Mrs. Firth (G. Allen). 
 
SOME INDUSTRIAL EXPERIMENTS. 1 63 
 
 Norwegian mind, a spirit of reverence for their 
 leaders in worldly things, and for their monitors 
 in spiritual things, which was their greatest 
 strength and greatest happiness, in the forfeiture 
 of which, by their nobles, had passed away their 
 own honour, and on the loss of which, by the 
 people, had followed inevitably the degradation 
 of their characters, the destruction of their arts, 
 and the ruin of their fortunes " {" Master's Re- 
 port," 1885, PP- i> 2). The object, then, of the 
 efforts described in this chapter has been to re- 
 create these lost arts, not by organizing ''in- 
 dustrial villages," but, what is a very different 
 thing, by reviving village industries. 
 
 " A subject which is of the deepest interest 
 to me," wrote Mr. Ruskin, in an earlier report 
 than the one just cited, " is the success of Mr. 
 Albert Fleming in bringing back the old indus- 
 try of the spinning-wheel to the homes of West- 
 moreland, greatly increasing their happiness, 
 and effectively their means of support, by the 
 sale, already widely increasing, of the soundest 
 and fairest linen fabrics that care can weave or 
 field-dew blanch." The description of this re- 
 vived spinning industry given in the first of the 
 following sections has been kindly written for 
 
164 SOME ASPECTS OF MR. RUSKIn's WORK. 
 
 me by Mr. Fleming. " For full account of the 
 kindly and honest trade in homespun work I 
 may," wrote Mr. Ruskin, " happily and thank- 
 fully refer the reader to the article in the Pall 
 Mall Gazette of Monday, February 8th [1886]. 
 ... I have nothing more closely at heart, nor 
 can any of my friends oblige me more than by 
 their support of it." The description of this 
 second village industry given in the second sec- 
 tion is reprinted from the article referred to by 
 Mr. Ruskin ; whilst in the third section I have 
 given some account of an allied experiment in 
 the case of a town industry. 
 
 § I- 
 
 THE LANGDALE LINEN INDUSTRY. 
 
 \_By Mr. Albert Fleming?^ 
 
 Amongst the evils resulting from the gradual 
 depopulation of the villages is that round us here, 
 in Westmoreland, all the old trades are dying or 
 dead — bobbin-turning, charcoal-burning, wood- 
 carving, basket-making, hand-spinning and 
 weaving — some are clean vanished, and others 
 are the mere ghosts of their old selves. My 
 
SOME INDUSTRIAL EXPERIMENTS. 1 65 
 
 own personal experiment has been to try and 
 reintroduce the hand-spinning and weaving of 
 linen. For years past Mr. Ruskin has been 
 eloquentl}' beseeching English men and maidens 
 once more to spin and weave. Wordsworth, too, 
 melodiously lamented the disuse of the spinning- 
 wheel ; but for all that, it was as practically ex- 
 tinct all over England as our great-grandmothers' 
 sedan-<:hairs. It figured on Covent Garden stage 
 every season, but Margaret's thread was scarcely 
 of a marketable quahty. And if the wheels 
 were obsolete, much more so were the distaff 
 and spindle. When Lady Freake's pretty young 
 ladies gave their Greek play some years ago, 
 not one of them (nor the learned Professor who 
 arranged them either) had any idea how to hold 
 her distaff, much less how to spin a thread. 
 
 In the face of all this prevailing ignorance I 
 determined to try and bring the art back to the 
 Westmoreland w^omen. Scattered about on the 
 fell side were many old women, too blind to 
 sew and too old for hard work, but able to 
 sit by the fireside and spin, if any one would 
 show them how, and buy their yarn. When I 
 broached my scheme to a circle of practical rela- 
 tions a Babel of expostulation arose, wild as a 
 
1 66 SOME ASPECTS OF MR. RUSKIN's WORK. 
 
 Parsifal chorus. " It won't pay ; no one wants 
 linen to last fifty years ; it's fantastic, impracti- 
 cable, sentimental, and quixotic." But to balance 
 
 PEASANT-WOMAN SPINNING. 
 (From a drawing by Edith Capper.') 
 
 all this came a voice from Brantwood, saying, 
 " Go ahead ; " so I went ahead, hunted up an 
 old woman who had spun half a century ago, 
 and discovered some wheels of a similar period. 
 
SOME INDUSTRIAL EXPERIMENTS. 16/ 
 
 I got myself taught spinning, and then set to 
 work to teach others. I tried my experiment 
 here, in the Langdale Valley, in Westmoreland, 
 half-way between Mr. Ruskin's home at Con- 
 iston and Wordsworth's at Rydal. Sixty years 
 ago every cottage here had its wheel, and every 
 larger village its weaver. Happy days those, 
 " before the present years were sought out, or 
 ever the inventions of them that now sin were 
 turned." Our first difficulty was to get wheels ; 
 we ransacked the country side, advertised far 
 and wide, and bought and begged anything that 
 had a leg to stand on or a wheel to turn. De- 
 lightful old ladies routed out their lumber-rooms 
 and garrets, and here and there a farmer's wife 
 brought tidings of a wheel having been heard 
 of in some remote valle}^ Some cam^e from 
 Stornoway, and others from the Isle of Man. 
 By-and-by the demand became so great that we 
 held a solemn council with the village carpenter, 
 and ultimately he made us fifteen good service- 
 able wheels. 
 
 What dire difficulties arose over our first 
 home-made wheel ! Birmingham either could 
 not or would not turn out the iron fittings, and 
 actually all Sheffield could not make us the 
 
1 68 SOME ASPECTS OF MR. RUSKIN's WORK. 
 
 necessary left-handed screws. When that first 
 wheel was completed and worked well I was 
 
 C Capper 
 
 " ST. MARTIN S, LANGDALE. 
 {From a draivin^ by Edith Ca/>/>cy.) 
 
 ready to bear it in triumph through the street, 
 like Cimabue's picture. I wanted to carry out 
 
SOME INDUSTRIAL EXPERIMENTS. 1 69 
 
 the whole process, from the flax in the field to 
 the sheet on the bed, but that I found impossible, 
 and I have to get my flax from Ireland. Then 
 I took a little cottage, and made it into a spin- 
 ning school ; a quaint place, exactly fulfilling 
 Horace's injunction, " Near the house let there 
 be a spring of water, and a little wood close by." 
 Kind lady friends rallied round me, and gave me 
 practical help in organizing and carrying on the 
 scheme. We soon had many pupils, and appli- 
 cations for wheels came from all sides. When 
 a woman could spin a good thread I let her take 
 a wheel home, and gave her the flax, buying it 
 back from her when spun, at the rate of 2s. 6d. 
 per pound of thread. Next came the weaving. 
 In a cellar in Kendal we discovered a loom ; it 
 was in twenty pieces, and when we got it home 
 not all the collective wisdom of the village knew 
 how to set it up. Luckily we had a photograph 
 of Giotto's Campanile, and by help of that the 
 various parts were rightly put together. We 
 then secured an old weaver, and one bright Easter 
 morning saw our first piece of linen woven — the 
 first purely hand-spun and hand-woven linen 
 produced in all broad England in our generation. 
 A significant fact that, if you think all round it. 
 
170 SOME ASPECTS OF MR. RUSKIN S WORK. 
 
 Over that first twenty yards the scofters rejoiced 
 greatly. I own it seemed terrible stuff, frightful 
 in colour and of dreadful roughness, with huge 
 lumps and knots meandering up and down its 
 surface. But we took heart of grace, and re- 
 freshed ourselves by reading that beautiful 
 passage in the " Seven Lamps " (" The Lamp of 
 Life," p. 21) which convinced us that these httle 
 irregularities were really the honourable badges 
 of all true hand work. Better still, an elect lady 
 called one day, and even without the prelimi- 
 nary refreshment of the passage from the 
 " Seven Lamps," she pronounced the stuff de- 
 lightful, and bought a dozen yards, at four 
 shillings a yard. 
 
 Having got our linen, the next process was 
 to bleach it. I read various treatises on bleach- 
 ing, and discovered that all the processes were 
 more or less injurious both to workmen and to 
 stuff; so, as Giotto fixed our loom for us, Homer 
 taught us the true principle of bleaching, and 
 we adopted the simple method described in the 
 " Odyssey." Sun, air, and dew were our only 
 chemicals : potent magicians they, changing by 
 their sweet alchemy our coarse brown stuff into 
 soft white linen. Now, Mr. Howells puts this 
 
SOME INDUSTRIAL EXPERIMENTS. 
 
 171 
 
 wise axiom into the lips of one of his heroines, 
 '* Before you learn to do a thing, be sure people 
 want it." To my great delight, I found people 
 
 mm 
 
 " OLD JOHN, THE WEAVER. 
 {From a drazviiig by Edith Capper.) 
 
 did want real hand-made linen, linen that they 
 could hand down as family heirlooms, and that 
 rust and moth could not corrupt. Orders and 
 
1/2 SOME ASPECTS OF MR. RUSKIN S WORK. 
 
 inquiries came from all parts of England. Fash- 
 ion helped us, too, for our linen was eagerly 
 sought after for embroidery, for curtains, por- 
 tieres, chair-backs, tea-cloths, and a dozen 
 other elegant inutilities ; so then, to quote the 
 " Spectator," " I took the laudable mystery of 
 embroidery into my serious consideration," and 
 enrolled a staff of about forty poor ladies, who 
 are experienced workers, and for whose work 
 we have a ready sale. 
 
 And now to wind up with a few facts. We 
 have two looms going, and about thirty women 
 at work. The old weaver gets a fixed wage of 
 165. a week and a good cottage rent free. The 
 best of our spinners earn about 6s. a week. 
 We make seventeen different kinds of linen, 
 varying in price from 2s. to 6s. a yard. The 
 widest linen is 44 inches, and its price is 
 55. 6d. a 3'ard. Stout, durable sheeting (very 
 white and soft) is our staple production, but we 
 aspire to table-cloths and body linen by-and- 
 by. All money produced by the sale of linen 
 is paid into the bank, and the profits will be 
 divided among the workers at the end of the 
 year. If any nice old-fashioned people want 
 any of our linen, or care to know anything more 
 
SOME INDUSTRIAL EXrERIMENTS. 1/3 
 
 about our little enterprise, let them write to me, 
 at Neaum Crag, Langdale, Ambleside. 
 
 § 2. 
 
 Some ten years ago, when " Fors Clavigera" 
 was still running its course, and Mr. Ruskin 
 was telling all true English girls that among 
 other things they must learn to spin and weave, 
 a correspondent wrote to him from Laxey, in 
 the Isle of Man, to say that there was still a 
 good deal of spinning done on that little island. 
 Unfortunately, however, there were no longer 
 any young girls learning to spin, and there 
 seemed every prospect that in a few years more 
 the spinning-wheel would be as great a curiosity 
 in the Isle of Man as it was already in Lanca- 
 shire. The reason was simple enough. There 
 was still a healthy native industry for women 
 in spinning the wool of the Isle-bred sheep, but 
 the market was so poor that frequently infirm 
 and aged women were obliged to leave their 
 cottages and their spinning-wheels to work in 
 the mines. This was the natural tendency, 
 everybody said, of inevitable laws ; but Mr. 
 
174 SOME ASPECTS OF MR. RUSKIN's WORK. 
 
 Ruskin was well accustomed to stand contra 
 mundtimy and determined to make a last effort 
 to save " the venerable art " that was being so 
 remorselessly '' torn from the poor." 
 
 He at once found his man in the correspon- 
 dent above referred to, Mr. Egbert Rydings, 
 with whose intelligent help the decrepit indus- 
 try was quickly put on its legs. Mr. Rydings's 
 heart was in the business : there could be 
 no doubt of that. Why, every blanket and 
 sheet, every piece of flannel and cloth, every 
 pair of stockings, in his house, had been spun 
 either by his wife or by her mother before her. 
 " We have now linen sheets in wear," wrote 
 Mr. Rydings, with pleasant pride, " not a hole 
 or a tear in them, that were spun by my wife's 
 mother — and she, poor body, has been dead 
 twenty-eight or twenty-nine years — the flax 
 grown on their own farm." What do you think 
 of that ? And did not the daughters of Lord 
 Auckland, when he was Bishop of Sodor and 
 Man, go ever}' Saturday afternoon to the dear 
 old lady to learn to spin ? Mr. Rydings was 
 thus reviving a family tradition as well as a 
 village industry. First of all, Mr. Ruskin found 
 money to encourage some of the older and 
 
^SE LI8^ 
 
 OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
SOME INDUSTRIAL EXPERIMENTS. 1 75 
 
 feebler workers, and he then had a water-mill 
 built. He has often been accused of prefer- 
 ring the beautiful to the useful, and I give the 
 accompanying sketch of St. George's Mill, at 
 Laxey, to refute the accusation. The author 
 of " The Seven Lamps of Architecture " and of 
 " The Stones of Venice " is justifiably proud of 
 this substantial building, and the photograph 
 of it, with the accompanying legend, from which 
 this sketch is taken, occupies a prominent place 
 among the other art treasures in the drawing- 
 room at Brantwood. The first virtue in any 
 building is that it should be suitable to its 
 purpose, and no one can deny to the Laxey 
 Mill an honest ugliness which exactly suits the 
 home '' of the manufacture of honest thread 
 into honest cloth." 
 
 This romantic building is at once a factory 
 and a store. It contains, in the first place, the 
 machinery for carding and spinning the wool 
 and w^ashing the cloth. The word machinery 
 may very probably grate on the ear of the more 
 devout Ruskinian, and 1 hasten therefore to 
 explain that the motive power is a water-wheel. 
 And it may here be noted, for the consolation 
 of weaker brethren, that the prohibition of 
 
1/6 SOME ASPECTS OF MR. RUSKIn's WORK. 
 
 machinery by "St. George" is not absolute. 
 It is not forbidden except where it supersedes 
 healthy bodily exercise or the art and precision 
 of manual labour. It is only steam that is abso- 
 lutely refused, as being '' a cruel and furious 
 waste of fuel, to do what every stream and 
 breeze are ready to do costlessly." The moored 
 river-mill alone, says Mr. Ruskin, " invented by 
 Belisarius fourteen hundred years ago, would 
 do all the mechanical work ever required by a 
 nation which either possessed its senses or could 
 use its hands." But Mr. Ruskin's mill is a 
 store as well, and in this capacity it enables 
 him to revive another piece of the olden time. 
 There is a sale in the ordinary way for the out- 
 side world, but there is the good old institution 
 of barter also. The farmers bring their wool, 
 which is stored in the mill, and are paid for it 
 either by finished cloth or by yarn for home 
 knitting, or occasionally by wool prepared for 
 home spinning. One does not like to think 
 what the rigid economists would say to this cal- 
 culated interference with the division of labour ; 
 but then, as the lives of the peasants are the 
 healthier, perhaps the other kind of wealth may 
 be left to look after itself. 
 
SOME INDUSTRIAL EXPERIMENTS. 1/7 
 
 But in addition to this work of preparing yarn 
 and wool, the " hands " at the mill make a good 
 deal of cloth for outside sale. This, indeed, 
 was an essential part of Mr. Ruskin's scheme. 
 There was no good, he saw, in denouncing 
 people for wearing shoddy unless he could also 
 put them in the way of buying honest cloth. 
 The square yard of Laxey homespun was to be 
 "one of the standards of value in St. George's 
 currency," but it was also to be a standard of 
 material in dress. It is "all wool," for one 
 thing; and for another, it is dyed indelibly, 
 being, indeed, the natural colour of the black 
 sheep of the island, blended in certain propor- 
 tions of white wool. Anybody who likes cloth 
 warranted not to change colour or to shrink 
 cannot do better (especiallyjust now, when greys 
 are so fashionable) than order a dress length of 
 the Laxey homespun. The Duchess of Albany 
 wrote to Mr. Ruskin a year or two ago, express 
 sing her great pleasure at receiving a length of 
 cloth made by the Guild, in whose work her 
 husband took so great an interest. One fault — 
 for I must not conceal its dark side — one fault 
 St. George's cloth cheerfully confesses. It lasts 
 a very long time, and that, Mr. Rydings says, 
 
 12 
 
178 SOME ASPECTS OF MR. RUSKIN's WORK. 
 
 was what made the Manx-made stuffs go out of 
 request : they did not give young women a chance 
 of having four or five new gowns in the year. 
 
 But if there are any English housewives ready 
 to forgive this fault, they cannot do better than 
 send some orders to Mr. Rydings (Laxey, Isle 
 of Man), or to Mr. George Thomson (Woodhouse 
 Hill, Huddersfield), who has latterly relieved 
 Mr. Ruskin of the management of the St. 
 George's Mill. 
 
 § 3- 
 
 " GEORGE THOMSON AND CO." 
 
 The " work according to Ruskin " which has 
 now to be described is not, like the schemes 
 already noticed, directly connected with the St. 
 George's Guild. The prime mover in the matter 
 is, however, one of the trustees of the Guild, 
 and the impetus which launched the scheme 
 three years ago was derived from Mr. Ruskin's 
 teaching. The scheme itself, which is of a more 
 far-reaching kind than the others, is of deep 
 interest in days when the condition of England 
 question is once more in every one's mouth. 
 
 Mr. Ruskin is no Socialist. " The division 
 
SOME INDUSTRIAL EXPERIMENTS. 179 
 
 of property," he has said, '' is its destruction ; 
 and with it the destruction of all hope, all in- 
 dustry, and all justice." But while Mr. Ruskin 
 differs from the Socialists in that he does not 
 wish for any forcible division of property, he has 
 proposed an almost equally revolutionary scheme 
 in saying that property should be only " to whom 
 proper." The capitalist, for instance, has no 
 right, according to him, to exact interest. Em- 
 ployers should be paid just wages for their 
 superintendence of labour, but not for their 
 capital ; that is the sum and substance of Mr. 
 Ruskin's teaching on the capital and labour 
 question. 
 
 It is this " law of political economy " that one 
 of the companions and trustees of St. George's 
 Guild is now carrying out into practice, as far 
 as he can, in the case of his own business — the 
 well-known woollen and worsted manufactory 
 of William Thomson and Sons, at Huddersfield. 
 Mr. George Thomson, the head of the firm, is 
 converting it into a productive association on 
 a truly co-operative basis. The new association 
 takes over the business at a price, of course ; 
 but the disposition in which " St. George" makes 
 bargains of the kind is not quite the same as 
 
l80 SOME ASPECTS OF MR. RUSKIN's WORK. 
 
 that of some other promoters of companies. The 
 amount to be paid is fixed on an independent 
 vakiation, and Mr. Thomson decided that such 
 valuation was not to include any consideration 
 whatever for goodwill. Further, the whole of 
 the sum, so far as it is not taken up in shares, 
 will be paid for by loan stock, bearing interest 
 at the rate of ;^5 per cent, per annum, and so 
 long as this interest is paid the principal cannot 
 be demanded ; subject to the payment of i^5 per 
 cent, on the shares — which in time will largely 
 pass, it ma\^ be hoped, into the hands of the 
 workmen and women — half the net profits of 
 the concern will go to the workers. A sum of 
 ;^500 has already either been earned as profit 
 or deposited as share-capital, by the workers, 
 thus showing their appreciation of the scheme. 
 The moral effect of it on the general character 
 of the workers, in increasing their self-respect 
 and interest in their work, has been particularly 
 noticed by all visitors. 
 
 Out of the other half of the profits, equitable 
 allowances are made to customers. The cus- 
 tomers so far have been mainly co-operative 
 societies, and 50 per cent, of the net profits is 
 divided amongst all such societies as have done 
 
SOME INDUSTRIAL EXPERIIMENTS. l8l 
 
 business to the extent of ^50 per annum (with 
 net cash payment). The co-operative societies 
 are thus practically their own producers, with- 
 out the trouble of production. One society re- 
 ceived about ;^20 last year in this way, over 
 and above all that they would have had in the 
 ordinary course of trade. 
 
 By this means it is hoped to counteract the 
 constant efforts of buyers to run down articles 
 for buying, and run them up for selling. Mr. 
 Thomson himself — who, by the way, is examiner 
 of cloth manufacture for the City and Guilds 
 of London Technical Institute — remains at the 
 head of the business as manager, and will be 
 paid his wages like every one else, sharing, I 
 presume, in proportion with the other workers, 
 but no more, in such net profits as he may assist 
 in earning. It is a commonplace with capitalists 
 to say that " the interests of capital and labour 
 are identical ; " so, no doubt, in a sense they 
 are, even under our existing economical condi- 
 tions. The same good times, that is to say, 
 that secure to the worker his weekly dole secure 
 to the capitalist his lion's share. But it is only 
 under such co-operative organization as I am 
 describing that the interests of capital and labour 
 
1 82 SOME ASPECTS OF MR. RUSKIN's WORK. 
 
 are identical in the sense that the capitaUst is 
 made a labourer and the labourers are made 
 capitalists. 
 
 What Mr. Ruskin himself thinks of the scheme 
 is sufBciently shown in the following letter, which 
 he addressed to Mr. Thomson on the subject in 
 1886:— 
 
 " I cannot enough thank you, or express the depth of 
 my pleasure in the announcement of the momentous 
 and absolutely foundational step taken by 3'ou in all 
 that is just and wise, in the establishment of these rela- 
 tions with your workmen. I may perhaps yet live to 
 see ' the pleasure of the Lord prosper in your hand ; ' 
 for though making no sign, I have been steadily ad- 
 vancing in strength, hope, and lately even in youthful 
 enjoyment of former work, and continuance of it on the 
 old terms. ' Praeterita ' is advancing fast toward the 
 part in which I shall resume the courses of thought 
 which led to writing ' Unto This Last,' and shall throw 
 what I was able to say confusedly into more intelligible 
 and open form. But without 5'our practical power and 
 faith nothing could have been yet done." 
 
 This latest development of Mr. Ruskin's political 
 economy is not, of course, a new thing; but the 
 concern starts under conditions of success and 
 upon genuinely co-operative terms, which have 
 not always attended similar undertakings. It 
 is not an amateur aftair, set on foot by philan- 
 
SOME INDUSTRIAL EXPERIMENTS. 1 83 
 
 thropic outsiders ; it is the result of the appeal 
 which has for so long been addressed to the 
 manufacturers themselves to organize their in- 
 dustry on a sounder basis than that of individual 
 competition. As such Mr. Ruskin may well 
 describe it as "a. momentous and absolutely 
 foundational step." 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 MR. RUSKIN AND THE BOOKSELLERS. 
 
 It is a far cry from Paternoster Row to Sunny- 
 side, at Orpington, where Mr. Ruskin's publish- 
 ing is carried on. The noise and bustle of a great 
 commercial establishment are exchanged for a 
 quiet little family circle ; and instead of the 
 '' city's central roar," you are surrounded by the 
 hills of Kent. The system of business presents 
 an evtn greater contrast. Other authors are 
 content to grumble — individually or in incor- 
 porated societies — against the wiles of pub- 
 lishers and the tricks of trade. Mr. Ruskin 
 alone has shaken himself free from the trammels, 
 and established a pubhsher and bookseller of his 
 own and on his own terms. This new method 
 was described as follows in " Fors Clavigera," 
 the first of his books which bore the imprint 
 of '' George Allen " instead of " Smith and 
 Elder : "— 
 
MR. RUSKIN AND THE BOOKSELLERS. 1 85 
 
 '' It costs me ^10 to print 1,000 copies, and ^5 more 
 to give you a picture, and a penny off my 'jd. to send 
 you the book; a thousand sixpences are ;^25 ; when 
 you have bought a thousand ' Fors ' of me I shall 
 therefore have ^5 for my trouble, and my single shop- 
 man, Mr. Allen, ^5 for his ; we won't work for less, 
 either of us. And I mean to sell all my large books, 
 henceforward, in the same way ; well printed, well 
 bound, and at a fixed price ; and the trade may charge 
 a proper and acknowledged profit for their trouble in 
 retailing the book. Then the public will know what 
 they are about, and so will tradesmen. I, the first 
 producer, answer, to the best of my power, for the 
 quality of the book — paper, binding, eloquence, and 
 all : the retail dealer charges what he ought to charge, 
 openly ; and if the public do not choose to give it, they 
 can't get the book. That is what I call legitimate 
 business." 
 
 It is now fifteen years since Mr. Ruskin 
 started this plan of campaign, and in view of 
 the ever-recurring controversy between authors 
 and pubhshers, I sought an opportunity a year 
 or two ago of learning how the plan is found 
 to work. Mr. George Allen inquired for Mr. 
 Ruskin's wishes in the matter, and Mr. Ruskin 
 kindly authorized him to tell me " everything I 
 cared to ask, and show me everything I cared 
 to see." The following, with such alterations 
 only as have been necessary to bring the 
 
1 86 SOI\IE ASPECTS OF MR. RUSKIN's WORK. 
 
 particulars up to date, was the description, 
 written at the time, of what is probably one of 
 the most successful publishing businesses of 
 the day : — 
 
 " Mr. Ruskin has transferred hig publishing," said the 
 trade circular, contemptuously, some years ago, "to the 
 middle of a country field." The remark was quite true. 
 Sunnyside is a pleasant private house, standing in its 
 own grounds, which slope down into one of the prettiest 
 vales of Kent. Mr. Allen tells me that he is fond of 
 roses, and the fame of his cabbages is known to readers 
 of " Fors Clavigera." The place is only some twelve 
 miles from London, but the scene is one of complete 
 rural seclusion. Like his principal, Mr. Allen has his 
 thorn in the flesh, for one uncompromisingly ugly 
 cottage is visible to the right ; but with this exception 
 the view from the drawing-room windows stretches 
 uninterruptedly over the vale to the Knockholt Beeches. 
 On one of the walls there hangs, between some pencil 
 drawings by Mr. Ruskin of his favourite Abbeville, 
 a water-colour drawing of the view which Mr. Ruskin 
 sees from his study window. It is drawn by Mr. Ruskin, 
 and shows "morning breaking along the Coniston Fells, 
 and the mists, motionless and grey beneath the rose of 
 the moorlands, veiling the lower woods, and the sleep- 
 ing village, and the long lawns by the lake-shore." 
 
 Behind Mr. Allen's house, at one side of his back 
 garden, stands a substantial building which serves for 
 warehouse. It is a valuable one. " I have taken stock 
 only recently, and I find we have ^28,000 worth of 
 goods stowed away. You see our business was not 
 made ; it grew. If I had foreseen its growth I should 
 
MR. RUSKIN AND THE BOOKSELLERS. 1 8/ 
 
 have built a more commodious warehouse, but we 
 began in a humble way without one at all, and I cannot 
 go on adding to it, or I should cover my garden in no 
 time ; so we have to utilize every inch of space, as you 
 see ; up there is ' The Stones of Venice ; ' down there in 
 the corner is ' The Seven Lamps of Architecture.' " If the 
 science of architecture consists in the adjustment of 
 means to end, Mr. Ruskin's publisher has lit his author's 
 lamps to some purpose, for a neater and better-kept 
 warehouse you will not easily find. There are sixty- 
 three different works (or editions) of Mr. Ruskin's in 
 stock, most of them in various styles of binding. To 
 keep all these in due place, so as to execute orders for 
 one here and there every day, in what is hardly more 
 than a garden outhouse, requires considerable skill. 
 And then Mr. Ruskin's books are not like other people's, 
 which are complete in one volume, or two volumes, or 
 three. He has at least a dozen of them on hand, 
 appearing in parts, at irregular intervals — a method 
 which calls for quite as much method on the publisher's 
 part as versatility on the author's. 
 
 The issuing department is as heavily taxed as the 
 stockkeeping. Ordinary publishers deal, of course, 
 almost entirely wholesale. Most of their books are sub- 
 scribed for by the trade, and subsequent country orders 
 are concentrated by London middlemen. But Mr. 
 Ruskin's leading idea was to eliminate the middleman. 
 His agent is bookseller and publisher in one. The books 
 are " published by," and for a long time were only 
 " to be had of, Mr. George Allen, Sunnyside, Orpington." 
 This, of course, entails a great deal of labour upon 
 the central establishment, which in the ordinary course 
 of the trade is divided among many hands. As Mr. 
 Ruskin's books are all sumptuously got up, so they 
 
1 88 SOME ASPECTS OF MR. 
 
 have to be all carefully packed. Every parcel is 
 protected by straw or deal boards, and the sorting, 
 packing, tying, weighing, and stamping make up a good 
 day's work for all concerned. Her Majesty's Post- 
 master-General sucks no small advantage therefrom, but 
 he affords no special facilities, and every afternoon Mr. 
 Allen's man may be seen trudging off with his bundles 
 on his back to the village post-office, a mile and more 
 distant from Sunnyside. The bundles are heavy, but 
 the result is not cumbrous. There was a great run on 
 the new edition of " The Stones of Venice," but every 
 subscriber had his copy or copies despatched within 
 four days of publication. " Prseterita," too, is very popu- 
 lar, but each part is punctually delivered within three 
 days. In one respect, however, Mr. Ruskin's method 
 greatly eases his publisher's labour. " Mr. Allen has 
 positive orders to attend to no letter asking credit." 
 This rule is not quite strictly enforced as against the 
 trade. Obviously a bookseller could not be expected 
 to pay for twenty copies, say, of " The Stones of Venice," 
 at four guineas each, before delivery, but prompt pay- 
 ment is expected and is made, and in the case of 
 private customers credit is very seldom allowed. The 
 accounts at the Orpington establishment — which Mr. 
 Allen was good enough to place unreservedly in my 
 hands — are comparatively simple, and what is more, 
 are capable, of course, of being always kept close up 
 to date. The value of every book disposed of is also 
 immediately credited, and Mr. Ruskin's balance-sheet 
 can therefore at any moment be precisely made up to 
 the exact date. How many authors, I wonder, are in 
 an equally fortunate condition ! 
 
 The readers will probably be surprised, I think, to 
 hear what the staff is which discharges the various 
 
MR. RUSKIN AND THE BOOKSELLERS. I 89 
 
 duties I have described. It consists of eight persons 
 only, two of whom, it should be stated, are largely 
 occupied not so much in the publishing as in the 
 producing department. Mr. Allen himself is an 
 engraver by profession. For thirty j^ears he has been 
 engaged as Mr, Ruskin's assistant in this matter. 
 Readers of " Modern Painters" will remember Mr. 
 Ruskin's compliment to " Mr. G. Allen's accurate line 
 studies from nature,' and nearly all his later works — 
 from the Oxford lectures to " Praeterita" — have been 
 engraved by the same careful and skilful hands. Mr. 
 Allen, in his turn, is assisted in the engraving work by 
 his second son. The eldest son and daughter are 
 chiefly responsible for directing the details of the pub- 
 lishing work, \vhile the remaining members of the 
 family are the other "hands." Even so, I have not 
 enumerated all the family tasks. More and more Mr. 
 Ruskin has come, as he has said, to trust to his good 
 friends at Orpington. At first he took an active part 
 in superintending the issue of his books ; but latterly 
 he has merely said, " Bring out such and such a book," 
 and they bring it out ; " Do this," and they do it. Miss 
 Allen, in addition to her duties as proof-reader, was 
 mainly responsible, too, for the compilation of the 
 "Ruskin Birthday Book." "Is not the establishment 
 rather heavily taxed," I asked, " at times, when a new 
 book, like 'The Stones of Venice,' for instance, is 
 issued ?" " Well, yes, it is," was the answer ; " but what 
 we have to do, we do. For one thing, there is no alter- 
 native. You see there is nobody in this village whom we 
 could take on for emergencies ; but besides that, we 
 all have our hearts in the work, and have been deter- 
 mined from the first to make Mr. Ruskin's experiment 
 a success." Publishing at Orpington is, it will be seen. 
 
IQO SOME ASPECTS OF MR. RUSKIN's WORK. 
 
 distinctly a home industry, and the Aliens, as Mr. 
 Ruskin says, in the Preface to the 1880 edition of " The 
 Seven Lamps of Architecture," are distinctly " a helpful 
 family." 
 
 Visitors to Sunnyside are not unnaturally a good 
 deal surprised. " Generally," I was told, " they will not 
 believe it is the right house. They apologize for their 
 mistake ; they wanted ' the shop ; ' will we kindly 
 direct them to 'Allen's'?" "And have you had dis- 
 tinguished strangers among your customers, who have 
 come in person ? " *• Not very many. Mr. Darwin used 
 to live a mile or two off, and members of his family 
 came sometimes. Carlyle, too, came over once, when 
 he was staying at Lord Derby's place at Keston. He 
 was very interesting, and wanted particularly to know 
 whether we didn't keep 'a coo.'"' (It was after this 
 visit, no doubt, that Carlyle wrote to Emerson of 
 " the way Ruskin has towards the bibliopolic world.") 
 " Visitors seldom understand that we can have any 
 work to do. The greatest sceptic of all is Mr. Ruskin 
 himself When he was staying with us last year we 
 tried to get him to come and help ; but he was quite 
 frightened at the parcels, and refused to believe that 
 anybody really wanted to buy his books. We must 
 take him for walks, he said, and so off we girls went 
 with him to the flowers and the woods." 
 
 The foregoing report will show that Mr. 
 Ruskin's new departure in publishing has, at 
 any rate, carried out in practice two favourite 
 ideals of the " New Political Economy : " it has 
 established a happy village industry, and it has 
 
MR. RUSKIN AND THE BOOKSELLERS. IQI 
 
 partially eliminated the middleman. How far 
 it has succeeded in securing authors' profits and 
 preventing ''underselling" by the trade (for 
 all Mr. Ruskin's books are retailed at their 
 published prices, a fixed discount being allowed 
 to the trade) will be seen from the following 
 details, which Mr. Allen gave me respecting his 
 sales and dealings, both with Mr. Ruskin and 
 with the trade : — 
 
 "I could even sell my books," said Mr. Ruskin ten 
 years ago, in " Fors," " for not inconsiderable sums of 
 money if I chose to bribe the reviewers, pay half of all 
 I get to the booksellers, stick bills on the lamp-posts, 
 and say nothing but what would please the Bishop of 
 Peterborough. I could say a great deal that would 
 please him, and yet be very good and useful ; I should 
 like much again to be on terms with my old publisher, 
 and hear him telling me nice stories over our walnuts, 
 this Christmas, after dividing his year's spoil with me 
 in Christmas charity." Remembering this passage, and 
 others of about the same date, in which Mr. Ruskin 
 spoke, at the outset of his campaign, against the 
 publishing and bookselling trades, of the sacrifices it 
 entailed on him, I asked Mr. Allen how the fortune 
 of war had gone since then. " It has been a winning 
 game," said Mr. Allen, " and a gradually expanding 
 business. It began sixteen years ago, with Mr. Ruskin 
 employing me to sell ' Fors Clavigera.' His original 
 battle was against the bookselling trade only. Messrs. 
 Smith and Elder printed ' Fors ' at first, and I sold 
 
192 SOME ASPECTS OF MR. RUSKIN S WORK. 
 
 them. Mr. Ruskin objected to the principle of dis- 
 counts and abatements adopted by the booksellers, 
 and I was to sell ' Fors " at a fixed price to all comers. 
 Then came the ' Revised Series ' of his already com- 
 pleted works ('Sesame and Lilies," etc.) ; these origin- 
 ally bore the double imprint of Messrs. Smith, Elder, 
 and Co. and myself. They were sold — ^in purple calf 
 bindings only — in both cases, on the same terms as 
 ' Fors.' After 1873 ^^- Ruskin's connection with his 
 old publishers ceased, and he gradually threw all his 
 publishing on me. Since then I have undertaken 
 publishing for other authors besides Mr. Ruskin. I 
 am an engraver, and had no special knowledge of the 
 publishing trade whatever. But the business has 
 grown and grown ever since." 
 
 "Till it has reached— what ? " "Well, Mr. Ruskin 
 has instructed me to tell you everything you care to 
 ask, so I shall break no confidence if I show you 
 these accounts. For instance, from the new edition 
 of ' The Stones of Venice ' Mr. Ruskin has received 
 already ^1,583 clear profits, besides leaving 1,272 
 copies unpaid for." * " Is that his greatest success ? " 
 " I cannot say yet, for the edition was only published 
 last year. So far, I think, ' The Seven Lamps of 
 Architecture ' has done best. The author's clear profits 
 from the editions I have published of that book have 
 amounted to close upon ^2,500. f But without going 
 into further details, I may tell you that last year (1886) 
 I was able to pay over to Mr. Ruskin, as his profit, 
 
 * Mr. Ruskin's profit on the new edition of " Stones of 
 Venice " up to the end of 1S89 was altogether ;!^3,o69 
 t.e., since the book was published, in 1886. 
 
 t ;^3>2oo between 1880 and 1889. 
 
MR. RUSKIN AND THE BOOKSELLERS. 1 93 
 
 ^4,000. And to that you should add the fact that 
 during the year we greatly increased the value of his 
 stock— as, for instance, by the new edition of ' The 
 Stones of Venice.' We have paid all the cost of pro- 
 duction, and the profits on it will come steadily in." 
 It will be seen that Mr. Ruskin's royalties, if one puts 
 his profits that way, are extraordinarily large. Thus, 
 2,000 copies of the "Seven Lamps," at ^i i^-., brought 
 him a clear profit of ^991, equivalent to a royalty of 
 10^. a copy. And this, so far as I examined, was 
 about the average rate. Thus, to take a cheaper 
 book, I noticed that 3,000 copies of "Sesame and 
 Lilies," at 5^., brought him in ^345- 
 
 " And what, if I may ask, is your own arrangement 
 as publisher with Mr. Ruskin? ' " 1 first pubhshed for 
 him simply on commission. This arrangement lasted 
 till the end of 1886. Since then I have worked under 
 an agreement for proportionate profits. ' 
 
 "You have given me some figures of the profits on 
 various books ; can you give me any of the sales, to 
 show their comparative popularity?" Mr. Allen readily 
 complied with my request, and drew up the following 
 table, showing the sales during 1886 of some of the 
 more popular of Mr. Ruskin's books : — 
 
 Volumes.* 
 " Sesame and Lilies " (small edition) . .2,122 
 " Frondes Agrestes ' ..... 1,273 
 " The Stones of Venice " (large edition), 
 
 first half-year of issue .... 939 
 " Unto This Last ' 874 
 
 * For 1889 the figures are 2,902, 1,038, 218, 775, 703, 
 503. SH, 334, 613, 105, 298. 
 
 13 
 
94 SOME ASPECTS OF MR. RUSKIN S WORK. 
 
 " Ethics of the Dust " . 
 
 " Fors Clavigera " (volumes of) . 
 
 " The Seven Lamps of Architecture " . 
 
 " Modern Painters," Vol. II. (small edition) 
 
 "The Stones of Venice" (small travellers 
 
 edition, in two vols.), each . 
 " On the Old Road," first year . 
 " King of the Golden River " 
 
 Volumes. 
 808 
 
 730 
 668 
 652 
 
 675 
 
 597 
 388 
 
 The " King of the Golden River," it may be interesting 
 to add, is largely bought by the London and Sheffield 
 School Boards for prizes. Mr. Ruskin's " Letter to 
 Young Girls " has also a large sale, 264 packets (con- 
 taining 3,168 copies in all) having been sold during 
 last year (1886). 
 
 With regard to the " Revised Series " of Mr. Ruskin's 
 works, the following were the sales during 1886: — 
 
 Sesame and Lilies " . 
 The Crown of Wild Olive 
 The Queen of the Air " 
 The Eagle's Nest " 
 The Two Paths " 
 Time and Tide " 
 Munera Pulveris " 
 ' Val d'Arno " 
 ' Aratra Pentehci " 
 * A Joy for Ever ' " 
 ' Ariadne Florentina " 
 
 272 
 
 188 
 
 108 
 
 104 
 
 96 
 
 89 
 
 73 
 
 54 
 
 53 
 
 51 
 
 40 
 
 This series, it should be stated, is a very expensive 
 one, the ordinary volumes costing ly. each (unbound). 
 
MR. RUSKIN AND THE BOOKSELLERS. 1 95 
 
 the illustrated (marked above with an asterisk) 22s. 6d. 
 These volumes are, however, all in course of being 
 issued in cheap form, similar to the small " Sesame 
 and Lilies." 
 
 From the sales the conversation turned to the buyers. 
 "Where," I asked, "do your customers come from?" 
 " From all parts of the kingdom, but more from Scot- 
 land and the north than from the south, excepting 
 London. It. is a curious fact, too, that I send very 
 much fewer books to Oxford than to Cambridge ; a 
 prophet is of no honour, I suppose, in his own univer- 
 sity. The circulating libraries do not patronize us at 
 all, with the exception of Mudie's, which takes perhaps 
 fifty of each of the smaller works in the course of the 
 year. Lately the orders from the Continent and the 
 colonies (especially Australia) have very much in- 
 creased." "America, I suppose, lives on its pirated 
 editions ? " " Yes, and tries to export them sometimes. 
 I remember we were lately asked, as a special favour, to 
 pass through a set of American editions for a celebrated 
 traveller. The matter was referred to Mr. Ruskin, who 
 
 replied that ' Mr. had much better not burden 
 
 himself with stolen property on his missionary expedi- 
 tion. He shall certainly not do so with permission of 
 mine.' " 
 
 Since the foregoing pages were first written, 
 the new edition of "Modern Painters" has been 
 pubhshed. This was the biggest job by far 
 that his present pubHsher has undertaken. The 
 money value of the edition, at its retail price, 
 was not far short of ;^20,ooo. The weight of 
 
196 SOME ASPECTS OF MR. RUSKIN's WORK. 
 
 the special hand-made copies was over six tons. 
 The pubHcation of any book of these dimensions 
 would be a heavy undertaking ; but " Modern 
 Painters " is a portfolio of engravings, as well 
 as a library of literature. It is the most im- 
 portant ,of all Mr. Ruskin's literary works, but 
 it was also, in its original form, one of the most 
 elaborate and beautiful collections of illustra- 
 tions ever issued. Mr. Allen was responsible, 
 not only for the republication of the book, but 
 for the reissue of these illustrations, compris- 
 ing eighty-seven full-page engravings and over 
 200 woodcuts. Such an undertaking would 
 obviously put to a crucial test the interesting 
 experiment in publishing w^hich Mr. Ruskin 
 initiated now nearly twenty years ago. I ap- 
 pend, therefore, to what has already been said 
 this further description of a second visit paid 
 to Orpington, in January, 1889 : — 
 
 I found the house and household taxed to its utter- 
 most by the new enterprise. Indeed, a new room had 
 been specially added to the premises to stock the copies 
 of this bulky book. Nothing in any of the largest pub- 
 lishing houses could excel the neatness and precision 
 of the arrangements. Indeed, the new warehouse in 
 this country villa on the Kentish hills reminded me of 
 nothing so much as some careful housewife's linen- 
 
MR. RUSKIN AND THE BOOKSELLERS. 1 97 
 
 closet — only that the sheets were the sheets of a book. 
 And just as in a well-ordered household each member 
 has a daily task marked out, so here each member of 
 Mr. Allen's helpful family has his share, or hers, in the 
 work of publishing. As I glanced round at the piles of 
 " Modern Painters " (each set of six volumes weighing 
 29 lbs.) I thought it would be hard on the packer. 
 Every one was going to lend him a hand, but even so it 
 had been found necessary for once to bring in outside 
 help, and two men from London were employed in 
 doing up the parcels for distribution, which left in 
 special vans, direct by road, to the principal booksellers. 
 " Modern Painters " will thus be Ruskinian to the end, 
 and every devout purchaser in London will have the 
 satisfaction of knowing that his copy came byroad, and 
 not by rail. 
 
 Bat indeed " the Master's " ideals have been adhered 
 to throughout in the production of this final edition of 
 his chief work. " About the plates I shall have plenty 
 to tell you presently," said Mr. Allen ; " but first let me 
 say that the binding has been done by my usual binder, 
 Mr. Mansell ; I need not add that there is no machine- 
 stitching about it, but only honest hand-work. With 
 regard to the printing of the letterpress, the New York 
 Cr///<r remarked the other day that ' there was something 
 very attractive in the idea of this printing-house in the 
 fields, far from the city's rush and roar. Instead of the 
 compositor snatching a hasty lunch at his case, with the 
 smell of the inky rollers in his nostrils and the noise of 
 the stone-paved streets in his ears, he may step outside 
 of the composing-room into a rose-perfumed garden at 
 Orpington, and munch his meal with no noise to dis- 
 turb him save that of the busy bees or the babbling 
 brook. And how much better work he can do amid 
 
IpO SOME ASPFCTS OF MR. RUSKIN S WORK. 
 
 such surroundings! No wonder that Ruskin's books 
 are so beautifully printed ! ' As applied to us here, 
 this is of course incorrect, for my printing is all done 
 by Messrs. Hazell, Watson, and Viney, at Aylesbury ; 
 but in substance the New York writer was not far wrong. 
 Messrs. Hazell's place at Aylesbury is quite an ideal 
 printing-office — with light and cheerful buildings, allot- 
 ment gardens, recreation-ground, clubs, a magazine, 
 and all the other machinery for ' mutual improvement.' 
 You may care to know, by the way, that this edition of 
 'Modern Painters' took over 600 reams of paper for the 
 ordinary copies ; they are printed on specially made 
 toned paper, of fine surface but tough texture, which 
 weighed in all well over fifteen tons. The hand-made 
 paper for the special copies was also made by Whatman 
 expressly for this book, and is of a size and weight 
 never before manufactured. The type, too, was a special 
 fount, cast expressly for this work, and indeed the 
 printing has, I may say, been done througliout quite 
 regardless of cost." 
 
 "This is even more the case," continued Mr. Allen, 
 " with regard to the printing of the plates. Mr. Robert 
 Smith, to whom I entrusted the work, is an out-and-out 
 good and honest workman. Curiously enough, he was 
 an apprentice to the printer who did the original edition 
 for Messrs. Smith and Elder, and he was as anxious as 
 I to get the best possible results from each plate. I do 
 not know where else I could have gone to get equally 
 good work, for Mr Smith is a workman himself, and 
 gives close and continuous personal superintendence. 
 Even so, some of the delay in publishing the book has 
 been due to the difficulty of finding a sufficient number 
 of conscientious workmen. Such men are never over- 
 abundant, and a great many of them have been drawn 
 
MR. RUSKIN AND THE BOOKSELLERS. I QQ 
 
 off by Professor Herkomer to his workshops at Bushey. 
 However, I have not stinted Mr. Smith in the price, and 
 that is the main essential. You have no idea of the 
 tricks to which plate-printers often resort — and neces- 
 sarily — owing to the cutting down of the price : the 
 mixture of soft soap with the ink is one way — so a 
 workman told me himself — in which time is saved and 
 the work scamped." 
 
 From the printing of the plates the conversation 
 turned to the preparation of the plates themselves, and 
 here the curious may be glad of some detailed particu- 
 lars. The plates in the new edition of " Modern 
 Painters" maybe divided under four heads — (i) new 
 plates, not included in any previous edition ; (2) plates 
 of which the originals have been destroyed, and which 
 have been re-engraved for the present edition ; (3) 
 plates in a like case which have been mechanically re- 
 produced ; and (4) original plates retouched. The addi- 
 tional plates are three in number, and it is these which 
 will always give a unique value among collectors to the 
 present edition. The subjects of them are " Chateau 
 de Blois," " Dawn after the Wreck," and " Lake of 
 Zug." They were all etched by Mr. Ruskin in 1859, 
 from Turner's drawings, and engraved by T. Lupton. 
 Intended for the fifth volume, they were held back 
 owing to the anxiety of Mr. Ruskin's father to see the 
 work fairly off his son's hands. The re-engraved plates 
 are nine in number, and include some of the best-known 
 illustrations in the book, such as " The Lombard 
 Apennine" and "Monte Rosa." Three other plates 
 had also been destroyed, but Mr. Allen fortunately had 
 in his possession early proofs of the original etchings, 
 and from these pJiotogravures have been executed for 
 the present edition by the Goupil process (Messrs. 
 
200 SOME ASPECTS OF MR. RUSKIN's WORK. 
 
 Boussod, Valadon, and Co.). " Finally, the remaining 
 plates have all been looked to," said Mr. Allen, " with 
 loving care by myself and my son (Mr. Hugh Allen), 
 both in retouching where necessary, and also in superin- 
 tendence of printing." 
 
 Into the merits of the new edition of " Modern 
 Painters " I need not enter, for most of my 
 readers have no doubt formed an opinion of 
 their own by personal inspection. But in con- 
 cluding this description of Mr. Ruskin's system 
 of pubhcation, and with it — for the present at 
 least — my survey of his work in some of its 
 aspects, it will not be out of place to record that 
 the edition has been a great commercial success. 
 Mr. Ruskin's profits from this one issue of a 
 single book will not in the end be less than 
 £6,000. Hitherto he has suffered badly from 
 the American pirates. Though his American 
 readers are numbered by tens of thousands, he 
 has never received a penny from them ; but the 
 cheaper editions of many of his books which 
 Mr. Allen is now bringing out will doubtless do 
 something to undermine the pirate's trade. But 
 even now Mr. Ruskin's profits are steadily grow- 
 ing every year, and exceed, I imagine, those 
 made by any other serious author of the time. 
 
MR. RUSKIN AND THE BOOKSELLERS. 20I 
 
 His system of publishing " in the wilds of Kent" 
 has — like most other schemes of his devising — 
 been derided as unpractical, visionary, and mad. 
 On closer inspection does there not seem to be 
 some method in Mr. Ruskin's mad work ? 
 
APPENDICES. 
 
 CONTAINING NOTES ON MR. RUSKIN'S 
 OXFORD LECTURES. 
 
APPENDIX I. 
 'Readings in 'Modern Painters:' 1877." 
 
 The first course of Lectures which I heard 
 Mr. Ruskin deliver at Oxford was one given 
 in Michaehiias term, 1877. The lectures, which 
 he called "Readings in 'Modern Painters,'" were 
 conversational and informal ; and the following 
 notes embody only some casual reminiscences. 
 As, however, the lectures were thoroughly cha- 
 racteristic of their author, even my imperfect 
 notes may be of interest to some readers.* 
 
 The three great principles of Art are, Mr. 
 
 * Writing at the end of this course to Miss Beever, Mr. 
 Ruskin said, " I write first to you this morning to tell yon 
 that I gave yesterday the twelfth and last of my course of 
 lectures, this term, to a room crowded by six hundred people, 
 two-thirds members of the University, and with its door 
 wedged open by those who could not get in ; this interest 
 of theirs being granted to me, I doubt not, because for the 
 first time in Oxford I have been able to speak to them 
 boldly of immortal life. I intended when I began the 
 course only to have read 'Modern Painters' to them; but 
 when I began, some of your favourite bits interested the 
 men so much, and brought so much larger a proportion of 
 undergraduates than usual, that I took pains to re-inforce 
 and press them home ; and people say I have never given 
 so useful a course yet " (" Hortus Inclusus," p. 47). 
 
206 
 
 APPENDIX I. 
 
 Ruskin said, these : First, that the Hfe of Art 
 is in Rehgion ; secondly, its food, in the ocular 
 and passionate love of nature ; thirdly, its 
 health, in the humility of the artists. To these 
 three essential Truths he went on to oppose 
 three popular Fallacies, corresponding to them ; 
 namely, /r5^, that the life of Art is in Sensu- 
 ality ; secondly, its food, in the telescopic and dis- 
 passionate examination of nature ; and thirdly, 
 its health, in the pride and riches of the artist. 
 In architecture, too, the lecturer laid down three 
 canons ; namely, first, that the material should 
 be good and true ; secondly, the ornament, 
 natural ; and thirdly, the designer, left free to 
 work from his heart. 
 
 "Readings from 'Modern Painters'" led to 
 few opportunities for enlarging on these architec- 
 tural canons, and the major part of the lecturer's 
 running commentary was devoted to illustrating 
 one or other of the three Principles of Art. 
 More especially did the lecturer s mind appear 
 to be running on the artistic, as opposed to the 
 scientific way of viewing nature. The true 
 artist, he said, if he wishes to paint a dog, looks 
 at him and loves him ; now we vivisect him. 
 Yet true science — true knowledge of any living 
 creature — begins in the love of it, not in dissec- 
 tion. The mere sight of this museum (see p. 47), 
 he said, with its specimens of death and disease, 
 instead of life and health, paralyzes me in all 
 artistic work. The fact is, though modern 
 science forgets it, that sight is spiritual as well 
 as physical. The pleasure of modern science 
 
** READINGS IN 'MODERN PAINTERS:' 1 877." 20J 
 
 is the pride of seeing more by instruments than 
 common people can with the naked eye. Of 
 the two dominant schools in the University, one 
 despises Nature, the other despises God. Man's 
 eye sees through his soul. But nowadays sight 
 has become mechanical. Instead of learning to 
 sketch, we buy photographs ; instead of loving 
 the poets, we try to imitate them. Natural 
 Philosophy exultingly hopes to be able to turn 
 on God ; and already we read of a tolling ma- 
 chine erected in Ealing Cemetery, at a cost of 
 ^80, the sexton, like a miller at his dam, turn- 
 ing on lamentation. 
 
 Students of Mr. Ruskin's w^orks will remem- 
 ber many passages in which several of the 
 aphorisms thrown out in these Oxford Lectures 
 have been expanded or illustrated ; and 1 pass 
 now to one or two notes on the third Principle 
 of Art laid down above. The health of Art 
 consists in the humility of the artist. I have 
 in my possession, said Mr. Ruskin, Turner's 
 receipt for ^28 75., paid for three drawings of 
 Florence. One of these would now fetch from 
 i^500 to ;{^8oo. The high prices now paid for 
 pictures are the cause of the hurry in modern 
 work. A man can resist a bribe of nine guineas, 
 but not so easily one of i^2,ooo. Even here in 
 Oxford the leaven of pride and riches is at work. 
 The peace of Isis is disturbed by shouts of 
 ambition, and all ambition is shameful. No 
 natural beauty can be seen through a shameful 
 passion. It was want of compassion, said Mr. 
 Ruskin, which often made me fail to appreciate 
 
208 APPENDIX I. 
 
 Turner's work, for he painted always in pity 
 or joy. 
 
 The illustration from his earlier writings ot 
 the Principles of Art above described w-as one 
 of the threads which kept together this discur- 
 sive course of '' Readings in ' Modern Painters.' " 
 Another was the explanation of the origin and 
 object of that great book. The first volume of 
 it was, he said, an expansion of a long letter in 
 defence of Turner. About 1 840 a marked change 
 took place in Turner's style. The change is to 
 be seen in the "Rivers of France," and w^as from 
 yellow and grey to truth in colour. The central 
 idea of the defence of Turner, as contained in 
 "Modern Painters," was that sight depends on 
 the soul, and that, said Mr. Ruskin, I have shown 
 you to be entirely true. But I wanted more 
 knowledge to make the essay really eftective, 
 and by the time I had got the knowledge the 
 period of public reprobation had begun. I am 
 ashamed now of the affected style of the volume. 
 Subsequently I read Carlyle, and succeeded in 
 catching something of his rhythm. I am ashamed 
 too of my pretended systems. Plato, added Mr. 
 Ruskin, in an excursus at this point, threw out 
 systems like the gleam on foam ; Herbert Spencer 
 throws them out like boys blowing bubbles full 
 of dirty air. After all, my system only amounted 
 to this : " The picture must be done well, the 
 thing must be pretty, and the motive good." 
 My denial, in the first volume, of the delight 
 in "ideas of powder" was wrong too. Venera- 
 tion, desire for exertion, and sympathy are all 
 
"readings in 'modern painters:' 1877." 209 
 
 involved in " ideas of power," and are all legiti- 
 mate elements of delight. 
 
 This self-criticism of " Modern Painters " was 
 afterwards written down by Mr. Ruskin in the 
 new edition of the second volume. But in 
 these Oxford Lectures it was carried out with 
 a bantering humour of which no notes can 
 conve}^ much impression. I remember in par- 
 ticular one lecture which, setting out from a 
 criticism of passages in some of his earlier books, 
 resolved itself into a discourse upon style. He 
 read to us first the passage from the *' Seven 
 Lamps " — one of the best known of his '' purple 
 patches" — which I have already quoted (see 
 p. 209). With this passage he bade us com- 
 pare the following from ''Unto This Last," 
 which he read with fervid emphasis : — 
 
 " And if, on due and honest thought over these things, 
 it seems that the kind of existence to which men are 
 now summoned, by every plea of pity and claim of right, 
 may, for some time at least, not be a luxurious one ; 
 consider whether, even supposing it guiltless, luxury 
 would be desired by any of us, if we saw clearly at our 
 sides the suffering which accompanies it in the world. 
 Luxury is indeed possible in the future — innocent and 
 exquisite ; luxury for all, and by the help of all ; but 
 luxury at present can only be enjoyed by the ignorant ; 
 the cruellest man living could not sit at his feast, unless 
 he sat blindfold. Raise the veil boldly ; face the light ; 
 and if, as yet, the light of the eye can only be through 
 tears, and the light of the body through sackcloth, go 
 thou forth weeping, bearing precious seed, until the time 
 come, and the kingdom, when Christ's gift of bread 
 and bequest of peace shall be unto this last as unto 
 thee ; and when, for earth's severed multitudes of the 
 wicked and the weary, there shall be holier reconcilia- 
 tion than that of the narrow home, and calm economy, 
 
 14 
 
210 APPENDIX I. 
 
 where the Wicked cease — not from trouble, but from 
 troubling — and the Weary are at rest." 
 
 Compare those two passages carefully, he 
 said, and you will know for ever afterwards the 
 difference between bad and good style. Note 
 in particular, he added, first, that the art which 
 in the earlier passage is obvious at every point 
 is in the later one hardly visible at all ; ars est 
 celare artem ; and secondly, that no word in 
 the later passage could be changed without loss 
 of meaning. There is, indeed, one alliteration 
 ("/>lea of /)ity"), but the word plea was the 
 inevitably right word in its place. In my early 
 works I used to hunt about for alliterations for 
 their own sake. What makes Carpaccio's art so 
 great — Carpaccio had recently been discovered 
 by Mr. Ruskin as the greatest of painters, and 
 there were several passing allusions to him in 
 these lectures — is that it is hidden. 
 
 I find among my notes — scattered and dis- 
 cursive, even as were the lectures — the following 
 few disjointed aphorisms and sentences which 
 may be set down as they come : — 
 
 Science is bad English which vanishes when it is 
 translated. 
 
 The modern stage is ruined by its realization of 
 scenery, which is contrary to all noble art. A picture, 
 whether on canvas or on the stage, should give an idea, 
 not its realization. 
 
 Stacy Marks has produced the first perfect pictures 
 of birds ; Copley Fielding produced the best picture of 
 a moor ; Burne Jones is our only living real artist. 
 
 We can only discern spiritual nature so far as we 
 are like it. 
 
 To speak of " natural " and " supernatural " is like 
 calling the organic " super-mineral." 
 
APPENDIX II. 
 
 "The Pleasures of England:" 1884. 
 
 The second complete course of Mr. Ruskin's 
 Oxford Lectures which I had the privilege of 
 attending was the one on "The Art of England." 
 Of these I took full notes at the time, for publi- 
 cation in the Pall Mall Gazette; but the lectures 
 had been carefully prepared, and the printed 
 volume hardly differs at all from the spoken 
 lectures. There would, therefore, be no point 
 in republishing my notes. With the lectures 
 entitled " The Pleasures of England," which 1 
 similarly reported, the case is different. The 
 course had clearly not been so carefully pre- 
 pared, nor was the lecturer's line of thought so 
 closely reasoned, as in " The Art of England." 
 My reports took the form, therefore, of "digested 
 plans " (so Mr. Ruskin was kind enough to call 
 them), " summarizing a line of thought not al- 
 ways by me enough expressed, and completing 
 and illustrating it from other parts of my books, 
 often more fully than, against time, I could do 
 myself." Accordingly 1 reprint these reports 
 here in their original form, in the hope that 
 
212 APPENDIX II. 
 
 they may be found by a reader here and there 
 to serve as useful companions to the printed 
 lectures. 
 
 Lecture I. 
 
 " Bertha to Osburga : the Pleasures 
 OF Learning." 
 
 {Pall Mall Gazette, October 20th, 1884.) 
 
 The course of lectures which Mr. Ruskin pro- 
 poses to give in Oxford this term, and the first 
 of which was delivered on Saturday, is intended 
 to trace in rough outline the whole history of 
 England as written in her art. 
 
 The Future of England. 
 
 Mr. Ruskin's history, it need hardly be said, 
 has a purpose and a moral ; and the object of 
 his survey of English art is, he stated at the out- 
 set on Saturday, to show what those of us who 
 have faculty should do, and those of us who iiave 
 sensibility should admire. " Such action and 
 such feeling may even yet create a future for 
 England which all of you may hopefully and 
 proudly labour for, and some of you even see, 
 when all the tumult of vain avarice and idle 
 pleasure has gone to its appointed perdition." 
 Wherein his hope for the future of England 
 lies Mr. Ruskin expounded in eloquent words, 
 written several years ago, which, as being '' the 
 
''the pleasures of ENGLAND:" 1 884. 2 13 
 
 most pregnant and essential" of all his profes- 
 sorial teachings, he repeated on Saturday : — 
 
 " There is a destiny now possible to us — the highest 
 ever set before a nation to be accepted or refused. We 
 are still undegenerate in race : a race mingled of the 
 best northern blood. We are not yet dissolute in tem- 
 per, but still have the firmness to govern and the grace 
 to obey. We have been taught a religion of pure mercy, 
 which we must either now finally betray, or learn to de- 
 fend by fulfilling. And we are rich in an inheritance of 
 honour, bequeathed to us through a thousand years of 
 noble history, which it should be our daily thirst to in- 
 crease with splendid avarice, so that Englishmen, if it 
 be a sin to covet honour, should be the most offending 
 souls alive. Within the last few years we have had the 
 laws of natural science opened to us with a rapidity 
 which has been blinding by its brightness ; and means 
 of transit and communication given to us, which have 
 made but one kingdom of the habitable globe. One 
 kingdom ; —but who is to be its king ? Is there to be no 
 king in it, think 3'ou, and every man to do that which is 
 right in his own eyes ? or only kings of terror, and the 
 obscene empires of Mammon and Belial ? Or will you, 
 youths of England, make your country again a royal 
 throne of kings ; a sceptred isle ; for all the world a 
 source of light, a centre of peace ; mistress of Learning 
 and of the Arts ; faithful guardian of great memories, in 
 the midst of irreverent and ephemeral visions ; faithful 
 servant of time-tried principles, under temptation from 
 fond experiments and licentious desires ; and amidst 
 the cruel and clamorous jealousies of the nations, wor- 
 shipped in her strange valour, of goodwill towards 
 men ? " 
 
 History Written in Art. 
 
 Fifteen years have passed since Mr. Ruskin 
 wrote those words, and he has net lost hope in 
 
214 APPENDIX II. 
 
 the interval ; on the contrary, he is more than 
 ever convinced that there has been " no time, 
 in all the pride of the past, when their country 
 might more serenely trust in the glory of her 
 youth, when her prosperity was more secure in 
 their genius, or her honour in their hearts." 
 What, then, are the young men and maidens of 
 England to do to carry out these hopes ? That 
 may best be learned, said Mr. Ruskin, by con- 
 sidering whether London be indeed " the natural 
 and Divinely appointed produce of the valley of 
 the Thames ; " and if not, how far it may be 
 altered by our acts and our thoughts. Mr. 
 Ruskin has said before (in his preface to the 
 translation of Xenophon's " Economics " in 
 " Bibliotheca Pastorum ") that all right educa- 
 tion should include the history of five cities — 
 Athens, Rome, Venice, Florence, and London. 
 The history of Athens, rightly understood, 
 teaches all that we need to know of the religion 
 and art of Greece ; that of Rome, the victory of 
 Christianity over barbarism ; that of Venice and 
 Florence, all that is essential in Christianity, as 
 illustrated by Christian painting, sculpture, and 
 architecture ; that of London, with its sister 
 Paris, Christian chivalry expressed in Gothic 
 architecture. Mr. Ruskin had once hoped to 
 write the history of these five cities, and it is 
 the histor}^ of London, understood in this man- 
 ner, that he proposes to tell in the present 
 course of lectures — the history, that is to say, 
 of the English and French nations, as expounded 
 in their architecture, their illuminated manu- 
 
"the pleasures of ENGLAND:" 1 884. 21 5 
 
 scripts, and, in a minor degree, their jewellery 
 and other lesser arts. The change in the title 
 of his lectures is significant of this historical 
 purpose. " Hitherto in all my writings I have 
 considered art solely in relation to the personal 
 temper of the artist, and so I have simply told 
 you that you ought to like Turner and dislike 
 Salvator Rosa, without ever considering what 
 your own instinct or genius would prompt you 
 to like or dislike. In this course Art is to be 
 looked at throughout from the people's side ; it 
 is to be asked what, as a matter of fact, they 
 did like ; and hence I have called my lectures 
 'The Pleasures of England,' instead of, as be- 
 fore, ' The Art of England.' " 
 
 ^^ Learning ^^ and ^^ Teaching^'' Nations. 
 
 First in historical order among these pleasures 
 comes the pleasure of learning — the pleasure, 
 that is, not of seeking truth for oneself, which 
 is a completely different thing, but of receiving 
 instruction — a pleasure which to all who have 
 the grace to receive is extremely sweet and 
 sacred. It is a pleasure, though, Mr. Ruskin 
 here interposed, which can hardl}^ find a place 
 in your modern theories, '' according to which 
 you turn out what you are to be by the inevita- 
 ble operation of what is within you ; whereas 
 the old theory of education was that the baby 
 material was by external force and wisdom bred 
 — that it was a plastic vase, to be shaped and 
 mannered as the potter chose, not as it chose. 
 
2l6 
 
 APPENDIX II. 
 
 until it was filled with sweetness of sound doc- 
 trine, like Hybla honey or Arabian spikenard." 
 Now, Athens and Rome were essentially self- 
 taught cities, but London and Paris are essen- 
 tially taught by others : — 
 
 "You find, from the earliest times, in Greece and Italy 
 a multitude of artists gradually perfecting the knowledge 
 and representation of the human body, glorified by the 
 exercises of war. You have, north of Greece and Italy, 
 innumerable and incorrigibly savage nations, represent- 
 ing, with rude and irregular efforts, on huge stones and 
 ice-borne boulders, on cave bones and forest stocks and 
 logs, with any manner of innocent tinting or scratching 
 possible to them, sometimes beasts, sometimes hobgob- 
 lins, sometimes Heaven only knows what, but never 
 attaining any skill in figure-drawing until, whether in- 
 vading or invaded, Greece and Italy teach them what a 
 human being is like ; and with that help they dream and 
 blunder on through the centuries, achieving many fan- 
 tastic and amusing things, more especially the art of 
 rhyming, whereby they usually express their notions of 
 things far better than by painting. Nevertheless, in 
 due course we g.et a Holbein out of them ; and in the 
 end, for best product hitherto, Sir Joshua, and the 
 supremely Gothic Gainsborough." 
 
 By "supremely Gothic Gainsborough" Mr. Rus- 
 kin explained that he meant, not that Gains- 
 borough painted " kings and saints turning up 
 their eyes, such as you buy at so much a hun- 
 dred, wherewith to ornament your pseudo-Gothic 
 temples," but that in his portraits the face was 
 everything, the body nothing, whereas the glory 
 of classic art is always in the body, and never 
 in the face. The foregoing summary of English 
 art may, Mr. Ruskin added, be still further 
 
1884. 21/ 
 
 condensed in Carlylean phrase ; and the art of 
 England may be said to consist of three whales' 
 cubs combined by boiling under the orders of 
 the Athena of Homer and Phidias.* 
 
 Untaught British Art. 
 
 Mr. Ruskin then proceeded to summarize 
 shortly the characteristics of the learning and 
 teaching nations respectively. The Huns and 
 Vandals he passed over, as being merely " forms 
 of punishment and destruction," and came to 
 immortal nations living on their native rocks 
 and unchanging plains. Of the learning nations, 
 the British have the deepest love of external 
 nature, of pure music and song ; they were 
 deeply religious, but neither apprehensive nor 
 receptive. " I do not speak of the Celtic race," 
 
 * "Mr. Ruskin incidentally referred again on Saturday 
 (wrote the Pall Mall Gazette a fortnight later) to those 
 'three whale's cubs combined by boiling' which the Satur- 
 day Reviciv found so hard a saying as only to be accepted 
 on our authority. It is a pretty compliment, but one which 
 we cannot accept, that our imprimatur is necessary to give 
 currency to a phrase of Carlyle's. Mr. Ruskin was quoting, 
 of course, from Friedrich, where Carlyle describes how the 
 Wends ' set up their god Triglaph — a three-headed mon- 
 ster of which I have seen prints, beyond measure ugly — 
 something like tliree whale's cubs combined by boiling or a 
 triple porpoise dead drunk.' The Wends were at this time 
 (a.d. 1023) ' sturdy heathens,' and their representation of 
 Triglaph was very appropriately, therefore, taken by Mr. 
 Ruskin as typical of the Northern art, which was subse- 
 quently to be touched through Christianity by ' the spear 
 of Pallas.' " 
 
2l8 APPENDIX II. 
 
 Mr. Ruskin said, " because I should now be 
 expected to say Keltic, and I don't mean to, if 
 only for fear that I should next be required to 
 say St. Kekilia." The Normans were scarcely 
 more apprehensive, but had more constructive 
 energy, their chief characteristic being that they 
 never spend themselves in vain anger, or pas- 
 sion, or sorrow ; they are like the living rock, 
 they flow like lava, and congeal like granite. 
 The Saxons and Franks are docile, imaginative, 
 and active, but with difficulty rational, and rarely 
 wise. For the type of the Ostrogoths '' you 
 may take the German Caesars, still standing as 
 a barrier against the license and insolence of 
 modern Republican Governments." And lastly, 
 there are the Lombards, sternly indocile, gloomily 
 imaginative ; for the Lom^bard, like the Arabian, 
 never jests. Of British art before the people 
 were touched by the influence of the tutor nations 
 there is no well-sifted account ; but they must 
 have been practical builders in wood, good boat- 
 builders, skilful in sail-weaving, with knowledge 
 of stout ironwork and copper for ornamentation. 
 You have here and there the stones of their 
 temples standing one on another in the midst 
 of deserted plains, and it is an ever-increasing 
 matter of wonder to me that your historians 
 never ask you to consider what you might have 
 been if no Roman missionary had ever passed 
 the Alps in charity, and no English king in 
 pilgrimage ; what the clay of Isis might have 
 yielded if it had never been touched by the 
 spear of Pallas and the rod of Agricola. 
 
"the pleasures of England:" 1884. 219 
 
 History Made Easy. 
 
 Mr. Ruskin then passed in review the chief 
 tutor nations — " nations of which you generally 
 learn only the corruptions, though it were better, 
 surely, if you must choose, to learn only their 
 virtues. For true knowledge is only of good, 
 in which alone are nature and life ; what is dis- 
 eased, and therefore unnatural, should be cut 
 away in contemplation, as in surgery." Of 
 these tutor nations, the Tuscan and the Arab 
 alone had no influence on us. For the influences 
 of the others you must look at the work of Agri- 
 cola and Constantius, of Benedict and Gregory ; 
 of the artists of Ravenna and Byzantium ; of 
 the teaching of St. Jerome and St. Chrysostom. 
 Of the period of history when the nations were 
 thus learning from the Syrians, and the Greeks, 
 and the Romans I can give you (said Mr. 
 Ruskin) " a few binding dates, which you will 
 find more practically useful than the inconse- 
 quential sequences which form the index of 
 common histories." Another department of 
 historical study, by the way, was considerably 
 simplified by Mr. Ruskin, in some informal re- 
 marks, after the conclusion of his written lecture. 
 Map-making is only tiresome when you trouble 
 yourself about railways leading from one un- 
 important place to another ; but in drawing the 
 map of England, for instance, you should put 
 in London, and Edinburgh, and Oxford, and Lan- 
 caster, and York, and Winchester — and nothing 
 else. With regard to the dates, from the Saxon 
 
220 APPENDIX II. 
 
 invasion (a.d. 449) to Alfred (a.d. 849) is a 
 period of exactly four hundred years. In 481 
 Clovis came to the throne ; and he marries Clo- 
 tilde, his saint-queen, in the year (a.d. 493) in 
 which Theodoric wins the battle of Verona. This 
 is the historical conjunction which Mr. Ruskin 
 has described in the " Bible of Amiens : " — 
 
 " At the close of the fifth century you have Europe 
 dividedsimply by her watershed, and two Christian kings 
 reigning, with entirely beneficent and healthy power — 
 one in the north, one in the south, the mightiest and 
 worthiest of them married to the other's youngest sister, 
 a saint-queen in the north — and a devoted and earnest 
 woman, queen-mother, in the south. It is a conjunction 
 of things memorable enough in the earth's history, much 
 to be thought of, O fast-whirling reader, if ever out of 
 the crowd of pent-up cattle driven across Rhine or Adige 
 you can extricate yourself for an hour, to walk peacefully 
 out of the south gate of Cologne, or across Fra Giocondo's 
 bridge at Verona — and so, pausing, look through the 
 clear air across the battle-field of Tolbiac to the blue Dra- 
 chenfels, or across the plain of St. Ambrogio to the moun- 
 tains of Garda. For there were fought — if you will think 
 closely — the two victor-battles of the Christian world. 
 Constantine's only gave changed form and dying colour 
 to the falling walls of Rome ; but the Frank and Gothic 
 races, thus conquering and thus ruled, founded the arts 
 and established the laws which gave to all future Europe 
 her joy and her virtue. And it is lovely to see how, 
 even thus early, the feudal chivalr}' depended for its 
 life on the nobleness of its womanhood. There was 
 no vision seen, or alleged, at Tolbiac. Clovis prayed 
 simply to the God of Clotilde." 
 
 So too with Theodoric. His marriage with 
 the youngest sister of Clovis is generally dis- 
 missed in a casual sentence, as exhibiting " the 
 
"the pleasures of ENGLAND:" 1 884. 221 
 
 first instance of a definite policy of domestic 
 alliances for publicends." Itis not asked whether 
 the King, who on the morning of the battle of 
 Verona visited his mother and his sister, and 
 " requested that on the most illustrious festival 
 of his life they v^^ould adorn him with the rich 
 garments which they had worked with their own 
 hands," would be a man to marry without love ; 
 nor is it considered how far his calmly Christian 
 justice may have been due to the sympathy and 
 counsel of his Frankish Queen. 
 
 The Education of England in Old Times. 
 
 A hundred years later sees the marriage of 
 Ethelbert and Bertha, signalizing the beginning 
 of erudition and laying the corner-stone of the 
 beautiful English character. Christianity has 
 been accepted ; faith from St. Augustine (not to 
 be confused with the Bishop) works from the 
 rule of Benedict — St. Augustine teaching all 
 men what to think and feel, Benedict what to 
 say, and be, and do ; and henceforth, for three 
 hundred years, ''from Bertha to Osburga," the 
 Saxon people are learning of the Christian faith 
 the humane arts and duties invented and incul- 
 cated by it. This is the history which is to be 
 found written in their art, and especially in their 
 illuminated missals. No effect whatever can be 
 traced on the Saxons from the luxury of Rome 
 or from her art. They build no aqueducts or 
 theatres; they envy no vile pleasures, and admire 
 no classic art. The pages of a Saxon missal 
 
222 APPENDIX II. 
 
 are the first example of the representation of 
 immediately imagined scenes. The contest be- 
 tween Herakles and Hydra on a Greek vase is 
 a mere memorandum ; the potter is busy en- 
 graving his lines with due regard for the inter- 
 vention of the handle. The Saxon monk scrawls 
 his figures anywhere and everywhere all over 
 the page, in explanatory scenes of inexpressible 
 vision. 
 
 Modern English Missionary Enterprise. 
 
 The lesson of this page of history — the moral 
 from past to present — is often strangely mis- 
 read. The late Dean of Westminster, standing 
 thirty years ago on St. Martin's Hill, at Canter- 
 bury, where Bertha prayed, and looking down 
 on the cathedral where once stood the Roman 
 church given by Ethelbert to Augustine, and 
 on the missionary college built on the ruins of 
 Augustine's abbe}^, found the prospect one of 
 "the most inspiriting in the world ; " and think- 
 ing of Augustine's solitary landing, and the sub- 
 sequent missionary zeal of the people to whom 
 he came, was minded to reflect on the mighty 
 results which may follow from the smallest be- 
 ginnings. " To this Gregorian chant in honour 
 of the British Constitution, I grieve," said Mr. 
 Ruskin, "but am compelled, to offer in conclu- 
 sion one or two historical objections. ' From 
 Bertha to Osburga ' the Saxons were learning 
 too eagerly to take to preaching, and whatever 
 Christianity left these shores were not from 
 
''the pleasures of ENGLAND:" 1884. 223 
 
 Thane t, but from lona ; and as for the new 
 ' Christianized continents ' that have arisen in 
 these latter days, the missionary office of Eng- 
 land in Africa and America has chiefly consisted 
 in stealing lands and exterminating their in- 
 habitants. Our introduction of Christianity in- 
 to India has only taught the natives to wear 
 Paisley shawls instead of Cashmere ; and in 
 Australasia the ' Christian aid ' that we have 
 rendered has been principally to help pious 
 farmers to convict labour. And although I will 
 take Dean Stanley's word for it that thirty years 
 ago the prospect from St. Martin's Church was 
 one of the cheerfullest and most inspiriting in 
 the world, I have yet to say that recent progress 
 has so accommodated the beauty of the sur- 
 roundings to the use of the missionary works 
 above described that the view of Canterbury 
 Cathedral has been contracted into despised 
 subservience to the colossal walls of an all-visible 
 county gaol." 
 
 Lecture II. 
 
 ''Alfred to the Confessor : the Pleasures 
 OF Faith." 
 
 {Pall Mall Gazette, October 27th, 1884.) 
 
 Mr. Ruskin prefaced the second chapter of his 
 history on Saturday by noting two omissions : 
 
224 APPENDIX II. 
 
 he had to pass by the influence of the Scotch 
 missionaries and the whole of the Roman-British 
 period. The former omission he the less re- 
 gretted because the facts could all be found in 
 Montalembert's " Les Moines d'Occident," where 
 they could be seen better through a nimbus of 
 sympathetic enthusiasm than in any distortion 
 of them by the fog of contemptuous Rationalism. 
 
 The Roman-British Period. 
 
 Of the Roman-British period, Mr. Ruskin's 
 readers would find a carefully digested account 
 in the forthcoming number of " Our Fathers 
 have Told Us," entitled "Valle Crucis." Mon- 
 talembert, it should be noticed, is entirely blind 
 to the conditions of Roman virtue which ap- 
 peared in such of the Emperors as Pertinax, 
 Carus, or Constantius, and denies with abusive 
 violence the good effect of Roman law. To all 
 of which no better answer could be wanted than 
 that St. Benedict and St. Gregory were both 
 Roman patricians, and Imogen and Cordelia 
 Roman ladies. King Lear and Cymbeline both 
 belong to this period, and only once — when 
 Kent exclaims, in the first scene of the play, 
 " Now, by Apollo, King, Thou swear'st thy gods 
 in vain " — does Shakespeare throw contempt on 
 the Roman gods. Nor is it without significance 
 that the richest fighting element in the British 
 army to-day is to be found, not in the Saxons, 
 but amongst the Irish, the Highlanders, and the 
 Cornishmen. 
 
"the pleasures of ENGLAND:" 1 884. 225 
 
 The Evidence of Alfred's Penny. 
 
 Having thus completed his survey of the 
 sources of instruction open to our Saxon fore- 
 fathers, Mr. Ruskin went on to answer the 
 question propounded in his first lecture, what 
 London would have been like if the nature of 
 the flowers, and trees, and children growing by 
 Thames-side had been rightly understood. '^ Of 
 what London was like in the days of faith I 
 can show you," said Mr. Ruskin, ''one piece of 
 artistic evidence. It is Alfred's silver penny, 
 struck in London mint. The character of a 
 coinage is quite conclusive evidence in national 
 history, and there is no great empire in progress 
 but tells its story in beautiful coins. Here in 
 Alfred's penny — a round coin, with L. O. N. D. 
 L N. L A. struck on it — you have just the same 
 beauty of design, the same enigmatical arrange- 
 ment of letters, as in the early inscription which 
 it is ' the pride of my life ' to have discovered 
 at Venice. This inscription (' the first words 
 that Venice ever speaks aloud') is, it will be 
 remembered, on the church of S. Giacomo di 
 Rialto, and runs, being interpreted, 'Around 
 this temple let the merchant's law be just, his 
 weights true, and his covenants faithful.' " 
 
 A Picture of " Old London." 
 
 What the buildings of that old London were 
 like I cannot tell 3^ou, but at least we know that 
 its groups of ships and sails were exceedingly 
 
 15 
 
226 APPENDIX II. 
 
 beautiful. No doubt your ironclads at Ports- 
 mouth now are extremely beautiful too ; but 
 the Saxon war-ships lay at London's shore, and 
 shone bright with banner, and shield, and dragon 
 prow. You may be happier, but you are not 
 handsomer, now, with your penny steamers 
 crowded with shop-girls and shop-boys, than 
 in the old days when ''the coracles of the 
 British tribes, the galleys of Roman armies, 
 were moored in the Thames, and gave to Lon- 
 don the most probable origin of its name — the 
 City of Ships ; when clear, swift rivulets, such 
 as the Wall Brook and the Hole Bourne, de- 
 scended from the higher hills through winding 
 valleys; when the consecrated springs of Clerken 
 Well, and Holy Well, and St. Clement's Well 
 were the scene of many a sacred and festive 
 pageant which gathered round their green mar- 
 gins." "I am quoting," said Mr. Ruskin, ''from 
 the first chapter of Dean Stanley's ' Memorials 
 of Westminster ' — a chapter which I always tell 
 my friends who praise my writing that I would 
 rather have written than any of my own books. 
 But had I been able to paint so perfect a pic- 
 ture, the conclusions I should have drawn would 
 have been widely different. The Dean describes, 
 indeed, the ' river of wells ' with all a poet's 
 joy, but Hke a true modern citizen of Belgravia, 
 he sees 'a quaint humour in the fact that the 
 great arteries of our crowded streets, the vast 
 sewers which cleanse cur habitations, are fed 
 by the life-blood of those old and Hving streams ; 
 that underneath our tread the Tyburn, and the 
 
"the pleasures of ENGLAND:" 1 884. 22/ 
 
 Holborn, and the Fleet, and the Wallbrook are 
 still pursuing their ceaseless course, still minister- 
 ing to the good of man, though in a far differ- 
 ent fashion than when Druids drank of their 
 sacred springs, and Saxons were baptized in 
 their rushing waters, ages ago.' Now, whatever 
 sympathy you may feel with the entire compla- 
 cency in the past, present, and future which is 
 characteristic of Dean Stanley, I would at least 
 beg you to observe that the transmutation of 
 holy wells into sewers has spoiled the Thames 
 as a salmon stream, from which once a year, 
 even as late as 1382, one of the London fisher- 
 men brought in a salmon for St. Peter, and took 
 his place beside the Prior." 
 
 Disbelief in Legends — ^^ Solvitur Anibulando'' 
 
 "Dean Stanley sees, again, in this legend of 
 the fish — containing the claim established by 
 the Abbots of Westminster on the tithe of the 
 Thames fisheries — an instance of 'the union of 
 innocent fiction with worldly craft which marks 
 so many legends both of Pagan and Christian 
 times.' A capital instance, truly, of the Lon- 
 donian thought which marks so many of the 
 well-meant books of your pious metropolis. 
 Let me say, in the first place, that the fiction of 
 old time would be no worse than that of to-day 
 for being innocent instead of guilty ; and, in 
 the second place, that legends are not fictions 
 at all, but are the true record of impressions 
 brought into bright focus by action under the 
 
228 APPENDIX II. 
 
 impulse of faith." '' Much more," continued Mr. 
 Ruskin, '4 could tell you of the reality of visions 
 than you would believe; but this at least I would 
 say to you, that unless you try the rough life 
 of Christian ages, you cannot judge of the visions 
 or legends that resulted from it. Because you 
 have feather beds instead of ferns for 3'our backs, 
 carpets instead of rushes for your feet, kickshaws 
 instead of beef for your eating, and drains in- 
 stead of holy wells for your drinking, therefore 
 you think that you are positively the cream of 
 creation. Stay in those pleasant circumstances 
 and in that pleasant delusion if you will, but do 
 not accuse j^our rough-fed and rough-bred fore- 
 fathers of bringing back a false report from 
 earth and sky until, like them, you have trodden 
 the earth barefoot and looked on the heaven as 
 they did, face to face. Do what king after king 
 of them did — put rough shoes on your feet and 
 walk to Rome, sleeping by the road-side when 
 it is fine, and in the first outhouse you can find 
 when it is wet, live, as you travel, on onions and 
 water, and then see if you will be inclined to 
 believe those who tell you that your experiences 
 by the way are either poetry or fiction." 
 
 The " Sfojies of Westminster y 
 
 Mr. Ruskin then went on to read the history 
 of London in the stones of Westminster Abbey 
 — the monument of the personal character of its 
 founder, and the shrine and throne of English 
 faith and truth — quoting from Dean Stanley the 
 
"the pleasures of ENGLAND:" 1 884. 229 
 
 account of Edward's vow to make a pilgrimage to 
 the Apostle's grave ; of the legend of the Hermit 
 of Worcester, who charged the King, in the 
 Apostle's name, to establish instead, '' at Thor- 
 ney, two leagues from the city," a Benedictine 
 monastery ; the legend of Edric the fisherman, 
 and his wonderful encounter with St. Peter ; and 
 finally the two miracles (of the cure of the cripple, 
 and of the child appearing in the sacramental 
 elements to the King Leofric and Godiva), which 
 still further endeared the little chapel of St. 
 Peter to the Confessor. After describing the 
 architecture and plan of Edward's Abbey, Mr. 
 Ruskin read, for purposes of subsequent depre- 
 cation, Stanley's general reflections on the story 
 of its foundation, in which the Dean speaks of 
 the ''fantastic circumstances," taking us back 
 into "a world of poetry," and of the ''childish 
 and eccentric fancies " of the Confessor, whose 
 ** opinions and prevailing motives were such as 
 in no part of modern Europe would now be 
 shared by any educated teacher or ruler." 
 
 The Age of Faith not the Age of Poetry. 
 
 " First, I dispute the implied statement," said 
 Mr. Ruskin, '^ that the age of faith is the age 
 of poetry. Surely the age of poetry in English 
 history is not the age of Bede, but that of Shake- 
 speare. The generation, too, which has seen 
 ^Hiawatha,' and George Macdonald's 'Soul's 
 Diary,' and Keble's Hymns might fairly claim to 
 be an age not destitute of religious poetry. But, 
 
230 APPENDIX II. 
 
 to settle the matter once for all, take the follow- 
 ing story from Bede's ' Life of Cuthbert,' which 
 tells how Cuthbert, on bidding some pilgrims 
 farewell, had bidden them also to cook a certain 
 goose they would find prepared for them. The 
 visitors, finding they had enough of their own, 
 and to spare, went on their way, but for seven 
 days were detained by contrary winds, and yet 
 ''could not think what fault they had committed." 
 But when they went back to the holy father, and 
 he found that the goose had not been eaten, he 
 reproved their disobedience, and said, ' No w^onder 
 that the storm has prevented you.' So he bade 
 them put the goose into the cauldron. And lo, 
 as soon as the kettle began to boil the w^ind 
 dropped and the waves were still ! This story, 
 which Bede had, he tells us, ' not on chance 
 authority, but from a very pious and reverend 
 monk who was present at the time,' I give you," 
 said Mr. Ruskin, "partly as an illustration of 
 the power of obedience, but chiefly in order 
 that we may hear no more about the poetry of 
 the age of Bede." 
 
 The Age of Faith not '' Childish^ 
 
 " But Dean Stanley tells us, in the second 
 place, that it was an ' artless and childish ' age. 
 On the contrary, it was an age which was 
 eminently productive of, eminently under the 
 governance and guidance of, men of the widest 
 and most brilliant faculties, constructive and 
 speculative, men whose acts became the romance, 
 
''the pleasures of ENGLAND:" 1884. 23 1 
 
 whose thoughts the wisdom, and whose arts the 
 treasure of a thousand years of futurity. In 
 illustration of this point Mr. Ruskin said — 
 
 "Again and again they would indeed find the stream 
 of the Gospel contracting itself into narrow channels, 
 and appearing, after long-concealed filtration through 
 veins of unmeasured rock, with the bright resilience of 
 a mountain spring. But they would find it the only 
 candid, and therefore the only wise, way of research to 
 look in each era of Christendom for the minds of 
 culminating power in all its brotherhood of nations, and 
 careless of local impulse, momentary zeal, picturesque 
 incident, or vaunted miracle, to fasten their attention 
 upon the force of chajacter in the men whom over each 
 newly converted race Heaven visibly sets forth its 
 shepherds and kings, to bring forth judgment and victory. 
 Of these he would name to them, as messengers of God 
 and masters of men, five monks and five kings, in whose 
 arms the life of the world lay as a nursling babe. Let 
 them remember, in their successive order — of monks, 
 St. Jerome, St. Augustine, St. Martin, St. Benedict, and 
 St. Gregory ; of kings, Theodoric, Charlemagne, Alfred, 
 Canute, and the Confessor." 
 
 *'Of three ofthesemen,"Mr. Ruskincontinued, 
 " I will read you some words which I will ask 
 you to compare with whatever is best and most 
 exalted in the literature of to-day. For philo- 
 sophy Mr. Ruskin recited a passage from St. 
 Augustine's 'Citie of God ; ' for Christian prayer, 
 Alfred's expansion of the words, Fiat voluntas 
 tua ; and for Christian polity, the well-known 
 letter which Canute sent to England from Rome, 
 ' that all the people of my realm may rejoice in 
 my well doing.' What think you, in candour 
 and honour," Mr. Ruskin asked, "you youths 
 of enlightenment, of the spirit that thus animated 
 
APPENDIX JI. 
 
 the dark ages ? Whatever you may feel respect- 
 ing the beauty and wisdom of the words I have 
 read to you, be assured of one thing above all, 
 that they were sincere. The idea of diplomacy 
 or priestcraft belongs only to comparatively 
 recent times. No false knight or lying priest 
 ever prospered in the ' dark ' ages ; men suc- 
 ceeded onl}' by following openly declared pur- 
 poses and preaching candidly beloved and 
 trusted creeds." 
 
 Tlie Pleasures of Faith. 
 
 In so believing and loving they were joyous 
 as well as sincere. ''We continually hear," 
 said Mr. Ruskin, in conclusion, "of the trials, 
 and sometimes of the victories of faith, but 
 scarcely ever of its pleasures. Yet the chief 
 delight of all good men, in all the ages, has 
 been in recognizing the goodness of the Master 
 who had come to dwell in their spirits. In 
 all we now do we expose ourselves to count- 
 less miseries, because we depend only on our 
 own power, and choose only our own gratifica- 
 tion — with no thought of working, except for 
 ourselves or others in whose welfare we are 
 equally selfishly interested, until the idea of 
 acting with any other object has come to be 
 like the precentor's invitation to a company of 
 little voice and less practice to 'sing to the 
 praise and glory of God.' You cannot any 
 longer imagine the pleasures of faith, perhaps, 
 but you can assuredly prove them. Simply as 
 
"the pleasures of ENGLAND:" 1884. 233 
 
 a philosophical experiment, adopt the principles 
 of Alfred or Augustine for a year. If, then, 
 you are no happier, at least you will be able 
 with more grace and more modesty to be of the 
 same opinion still. If you are minded thus to 
 try, begin each day with Alfred's prayer ; then 
 set to work with no thought of ambition, or gain, 
 or pleasure more than is appointed you, but 
 with a steady determination to do something 
 for the help or honour of your country, resolv- 
 ing not to join in the world's iniquities, nor to 
 turn aside from its miseries. Live thus, and 
 believe that with a swiftness of answer pro- 
 portionate to the truth of your endeavour the 
 God of hope will fill you with all peace and joy. 
 But if you have not courage nor art enough to 
 make the trial, if you allow yourselves to be 
 hindered by the wishes of your friends, or the 
 interest of your families, or the bias of your 
 genius, or the expectations of your college, or 
 any other bow-wow-wow of this wild dog of a 
 world, then for very shame giv^e up all title to 
 be free or independent, and recognize yourselves 
 for the slaves you are, with your thoughts put 
 in ward to your bodies, and your hearts bound 
 in manacles to your hands ; then, for very 
 shame, if you cannot believe that there were 
 once men who gave their souls to God, know 
 and confess how surely there are those who sell 
 themselves to His adversaries." 
 
234 APPENDIX II. 
 
 Lecture III. 
 
 "The Confessor to Cceur-de-Lion : 
 THE Pleasures of Deed." 
 
 {Pall Mall Gazette, November 3rd, 1884.) 
 
 The 3rd chapter of Mr. Ruskin's history dif- 
 fered from the other two in not having been 
 completely written out when the time came for 
 the delivery of the lecture last Saturday. The 
 work had been interfered with, it seems, partly 
 by a visit from a Birmingham gentleman — the 
 trustee of St. George's Guild — and partly by a 
 dinner with " my dear Professor Westwood," 
 both of which events, it will be seen, suggested 
 happy thoughts which Mr. Ruskin had not time 
 to fully work in. So, again, the historical ex- 
 tracts required for the illustration of his lectures 
 w^ere on this occasion curtailed, because "the 
 University insists on building ball-rooms instead 
 of lecture-rooms, and I do not care to keep 
 you further imprisoned in this black hole." 
 The following abstract, however, will perhaps 
 give a general idea of Mr. Ruskin's line of 
 argument : — 
 
 Saxons versus Normans. 
 
 In his first two lectures he had given some 
 reasons for doubting whether our Saxon ances- 
 tors were as fantastic and childish as Dean 
 
"the pleasures of England:" 1884. 235 
 
 Stanley represents them. He now went a step 
 farther, and showed that there was such force 
 in their infancy and grace in their fantasy as 
 to make extremely disputable the Dean's final 
 statement that the Norman invasion was entirely 
 a sanitary, moral, and intellectual blessing to 
 England, and that the arrow which struck her 
 Harold was indeed the arrow of the Lord's 
 deliverance. Was the rule of the Norman really 
 ''the a\enging, civilizing, stimulating hand of 
 a mightier race " ? and did the future of the 
 Saxons indeed depend on the critical advent of 
 the didactic and disciplinary Norman barons 
 to polish them, stimulate, and chastise ? One 
 thing, at least, Mr. Ruskin's audience would, 
 after his last lecture, be ready, perhaps, to admit, 
 and that was that the Saxon character, with its 
 imagination, its docility, its love of knowledge, 
 gave rise to one of the purest and most intel- 
 lectual forms of faith that Christendom has ever 
 seen. It has, however, never been understood 
 — partly because of the rudeness of its expres- 
 sion in the illumination of manuscripts, and its 
 total want of expression in architecture, but 
 chiefly from its own childlike character, and its 
 fearless application of great principles to small 
 things. 
 
 Norman Religion : the Gospel of Works. 
 
 Just as this faith was springing to its fruit- 
 age comes the Norman invasion. How far this 
 was an advantage may be seen far better by 
 
236 APPENDIX II. 
 
 considering Alfred's struggle against the Vikings 
 than Harold's against William, whose Normans 
 had been touched by Christianity. They had 
 been touched, but that is all ; for the first thing 
 to notice about the Normans is that they never 
 were Christians, nor ever tried to be, but only 
 enemies of the Saracens. For detailed know- 
 ledge about the Normans, between 800 a.d. 
 and 1200, Mr. Ruskin referred to the scattered 
 notices in M. VioUet le Due's Dictionary of 
 Architecture — the best informed, most intelli- 
 gent, and most thoughtful of guides — and con- 
 tented himself with gathering up the general 
 results. One needful caution, by the way, Mr. 
 Ruskin interposed to his erudite critics : rough 
 generalizations of four centuries in so many 
 minutes must not be understood without excep- 
 tions or taken an pied de la lettre. As he read 
 them, these Normans were men wholly of this 
 world, bent on doing the most in it and making 
 the best of it they could — men of deeds to their 
 death, never pausing, changing, repenting, or 
 anticipating more than the completed square of 
 their keep and roof of their nave. In religion 
 they cared neither for its sentiments nor its 
 promises, but they adopted it solely as an in- 
 strument of order. Their attitude was thus the 
 exact reverse of that of the modern believer, of 
 whom it may be generally said that he values 
 religion as promising future bliss, not as enforc- 
 ing present duty. The Norman searches the 
 Scriptures, adopts every exhortation to do and 
 govern, and proclaims himself blunt knight of 
 
^'THE pleasures of ENGLAND:" 1 884. 23/ 
 
 God — liable to much misapprehension, of course, 
 as to the services immediately required of him, 
 but supposing, since the whole make of him, 
 outside and in, was a soldier, that God meant 
 him for a soldier, and that he was to establish 
 by main force the Christian faith and w^orks all 
 over the world, so far as he comprehended them ; 
 not with the Mohammedan indignation against 
 spiritual error, but with a sound and honest 
 soul's dislike of material error, and resolution 
 to extinguish that, even if perchance found in 
 the spiritual persons to whom, in their office, he 
 yet rendered total reverence. 
 
 Norman Art : the Rule of Strength. 
 
 So, too, in art, the Normans make no books 
 of their churches, write no " Bibles of Amiens " 
 on their porches. As soon as they entered 
 France — 
 
 " They became hardy and active builders. Within 
 the space of a century and a half they had covered 
 the country on which they had definitely landed with 
 religious, monastic, and civil edifices, of an extent and 
 richness then little common. They set themselves to 
 build impregnable military walls, and sublime religious 
 ones, in the best possible practical ways. Soldiers 
 before and after everything, they learned the lockings 
 and bracings of their stones primarily in defence against 
 the battering-ram and the projectile, and esteemed the 
 pure circular arch for its distributed and equal strength 
 more than for its beauty." 
 
 The pictured wall belongs not to the Normans. 
 And here came in — brought, we may suppose. 
 
238 APPENDIX II. 
 
 by " Fors Clavigera " — a very happy illustration, 
 suggested by Mr. Ruskin's Birmingham friend, 
 Mr. Baker. Mr. Ruskin was showing him, only 
 the day before, the collection of antique casts 
 which Mr. W. B. Richmond had so wisely 
 brought to supersede " the modern stuff of 
 Chantrey," and on stopping under the Athena 
 of JEgina. Mr. Baker exclaimed, " Hallo ! why, 
 there's the chopped Norman arch ! " And there, 
 sure enough (Mr. Ruskin added) it was, and I 
 had never seen it. The chopped Norman arch 
 and the fringe in which you 3^oung ladies delight 
 come alike from the forehead of Athena. Nor 
 was this all, for on the edge of her cestus Mr. 
 Ruskin found the foliation which he showed in a 
 photograph of Poictiers, just as from her peplus 
 comes the drapery of Rheims, Mr. Ruskin 
 gave another interesting instance of the depend- 
 ence of the Normans on the art of Greece. A 
 few years ago he went to Sicily to see the tombs 
 of Roger and of Frederick (cf. p. 84), and to 
 look at the Norman art he would surely find 
 there. But not a stroke of the chisel turned 
 out to belong to the Normans. Their own 
 masons could not carve, and the tombs of the 
 Norman kings are the work of Greek slaves. 
 What the Greeks carved was a lion with 
 the Gorgon's head — again with the chopped 
 Norman arch in the fringe ; and what the 
 Normans themselves made of the Gorgon may 
 be seen on Iffley Church. Mr. Ruskin here 
 showed an enlarged drawing of a grotesque 
 head — the Gorgon, with long ears, and the face 
 
"the pleasures of England:" 1884. 239 
 
 elongated by the Norman helmet — the whole 
 effect bearing a striking resemblance to Mephis- 
 topheles, of which gentleman Mr. Ruskin pro- 
 mised to say more in later lectures. 
 
 The Pleasures of Deed — in War. 
 
 Both in religion, then, and in art, the plea- 
 sures of the Normans were those not of faith, 
 but of deeds. Of these pleasures of deed Mr. 
 Ruskin gave many illustrations from Sismondi's 
 " Norman Conquest of Sicily," only " touching 
 Sismondi up here and there, where he is too 
 cool, or where he fails to see far enough into 
 things." Mr. Ruskin referred especially to the 
 off-hand determination of the Normans in 1041, 
 that '' as they were there they might as well 
 destroy the Byzantine Empire ; " to the deeds 
 of Robert Guiscard (so politely described as 
 " M. Guiscard " by the Daily Nezus) ; and above 
 all to the battle of Civitella, on Waterloo Day, 
 1053, describing how the handful of Normans 
 routed the Papal forces, and then how Leo 
 IX. met the Norman army alone, and as he 
 approached they threw themselves on their 
 knees, covered themselves with dust, and im- 
 plored his pardon and his blessing — ''a day of 
 deeds, gentlemen, that, to some purpose, at any 
 rate. A piece of poetry, too, if you like, but a 
 piece of steel-clad fact also, compared to which 
 the battles of Hastings and Waterloo were 
 mere boys' quarrels. You do not suppose, 
 you British boys, that you overthrew Napoleon 
 
240 APPENDIX II. 
 
 when your Prime Minister folded up the map of 
 Europe at the thought of him. Not you, but 
 the snows of Heaven and the acts of Him who 
 dasheth in pieces with a rod of iron." 
 
 A Defence of Norman " T/iicz'ing." 
 
 Mr. Ruskin here diverged to meet an objec- 
 tion which he supposed the extreme probity of 
 the nineteenth century would feel acutel}^ against 
 these men — that they all lived by thieving : — 
 
 Without venturing (said Mr. Ruskin) to allude to the 
 I'aison d'et?-e of the present French and Enghsh Stock 
 Exchanges, I will merely ask any of you, whether of 
 Saxon or Norman blood, to define for yourselves what 
 you mean by the " possession of hidia." I have no 
 doubt that you all wish to keep India in order, and in 
 like manner the Duke WilHam wished to keep England 
 in order. If you will read the lecture on the life of Sir 
 Herbert Edwardes* (not Prince Albert Edward, as the 
 Standard loyally had it), which I hope to give in London 
 after finishing this course, you will see how a Christian 
 British officer could, and did verily with his whole heart, 
 keep in order such part of India as might be entrusted 
 to him, and so doing secured our empire. But the 
 silent feeling and practice of the nation about India are 
 based on quite other motives than Sir Herbert s. Every 
 mutiny, every danger, every terror, and every crime 
 occurring under or paralyzing our Indian legislation 
 arises directly out of our national desire to live on the 
 loot of India ; and the notion of English young gentle- 
 men and ladies of good position, falling in love with 
 each other without immediate prospect of establishment 
 in Belgrave Square, that they can find in India, instantly 
 on landing, a bungalow ready furnished with the loveliest 
 
 * See "A Knight's Faith,'' vol. iv. of " Bibliotheca 
 Pastorum '■ (George Allen, 1885). 
 
"the pleasures of ENGLAND:" 1 884. 24 1 
 
 fans, china, and shawls, ices and sherbet at command, 
 four-and-twenty slaves succeeding each other hourly to 
 swing the punkah, and a regiment with a beautiful band 
 to " keep order " outside, all round the house. 
 
 The Old Lion and the New. 
 
 Mr. Ruskin's peroration had not got itself 
 written on Saturday afternoon, but the scorn- 
 ful moral with which his lectures are wont to 
 conclude was pointed very effectively by some 
 pictures instead. The first illustration was the 
 lucky outcome of his dinner with Professor 
 Westwood, who had shown him the Bible of 
 Charles the Bald, the tutor of Alfred. The illu- 
 minated frontispiece which Mr. Ruskin showed 
 is the figure of a true lion, inscribed beneath 
 with words which run, being interpreted, " This 
 Hon rises, and by his rising breaks the gates 
 of hell. This lion never sleeps, nor shall sleep 
 for evermore." Such was the lion as our Saxon 
 Alfred knew it. For Richard Coeur de Lion 
 Mr. Ruskin referred his audience to " Fors 
 Clavigera" (No. III., March, 1871) and the 
 later chapters of '' Ivanhoe." " Men called him 
 * Lion-heart,' not untruly ; and the English as a 
 people have prided themselves somewhat ever 
 since on having every man of them the heart of 
 a lion. Many lion-hearted Englishmen there 
 have been, and are indeed still to this day ; but 
 for the especial peculiar typical product of the 
 nineteenth century see this page of Punch'' 
 Mr. Ruskin here displayed in a frame the inside 
 fold oi Punch for August i6th, 1884, containing 
 
 16 
 
242 
 
 APPENDIX II. 
 
 on the left-hand page a drawing, by Mr. Du 
 Maurier, of the different effects of a good din- 
 ner on two fat old gentlemen, and on the right 
 a cartoon of Mr. Bright as " The Old Lion 
 Aroused." Mr. Ruskin had inserted a con- 
 necting mark between the two pictures, and 
 christened the whole 
 
 '' The New Lion Stiiffedr 
 
 Lecture IV. 
 
 " CcEUR DE Lion to Elizabeth : 
 THE Pleasures of Fancy." 
 
 {Pall Mall Gazette, November loth, 1884.) 
 
 Mr. Ruskin's History has been '' shoved all 
 wrong," as he told his audience on Saturday, 
 by the lucky accidents which he described in 
 his last lecture. The fourth lecture had to fill 
 up some of the gaps in the third, and the result 
 is that the History is getting a good deal behind 
 date. No one need complain, however, since 
 the result is that Mr. Ruskin has now promised 
 some further lectures to supplement the present 
 course, as well as a special one on Giorgione, 
 with a description of whose altar-piece at Cas- 
 tel Franco Saturday's miscellany was, as will 
 be seen lower down, brought to an eloquent 
 conclusion. 
 
THE PLEASURES OF ENGLAND:" 1 884. 243 
 
 " The Five Christmas DaysT 
 
 The first gap in his last lecture which Mr. 
 Ruskin filled up on Saturday was an enumer- 
 ation of the " Five Christmas Days " which, as 
 it happens, sum up the history of five centuries. 
 These dates were written down on a diagram 
 which hung conspicuously on the wall behind 
 the lecturer, and are as follows : Christmas 
 Day 496, Clovis baptized ; 8oo, Charlemagne 
 crowned ; 1 04 1 , the Vow of the Count of Aversa 
 (the settlement of the Normans, near Naples, 
 whose vow was referred to in the last lecture) ; 
 1066, the Conqueror crowned ; 1 130, Roger 11. 
 crowned King of the Two Sicilies. These 
 Christmas Days will be referred to in later lec- 
 tures, said Mr. Ruskin, in connection with the 
 way in which you keep Christmas Days now. 
 
 Ail Ideal Election. 
 
 The filling up of another gap was also a 
 correction. In the last lecture I gave you 
 incidentally (said Mr. Ruskin) what was, in my 
 opinion, extremely good advice— namely, never 
 to make a shot at anything, neither at a word 
 — no, nor at a bird. 1 was the better quahfied 
 to give that sage advice because 1 was at the 
 moment making a shot myself at the name of 
 the Venetian Doge who was defeated by Robert 
 Guiscard. I thought at the time it was Pietro 
 Orseolo, but 1 now remember that it was 
 
244 APPENDIX II. 
 
 Domenico Selvo. Taking this slip apparently 
 as an accident sent by '' Fors," Mr. Ruskin 
 proceeded to say some more about this great 
 Doge, reading from the chapter entitled " Divine 
 Right," in '' St. Mark's Rest "—a chapter which 
 was always meant, Mr. Ruskin said, for a lecture, 
 since much of its meaning depended on accent. 
 It describes how the people of Venice went in 
 armed boats to the Lido, and prayed that "God 
 would grant to them such a king as should be 
 worthy to reign over them ; " and how suddenly, 
 as they prayed, there rose up with one accord 
 among the multitude the cry, " Domenico Selvo, 
 we will, and we approve." Carlyle has given 
 you a description of a grand election in that of 
 the Abbot Samson, but this is a grander still. 
 The chapter then goes on to tell how Domenico 
 entered barefoot the Field of St. Mark (all 
 covered with green grass then), how he gave 
 the people pillage of his palace ("modern bribery 
 is quite as costly and not half so merry "), 
 and how he afterwards took a Greek maid for 
 his wife, whose luxury, especially in the use of 
 " certain two-pronged instruments" wherewith 
 to eat her meat, was miraculous in the eyes of 
 simple Venice, but whose reign " first gave the 
 glories of Venetian art, in true inheritance from 
 the angels, of that Athenian Rock above which 
 Ion spread his starry tapestry, and under whose 
 shadow his mother had gathered the crocus in 
 the dew." 
 
884. 245 
 
 A Distress ion. 
 
 'i> 
 
 The mention of " Ion " led Mr. Ruskin into a 
 little digression about the violet, for Euripides^ 
 violet was the viola odorata of pure blue, the 
 fleur-de-lis of Byzantine ornament. Gathering 
 it at its home at Palermo long ago, said Mr. 
 Ruskin, I matched it against the "violet sea," 
 and could not tell which was which. Here are 
 my drawings of the sea and of the flower. I 
 have given you in the Turner Gallery, here in 
 Oxford, his rendering of the Mediterranean Sea 
 — more skilful in its effect of haze than mine, 
 but mine, I think, a little more true in colour ; 
 at any rate I put all the colour in my box on it. 
 It is a picture of what spring grass is like- — in 
 Sicily you cannot say w^hether it is green or 
 blue, pure white in Florence and in France, and 
 gold here on Isis banks, till your horrible races 
 came and embanked the stream, and the ncisy 
 crowds of you trampled the flowers. 
 
 ^^Imagination'' and ^^ Fancy T 
 
 Returning now " to business," Mr. Ruskin 
 gave a preliminary definition of what he meant 
 by imagination. *' In ' Modern Painters ' I dis- 
 tinguished unnecessarily between fancy and 
 imagination. Dean Stanley's word ' fantasy ' 
 is accurate for both, fancy being concerned with 
 lighter things. When a boy falls foolishly in 
 love with a girl you say he has taken a fancy 
 
246 APPENDIX II. 
 
 for her ; but if he loves her rightly, that is to 
 say for her noble qualities, you ought to say he 
 has taken an imagination for her ; for then he 
 is endowed with the new light of love, which 
 sees and tells of the mind in her. And not 
 falsely or vainl}'. Wordsworth, indeed, says of 
 his wife, most foolishly and conceitedly — 
 
 ■ Such if thou wert in all men's view, 
 An universal show, 
 What would mj' fanc}^ have to do, 
 My feelings to bestow ? ' 
 
 thus making of her a mere lay figure for the 
 drapery of his fancy. But the true lover's love 
 discovers, not bestows — discovers what is most 
 precious in his mistress, and what works most 
 deeply for his life and happiness. Day by day, 
 as he loves her better, he discerns her more 
 truly." 
 
 ^^ Lnagination^' and ^^ Truths 
 
 "The truth and faith of the lover are the 
 foundation of all the joy in imagination, that is 
 to say in truths of configuration. When in my 
 next lecture I speak of the pleasures of truth 1 
 mean untransfigured truth, whereas what the 
 imagination exercises itself upon is configured 
 truth. Thus, you may look at a girl until she 
 seems to you an angel, because, at best, all girls 
 are angels; but no amount of looking at a cock- 
 chafer will convert it into a girl. The conse- 
 quences of the frank and eager use of the fancy 
 
THE PLEASURES OF ENGLAND. 1554. ^A7 
 
 on religious subjects are to be seen in the 
 change from the ' three whale's cubs ' to the 
 perfect types of the Virgin and Son— Divine, 
 because, with most affectionate truth, human. 
 This apotheosis by the imagination is the sub- 
 ject of the present lecture : to-day I only de- 
 scribe it : in the next lecture I shall discuss it." 
 
 Mythic and Real Saints. 
 
 An important distinction is to be noted in 
 the objects of this apotheosis, according as they 
 are, or are not, real persons. The first class in- 
 cludes the mythic saints, who are often merely 
 revived Pagan deities ; the second includes 
 men and women who really lived, but whose 
 memories are illumined by tradition. The 
 mythic saints belong chiefly to the southern 
 races ; the Goths have their saints of flesh and 
 blood, and in all the art by Loire and Seine you 
 will never find either river personified. The 
 ideal Charity of Giotto at Padua tramples upon 
 bags of gold, gives only corn and flowers, while 
 God's angel gives her, not even these, but a 
 heart. The Charity on the west porch of 
 Amiens clothes a beggar with the staple manu- 
 facture of the town. Under the former exercise 
 of the imagination the lion personifies the 
 Evangelists ; an angel, justice ; and some per- 
 sonification is found for every Platonic myth 
 and Athanasian article. 
 
248 
 
 APPENDIX II. 
 
 The Glorious Company of Saints. 
 
 Mr. Ruskin then went through some of the 
 samts, whose glorious company was one of 
 the pleasures of imagination — speaking first of 
 St. Sophia, the pacific and scholastic ghost of 
 Athena ; and of St. Catherine of Egypt, of whom 
 there are some vestiges of personality, and who 
 may possibly have existed. However that may 
 be— witty, proud, fanciful— she is the bride in 
 Solomon's Song, combining the purest hfe of 
 the nun with the brightest death of a martyr. 
 St. Barbara of Eg3^pt— confined, like Danae, in 
 a tower (inclnsam Daitaen turris aenea) — is of 
 all saints the most practical, the personification 
 of the art of building ; not a pillar in Giotto's 
 Santa Maria del Fiore, as Mr. Ruskin says of 
 her in " Ethics of the Dust," which Athena did 
 not set true by her spear-shaft as it rose ; and 
 her tower is the perfected symbol of Gothic 
 architecture. She is protectress against light- 
 ning, and the first to hear the petition in the 
 Litany against sudden death. The later legends, 
 connecting her with cannon and gunpowder — 
 with attack instead of defence — are a base cor- 
 ruption ; and no doubt we shall have her next 
 as the figure-head of an ironclad. St. Margaret 
 of Antioch — the Genevieve of the East, winning 
 a soul's victory like Alcestis — is the type of all 
 meekness and gentleness, the pattern of all 
 gracious and lowly womanhood. Of St. Cecilia 
 I may say — like the carter in Miss Edge worth's 
 
"the pleasures of ENGLAND:" 1 884. 249 
 
 *' Harry and Lucy," who refuses to believe the 
 story of the upset till he hears the name of the 
 hill where it took place — that a visit to her 
 Church in Rome establishes the legend of her. 
 She is of course the patron saint of music, but 
 her true note is not so often insisted upon. In 
 a manuscript dated 1290, in Mr. Ruskin's pos- 
 session — " I have selfishly kept it in my own 
 house, but it shall go to your schools now " — 
 there is this story of St. Cecilia told : While 
 the organs were playing Cecilia sang to the 
 Lord, that He would keep her heart in purity. 
 " We have hardly so clear a notion of the bap- 
 tizing, purifying power of music now, and St. 
 Cecilia's presence at a Monday Pop would be 
 as little expected as desired." Of all the mythic 
 saints she is the greatest, and all who strive to 
 purify themselves by fireside or wayside may 
 hear Cecilia sing. For St. Ursula Mr. Ruskin 
 referred to 'Tors Clavigera ; " and of the second 
 class of saints, who really lived, he only enu- 
 merated, taking their French names from St. 
 Louis's Psalter, Magdalen, Genevieve, Scholas- 
 tica, Agatha, Felicitas, Christina, Honorine, 
 Euphemia, Eugenia. Of Magdalen alone Mr. 
 Ruskin made one remark, that any woman, 
 whatever her position, who sells herself for 
 money is a harlot, while Magdalen is the type 
 of those for whom the guilt of others around 
 them have " taken away my Christ ; I know 
 not where they have laid Him." 
 
250 APPENDIX II. 
 
 Figures of the Saints. 
 
 Mr. Ruskin then passed to a second pleasure 
 of imagination — -not any longer that of exalting 
 the memory of dead persons, but that of set- 
 ting up their images and investing them with 
 sanctity. " Fors Clavigera " came in the form 
 of a letter from Miss Alexander (" Francesca"), 
 to clench this matter with an illustration from 
 modern Italian life. In this letter Miss Alex- 
 ander describes the Madonna whom she saw 
 enshrined in an orphanage as a stout heavy 
 person in impossible drapery — mi . improved 
 of late in cleanliness, if not in beauty or sanctity, 
 by a coating of white oil paint. One of the 
 girls had given her a rose, another a set of ear- 
 rings. " I pierced the ears myself," added the 
 Lady Superior, "with a gimlet." There, said 
 Mr. Ruskin, you have the perfection of child- 
 like imagination — making everything out of 
 nothing.* 
 
 Giorgione and Tintoret. 
 
 Of Saturday's lecture a written peroration 
 was again wanting, and the conclusion of the 
 whole matter was shown instead in two pictures 
 
 * The letter from Francesca referred to above will be 
 found in ch. 3 of vol. i. of " Christ's Folk in the Apennine "' 
 (George Allen, 1887), where Mr. Ruskin says of the 
 Madonna stor}-, "There is no passage in all these histories 
 which claims from the general reader more tender and 
 loving attention, or in reading which he ought to repent 
 more solemnly of light thought and scornful mood, or to 
 remember with more shame the iconoclasm of Churches 
 that had neither sense nor charity." 
 
"the pleasures of ENGLAND:" 1 884. 25 I 
 
 — '' the two most perfect pictures in the world." 
 One was a small piece from Tintoret's Paradise 
 in the Ducal Palace, representing the group 
 of St. Ambrose, St. Jerome, St. Gregory, St. 
 Augustine, and behind St. Augustine " his 
 mother watching him, her chief joy in Paradise." 
 There was some little movement of laughter 
 among the audience as Mr. Ruskin found that 
 he had placed the sketch upside down. But it 
 is little matter, he added, for in Tintoret's Para- 
 dise you have heaven all round you — a work of 
 pure imagination, and that, too, by a dyer's son 
 in Venice. The other picture was the Arundel 
 Society's reproduction (" a Society which has 
 done more for us than we have any notion of") 
 of the altar-piece by Giorgione, in his native 
 hamlet of Castel Franco. ''No picture in the 
 w^orld can show you better the seeing and real- 
 izing imagination of Christian painters. Gior- 
 gione in no wise intends you to suppose that 
 the Madonna ever sat thus on a pedestal with 
 a coat of arms upon it, or that St. George and 
 St. Francis ever stood, or do now stand, in that 
 manner beside her ; but that a living Venetian 
 may, in such vision, most deeply and rightly 
 conceive of her and of them. As such this 
 picture is alone in the world, as an imaginative 
 representation of Christianity, with a monk and 
 a soldier on either side, the soldier bearing the 
 white cross of everlasting peace on the purple 
 ground of former darkness." 
 
 It would appear (said the Pa// Ma// Gazette, 
 
252 APPENDIX II. 
 
 by way of supplement to the above report), from 
 one of the incidental passages of autobiography 
 in Mr. Ruskin's lecture on Saturday, that he is 
 as much a victim of the demon of noise as 
 was his master Carlyle. Among other passages 
 which he read was one from Carlyle's " Frede- 
 rick the Great," in which it is told how Adalbert, 
 Bishop of Prague, was sleeping by the road-side 
 when " a Bohemian shepherd chanced to pass 
 that way, warbling something on his pipe, 
 as he wended towards looking after his flock ; 
 and seeing the sleeper on his stone pillow, the 
 thoughtless Czech mischievously blew louder." 
 Adalbert awoke, and shrieked in his fury, 
 "Deafness on thee, man cruel to the human 
 sense of hearing ! " — or words to that effect. 
 The curse was punctually fulfilled, and the 
 fellow was deaf for the rest of his life. What 
 a pity, said Mr. Ruskin, that you have no Bishop 
 Adalbert in Oxford ! You think yourselves very 
 musical, with your twiddlings and fiddlings of 
 organs after service, but you allow " that beastly 
 hooter " to wake me every morning, and so to 
 make life among you intolerable in these days. 
 
 Lecture V. 
 
 "Protestantism: the Pleasures oe Truth." 
 
 {Pall Mall Gazette, November 17th, 1884.) 
 
 The space in the history of Christianity covered 
 by the present lecture cannot, Mr. Ruskin began 
 
"the pleasures of ENGLAND:" 1 884. 253 
 
 by saying on Saturday, be defined by the reigns 
 of any particular kings or queens, because the 
 movement with which it is concerned takes 
 place at different times, in different countries. 
 He could only define it, therefore, by its cha- 
 racter, calling it the period of Protestantism, 
 including the two movements known severally 
 in history as the Reformation aixi the Revo- 
 lution. 
 
 TJic Rcfonnation and the Rcvoliifion. 
 
 Every country passes through one Reforma- 
 tion and one Revolution — reformation, when it 
 bears witness for spiritual truth against manifest 
 falsehood ; revolution, when it secures the rights 
 of the subjects from tyranny. Of the Refor- 
 mation in all countries and times, John Knox 
 is the perfect symbol (" or, if you will, Luther ; 
 but I like Knox better "); and of the Revolution, 
 John Hampden — the former saying, " I won't 
 be cheated in religion ;" the latter, " I won't be 
 taxed in ni}^ pockets." " Sometimes, indeed, the 
 Protestant fights against untruth and taxation 
 together, and then you have the Protestant 
 squire ; just as sometimes the Catholic fights for 
 lies and taxes together, and then you have the 
 Catholic squire. In Scott the representatives 
 of the two kinds of Protestantism are Jeanie 
 Deans of the first, and Major Bridgenorth, in 
 ' Peveril of the Peak,' of the other. I refer to 
 Scott," said Mr. Ruskin, " now and always, for 
 historical illustration, because he is far and 
 
254 APPENDIX II. 
 
 away the best writer of history we have. Our 
 only historians (ordinarily so called) are Carlyle, 
 Froude, and Helps, but none of them can see 
 all round a thing as Scott does. Froude does 
 not even know whether he is a Catholic or a 
 Protestant; Carlyle is first the one, and then 
 the other ; while Helps is deficient because he 
 never understands Catholicism at all." 
 
 The Beauty of Protestantism. 
 
 Protestantism (continued Mr. Ruskin) is still 
 in the ascendant, but we Catholics think that 
 the day will yet come when we shall again see 
 visions of things that are not as though they 
 were, and even be able, like Edward the Con- 
 fessor, to tax the people in a tenth of their 
 possessions to build a beautiful church, with a 
 weathercock upon it, to rise above the filth of 
 nasty London. All the beauty of Protestantism 
 is embodied in two great masters — Scott for 
 English literature, Gotthelf for Continental (not 
 Goethe, as the Standard had it) — in Scott, in 
 the character of Jeanie Deans ; in Gotthelf, in 
 " Ulric, the Farm Servant." The latter story, 
 which Mr. Ruskin said some time ago he meant 
 to add to '^ Bibliotheca Pastorum," his series 
 of classical books for the St. George's Library, 
 has been translated from the German by one 
 of his " best lady pupils," and was published 
 recently. Nothing can be more perfect or com- 
 plete, Mr. Ruskin said, as a representation of 
 the good side of Protestantism. 
 
THE PLEASURES OF ENGLAND:" 1 884. 255 
 
 The Beauty of Catholicism — in Turner. 
 
 Leaving the beauty of Protestantism, the 
 pleasures of truth, to the description of them 
 in these two novels, Mr. Ruskin himself turned 
 to the other side of the question, and proposed 
 to show rather the narrowness of its rigid truth 
 in comparison with the beauty of the spectral 
 phenomena in which Catholicism delights. For 
 this purpose he had brought with him two 
 pictures — one by Turner, the other a copy from 
 Carpaccio. The Turner was a large water- 
 colour drawing, measuring somewhere about 
 20 inches by 15 inches, in his early or brown 
 period, of a stream and a grove. " There," 
 said Mr. Ruskin, pointing to it, "is a spectral 
 grove for you, the very d^oikov of a grove. 
 There never was such a grove or such a stream. 
 You may photograph every grove in the world, 
 and never will you get so ghostly a one as this. 
 I cannot tell 30U where it is ; I can only swear 
 to you that it never existed anywhere except 
 in Turner's head. It is the very best Turner 
 drawing I ever saw of his heroic period, the 
 period in which he painted the ' Garden of 
 the Hesperides' (Nat. Gal., No. 477 — exhibited 
 1806) and 'Apollo Killing the Python' (No. 
 488 — exhibited 181 1). I picked it up by pure 
 chance, the other day, in the shop of my friend 
 Mr. Sewening, of Duke Street, St. James's, to 
 whose excellent judgment, by the way, I now 
 refer any pictures which are sent to me to 
 verify. He thought it might be a Turner, and 
 
256 APPENDIX II. 
 
 asked me ^40 for it. I was sure it was, and 
 gave him 50 guineas, and I now present it to 
 your gallery at Oxford, to be an idol to you, I 
 hope, for evermore." 
 
 In Car pace ws *' St. Ursula ^ 
 
 " And here," added Mr. Ruskin, turning to 
 the other picture, "is an idol of a girl." This 
 was a copy of the head in Carpaccio's '' Dream 
 of St. Ursula," the picture of which Mr. Ruskin 
 has written so much in '' Fors Clavigera " 
 and his Venetian guide-books, and which was 
 largely referred to, by the way, by Mr. Wing- 
 field, in the recent revival of " Romeo and 
 Juliet " at the Lyceum, for the details of a 
 Venetian interior :^ 
 
 "There never was such a face as hers in the world. 
 Take the sweetest you can find in your college gardens, 
 and none will be so sweet. Nor in any PhylHs that 
 you know will you find such twisted hair as hers — 
 twisted, like that of all Venetian girls, in memory^ of the 
 time when they first made their hair into ropes for the 
 fugitive ships at Aquileia. You will never see such 
 hair, nor such peace beneath it on the brow — the peace of 
 heaven, of infancy, and of death. No one knows who 
 she is or where she lived. She is Persephone at rest 
 below the earth ; she is Proserpine at play above the 
 ground. She is Ursula, the gentlest yet the rudest of 
 little bears ; a tj'pe in that, perhaps, of the moss rose, 
 or of the rose spmos/'ss/ma, with its rough little buds. 
 She is in England, in Cologne, in Venice, in Rome, in 
 eternity, living everywhere, dying everywhere, the 
 most intangible yet the most practical of all saints, 
 queen, for one thing, of female education, when once 
 her legend is rightly understood. This sketch of her 
 
"the pleasures of ENGLAND:" 1884. 25/ 
 
 head is the best drawing I ever made. Carpaccio's 
 picture is hung, like all good pictures, out of sight, 
 seven feet above the ground ; but the Venetian Academy 
 had it taken down for me, and I traced every detail in 
 it accurately to a hair's breadth. It took me a day's 
 hard work to get that spray of silver hair loosening 
 itself rightly from the coil, and twelve times over had I 
 to try the mouth. And to-day, assuming Miss Shaw 
 Lefevre's indulgence, I present it to the girls of Somer- 
 ville Hall. Perhaps the picture of a princess's room, 
 of which it is a part, may teach the young ladies there 
 not to make their rooms too pretty — to remember that 
 they come to Oxford to be uncomfortable and to suffer 
 a little — to learn w^hatever can be learnt in Oxford, 
 which is not much, and even to live little Ursulas, in 
 rough gardens, not on lawns made smooth for tennis." 
 
 " The Wooden Walls of England y 
 
 Such is the lesson of the legend of St. Ursula ; 
 and now (continued Mr. Ruskin), I must tell 
 you somewhat of a Doge of Venice who lived 
 by the light of superstitions such as this, a 
 Catholic and a brave man withal, Cattolico uonio 
 e audace, " the servant of Gcd and of St. 
 Michael." To avoid mistakes to-day and 
 corrections to-morrow, Mr. Ruskin craved per- 
 mission to read again from his Venetian hand- 
 book, " St. Mark's Rest," which had always 
 been meant for reading, and had now been 
 retouched. 
 
 The longest of these new touches was sug- 
 gested by " The Truth about the Navy," which 
 Mr. Ruskin had been reading, he said, in the 
 Pall Mall Gazette; from which he gathered 
 that the British people having spent several 
 
 17 
 
258 APPENDIX II. 
 
 hundreds of millions on blowing iron bubbles — 
 " the earth hath bubbles, as the water has, and 
 these are of them "—would soon be busy blowing 
 more. Nothing could be more tragically absurd 
 than the loss of the Captain and the London^ un- 
 less it were the loss of the Eiirydice — without her 
 Orpheus then. There was nothing the matter, 
 except that Governments were donkeys enough 
 to build in iron instead of wood, just in order 
 that the ironmongers might get their commis- 
 sions. They were honest enough, these Go- 
 vernments, but they allowed the ironmongers 
 to work them round like screws. Whoever 
 heard of a Venetian man-of-war going over ? 
 A gale was nothing at all to a wooden ship ; 
 Venice would have laughed at it, rejoiced in it. 
 They never heard of a Venetian being upset or 
 making for the shore. Why ? Because they 
 had been broken in to the life of the rough sea. 
 " You think that you know what boating is ; 
 but why don't you practise in the open sea, as 
 the Venetians did, instead of spoiling the Isis, 
 here ? " But w4th the LojidoTi, she was crossing 
 the Bay of Biscay when it got a little rough ; 
 the wind blew the bulwarks down, and down 
 the ship went bodily. The only grand thing 
 connected with it was that the captain, looking 
 over the bulwarks as the last boat was launched, 
 gave the crew their latitude, and said he would 
 go down with his ship, and he did. Mr. Ruskin 
 had no patience, in face of disasters like those 
 of the London and the Captain, with the talk all 
 about our splendid British seamanship. It was 
 
''the pleasures of ENGLAND:" 1 884. 259 
 
 bombastic English blarney — not Irish, for there 
 was always wit in an Irish bull, but only a 
 double blunder in an English one — all that talk 
 about sweeping the fleets of all other nations off 
 the seas. You went under Napier and knocked 
 your heads against Cronstadt, and Cronstadt 
 cared no more for you than if you had been a 
 flight of swallows or sparrows. Then you went 
 and knocked your heads against Sebastopol ; 
 and, in spite of all the lies in the newspapers, 
 every one knew that the British fleet had been 
 thoroughly well licked. And now you have 
 been bombarding Alexandria, and narrowly 
 escaped being done for by a few Arabs. So 
 much for the proud supremacy of the British 
 navy and its ironclads.* They might say that 
 all this was irrelevant ; but there was no finer art 
 
 * "Mr. Ruskin" (wrote the Pall Mall Gazette), "like the 
 rest of the world, is fully alive (as will be seen from the 
 report of his lecture in another column) to the Truth about 
 the Navy, and to the loss of our vaunted supremacy on the 
 sea. We can hardly agree with him, however, that every- 
 thing would again be right if we only got rid of the 
 ' ironmongers ' and their ' bubbles,' and sent the mariners 
 of England to meet the Navies of the world in row-boats. 
 As for Mr. Ruskin's version of the truth about Protes- 
 tantism, which was the main subject of his lecture, it will 
 be interesting to see what the Rock, say, will make of it. 
 The Catholic community in Oxford must apparently have 
 been forewarned of Mr. Ruskin's conversion to their party, 
 for there was an important deputation of them in the front 
 seats on Saturday afternoon, and very pretty it was to see 
 them cheering the winged words of their fiery ally. Every 
 one who knows Mr. Ruskin's earlier works will remember 
 how he was brought up by the strictest sect of Protestant 
 Evangelicalism. In his old age he ought to serve as a 
 terrible example to Protestant mothers." 
 
260 APPENDIX II. 
 
 than ship-building, and they would find that out 
 when he set them to draw ships ; they were 
 only drawing shells now. Even a draughtsman 
 could not draw two sides of a ship alike ; no- 
 body but Turner ever did. They might say one 
 of the subjects forbidden to him was political 
 economy ; but that subject, too, would be forced 
 on them all pretty soon. For when all the pre- 
 sent ships were destroyed the new ones would 
 also go "snap" in like fashion. 
 
 The Nelson of Venice : a Catholic and Brave 
 Man. 
 
 The chapter from which Mr. Ruskin was 
 reading when this parenthesis came in is the 
 one entitled '' The Burden of Tyre," and tells 
 the story of Domenico Michiel, the Nelson of 
 Venice, the doge who brought back in 1126, 
 from his wars against the Saracens, the famous 
 pillars of the Piazzetta. Besides them, he 
 brought the dead bodies of St. Donato and St. 
 Isidore ; for the Venice of his day was intensely 
 covetous, not only of money, though she loved 
 that too, nor of kingdom, nor of pillars of marble 
 and granite, but " also and quite principally of 
 the rehcs of good people, of their dust to dust, 
 ashes to ashes." He himself lies buried behind 
 the altar of the church of St. Giorgio Maggiore, 
 and on his tomb there was this inscription 
 written, '' Whoever thou art, who com.est to 
 behold this tomb of his, bow thyself down 
 before God because of him." 
 
THE PLEASURES OF ENGLAND:" 1 884. 26 1 
 
 Two Types of Protestant Witness. 
 
 That (said Mr. Ruskin) is the feeling of all 
 ** Old Catholics " in the presence of a shrine ; 
 they worship not the hero or the saint, but '' God 
 because of him." Against all this comes the 
 witness of Protestantism, partly honest, partly 
 hypocritical, with good knowledge of a few minor 
 things, but ignorant hatred of all above and 
 beyond itself. Here I have for you a type of 
 the honest but not liberally minded Protestant 
 (said Mr. Ruskin), disclosing a sketch of a little 
 porker. The little pig walks along, you see, 
 knowing every inch of its ground, having in its 
 snout a capital instrument for grubbing up 
 things. You may be shocked, perhaps, at my 
 selection of this animal for the type of a religious 
 sect ; but if you could but realize all the beau- 
 tiful things which the insolence of Protestant- 
 ism has destroyed, you would think surely 
 the Gadarene swine too good for it. But my 
 illustration is, at any rate, appropriate as signifi- 
 cant of the Protestant and Evangelical art which 
 can draw a pig to perfection, but never a pretty 
 lady. Mr. Ruskin then passed on to the hypo- 
 critical Protestant, and produced as the type of 
 him a sketch in black and white of a truly 
 repulsive Mr. Stiggins with a concertina. 
 
 The Heroic Ideal. 
 
 These two sketches were to illustrate the 
 religious ghostly ideal. The heroic ideal was 
 
262 
 
 APPENDIX II. 
 
 illustrated from poetry. The faith in human 
 honour, taking the place of the faith in religion, 
 which is the groundwork of this ideal, passes 
 into the noble pride of the true knight ; and it 
 is when this noble pride passes into malignant 
 pride that the Revolution comes. Of the true 
 knight, the perfect type is Douglas in the " Lady 
 of the Lake." " No one reads Scott now (Mr. 
 Ruskin here parenthetically remarked), and I am 
 going to send his poems and novels by the gross 
 to classes in our elementary schools — not for 
 prizes to be awarded by competition, but to be 
 given to any boy or girl who is good and likes 
 to read poetry. I should like to see the children 
 draw lots for the books, and the one who wins 
 not keep the book, but have the right of giving 
 it away — a very subtle little moral lesson." 
 Mr. Ruskin then read some stanzas from the 
 fifth canto of " The Lady of the Lake," describ- 
 ing the burghers' sports before King James at 
 Stirling, the classical passage in Scott corre- 
 sponding to the games in Virgil. The passage 
 is typical, too, of that association with his dog, 
 his horse, and his falcon which is a mark of 
 the knight, the clown being one who cannot 
 keep these animals, or does not know how to 
 use them. It was very bad of Douglas, you 
 may think, to knock a man down for the sake 
 of a dog — a creature that we should think 
 nothing of torturing nowadays for a month to 
 find out the cause of a pimple on our own 
 red noses. Mr. Ruskin then went on to the 
 stanzas which he wished all who cared to 
 
"the pleasures of ENGLAND:" 1 884. 263 
 
 please him at once to learn by heart, the 
 stanzas in which 
 
 " With grief the noble Douglas saw 
 The commons rise against the law; " 
 
 and bade them hear 
 
 " Ere yet for me 
 Ye break the bands of fealty." 
 
 [The remaining lectures of this course on 
 '' The Pleasures of England " were not delivered, 
 for reasons explained at the beginning of the 
 next Appendix.] 
 
APPENDIX III. 
 
 A Lfxture on "Patience." 
 
 {Pall Mall Gazette, November 24th, 1884.) 
 
 No better proof can be given of Mr. Ruskin's 
 popularity at Oxford than the fact that he played 
 off a practical joke on the five hundred people 
 who crowded the Museum theatre to hear him 
 on Saturday afternoon, and yet aroused no per- 
 ceptible resentment. They had all come — ^an 
 hour before the time, too, many of them — to 
 hear the sixth of his appointed course of lectures 
 on the *' Pleasures of England ; " but he straight- 
 way announced that this lecture would be post- 
 poned till Monday week, and meanwhile he 
 proposed to read them a little essay on Patience. 
 The innocent joke, it should at once be said, 
 was not altogether of Mr. Ruskin's own devis- 
 ing. The remaining lectures of the proper 
 course were ready, but pressure had been 
 brought to bear upon him to suppress or recast 
 them. The details of these lectures had so far 
 " fluttered the dovecots of the vivisectionists " 
 that there had even been threats of the inter- 
 vention of a Board of Studies, and of the 
 
A LECTURE ON '' PATIENCE." 265 
 
 incarceration of their single-handed antagonist.* 
 Why they were so much afraid of his discussing 
 the pleasures of sense he really could not think. 
 All the beautiful things he had showed them in 
 religious art appealed to the pleasure of sense. 
 Every religious child is happy ; and all religion, 
 if it is true, is beautiful ; it is only sham religion 
 — the habit, for instance, of excessive mourning 
 for the dead — and vice that are ugly. When 
 they heard the lecture they would see that he 
 was only going to point out to them some new 
 and innocent ways of enjoying themselves. 
 
 The unkind critics who had caused all this 
 confusion were — so it was said in Oxford — Mr. 
 Macdonald and Dr. Acland. Mr. Ruskin had 
 taken their rebuke, meekly ; but if it was on 
 behalf of science that Dr. Acland was afraid, 
 Mr. Ruskin clearly means to have his revenge. 
 For in the meanwhile he promised to give a 
 scientific lecture (see Appendix IV.) ; and Mr. 
 Ruskin's scientific lectures do not greatly please 
 the recognized professors of science. " I shall 
 not tell you," Mr. Ruskin said, ''how long a 
 bird's larynx is, for I don't know and I don't 
 
 * Writing from Oxford on December ist, 1884, to Miss 
 Beever, Mr. Ruskin said, " I gave my fourteenth, and last 
 for this year, lecture this afternoon, with vigour and effect 
 {i.e. the Lecture on Birds, Appendix IV.), and am safe and 
 vi'ell (D.G.), after such a spell of work as I never did before. 
 I have been thrown a week out in all my plans, by having 
 to wiite two new lectures, instead of those the University 
 was frightened at. The scientists slink out of my way 
 now, as if I were a mad dog, for I let them have it hot 
 and hearty whenever I've a chance at them " (" Hortus 
 Inclusus," p. 87). 
 
266 APPENDIX III. 
 
 care, but I can tell you something about its sing- 
 ing. I can tell you about its feathers, but not 
 what is underneath its skin. Why, I went into 
 your museum to find an Abyssinian kingfisher 
 — the classical halcyon — but there was only one, 
 hidden in a dark corner, and that not a good 
 enough specimen to draw. A very sad thing 
 that, and even sadder that they should pack 
 away the skins of the birds in drawers in ' stink- 
 ing camphor.' In the British Museum, however, 
 you can now for the first time see birds poised, 
 and how they fly. I told Dr. Giinther,* the 
 Keeper of Zoology (in the second chapter of 
 * Love's Meinie,' for example), and he's now 
 telling you." Next Saturday, Mr. Ruskin added, 
 I shall do a little more '' peacocking " before 
 you, and am going to show you some practical 
 experiments — with the help of the Balliol College 
 cook — of glaciers and glacier motion. Here, 
 
 * Referring to the above report, Mr. Ruskin wrote to the 
 Pall Mall Gazette as follows : " 84, Woodstock Road, Oxford, 
 November 25th. — Sir, — Again thanking you for the general 
 care and fulness of your reports, permit me to correct the 
 sentence referring to the head of the Zoological Department 
 in the British Museum, as it is given in your account of my 
 lecture on Saturday. I said that in * Love's Meinie ' I had for 
 the first time explained to my Oxford pupils how birds flew, 
 and that now Dr. Giinther had beautifully shoivn the birds 
 of England to us all, in the perfect action of flying. But I 
 never said I had ' told Dr. Giinther' anything. Everything 
 he has so beautifully done has been his own bettering of 
 what had been begun by Mr. Gould ; it fulfils, or supersedes, 
 much of what I meant to attempt at Sheffield, and leaves 
 me, I am thankful to sa}^, more free to my proper work 
 here. Dr. Giinther continually tells nie things, in all sorts 
 of kind ways, but I never told, or could have told, him any- 
 thing. — I am, Sir, your obedient servant, J. Ruskin." 
 
A LECTURE ON " PATIENCE." 26/ 
 
 again, Mr. Ruskin has an old quarrel, as every 
 one knows, with the men of science. 
 
 The prospect of these two dainty dishes 
 should itself have made the lesson of patience 
 easier. As Mr. Ruskin told the girls in the 
 " Ethics of the Dust," there was obviously no 
 reason why his audience, because they were the 
 richer by the expectation of playing at a new 
 game — of having two new lectures thrown in — 
 should make themselves unhappier than when 
 they had nothing to look forward to but the old 
 ones. And then, even when the little lecture 
 itself began, Mr. Ruskin often stopped from his 
 reading to throw sugar-plums to his pupils. 
 Were there any of them courting, for instance ? 
 Then his advice was to continue it as long as 
 possible. " Young people nowadays do not 
 enjoy their courtship half enough ; it really 
 becomes nicer and nicer the longer it lasts. 
 Besides, you are all sure to find fault with your 
 wives when you marry them ; it is only during 
 courtship that they are entirely faultless and 
 seraphic ; and why not keep them so as long 
 as you can ? " Then there was a little critical 
 squib, apropos of a citation of Keats's phrase, 
 " human serpentry." " Read as much Keats 
 as possible, and no Shelley. Shelley, with due 
 admiration, notwithstanding, for his genius, is 
 entirely mischievous, Keats entirely innocent 
 and amusing." As for the little essay on 
 Patience itself, it consisted of readings, with 
 occasional self-criticism, from the '* Cestus of 
 Aglaia " and " St. Mark's Rest." The '' Cestus 
 
268 
 
 APPENDIX III. 
 
 of Aglaia" was the title given to the papers 
 which Mr. Ruskin contributed to the AH Jour- 
 nal \n 1856-7, on "The Opposition of Modesty 
 and Liberty, and the Unescapable Law of Wise 
 Restraint," and some of which were afterwards 
 incorporated in '' The Queen of the Air." Were 
 they the passages in that book, one wonders, 
 which Carlyle told Mr. Froude " went into 
 his heart Hke arrows " ? The passage read 
 on Saturday, however, was none of these 
 chapters, but was the analysis of Chaucer's 
 " Patience : "— 
 
 " Dame Patientia sitting there I fond, 
 With face pale, upon a hill of send." 
 
 Mr. Ruskin apologized for the over-allusive 
 style in which much of this analysis was written, 
 for "twenty years ago I was always fond of 
 showing that I knew a good deal and had read 
 a good deal." Elsewhere, too, he has explained, 
 with reference to these same chapters in the A}i 
 Journal, that he has ''three different ways of 
 writing — one, with the single view of making 
 myself understood, in which I necessarily omit 
 a good deal of what comes into my head ; 
 another, in which I say what I think ought to 
 be said, in what I suppose to be the best words 
 I can find for it (which is in reality an affected 
 style) ; and my third way of writing is to say 
 all that comes into my head for my own plea- 
 sure, in the first words that come, retouching 
 them afterwards into (approximate) grammar." 
 The "Cestus of Aglaia" was written in this 
 
A LECTURE ON " PATIENCE." 269 
 
 third style. From the Patience of Chaucer, 
 Mr. Ruskin passed to the Patience of Venice. 
 The Patience who really smiles at grief usually 
 stands, or walks, or even runs. She seldom 
 sits, though she may sometimes have to do it for 
 many a day, poor thing, by monuments, or like 
 Chaucer's, with " face pale, upon a hill of sond." 
 The Patience of Venice is to be found on a 
 monument — the statue of St. Theodore, whose 
 legend Mr. Ruskin has explained in " Fors 
 Clavigera " (March, 1877), and again in the 2nd 
 chapter of ''St. Mark's Rest," from which he 
 read on Saturday. In these later books of his, 
 when he talks in what Mr. Matthew Arnold 
 calls his " assured way " about the meaning of 
 legends, he is only collating the results of a 
 life's work, begun when he was twenty-four 
 years old, and when, by the good counsel of 
 Dean Liddell, he took to drawing religious art in 
 the Christ Church library. All early religious 
 art is symbolic, and the meaning of the symbols 
 is well ascertainable. The divinity of Botti- 
 ceUi, for instance, is a science at least as well 
 known as that of the Greek gods, and all Mr. 
 Ruskin does is to give the result of the Catholic 
 knowledge of the saints — the interpretation 
 which is universally recognized of their legends. 
 St. Theodore, then, standing on a crocodile, as 
 he may be seen on one of the twin pillars of 
 the Piazzetta at Venice, represents the power 
 of the Spirit of God in all noble and useful 
 animal life, conquering what is venomous, use- 
 less, or in decay. The victory of his Patience is 
 
2/0 APPENDIX III. 
 
 making the earth his pedestal instead of his 
 adversary ; he is the power of gentle and rational 
 life, reigning over the wild creatures and sense- 
 less forces of the world — the dragon-enemy 
 becoming by human mercy the faithfullest of 
 creature friends to man. 
 
 Besides the essay on Patience, Mr, Ruskin 
 set to work on Saturday on a clearing-up and 
 putting right of the *' heterogeneous rubble " 
 which some of the newspapers had made of his 
 remarks on the British Navy last week. With 
 a pretty compliment to his pupils, he asked them 
 to sympathize with the bewilderment of the 
 paltry British press in its attempt to reduce to 
 the level of British press understanding lectures 
 which were prepared only for their higher intel- 
 ligence. Mr. Ruskin then repeated what he had 
 before said about the loss of the London^ the 
 Captain, and the Etirydice. To these disasters 
 he now added a much antecedent one — that of 
 the Royal George, which was sunk in the harbour, 
 with most of her crew, while the captain was 
 writing in the cabin, because a few of them 
 were hunting rats half a minute too long in her 
 hull. They had thus four accurate illustrations 
 of a kind of shipbuilding and ship management 
 of which there was no parallel whatever, either 
 among the Saxons, Vikings, Venetians, Cartha- 
 ginians, Athenians, or Normans. These catas- 
 trophes belonged exclusively to modern naval 
 history, which had its triumphs, but was darkened 
 by many more shadows than the features which 
 beautified it. As for the remedy, Mr. Ruskin 
 
A LECTURE ON "PATIENCE. 27 1 
 
 has explained long ago, in 'Tors," the incom- 
 patibility of seamanship with iron. ''You need 
 not think," he said, " that you can ever have 
 seamen in iron ships ; it is not in flesh and blood 
 to be vigilant when vigilance is so slightly neces- 
 sary ; the best seaman born will lose his qualities 
 when he knows he can steam against wind and 
 tide, and has to handle ships so large that the 
 care of them is necessarily divided among many 
 persons. If you want sea captains indeed, like 
 Sir Richard Grenville or Lord Dundonald, you 
 must give them small ships and wooden ones — 
 nothing but oak, pine, and hemp to trust to, 
 above or below — and those trustworthy." 
 
APPENDIX IV. 
 
 *' Birds, and How to Paint them." 
 
 {Pall Mall Gazette, December 3rd, 1884. For the pre- 
 paration of this report Mr. Ruskin lent me his own 
 manuscript notes.) 
 
 Town and Country Life. 
 
 " I have scarcely any heart to address you 
 to-day," Mr. Ruskin began by saying on Satur- 
 day, " so terrified am I, and so subdued, by the 
 changes in Oxford which have taken place even 
 since first I accepted this Professorship, and 
 which are directly calculated to paralyze all my 
 efforts to be useful in it. I need scarcely tell 
 any of my pupils that my own Art teaching has 
 been exclusively founded on the hope of getting 
 people to enjoy country life, and to care for its 
 simple pleasures and modest employments. But 
 I find now that the ideal in the minds of all 
 young people, however amiable and well-mean- 
 ing, is to marry as soon as possible, and then to 
 live m the most fashionable part of the largest 
 town they can afford to compete with the rich 
 inhabitants of, in the largest house they can 
 
" BIRDS, AND HOW TO PAINT THEM. 273 
 
 Strain their incomes to the rent of, with the 
 water laid on at the top, the gas at the bottom, 
 huge piate-glass windows, out of which they may 
 look uninterruptedly at a brick wall, a drawing- 
 room on the scale of Buckingham Palace, with 
 Birmingham fittings, and patent everythings 
 going of themselves everywhere ; with, for all 
 intellectual aids to felicity, a few bad prints, a 
 few dirty and foolish books, and a quantity of 
 photographs of the people they know, or of any 
 passing celebrities. This is the present ideal of 
 English life, without exception, for the middle 
 classes ; and a more miserable, contemptible, or 
 criminal one never was formed by any nation 
 made under the wondering stars. It implies 
 perpetual anxiety, lazy and unjustifiable pride, 
 innumerable petty vexations, daily more poig- 
 nant greed for money, and the tyrannous com- 
 pulsion of the labouring poor into every form of 
 misery ; and it implies, further, total ignorance 
 of all the real honour of human life and beauty 
 of the visible world. I felt all this borne in 
 upon me, almost to the point of making me give 
 up all further effort here in England, and going 
 away to die among the Alps, when I walked 
 early this week across what were once fields, but 
 are now platforms of mud and bitumen, to what 
 we used to call the ' Happy Valley,' and the 
 scenes, by Ferry Hinksey (but ' in the two 
 Hinkseys nothing keeps the same '), of my for- 
 mer endeavours to set some undergraduates to 
 useful country labour. [See ante, p. 43.] Every 
 beautiful view, either of Oxford or from it, is now 
 
 t8 
 
274 APPENDIX IV. 
 
 scarified and blasted by the detestable conditions 
 of labour, which always mean that a company 
 or a capitalist are ruining either themselves or 
 somebody else. [Mr. Ruskin need not, though, 
 have put the alternative, for the Oxford Build- 
 ing Compan}^ has ruined both itself and many 
 others.] There is not an old path to be trodden, 
 or an old memory to be traced, except where 
 the discouraged and desperate cottagers here 
 and there maintain still a rugged fence or let 
 run a half-choked ditch round the melancholy 
 yards or gardens which they can still call their 
 own." 
 
 " Intelligent Destruction " of Birds. 
 
 " Now, w^hat is the use," Mr. Ruskin went 
 on to ask, ''under these conditions, of my talk- 
 ing to you about birds ? Are their nests to be 
 built in the waterworks reservoir ? is their song 
 to be heard in the morning above the steam 
 buzzer and the roll of the tramway ? have you 
 still hearts to listen to it, if it could be ? What 
 do you want of them now, but for such deadly 
 science or deadlier luxury as may best feed 3^our 
 itch for notoriety of some sort — their skeletons 
 or their skins ? And I have actually been un- 
 able, from the mere distress and disgust of what 
 I had to read of bird-slaughter, to go on with 
 * Love's Meinie.' I will make you a little mise- 
 rable, with myself, in letting 3^ou hear accurately 
 described the sort of thing that is going on 
 
275 
 
 continually." Mr. Ruskin then read two ex- 
 tracts from " a thoroughly trustworthy book," 
 Mr. Robert Gray's ''Birds of the West of Scot- 
 land," describing, among other things, how some 
 ornithologist of the party had shot two parent 
 divers and their little ones. Some others of the 
 party had seen the little ones the day before, and 
 had given them their first swimming lesson, 
 but the ornithologists wanted their skins. The 
 other extract told how the same party (minus 
 the ornithologists this time, it would seem) had 
 taken on board their yacht a live specimen of 
 the tyste, or black guillemot, and made a pet of 
 him. When he desired to leave his basket the 
 little fellow would ''raise himself upon his hinder 
 end till he was almost as tall as a little spruce 
 tree ; and then he would waddle on to the palm 
 of a person's hand, and sit there flapping his 
 wings as if he were flying at the rate of fifty 
 miles an hour ; and then he would rest himself 
 on his abdomen, and shut one eye, and wink with 
 the other at the sun. But the cabin-boy said 
 from the beginning that he was too good to 
 live. The little creature died, I believe," Mr. 
 Ruskin here put in, " angelically, of being too 
 happy ; but does not this show you how natural 
 it is for men and birds to love each other, and 
 live with other joyfully ? — if it were not for these 
 ghastly skin and bone mongers who call them- 
 selves ornithologists, and the still wretcheder 
 and ghastlier form of English booby squire, who 
 knows nothing and cares for nothing in all the 
 earth but how to wink along a gun-barrel till 
 
2/6 APPENDIX IV. 
 
 he can sight it to blow the brains out of some- 
 thing, and he thinks that clever, and the best 
 part of the life of a lord." 
 
 The Scientific View of Birds. 
 
 Mr. Ruskin then went on to illustrate, from a 
 book of scientific travel, a different method of 
 intelligent destruction — that of " the mob, who, 
 not having guns, take to stones," and the kind 
 of study of birds in connection therewith. Here 
 is the method of destruction: ''At one place 
 ten cormorants and three steamer ducks were 
 assembled on three small rocks, placed side by 
 side, and would not take their departure till I 
 had thrown a succession of stones at them. . . . 
 One or two which had been hit with stones lay 
 on their backs on the beach for some minutes, 
 emitting strange sounds, and waving about their 
 splay feet in the air, in the most ridiculous 
 manner." And here is an example of what 
 these sportsmen saw^ in a bird they had " for- 
 tunately killed :" "The stomach was distinctly 
 divided into a cardiac and a pyloric portion, 
 separated by a short and narrow interval. Of 
 these portions the cardiac division possessed a 
 comparatively feeble muscular coat, and was 
 remarkably glandular ; while the pyloric, of a 
 somewhat flattened spheroidal form, was ex- 
 tremely muscular. The former I found dis- 
 tended, with a firm mass of semi-digested ship 
 biscuit, while the latter contained the two man- 
 dibles of a small cephalopod," 
 
277 
 
 Birds in EnsiUsJi Art, 
 
 i>' 
 
 This is the way EngHsh men of science look 
 at birds, and Enghsh painters have hardly any- 
 thing better to tell us of them. Art in this kind 
 may be divided under four heads. There is 
 first of all common still life — " dead game, with 
 a cut lemon and a glass and bottle — the most 
 wretched of human stupidities." Then there is 
 still life, with some enjoyment of colour — ''fruit 
 pieces, usually with handsome plate^things 
 such as Lance used to paint, and many other 
 suppliers of the trade — not worth notice." Very 
 different is William Hunt's work, whether in 
 fruit or birds — "chiefly doves — unique in ex- 
 cellence, but still not didactic." And finally, 
 there is the animal painting of Landseer and 
 Mr. Briton Riviere. Landseer, however, is 
 '' strictly only a horse and dog painter ; he sel- 
 dom attempted birds, and when he did he failed. 
 Riviere has done some wonderful ornithology — 
 of a comic kind — as, for instance, in his ' An 
 Anxious Moment,' in which a flock of geese are 
 debating whether they may with safety pass by 
 an old hat." * 
 
 The Artistic View of Birds ; their Feathers. 
 
 The true portraiture of birds, then, is one of 
 the things which English painters have still to 
 
 * See Appendix I., p. 2IO, for a reference to the birds of 
 Mr. Stacy Marks, 
 
2/8 APPENDIX IV. 
 
 do, and Mr. Ruskin's pupils would find plenty 
 of examples in his own studies in plumage in 
 his drawing-school. But artists will never be 
 able to paint birds so long as they study in 
 modern schools of science. " The true artist," 
 Mr. Ruskin said, in a former Oxford lecture, " if 
 he wishes to paint a dog, looks at him and loves 
 him, does not vivisect him." [See Appendix I., 
 p. 206.] So it is with birds. Whatever Science 
 may be concerned with on its own account, as 
 a foundation for Art it must look at a bird's 
 plumage, not at the contents of its stomach. 
 Mr. Ruskin laid, therefore, some of this true 
 scientific groundwork on Saturday, by some 
 notes on feather analysis. Birds, he said, have 
 three kinds of feathers : (i) feathers for clothing, 
 which again may be subdivided into flannel 
 feathers and armour feathers; (2) feathers for 
 action — either feathers of force in the wing, or 
 of steerage in the tail ; and (3) feathers for 
 decoration and expression — which either modify 
 the bird's form (crests, e.g., or tassels), or its 
 colour, by lustre or pigment. 
 
 Co/ours in Plumage. 
 
 It should be noted generally that the under- 
 clothing, the down, is always white in adult birds; 
 and the prevailing colour of the upper feathers, 
 in land birds of temperate zones, brown, and in 
 sea birds white. '' The theorists of develop- 
 ment," continued Mr. Ruskin, " say, I suppose, 
 that partridges get brown by looking at stubble, 
 
" BIRDS, AND HOW TO PAINT THEM. 2/9 
 
 seagulls white by looking at foam, and jackdaws 
 black by looking at clergymen. The theory at 
 first is plausible, as are the ideas of development 
 in general, to people who like guessing better 
 than thinking ; but you may see its fallacy in an 
 instant by reflecting that if sea birds were really 
 coloured by the sea, they would be blue, not 
 white ; if land birds were coloured by their 
 woods, they would be green, not brown ; and 
 that birds of darkness, both in feather and 
 spirit, must have been suited with sable, not by 
 our cathedral, but our manufacturing towns." 
 Coming next to force feathers and decorative 
 feathers, Mr. Ruskin noted that they are usually 
 reserved and quiet in colour. " There is no 
 iridescent eagle, no purple and golden seagull ; 
 while a large mass of coloured birds — parrots, 
 pheasants, humming birds — seem meant for 
 human amusement. Seem meant— dispute it if 
 you will : no matter what they seem, they are 
 the most amusing and infinitely delicious toys, 
 lessons, comforts, amazements, of human exist- 
 ence. Think of it, for here is a curious thing." 
 
 Catching Butterflies — and Feathers. 
 
 '' Ever since I have known children," Mr. 
 Ruskin said, in conclusion, ''or heard talk of 
 them, I have noticed that they liked running 
 after butterflies, and are represented in poetical 
 vignettes as if that were an amiable occupation 
 of theirs. I would give any child I had the care 
 of a good horsewhip or pony whip cut over the 
 
280 APPENDIX IV. 
 
 shoulders if I caught it running after a butterfly. 
 The way to see a butterfly is, as for everything 
 else, to see it alive. If you're quiet enough it 
 will settle under your nose or on your sleeve; 
 and if it's a rare one, and you don't kill it, it will 
 be less rare next year, until you may have purple 
 emperors flying about, as plentiful as now you 
 have smuts. But also when you've got it and 
 pinned it wriggling on a cork, what's the good 
 of it ? It is merely an ill-made bird, the inter- 
 mediate thing between a bird and a worm. It 
 has wings, but is for the most part more blown 
 about by them than lifted ; it has legs, but it 
 can't hop with them or catch anything wnth 
 them ; it has brains, but never has the least idea 
 where it's going ; it has eyes, but doesn't see 
 anything particular with them that I know of; 
 ears, perhaps, I don't know ; voice, I don't know ; 
 anyhow, it can't whistle. Feathers it has, which 
 rub off if you touch them, like so much mildew. 
 A precious sort of thing to catch and transfix 
 what poor little life and succulent pleasure the 
 creature has evermore out of its body, that you 
 may pin it on your hat and say it's the Jackiana 
 Tomfooliensis ! But I will tell you what you 
 can catch, and catch innocently — feathers ; and 
 a single feather has more to study in it than fifty 
 butterflies. Here's Christmas coming — general 
 roast turkey and goose-pie time. You know I'm 
 no vegetarian. I wouldn't have you dine on 
 nightingales' tongues ; but quantities of birds 
 are born, like sheep, to be finally dined on. 
 Well, you go and help the cook to pluck her 
 
'* BIRDS, AND HOW TO PAINT THEM." 28 1 
 
 game, and in a single Christmas you may 
 gather plumage enough to be a wonder to you 
 all your days. Begin with the pheasant. Put 
 the characteristic breast, shoulder, wing, and 
 tail feather into explicable order, prettily stitched 
 down on cardboard, or velvet, or anything that 
 sets them off. Then put the feathers of any 
 other birds you can. get hold of into the same 
 order — that is to say, put the main feather of 
 a seagull's wing, a swallow's, an owl's, a phea- 
 sant's, and a barn-door fowl's side by side — 
 similarly the main central types of breast 
 feather, tail feather, and so on. Then draw 
 their outlines carefully, then their patterns of 
 colour, then, analyzed up to the point of easy 
 magnifying, their shafts and filaments, and see 
 what a new world of beauty you will have 
 entered into — before the sun turns to go up 
 hill again." 
 
 ^' Arise, my love, my fair one, and come 
 away." 
 
 ''And when he does turn up hill again, if 
 any of you care to put your lives a little to 
 rights, and to prime your own feathers for what 
 flight is in them — don't go to London, nor to 
 any other town in the spring — don't let the 
 morning winds of May find your cheeks pale 
 and your eyes bloodshot with sitting up all 
 night, nor the violets bloom for you only in the 
 salesman's bundles, nor the birds sing around, 
 if not above, the graves you have dug for 
 
282 APPENDIX IV. 
 
 yourselves before your time. Time enough you 
 will have hereafter to be deaf to their song, 
 and ages enough to be blind to their brightness, 
 if you seek not the sight given now. If there 
 be any human love in your youth, if any sacred 
 hope, if any faithful religion, let them not be 
 defiled and quenched among the iniquities of 
 the multitude. Your Love is in the clefts of 
 the Rock, when the flowers appear on the earth, 
 and the time of the singing of birds is come, 
 and the God of all Love calls to you ' from the 
 top of Amana, from the top of Shenir and 
 Hermon,' calls to every pure spirit among the 
 children of men, as they to those they love 
 best — 
 
 'Arise my love, in}" fair one, and come a\vaj\"' 
 
APPENDIX V. 
 
 A Lecture on Landscape. 
 
 {Pall Mall Gazette, December loth, 1884. Mr. Ruskin 
 himself was good enough to subsequently revise 
 this report.) 
 
 Mr. Ruskin's final lecture to his pupils for this 
 term, given at Oxford last week, began with an 
 expression of the " disappointment and surprise 
 which, on reviewing the results of my lecturing 
 and working here for upwards of twelve years, 
 I feel in being forced to the sorrowful confession 
 that not a single pupil has learned the things I 
 primarily endeavoured to teach, nor used of his 
 own accord, so far as I know, in a single in- 
 stance, the examples which I put before him as 
 most admirable in my especial department of 
 art, landscape." 
 
 Examples of Landscape-drawing at Oxford. 
 
 How complete and numerous these examples 
 are every one knows who has visited the Tay- 
 lorian picture-gallery or seen in the '' Ruskin 
 
284 APPENDIX V. 
 
 Drawing-school" the insides of the cabinets 
 filled with Mr. Ruskin's own drawings. ''You 
 may wonder," continued Mr. Ruskin, "why the 
 examples I have given 3'ou of landscape in 
 the school are my drawings and not Turner's. 
 But Turner's are of a finesse beyond what has 
 ever else been attained, and for that reason not 
 useful as working examples. But I am proud 
 to think that these drawings of mine " (several 
 of which were exhibited at the lecture), '' done 
 thirty years ago at the foot of the Matterhorn, 
 are entirely right as examples of mountain 
 drawing, with absolutely correct outline of all 
 that is useful for geological science or landscape 
 art. And I am proud to think, too, that though 
 at the time I did them I had never seen Turner's 
 drawings, mine are on exactly the same plan 
 as his — that is to say, I always drew an ab- 
 solutely right pencil outline before putting in 
 any colour whatever. But though I have been 
 preaching, crying, shrieking to you that this is 
 the method of all true landscape painting, there 
 is not one of you who sharpens his pencil 
 point, instead of seizing his biggest brush and 
 going dab at the mountains with splashes of 
 colour. And then in the gallery up-stairs there 
 is the unequalled collection of Turner drawings, 
 which with some self-denial I gave you twenty 
 years ago, and which has lately been completed 
 by the kindness of the Trustees of the National 
 Gallery, at the intercession of Prince Leopold." 
 
A LECTURE ON LANDSCAPE. 285 
 
 Neglect of them by Mr. Riiskin^s Pupils. 
 
 Why was it, then, Mr. Ruskin returned to 
 ask, that none of his examples in landscape 
 had been used, none of his principles adopted ? 
 '' I perhaps trusted too much to what I had 
 before written on the subject of landscape, and 
 in the first years of my Professorship drew the 
 attention of my pupils only to the higher con- 
 ditions of pictorial imagination, which had been 
 occupied in religion and ethics. As it has 
 turned out, the religion of England being in its 
 practical power extinct before her science, and 
 the ethics of England extinct before her avarice, 
 everything that I have written of the religious 
 painting of Italy has been useless, until lately 
 in the form of guide-books ; while the value of 
 the few words I spoke on landscape was still 
 more hopelessly effaced by the vast irruption 
 of sensual figure-study, patronized by the now 
 all-powerful Republican demi-monde of the 
 French capital. Respecting the general rela- 
 tions and dignities of landscape and figure- 
 painting, I purpose very earnestly and carefully 
 to address you in a spring lecture. But with 
 respect to the especial danger and corruption 
 of existing schools of the figure, 1 must point 
 out one or two chief facts for your immediate 
 consideration." 
 
 Landscape Superior to Figure Painting. 
 *' First, landscape, however feeble or fantastic, 
 
286 APPLNDIX V. 
 
 cannot be definitely immoral. It neither mocks 
 what is venerable nor recommends what is 
 lascivious. But the sale of figure sketches or 
 paintings, by persons of inferior talent, depends 
 almost exclusively on its being addressed to the 
 vanity, the lust, or the idle malice of the classes 
 of society developed by the corruption of large 
 towns. Secondly, the idea of greater dignity 
 naturally attached to figure painting of higher 
 pretension, because it implies a strict course of 
 previous academical study, entirely ignores the 
 primary law of human education, that the more 
 you teach a fool the more manifold a fool you 
 make him. Nothing is so melancholy, nothing 
 so mischievous, as the academical imitations of 
 the great men by the little ones, and the pompous 
 display of laboriously artificial attainments by 
 men of faculties inherently and natively com- 
 temptible. During the first half of this century 
 the artists of England were divisible, almost 
 without exception, into two classes — men of 
 modesty, sense, and industry, who were forming 
 a pure school of pathetic and meditative land- 
 scape, rising with the quiet flow of a mountain 
 well out of the formahty of the older ' views ' 
 of this and that ; and men, on the other hand, 
 of mean ambition, foolish sentiment, and vulgar 
 breeding, who reduced the figure-painting of 
 the Academy to the inanity from which it 
 was only rescued by the splendid indignation 
 of Rossetti, Millais, and Holman Hunt — all of 
 them, observe, introducing, if not as the basis, 
 at least as an essential and integral part of 
 
A LECTURE ON LANDSCAPE. 28/ 
 
 their conception, a landscape elaborated to the 
 last grass blade and flower petal." 
 
 Greater Difficulty of Landscape. 
 
 " Thirdly, I will not in this brief notice touch 
 on the actual difficulties of landscape, as com- 
 pared with figure painting, but I beg you to 
 observe the requirement for it of far greater 
 industry. With an hour's work a good figure 
 painter can produce a satisfactorily realistic 
 image of the fairest human creature ; set him to 
 paint a heathy crag or a laurel coppice, and see 
 what he will make of it, giving him an hour for 
 every former minute, or sixty hours instead of 
 one. Why, then, paint it with so much care, 
 do you say, when the painting of the pretty 
 lady is so much nicer ? Well, my own 
 answer to that would be, Because the pretty 
 lady herself is so much nicer than the painting, 
 and will alwa^'s be there if you ask her ; but the 
 laurel coppice or the heather crag won't come 
 for the asking ; you must paint them or forget 
 them. Returning to my main point, note that 
 the painting of landscape requires not only 
 more industry, but far greater delicacy of bodily 
 sense and faculty than average figure painting. 
 Any common sign-painter can paint the land- 
 lord's likeness, and with a year or two's scraping 
 of chalk at Kensington any cockney student can 
 be got to draw, effectively enough for public 
 taste, a straddling gladiator or a curly-pated 
 Adonis. But to give the slightest resemblance 
 
250 APPENDIX V. 
 
 to, or notion of, such a piece of mountain wild- 
 wood or falling stream as these, in this little 
 leap of the Tees in Turner's drawing, needs 
 an eagle's keenness of eye, fineness of finger 
 like a trained violinist's, and patience and love 
 like Griselda's or Lad}^ Jane Grey's." 
 
 Delight ill Landscape Dependent on Human 
 Sympathy. 
 
 " Without, however, further reasoning just 
 now why or with what feelings we should tr}- 
 to paint landscape, I return to my immediate 
 business, to ask you why in no single instance 
 any of you have painted a bit in my way. For 
 one of 3'ou that used to go to Scotland or Swit- 
 zerland a thousand go now ; for one descriptive 
 passage in poetry or novel that used to be given 
 before Scott and Byron told 3-ou that nature 
 was beautiful, a thousand romancers and trou- 
 badours paint now their landscape backgrounds 
 for personages whom they couldn't make else of 
 an}' account ; and yet here are twelve years I 
 have been your drawing-master, and not one o^ 
 you has brought me a bit of Alpine snow, of 
 Greek sea, or of English greenwood, drawn with 
 as much pains or heart as dear old William 
 Hunt puts into a horn tankard. I do not know 
 what 3^our answer would or will be. But my 
 own explanation of this scorn of landscape will 
 certainly surprise you, I attribute it, and I 
 attribute it with a very strong conviction, to 
 
A LECTURE ON LANDSCAPE. 289 
 
 your having no sympathy with the people who 
 inhabit the countries you visit. No passage of 
 my old books is more often quoted than that in 
 the ' Seven Lamps ' as to the entire interest of 
 landscape depending on our sympathy with its 
 history and inhabitants." The passage in ques- 
 tion is that in which Mr. Ruskin describes " the 
 broken masses of pine forest which skirt the 
 course of the Ain above the village of Cham- 
 pagnole, in the Jura," and which has been 
 quoted above (see p. 17), as enforcing the de- 
 pendence of landscape upon the human element 
 for its power over the human heart. "But this 
 point/' Mr. Ruskin said, " I have never enough 
 reinforced. The lecture in which I partly did 
 so was never published ; and you all go rushing 
 about the world in search of Cotopaxis and 
 Niagaras, when all the rocks of the Andes and 
 all the river drainages of the two Americas are 
 not worth to you, for real landscape, pathos, 
 and power, this wayward tricklet of a Scottish 
 burn over its shelves of low-levelled sandstone." 
 Mr. Ruskin here showed the early Turner which 
 he has lately acquired, and to which he referred, 
 it will be remembered, in a former lecture. 
 (See Appendix II., p. 255.) "Its whole force," 
 he said, "consists in a dreamy and meditative 
 sense that men were once living there, and that 
 spirits are still moving there — that it was full 
 of traces of the valour of our ancestors, just as 
 it may still be full, if you will, of the sanctities 
 of your love." 
 
 19 
 
290 APPENDIX V. 
 
 TJic Contrary Case, Illustrated from Evelyn s 
 Diary. 
 
 To illustrate the contrary case — -the absence 
 of delight in landscape, accompanied and con- 
 ditioned by a want of sympathy for the people 
 — Mr. Ruskin read a series of extracts from 
 Evelyn's Diary, written for him by his god- 
 daughter with a type-writer — '' the only kind 
 of machine of which I do approve." First there 
 was English enjoyment of English landscape at 
 Spie Park, where the house had ''not a win- 
 dow on the prospect side." That is the rough 
 type ; for the gentle type Mr. Ruskin referred to 
 Evelyn's building a study, a fishpond, an island, 
 and some other " solitudes and retirements " at 
 Wotton, which " gave the first occasion of im- 
 proving them to waterworks and gardens." As 
 for English travellers' enjoyment of French 
 landscape, "we passed through a forest (of 
 Fontainebleau), so prodigiously encompassed 
 with hideous rocks of white, hard stone, heaped 
 one on another in mountainous height, that I 
 think the like is nowhere to be found more 
 horrid and solitary." For an example of 
 " French and characteristically European manu- 
 factured landscape/' Mr. Ruskin referred to 
 Evelyn's description of Richelieu's villa, with 
 its "walks of vast lengthes, so accurately kept 
 and cultivated, that nothing can be more agree- 
 able," and its " large and very rare grotto of 
 shell- worke, in the shape of satyrs and other wild 
 fancys." The human sympathy involved inmanu- 
 
A LECTURE ON LANDSCAPE. 29 1 
 
 factured landscape is to be seen in its cost — 
 " He has pulled downe a whole village to make 
 roome for his pleasure about it" — making a soli- 
 tude, and calling it delight. And then, lastly, Mr. 
 Ruskin read an account of how Evelyn took his 
 pleasure in the Alps, passing through '' strange, 
 horrid, and fearful craggs," and treating the na- 
 tives — as only the British tourist knows how. 
 The pious Evelyn, or one of his party, had a 
 water spaniel, ''a huge, filthy cur," that killed 
 a goat, ''whereupon we set spurrs and endea- 
 voured to ride away;" but inasmuch as ''amongst 
 these rude people a ver}' small misdemeanour is 
 made much of, we lay'd down the money, though 
 the proceedings seemed highly unjust." These 
 proceedings occurred on the Simplon Pass ; and 
 Mr. Ruskin showed, in contrast to them, a draw- 
 ing of the St. Gothard, by Turner, in which, 
 as in other scenes, it is a human interest that 
 gives the grandeur. The reader will remember 
 in this connection Mr. Ruskin's description of 
 the Pass of Faido, in " Modern Painters," where, 
 in " Turnerian typography," the " full essence 
 and soul of the scene and consummation of all 
 the wonderfulness of the torrents and Alps lay 
 in a postchaise with small ponies and postboy." 
 (See ante, p. 17.) 
 
 From the Alpine Club : Modern Manners. 
 
 " Now, I dare say," said Mr. Ruskin, resum- 
 ing, "you all think you have improved greatly 
 in sense, and good-nature, and love of scenery 
 
292 APPENDIX V. 
 
 since Evelyn's time. I admit there are a certain 
 number of you very different creatures indeed. 
 But there is nothing to me so amazing in Evelyn's 
 injustice to the poor peasants, and terrified hatred 
 of their Alps, as there is in the total absence 
 from the papers of the Alpine Club of the small- 
 est expression of any human interest in anything 
 they see in Switzerland except the soaped poles 
 they want to get to the top of, and their continual 
 exultation, over their cheese and beer, in their 
 guides' legs and their own, without ever appear- 
 ing conscious for an instant that every valley 
 of which the blue breaks through the cloud at 
 their feet is full of the most beautiful human 
 piety and courage, being gradually corrupted 
 and effaced by European vice, after contending 
 for long ages w4th conditions of hardship and 
 disease, prolonged by European neglect, folly, 
 and cruelty. And of the less adventurous Eng- 
 hshman, content with flatter mountain tops, here 
 without question is the central type for this 
 hour." Mr. Ruskin here showed Punch's car- 
 toon of " The Old Lion Aroused," to which he 
 had referred in a former lecture, and in doing 
 so he apologized for any pain that had been 
 caused by his thus accidentally ridiculing Mr. 
 Bright — for whose character he had in most 
 things a great respect, although it was *' an awful 
 sign of the times " that so honourable and ex- 
 cellent a man should have stood up on a memo- 
 rable occasion in the House of Commons to 
 defend the adulteration of food as a legitimate 
 form of competition. "You are all of you," Mr. 
 
A LECTURE ON LANDSCAPE, 293 
 
 Ruskin resumed, with reference to this cartoon, 
 " resolving 3'ourselves, and that with rapidity, 
 into this kind of British person, and this kind 
 of British standard-bearer — consumer of all 
 things consumable, producer of nothing but 
 darkness and abomination, with his foot on all 
 that he once revered, his hope lost in all that 
 he once worshipped, a god to himself, and to 
 all the world an incarnate calamity." 
 
 The Retiini to Nature. 
 
 " Your way out of all this I told you full 
 fourteen years ago, in my inaugural lectures, to 
 not one word of which any of you have prac- 
 tically attended. I have, indeed, one pupil-friend, 
 an accomplished and amiable artist, another a 
 conscientious and prosperous lawyer — of formal 
 school or consistent disciples no vestige what- 
 ever. The time may yet come ; anyhow next 
 year I have again, with the ever-ready help of 
 Mr. Macdonald, to begin at the beginning, and 
 meanwhile I will close my discourses to you 
 for this 3^ear by re-reading the conditions of 
 prosperous art work which I laid before you in 
 1870." The passage .which Mr. Ruskin read is 
 in the fourth of his inaugural " Lectures on 
 Art," on " The Relation of Art to Use," in which 
 it was laid down that after recovering, for the 
 poor, wholesomeness of food, the next steps 
 towards founding Schools of Art in England 
 must be in recovering for them decency and 
 wholesomeness of dress and of lodging, and 
 
294 APPENDIX V. 
 
 then after this that '' nothing be ever made ot 
 iron that can be as effectually made of wood or 
 stone, and nothing moved by steam that can be 
 as effectually moved by natural forces. . . . And 
 until you do this, be it soon or late, things will 
 continue in that triumphant state to which, for 
 want of finer art, your mechanism has brought 
 them ; that though England is deafened with 
 spinning-wheels, her people have not clothes ; 
 though she is black with digging of fuel, they 
 die of cold ; and though she has sold her soul 
 for gain, they die of hunger. Stay in that 
 triumph, if you choose ; but be assured of this, 
 it is not one which the Fine Arts will ever share 
 with you." 
 
 ^' All this," said Mr. Ruskin, in conclusion, 
 " is called impossible. It may be so. I have 
 nothing to do with its possibility, but only with 
 its indispensability. And at any rate this much 
 is possible to 3^ou — to prefer life in the country, 
 though it be dull, to life in London, though it is 
 merry; to look at one thing in the day, instead 
 of at twenty ; and to think of that one in such 
 a way as will give you some love for man and 
 some belief in God." 
 
INDEX. 
 
 Alexander, Miss (" Francesca ") her drawings at Oxford, 
 lOO; her Italian studies referred to, loi n., 250. 
 
 Allen, George, appointed Ruskin's publisher, 184; engraver, 
 189, 200 ; Ruskin's pupil at Working Men's College, 
 125; author's visits to, at Orpington, 185 — 200; Car- 
 lyle's visit to, 190. 
 
 Alpine Club, The, 292. 
 
 " Aratra Pentelici," cited, 65 ; referred to, 16. 
 
 Architecture, Ruskin's essential principles in, 14, 18. 
 
 Art, Duty of choosing noble subjects, 8 ; Essential truths 
 and corresponding fallacies about, 206; Ideas to be 
 conveyed by — beauty, 10; imitation, 8; poiver, 7; 
 relation, 16 ; truth, 9 ; Origin of, 5 ; Relation of, to 
 — history, 24; life, 18; material progress, 20; morality, 
 16; religion, 15; science, 20. 
 
 "Art for Schools Association," 139. 
 
 Arundel Society, The, importance of, 251. 
 
 Beaumont, Sir George, exponent of the pre-Ruskinian 
 
 criticism, 9. 
 Beauty, objective standard of, ii ; relation of, to Art, 10 ; 
 
 Spenser's definition of, 12; "typical" and "vital" 
 
 distinguished, 13. 
 Beever, Miss, Ruskin's letters to, cited, 205 n., 265 n. 
 
296 INDEX. 
 
 Birds. Lecture on "Birds, and How to Paint them," 
 272 — 282 ; arrangement of, in museums, 266 ; colours 
 of, in plumage, 278; destruction of, 274; feathers, 278; 
 in English Art, 210, 277, 278. 
 
 "Bishop's House," The, at Meersbrook, 159. 
 
 Bright, John, Ruskin on, 292. 
 
 BuNNEY, The late W. J., drawings by, at Oxford, 92; 
 picture of St. Mark's, by, at St. George's Museum, 158; 
 Ruskin's pupil at Working Men's College, 125. 
 
 Burgess, The late Arthur (Ruskin's assistant), work b}-, 
 at Oxford, 91. 
 
 Burne-Jones, Edward, A.R.A., "entirely masterful," 99 ; 
 "our only artist," 2lo ; designs for " Alcestis " and 
 "Jason"' by, at Oxford, 71; "Psyche" drawings by, 
 at Oxford, 99, 112; studies b}', at Oxford, 100. 
 
 Carlyle, Thomas, on Ruskin's Gospel. 3, 10; its relation 
 
 to, 4, 25 ; influence of, on Ruskin's style, 208 ; referred 
 
 to, 162, 217, 252, 254. 
 Carpaccio, greatness of, 210; Ruskin's discovery of, 73 w ; 
 
 "Parrot," by, in 11.; "St. Ursula's Dream," by, 73, 
 
 256. 
 "Cestus of Aglaia," referred to, 268. 
 Country v. Town Life, 162, 272. 
 " Crown of Wild Olive," the Sanction of Ruskin's Gospel 
 
 in, 37- 
 Cork, High School for Girls, May Queen Festival at, 134; 
 
 Ruskin's gifts to, 135. 
 
 " Eagle's Nest" cited, 71 n. 
 
 " Ethics of the Dust " referred to, 267. 
 
 Evelyn's Diary cited, 290. 
 
 Faunthorpe, Rev. J. P. (Principal of Whitelands College, 
 q.v.), 127, 128, 133, 134; his index to " Fors Clavigera," 
 
INDEX. 297 
 
 Fleming, Albert, revival of spinning industry by, 164- 
 173; Ruskin's interest therein, 163, 166. 
 
 " FoRS Clavigera " cited, 26, 27, 64, 142, 143, 146; its 
 place in Ruskin's Gospel, 34, 35. 
 
 " Francesca," see Miss Alexander. 
 
 GiORGiONE, altar-piece at Castelfranco, by, 251. 
 Goodwin, A., drawings by, at Oxford, 98. 
 Gordon, General, Ruskin on, 54. 
 
 GOTTHELF, JeREMIAS, 1 62, 254. 
 
 Greenaway, Miss Kate, May Queen's gown designed by, 
 
 129, 132 {illustration). 
 GiJNTHER, Dr., and Ruskin, 266, 
 
 Hill, Miss Octavia, and Ruskin, 35. 
 HiNKSEY. See under Oxford (road-digging). 
 Hunt, William, drawings by, af Oxford, 92 ; his birds, 
 277 ; still-life, 288. 
 
 Isle of Man, St. George's Mill at Laxey, 173 — 178. 
 
 JowETT, Professor, and Ruskin, 48. 
 
 Keats, Ruskin on, 267. 
 
 Landscape, Lecture on, 283 — 294 ; contempt of, in i8th 
 century, 290; how dependent on human interest, 17, 
 288 ; neglect of, 283 ; superiority of, to figure-painting 
 285-288. 
 
 Landseer, Sir E., 277, 
 
 Langdale spinning industry, 164 — 173. 
 
 Laxey. See Isle of Man. 
 
 " Lectures on Art," its place in Ruskin's Gospel, 34 ; 
 referred to, 62, 66, 67, 102, 106, 114, 213, 293. 
 
 Leighton, Sir F., drawing by, at Oxford, 98; Ruskin on, 
 99. 
 
298 INDEX. 
 
 Leopold, Prince, admiration of, for Ruskin, 43 ;/., 144 ; 
 
 visit of, to the Walkley Museum, 148. 
 " Love's Meinie " referred to, 266, 274. 
 LuiNi, Copy from frescoes by, at Oxford, 71. 
 
 Macdonald, Alexander (Master of the Ruskin Drawing- 
 school), 57, 58, 59, 65, 67, 70, 265, 293. 
 
 Machinery, Raskin's views on, 142, 175, 294. 
 
 McWhirter, a., drawings by, at Oxford, 98. 
 
 Mallock, W. H., a disciple of Ruskin, 43 it. ; on Ruskin's 
 Oxford Lectures, 47 n., 49 n. 
 
 Manual Labour, dignity of, 25, 45 ; its relation to Art, 25. 
 
 Martin, Miss (Head-mistress of the Cork High School for 
 Girls), 134. 
 
 Martin's, St. (head-quarters of the Langdale spinning in- 
 dustry), 168 {illustration). 
 
 May Queen Festival, Ruskin's, at Whitelaxds : de- 
 scription of, 127 — 133; origin of, 128; at Cork, 134; 
 elsewhere, 134; influence of, 133, 134, 139. 
 
 Meersbrook Park (site of the new St. George's Museum) 
 described, 158 — 160 ; exterior of museum at, 158 
 {illustration) ; interior of picture-gallery at, 160 {illus- 
 tration) ) "Bishop's House " at, 159 {illustration). 
 
 " Modern Painters," its place in Ruskin's Gospel, 33 ; 
 main principle of, 6, 18; new edition of, 195 — 200; 
 "Readings" in, by Ruskin, 205 — 210. 
 
 " Munera Pulveris," its place in Ruskin's Gospel, 34. 
 
 Museum. See Meersbrook Park, Oxford Museum, 
 Walkley Museum. 
 
 Navy, Ruskin on the British, 226, 257-9, 270. 
 
 Oxford, modern "improvements" at, 273. 
 
 Oxford Museum, The, 47, 206, 266. 
 
 Oxford, Ruskin's Work as Professor at : his published 
 
INDEX. 299 
 
 volumes of lectures, 40 ; other literary works in con- 
 nection therewith, 41 ; personal influence, 42-47 ; 
 road-diggfng, 43-45, 273 ; his pupils {see Leopold, 
 Mallock, Toynbee) ; his lectures described, 47-61 ; 
 Ruskin on them, 47 ; his popularity, 48, 205 «., 264 ; 
 first Professorship, 38, 47, 62 ; second, 39, 48, 67 ; 
 resignation of Professorship and rupture with Uni- 
 versity, 115. 
 
 Patience, Chaucer's conception of, 268 ; lecture on, 264 — 
 271 ; St. Theodore, the Venetian type of, 269. 
 
 " Pall Mall Gazette," The, on Ru skin's re-election to 
 Slade Professorship, 39 ;/. ; on " The New School," 
 45 n.) cited and referred to, 53, loi «., 116 //., 133 
 155 "•> 156 '^■1 211, 217 n.) Ruskin's letter to, on his 
 resignation of the Professorship, 115; Ruskin's refer- 
 ences to, 164, 211, 257. 
 
 " Pleasures of England," 69 ; reports of the lectures 
 (from the Pall Mall Gazette), 211 — 263. 
 
 " Pr^terita," 50 w., 76 «., 124, 134. 
 
 Profit-sharing. See Thomson. 
 
 Prout, drawings by, at Oxford, 92, 
 
 Publishing, Ruskin's system of, 184 — 201. 
 
 Riviere, Briton, R.A., 277. 
 
 Ruskin, John. [I. Personal. II. His " Gospel." III. 
 His Work. IV. His Lectures. V. His Drawings. 
 VI. His Books.] 
 
 I. Personal : early rising, 76 w. ; explanation of rup- 
 ture with Oxford, 1 15 ; dislike of noise, 252 ; gifts 
 to public galleries, 97 n. ; to Cork High School, 
 135; to Whitelands Training College, 137; in- 
 dustry, 76 ; personal appearance, 50 ; title of 
 " Professor," 39 ; his conversation, 45 ; voice, 49 ; 
 bust of, 121; and see frontispiece; his unique 
 
300 INDEX. 
 
 equipment as art-teacher, lO; as a social reformer, 
 36, 46. 
 
 II. His Gospel. Principles of Art, 1-21 ; applications 
 
 to life, 22-37 ; its relation to the present age, 
 19-21; the essential and non-essential in, 23; 
 principles of politics, 24-29 ; Political Economy, 
 29-33> 179; place of his different books in, 33-35 ; 
 its sanction, 36; its relation to Carlyle, 4, 25; its 
 width, 23; opinions on — Carlyle, 3, 10; Century 
 Magazine (W. J. Stillman), 24; Chesneau, 22; 
 George Eliot, 3 ; Edinburgh Revieiv, 24 ; address 
 from his admirers (1885), 30 n. 
 
 III. His Work. [a. General Remarks. b. Educa- 
 tional, c. Industrial.] 
 
 a. His practice in keeping with his precept, 35, 123; 
 
 his munificence, 35, 36, 97 ; his industry, 76 ; 
 dispersion of his energies, 66, 143. 
 
 b. His interest in education, 122; in the village school 
 
 at Coniston, 123; his writings on, 122; his books 
 written as lectures, 123. See also May Queens, 
 Oxford, Walkley, Working Men's College. 
 
 c. His place as a social reformer, 36, 143 ; agricultural 
 
 experiments, 145; revival of village industries — in 
 Westmoreland, 163; in the Isle of Man, 173; 
 interest in " G. Thomson & Co's. industrial partner- 
 ship," 182. See also St. George's Guild. 
 
 IV. His Lectures, [a. General remarks on. b. Par- 
 ticular lectures referred to.] 
 
 a. Humour of, 51, 209; illustrations at, 55, 242, 243, 
 
 245, 261; intimite oi, 52, 84; impromptus in, 53, 
 211, 234, 252, 257; Mallock on, 47 «., 49 ti. 
 
 b. " Art of England," 58, 59 ; " Cistertian Architecture," 
 
 52 ; " Birds, and How to Paint them " (report), 272 
 — 282 ; " Flamboyant Architecture," 55 ; Inaugural 
 Lectures at Oxford, 62 " Patience " (report), 264 
 
INDEX. 301 
 
 —271; "Landscape" (report), 283— 294 ; "Plea- 
 sures of England," 53, (reports), 21 1 — 263 '> " Read- 
 ings in 'Modern Painters'" 60, (notes), 205 — 210 ; 
 " Storm Cloud," 56. 
 V. His Drawings, [a. General remarks on. b. Par- 
 ticular drawings referred to.] 
 
 a. General characteristics of, 77, 81 ; wide range of, 
 
 81 ; Edinburgh Review on, 82 n. ; Ruskin on his 
 artistic powers, 82 n. ; Mr. Whistler on, 82 tt. 
 
 b. Abbeville market-place, 81 ; Alpine studies, 83 n., 
 
 284; Amiens Cathedral, 81 it. ; Assisi, sacristan's 
 cell, 86 ; " Dryad's Crown,"' 83 ; " Epops Car- 
 paccii," III n. ; Fribourg, 87; Grass, 87; Lucca 
 San Michele, 78, 85 ; Lucerne, 87 ; marsh orchis, 
 77 ; partridge, 79 ; Palermo, sketches at, 84 ; pea- 
 cock's feather, 78 ; Pisa, chapel of " The Thorn," 
 77; "Queen of Sheba," 77 ; "Purist Landscape," 
 83; quartz, 78; Rheinfelden, 87; "Rock of 
 Arona," 87 ; rolled gneiss, 78 ; " Rose of Demeter," 
 87; sketch of dead bird, 124; St. Ursula, 73; 
 Venice, Grand Canal, 81 ; Verona, tomb at, 72. 
 
 VL His Books. Eloquence of, i ; style of, 208, 209, 
 268; alliteration in, 2io; profits on, 192; sales of, 
 193 — 195 ; manner of publishing, 184 — 201 ; piracy 
 of, in America, 195, 200 ; adopted as School Board 
 prizes, 194. See also several books indexed under 
 their titles. 
 RusKiN Drawing School, The, at Oxford. [L General. 
 
 n. As A School of Art. IIL Its Collections.] 
 
 L General. Its objects, 63 ; foundation and endow- 
 ment, 65; location of, 65, 116-7 n. ; possible 
 developments of, 113 — 121 ; use as model for 
 museums, etc., 75, 107, 119. 
 
 II. As a School of Art : 65-70 ; system of teaching 
 at, 67, 79 • advantages of, 70, 
 
302 INDEX. 
 
 III. The Collections: 70-121 ; description of cabinets, 
 73; unexpectedness of, 74; Ruskin's drawings 
 in, 76-89 ; woodcuts (Diirer, etc.), 89 ; drawings 
 by — Burne-Jones, 71, 99, 100, 112; Burgess, 9 
 Bunney, 92; "Francesca," 100; Goodwin, 9 
 Hunt, 92; Leighton, 98; McWhirter, 98; Prout, 
 92 ; Turner {q.v.) ; Ward, 96 ; " Standard Series 
 described, loi — 106; "Educational," 106 — 112 
 " Rudimentary," 1 13. 
 Rydings, Egbert. See Isle of Man. 
 
 St. George's Guild, 140 — 163; origin of, 140; purposes of, 
 141, 161 ; agricultural experiments of, 145 ; Museum, 
 see Meersbrook and Walkley ; industrial experiments 
 in connection with, 161 — 183. 
 
 "St. Mark's Rest," 257, 269. 
 
 St. Martin's, Langdale, spinning industry at, 164 — 173 ; 
 description of, 169; view of St. Martin's {illustration), 
 168; peasant-woman spinning (illustration), 166 ; " Old 
 John, the weaver " {illustration), 171. 
 
 Science, Modern, Ruskin on, 206, 210, 265 n., 276, 278; 
 relation of Science to Art, 20, 278. 
 
 " Sesame and Lilies " cited, 2,2> '> its place in Ruskin's 
 Gospel, 34. 
 
 "Seven Lamps of Architecture" cited, 17, 209; essential 
 principle of, 14 ; its place in Ruskin's Gospel referred 
 to, 170, 289. 
 
 Severn, Arthur, May Queen's cross designed by {illustra- 
 tion), 129. 
 
 Sewening, Mr. (picture-dealer), 255. 
 
 Sheffield, why chosen as site of St. George's Museum, 
 I46, 155 ; its treatment of the museum, 147, 156. 
 
 Shelley, Ruskin on, 267. 
 
 Socialism, Ruskin's relation to, 178. 
 
 South Kensington system, Ruskin on, 64. 
 
INDEX. 303 
 
 Stage, Ruskin on, 210. 
 
 " Stones of Venice," its place in Ruskin's Gospel, 34. 
 
 referred to, 15. 
 Swan, the late Henry, Ruskin's pupil at Working Men's 
 
 College, 125 ; first Curator of St. George's Museum, 
 
 154 n. 
 
 Thomson, George, his industrial partnership described, 
 178 — 183; Ruskin's interest in, 182; trustee of the 
 St. George's Guild, 178. 
 
 Tintoretto, his "Doge Mocenigo," 72; "Paradise," 59, 
 251. 
 
 Tolstoi, relation of his teaching to Ruskin's, 45, 145. 
 
 Town and Country Life, 162, 272. 
 
 ToYNBEE, Arnold, a pupil of Ruskin, 45, 
 
 Turner on Ruskin's Art-criticism, 8; greatness of, 14, 16, 
 17; "Modern Painters," a defence of, 208; small 
 prices obtained by, for early drawings, 207 ; drawings, 
 etc., by — " Brignal Banks," 94; "Building of Car- 
 thage," 16 ; drawing of a grove, 255, 289 ; drawings in 
 Oxford University Galleries, 97, 284 ; Farnley interior, 
 96 ; junction of Greta and Tees, 94 ; Leicester. 60 ; 
 Loire, 94 ; pen and sepia studies, 95 ; Pass of Faido, 
 17, 291 ; Ruined Abbey, 95 ; St. Gothard, 291. 
 
 "Two Paths," 14. 
 
 Universities' Settlements, and Ruskin's teaching, 46. 
 " Unto this Last," its place in Ruskin's Gospel, 34 ; 
 referred to, 182; cited, 209. 
 
 Verocchio, " Madonna and Child " in St. George's Museum, 
 
 149. 
 Vivisection, Ruskin on, 115, 116 n., 206, 264. 
 
 Walkley Museum, purpose of, 146 ; general description 
 of its contents, 147 ; Prince Leopold's visit to, with 
 
304 INDEX. 
 
 Ruskins explanations, 148 — 154 ; country around, 
 155; visitors to, 155; principles of its arrangement, 
 
 153, 156. 
 Ward, William, his copies of Turner, 96, 97 n. ; Ruskin's 
 
 pupil at Working Men's College, 125. 
 White, William, Curator of the St. George's Museum, 
 
 160 n. 
 Whitelands Training College, Chelsea, Ruskin's gifts to, 
 
 137; Ruskin Cabinet at, 138; Ruskin Library' at, 137. 
 
 See also May Queen Festival and Faunthorpe. 
 Working Men's College (London). Ruskin's connection 
 
 with, 124; his method of teaching at, 124; Ruskin and 
 
 Rossetti at, 125 ; his pupils at — G. Allen, 125 ; Bunney, 
 
 125; Swan, 125; Ward, 125. 
 
 Printed by Hazell, Watson, & Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbun'. 
 
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