\ » rmaojilVD JO •> \ O Of CAllfOSNlA a V(N40j4W^ 3O O O OF CAIIFORNIA o n I ^ M^ o AiliOiAiNii JHl » n X o 30 AdVotoU 3HI "* \ J£ < ' X ^ JO Ai;. -... o THt LlM:*»y Of o ■^'^7y,Tr-'U M^'l' '13 o THE UNiVEItSITV o O / ^^ or CAlUOHNId >■ 5 f jm • :.i: o xir<:xiAiNjn AllSaJMNH ]H1 > r tut UN'VtHSlIV n 8 r'- n * lANiA AAltbAKA %i ^ ' SANIA BARSARA • STUDIES IN RUSKIN: SOME ASPECTS WORK AND TEACHING OF JOHN RUSKIN, HIT II REPRODUCTIONS OF DRAIl'IXGS BY MR. RUSKIN IN THE RUSKIN DRAWING SCHOOL. OXFORD. ■tl ,7 E. liOEHU, RA. " 1, Oxford). STUDIES IN RUSKIN: SOME ASPECTS WORK AND TEACHING OF JOHN RUSKIN. EDWARD T. COOK, M.A., AUTHOR OF 'A POPULAR HANDBOOK TO THE NATIONAL GALLERY.' WJTH REPRODUCTIONS OF DRAWINGS BY MR. RUSKIN IN THE RUSKIH DRAWING SCHOOL, OXFORD. GEORGE ALLEN, SUNNY SIDE, ORPINGTON, AND BELL YARD, TEMPLE BAR, LONDON. 1890. [AH rights reserved,'] PRINTED BY IIAZELL, WATSON, AND 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 lioiv, but what, 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 like 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 LIBRARY UNIVERSITY or (CALIFORNIA SANTA BARBARA VI PREFACE. works, and by the cult which has grown up around his personality. The most ardent are not always the most di.scriminating 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 m}- head ; another, in which I saj' what I think ought to be said ; and my third way of writing is to say all that comes into m3- 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 PREFACE. Vn 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. Raskin'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 VIU 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." Dccoiil'cr jist, 1 SS9. CONTENTS. PAGE PREFACE V PART I. " THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO RUSKIN." 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 ...... 38 PAGE . 62 X CONTENTS. CHAPTER n. THE RUSKIN DRAWING SCHOOL CHAPTER 111. 4MR. KUSKIN AND TllK WOliKIXG JlKx's COLLEGE . . 122 CHAPTER IV. 51K. KUSKINS ".MAY QUEENS " 12? CHAPTER V. THE ST. GEOKOe's GUILD (willi SOIIIC accoiiiil of the " Rtiskin Muscimi" 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." . . . . 17S CHAPTER VII. MR. KUSKIN AND THE BOOKSELLERS .... 1S4 .MM'ENDICES. NOTES ON MR. RUSKIN' S OXFORD LECTURES. I. "readings in 'MODERN PAINTERS ' " . . . 2O5 CONTENTS. II, "the pleasures of ENGLAND III. A LECTURE ON PATIENCE. IV. "birds, and how to paint them' V. A LECTURE ON LANDSCAPE PAGE . 211 . 264 . 272 . 28q REPRODUCTIONS OF DRAWINGS MR. RUSKIN. I. MARKET PLACE, ABBEVILLE . II. PINE FOREST, MONT CENIS III. LUCERNE .... IV. OLD BRIDGE AT LUCERNE V. FRIEOURG, SWITZERLAND VI. GLACIER DES BOSSONS, CH.^MONI.V VII. GR.\ND CANAL, VENICE VIII. CASTLE OF HAPSBURG IX. KINGFISHER . X. PLANE LEAVES XI. SAN MICHELE, LUCCA XII. AGRIMONY LEAVES . XIII. GLEN FINLAS . BY ■ 300 • 302 ■ 304 • 306 . 308 ■ 310 • 312 ■ 314 . 3'6 . 318 . 320 ■ 322 • 324 325 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 1. John Ruskin. From n bust by Sir J. E. Boeinn, 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 drawing by Edith Capper .... Page 132 V. The St. George's Museum, Walkley : Ex- terior .... To face page 146 VI. The St. George's Museum, 'V\''alkley : In- terior .... To face page 148 VII. The Ruskin Museum, Meersbrook Park : E.\- terior .... To face page 1 58 XIV LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. Vlll. The "Bishop's House," Meersbrook Pakk To face poi^e 159 IX. The Ruskin Museum. Meersbrook Tauk : In- terior OF Picture-gallery To face page 160 X. Peas.\nt-\voman Spinning. Fioiii a drazviiig by Erlith Capper .... Page 1 66 XI. "St. Martin's," Laxgd.^le. From a dra-aiing by Edith Capper .... Page 16S XII. "Old John," the Weaver. From a drawing by Edith Capper .... Page 171 XIII. St. George's Mill, La.xey, Isli: of Man (with fac-similc 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 I am indebted to Mr. A. Macdonald, the Master of the School . Permission to reproduce a selection from Mr. Ruskin's Drawings in the Ruskin Drawing School has been kindly accorded to me by the Curators of the University Galleries, and by Mr. Macdonald, the Master of the School. To Mr. Macdonald I am greatly indebted for much help in this matter, as well as for other kind offices. PART I. THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO RUSKIN." CHAPTER I. PRINCIPLES OF ART. Is there a Gospel according to Ruskin at all ? is there a The very genius of Mr. Ruskin as a writer '^Jjj' '^"^^ 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." 1 2 ' THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO RUSKIN. gold in thought that glisters in words. Tt 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 they." 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 any 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 sj'Stem called after their own names. Hui 1 ha\r ikmi ajiplied PRINCIPLES OF ART. 3 myself to discover anything, being content to praise vvhiat 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, 1 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 on ^noid Gos- pel with the one side, and of his admirers on the other, "1Y^!!?p''" ' 1 cations. are not contradictory. The Gospel according to Ruskin is one of glad tidings, but not of " news." What George Eliot 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 Carl3le, 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 been said of Carlyle, by one of his imiched" latcst biographcrs, that his taste in art was withp.aisc. Qj^,^^ ,, ji^^j ^c ,j,^^, Annandale 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 true Works of Art," says Carlyle in "Sartor," " if thou know a Work of Art from a Daub of Artifice, wilt thou discern Eternit)' 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, hut in so abstruse a condition, PRINCIPLES 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 RL'SKIX. 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. The facui- Such being, on the Ruskinian theory, the ties to °' -' ' a '"eaif"^' o'"'?^" of Art, it is casy to see to what faculties inlua^fon'^ i" man it appeals. " Like is known of like : " power." 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 syllabic to its last. It declares the pcrfectness 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 iVoni Art PRINCIPLES OF ART. 7 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 t*"^ 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 Riche ; for it is only he who knows how much skill in composition and delicacy in handling 8 " 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 dii'licult 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 3'ou do of those who fail." As applied to Mr. Ruskin's criticism of kcliiiiqiic, 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 not waste your hard-won skill and scanty time in painting a boor instead of a gentleman, or an " impression " of a ballet-girl instead oi' a vision of angel choirs. PRINCIPLES OF ART. 9 And thus we come to the other ideas which j-.'^th''." °' 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 RUSKl.N. said Carlyle of Mr. Ruskin's political economy, " has in him the same divine rage against falsity." But false wares may be passed in pictures as well as in trade, and Mr. Ras- kin's "divine rage" was spent against both alike. "Ideas of But it must Hot be supposed tiiat in prcach- Beauty : " rr i Ruskinat jne Truth in Art he ignores tiie function of once a ^ ° a Painter"^ Bcauty. On the contrar}', 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 tiic senses. This is the theory of the matter which is responsible for all the sensuality and all the frivolity in An PRINCIPLES OF ART. I I which made the Puritans banish it as the accursed thing. Mr. Ruskin's theory of the function of Art JJ^^^°^- is diametrically opposite. According to him, 85^11"/. " 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 you 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 learnc to love with zealous humble dewt^- Th' eternal fountaine of lliat hiavenlj' beauty." 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 samis." Nor is it the useful ; unless the most beautiful products of art are spades and millstones. Nor does it depend on custom : Gower Street ma)' 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 PRINCIPLES OF ART. 1 3 not therefore association. No ; beauty consists, says Ruskin, (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^''^'." 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 RUSKIN. more beautiful than that of the man in tlie street ? Because Art is " the pure mirror that can show the seraph standing by each human bodv, as signal to the heavenl}' land." That is what is meant by vital beauty. There is no beauty that cannot ultimateh' 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 glorj' of God." And so with architecture. "The law which it has been my effort chiefl\^ to illustrate," says Mr. Ruskin, " is the dependence of all noble design on the sculpture of organic form." One school of architecture sets itself to lines and jiropor- tions and conventional ornaments ; the other chooses the suggestion of natural laws, the imitation of natural forms. Let the architects pause, saj's Mr. Ruskin, with all the seriousness of a moral teacher, at the parting of " the Two Paths," before they " wilfully bind uji their eyes from the splendour, wilfully turn their backs upon all the majesties, of OuHiipolence." PRINCIPLES OF ART. IS One sees from this passage how serious and Ai;j.^!'^d^ 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 bting, and " name it as you will : " if you recognise it, and recognising revere, you are religious ; and Art, as the interpreter of Beauty, 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 1 6 "the gospel accordixg to ruskix." the pictures of Florence ; the gladness of Greek religion that gives for him its sharpness to the " Ploughshare of Pentelicus." "Ideas of Biit i,^ the Gospel according to Ruskin Art Relation : ^ ° Mo'rality '^ ""'• °"'y 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 tliis 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 would have conveyed the same intellectual idea as an elaborate realization 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/ onl}' 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 otlier interest than that of its own secluded and serious beauty ; but the writer well remembers the sudden blankness and chill whicli 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 glor}' of the imperishable, or contimiall}- 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 tlie crests of the sable hills that rose against the evening sky received a deeper worsliip, because their far sliadows fell eastward over the iron wall of Joux and the four-square keep of Gransou." Great Art Herein is another fundamental aitick- in the '* the t^'pc and'nobfe Gospel accordlng 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 hiuiian 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 scliool 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 ilcspised." PRINCIPLES OF ART. ig The artist, then, and the amateur are not to Hve 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 significance ^ oi the fore- is the value of the message to the present o°',"^^ p""^-^ generation ? To answer that question one has p'''=^'="'^s^ 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 Ruskinian Gospel has sometimes been spoken of as wliolly contradictory of both these factors in modern Hfe. 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 sleet}' 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 tlial they produce such and sucii an effect upon tlie eye or heart, as that thcj' 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 ninterial misery of poverty. The drifl 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 ne.xt chapter. CHAPTER II. APPLICATIONS TO LIFE. Ruskin's No gosDcI is eood for anvthinir which is not "inc^uire ^ i ^ ^