CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY FINE ARTS LIBRARY CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY DATE DUE GAYLOBD PRINTED IN U.S.A. Cornell University Library The original of this bool< is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924097556025 In compliance with current cop5a'ight law, Cornell University Library produced this replacement volume on paper that meets the ANSI Standard Z39.48-1992 to replace the irreparably deteriorated original. 2003 CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY FINE ARTS LIBRARY JOHN RUSKIN liy George Richmand, R.A. 1857 THE LIFE OF JOHN RUSKIN BY W. G. COLLINGWOOD WITH A FRONTISriECE SIXTH EDITION METHUEN & CO. 36 ESSEX STREET W.C. LONDON First Published, in Two Vols. May 1S93 Second Edition „ May 1^3 Third Edition, in One Vol. AJiril igoo Fourth Edition „ November igoo Fifth and Cheaper Edition Jamtary igoj Sixth Edition ^Pril igoj CONTENTS BOOK I. THE BOY POET (1819-1842). CnAPTER I. HIS ANCESTORS .... II. THE FATHER OF THE MAN (1819-1825) III. PERFERVIDUM INGENIUM (1826-1830) . IV. MOUNTAIN-WORSHIP (1830-1835) V. THE GERM OF 'MODERN PAINTERS' (1836) VI. A LOVE-STORY (1836-1839) VII. 'KATA phusin' (1837-1838) . VIII. SIR ROGER NEWI^IGATE's PRIZE (1837-1839) IX. 'THE BROKEN CHAIN' (1840-1841) X. THE GRADUATE OF OXFORD (1841-1842) BOOK II. THE AET CRITIC (1842-1860). I. 'TURNER AND THE ANCIENTS ' (1842-1844) II. CHRISTIAN ART (1845-1847) HI. 'THE SEVEN LAMPS' (1847-1849) IV. 'stones OF VENICE' (1849-1851) V. PRE-RAPHAELITISM (1851-1853) VL THE EDINBURGH LECTURES (1853-1854) Vn. THE WORKING MEN's COLLEGE (1854-1855) Vm. 'MODERN painters' CONTINUED (1855-1856) IX. 'THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART' (1857-1858) X. 'MODERN PAINTERS' CONCLUDED (l 858-1860) . 13 22 30 44 51 57 66 72 79 87 97 107 119 130 141 149 156 168 ISO IV CONTENTS BOOK III. HERMIT AND HERETIC (1860-1870) CHAPTER I. 'UNTO THIS last' (I86O-I86I) II. 'MUNERA PULVERIS' (l86l-1862) III. THE LIMESTONE ALPS (1863) IV. 'SESAME AND LILIES' (1864) . V. 'ETHICS OF THE DUST ' (1865). VI. 'THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE' (1865-1866) VII. 'TIME AND TIDE' (1867) VIII. AGATES, AND ABBEVILLE (I868) IX. 'THE QUEEN OF THE AIR ' (1869) X. VERONA AND OXFORD (1869-1870) PAOE 189 198 204 210 215 222 234, 246 255 263 BOOK IV. PROFESSOR AND PROPHET (1870-1897). I. FIRST OXFORD LECTURES (1870-1871) . . . 271 n. 'FORs' BEGUN (1871-1872) . . . .284 in. OXFORD TEACHING (1872-1875) . . . 296 IV. ST. GEORGE AND ST. MARK (1875-1877) . ■ 312 V. 'DEUCALION' AND 'PROSERPINA* (1877-1879) . . 327 VI. THE DIVERSIONS OF BRANTWOOD (1879-1880) . . 340 VII. 'FORS' RESUMED (1880-1881) . . . .353 VIII. THE RECALL TO OXFORD (1882-1883) . . . 362 IX. THE STORM-CLOUD (1884-1888). . . . 374 X. DATUR HORA QUIETI (1889-1897) . . .386 ONE WORD MORE ..... 400 B1BLI0GRAPH\ ...... 409 INDEX ....... 422 THE LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN BOOK I. THE BOY POET. (1819-1842.) ' Eat fern-seed, And peer beside us, and report, indeed, If (your word) " genius " dawned with throes and stings, And the whole fiery catalogue, while springs, Summers, and winters quietly came and went.' SOBDELLO. CHAPTER I, HIS ANCESTORS. ' And still within our valleys here We hold the kindred title dear, Even -when, perchance, its far-fetched claim To Southern ear sounds empty name ; For course of blood, our proverbs deem, Is warmer than the mountain-stream.' Scott. IF origin, if early training and habits of life, if tastes, and character, and associations, fix a man's nationality, then John Ruskin must be reckoned a Scotsman. He was born in London, but his family was from Scotland, He was brought up in England, but the friends and teachers, the standards and influences of his early life, were chiefly Scottish. The writers who directed him into the main lines of his thought and work were Scotsmen — from Sir Walter and Lord Lindsay and Principal Forbes to the master of his later studies of men and the means of life, Thomas Carlyle. The religious instinct so conspicuous in him was a heritage from Scotland ; thence the combination of shrewd common-sense and romantic sentiment ; the oscillation between levity and dignity, from caustic jest to tender earnest; the restlessness, the fervour, the impetuosity — all these are the tokens of a Scotsman of parts, and were highly developed in John Ruskin. And, indeed, he received a great impress of Scottish character from old Galloway, from ancestors whose names are famous in history as champions and patriots and martyrs. 1—2 4 LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN The strange Tory revolutionism of ' Fors Clavigera,' at once monai-chical and democratic, loyal and radical, holding so close to tradition, and yet so progressive in its aims ; the Ruskinian knight-errantry, his readiness to rush in on the weaker side with a passionate cry for poetical justice — these find their explanation as inheritances from men who stood for the King against Cromwell, and yet suffered for the Kirk under Claver- house ; afterwairds, again, in many an instance, accepting the forlorn hope of Jacobitism as a solemn trust, or cherishing its lost cause as a sacred memory. Such men as these, among his various ancestors, most nearly anticipate his character, and undoubtedly had most influence in its formation. It was from Galloway, too, that he got the strain of Gaelic blood, in virtue of which he became a leader in that movement which latter-day critics have named ' the recrudescence of the Celt '; being, indeed, the central figure of a group of artists and poets whose inspiration we regard as a survival of Ossianic nature- worship, Fingalian romance, or Coluraban piety. But the exponent of a national ideal is rarely pure-bred. To expound an ideal, he must be in touch with the actual ; to introduce one party to another he must hold, so to say, the hands of each. It is commonly remarked that notable men are of mixed race ; and in this case, as the pedigree shows, Celtic fire was fed with Norman strength, and tempered with some infusion of English coolness from sailors of the North Sea. In the days of auld lang syne the Rhynns of Galloway — that hammer-headed promontory of Scotland which looks towards Belfast Lough — was the home of two great families, the Agnews and the Adairs. The Agnews, of Norman race, occupied the northern half, centring about their island-fortress of Lochnaw, where they became celebrated for a long line of hereditary sheriffs and baronets who have played no incon- siderable part in public affairs. The southern half, from Portpatrick to the Mull of Galloway, was held by the Adairs, originally Gallgaedhel, or Vikings of mixed Celtic and Scandinavian blood — immigrants from Ireland, according to a family tradition, not unsupported by the history of this HIS ANCESTORS 5 sea-board in the ninth and tenth centuries. The Adairs (or, as foi-merly spelt, Edzears) took their name from Edgar, son of Dovenald, one of the two Galloway leaders at the Battle of the Standard. Three hundi-ed years later Robert Edzear — who does not know his descendant and namesake, Robin Adair ? — settled at Gainoch, near the head of Luce Bay ; and for another space of 300 years his children kept the same estate, in spite of private feud, and civil war, and religious persecution, of which they had more than their share. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, John Adair, the laird of Little Genoch, was married to Mary Agnew, a near kinswoman of the celebrated Sir Andrew, whose laconic harangue to the Scots Fusiliers at Dettingen has become proverbial ; ' My lads, ye see those loons on yon hill there .'' If ye dinna kill them they'll kill you.' After the battle George II. rode up. 'So, Sir Andrew,' he began, as the Sheriff sat stoically at his parade, 'I hear the cuirassiers rode through your regiment to-day.' 'Ay, please your Majesty,' the other dryly replied, ' but they didna gang back again.'* What was the exact relationship of Mary Agnew to ' the bravest man in the British army' remains undecided, but letters still extant from the Lady Agnew of the day address her as ' Dear Molly,' and end, ' Your affectionate cousin ' or ' kinswoman.' Her son Thomas succeeded his father in 1721, and, retiring with his captaincy, settled on the estate. He married Jean, daughter of Andrew Ross of Balsarroch and Balkail, a lady noted for her beauty, her wit, and her Latin scholarship, and a member of a family which has given many distinguished men to the army and navy. Among them Admiral Sir John Ross, the Arctic explorer, Sir Hew Dalrymple, and Field-Marshal Sir Hew Dalrymple Ross, were all her great-nephews, and her son. Dr. John Adair, was the man in whose arms Wolfe died at the taking of Quebec ; it is he who is shown in Benjamin West's picture supporting the General. * Sir Andrew Agnew, 'Hereditary Sheriffs of Galloway,' ii. 278. 6 LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN Dr. Adair's sister Catherine, the daughber of Thomas Adair and Jean Ross, married the Rev. James Tweddale, minister of G-lenluce from 1758 to 1778, representative of an old Covenanting family, and holder of the original Covenant, which had been confided to the care of his great-aunt Catherine by Baillie of Jarviswood on his way to execution in the 'killing time.' The document was sold with his library at his death, his children being then under age, and is now in the Glasgow Museum, One of these children, Catherine, married John Ruskin, whose name, then of little account, was destined to become as famous, in the person of his grandson, as any of the heroic names with which it was thus connected. The origin of the name of Ruskin is obscure. It has been taken for Lowland Scottish, a variant of Erskine ; for a Highland place-name, Roskeen ; for a corruption of Roger- kin ; or even for a vulgar nickname, Roughskin. These are mere guesses, but Ruskington, in Lincolnshire, points, by a well-known rule of place-names, to a tribe of Anglian settlers called Rusking, of whom this village was originally the tun, or homestead, as Pennington was the ' to^vn ' of the Pennings, and so forth. Soon after the dissolution of Furness Abbey, Richerde Ruskyn and his family were land-owners at Dalton- in-Furness.* Other Ruskins and Ruskens are known in the North of England, and naturally also in London, whither all our tribes go up. One branch, however, and that with which we are especially concerned, settled in Edinburgh. John Ruskin — our subject's grandfather — when he ran away with Catherine Tweddale in 1781, was a handsome lad of twenty. His portrait as a child proves his looks, and he evidently had some charm of character or promise of power, for the escapade did not lose him the friendship of the lady's family. Major Ross, her uncle and guardian, * Communicated by Mr. W. Hutton Brayshay, from the Record Office. See also Dr. Barber, 'Furness and Oartmel Notes,' p. 380. Dalton is within fourteen miles of Brantwood, and was the bii-thplace of Eomney, the artist. HIS ANCESTORS 7 remained a good friend to the young couple. She herself was only sixteen at her marriage — a bright and animated brunette, as her miniature shows, in later years ripening to a woman of uncommon strength, with old-fashioned piety of a robust, practical type, and a spirit which the trials of her after-life — and they were many — could not subdue. Her husband set up in the wine trade in Edinburgh. For many years they lived in the Old Town, then a respectable neigh- bourhood, among a cultivated and well-bred society, in which they moved as equals,* entertaining, with others, such a man as Dr. Thomas Brown, the professor of philosophy, a great light in his own day, and still conspicuous in the constellation of Scotch metaphysicians. Their son, John James Ruskin (born May 10, 1785), was sent to the famous High School of Edinburgh, under Dr. Adam, the most renowned of Scottish headmasters, and there he received the sound old-fashioned classical educa- tion. Before he was sixteen, his sister Jessie was already married at Perth to Peter Richardson, a tanner living at Bridge End, by the Tay ; and so his cousin, Margaret Cox, wa^s sent for to fill the vacant place. She was a daughter of old Mr. Ruskin's sister, who had married a Captain Cox, sailing from Yarmouth for the herring fishery. He had died in 1789, or thereabouts, from the results of an accident while riding homewards to his family after one of his voyages, and his widow maintained herself in comfort by keeping the old King's Head Inn at Croydon Market-place, and brought up her two daughters with the best available education. The yoimger one married another Mr. Richardson, a baker at Croydon, so that, by an odd coincidence, there were two families of Richardsons, * ' I bad also a father more magnificent in his expenditure than mindful of his family ; ao indiscriminate and boundless in bis hos- pitalities that, when the invited guests arrived, he would sometimes have to inquire their names. My mother, too, had a heart large enough to embrace the whole human race, but with universal love combined peculiar prudence.' — J. J. Kuskin to Mias Mitford, January 5, 1852. LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSIQN si" 05 h o w HIS ANCESTORS 9 unconnected with one another except through their relation- ship to the Ruskins. Margaret, the elder daughter, who came to keep house for her uncle in Edinburgh, was then nearly twenty years of age. She had been the model pupil at her Croydon day-school ; tall and handsome, pious and practical, she was just the girl to become the confidante and adviser of her dark-eyed, active, and romantic yomig cousin — ^his guardian angel. Some time before the beginning of 1807, John James, having finished his education at the High School, went to London, where a place had been found for him by his uncle's brother-in-law, Mr. MacTaggart. He was followed by a kind letter from Dr. Thomas Brown, who advised him to keep up his Latin, and to study political economy, for the Professor looked upon him as a young man of unusual promise and power. During some two years, he worked as a clerk in the house of Sir William Gordon, Murphy and Co., where he made friends, and laid the foundation of his prosperity ; for along with him at the ofiice there was a Mr. Peter Domecq, owner of the Spanish vineyards of Macharnudo, learning the commercial part of his business in London, the headquarters of the sherry trade. He admired his fellow-clerk's capacity so much as to offer him the London agency of his family business. Mr. MacTaggart found the capital in consideration of their taking his relative, Mr. Telford, into the concern. And so they entered into partnership, about 1809, as Ruskin, Telford and Domecq : Domecq contributing the sherry, Mr. Henry Telford the capital, and Ruskin the brains. How he came by his business capacity may be understood — and in some measure, perhaps, how his son came by his flexible and forcible style — from a letter of Mrs. Catherine Ruskin, written about this time; in which, moreover, there are a few details of family circumstances and character, not without interest. John James Ruskin had been protesting that he was never going to marry, but meant to devote him- self to his mother ; she replied : 10 LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN ' . . . But my son an old Batchelor — believe me my beloved Child I feel the full force and value of that affection that could prompt to such a plan — dear as your society is to me it would then become the misery of my existence — could I see my Child so formed for domestick happiness deprived of every blessing on my account. No my D^ John I do not know a more imhappy being than an old Batchelor . . . may God preserve my Child from realizing the dreary picture — as soon as you can keep a Wife you must Marry with all possible speed — that is as soon as you find a very Amiable woman. She must be a good daughter and fond of Domestick life — and pious, without ostentation, for remember no Woman without the fear of God, can either make a good Wife or a good Mother — freethinking Men are shocking to natm-e, but from an Infidel Woman Good Lord deliver us. I have thought more of it than you have done — for I have two or three presents carefully [laid] by for her, and I have also been so foresightly as to purchase two Dutch toys for your Children in case you might marry before we had free inter- course with that country. . . . Who can say what I can say ' here is my Son — a hansome accomplished young man of three and twenty — ^he will not Marry that he may take care of his Mother — here is my D'' Margaret, hansome Amiable and good and she would not leave her Ant (I mean Aunt) for any Man on Earth.' Ah My Dear and valuable children, dear is your affection to my heart, but I will never make so base a use of it. I entrfeat my D' John that you will not give your- self one moment's uneasiness about me — I will at all events have ^"86 a year for life that your Father cannot deprive me of, and tho' I could not live very splendidly in a Town on this, yet with a neat little House and Garden in the country, it would afford all the means of life in fullness to Meggy myself and our servant. You forget, my D' how much a woman can do without in domestick affairs to save Money — a Woman that has any management at all can live with more comfort on ^50 a year than a Man could do on two hundred. There was a year of my life that I maintained myself and two children on twenty povmd, the bread too was 1/2 the HIS ANCESTORS , 11 loave that year : we did not indeed live very sumptuously nor shall I say our strength improved much but I did not contract one farthing of debt and that to me supplyed the want of luxuries. Now my D^ John let me never hear a fear expressed on my account ; there is no fear of me ; make yourself happy and all will be well, and for God sake my beloved Boy take care of your health, take a good drink of porter to dinner and supper and a little Wine now and then, and tell me particularly about y^ new Lodgings,' etc. He returned home to Edinburgh on a visit, and arranged a mari'iage with his cousin Margaret, if she would wait for him until he was safely established ; and then he set to work at the responsibilities of creating a new business. It was a severer task than he had anticipated, for his father's health and affairs, as the above letter hints, had both gone wrong ; he left Edinburgh and settled at Bower's Well, Perth, ended unhappily, and left a load of debt behind him, which the son, sensitive to the family honour, undertook to pay before laying by a penny for himself. It took nine years of assiduous labour and economy. He worked the business entirely by himself. The various departments that most men entrust to others he filled in person. , He managed the correspondence, he travelled for orders, he arranged the importation, he directed the growers out in Spain, and gradually built up a great business, paid off his father's creditors, and sectu-ed his own competence. This was not done without sacrifice of health, which he never recovered, nor without forming habits of over-anxiety and toilsome minuteness which lasted his life long. But his business cares were relieved by cultured tastes. He loved art, painted in water-colours in the old style, and knew a good picture when he saw it. He loved literature, and read aloud finely all the old standard authors, though he was not too old-fashioned to admire ' Pickwick ' and the ' Noctes Ambro- sianas' when they appeared. He loved the scenery and architecture among wWch he had travelled in Scotland and Spain ; but he could find interest in almost any place and any subject ; an alert man, in whom practical judgment was 12 LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN UUSKIN joined to a romantic temperament, strong feelings and opinions to extended sympathies. His letters, of which there are many preserved, bear witness to his character, taste, and intellect, curiously anticipating, on some points, t lose of his son. His portraits by Copley and Northcote give the idea of an expressive face, sensitive, refined, every featiu-e a gentle- man's. So, after those nine years of work and waiting, he went to Perth to claim his cousin's hand. She was for further delay ; but with the minister's help he persuaded her one evening into a prompt marriage in the Scotch fashion, drove off with her next morning to Edinburgh, and on to the home he had prepared in London at 54, Hunter Street, Brunswick Square (February 27, 1818). The heroine of this little drama was no ordinary bride. At Edinburgh she had found herself, though well brought up for Croydon, inferior to the society of the Modem Athens. As the affianced of a man of ability, she felt it her duty to make herself his match in mental culture, as she was already in her own department of practical matters. Under Dr. Brown's direction, and stimulated by his notice, she soon became — not a blue-stocking — but well-read, well-informed above the average. She was one of those persons, too rarely met with, who set themselves a very high standard, and re- solve to drag both themselves and their neighbours up to it. But, as the process is difficult, so it is disappointing. People became rather shy of Mrs. Ruskin, and she of them, so that her life was solitary and her household quiet. It was not from merely narrow Puritanism that she made so few friends ; her morality and her piety, strict as they were within their own lines, permitted her most of the enjoyments and amuse- ments of life ; still less was there any cynicism or misanthropy. But she devoted herself to her husband and son. She was too proud to court those above her in worldly rank, and she was not easily approached except by people fully equal to her in strength of character, of whom there could never be many. The few who made their way to her friendship found her a true and valuable friend. CHAPTER II. THE FATHER OF THE MAN. (1819-1825.) ' While yet a child, and long before his time, Had he perceived the presence and the power Of greatness.' WOEDSWOETH. INTO this family John Ruskin was born on February 8, 1819, at half-past seven in the morning. He vt^as baptized on the twentieth by the Rev. Mr. Boyd. It might be, if we had fuller information about the per- sonages of history, that we could trace in all of them the influences of heredity and early training as distinctly and as completely as in his case. But the birth and breeding of most writers and artists are, in essential points, comparatively undetailed. We have anecdotes about them; we hear of their sudden appearance, their struggles, their adventures; but we cannot trace the development, step by step, of their genius. We see the result ; but the process is like the growth of a Jonah's gourd, something that seems to have sprung up in the darkness, whence or how we can only surmise. And so, not the least interesting fact about this life is the circum- stantiality with which its early part is known. We have not only the autobiography, but the recollections of friends, and, most important of all, the actual relics of the very time, in old letters and note-books and documents, from which the child's mental growth can be traced year by year. The first account of him in writing is in a letter from his mother when he was six weeks old. She chronicles — not 14 LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN without a touch of superstition — the breaking of a looking- glass, and continues: 'John grows finely; he is just now on my knees sleeping and looking so sweetly ; I hope I shall not get proud of him.' He was a fine healthy baby, and at four months was ' beginning to give more decided proofs that he knows what he wants, and will have it if crying and passion will get it.' At a year his mother resolves that ' this will be cured by a good whipping when he can understand what it is,' and we know that she carried out her Spartan resolve. This, and the story in ' Arachne,' how she let him touch the tea-kettle ; and the reminiscences in ' Prasterita ' of play- things locked up, and a lone little boy staring at the water-cart and the pattern on the carpet — all these give a gloomy impression of his mother, against which we must set the proofs of affection and kindliness shown in her correspondence. In these we can see her anxiously nursing him through childish ailments, taking him out for his daily walk to Duppas Hill with a captain's biscuit in her muff, for fear he should be hungry by the way ; we hear her teaching him his first lessons, with astonishment at his wonderful memory, and glorying with Nurse Anne over his behaviour in church ; and all these things she retails in gossiping letters to her husband, while Mr. Richard Gray gives two-year-old John 'his first lesson on the flute, both sitting on the drawing-room floor, very deeply engaged.' ' I am sure,' she says, ' there is no other love, no other feeling, like a mother's towards her first boy when she loves his father'; and her pride in his looks, and precocity, and docility — ' I never met with a child of his age so sensible to praise or blame ' — found a justification in his passionate devotion to the man who was so dear to them both. Though he was born in the thick of London, he was not City-bred. His love for landscape was not the result of a late discovery of it, and of a Cockney's contrast of wild nature with streets and squares. His first three summers were spent in lodgings in Hampstead or Dulwich, then ' the THE FATHER OF THE MAN 15 country.' So early as his fourth summer he was taken to Scotland by sea to stay with his aunt Jessie, Mrs. Richardson of Perth. There he found cousins to play with, especially one little Jessie, of nearly his own age ; he found a river with deep swirling pools, that impressed him more than the sea, and he found the mountains. Coming home in the autumn, he sat for his full-length portrait to James Northcote, R.A., and being asked what he would choose for background, he replied, ' Blue hills.' Northcote had painted Mr. and Mrs. Ruskin, and, as they were fond of artistic company, remained their friend. A certain friendship, too, was struck up between the old Academician, then in his seventy-seventh year, the acknow- ledged cynic and satirist, and the little wise boy who asked shrewd questions, and could sit still to be painted; who, moreover, had a face worth painting, not unlike the model from whom Northcote's master, the great Sir Joshua, had painted his famous cherubs. The painter asked him to come again, and sit as the hero of a fancy picture, bought at the Academy by the flattered parents, relegated since to the out- house at Brantwood. There is a grove, a flock of toy sheep, drapery in the grand style, a mahogany Satyr taking a thorn out of the little pink foot of a conventional nudity — poor survivals of the Titianesque. But the head is an obvious portrait, and a happy one; far more like the real boy, so tradition says, than the generalized chubbiness of the com- missioned pictui-e. In the next year (1823) they quitted the town for a suburban home. The spot they chose was in rural Dulwich, on Heme Hill, a long ofishoot of the Surrey downs ; low, and yet commanding green fields and scattered houses in the foreground, with rich undulating country to the south, and looking across London toward Windsor and Harrow. It is all built up now ; but their house (the present No. 28) must have been as secluded as any in a country village. The suburbs were, of course, once country villages, and as pleasant in their old-fashioned comfort. There were ample gardens front and 16 LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN rear, well stocked with fruit and flowers — quite an Eden for a little boy, and all the more that the fruit of it was for- bidden. It was here that all his years of youth were spent. Here, under his parents' roof, he wrote his earlier works, as far as vol. i. of ' Modem Painters.' To the adjoining house j as his own separate home, he returned for a period of his middle life ; and in the old home, handed over to his adopted daughter, he still used to find his own rooms ready when he cared to visit London. So he was brought up almost as a country boy, though near enough to town to get the benefit of it, and far enough from the more exciting scenes of landscape nature to find them ever fresh, when summer after summer he revisited the river scenery of the West or the mountains of the North. For by a neat arrangement, and one fortunate for his educa- tion, the summer tours were continued yearly. Mr. John James Ruskin still travelled for the business, then greatly extending. ' Strange,' he writes on one occasion, ' that Watson [his right-hand man] went this journey without getting one order, and everyone gives me an order directly.' In return for these services to the firm, Mr. Telford, the capitalist partner, took the vacant chair at the oflice, and even lent his carriage for the journeys. There was room for two, so Mrs. Ruskin accompanied her husband, whose in- different health gave her and his friends constant anxiety during long separations. And the boy could easily be packed in, sitting on his little portmanteau, and playing horses with his father's knees; the nurse riding on the dickey behind. They started usually after the great family anniversary, the father's birthday, on May 10, and journeyed by easy stages through the South of England, working up the west to the north, and then home by the east-central route, zigzagging from one provincial town to another, calling at the great country seats, to leave no customer or possible customer unvisited ; and in the intervals of business seeing all the sights of the places they passed through — colleges and churches, galleries and parks, ruins, castles, caves, lakes, and THE FATHER OF THE MAN 17 mountains — and seeing them all, not listlessly, but with keen interest, noting 'everything, inquiring for local information, looking up books of reference, setting down the results, as if they had been meaning to write a guide-book and gazetteer of Great Britain. They, I say, did all this, for as soon as the boy could write, he was only imitating his father in keeping his little journal of the tours, so that all he learned stayed by him, and the habit of descriptive writing was formed. We could follow out the tourists in detail if it were worth while, but it must suffice here to notice the points of interest which influenced and impressed the boy's mind, and left a mark upon his work. In 1823 they seem to have travelled only through the south and south-west; in 1824 they pushed north to the lakes, stayed awhile at Keswick, and while the father went about his business, the child was rambling with his nurse on Friar's Crag, among the steep rock and gnarled roots, which suggested, even at that age, the feelings expressed in one of the notable passages in ' Modern Painters.' Thence they went on to Scotland, and revisited their relatives at Perth. In 1825 they took a more extended tour, and spent a few weeks in Paris, partly for the festivities at the coronation of Charles X., partly for business conference with Mr. Domecq, who had just been appointed wine-merchant to the King of Spain. Thence they went to Brussels and the field of Waterloo, of greater interest than the sights of Paris to six- year-old John, who often during his boyhood celebrated the battle, and the heroes of the battle, in verse. These excitements of travel alternated with the quietest home-keeping, employed in uneventful study, not stimulated by competition, nor sweetened by any of those educational sugar-plums with which the modern child's path is so thickly strewn. And yet his lessons were followed with steadiness and interest, for he had already begun his life's work, in the sense that his later writing and teaching are demonstrably continuous with his earliest interests and efforts. He has 2 18 LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN been laughed at for seeing in a copy of verses written at seven the germ of his political economy, and what not. But it is true that the expressions there used are expressions of the very same feeling and the same habits of mind that gradually developed into the thoughts he laid before the world ; they are the initial segments of lines which, drawn boldly out, are recognised as his own lines ; and even from these early indica- tions we now, looking back, can see the man. Before he was quite three he used to climb into a chair — the chair that all his friends have seen him sitting in of evenings — and preach. There is nothing so uncommon in that. Of Robert Browning, his neighbour and seven-years- older contemporary, the same tale is told. But while the incident that marks the baby Browning is the aside, a propos of a whimpering sister, ' Pew-opener, remove that child,' the baby Ruskin is seen in his sermon : ' People, be dood. If you are dood, Dod will love you ; if you are not dood, Dod will not love you. People, be dood.' At the age of four he had begun to read and write, refusing to be taught in the orthodox way — this is so accurately characteristic — ^by syllabic spelling and copy-book pothooks. He preferred to find a method out for himself, and he found out how to read whole words at a time by the look of them, and to write in vertical characters like book-print, just as the latest improved theories of education suggest. His first letter may be quoted as illustrating his own account of his child- hood, and as proving how entirely Scotch was the atmosphere in which he was brought up. The postmark gives the date March 15, 1823. Mrs. Ruskin premises that John was scribbling on a paper from which he proceeded to read what she writes down (I omit certain details about the whip) : ' My DEAR Papa, ' I love you. I have got new things . Waterloo Bridge — Aunt Bridget brought me it. John and Aunt helped to put it up, but the pillars they did not put right, upside down. Instead of a book bring me a whip, THE FATHER OF THE MAN 19 coloured red and black. . . . To-morrow is Sabbath. Tuesday I go to Croydon. I am going to take my boats and my ship to Croydon. I'll sail them on the pond near the bum which the bridge is over. I will be very glad to see my cousins. I was very happy when I saw Aunt come from Croydon. I love Mrs. Gray and I love Mr. Gray. I would like you to come home, and my kiss and my love. ' [First autograph in straggling capitals] JOHN RUSKIN.' When once he could read, thenceforward his mother gave him regular morning lessons, in Bible-reading and in reciting the Scotch paraphrases of the Psalms and other verse, which for his good memory was an easy task. He made rhymes before he could write them, of course. At five he was a bookworm, and the books he read fixed him in certain grooves of thought, or, rather, say they were chosen as favourites from an especial interest in their subjects — an interest which arose from his character of mind, and displayed it. But with all this precocity, he was no milksop or weakling ; he was a bright, active lad, full of fun and pranks, not without companions, though solitary when at home, and kept precisely, in the hope of guarding him from every danger. He was so little afraid of animals — a great test of a child's nerves — that about this time he must needs meddle with their fierce Newfoundland dog Lion, which bit him in the mouth, and spoiled his looks. Another time he showed some address in extricating himself from the water- butt — a common child-trap. He did not fear ghosts or thunder ; instead of that, his early-developed landscape feeling showed itself in dread of foxglove dells and dark pools of water, as in the popular Italian di-eam-presage, in coiling roots of trees — things that to the average fancy have no significance whatever. At seven he began to imitate the books he was reading, to write books himself He had found out how to print, as children do ; and it was his ambition to make real books, with title-pages and illustrations, not only books, indeed, but 2—2 20 LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN sets of volumes, a complete library of his whole works. About these there are two prophetic circumstances, the one pointing to his habit of bringing out a work, not all at once, but in successive parts, at intervals, perhaps, of ' olympiads,' as he once said ; and the other to his unfortunate tendency to find himself unable to complete his enterprises, to let one subject be crowded out by others, and to drop it in the forlorn hope of resuming it at the more convenient season which is so long in coming. So that there is hardly a title of his which stands before a properly-finished work. Of the ' Seven Lamps ' he writes that he had difficulty in preventing them from becoming eight ; ' Modern Painters ' is rather a series of treatises than a book ; ' Fors ' is a bundle of letters, and so is ' Time and Tide ' ; other works are only collections of lectures or detached essays ; of hardly any can it be said that it is carried out according to a studied programme. In a letter of March 4, 1829, his mother says to his father : ' If you think of writing John, would you impress on him the propriety of not beginning too eagerly and becoming careless towards the end of his works, as he calls them ? I think in a letter from you it would have great weight. He is never idle, and he is even uncommonly persevering for a child of his age ; but he often spoils a good beginning by not taking the trouble to think, and concluding in a hurry.' The first of these sets was imitated in style from Miss Edgeworth; he called it, 'HaiTyand Lucy Concluded; or, Early Lessons.' Didactic he was from the beginning. It was to be in four volumes, uniform in red leather, with proper title, frontispiece, and ' copper-platesj' ' printed and composed by a little boy, and also drawn.' It was begun in 1826, and continued at intervals until 1829. It was all done laboriously in imitation of print, and, to complete the illusion, contained a page of errata — a capital touch of infantile realism. This great work was, of course, never completed, though he laboured through three volumes ; but when he tired of it, he would turn his book upside down, and begin at the other end with other matters ; so that the THE FATHER OF THE MAN 21 red books contain all sorts of notes on his minerals and travels, reports of sermons, and miscellaneous information, besides their professed contents ; in this respect also being very like his later works. His ' Harry and Lucy ' is mainly a dramatized account of tours, himself being Harry, with an imaginary sister, studied from Jessie of Perth or Bridget of Croydon, for he had nobody then to act permanently in that capacity, as his cousin Mary did afterwards. The moralizing mamma and literary papa represent his parents to the life. Beside the tours, we read of white rabbits and silkworms, air-pumps and fireworks ; the scrapes of a savant in pinafores in quest of general information, from hydraulics, pneumatics, acoustics, electricity, astronomy, mineralogy, to boat-building, engineer- ing, and riddles. Much, of course, is ideal, as where HaiTy, anticipating — shall we say ? — a later enterprise at Coniston, constructs a great mud globe, ' and when his mamma and papa saw this, whenever they were at a loss for the situation of any counti-y, they went to Harry's globe for satisfaction,' or when he experiments ivith a well-appointed laboratory for the astonishment of Lucy. But the description of a week at Hastings in the spring of 1826 is probably a bit of history, and told with lively artlessness. There you have our author ready made, with his ever-fresh interest in everything, and all-attempting eagerness, out of which the first thing that crystallizes into any definite shape is the verse- writing. CHAPTER m. PEEFERVIDUM INGENIUM. (1826-1830.) 'AprJs, en tel train d'estude le mist qu'il ne perdoit heures quel- conquea du jour ; aiusi tout son temps consommoit en lettres.' — GarganttM. THE first dated ' poem ' was written a month before little Joltn Ruskin reached the age of seven. It is a tale of a mouse, in seven octosyllabic couplets, ' The Needless Alarm,' remarkable only for an unexpected correctness in rhyme, rhythm, and reason. His early verse, like his early prose, owes much to the summer toui's. The journey to Scotland of 1826 suggested two poems, of which one is really interesting for its sustained sequence of thought — the last thing you ask from a child — and the final stanza has a glimpse of wild imagery of the in- finite, like Blake's best touches : ' The pole-star guides thee on thy way, When in dark nights thou art lost ; Therefore look up at the starry day — Look at the stars about thee tost.' But these are only the more complete bits among a quantity of fragments. These summer tours were prolific in notes ; everjrthing was observed and turned into verse. The other inspiring source during this period of versifica- tion was his father — the household deity of both wife and child, whose chief delight was in his daily return from the city, and in his reading to them in the drawing-room at PERFERVIDUM INGENIUM 23 Heme Hill. John was packed into a recess, where he was out of the way and the draught; he was barricaded by a little table that held his own materials for amusement, and if he liked to listen to the reading, he had the chance of hearing good literature, the chance sometimes of hearing passages from Byron and Christopher North and "'ervantes, rather beyond his comprehension, for his parents were not of the shockable sort : with all their religion and strict Scotch morality, they could laugh at a broad jest, as old-fashioned people could. So he associated his father and his father's readings with the poetry of reflection, as he associated the regular summer round with the poetry of description ; the two manners were like two rivulets of verse flowing through his life, occasion- ally intermingling, but in their main channels and directions kept distinct. As every summer brought its crop of de- scription, so against the New Year (for, being Scotch, they did not then keep our Christmas) and against his father's birthday in May he used always to prepare some little drama or story or ' address ' of a reflective nature, beginning with the verses on ' Time,' written for New Year's Day, 1827. That year they were again at Perth, and on their way home some early morning frost suggested the not ungraceful verses on the icicles at Glenfarg. By a childish misconception, the little boy seems to have confused the real valley that in- terested him so with Scott's ideal Glendearg, and, partly for this reason, to have found a greater pleasure in 'The Monastery,' which he thereupon undertook to paraphrase in verse. There remain some hundreds of doggerel rhymes; but his affection for that particular novel survived the fatal facility of his octosyllabics, and reappears time after time in his later writings. Next year, 1828, their tour was stopped at Plymouth by the painful news of the death of his aunt Jessie, to whom they were on their way. It was hardly a year since the bright little cousin, Jessie of Perth, had died of water on the brain. She had been John's especial pet and playfellow, 24 LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN clever, like him, and precocious ; and her death must have come to his parents as a warning, if they needed it, to keep their own child's brain from over-pressure. It is evident that they did their best to ' keep him back ' ; they did not send him to school for fear of the excitement of competitive study. His mother put him through the Latin grammar herself, using the old Adam's manual which his father had used at Edinburgh High School. She had the secret of engaging his interest in her lessons without using any of those adventitious means which teachers nowadays recommend. Even this old grammar became a sort of sacred book to him ; and when at last he went to school, and his English master threw the book back to him, saying, 'That's a Scotch thing,' the boy was shocked and affronted, as which of us would be at a criticism on awr first instrument oi torture? He rennembered the incident all his life, and pilloried the want of tact with acerbity in his reminiscences. They could keep him from school, but they did not keep him from study. The year 1828 saw the beginning of another great work, 'Eudosia, a Poem on the Universe'; it was 'printed' with even greater neatness and labour; but this too, after being toiled at during the winter months, was dropped in the middle of its second ' book.' It was not idle- ness that made him break off such plans, but just the reverse — a too great activity of brain. His parents seem to have thought that there was no harm in this apparently quiet reading and wi-iting. They were extremely energetic them- selves, and hated idleness. They seemed to have held a theory that their little boy was safe so long as he was not obviously excited ; and to have thought that the proper way of giving children pocket-money was to let them earn it. So they used to pay him for his literary labours ; ' Homer ' was one shilling a page ; ' Composition,' one penny for twenty lines; 'Mineralogy,' one penny an article. And the result of it all is described in a chapter of ' Harry and Lucy,' written at the end of 1828. ' After Harry had learned his lessons he went to a poem PERFERVIDUM INGENIUM 25 that he was composing for his father on New Year's Day, as he always presented his father with a poem at that period. The suhject of it was a battle between the Pretender, or " Chevalier,'" as Harry would have him called, and the forces, or part of the forces, of George II. All the poems that he had hitherto presented to his father were printed in what Harry called dngh letters, thus, "n" or "m," but Harry printed this double print, in this manner, " 2IL " ; and it was most beautifully done, you may be sure. It was irregular measure. 'Harry, when he had done what he thought a moderate allowance of his poem, went to his map. But scarcely had the pen touched the paper when in came dinner. However, that hindrance was soon over, and Harry returned to his map. Harry to-day nearly finished it ; and, after having had some ." Don Quixote," he went to bed. ' But as, whenever the world was left " to darkness and to me," a bright thought came into Harry's mind, he thought that if he could contrive to make a Punch's show, or rather Fantoccini, out of paper, he would exhibit it when he pre- sented his poem, and please his father a little more. So he fell to work to invent or plan one. First, he settled the size, which was to be about five inches long, two broad, and two sideways. The top, where the figures were to act, was to be two inches square. ' This settled, Harry began to think how he should make it. This was rather difficult. Harry first thought what shape the piece of paper must be, before it was put together so as to form the show. [Follows a description with diagrams, elaborate and correct, of a marionette-theatre, reduced to lowest terms, with pasteboard figures worked from below with sticks.] ' Harry, being now quite satisfied with his plan, fell asleep . . . and in the morning . . . alas ! he was, to use his own words, in a hugeous hurry ! Four days, and he would be entering upon another year. How was he to get a poem finished consisting of eighty-nine lines — finished in that style 26 LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN of printing — with the show ? It was altogether impossible. So Harry put oiF the show till his father's birthday.' This was the end of that long-continued episode, for he had now found a real Lucy, and the ideal vanished. The death of his aunt Jessie left a large family of boys and one girl to the care of their widowed father, and the Ruskins felt it their duty to help. They fetched Mary Richardson away, and brought her up as a sister to their solitary son. She was not so beloved as Jessie had been, but a good girl and a nice girl, four years older than John, and able to be a companion to him in his lessons and travels. There was no sentimentality about his attachment to her, but a steady fraternal relation- ship, he, of course, being the little lord and master ; but she was not without spirit, which enabled her to hold her own, and perseverance, which sometimes helped her to eclipse, for the moment, his brilliancy. They learnt together, wiote their journals together, and shared alike with the scrupulous fairness which Mrs. Ruskin's sensible nature felt called on to show. And so she remained his sister, and not quite his sister, until she married, and after a very short married life died. Another accession to the family took place in the same year (1828); the Croydon aunt, too, had died, and left a dear dog. Dash, a brown and white spaniel, which at first refused to leave her coffin, but was coaxed away, and found a happy home at Heme Hill, and frequent celebration in his young master's verses. So the family was now complete — papa and mamma, Mary and John and Dash. One other figure must not be forgotten, Nurse Anne, who had come from the Edinburgh home, and remained always with them, John's nurse and then Mrs. Ruskin's attendant, as devoted and as censorious as any old-style Scotch servant in a story- book. The year 1829 marked an advance in poetical composition. For his father's birthday he did something better than the • show ' — a book more elaborate than any, sixteen pages in a red cover, with a title-page quite like print : ' Battle of PERFERVIDUM INGENIUM 27 Waterloo | a play | in two acts | with other small | Poems | dedicated to his father | by John Ruskin | 1829 | Hemhill (sic) Dulwich.' The play, modelled on a Shakespeare history, shows Wellington with his generals, and Bonaparte with his guards, mouthing 'prave 'orts' like Prince Harry and Pistol. There is a Shakespearian chorus, bidding you imagine the fight ; and in the next act the arrival of Blucher is drama- tized, and Louis XVIII., with the Duchess of Angouleme, praying for the issue. Then we have Bonaparte soliloquizing on the deck of the Bellerophon, with the chorus at the end describing the triumphal procession in London. To this are appended, among other pieces, fair copies of the ' May,' and ' Skiddaw,' and ' Derwentwater,' printed in his collected poems from a previous copy. There is something very Ruskinian in the thought, when comparing Skiddaw with the Pyramids : ' All that art can do Is nothing beside thee. The touch of man Kaised pigmy mountains, but gigantic tombs. The touch of Nature raised the mountain's brow, But made no tombs at all.' Right or wrong, that always remained his leading motive, the noimal beneficence of Nature ; and no wonder, for Nature, as he knew her, was very kind to him in those glorious early years of home love and summer excursions into wonder- land. An illness of his postponed their tour for 1829, until it was too late for more than a little journey in Kent. Mr. Ruskin has referred his earliest sketching to this occasion, but it seems likely that the drawings attributed to this year were done in 1831. He was, however, busy writing poetry. At Tunbridge, for example, he wrote that fragment 'On Happiness ' which catches so cleverly the tones of Young — a writer whose orthodox moralizing suited with the creed in which John Ruskin was brought up, alternating, be it re- membered, with ' Don Quixote.' Coming home, he began a new edition of his verses, on a 28 LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN more prebentious scale than the old red books, in a fine bound volume, exquisitely ' printed,' with the poems dated. This new energy seems to have been roused by the gift from his Croydon cousin Charles, a clerk in the publishing house of Smith, Elder, and Co., of their annual ' Friendship's Offering.' Mi-s. Ruskin, in a letter of October 31, 1829, finds 'the poetry very so-so ' ; but John evidently made the book his model. An enormous quantity of verse follows, of which only samples have seen the light. The ' poems ' are curious from their great variety of style and subject, grave and gay ; but, as might hardly be expected, the violent-heroic predominates. There was a strong touch of Celtic bravura in little John's character ; he liked to be dressed as a soldier, and lived in imagination much among warriors. And down to his later years, though nobody has so energetically denounced the waste and the cruelty and the folly of war, yet nobody has dwelt so lovingly on the virtues that war brings out in noble natures, and on the dignities of a knight's faith. ' 'Tis vice,' he says in one of the poems of this time, ' 'tis vice, not war, that is the curse of man.' He was now growing out of his mother's tutorship, and in this last autumn he was put under the care of Dr. Andrews for his Latin. He relates the introduction in ' Prfeterita,' and more circumstantially, in a letter of the time, to Mrs. Monro, the mother of his charming Mrs. Richard Gray, the indulgent neighbour who used to pamper the little gourmand with delicacies unknown in severe Mrs. Ruskin's dining- room. He says in the letter — ^this is at ten years old : ' Well papa, seeing how fond I was of the doctor, and knowino- him to be an excellent Latin scholar, got him for me as a tutor and every lesson I get I like him better and better, for he makes me laugh " almost, if not quite " — to use one of his own expressions — the whole time. He is so funny, comparing Neptune's lifting up the wrecked ships of JEneas with his trident to my lifting up a potato with a fork, or taking a piece of bread out of a bowl of milk with a spoon ! And as PERFERVIDUM INGENIUM 29 he is always saying [things] of that kind, or relating some droll anecdote, or explaining the part of Virgil (the book which I am in) very nicely, I am always delighted when Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays are come.' Dr. Andrews was no doubt a genial teacher, and had been a scholar of some distinction in his University of Glasgow ; but perhaps he was not the most judicious master for a precocious and versatile pupil. Mrs. Ruskin thought him ' flighty,' as well she might, when, after six months' Greek, he proposed (in March, 1831) to begin Hebrew with John. It was a great misfortune for the young genius that he was not more sternly drilled at the outset, and he suffered for it through many a long year of struggles with deficient scholar- ship. The Doctor had a large family and pretty daughters. One, who wrote verses in John's note-book, and sang ' Tam- bourgi,' Mrs. Orme, lived until 1892 in Bedford Park ; the other lives in Mr. Coventry Patmore's ' Angel in the House.' When Mr. Ruskin, thirty years later, wrote of that doubt- fully-received poem, that it was the 'sweetest analysis we possess of quiet, modern, domestic feeling,' few of his readers could have known all the grounds of his appreciation, or suspected the weight of meaning in the words. CHAPTEE IV. MOUNTAIN-WORSHIP. (1830-1835.) ' The North and Nature taught me to adore Your scenes sublime, from those beloved before.' Bykon. CRITICS who are least disposed to give Mr. Ruskin credit for his artistic doctrines or economical theories unite in allowing that he has taught us to look at Nature, and especially at the sublime in Nature — at storms and sunrises, and the forests and snows of the Alps. Not that such things were unknown to others, but that he has most impressively united the merely poetical sentiment of their grandeur with something of a scientific curiosity as to their details and conditions ; he has brought us to linger among the moun- tains, and to love them. And as a man rarely convinces unless he is convinced, so this mission of mountain-worship has been the outcome of a passion beside which the other interests and occupations of his youth were only toys. He could take up his mineralogy and his moralizing and lay them down, but the love of mountain scenery was something beyond his control. We have seen him leave his heart in the Highlands at three years old; we have now to follow his passionate pilgrimages to Skiddaw and Snowdon, to the Jung- frau and Mont Blanc, They had planned a great tour through the Lakes and the North two years before, but were stopped at Plymouth by the news of Mrs. Richardson's death. At last the plan was MOUNTAIN-WORSHIP 31 carried out. A prose diary was written alternately by John and Mary, one carrying it on when the other tired, with rather curious effect of unequally-yoked collaboration. We read how they 'set off from London at seven o'clock on Tuesday morning, the 18th of May,' and thenceforward we are spared no detail : the furniture of the inns ; the bills of fare; when they got out of the carriage and walked; how they lost their luggage ; what they thought of colleges and chapels, music and May races at Oxford, of Shakespeare's tomb, and the pin-factory at Birmingham ; we have a com- plete guide-book to Blenheim and Warwick Castle, to Haddon and Chatsworth, and the full itinerary of Derby- shire. ' Matlock Bath,' we read, ' is a most delightful place ' ; but after an enthusiastic description of High Tor, John reacts into bathos with a minute description of wetting their shoes in a puddle. The cavern with a Bengal light was fairyland to him, and among the minerals he was quite at home. Everything was interesting on these journeys, everything was noteworthy, and the excitement was certainly kept up at a high pitch. Sight-seeing by day was not enough — John must get out his book after supper in the evening at the hotel and write poems. When he had written up his journal, he went on with some subject totally unconnected with his travels or the place he was in. For instance, after seeing Haddon, that very night he finished a gruesome vision of the Day of Judgment. This power of detaching himself from surroundings, and fixing his mind on any business on hand, has always been one of his most curious and most enviable gifts. How few writers could correct proofs at Sestri and write political economy at Chamouni! After spending the morning in drawing early Gothic, and the afternoon driving to some historic site, with a sketch of sunset, perhaps, he could settle down in his hotel bedroom and write a preface to an old work, and next morning be up before the sun busy at a chapter of ' Fors ' or ' Praeterita.' To resume the tour. ' Majichester is a most disagreeable 32 LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN town,' but at Liverpool they were delighted with the river, assisted at a trifling collision, and got caught in the old dock- gates, on which adventure John bursts into ballad rhyme. Then they hurried north to Windermere. Once at Lowwood, the excitement thickens, with storms and rainbows, mountains and waterfalls, boats on the lake and coaching on the steep roads. This journey through Lakeland is described in the galloping anapaests of the ' Iteriad,' which was simply the prose journal versified on his return, one of the few enter- prises of the sort which was really completed. To readers who know the country it is interesting, as giving a detailed account sixty years ago, in the days of the old regime, when this ' nook of English ground ' wa^ ' secure from rash assault.' One learns that, even then, there were jarring sights at Bowness Bay and along Derwentwater shore, elements unkind and bills exorbitant. Coniston especially was dreary with rain, and its inn — the old Waterhead, now destroyed — extravagantly dear ; ' but,'' says John, with his eye for mineral specimens, ' it contains several rich copper-mines.' An interesting touch is the hero-worship with which they went reverently to peep at Southey and Wordsworth in church ; too humble to dream of an introduction, and too polite to besiege the poets in their homes, but independent enough to form their own opinions on the personality of the heroes. They did not like the look of Wordsworth at all ; Southey they adored. The dominant note of the tour is, however, an ecstatic delight in the mountain scenery ; on Skiddaw and Helvellyn all the gamut of admiration is lavished. Reluctantly leaving the wilder country, they returned to Derbyshire, and meeting a friend to whom it was new, they revisited everything with revived pleasure. They did not seem to know what it was to be bored. The whole tour was a triumphal progress, or a march of conquest. On returning home, John began Greek under Dr. Andrews, and was soon versifying Anacreon in his notebooks. He began to read Byron for himself, with what result we shall MOUNTAIN-WORSHIP S3 see before long ; but the most important new departure was the attempt to copy Cruikshank's etchings to Grimm's fairy- tales, his real beginning at art. From this practice he learnt the value of the line — the pure, clean line that expresses form. It is a good instance of the authority of these early years over Mr. Ruskin's whole life and teaching that in his ' Elements of Drawing ' he advises young artists to begin with Cruikshank, as he began, and that he wrote appreciatively both of the stories and the etchings so many decades afterwards in the preface to a reprint by J. C. Hotten. His cousin-sister Mary had been sent to a day-school when Mrs. Ruskin's lessons were superseded by Dr. Andrews, and she had learnt enough drawing to attempt a view of the hotel at Matlock, a thing which John could not do. So, now that he too showed some power of neat draughtsmanship, it was felt that he ought to have her advantages. They got Mr. Runciman the drawing -master, chosen, it may be, as a relative of the well-known Edinburgh artist of the same name, to give him lessons, in the early part of 1831. His teaching was of the kind which preceded the Hardingesque : it aimed at a bold use of the soft pencil, with a certain round- ness of composition and richness of texture, a conventional • right way ' of drawing anything. This was hardly what John wanted ; but, not to be beaten, he facsimiled the master's Preehand in a sort of engraver's stipple, which his habitual leatness helped him to do in perfection. Mr. Runciman ioon put a stop to that, and took pains with a pupil who took luch pains with himself — taught him, at any rate, the princi- Dles of perspective, and remained his only drawing-master for everal years. A sample of John Ruskin's early lessons in drawing, de- cribed by him in letters to his father, may be not without nterest. On Februai-y 20, 18S2, he writes : ' . . . You saw the two models that were last sent, before 'ou went away. Well, I took my paper, and I fixed my >oints, and I drew my perspective, and then, as Mr. Runciman old me, I began to invent a scene. You remember the 3 34 LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN cottage that we saw as we went to Rhaidyr Dhu (sic), near Maentwrog, where the old woman lived whose grandson went with us to the fall, so very silently ? I thought my model re- sembled that ; so I drew a tree — such a tree, such an enormous fellow — and I sketched the waterfall, with its dark rocks, and its luxuriant wood, and its high mountains ; and then I examined one of Mary's pictures to see how the rocks were done, [and another to see how the woods were done, and another to see how the mountains were done, and another to see how the cottages were done, and I patched them all togethei-, and I made such a lovely scene — oh, I should get such a scold from Mr. Runciman (that is, if he ever scolded) !' After the next lesson he wrote, February 27, 1832 : ' You know the beautiful model drawing that I gave you an account of in my last ? I showed it to Mr. Runciman. He con- templated it for a moment in silence, and then, turning, asked me if I had copied. I told him how I had patched it up ; but he said that that was not copying, and although he was not satisfied with the picture, he said there was something in it that would make him totally change the method he had hitherto pursued with me. He then asked Mary for some gray paper, which was produced ; then inquired if I had a colour-box ; I produced the one you gave me, and he then told me he should begin with a few of the simplest coloui's, in order to teach me better the effects of light and shade. He should then proceed to teach me water-colour painting, but the latter only as a basis for oil ; this last, however, to use his own words, all in due time. . . . Oh, if I could paint well before we went to Dover ! I should have such sea- pieces. . . .' In March 1834, Mr. Runciman was encouraging him in his oil-painting ; but a year later he wrote to his father : ' I cannot bear to paint in oil. C. Fielding's tints alone for me I The other coats me double toil, And wants some fifty coats to be Splashed on each spot successively. MOUNTAIN-WORSHIP 35 Fangh, ■wie es stinckt ! I can't bring out, With all, a picture fit to see. My bladders burst ; my oils are out — And then, what's all the work about V After a few lessons he could rival Mary when they went for their summer excursion. He set to work at once at Seven- oaks to draw cottages ; at Dover and Battle he attempted castles. It may be that these first sketches are of the pre- Runciman period ; but the Ruskins made the round of Kent in 1831, and though the drawings are by no means in the master's style, they show some practice in using the pencil. The journey was extended by the old route, conditioned by business as before, round the South Coast to the West of England, and then into Wales. There his powers of drawing failed him ; moonlight on Snowdon was too vague a subject for the blacklead point, but a hint of it could be conveyed in rhyme : ' Folding like an airy vest, The very clouds had sunk to rest ; Light gilds the rugged mountain's breast, Calmly as they lay below ; Every hill seemed topped with snow, As the flowing tide of light Broke the slumbers of the night.' Harlech Castle was too sublime for a sketch, but it was painted with the pen : ' So mighty, so majestic, and so lone j And all thy music, now, the ocean's murmuring.' And the enthusiasm of mountain glory, a sort of Bacchic ecstasy of uncontrollable passion, strives for ai'ticulate deliverance in the climbing song, 'I love ye, ye eternal hills.' It was hard to come back to the daily round, the common task, especially when, in this autumn of 1831, to Dr. Andrews' Latin and Greek, the French grammar and Euclid were added, under Mr. Rowbotham. And the new tutor had no funny stories to tell ; he was not so engaging a man as 3—2 86 LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN the ' dear Doctor,' and his memory was not sweet to his way- ward pupil. But the parents had chosen the best man for the work — one who was favourably known by his manuals, and capable of interesting even a budding poet in the mathematics ; for our author tells that at Oxford, and ever after, he knew his Euclid without the figures, and that he spent all his spare time in trying to trisect an angle. An old letter from Rowbotham informs Mr. J. J. Ruskin that an eminent mathematician had seen John's attempt, and had said that it was the cleverest he knew. In French, too, he progressed enough to be able to find his way alone in Paris two years later. And however the saucy boy may have satirized his tutor in the droll verses on ' Bedtime,' Mr. Row- botham always remembered him with aifection, and spoke of him with respect. John Ruskin, boy and man, had a terrible power of winning hearts. In spite of these tedious tutorships, he managed to scribble energetically all this winter, writing with amazing rapidity, as his mother notes : attempts at Waverley novels, which never got beyond the first chapter, and imitations of ' Childe Harold ' and ' Don Juan ' ; scraps in the style of everybody in turn, necessarily imitative because immature. He was curiously versatile; one time he would be pedantic or stiff with the buckram and plume of romance ; again, gossipy and naif and humorous; then sarcastic and satirical, sparing no one ; then carried away with a frenzy of excitement, which struggles to express itself, convulsively, and dies away in nonsense. No wonder his mother sent him to bed at nine punctually, and kept him from school, in vain efforts to quiet his brain. The lack of companions was made up to him in the friendship of Richard Fall, son of a neighbour on ' the Hill,' a boy without affectation or morbidity of disposition whose complementary character suited him well. An affection- ate comradeship sprang up between the two lads, and lasted until in middle life they drifted apai-t, in no ill-will, but each going on his own course to his own destiny. Some real advance was made this winter (1831-32) with MOUNTAIN-WORSHIP 37 his Shelleyan 'Sonnet to a Cloud' and his imitations of Byron's ' Hebrew Melodies,' from which he learnt how to concentrate expression, and to use rich vowel-sounds and liquid consonants with rolling effect. A deeper and more serious turn of thought, that gradually usurped the place of the first boyish eifervescence, has been traced by him to the influence of Byron, in whom, while others see nothing more than wit and passion, Mr. Ruskin could feel an earnest mind and a sound judgment. But the most sincere poem — if sincerity be marked by unstudied phrase and neglected rhyme — the most genuine ' lyrical cry ' of this period, is that song in which our boy-poet poured forth his longing for the ' blue hills ' he had loved as a baby, and for those Coniston crags over which, when he became old and sorely stricken, he was still to see the morning break. When he wrote these verses he was nearly fourteen, or just past his birthday. It had been eighteen months since he had been in Wales, and all the weary while he had seen no mountains ; but in his regrets he goes back a year farther still, to fix upon the Lakeland hills, less majestic than Snowdon, but more endeared, and he describes his sensations on approaching the beloved objects in the very terms that Dante uses for his first sight of Beatrice : 'I weary for the fountain foaming, For shady holm and hill ; My mind is on the mountain roaming. My spirit's voice is still. ' The crags are lone on Coniston And Glaramara's dell ;'*' And dreary on the mighty one, The cloud-enwreathed Sca-felL ' Oh, what although the crags be stem, Their mighty peaks that sever ; Fresh flies the breeze on mountain-fern, And free on mountain heather. , . . * So in the first MS. ; changed afterwards to ' Loweswater'a delL' 38 LITE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN ' There is a thrill of strange delight That passes qidvering o'er me, When blue hills rise upon the sight, Like summer clouds before me.' Judge, then, of the delight with which he turned over the pages of a new book, given him this birthday by the kind Mr. Telford, in whose carriage he had first seen those blue hills — a book in which all his mountain-ideals, and more, were caught and kept enshrined — visions still, and of mightier peaks and ampler valleys, romantically * tost ' and sublimely ' lost,' as he had so often written in his favovu^ite rhymes. In the vignettes to Rogers' 'Italy,' Turner had touched the chord for which John Ruskin had been feeling all these years; no wonder that he took Turner for his leader and master, and fondly tried to copy the wonderful 'Alps at Daybreak ' to begin with, and then to imitate this new-found magic art with his own subjects, and finally to come boldly before the world in passionate defence of a man who had done such great things for him. This mountain-worship was not inherited from his father, however it may have been an inheritance from remoter ancestry. Mr. J. J. Ruskin never was enthusiastic about peaks and clouds and glaciers, though he was interested in all travelling in a general way. So that it was not Rogers' ' Italy ' that sent the family ofl' to the Alps that summer ; but, fortunately for John, his father's eye was caught by the romantic architecture of Prout's 'Sketches in Flanders and Germany,' when it came out in April, 18S3, and his mother proposed to make both of them happy in a tour on the Continent. The business-round was abandoned, but they could see Mr. Domecq on their way back through Paris, and not wholly lose the time. They waited to keep papa's birthday on May 10, and early next morning drove off — father and mother, John and Mary, Nurse Anne, and the courier Salvador. They crossed to Calais, and posted, as people did in the old times, slowly from point to point ; starting betimes, halting at the road- MOUNTAIN-WORSHIP 39 side inns, where John tried to snatch a sketch, reaching their destination early enough to investigate the cathedral or the citadel, monuments of antiquity or achievements of modern civilization, Avith impartial eagerness; and before bedtime John would write up his journal and work up his sketches just as if he were at home. Once or twice he found time to sit down and make a Proutesque study of some great build- ing, probably to please his father ; but his mind was set on his Turner vignettes. So they went through Flanders and Germany, following Prout's lead by the castles of the Rhine; but at last, at Schaffhausen one Sunday evening — 'suddenly — behold — beyond!' — they had seen the Alps. Thenceforward Turner ■was their guide as they crossed the Spliigen, sailed the Italian lakes, wondered at Milan Cathedral, and the Medi- terranean at Genoa, and then — whether because it was too hot to go southward, or because John having tasted the Alps importuned for more — roamed through the Oberland and back to Chamouni. All this while a great plan shaped itself in the boy's head, no less than to make a Rogers' 'Italy' for himself, just as once he had tried to make a ' Harry and Lucy ' or a ' Dictionary of Minerals.' On every place they passed he would write verses and prose sketches, to give respectively the romance and the reality, or ridicule ; for he saw the comic side of it all, keenly ; and he would illustrate the series with Turneresque vignettes, drawn with the finest crowquill pen, to imitate the delicate engravings! That was his plan, and if he never quite caiTied it out, he got good practice in two things which went to the making of f ' Modern Painters ' — in descriptive writing, and in getting at the mind and method of Turner, by following him on his own sketching-ground, and can-ying out his subjects in his own way. This is just what Turner had done with Vandevelde and Claude, and it is the way to learn a land- scape-painter's business ; there is no other, for simple copying neglects the relation of art to Nature — it is like trying to learn a language without a dictionary, and unguided 40 LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSIQN experiments are not education at all. By this imitation of Turner and Prout, apart from Mr. Runciman's lessons in oil-painting, John Ruskin learnt more drawing in two or three years than most amateur students do in seven ; he had hit upon the right method, and worked hard. For the first year he has the ' Watchtower of Andernach ' and the ' Jungfrau from Interlaken ' to show, with others of similar style, and thenceforward alternates between Turner and Prout, until he settles into something diiFerent from either. But Turner and Prout were not the only artists he knew ; at Paris he found his way into the Louvre, and got leave from the directors, though he was under the age required, to copy. It is curious that the picture he chose was a Rembrandt ; it shows what the casual reader of his works on art might miss, that he is naturally a chiaroscurist, and that his praise of the pre-Raphaelite colour and draughtsmanship is not prompted by his taste and native feeling so much as by intellectual judgment. if Between this foreign tour and the next, his amusement was to draw these vignettes, and to write the poems suggested by the scenes he had visited. He had outgrown the evening lessons with Dr. Andrews, and as he was fifteen, it was time to think more seriously of preparing him for Oxford, where his name was put down at Christ Church. His father hoped he would go into the Church, and eventually tuin out a combination of a Byron and a bishop — something like Dean Milman, only better. For this, college was a necessary preliminary; for college, some little schooling. So they picked the best day-school in the neighbourhood, that of the Rev. Thomas Dale, in Grove Lane, Peckham.* John Ruskin worked there rather less than two years. In 1835 he was taken from school in consequence of an attack of pleurisy, and lost the rest of that year from regular studies. * 'Schoolmaster, poet, author and preacher. In 1835 he was pre- sented to the living of St. Bride's, Fleet Street ; in 1843 to a canonry of St. Paul's J and he died in ] 870, shortly after accepting the deanery of Rochester.' — Editor's preface to Three Letters and an Essay, by John Euskin, published 1893. MOUNTAIN-WORSHIP 41 More interesting to him than school was the British Museum collection of minerals, where he worked occasionally with his Jamieson's Dictionary. By this time he had a fair student's collection of his own, and he increased it by picking up specimens at Matlock, or Clifton, or in the Alps, wherever he went, for he was not short of pocket-money ; he earned enough by scribbling even if his father were not always ready to indulge his fancy. He took the greatest pains over his catalogues, and wrote elaborate accounts of the various minerals in a shorthand he invented out of Greek letters and crystal forms. Grafted on this mineralogy, and stimulated by the Swiss tour, was a new interest in physical geology, which his father so far approved as to give him Saussure's ' Voyages dans les Alpes' for his birthday in 1834. In this book he found the complement of Turner's vignettes, something like a key to the ' reason why ' of all the wonderful forms and marvellous mountain-architecture of the Alps. In our hills of the North these things do not so obviously call for explanation ; but no intelligent boy could look long and intently at the crags of Lauterbrunnen and the peaks of Savoy without feeling that their twisted strata present a problem which arouses all his curiosity. And this boy was by no means content with a superficial sentiment of grandeur. He tried to understand the causes of it, to get at the secrets of the structure, and found poetry in that mystery of the mountains, no less than in their storms and sunrises. He soon wrote a short essay on the subject, and had the pleasure of seeing it in print, in Loudon's Magazine of Natural History for March, 1834, along with another bit of his writing, asking for information on the cause of the colour of the Rhine-water. It was rather characteristic that he began his literary career by asking questions that got no answer, and that his next appearance in print was to demolish a correspondent to the same magazine, whose accounts of rats eating leaden pipes was discredited by the extraordinary dimensions which he assigned. The analytic John Ruskin was already an enfant terrible. 42 LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN He had already some acquaintance with Mr. J. C. Loudon; F.L.S., H.S., etc., and he was on the staif of that versatile editor not long afterwards, and took a lion's share of the writing in the Magazine of Arcliitectwe. Meanwhile he had been introduced to another editor, and to the publishers with whom he did business for many a year to come. The acquaintance was made in a curious, accidental manner. His cousin Charles, clerk to Smith, Elder, and Co., had the opportunity of mentioning the young poet's name to Mr. Thomas Pringle, editor of the ' Friendship's Offering ' which John had so admired and imitated. Mr. Pringle came out to Heme Hill, and was hospitably entertained as a brother Scot, as not only an editor, but a poet himself, — not only a poet, but a man of respectability and piety, who had been a missionary in South Africa. In return for this hospitality he gave a good report of John's verses, and, after getting him to re-write two of the best passages in the last tour, carried them off for insertion in his forthcoming number. He did more : he carried John to see the actual Mr. Samuel Rogers, whose verses had been adorned by the great Turner's vignettes. But it seems that the boy was not courtier enough — home-bred as he had been — to compliment the poet as poets love to be complimented ; and the great man, dilettante as he was, had not the knowledge of art to be honestly delighted with the boy's enthusiasm for the wonder- ful drawings which had given his book the best part of its value. After the pleurisy of April, 1836, his parents took him abroad again, and he made great preparations to use the opportunity to the utmost. He would study geology in the field, and took Saussure in his trunk ; he would note meteor- ology : he made a cyanometer — a scale of blue to measure the depth of tone, the colour whether of Rhine-water or of Alpine skies. He would sketch. By now he had abandoned the desire to make MS. albums, after seeing himself in print, and so chose rather to imitate the imitable, and to follow Prout, this time with careful outlines on the spot, than to idealize MOUNTAIN-WORSHIP 43 his notes in mimic Tumerism. He kept a prose journal, chiefly of geology and scenery, as well as a versified descrip- tion, written in a metre imitated from ' Don Juan,' but more elaborate, and somewhat of a tovnr de force in rhyming. But that poetical journal was dropped after he had carried it through France, across the Jura, and to Chamouni. The drawing crowded it out, and for the first time he found him- self over the pons asinorum of art, as ready with his pencil as he had been with his pen. His route is marked by the drawings of that year, from Chamouni to the St. Bernard and Aosta, back to the Ober- land and up the St. Gothard ; then back again to Lucerne and round by the Stelvio to Venice and Verona, and finally through the Tyrol and Germany homewards. The ascent of the St. Bernard was told in a dramatic sketch of great humour and power of characterization, and a letter to Richard Fall records the night on the Rigi, when he saw the splendid sequence of storm, sunset, moonlight, and daybreak, which forms the subject of one of the most impressive passages of ' Modern Painters.' It happened that Mr. Pringle had a plate of Salzburg which he wanted to print in order to make up the volume of ' Friendship's Offering' for the next Christmas. He seems to have asked John Ruskin to furnish a copy of verses for the picture, and at Salzburg, accordingly, a bit of rhymed descrip- tion was written and re-written, and sent home to the editor. Early in December the Ruskins returned, and at Christmas there came to Heme Hill a gorgeous gilt morocco volume, * To John Ruskin, from the Publishers.' On opening it there were his ' Andernach ' and ' St. Goar,' and his ' Salzburg ' opposite a beautifully-engraved plate, all hills and towers and boats and picturesquely-moving figm'es under the sunset, in Turner's manner more or less, ' Engraved by E. Goodall from a drawing by W. Purser,' It was almost like being Mr, Rogers himself. CHAPTER V. THE GBEM OF 'MODEEN PAINTERS.' (1836.) 'And, putting on the coat of darkness, approached near the giant, and said softly, " Oh, are you there } It will not be long ere I shall take you fast by the beard." ' — Jaclc the Giant-lciller. FROM the ' Conversation ' printed at the end of the first volume of Mr. Ruskin's 'Poems,' we get a life-like picture of the Heme Hill family at this turning-point — the close of John Ruskin's childhood. There is the father, sighing for beloved Italy, and grumbling at London fogs and business annoyances ; the mother, careful and troubled about little things, but piously looking at the bright side ; Mary, the good girl ; and John, the romantic, observant, humorous, irrepressible boy — all sketched with the cleverest touches of dramatic portraiture. He was now close upon seventeen, and it was time to think seriously of his future. His father went to Oxford early in the year to consult the authorities about matriculation. Meantime they sent him to Mr. Dale for some private lessons, and for the lectures on logic, English literature, and translation, which were given on Tuesdays, Thiursdays, and Fridays at King's College, London. John enjoyed his new circumstances heartily. From voluminous letters, it is evident that he was in high spirits and in pleasant company. He was a thorough boy among boys — Matson, Willoughby, Tom Dale, and the rest. He joined in their pranks, and contributed to their amusement with his ready good-humour and unflagging drollery. THE GERM OF 'MODERN PAINTERS' 45 Mr. Dale told him there was plenty of time before October, and no fear about his passing, if he worked hard. He found the work easy, except epigram-writing, which he thought ' exces- sively stupid and laborious,' but helped himself out, when scholarship failed, with native wit. Some of his exercises remain, not very brilliant Latinity ; some he saucily evaded, thus : ' Subject : Non sapere maximum est maZum. ' Non sapere est grave ; sed, cum dura epigrammata oportet Scrlbere, tunc sentis prsecipue esse malum.' In Switzerland and Italy, during the autumn of 1835, he had made a great many drawings, carefully outlined in pencil or pen on gray paper, and sparsely touched with body colour, in direct imitation of the Prout lithographs. Proufs original coloured sketches he had seen, no doubt, in the exhibition ; but he does not seem to have thought of imitating them, for his work in this kind was all intended to be for illustration of his MS. books. The ' Italy ' vignettes likewise, with all their inspiration, suggested to him only pen-etching; he was hardly conscious that somewhere there existed the tiny, delicious, coloured pictures that Turner had made for the engraver. Still, now that he could draw really well, his father, who painted in water-colours himself, complied with the demand for better teaching than Runciman's, went straight to the President of the Old Water-Colour Society, and engaged him for the usual course of half a dozen lessons at a guinea apiece. Copley Fielding, beside being president, could draw mountains as nobody else but Turner could, in water-colour ; he had enough mystery and poetry to interest the younger Ruskin, and enough resemblance to ordinary views of Nature to please the elder. So they both went to Newman Street to his painting-room, and John worked through the course, and a few extra lessons, but, after all, found Fielding's art was not what he wanted. Some sketches exist, showing the influence of the spongy style ; but his characteristic way of work remained for him to devise for himself, by following at first the highest masters he 46 LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN knew, and by superadding to the lessons he could get from them an expression of his own sincere feeling. At the Royal Academy Exhibition of 1836 Turner showed the first striking examples of his later style in ' Juliet and her Nurse,' ' Mercury and Argus,' and ' Rome from Mount Aven- tine.' The strange idealism, the unusualness, the mystery, of these pictures, united with evidence of intense significance and subtle observation, appealed to young Ruskin as it appealed to few other spectators. Here was Venice as he saw her in his own dreams ; here were mountains and skies such as he had watched, and studied, and attempted to describe in his own poems. It was not for nothing that he had been devoted to Nature, that he had tried to set down her phenomena in writing, and to represent her forms with severe draughtsmanship ; that he had studied the geology of mountains as well as the poetry of them. In Turner's work he saw both sides of his own character reflected, both aspects of Nature recorded. It was not the mere matter-of-fact map of the place which would have appealed to merely matter-of- fact people, interested in science. Nor was it simply a vague Miltonian imagination, which would have appealed to the mere sentimentalist. But Turner had been able to show, and young Ruskin to appreciate, the combination of two attitudes with regard to Nature : the scientific, inquisitive about her facts, her detail ; and the poetical, expatiating in eifect, in breadth and mystery. There may have been other people who appreciated these pictures ; if so, they said nothing. On the contrary, public opinion regretted this change for the worse in its old favourite, the draughtsman of Oxford colleges, the painter of shipwrecks and castles. And Blackwood's Magazine, which the Ruskins, as Edinburgh people and admirei-s of Christopher North, read with respect, spoke about Turner, in a review of the picture-season, with that freedom of speech which Scotch reviewers claim as a heritage from the days of Jeffrey. Young Ruskin at once dashed off an answer, indignant not so much that Turner was attacked, but that he should have been THE GERM OF 'MODERN PAINTERS' 47 attacked by a writer whose article showed that he was not a qualified critic of art, and that this should have been printed in ' Maga.' The critic had found that Turner was 'out of nature'; Ruskin tried to show that the pictures were full of facts, studied on the spot and thoroughly understood, but treated with poetical license — Turner being, like Shakespeare, an idealist, in the sense of allowing himself a free treatment of his material. The critic pronounced Turner's colour bad, his execution neglected, and his chiaroscuro childish; in answer to which Ruskin explained that Turner's reasoned system was to represent light and shade by the contrast of warm and cold colour, rather than by the opposition of white and black which other painters used. He denied that his execution was other than his aims necessitated, and main- tained that the critic had no right to force his cut-and-dried academic rules of composition on a great genius ; at the same time admitting that ' the faults of Turner are numerous, and perhaps more egregious than those of any other great existing artist; but if he has greater faults, he has also greater beauties. ' His imagination is Shakespearian in its mightiness. Had the scene of " Juliet and her Nurse " risen up before the mind of a poet, and been described in " words that bum," it had been the admiration of the world. . . . Many-coloured mists are floating above the distant city, but such mists as you might imagine to be ethereal spirits, souls of the mighty dead breathed out of the tombs of Italy into the blue of her bright heaven, and wandering in vague and infinite glory around the earth that they have loved. Instinct with the beauty of uncertain light, they move and mingle among the pale stars, and rise up into the brightness of the illimitable heaven, whose soft, sad blue eye gazes down into the deep waters of the sea for ever — that sea whose motionless and silent transparency is beaming with phosphor light, that emanates out "of its sapphire serenity like bright dreams breathed into the spirit of a deep sleep. And the spires of 48 LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN the gloi'ious city rise indistinctly bright into those living mists, Mice pjnrainids of pale fire from some vast altar ; and amidst the glory of the dream there is, as it were, the voice of a multitude entering by the eye, arising from the stillness of the city like the summer w^ind passing over the leaves of the forest, when a murmur is heard amidst their multitudes. ' This, O Maga, is the picture which your critic has pro- nounced to be like "models of different parts of Venice, streaked blue and white, and thrown into a flour-tub " !' Before sending this reply to the editor of Blackwood, as had been intended, it was thought only right that Turner should be consulted, as he was the person most interested. The MS. was enclosed to his address in London, vidth a courteous note from Mr. John James Ruskin, asking his permission to publish. Turner replied, expressing the scorn he felt for anonymous attacks, and jestingly hinting that the art-critics of the old Scotch school found their ' meal-tub ' in danger from his * flour-tub ' ; but ' he never moved in such matters,' so he sent on the MS. to Mr. Munro of Novar, who had bought the picture. Thus the essay was lost until another copy turned up among old papers, enabling us to add an important link to the history of a great enterprise, for this was the 'first chapter,' the germ of ' Modern Painters.' Ten days or so after this episode John Ruskin was matri- culated at Oxford (October 18, 1836). He tells the story of his first appearance as a gownsman in one of those gossiping letters in verse which show his improvisional humorous talent to the best advantage : ' A night, a day past o'er — the time drew near — The morning came — I felt a little queer ; Came to the push ; paid some tremendous fees ; Past ; and was capped and gowned with marvellous ease. Then went to the Vioe-Chancellor to swear Not to wear boots, nor cut or comb my hair Fantastically — to shun all such sins As playing marbles or frequenting inns ; THE GERM OF 'MODERN PAINTERS' 49 Always to walk with breeches black or brown on ; When I go out, to put my cap and gown on ; With other regulations of the sort, meant For the just ordering of my comportment. Which done, in leas time than I can rehearse it, I Found myself member of the University !' In pursuance of his plan for getting the best of everything, his father had chosen the -best college, as far as he knew, that in which social and scholastic advantages were believed to be found in pre-eminent combination, and he had chosen what was thought to be the best position in the college ; so that it was as gentleman-commoner of Christ Church that John Ruskin made his entrance into the academic world. In ' Prasterita ' he hints that there was some fear of his failing if he had tried for the ordinary matriculation ; and, indeed, he was ' shaky ' in ' scholarship,' as Mr. Dale reported (in official terms) to the parents at the end of this King's College year. Mrs. Dale roundly told Mr. J. J. Ruskin that John had been neglected between ten and twelve, reflecting thereby upon Dr. Andrews. But if his classics were not up to the mark, his ' English ' was very far beyond the average, and examiners of fifty years ago did not so entirely neglect ' the modern side ' as to ignore clever essay- writing. After matriculation, the Ruskins made a fortnight's tour to Southampton and the coast, and returned to Heme Hill. John went back to King's College, and in December was examined in the subjects of his lectures. He wrote to his father on Christmas Eve about the examination in English literature: 'The students were numerous, and so were the questions ; the room was hot, the papers long, the pens bad, the ink pale, and the interrogations difficult. It lasted only three hours. I wrote answers in very magnificent style to all the questions except three or four; gave in my paper and heard no more of the matter : sic trcmseimt bore-ia mundi.'' He goes on to mention his ' very longitudinal essay,' which, since no other essays are reported in his letters about King's College, must be the paper published in 1893, in answer to the question, 'Does the perusal of works of fiction act 4 50 LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN favourably or unfavourably on the moral character ?' It would have been strange if any college had refused a candidate with such evidence of brains and the will to use them. At his farewell interview with Mr. Dale he was asked, as he ivrites to his father, what books he had read, and replied with a pretty long list, including Quintilian and Grotius. Mr. Dale inquired what ' light books ' he was taking to Oxford : ' Saussure, Humboldt, and other works on natural philosophy and geology,' he answered. 'Then he asked if I ever read any of the modern fashionable novels ; on this point I thought he began to look positive, so I gave him a negative, with the exception of Bulwer's, and now and then a laughable one of Theodore Hook's or Captain Marryat's.' And so, with much excellent advice about exercise and sleep, and the way to win the Newdigate, he parted from Mr. Dale. This Christmas was inarked by his first introduction to the scientific world. Mr. Charlesworth, of the British Museum, invited him to a meeting of the Geological Society (January 4, 1837), with promise of introductions to Buckland and Lyell. The meeting, as he wrote, was ' amusing and interesting, and very comfortable for frosty weather, as Mr. Murchison got warm and Mr. Greenau (sic) witty. The warmth, however, got the better of the wit.' The Meteorological Society also claimed his attention, and in this month he contributed a paper which ' Richard says will frighten them out of their meteorological wits, contain- ing six close- written folio pages, and having, at its conclusion, a sting in its tail, the very agreeable announcement that it only commences the subject.' CHAPTER VI. A LOVE-STORY. (1836-1839.) ' I loved a certain person ardently, and my love was not returned. Yet out of that I have written these songs.'— Leaves of Grass. EARLY in 1836 the quiet of Heme Hill was fluttered by a long-promised, long-postponed visit. Mr. Domecq at last brought his four younger daughters to make the acquaintance of their English friends. The eldest sister had lately been married to a Count Maison, heir to a peer of France; for Mr. Domecq, thanks in great measure to his partner's energy and talents, was prosperous and wealthy, and moved in the enchanted circles of Parisian society. To a romantic schoolboy in a London suburb the appari- tion was dazzling. Any of the sisters would have charmed him, but the eldest of the four, Adele Clotilde, bewitched him at once with her graceful figure and that oval face which was so admired in those times. She w£is fair, too — another recommendation. He was on the brink of seventeen, at the ripe moment, and he fell passionately in love with her. She was only fifteen, and did not understand this adoration, unspoken and unexpressed except by intensified shyness ; for he was a very shy boy in the drawing-room, though brimming over with life and fun among his schoolfellows. His mother's ideals of education did not include French gallantry ; he felt at a loss before these Paris-bred, Paris-dressed young ladies, and encumbered by the very strength of his new-found passion. 4—2 52 LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN And yet he possessed advantages, if he had known how to use them. He was tall and active, light and lithe in gesture, not a clumsy hobbledehoy. He had the face that caught the eye, in Rome a few years later, of Keats' Severn, no mean judge, surely, of faces and poets' faces. He was undeniably clever ; he knew all about minerals and mountains ; he was quite an artist, and a printed poet. But these things weigh little with a girl of fifteen who wants to be amused ; and so she only laughed at John. He tried to amuse her, but he tried too seriously. He wrote a story to read her, ' Leoni, a Legend of Italy ' (for of course she understood enough English to be read to, no doubt to be wooed in, seeing her mother was English). The story was of brigands and true lovers, the thing that was popular in the romantic period. The costumery and mannerisms of the little romance are out of date now, and seem ridiculous as an old-fashioned dress does, though Mr. Pringle and the public were pleased with it then, when it was printed in ' Friendship's Offering.' But the note of passion was too real for the girl of fifteen, and she only laughed the more. When they left, he was alone with his poetry again. But now he had no interest in his tour-book ; even the mountains, for the time, had lost their power, and all his plans of great works were dropped for a new style of verse — the love-poems of 1836. His father, from whom he kept nothing, approved the verses, and did not disapprove his views on the young lady. Indeed, it is quite plain, from the correspondence of the two gentlemen, that Mr. Domecq intended his friend and partner's son to become his own son-in-law. He had the greatest respect for the Ruskins, and every reason for desiring to link their fortunes still more closely with those of his own family. But to Mrs. Ruskin, with her religious feelings, it was intoler- able, unbelievable, that the son whom she had brought up in the nvu-ture and admonition of the strictest Protestantism should fix his heart on an alien in race and creed. The wonder is that their relations were not more strained ; there A LOVE-STORY 53 are few young men who would have kept unbroken allegiance to a mother whose sympathy failed them at such a crisis. To end the story we must anticipate a little ; there are so many strands in this complex life that they cannot be followed all at once. When we have traced this one out, we can resume the history of John Ruskin as student and poet and youthful savant. As the year went on his passion seemed to grow in the absence of the beloved object. His only plan of winning her was to win his spurs first ; but as what ? Clearly his forte, it seemed, was in writing. If he could be a successful writer of romances, of songs, of plays, surely she would not refuse him. And so he began another romantic story, ' Velasquez, the Novice,' opening with the monks of St. Bernard, among whom had been, so the tale ran, a mysterious member, whose papers, when discovered, made him out the hero of adven- tures in Venice. He began a play, which was to be another great work, 'Marcolini.' To this he has alluded in terms which leave one in doubt whether its author has re-read it since it was written under the mulberry-tree in Heme Hill garden that summer of 1836. Partly Shakesperian, but more Byronic in form, it does not depend merely on description, but shows a dramatic power of character and dialogue indi- cated by many earlier attempts at stories and scenes. The weakness of ' Marcolini ' is in the arrangement and disposition of the plot ; he has no playwright's eye for situations. But the conversation is animated, and the characters finely drawn, with more discrimination than one would expect from so young an author. This work was interrupted at the end of Act III. by press- ing calls to other studies, which have been described ; and then by the attempt to win the distinction he sought in the Newdigate prize at Oxford. But it was not that he had forgotten Ad^le. From time to time he wrote verses to her or about her ; and as in 1838 she was sent to school with her sisters at Newhall, near Chelmsford, to ' finish ' her in English, in that August he saw her again. She had lost some of her 54 LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN first girlish prettiness, but that made no difference. And when the Domecqs came to Heme Hill at Christmas, he was as deeply in love as ever. But she still laughed at him. His father was fond of her, liked all the sisters, and thought much of them as girls of fine character, but he liked Adele best. He seems to have been fond of his partner, too, worked very hard in his interests, and behaved very well to his heirs afterwards through many years of responsible and difficult management of their business. And at this time, when he went down to the convent school in Essex, as he often did, he must have had opportunities for seeing how hopeless the case was. Mr. Domecq recognised it, too, but thought, it seems (they manage these things differently in France), that any of his daughters would do as well, and early in 1839 entertained an offer from Baron Duquesne, a rich and handsome young Frenchman. They kept this from John, fearing he would break down at the news, so fully did they recognise the importance of the affair. They even threw other girls in his way. It was not difficult, for Ijy now he had made his mark in magazine literature, and was a iteady, rising young man, with considerable expectations. But he could not think of any other girl. In February or March, 1839, Mr. Domecq died. The Maisons came to England, and the marriage was proposed. Adcie stayed at Chelmsford until September, when he wrote the long poem of ' Farewell,' dated the eve of their last meet- ing and parting. One sees that he has been reading his Shelley ; one sees that he knows he is writing ' poetry ' ; but at the same time it is certain that his disappointment was deep, after nearly four years of hope and effort and real fidelity at a period of life when, if ever, a lover's unfaithful- ness might be easily pardoned, placed as he was among new scenes and new people, among success and flattery and awaken- ing ambitions. But in this disappointment there is no ano^er no bitterness, no reproach. She is still to be his goddess of stone — calm and cold, but never to be forgotten. A LOVE-STORY 55 At twenty young men do not die of love ; but I find that a fortnight after writing this he was taken seriously ill. During the winter of 1839-40 the negotiations for the marriage in Paris went on. It took place in March. They kept the news from him as long as they could, for he was in the schools next Easter term, and Mr. Brown (his college tutor) had seemed to hope he would get a Fii'st, so his mother wrote to her husband. In May he was pronounced consump- tive, and had to give up Oxford, and all hope of the distinc- tion for which he had laboured, and with that any plans that might have been entertained for his distinction in the Church. And his parents' letters of the period put it beyond a doubt that this first great calamity of his life — how far-reaching cannot well be told — was the direct consequence of that un- fortunate matchmaking. For nearly two years he was dragged about from place to place, and from doctor to doctor, in search of health. Thanks partly to wise treatment, more to new faces, and most to a plucky determination to employ himself usefully with his pen and his pencil, he gradually freed himself from the spell, and fifty years afterwards could look back upon the story as a pretty comedy of his youthful days. How pretty, at any rate, the actress must have been, if we do not believe his own words, and taste, we can judge from a little side-glimpse of the sequel afforded us by a writer whose connoisseurship in pretty girls we can trust, Mrs. Richmond Ritchie (Miss Thackeray) : 'TTie writer* can picture to herself something of the charm of these most charming sisters ; for once, by chance, travelling on Lake Leman, she found herself watching a lady who sat at the steamer's end, a beautiful young woman, all dressed in pale gray, with a long veil floating on the wind, who sat motionless and absorbed, looking towards the distant hills, not unlike the vision of some guiding, wistful Ariel at the prow, while the steamer sped its way between the banks. The story of the French sisters has gained an added interest * In Harper's Magazine, March, 1890. 56 LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN from the remembrance of those dark, lovely eyes, that charm- ing countenance ; for afterwards, when I knew her better, the lady told me that her mother had been a Domecq, and had once lived with her sisters in Mr. Ruskin's home. Circum- stances had divided them in after-days, but all the children of the family had been brought up to know Mr. Ruskin by name, and to love and appreciate his books. The lady sent him many messages by me, which I delivered in after-days, when, alas ! it was from Mr. Ruskin himself I learned that the beautiful traveller — Isabelle,* he called her — had passed away before her time to those distant hills where all our journeys end.' * Daughter of Comteaae Maiaon (Mathilda Domecq). The sisters all married Frenchmen of title, and were well known and higlily re- spected in French society. Mme. Duquesne has Ion?; been dead. CHAPTER VII. 'KATA PHUSm.' (1837, 1838.) ' And you, painter, who are desirous of great practice, understand that if you do not rest it on the good foundation of Nature, you will labour with little honour and less profit ; and if you do it on a good ground, your works will be many and good, to your great honour and advantage.' — Leonardo da Vinci. DEVOTED as she was to her husband, Mrs. Ruskin felt bound to watch over her son at Oxford. It was his health she was always anxious about; doctoring was her forte. He had suffered from pleurisy ; caught cold easily ; was feared to be weak in the lungs ; and nobody but his mother understood him. So taking Mary Richardson, she went up with him (January, 1837), and settled in lodgings at Mr. Adams' in the High. Her plan was to make no intrusion on his college life, but to require him to report himself every day to her. She would not be dull ; she could drive about and see the country, and to that end took her own carriage to Oxford, the ' fly ' which had been set up two years before. John had been rather sarcastic about its genteel appearance. ' No one,' he said, ' would sit down to draw the form of it.' However, she and Mary drove to Oxford, and reckoned that it would only mean fifteen months' absence from home altogether, gi'eat part of which deserted papa would spend in travelling. John went into residence in Peckwater. At first he spent every evening with his mother and went to bed, as Mr. Dale had told him, at ten. After a few days Professor Powell 58 LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN .asked him to a musical evening; he excused himself, and explained why. The Professor asked to be introduced, whereupon says his mother, 'I shall return the call, but make no visiting acquaintances.' The ' early-to-bed ' plan was also impracticable. It was not long before somebody came hammering at his ' oak ' just as he was getting to sleep, and next morning he told his mother that he really ought to have a glass of wine to give. So she sent him a couple of bottles over, and that very night ' Mr. Liddell and Mr. Gaisford' (junior) turned up. 'John was glad he had wine to offer, but they would not take any ; they had come to see sketches. John says Mr. Liddell looked at them with the eye of a judge and the delight of an artist, and swore they were the best sketches he had ever seen. John accused him of quizzing, but he answered that he really thought them excellent.' John said that it was the scenes which made the pictures ; Mr. Liddell knew better, and spread the fame of them over the college. Next morning ' Lord Emlyn and Lord Ward called to look at the sketches,' and when the undergraduates had dropped in one after another, the Dean himself, even the temble Gaisford, sent for the portfolio, and returned it with august approval. Liddell, afterwards Dean of Christ Church ; Newton, after- wards Sir Charles, of the British Museum ; Acland, afterwards Sir Henry, the Professor of Medicine, thus became John Ruskin's friends : the first disputing with him on the burning question of Raphael's art, but from the outset an admirer of "^ Modem Painters,' and always an advocate of its author ; the second differing from him on the claims of Greek archaeology, but nevertheless a close acquaintance through many long years ; and the third for half a century the best of friends and counsellors. It was a happy destiny that brought him to Christ Church among such men. The dons of his college he was less likely to attract. Di'. Buckland, the famous geologist, and still more famous lecturer and talker, took notice of him and employed him in drawing diagrams for lectures. The Rev. Walter Brown, his 'KATA PHUSIN' 59 college tutor, afterwards Rector of Wendlebury, won his good-will and remained his friend. His private tutor, the Rev. Osborne Gordon, was always regarded with affectionate respect. But the rest seem to have looked upon him as a somewhat desultory and erratic young genius, who might or might not turn out well. For their immediate purpose, the Schools, and Chiurch or State preferment, he seemed hardly the fittest man. The gentlemen-commoners of Christ Church were a puzzle to Mrs. Ruskin ; noblemen of spoiiing tastes, who rode and betted and drank, and got their impositions written ' by men attached to the University for the purpose, at Is. 6d. to 2s. 6d., so you have only to reckon how much you will give to avoid chapel.' And yet they were very nice fellows. If they began by riding on John's back round the quad, they did not give him the cold shoulder — quite the reverse. He was asked everywhere to wine ; he beat them all at chess ; and they invaded him at all hours. ' It does little good sporting his oak,' wrote his mother, describing how Lord Desart and Grimston climbed in through his window while he was hard at work. ' They say midshipmen and Oxonians have more lives than a cat, and they have need of them if they run such risks.' Once, but once only, he was guilty, as an innocent fresh- man, of a breach of the laws of his order. He wrote too good an essay. He tells his father : 'OXFOEO, ' February, 1837. ' Yesterday (Saturday) forenoon the Sub-dean sent for me, took me up into his study, sat down with me, and read over my essay, pointing out a few verbal alterations and suggesting improvements ; I, of course, expressed myself highly grateful for his condescension. Going out, I met Strangeways. " So you're going to read out to-day, Ruskin. Do go it at a good rate, my good fellow. Why do you write such devilish good ones .?" Went a little farther and met March. " Mind you stand on the top of the desk, Ruskin ; gentlemen-commoners 60 LIFE ANT> WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN never stand on the steps." I asked him whether it would look more dignified to stand head or heels uppermost. He advised heels. Then met Desart. " We must have a grand supper after this, Ruskin ; gentlemen -commoners always have a flare-up after reading their themes." I told him I supposed he wanted to " pison my rum-and-water." ' And though they teased him unmercifully, he seems to have given as good as he got. At a big wine after the event, they asked him whether his essay cost 2s. 6d. or 5s. What he answered is not reported; but they proceeded to make a bonfire in Peckwater, while he judiciously escaped to bed. So for a home-bred boy, thrown into rather difficult surroundings, his first appearance at Christ Church was dis- tinctly a success. 'Collections' in March, 1837, went off creditably for him. Hussey, Kynaston, and the Dean said he had taken great pains with his work, and had been a pattern of regularity ; and he ended his first term very well pleased with his college and with himself. In his second term he had the honour of being elected to the Christ Church Club, a very small and very exclusive society of the best men in the college : ' Simeon, Acland, and Mr. Denison proposed him ; Lord Carew and Broadhurst supported.' And he had the opportunity of meeting men of mark, as the following letter recounts. He writes on April 22, 1837 : ' My dearest Father, ' When I returned from hall yesterday — where a servitor read, or pretended to read, and Decanus growled- at him, " Speak out !" — I found a note on my table from Dr. Buckland, requesting the pleasure of my company to dinner, at six, to meet two celebrated geologists. Lord Cole and Sir Philip Egerton. I immediately sent a note of thanks and acceptance, dressed, and was there a minute after the last stroke of Tom. Alone for five minutes in Dr. B.'s 'KATA PHUSIN' 61 drawing-room, who soon afterwards came in with Lord Cole, introduced me, and said that as we were both geologists he did not hesitate to leave us together while he did what he certainly very much required — brushed up a little. Lord Cole and I were talking about some fossils newly arrived from India. He remarked in the course of conversation that his friend Dr. B.'s room was cleaner and in better order than he remembered ever to have seen it. There was not a chair fit to sit upon, all covered with dust, broken alabaster candlesticks, withered flower -leaves, frogs cut out of ser- pentine, broken models of fallen temples, torn papers, old manuscripts, stuffed reptiles, deal boxes, brown paper, wool, tow and cotton, and a considerable variety of other articles. In came Mrs. Buckland, then Sir Philip Egerton and his brother, whom I had seen at Dr. B.'s lecture, though he is not an undergraduate. I was talking to him till dinner-time. While we were sitting over our wine after dinner, in came Dr. Daubeny, one of the most celebrated geologists of the day — a curious little animal, looking through its spectacles with an air very distmgtiee — and Mr. Darwin, whom I had heard read a paper at the Geological Society, He and I got together, and talked all the evening.' There is no quizzing of Mr. Darwin ; John Ruskin knew a first-rate man when he met him. The long vacation of 1837 was passed in a tour through the North, during which his advanced knowledge of art was shown in a series of admirable drawings. Their subjects are chiefly architectural, though a few mountain drawings are found in his sketch-book for that summer. TTie interest in ancient and picturesque buildings was no new thing, and it seems to have been the branch of art-study which was chiefly encouraged by his father. During this tour among Cumberland cottages and Yorkshire abbeys, a plan was formed for a series of papers on architecture, perhaps in answer to an invitation from his friend Mr. Loudon, who had started an architectural magazine. In the summer he 62 LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN began to write ' The Poetry of Architecture ; or, The Archi- tectiue of the Nations of Europe considered in its Association with Natural Scenery and National Character,' and the papers were worked oiF month by month from Oxford, or wherever he might be, with a steadiness* that showed his power of detaching himself from immediate surroundings, like any experienced litterateivr. This piece of work is a valuable link in the development of his 'Seven Lamps,' anticipating many of his conclusions of later days, and ex- hibiting his literary style as very near maturity. It deals chiefly with the countries he had visited — the English Lake- land, France, Switzerland, and North Italy — ^but some little notice of Spain suggests occasional collaboration with his father. The papers terminated with the termination of the magazine in January, 1839. They are bright and amusing, full of pretty description and shrewd thoughts. They parade a good deal of classical learning and travelled experience; readers of the magazine took their author for some dilettante Don at Oxford. The editor did not wish the illusion to be dispelled, so John Ruskin had to choose a nom de plume. He called himself ' Kata Phusin ' (' according to nature '), for he had begun to read some Aristotle. No phrase woula have better expressed his point of view, that of common- sense extended by experience, and confirmed by the appeal to matters of fact, rather than to any authority, or tradition, or committee of taste, or abstract principles. While these papers were in process of publication ' Kata Phusin' plunged into his first controversy. Mr. Arthur Parsey had published a treatise on ' Perspective Rectified,' with a new discovery that was to upset all previous practice. He said, in eifect, that when you look at a tower the top is farther from the eye than the bottom, therefore it must look narrower, therefore it should be drawn so. This was ' Parsey's Convergence of Perpendiculars,' according to which vertical * Though not without labour. His mother, writing February 15, 1838, announces that the ' chapter on Chimneys ' has been sent to London, and expresses her thankfulness that it is ' off his mind.' 'KATA PHUSIN' 63 lines should have a vanishing point, even though they are assumed to be parallel to the plane of the picture. He had been discussed by one, and ridiculed by another, of the contributors to the magazine, when ' Kata Phusin ' joined in with the remark that the convergence is perceptible only when we stand too close to the tower to draw it (when, of course, the verticals are not parallel to the plane of the picture), and that we never can draw it at all until we are so far away that the eye is practically equidistant from all parts, top and bottom. You see that in reflections too, he said ; the vertical lines do converge when your eye ranges round the horizon, and from zenith to nadir ; but, as a matter of fact, in a picture we include so small a piece of the whole field of vision that the convergence is practically reduced to nil. A writer signing himself ' Q.' gravely reviews the situation, and gives the palm to ' Kata Phusin ' ; yet, he says, the con- vergence is there. To which ' Kata Phusin ' answers that of course it is, and all artists know it ; but they know also that the limited angle of their picture's scope makes awcy with the difficulty. Parsey was not satisfied. ' Kata Phusin ' appeals to obser- vation. He says he is looking out of his window at one of the most noble buildings in Oxford, and the vertical lines of it do fall exactly on the sashes of his window-frame. He suggests a new line of defence — that, to see a picture properly, the eye must be opposite the point of sight, and the angle of vision is the same for the picture placed at the right distance as for the actual scene ; so whatever convergence there is in the scene, there is also in the picture, when rightly viewed. And so the discussion dragged on, ' Kata Phusin ' appealing to common-sense and common practice, as against the mathe- maticians and the theorists ; and the editor gave him the last word to conclude the series. None of the disputants were bold enough to remark that the great science of perspective is, after all, only an ab- straction ; that the ' plane of the picture ' is a mere assumption, made for the convenience of geometrical draughtsmen ; and 64 LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN that, if you draw what you really see, you would draw the top of a tower greater than its base, owing to the structure of the lens of the eye, as discussed, with curious experiment and improved knowledge of optics, by Dr. P. H. Emerson and Mr. Goodall in a recent tract. During this controversy, and just before the summer tour of 1838 to Scotland, John Ruskin was introduced to Miss Charlotte Withers, a young lady who was as fond of music as he was of drawing. They discussed their favourite studies with eagerness, and, to settle the matter, he wrote a long essay on 'The Comparative Advantages of the Studies of Music and Painting,' in which he sets painting as a means of recreation and of education far above music. He allows to music a greater power of stirring emotion, but finds that power strongest in proportion as the art is diminished ; so that the iEolian harp is the most touching of all melody, and next to it, owing partly to associations, the Alp-hom. To the higher forms of music he awards no such power of compelling emotion, and finds no intellectual interest in them to make up for the loss ; whereas in painting, the higher the art, the stronger the appeal both to the senses and the intellect. He describes an ideal ' Crucifixion by Vandyke or Guido,' insisting on the complexity of emotions and trains of thought roused by such a picture. He goes into ecstasies over a typical 'Madonna of Raphael,' discusses David's ' Iloratii,' and concludes that even in landscape this double office of painting, at once artistic and literary, gives it a supremacy to which music has no claim. As a practical means of education, he finds little difficulty in showing that, ' with regard to drawing, the labour and time required is the same (as for music), but the advantages gained will,' he thinks, ' be found considerably superior. These are four ; namely, (1) the power of appreciating fine pictures ; (2) the agreeable and interesting occupation of many hours ; (3) the habit of quick observation, and exquisite perception of the beauties of Nature ; and, lastly, the power of amusing and gratifying others.' 'KATA PHUSIN' 65 Already at nineteen, then, we see him as a writer on art, not fall-fledged, but sturdily taking his own line and making up his mind upon the first great questions. As ' Kata Phusin ' he was attracting some notice. Towards the end of 1838 a question arose as to the best site for the proposed Scott memorial at Edinburgh, and a writer in the Architectwal Magazine quotes 'Kata Phusin' as the authority in such matters, saying that it was obvious, after those papers of his, that design and site should be simultaneously considered ; on which the editor ' begs the favour of " Kata Phusin " to let our readers have his opinion on the subject, which we certainly think of considerable importance.' So he discusses the question of monuments in general, and of this one in particular, in a long paper, coming to no very decided opinion, but preferring, on the whole, a statue group with a colossal Scott on a rough pedestal, to be placed on Salisbury Crags, 'where the range gets low and broken towards the north at about the height of St. Anthony's Chapel.' His paper did not influence the Edinburgh Com- mittee, but it was not without effect, as the following extract shows. • Bayswatee, ' Wovemher 30, 1838. 'Dear Sir, ' . . . Your son is certainly the greatest natural genius that ever it has been my fortune to become acquainted with, and I cannot but feel proud to think that at some future period, when both you and I are under the turf, it will be stated in the literary history of your son's life that the first article of his which was published was in Loudori's Magazine of Natural History. ' Yours very sincerely, 'J. C. Loudon.' CHAPTER Vni SIR ROGER NEWDIGATE'S PRIZE. (1837-1839.) "fls ol Traioes AeiffSof 6 S' atirSKos (55' Ayipevev 'ASiJ TL rb crrdfia rof, Kal itpifiepos (5 Ad^i/i tpiavh* AiffBeo t4s cipiyyas- htKrijas y&p ielSan. Theocritus, vm. OF all the prizes which Oxford could bestow, the Newdi- gate used to be the most popular. Its fortunate winner was an admitted poet in an age when poetry was read, and he appeared in hie glory at Commemoration, speaking what the ladies could understand and admire. The honour was attainable without skill in Greek particles or in logarithms ; and yet it had a real value to an intending preacher, for the successful reciter might be felt to have put his foot on the pulpit stairs. John Ruskin was definitely meant for the Church, and he went to Oxford in the avowed hope of getting the Newdigate, if nothing else. His last talk with Mr. Dale was chiefly about ways and means to this end ; and before he went up he had begun 'The Gipsies' for March, 1837. The prize was won that year by Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, afterwards Dean of Westminster. Our candidate and his old schoolfellow, Henry Dart, of Exeter College, set to work on the next subject, ' The Exile of St. Helena,' and after the long vacation read their work to each other, accepting the hints and corrections of a friendly rivalry. Meantime his old nurse Anne (it is trivial, but a touch of nature), being at Oxford in attendance on the ladies, and SIR ROGER NEWDIGATF;S PRIZE 67 keen, as she always was, for Master John's success, heard from the keeper of the Reading-room of criticisms on his published verses. She brought the news to his delighted mother. ' He was pleased,' she writes, ' but says that he forms his own estimate of his poems, and reviews don't alter it ; but " How my father will be delighted ! How he will crow !" ' Which historiette repeated itself many a time in the family annals. In Lent term, 1838, he was hard at work on the new poem. He wrote : ' I must give an immense time every day to the Newdigate, which I must have, if study will get it. I have much to revise. You find many faults, but there are hundreds which have escaped your notice, and many lines must go out altogether which you and I should wish to stay in. The thing must be remodelled, and I must finish it while it has a freshness on it, otherwise it will not be written well. The old lines are hackneyed in my ears, even as a very soft Orleans plum, which your Jewess has wiped and re-wiped with the corner of her apron, till its polish is perfect, and its temperature elevated.' In this March he got through his ' Smalls.' ' Nice thing to get over ; quite a joke, as everybody says when they've got through with the feathers on. It's a kind of emancipation from freshness — a thing unpleasant in an egg, but dignified in an Oxonian — rvery. Lowe very kind; Kynaston ditto — nice fellows — ittbane. How they do frighten people ! There was one man all but crying with mere fear. Kynaston had to coax him like a child. Poor fellow ! he had some reason to be afraid ; did his logic shockingly. People always take up logic because they fancy it doesn't require a good memory, and there is nothing half so productive of pluck ; they never know it. ' I was very cool when I got into it ; found the degree of excitement agreeable ; nibbled the end of my pen, and grinned at Kynaston over the table as if / had been going to pluck him. They always smile when they mean pluck.' The Newdigate for 1838, for all his cai-e and pains, was 6—2 68 LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN won by Dart. He was, at any rate, beaten by a friend, and with a poem which his own honourable sympathy and assist- ance had helped to perfect. Another trifling incident lets us get a glimpse of the family life of our young poet. The Queen's coronation in June, 1838, was a great event to all the world, and Mr. Ruskin was anxious for his son to see it. Much correspondence ensued between the parents, arranging everything for him, as they always did — which of the available tickets should be accepted, and whether he could stand the fatigue of the long waiting, and so forth. Mrs. Ruskin did not like the notion of her boy sitting perched on rickety scaffolding at dizzy altitudes in the Abbey. Mr. Ruskin, evidently determined to can-y his point, went to Westminster, bribed the carpenters, climbed the structui'e, and reported all safe to stand a century, ' though,' said he, ' the gold and scarlet of the decorations appeared very paltry compared with the Wengern Alp.' But he could not find No. 447, and wrote to the Heralds' Office to know if it was a place from which a good view could be got. Blue- mantle replied that it was a very good place, and Lord Brownlow had just taken tickets for his sons close by. Then there was the great question of dress. He went to Owen's and ordered a white satin waistcoat with gold sprigs, and a high dress-coat with bright buttons, and asked his wife to see about white gloves at Oxford — a Court white neck-cloth or a black satin would do. Picture, then, the young Ruskin in those dressy days. A portrait was once sent to Brantwood of a dandy in a green coat of wonderful cut, supposed to represent him in his youth, but suggesting Lord Lytton's ' Pelham ' rather than the homespun-suited seer of Coniston. ' Did you ever wear a coat like that .<" I asked. ' I'm not so sure that I didn't,' said he. After that, they went to Scotland and the North of England for the summer, and more fine sketches were made, some of which hang now in his drawing-room, and compare not un- favourably with the Prouts beside them. In firmness of line SIR ROGER NEWDIGATE'S PRIZE 69 and fulness of insight they are masterly, and mark a rapid progress, all the more astonishing when it is recollected how little time could have been spared for practice. The subjects are chiefly architectural — castles and churches and Gothic details — and one is not surprised to find him soon concerned with the Oxford Society for Promoting the Study of Gothic Ar-chitecture. ' They were all reverends,' says a letter of the time, ' and wanted somebody to rouse them.' Science, too, progressed tihiis year. We read of geological excursions to Shotover with Lord Carew and Lord Kildare — one carrying the hammer and another the umbrella — and actual discoveries of saurian remains; and many a merry meeting at Dr. Buckland's, in which, at intervals of scientific talk, John romped with the youngsters of the family. After a while the Dean took the opportunity of a walk through Oxford to the Clarendon to warn him not to spend too much time on science. It did not pay in the Schools nor in the Church, and he had too many irons in the fire. Drawing, and science, and the prose essays mentioned in the last chapter, and poetry, all these were his by -play. Of the poetry, the Newdigate was but a little part. In ' Friendship's Offering ' this autumn he published ' Remem- brance,' one of many poems to Adele ; ' Christ Church,' of which Mr. Harrison said that the last stanza was unintel- ligible, but he would print it for the people who liked their poetry so ; and the ' Scythian Grave.' In reading Herodotus he had been struck — as who is not? — ^by the romantic pic- turesqueness of the incomparable old chronicler. Several passages of Greek history — the story of the Athenian fugitive from the massacre at Mgina, and the death of Aristodemus at Plataea — offered telling subjects for lyrical verse ; the death of Arion, and the dethronement of Psammenitus were treated, later, at length ; but, above all, the account of the Scythians, with their wild primitive life and manners, fascinated him. Instead of gathering from their history such an idyl as Mr. William Morris would have made, he fixed upon only the most gruesome points — their 70 LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN fierce strupjgle vdth the Persians, cruelty and slavery, burial- rites and skull-goblets — which he set himself to picture with ghastly realism. In these poems there is a strong tinge of the horrible, which, to judge from Mr. Ruskin's expressed opinions on art, we should hardly suspect ever to have been his taste. But during all his boyhood and youth there were moments of weakness when he allowed himself to be carried away by a sort of nightmare, the reaction from healthy delight in natural beauty. In later life he learned to put limits to art, and to refuse the merely horrible as its material — at least, to confine it to necessary revelations of actual suffering. As an undergraduate, however, writing for effect, he gave free rein to the morbid imaginations to which his unhappy affaire de caeur and the mental excitement of the period predisposed him. Mr. Harrison, his literary Mentor, approved these poems, and inserted them in ' Friendship's Offering,'' along with love-songs and other exercises in verse. One had a great success and was freely copied — the sincerest flattery — and the preface to the annual for 1840 publicly thanked the 'gifted writer ' for his ' valuable aid.' At the beginning of 1839 he went into new rooms vacated by Mr. Meux, and set to work finally on ' Salsette and Elephanta.' He ransacked all sources of information, coached himself in Eastern scenery and mythology, threw in the Aristotelian ingredients of terror and pity, and wound up with an appeal to the orthodoxy of the examiners, of whom Keble was the chief, by prophesying the prompt extermina- tion of Brahminism under the teaching of the missionaries. And while he wrote, his parents kept it from him day after day that his lady-love could be his no longer. This third try won the prize. Keble sent for him, to make the usual emendations before the great work could be given to the world with the seal of Oxford upon it. John Ruskin seems to have been somewhat refractory under Keble's hands, though he would let his fellow-students, or his father, or Mr. Harrison, work their will on his MSS. or proofs ; being SIR ROGER NEWDIGATE'S PRIZE 71 always easier to lead than to drive. Somehow he came to terms with the Professor, and then the Dean, taking an unexpected interest, was at pains to see that his printed copy was flawless, and to coach him for the recitation of it at the great day in the Sheldonian (June 12, 1839). And now that friends and strangers, publishers in London and professors in Oxford, concurred in their applause, it surely seemed that he had found his vocation, and was well on the highroad to fame as a poet. CHAPTER IX THE BROKEN CHAIN. (1840-1841.) ' But nevermore the same two sister pearls San down the silken thread to kiss each other On her white neck ; so is it with this rhyme.' Tennyson. THAT 8th of February, 1840, when John Ruskin came of age, it seemed as though all the gifts of fortune had been poured into his lap. What his father's wealth and influence could do for him had been supplemented by a personal charm, which found him friends among the best men of the best ranks. What his mother's care had done in fortifying his health and forming his character, native energy had turned to the best advantage. He had won a reputation already much Avider and more appreciable, as an artist and student of science, and as a writer of prose and verse, than undergraduates are entitled to expect; and, for crowning mercy, his head was not turned. He was reading extremely hard — ' in ' for his degree examination next Easter term. His college tutor hoped he would get a First. From that it was an easy step to Holy Orders, and with his opportunities preferment was certain. On his twenty-first birthday, his father, who had sym- pathized with his admiration for Turner enough to buy two pictures — the ' Richmond Bridge ' and the ' Gosport ' — for their Heme Hill drawing-room, now gave him a picture all to himself for his new rooms in St- Aldate's, — the ' Winchel- THE BROKEN CHAIN 73 sea,' and settled on him a handsome allowance of pocket- money. The first use he made of his wealth was to buy another Turner. In the Easter vacation he met Mr. Griffith, the dealer, at the private view of the old Water-colour Society, and hearing that the ' Harlech Castle ' was for sale, he bought it there and then, with the characteristic disregard for money which has always made the vendors of pictures and books and minerals find him extremely pleasant to deal with. But as his love-affair had shown his mother how little he had taken to heart her chiefest care for him, so this first business transaction was a painful awakening to his father, the canny Scotch merchant, who had heaped up riches hoping that his son would gather them. This ' Harlech Castle ' transaction, however, was not altogether unlucky. It brought him an introduction to the painter, whom he met when he was next in town, at Mr. Grifiith''s house. He knew well enough the popular idea of Turner as a morose and niggardly, inexplicable man. As he had seen faults in Turner''s painting, so he was ready to acknowledge the faults in his character. But while the rest of the world, with a very few exceptions, dwelt upon the faults, Ruskin had penetration to discern the virtues which they hid. Few passages in his autobiography are more striking than the transcript from his journal of the same evening recording his first impression : '"I found in him a somewhat eccentric, keen-mannered, matter-of-fact, English -minded — gentleman; good-natured evidently, bad-tempered evidently, hating humbug of all sorts, shrewd, perhaps a little selfish, highly intellectual, the powers of the mind not brought out with any delight in their manifestation, or intention of display, but flashing out occasionally in a word or a look." Pretty close, that,' he adds later, ' and full, to be set down at the first glimpse, and set down the same evening.' Turner was not a man to make an intimate of, all at once ; the acquaintanceship continued, and it ripened into as close a confidence as the eccentric painter's habits of life permitted. 74 LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN He seems to have been more at home with the father than with the son ; but even when the young man took to writing books about him, he did not, as Carlyle is reported to have done in a parallel case, show his exponent to the door. The occasion of John Ruskin's coming to town this time was not a pleasant one — nothing less than the complete breakdown of his health ; we have heard the reasons why in the last chapter but one. It is true that he was working very hard during this spring ; but hard reading does not of itself kill people, only when it is combined with real and prolonged mental distress, acting upon a sensitive temperament. The case was thought serious; reading was stopped, and the patient was ordered abroad for the winter. From February to May, and such a change ! Then he had seemed so near the top of the hill, and the prospect was opening out before him ; now cloud and storm had come suddenly down ; the path was lost, the future blotted out. Disappointed in love, after four years of hope and effort ; disappointed in ambition, after so nearly gathering the fruits of his labour ; to be laid a^ide, to be sent away out of the battlefield as a wounded man — perhaps to die. For that summer there was no hurry to be gone ; rest was more needed than change, at first. Late in September the same family-party crossed the sea to Calais. How different a voyage for them all from the meny departures of bygone Mays ! Which way should they turn ? Not to Paris, for there was the cause of all these ills ; so they went straight southwards, through Normandy to the Loire, and saw the chateaux and churches from Orleans to Tours, famous for their Renaissance architecture and for the romance of their chivalric history. Amboise especially made a strong im- pression upon the languid and unwilling invalid. It stirred him up to write, in easy verse, the tale of love and death that his own situation too readily suggested. In ' The Broken Chain ' he indulged his gloomy fancy, turning, as it was sure to do, into a morbid nightmare of mysterious horror, not without reminiscence of Coleridge's ' Christabel.' But THE BROKEN CHAIN 75 through it all he preserved, so to speak, his dramatic in- cognito ; his own disappointment and his own anticipated death were the motives of the tale, but treated in such a manner as not to betray his secret, nor even to wound the feelings of the lady who now was beyond appeal from an honourable lover — ^taking his punishment like a man. This poem lasted him, for private writing, all through that journey — a fit emblem of the broken life which it records. A healthier source of distraction was his drawing, in which he had received a fresh impetus from the exhibition of David Roberts' sketches in the East. More delicate than Proufs work, entering into the detail of architectural form more thoroughly, and yet suggesting chiaroscuro with broad washes of quiet tone and touches of light, cleverly introduced — ' that marvellous pop of light across the foreground,' Harding said of the picture of the Great Pyramid — ^these drawmgs were a mean between the limited manner of Prout and the inimitable fulness of Turner. Ruskin took up the fine pencil and the broad brush, and, with that blessed habit of industry which has helped so many a one through times of trial, made sketch after sketch on the half-imperial board, finished just so far as his strength and time allowed, as they passed from the Loire to the mountains of Auvergne, and to the valley of the Rhone, and thence slowly round the Riviera to Pisa and Florence and Rome. He was not in a mood to sympathize readily with the enthusiasms of other people. They expected him to be delighted with the scenery, the buildings, the picture-galleries of Italy, and to forget himself in admiration. He did admire Michelangelo ; and he was interested in the back-streets and slums of the cities. Something piquant was needed to arouse him ; the mild ecstasies of common connoisseurship hardly appeal to a young man between life and death. He met the friends to whom he had brought introductions — Mr. Joseph Severn, who had been Keats' companion, and was afterwards to be the genial Consul at Rome, and the two Messrs. Rich- mond, then studying art in the regular professional way ; one 76 LIFE AND WOKK OF JOHN RUSKIN of them to become a celebrated portrait -painter, and the father of men of mark ; the present R.A., the architect and a Canon of Carlisle. But his views on art were not theirs ; he was already too independent and outspoken in praise of his own heroes, and too sick in mind and body to be patient and to learn. Tliey had not been a month in Rome before he took the fever. As soon as he was recovered, they went still farther South, and loitered for a couple of months in the neighbour- hood of Naples, visiting the various scenes of interest — Sorrento, Amalfi, Salerno. The adventures of this journey are pai-tly told in letters to Mr. Dale, printed in the volume above mentioned, and in the ' Letters addressed to a College Friend' — books which, though not published by himself as part of his works, are interesting as contributions to his biography. In them the reader may trace, more fully than we can here detail, his occupations and travels, and find many a quaint remark and admirable bit of description, anticipating and explaining the wealth of language so soon to be displayed in his writings on art. On the way to Naples he had noted and sketched the winter scene at La Riccia, which he afterwards used for a glowing passage in ' Modern Painters ' ; and he had ventured into a village of brigands to draw such a castle as he had once imagined in his ' Leoni.' From Naples he wrote an account of a landslip near Giagnano, and sent it home to the Ashmolean Society. He seemed better ; they turned home- wards, when suddenly he was seized with all the old symptoms worse than ever. After another month at Rome, they travelled slowly northwards from town to town; spent ten days of May at Venice, and passed through Milan and Turin, and over the Mont Cenis to Geneva. At last he was among the mountains again — the Alps that he loved. It was not only that the air of the Alps braced him, but the spirit of mountain -worship stirred him as nothing else could. At last he seemed himself, after more than a year of intense dej)ression ; and he records that one THE BROKEN CHAIN 77 day, in church at Geneva, he resolved to do something, to he something useful. That he could make such a resolve was a sign of returning health ; but if, as I find, he had just been reading Carlyle's latel3'-published lectures on ' Heroes,' though he did not accept Carlyle's conclusions nor admire his style, might he not, in spite of his criticism, have been spurred the more into energy by that enthusiastic gospel of action ? They travelled home by Basle and Laon ; but London in August, and the premature attempt to be energetic, brought on a recurrence of the symptoms of consumption, as it was called. He wished to try the mountain-cure again, and set out with his friend Richard Fall for a tour in Wales. But his father recalled him to Leamington to try iron and dieting under Dr. Jephson, who, if he was called a quack, was a sensible one, and successful in subduing for several years to come the more serious phases of the disease. The patient was not cured ; he suffered from time to time from his chest, and still more from a weakness of the spine, which during all the period of his early manhood gave him trouble, and finished by bending his tall and lithe figure into something that, were it not for his face, would be deformity. In 1847 he was again at Leamington under Jephson, in consequence of a relapse into the consumptive symptoms, after which we hear no more of it. He outgrew the tendency, as so many do. But nevertheless the alarm had been justifiable, and the malady had left traces which, in one way and another, haunted him ever after ; for one of the worst effects of illness is to be marked down as an invalid. At Leamington, then, in September, 1841, he was finding a new life under the doctor's dieting, and new aims in life, which were eventually to resolder for awhile the broken chain. Among the Scotch friends of the Ruskins there was a family at Perth whose daughter came to visit at Heme Hill, more lovely and more lively than his Spanish Princess had been. The story goes that she challenged the melancholy John, engrossed in his drawing and geology, to write a fairy- tale, as the least likely task for him to fulfil. Upon which 78 LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN he produced, at a couple of sittings, ' The King of the Golden River,' a pretty medley of Grimm's grotesque and Dickens kindliness and the true Ruskinian ecstasy of the Alps. He had come through the valley of the shadow, that terrible experience which so few survive ; fewer still emerge from it without loss of all that makes their life worth the living. But though for awhile he was ' hard bested,' he fought a good fight, and kept his faith in God, and in Nature, and in the human heart. CHAPTER X. THE GRADUATE OF OXFORD. (1841, 1842.) ' Ecougli of Science and of Art ; Close up those barren leaves ; Come forth, and bring with you a heart That watches and receives.' WORDSWOETH. READY for work again, and in reasonable health of mind and body, John Ruskin sat down in his httle study at Heme Hill in November, 1841, with his private tutor, Osborne Gordon. There was eighteen months'' leeway to make up, and the dates of ancient history, the details of schematized Aristotelianism, soon slip out of mind when one is sketching in Italy. But he was more serious now about his work, and aware of his deficiencies. To be useful in the world, is it not necessary first to understand all ^lossible Greek constructions ? So said the voice of Oxford ; but our undergraduate was saved, both now and afterwards, from this vain ambition. ' I think it would hardly be worth your while,' said Gordon, with Delphic double-entendre. He could not now go in for honours, for the lost year had superannuated him. So in April he went up for a pass. In those times, when a pass-man showed unusual powers, they could give him an honorary class : not a high class, because the range of the examination was less than in the honour- school. This candidate wrote a poor Latin prose, it seems ; but his divinity, philosophy, and mathematics were so good that they gave him the best they could — an honorary double 80 LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN fourth — upon which he took his B.A. degree, and could describe himself as ' A Graduate of Oxford.' It is noteworthy that our greatest master of English wrote a poor Latin prose. So much the worse, many will say, for Latin prose. The divinity, by which is meant Bible-know- ledge, was thoroughly learnt from his mother's early lessons. Not long after, he was contemptuously amused at a Scotch reviewer, who did not know what a ' chrysoprase ' was. As the word occurs in the Revelation, he assumed that everyone ought to know it, whether mineralogist or not. And his works teem with Biblical quotations — see their indexes for the catalogue. The mathematics were not elaborate in the old Oxford pass-school ; geometry and the elements of trigo- nometry and conies, thoroughly got by heart, and frequently alluded to in early works, sum up his studies. The philosophy meant the usual logic from Aldrich, with Bacon and Locke, Aristotle and Plato, analyzed into rather thin abstract. But Ruskin, with his thoroughness in all matters of general interest, took in the teaching of his books, and inwardly digested it. ' Modern Painters,' even in its literary style, is imbued with Locke; Aristotle is his leader and antagonist alternately throughout the earlier period of art criticism, and Plato his guide and philosopher ever after. Some Scotch philosophy he had read; Thomas Brown, his parents' old friend ; Dugald Stewart and the rest of the school ; and their teaching comes out in the scheme of thought that underlies his artistic theories. It is worth while dwelling upon his acquirements at this moment — taking stock, as it were — because he was on the brink of his first great work. ' Modern Painters ' has been usually looked uj)on as the sudden outburst of a genius; young, but mature ; complex, but inexplicable ; to be accepted as a gospel or to be decried as the raving of a heretic. But we cannot trace the author's life without seeino- that the book is only one episode in an interesting develop- ment. We have been gradually led up to it, and as gradually we shall be led away from it ; and the better we understand THE GRADUATE OF OXFORD 81 the circumstances of its production, the better we shall be able to appreciate it, to weigh it, and to keep what is perma- nent in it. All this religious and useful learning was very lightly carried by our Oxford graduate. He could now take no high academic position, and the continued weakness of his health kept him from taking steps to enter the Church ; and his real interest in art was not crowded out even by the last studies for his examination. While he was working with Gordon, in the autumn of 1841, he was also taking lessons from J. D. Harding ; and the famous study of ivy, his first naturalistip sketching, to which we must revert, — this must have been done a week or two before going up for his examination. The lessons from Harding were a useful counter-stroke to the excessive and exaggerated Tumerism in which he had been indulging through his illness. The drawings of Amboise, the coast of Genoa, and the Glacier des Bois, though pub- lished later, were made before he had exchanged fancy for fact ; and they bear, on the face of them, the obvious marks of an unhealthy state of mind. Harding, whose robust common-sense and breezy mannerism endeared him to the British amateur of his generation, was just the man to correct any morbid tendency. He had religious views in sympathy with his pupil, and he soon inoculated Ruskin with his contempt for the minor Dutch school — those bituminous landscapes, so unlike the sparkling freshness that Harding''s own water-colour illustrated, and those vulgar tavern scenes, painted, he declared, by sots who disgraced art alike in their works and in their lives. Until this epoch, John Ruskin had found much that interested him in the Dutch and Flemish painters of the seventeenth century. He had classed them all together as the school of which Rubens, Vandyck, and Rembrandt were the chief masters, and those as names to rank with Raphael and Michelangelo and Velasquez. He was a humorist, not without boyish delight in a good Sam-Wellerism, and so could be amused with the ' drolls,' until Harding appealed to 6 82 LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN his religion and morality against them. He was a chiar- oscm-ist, and not natm-ally offended by their violent light and shade, until George Richmond showed him the more excel- lent way in coloiu-, the glow of Venice, first hinting it at Rome in 1840, and then proving it in London in the spring of 1842, from Samuel Rogers' treasui-es, of which the chief (now in the National Gallery) was the ' Christ appearing to the Magdalen.' Much as the author of ' Modern Painters ' owed to these friends and teachers, and to the advantages of his varied training, he would never have wiitten his great work without a farther inspiration. Harding's especial forte was his method of drawing trees. He looked at Nature with an eye which, for his period, was singularly fresh and unprejudiced ; he had a strong feeling for truth of structure as well as for picturesque effect, and he taught his pupils to observe as well as to draw. But in his own practice he rested too much on having observed ; formed a style, and copied himself if he did not copy the old masters. Hence he held to rules of composition and conscious graces of arrangement ; and while he taught naturalism in study, he followed it up with teaching artifice in practice. Turner, who was not a drawing-master, lay under no necessity to formulate his principles and stick to them. On the contrary, his style developed like a kaleidoscope, ever changing into something more rich and strange. He had been in Switzerland and on the Rhine in 1841, ' painting his impressions,' making water-colour notes from memory of effects that had struck him. From one of these, ' Spliigen,' he had made a finished picture, and now wished to get commissions for more of the same class. Ruskin was greatly interested in this series, because they were not landscapes of the ordinary type, scenes from Natiu:? squeezed into the mould of recognised artistic composition, nor, on the other hand, mere photographic transcripts ; but dreams, as it were, of the mountains and sunsets, in which Turner's wealth of detail was suggested, and his intuitive knowledge of form THE GRADUATE OF OXFORD 83 expressed, together with the unity which comes of the faithful record of a single impression. Nothing had been done like them before, in landscape. They showed that an artistic result might be obtained without the use of the ordinary tricks and professional rules ; that there was a sort of com- position possible, of which the usual hackneyed arrangements were merely frigid and vapid imitations ; and that this higher kind of art was only to be learnt by long watching of Nature and sincere rendering of her motives, her supreme moments, the spirit of her scenes. The lesson was soon enforced upon his mind by example. One day, while taking his student's constitutional, he noticed a tree-stem with ivy upon it, which seemed not ungraceful, and invited a sketch. As he drew he fell into the spirit of its natural arrangement, and soon perceived how much finer it was as a piece of design than any conventional rearrange- ment would be. Harding had tried to show him how to generalize foliage; but in this example he saw that not generalization was needed to get its beauty, but truth. If he could express his sense of the charm of the natural arrangement, what use in substituting an artificial com- position ? In that discovery lay the germ of his whole theory of art, the gist of his mission. Understanding the importance of it, we shall understand his subsequent writing, the grounds of his criticism and the text of his art-teaching. If it can be summed in a word, the word is ' sincerity.' Be sincere with Nature, and take her as she is ; neither casually glancing at her ' effects ' nor dully labouring at her parts, with the in- tention of improving and blending them into something better, but taking her all in all. On the other hand, be sincere with yourself, knowing what you truly admire, and painting that, refusing the hypocrisy of any ' grand style ' or ' high art,' just as much as you refuse to pander to vulgar tastes. And then vital art is produced, and, if the workman be a man of great powers, great art. All this followed from the ivy sketch on Tulse Hill in May, 6—2 84 LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN EUSKIN 1842. It did not follow all at once ; repeated experiment was needed to give the grounds from which the induction was drawn. At Fontainebleau soon after, under much the same circumstances, a study of an aspen -tree, idly begun, but carried out with interest and patience, confirmed the principle. At Geneva, once more in the church where he had formed such resolutions the year before, the desire came over him with renewed force ; now not only to be definitely employed, but to be employed in the service of a definite mission, which, be it observed, was, in art, exactly what Carlyle had preached in every other sphere of life in that book of ' Heroes :' the gospel of sincerity ; the reference of greatness in any form to honesty of purpose as the imderlying motive of a j)erspicuous intellect and a resolute will — these last being necessary conditions of success, but the sincerity being the chief thing needful. The design took shape. At Chamouni he studied plants and rocks and clouds, not as an artist to make pictures out of them, nor as a scientist to class them and analyze them; but to learn their aspects and enter into the spirit of their growth and structure. And though on his way home through Switzerland and down the Rhine he made a few drawings in his old style for admiring friends, they were the last of the kind that he attempted. Thenceforward his path was marked out; he had found a new vocation. He was not to be a poet, — that was too definitely bound up with the past which he wanted to forget, and with conventionalities which he wished to shake off; not to be an artist, struggling with the rest to please a public which he felt himself called upon to teach ; not a man of science, for his botany and geology were to be the means, and not the ends, of his teaching ; but the mission was laid upon him to tell the world that Art, no less than other spheres of life, had its Heroes ; that the mainspring of their energy was Sincerity, and the burden of their utterance, Truth. BOOK II. THE ART CRITIC. (1 842-1 RCn.) ' The almost unparalleled example of a man winning for liimaelt the nnanimons planrlita of hia generation and time, and then cnating tliem away like dnat, that he may build his monument — mre perennuis.' — RusMn on Turner, 1844. CHAPTER I. 'TURNER AND THE ANCIENTS.' (1842-1844.) Aristotle : Eth., i. 4. THE neighbour, or the Oxonian friend, who climbed the steps of the Heme Hill house and called upon Mrs. Rusldn, in the autumn and winter of 1842, would learn that Mr. John was hard at work in his own study over- head. Those were its windows, on the second-floor, looking out upon the front -garden; the big dormer-window above was his bedroom, from which he had his grand view of low- land, and far horizon, and unconfined sky, comparatively clear of London smoke. In the study itself, screened from the road by russet foliage and thick evergreens, great things were going on. But Mr. John could be interrupted, would come running lightly downstairs, with both hands out to greet the visitor ; would show the pictures, eagerly demonstrating the beauties of the last new Turners, ' Ehrenbreitstein ' and ' Lucerne,' just acquired, and anticipating the sunset glories and mountain gloom of the ' Goldau ^ and ' Dazio Grande,' which the great artist was ' realizing' for him from sketches he had chosen at Queen Anne Street. He was very busy — but never too busy to see his friends — writing a book. And, the visitor gone, he would run up to his room and his writing, sure of the thread of his ideas and the flow of his language, with none of that misery and despair of soul which an interruption brings to many another author. In the 88 LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN afternoon his careful mother would turn him out for a tramp round the Norwood lanes ; he might look in at the Poussins and Claudes of the Dulwich Gallery, or, for a longer excursion, go over to Mr. Windus, and his roomful of Turner drawings, or sit to Mr. George Richmond for the portrait at full length with desk and portfolio, and Mont Blanc in the background. Dinner over, another hour or two's writing, and early to bed, after finishing his chapter with a flourish of eloquence, to be read next morning at breakfast to father and mother and Mary. The vivid descriptions of scenes yet fi-esh in their memory, or of pictures they treasured, the ' thoughts ' as they used to be called, allusions to sincere beliefs and cherished hopes, never failed to win the praise that pleased the young writer most, in happy tears of mirestrained emotion. These old-fashioned folk had not learnt the trick of nil adniirari. Quite honestly they would say, with the German musician, ' When I hear good music, then must I always weep.' We can look into the little study, and see what this writing was that went on so busily and steadily. It was the long- meditated defence of Turner, provoked by Blackwood's Magazme six years before, encouraged by Carlyle's ' Heroes,' and necessitated by the silence, on this topic, of the more enlightened leaders of thought in an age of cut -and -dry connoisseurship and critical cant. True, there were teachers, like Prout and Harding, right, but narrow in range. The moment any author ventured upon the subject of ' high art,' his principles of beauty and theories of sublimity stood in the way of candour and common-sense. But 'Kata Phusin' had been to college, and read his ' Ethics,' and he had marked such a passage as this : ' We must not forget the difference between reasoning from principles and reasoning to principles. Plato was quite right in pointing this out, and in saying that it is as important in philosophy as in i-unning races to know where your starting- point is to be. Now you and I,' quoth Aristotle, ' can reason only upon what we know — not on what we cniglit to know, or might be supposed to know, but upon what each of us has 'TURNER AND THE ANCIENTS' 89 ascertained to be matter of fact. Fact, then — ^the particular fact — is our starting-point. Take care of the facts,' he says, to put him into plain English, ' and the principles will take care of themselves.' Which Aristotle did, and in the sphere of Ethics found that the observed facts of conscience and conduct were not truly explained by the old moral philosophy of the Sophists and the Academy. Just in the same way oiu* young Aristotelian, by beginning with the observed facts of nature — truths, he called them — and the practice (not the precept) of great artists, superseded the eighteenth-century Academic art-theories, and created a perfectly new school of criticism, which, however erring or incomplete in details or misapplied in corollaries, did for English art what Aristotle did for Greek Ethics. He brought the whole subject to the bar of common-sense and common understanding. He took it out of the hands of adepts and initiated jargoners, and made it public property, the right and the responsibility of all. Though John Ruskin had the honour of doing this work in the world of art, others were doing similar work in other spheres. Most of our soundest thinkers of the nineteenth century were brought up on the ' Ethics,' and learnt to take fact for their starting -point. The physical - science school, whether classically trained or not, was working in the same cause — the substitution of obsei-vation and experiment for generalization and a priori theories. And it is curious, as showing how accurately the young Ruskin was representative of the spirit of his age, that at the very moment when he was propounding his revolutionary art-philosophy, John Stuart Mill was writing that 'Logic' which was to convert the old hocus-pocus of Scholasticism into the method of modem scientifSc inquiry. In his later works Mr. Ruskin appeared as somewhat of a reactionary — laudator tempm-is acti — opponent of modernism ; but, like many men of note, he began as a Progressist, the preacher of hope, the darter of new lights, the destroyer of pythons, of tyrannic superstitions quibits lumen ademptum. 90 LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN His youth was an epoch of intellectual reform, one of many such epochs, when the house of life was being set in order for another period''s work and wage-earning — no new thing, but necessary. There had been such a clearance begun 170 years before by John Locke, when he took fact for his staiting-point in a revolt fi-om the tyrmmy of philosophical dogma. And it was not at all strange that our young author should model his manifesto upon so renowned a precedent ; that his style in the opening chapters of his work, his arrangement in divisions and subdivisions, even his marginal summaries, should recall the ' Essay on the Human Undeistanding,' from which the scheme and system of his thought were derived. He began, like Locke, by showing that public opinion and the dicta of tradition were no valid authorities. If painting be an expression of the human mind — as, in anothei- way, language is — and if the contents of tlie mind are Ideas, then, he said, the best painting is that which contains the greatest number of the greatest Ideas. Locke had shown that all Ideas are derived from Sensation, from Reflection, and from the combination of both ; the Ideas which painting can express must be similai'ly derived. And since the mind which we share with the Deity is nobler than the senses which we share Avith beasts, it was logical to conclude that, in propor- tion as the Ideas expressed in painting ai-e intellectual and moral, the ai't that expresses them is fuller and highei\ Ideas of Imitation, involving only the illusion of the senses, are the lowest of all ; those of Power, artistic execution, are a step higher, but still so much in the realm of Sensation as to be hai-dly matter of argument ; and therefore the Ideas of Ti'uth, of Beauty, and of Relation (or the imaginative present- ment of poetical thought in the language of painting), ai-e the three chief topics of his inquiry. For the present he will discuss Truth, the more reeidily as it was the general complaint that Turner was untrue to Nature. What is Truth ? Aristotle has stated plainly enough, ' Particular fact is our "TURNER AND THE ANCIENTS' 91 starting-point.' But, unfortunately, Sir Joshua Reynolds, our old friend Northcote's master, the greatest English artist and art -theorist, had taught a modified Academic doctrine ol Ideas, not Lockeian, but Platonic ; and our young philosopher lost liis way for the time in trying to reconcile one favourite authority with another. But he was able to show that old- fashioned generalization was not Truth, and, quitting the formal doctrinaire tone of his opening chapters, plunged eagerly into the illustration of his theme, namely, that Truth in landscape art was the expression of natural law by exhibit- ing such facts as tell the story of the scene. For example, Canaletto, with all his wonderful mechanism, when he painted Venice, lost the fulness of detail and glory of light and colour ; Prout secured only the picturesqueness with his ' five strokes of a reed pen ' ; Stanfield only the detail ; while Turner gave the full character of the place in its detail, colour, light, mystery, and poetical effect. In the analysis of natural fact, as shown in painting, there was full scope for the power of descriptive writing which, as we have seen, was John Ruskin's peculiar gift and study. When he came to compare Gaspar Poussin's picture of La Riccia with the real scene as he had witnessed it, he had the description ready to hand in his journal of two years before ; and a careful drawing on the spot, not indeed realizing the colour, which he could not then attempt, but recording ' the noonday sun slanting down the rocky slopes of La Riccia, and its masses of entangled and tall foliage,' with their autumnal tints suggested so far as his water-colour wash on gray paper allowed. A still happier adaptation of accumulated material was his word-picture of a night on the Rigi, with all its wonderful successive effects of gathering thunder, sunset in tempest, serene starlight, and the magic glories of Alpine sunrise, taken from the true story of his visit there, eight years before, aa described in a rhyming letter to Richard Fall, and ingeniously embroidered with a running commentary on a series of draw- ings by Turner. 92 LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN Then, passing to the forms of mountains, he warmed with his old enthusiasm. Years of study and travel had taught him to combine scientific geology with the mystery and poetry of the Alps. Byron and Shelley had touched the poetry of them ; a crowd of earnest invastigators were work- ing at geology ; but none beside this youth of twenty-three had made them the topic of literatui-e so lofty in aim and so masterly in execution. And as the year ran out, he was ending his work, happy in the applause of his Uttle domestic circle, and conscious that he was preaching the crusade of Sincerity, the cause of justice for the greatest landscape artist of any age, and justice, at the hands of a heedless public, for the glorious works of the supreme Artist of the universe. Let our yoimg paintere, he concluded, go humbly to Nature, ' rejecting nothing, selecting nothing, and scorning nothing,' in spite of Academic theorists, and in time we should have a school of landscape worthy of the inspiration they would find. There was his book ; the title of it, ' Turner and the Ancients.' Before publishing, to get more experienced criticism than that of the breakfast-table, he submitted it to his friend, Mr. W. H. Harrison. The title, it seemed, was not explicit enough, and after debate they substituted ' Modem Painters : their Superiority in the Art of Landscape Painting to all the Ancient Masters proved by Examples of the True, the Beautiful, and the Intellectual, from the Works of Modem Artists, especially from those of J. M. W. Tiu-ner, Esq., R.A.' And as the severe tone of many remarks was felt to be hardly supported by the age and standing of so young an author, he was content to sign himself ' A Graduate of Oxford.' It is odd how easily men of note become the heroes of myths. The too common discouragement of young geniuses, the old story of the rejected manuscript, disdainful publishers, and hope defended, experienced by so many as to be tjrpical of the embryo stage of a literary reputation, ail this has been tacked on to Mr. Ruskin's supposed first start. Anecdotes 'TURNER AND THE ANCIENTS' 93 are told of his father hawking the MS. from office to office until it found acceptance with Messrs. Smith and Elder. Absurd, since young Ruskin had been doing business for seven years past with that firm ; he was perfectly well known to them as one of the most ' rising ' youths of the time, and their own literary editor, Mr. Harrison, was his private Mentor, who revised his proofs and inserted the punctuation, which he usually indicated only by dashes. And yet there is the half-truth in it that his business dealings with the pub- lishers were generally conducted through his father, who made very fair terms for him, as things went then. In May, 1843, ' Modern Painters,' vol. i., was published, and it was soon the talk of the art-world. It was meant to be audacious, and naturally created a storm. The free criticisms of public favourites made an impression, not because they were put into strong language, for the tone of the press was stronger then than it is now, as a whole, but because they were backed up by illustration and argument. It was evident that the author knew something of his subject, even if he were all wrong in his conclusions. He could not be neglected, though he might be protested against, decried, controverted. Artists especially, who do not usually see their works as others see them, and are not accustomed to think of themselves and their school as mere dots and spangles in the perspective of history, could not be entirely content to be classed as Turner's satellites. Even the gentle Prout was indignant, not so much at the ' five strokes of a reed pen,' but at the want of reverence with which his masters and friends were treated. Harding thought that his teaching ought to have been more fully acknowledged. Turner was embarrassed at the greatness thrust upon him. And while the book contained something that promised to suit every kind of reader, everyone found something to shock him. Critics were scandalized at the depreciation of Claude ; the religious were outraged at the comparison of Turner, in a passage omitted from later editions, to the Angel of the Sun, in the Apocalypsa 94 LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN But tlie descriptive passages were such as had never appealed before in prose ; and the obvious usefulness of the anal3'ses of natural form and effect made many an aitist read on, while he shook his head. Some readily owned their obligation to the new teachei-. Holland, for one, Avrote to Hairison that he meant to paint the better for the snubbing he had got. Of professed connoisseurs, such as reviewed the book adversely in Blackwood and the Aiheiunum, not one undertook to refute it seriously. They merely attacked a detail here and thei-e, which the author discussed in two or thiee replies, with a patience that showed how confident he was in his position. He had the good word of some of the best judges of hterature. 'Modem Painters' lay on Rogei-s' table; and Tennyson, who a few years before had beaten young Ruskin out of the field of poetry, was so taken with it that he wrote to his publishei- to borrow it for him, ' as he longed very much to see it,' but could not afltbrd to buy it. Sir Henry Taylor wrote to Mr. Aubrey de Vere, the poet, begging him to read ' a book which seems to me to be far more deeply founded in its criticism of ai-t than any other that I have niet with • . . written with great power and eloquence, and a spirit of the most diligent investigation. ... I am told that the author's name is Ruskin, and that he was considered at college as an odd sort of man who would never do anything.'* When the secret of the ' Oxford Graduate ' leaked out, as it did very soon, thi-ough the proud fathei-, Mr. John was lionized. During the winter of 1843 he met celebrities at fashionable dinner-tables ; and now that his parents were established in their grander house on Denmark Hill, they could duly return the hospitalities of the great world. It was one very satisfactory result of the success that the father was more or less converted to Turnerism, and lined his walls with Turner drawings, which became the great attraction of the house, far outshining its seven acres of garden and orchard and shrubbery, and the ampler air of cultured ease. * From a letter kindly commuDicated by Mr. de Vere, 'TURNER AND THE ANCIENTS' 95 For a gift to his sou he bought ' The Slave Ship,' one of Turner's latest and most disputed works ; and he was all eagerness to see the next volume in preparation. It was intended to carry on the discussion of ' Truth,' with further illustrations of mountain-form, trees and skies. And so in May, 1844, they all went away again, that the artist- author might prepare drawings for his plates. He was going to begin with the geology and botany of Chamouui, and work through the Alps, eastward. At Chamouni they had the good fortune to meet with Joseph Coutet, a superannuated guide, whom they engaged to accompany the eager but inexperienced mountaineer. Coutet was one of those men of natural ability and kindli- ness whose friendship is worth more than much intercourse with worldly celebrities, and for many years afterwards Mr. Ruskin had the advantage of his care — of something more than mere attendance. At any rate, under such guidance, he could climb where he pleased, free from the feeling that people at home were anxious about him. He was not imadventurous in his scramblings, but with no ambition to get to the top of everything. He wanted to observe the aspects of mountain-form ; and his careful out- lines, slightly coloured, as his manner then was, and never aiming at picturesque treatment, record the structure of the rocks and the state of the snow with more than photographic accuracy. A photograph often confuses the eye with un- necessary detail ; these drawings seized the leading lines, the important features, the interesting points. For example, in his Matterhom (a drawing of 1849), as Mr. Whymper remarks in ' Scrambles among the Alps,' there are particulars noted which the mere sketcher neglects, but the climber finds out, on closer intercourse, to be the essential facts of the mountain's anatomy. All this is not picture-making, but it is a very valuable contribution and preliminary to criticism. From Chamouni this year they went to Simplon, and met J. D. Forbes, the geologist, whose * viscous theory ' of glaciers Mr. Ruskin adopted and defended with warmth later on, and 96 LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN to the Beir Alp, long before it had been made a place of popular resort by Professor TyndalPs notice. The ' Panorama of the Simplon from the Bell' Alp ' is still to be found in the St. George's (Ruskin) Museum at Sheffield, as a record of the draughtsmanship in this period. Thence to Zermatt with Osborne Gordon ; Zermatt, too, unknown to the fashionable tourist, and innocent of hotel luxuries. It is curious that, at firsb sight, he did not care for the Matterhorn. It was entirely unlike his ideal of mountains. It was not at all like Cumber- land. But in a very few years he had come to love the Alps for their own sake, and we find him regretting at Ambleside the colour and light of Switzerland, the mountain glory which our humbler scenery cannot match. And yet he has come back to it for a home, not ill-content. After another visit to Chamouni, he crossed Frtoce to Paris, where something awaited him that upset all his plans, and tm-ned his energies into au unexpected channel. CHAPTER II. CHRISTIAN ART. (1845-1847.) ' They might chirp and chatter, come aud go For pleasure or profit, her men alive — My business was hardly with them, I trow, But with empty cells of the human hive ; With the ehapter-room, the cloister-porch, The church's apsis, aisle or nave, Its crypt, one fingers along with a torch, Its face, set full for the sun to shave.' Old Pictures in Florence. AT Paris, on the way home in 1844, Mr. Ruskin had spent some days in studying Titian and Bellini and Pei-ugino. They were not new to him ; but now that he was an art-critic, it behoved him to improve his acquaint- ance with the old masters. ' To admire the works of Pietro Perugino ' was one thing ; but to understand them was another, a thing which was hardly attempted by ' the Land- scape Artists of England ' to whom the author of ' Modern Painters ' had so far dedicated his services. He had been extolling modernism, and depreciating ' the Ancients '' because they could not draw rocks and clouds and trees ; and he was fresh from his scientific sketching in the happy hunting- ground of the modern world. A few days in the Louvre made him the devotee of ancient art, and taught him to lay aside his geology for history. In one way the development was easy. The patient attempt to copy mountain-form had made him sensitive to 7 yS LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN liai-mony of line ; and in the great composei-s of Florence and Venice he found a quahty of abstract design which tallied with his experience of what was beautiful in Nature. Aiguilles and glaciers, di-awn as he drew them, and the figure-subjects of severe Italian draughtsmen, are beautiful by the same laws of composition, however different the associations they suggest. ^Vith the general public, and with many artists, associations easily outweigh abstractions ; but this was an analytic mind, bent, then, upon the problems of form, and ready to acknowledge them no less in Madonnas than in mountains. But he had been learning these laws of beauty from Tiu-ner and from the Alps ; how did the ancients come by them ? They could be found only in a thorough study of their lives and times, to begin with, to which he devoted his winter, with Rio and Lord Lindsay and Mrs. Jameson for his authori- ties. He found that his foes, Gaspar Poussin and Canaletto, and the Dutch landscapists, were not the real old masters; that there had been a great age of art before the era of Vandyck and Rubens, — even before Michelangelo and Raphael ; and that, towards setting up as a critic of the present, he must understand the past out of which it had grown. So he determined to go to Florence and Venice, and to study the religious painters at first hand. Mountain-study and Turner were not to be dropped. For example, to explain the obvious and notorious licences which Turner took with topography, it was necessary to see in what these licences consisted. Of the later Swiss drawings, one of the wildest and most impressive was the ' St. Gothai'd ' ; Ruskin wanted to find Turner's point of view, and to see what alterations he had made. He told Turner so, and the artist, who knew that his picture had been realized from a very slight sketch, was naturally rather opposed to this test, as being, from his point of view, merely a waste of time and trouble. He tried to persuade the Raskins that the Swiss Sonderbund war, then going on, made travelling unsafe, and so forth. But in vain. Mr. Jolm was allowed to go, for the CHRISTIAN ART 99 first time, alone, without his parents, taking only a servant, and meeting the trustworthy Coutet at Geneva. With seven months at his own disposal, he did a vast amount of work, especially in drawing. The studies of mountain-form and Italian design, in the year before, had given him a greater interest in the ' Liber Studiorum,' Turners early book of Essays in Composition. He found there that use of the pure line, about which he has since said so much; together with a thoughtfully devised scheme of light-and-shade in mezzotint ; devoted to the treatment of landscape in the same spirit as that in which the Italian masters treated figure-subjects in their pen-and-bistre studies. And just as he had imitated the Rogers vignettes in his boyhood, now in his youth he tried to emulate the fine abstract flow and searching expressiveness of the etched line, and the studied breadth of shade, by using the quill-pen with washes of monochrome, or sometimes with subdued colom*. This dwelling upon outline as not only representative, but decorative in itself, has sometimes led Mr. Ruskin into over- emphasis and a mannered grace ; but the value of his pen- and-wash style has never been fairly tested in landscape. His best drawings are known to very few ; some of his finest work was thrown away on subjects which were never com- pleted, or were ruined by rough experiments when he had tired of them ; and no other man with his feeling and know- ledge has attempted to work in the same method. At first he kept pretty closely to monochrome. His object was form, and his special talent was for draughtsmanship rather than for colour, which developed quite late in his life. But it was this winter's study of the ' Liber Studiorum ' that started him on his own characteristic course ; and while we have no pen-and-wash work of his before 1845 (except a few experiments after Prout), we find him now using the pen continually during the ' Modern Painters ' period. On reaching the Lake of Geneva he wrote, or sketched, one of his best-known pieces of verse, ' Mont Blanc Revisited,' and a few other poems followed, the last of the long serial 100 LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN which had once been his chief interest and aim in life. With this lonely journey there came new and deeper feelings ; with his increased literary power, fresh resources of diction ; and he was never so near being a poet as when he gave up wi'iting verse. Too condensed to be easily understood, too solemn in their movement to be trippingly read, the lines on ' The Arve at Cluse,' on ' Mont Blanc,' and ' The Glacier,' should not be passed over as merely rhetorical. And the reflections on the loungers at Conflans are full of significance of the spirit in which he was gradually approaching the great problems of his life, to pass through art into the earnest studj' of human conduct and its final cause. 'Why Stand ye herb all the Day Idle?' * Have you iu heaven no hope — on earth no cure — No foe iu hell, ye things of stye and stall, That congregate like tlies, and make the air Eauk with your fevered sloth ; that hourly call The sun, which should your servant be, to bear Dread witness on you, with uncounted wane And unregarded rays, from peak to peak Of fiery-gnomoued mountain moved in vain ? Behold, the very shadows that 3'e seek For slumber, write along the wasted wall Your condemnation. They forget not, they, Their ordered functions ; and determined fall , Nor useless perish. But you count your day By sins, and write your difference from clay In bonds you break, and laws you disobey. * God ! who has given the rocks their fortitude, Their sap unto the forests, and their food And vigour to the busy tenantry Of happy soulless things that wait on Thee, Hast Thou no blessing where Thou gav'st Thy blooJ { Wilt Thou not make Thy fair creation whole ? Behold and visit this' Thy vine for good — Breathe in this human dust its living soul.' He was still deeply religious — more deeply so than before, and found the echo of his own thoughts in George Herbert, with whom he 'communed in spirit^ while he travelled CHRISTIAN ART 101 through the Alps. But the forms of outward religion were losing their hold over him in proportion as his inward religion became more real and intense. It was only a few days after writing these lines that he ' broke the Sabbath ' for the first time in his life, by climbing a hill after church. That was the first shot fired in a war, in one of the strangest and saddest wars between conscience and reason that biography records ; strange because the opposing forces were so nearly matched, and sad because the struggle lasted until their field of battle was desolated before either won a victory. Thirty years later, the cleverest of his Oxford hearers* drew his portrait under the name of the man whose sacred verse was his guide and mainstay in this youthful pilgrim's progress, and the words put into his mouth summed up with merciless insight the issue of those conflicts. ' " For I ! Whom am I that speak to you ? Am I a believer ? No. I am a doubter too. Once I could pray every morning, and go forth to my day's labour stayed and comforted. But now I can pray no longer. You have taken my God away from me, and I know not where you have laid Him. My only consolation in my misery is that I am inconsolable for His loss. Yes," cried Mr. Herbert, his voice rising in a kind of threatening wail, " though you have made me miserable, I am not yet content with my misery. And though I too have said in my heart that there is no God, and that there is no more profit in wisdom than in folly, yet there is one folly that I will not give tongue to. I will not say Peace, peace, when there is no peace." ' Later on we have to tell how he dwelt in that Doubting Castle, and how he escaped.- But the pilgrim had not yet met Giant Despair ; and his progress was very pleasant in that spring of 1845, the year of fine weather, as he drove round the Riviera, and the cities of Tuscany opened out their treasures to him. There was Lucca, with San Frediano and the glories of twelfth-century architecture ; Fra Bartolommeo's picture of the Madonna with the Magdalen and St. Catherine * W. H. Mallock, ' The New Eepublic' 102 LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN of Siena, his initiation into the significance of early religious painting ; and, taking hold of his imagination, in hei- marble sleep, more powerfully than any flesh and blood, the dead lady of St. Mai-tin's Church, Ilaria di Caretto. There was Pisa, with the jewel shrine of Sta. Maria della Spina, then undestroyed; the excitement of street sketching among a sympathetic crowd of fraternizing Italians ; the Abbe Rosini, Professor of Fine Arts, whom he made friends with, endured as lecturer, and persuaded into scaffold-building in the Campo Santo for study of the frescoes. And there was Florence, with Giotto's campanile, where the young Protestant frequented monasteries, made hay with monks, sketched with his new-found friends Rudolf Durheim of Berne and Dieudonne the Fi-ench purist ; and spent long days copying Angelico and annotating Ghirlandajo, fevered with the sun of Italy at its strongest, and with the rapture of discovery, ' which turns the unaccustomed head like Chianti wine.' Coutet got him away, at last, to the Aljis ; worn out and in despondent reaction after all this excitement. He spent a month at Macugnaga, reading Shakespeai-e and trying to draw boulders ; drifting gradually back into strength enough to attack the next piece of work, the study of Turner sites on the St. Gothard, where he made the drawings afberwai'ds engraved in ' Modern Painters.' In August, J. D. Harding was going to Venice, and arranged for a meeting at Baveno, on the Lago Maggiore. Gossip had credited him with a share in ' Modern Painters' ; now the tables were turned, and Griffith the j5icture-dealer wanted to know if it was true that John Ruskin had helped Harding with his new book, just out. They sketched together, Ruskin perhaps emulating his friend's slap-dash style in the 'Sunset' i-eproduced in his ' Poems,' and illustrating his own in the ' Water-mill.' And so they drove together to Verona and thence to Venice. At Venice they stayed in Danieli's Hotel, on the Riva dei Schiavoni, and began by studying picturesque canal-life. Mr. Boxali, R.A., and Mrs. Jameson, the historian of Sacred and Legendary Art, were their companions. Another old CHRISTIAN ART 103 friend, Joseph Severn, had in 1843 gained one of the prizes at the Westminster Hall Cartoons Competition ; and a letter from Mr. Ruskin, referring to the work there, shows how he still pondered on the subject that had been haunting him in the Alps. ' With your hopes for the elevation of English art by means of fresco I cannot sympathize. ... It is not the niatei'ial nor the space that can give us thoughts, passions, or power. I see on our Academy walls nothing but what is ignoble in small pictures, and would be disgusting in large ones. ... It is not the love of fresco that we want ; it is the love of God and His creatures; it is humility, and charity, and self-denial, and fasting, and prayer; it is a total change of character. We want more faith and less reasoning, less strength and more trust. You want neither walls, nor plaster, nor colours — fa ne fait rien a Taffaire ; it is Giotto, and Ghirlandajo, and Angelico that you want, and that you will and must want until this disgusting nineteenth century has — I can't say breathed, but steamed its last.' So early he had taken up and wrapped round him the mantle of Cassandra. But he was suddenly to find the sincerity of Ghirlandajo and the religious significance of Angelico united with the matured power of art. Without knowing what they were to meet, Harding and he found themselves one day in the Scuola di S. Rocco, and face to face with Tintoret. It was the fashion before Mr. Ruskin's time, and it has been the fashion since, to undervalue Tintoret. He is not pious enough for the purists, nor decorative enough for the Pre-Raphaelites. The ruin or the restoration of almost all his pictures makes it impossible for the ordinary amateur to judge them ; they need reconstruction in the mind's eye, and that is a dangerous process. Mr. Ruskin himself, as he grew older, found more interest in the playful industry of Carpaccio than in the laborious games, the stupendous Titan-feats of Tintoret. But at this moment, solemnized before the problems of life, he found these problems hinted in the mystic symbolism of the school of S. Rocco ; with eyes now 104 LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN opened to pre-Reformation Christianity, he found its com- pleted outcome in Tintoret'S interpretation of the life of Christ and the types of the Old Testament ; fresh from the stormy grandeur of the St. Gothard, he found the lurid skies and looming giants of the Visitation, or the Baptism, or the Crucifixion, re-echoing the subjects of Turner as ' deep answering to deep ' ; and, with Harding of the Broad Brush, he recognised the mastery of landscape execution in the Flight into Eg)fpt, and the St. Mary in the Desert. He devoted the rest of his time chiefly to cataloguing and copying Tintoret. The catalogue appeared in ' Stones of Venice,' which was suggested by this visit, and begiui by ome sketches of ai'chitectural detail, and the acquisition of dagueiTeotypes — a new invention which delighted Mr. Ruskin immensely, as it had delighted Turner, with trustworthy records of detail which sometimes eluded even his industry and accuracy. At last his friends were gone ; and, left alone, he overworked himself, as usual, before leaving A'enice with crammed port- folios and closely -written note-books. At Padua he was stopped by a fever ; all through France he was pursued by what, from his account, appears to have been some form of diphtheria, averted only, as he believed, in direct answer to eai-nest pra}'er. At Lost his eventful pilgi'image was ended, and he was restored to his home and his parents. It was not long before he was at work again in his new study, looking out upon the quiet meadow and grazing cows of Denmark Hill, and rapidly throwing into form the fresh impressions of the summer. Still thoroughly Aristotelian and Lockeian in method, he found no difficulty in making his philosophy the vehicle of religious thought. He was strongly influenced by the sermons of Canon Melvill — the same preacher whom Browning in his youth admired — a good orator and sound analytic expositor, though not a great or independent thinker. Osborne Gordon had recommended him to read Hooker, and he caught the tone and style of the ' Ecclesi- astical Polity'' only too readily, so that much of his work of CHRISTIAN ART 105 that winter, the more philosophical part of vol. ii., was damaged by inversions, and Elizabethan quaintness as of ruff and train, long epexegetical sentences, and far-sought pomposity of diction. It was only when he had waded through the philosophic chaos, which he set himself to survey, that he could lay aside his borrowed stilts, and stand on his own feet, in the Tintoret descriptions — rather stiif, yet, from foregone efforts. But, after all, who writes philosophy in graceful English ? This volume, like the first, was written in the winter, in one long spell of hard work, broken only by a visit to Oxford in January as the guest of Dr. Greswell, Head of Worcester, at a conference for the promotion of art. Smith and Elder accepted the book on Mr. J. J. Ruskin's terms (so his wife wrote), for they had already reported it as called for by the public. The first volume had been reprinted once, and was going into a third edition. ^Vhen his book came out he was away again in Italy, trying to show his father all that he had seen in the Campo Santo and Giotto's Tower, and to explain 'why it more than startled him.'' The good man hardly felt the force of it all at once. How should he ? And there were little passages of arms and some heart -quaking and head -shaking, until Mr. Dale, the old schoolmaster, wrote that he had heard no less a man than Sydney Smith mention the new book in public, in the pi'esence of ' distinguished literary characters,' as a work of ' transcendent talent, presenting the most oi-iginal views, in the most elegant and powerful language, which would work a complete revolution in the world of taste.' When he returned home it was to find a respectful welcome. His word on matters of Art was now really worth something, and before long it was called for. The National Gallery was comparatively in its infancy. It had been established less than twenty-five years, and its manager, Mr. Eastlake (after- wards Sir Charles), had his hands full, what with rascally dealers in forged old masters, and inrompetciit picture- cleaners, and an economical Government, and a public that 106 LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN neither knew its own mind nor trusted his judgment. A great outcry was set up against him for buying bad works, and spoiling the best by restoration. Mr. Ruskin wrote very temperately to the Times, pointing out that the damage had been slight compared with what was being done everywhere else, and suggesting that, prevention being better than cure, the pictures should be put under glass, for then they would not need the recurring attentions of the restorer. But he blamed the management for spending large sums on added examples of Guido and Rubens, while they had no Angelico, no Ghirlandajo, no good Perugino, only one Bellini, and, in a word, left his new friends, the early Christian artists, un- represented. He suggested that pictures might be picked up for next to nothing in Italy ; and he begged that the collection might be made historical and educational by being fully re- presentative, and chronologically arranged. Such ideals cannot be realized at a stroke ; but as we walk round our Gallery now we can be thankful that his voice was raised, and not in vain ; and rejoice that in many a case justice has been done to ' the wronged great soul of an ancient master/ CHAPTER III. •THE SEVEN LAMPS.' (1847-1849.) ' They dreamt not of a perishable home Who thus could build.' Wordsworth. HAVE you read an Oxford Graduate's " Letters on Art " .?' wote Miss Mitford, of ' Our Village,' on January 27, 1847. 'The author, Mr. Ruskin, was here last week, and is certainly the most charming person that I have ever known.' The friendship thus begun lasted until her death. She encouraged him in his work ; she delighted in his success ; and, in the grave reverses which were to befall him, he found her his most faithful supporter and most sympathetic consoler. In retui-n, ' his kindness cheered her closing days ; he sent her every book that would interest and every delicacy that would strengthen her, attentions which will not sur|irise those who have heard of his large and thoughtful generosity.'* It was natural that a rising man, so closely connected with Scotland, should be welcomed by the leaders of the Scottish school of literature. Sydney Smith, a former Edinburgh professor, had praised the new volume. John Murray, as it seems from letters of the period, made overtures to secure the author as a contributor to his Italian guide-books. Lockhart employed him to write for the Quarterly Review. Lockhart was a person of great interest for young Ruskin, * ' The rrieiidships of Mary Russell Mitford,' edited by the Eev. A. G. L'Estrauge. 108 LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKDJ who worshipped Scott ; and Lockharfs daughtei-, even with- out her pei-sonal cliaim, would have attiacted him as the actual grandchild of the great Sir "Walter. It was for her sake, he says, rather than for the honour of writing in the famous Quarterly, that he undertook to re\dew Lonl Lindsay's ' Christian Art.' He was known to be a suitor for Miss Lockhaifs hand. His father, in view of the success he desu-ed, had been in February looking out for a house in the Lsike District; hoping, no doubt, to see him settled there as a sort of successor to Wordsworth and Cluistopher North. In Maich, John Ruskin betook himself to the Salutation at Ambleside, with his constant attendant and amanuensis George, for quiet after a tiring winter in London society, and for his new labour of reviewing. But he did not find himself so fond of the Lakes as of old. He wrote to his mother (Sunday, March 28, 1847) : ' I finished — and sealed up — and addressed — my last bit of work, last night by ten o'clock — ^i-eady to send by to-day's post — so that my father should receive it with this. I could not at all have done it had I stayed at home : for even with all the quiet here, I have had no more time than was necessary, for exercise. I find the rowing very useful, though it makes me melancholy with thinking of 1838, — and the lake, when it is quite calm, is wonderfully sad and quiet : — no bright colours — no snowy peaks. Rlack water — as still as death ; — lonely, rocky islets — ^leafless woods, — orworse than leafless — ^the brown oak foliage hanging dead upon them ; graj' sky ; — far- olf, wild, dark, dismal moorlands ; no sound except the rustling of the boat among the reeds. ' One o'clock. — I have your kind note and my fatlier's, and am very thankful that you like what I have written, for I did not at all know myself whether it were good or bad.' In the early summer he went to Oxford, for a meeting of the British Association. He said (June 27, 1S4'7) . ' I am not able to write h full account of all I see, to amuse you, for I find it necessary to keep as quiet as I can, and I •THE SEVEN LAMPS' 109 fear it would only annoy you to be told of all the invitations I refuse, and all the interesting matters in which I take no part. There is nothing for it but throwing one's self into the stream, and going down with one's arms under water, ready to be carried anywhere, or do anything. My friends are all busy, and tired to death. All the members of my section, but especially (Edward) Forbes, Sedgwick, Murchison, and Lord Northampton — and of course Buckland, are as kind to me as men can be ; but I am tormented by the perpetual sense of my unmitigated ignorance, for I know no more now than I did when a boy, and I have only one perpetual feeling of being in everybody's way. The recollections of the place, too, and the being in my old rooms, make me very miserable. I have not one moment of profitably spent time to look back to while I was here, and nuich useless labour and disajjpointed hope ; and I can neither bear the excitement of being in the society where the play of mind is constant, and rolls over me like heavy wheels, nor the pain of being alone. I get away in the evenings into the hayfields about Cunnior, and rest ; but then my failing sight plagues me. I cannot look at anything as I used to do, and the evening sky is covered with swim- ming strings and eels. My best time is while I am in the section room, for though it is hot, and sometimes wearisome, yet I have nothing to sai/, — little to do, — nothing to look at, and as much as I like to hear.' He had to undergo a second disappointment in love ; his health broke down again, and he was sent to Leamington to his former doctor, Jephson, once more a ' consumptive ' patient. Dieted into health, he went to Scotland with a new-found friend, Mr. William Macdonald Macdonald of St. Martin's and Crossmount. But he had no taste for sport, and could make little use of his opportunities for distraction and relaxation. One battue was enough for him, and the rest of the visit was spent in morbid despondency, digging thistles, and brooding over the significance of the curse of Eden, so strangely now interwoven with his own life — ' Thorns also and thistles.' 110 LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN At Bower's Well, Perth, whei-e his gi-andpaients had spent thek latei- yeai-s, and where his parents had been married, lived some old acquaintances of the Ruskin family. Their daughter used to visit at Denmaik Hill. It was for her that, some years earlier, ' The King of the Golden River ' had been written. She had grown up into a peifect Scotch beauty, with eveiy gift of health and spirits whicli would com- pensate — ^the old folk thought — for his retiring and morbid nature. They were anxious, now more than ever, to see liim settled. They pressed him, in letters still extant, to propose. AVe have seen how he was situated, and can understand how he pei-suaded himself that fortmie, after all, was about to smile upon him. Her family had tlieir o^vIl reasons for pro- motinsr the match, and all united in hasteuinff on tlie event — alike ' dreaming of a perishable home.' In the Notes to Exhibitions added to a new edition of ' Modern Paintei-s,' then in the press, the author mentions a 'hurried \'isit to Scotland in the spring' of 1848. This was the occasion of his marriage at Perth, on April 10. The young couple spent rather more tlian a fortnight on the way South, among Scotch and English lakes, intending to make a more extended tour in the summer to the catliedrals and abbeys. The pilgrimage began with Salisbury, where a few days' sketching in the damp and draughts of the cathedral laid the bridegroom low, and brought the tour to au untimely end. When he was thought to be recovered, the whole family started for the Continent; but a relapse in the patient's condition brought theni back. At last, in August, the young people wei-e seen safely off to Normandy, where they went by easy stages from town to town, studying the i-emains of Gothic building. In October they returned, and settled in a house of their own, at 31, Pai'k Street, whei-e during the winter Mr. Ruskin wrote 'The Seven Lamps of Architecture,' and, as a bit of by-work, a notice of Samuel Prout for th« Art Journal. This was Mr. Ruskin's first illustrated volume. The plates •THE SEVEN LAMPS' ill were engraved by himself in soft -ground etching, such as Prout had used^ from drawings he had made in 184<6 and 1848. Some are scrappy combinations of various detail, but others, such as the Byzantine capital, the window in Giotto's Campanile, the arches from St. Lo in Normandy, from St. Michele at Lucca, and from the Ca' Foscari at Venice, are effective studies of thj actual look of old buildings, seen as they are shown us in Nature, with her light and shade added to all the facts of form, and her own last touches in the way of weather-softening, and settling-faults, and tufted, nestling plants. Revisiting the Hotel de la Cloche at Dijon in later years, Mr. Ruskin showed me the room where he had ' bitten ' the last plate in his wash-hand basin, as a careless makeshift for tlie regular etcher's bath. He w£is not dissatisfied with his work himself ; the public of the day wanted something more finished. So the second edition appeared with the subjects elaborately popularized in fashionable engraving. More recently they have undei-gone reduction for a cheap issue. But any true lover of Ruskin knows the value of the real original ' Seven Lamps ' with its San Miniato cover and autograph plates. As to its reception, or at least the anticipation of it, Char- lotte Bronte bears witness in a letter to the publishers. 'I have lately been reading "Modem Painters," and have derived from the work much genuine pleasure, and, I hope, some edification; at any rate, it has made me feel how ignorant I had previously been on the subject which it treats. Hitherto I have only had instinct to guide me in judging of art ; I feel now as if I had been walking blindfold — this book seems to give me new eyes. I do wish I had pictures within reach by which to test the new sense. Who can read these glowing descriptions of Turner's work without longing to see them ? ' I like this author's style much ; there is both energy and beauty in it. I like himself, too, because he is such a hearty admirer. He does not give half-measure of praise or veneration. 112 LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN He eulogizes, he reverences, with his whole soul. One can sympathize with that sort of devout, serious admiration, for he is no rhapsodist; one can respect it; yet, possibly, many people would laugh at it. ' I congratulate you on the approaching publication of Mr. Ruskin's new work. If " The Seven Lamps of Architectm-e " resemble their predecessor, " Modern Painters," tliey will be no lamps at all, but a new constellation, — seven bright stais, for whose rising the reading world ought to be anxiously agape.' The book was announced for his father''s birthday, May 10, 1849, and it appeared while they were among the Alps. The KiU'lier part of this tour is pretty fully described in ' Prteterita,' II. xi., and ' Fors,' letter xc, and so the visit of Richard Fall, the meeting with Sibylla Dowie, and the death of cousin ]\Iary need not be dwelt on here. From the letters that passed between father ajid son we find that Mr. John had been given a month''s leave from July 5E6 to explore the Higher Alps, with Coutet his guide and George his valet. The old people stayed at the Hotel des Bergues, and thought of little else but their son and his affairs, looking eagerly from day to day for the last news, both of him and of hk book. Mr. Ruskin senior writes from Geneva on July 29 : ' Miss Tweddale says your book has made a great sensation.'' On the 31st : ' Thiers has surprised and delighted the Chamber of Deputies by your doctrine of no such thing as Liberty. I think he has borrowed.' On August 4 : ' The Spectator, which Smith sets great value on, has an elaborate favourable notice on "Seven Lamps," only ascribing an infirmity of temper, quoting railroad passage in proof. Anne was told by American family servant that you were in American paper, and got it for us, the New York Tribune of July 13 ; first article is your book. They say they are willing to be leamei-s from, rather than critics of, such a book, etc. The Daily News (some of the Punch people's paper) has a capital notice. It begins : " This is a masked battery of seven pieces, which 'THE SEVEN LAMPS' 113 blaze away to the total extinction of the small architectural lights we may boast of, etc., etc." ' On August 5 : ' I have, at a shameful charge of ten francs, got August magazine and Dickens, quite a prohibition for parcels from England. In British Quarterly, under aesthetics of Gothic architecture they take four works, you first. ... As a critic they almost rank you with Goethe and Coleridge, and in style with Jeremy Taylor.' The qualified encouragement of these remarks was farther qualified with detailed advice about health, and wai-nings against the perils of the way, to which Mr. John used to answer on this wise : 'CORMAYEtTR, ■ ' Sunday afternoon ' (July 29, 1849). ' My deakest Fatiiee, ' (Put the three sheets in order first, 1, 2, 3, then read this, front and back, and then 2, and then 3, front and back.) You and my mother were doubtless very happy when you saw the day clear up as you left St. Martin's. Truly it was impossible that any day could be more perfect towards its close. We reached Nant Bourant at twelve o'clock, or a little before, and Coutet having given his sanction to my wish to get on, we started again soon after one — and reached the top of the Col de Bonhomme about five. You would have been delighted with that view — it is one upon those lovely seas of blue mountain, one behind the other, of which one never tires — this, fortunately, westward — so that all the blue ridges and ranges above Conflans and Beaufort were dark against the afternoon sky, though misty with its light ; while east- ward a range of snowy crests, of which the most important was the Mont Iseran, caught the sunlight full upon them. The sun was as warm, and the air as mild, on the place where the English travellers sank and perished, as in our garden at Denmark Hill on the summer evenings. There is, however, no small excuse for a man's losing courage on that pass, if the weather were foul. I never saw one so literally pathless — so void of all guide and help from the lie of the ground — so 8 114 LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKESf embarrassing from the distance which one has to wind round mere brows of craggy precipice without knowing the direction in which one is moving, while the path is perpetually lost in heaps of shale or among clusters of crags, even when it is free of snow. All, however, when I passed was serene, and even beautiful — owing to the glow which the red rocks had in the sun. We got down to Chapiu about seven — itself one of the most desolately-placed villages I ever saw in the Alps. Scot- land is in no place that I have seen, so barren or so lonely. Ever since I passed Shapfells, when a child, I have had an excessive love for this kind of desolation, and I enjoyed my little chalet window and my chalet supper exceedingly (mutton with garlic).' He then confesses that he woke in the nijrht with a sore throat, but struggled on next day down the Allee Blanche to Cormayeur. ' I never saw such a mighty heap of stones and dust. The glacier itself is quite invisible from the road (and I had no mind for extra workorscrambling), except just at the bottom, where the ice appears in one or two places, being exactly of the colour of the heaps of waste coal at the Newcastle pits, and admirably adapted therefore to realize one's brightest anticipations of the character and style of the Allee Blanche. ' The heap of its moraine conceals, for the two miles of its extent, the entire range of Mont Blanc from the eye. At last you weather the mighty promontory, cross the torrent which issues from its base, and find yourself suddenly at the very foot of the vast slope of torn granite, which from a point not 200 feet lower than the summit of Mont Blanc, sweeps down into the valley of Cormaj'eur. "■ I am quite unable to speak with justice — or think with clearness — of this marvellous view. One is so unused to see a mass like that of Mont Blanc without any snow that all my ideas and modes of estimating size were at fault. I only felt overpowered by it, and that — as Avith the porch of Rouen Cathedral — look as I would, I could not see it. I had not 'THE SEVEN LAMPS' 115 mind enough to grasp it or meet it. I tried in vain to fix some of its main features on my memory ; then set the mules to graze again, and took my sketch-book, and marked the out- lines — ^but where is the use of marking contours of a mass of endless — countless — fantastic rock — 12,000 feet sheer above the valley ? Besides, one cannot have sharp sore-throat for twelve hours without its bringing on some slight feverish- ness ; and the scorching Alpine sun to which we had been exposed without an instant's cessation from the height of the col till now — i.e., from half-past ten to three — ^had not mended the matter ; my pulse was now beginning slightly to quicken and my head slightly to ache — and my impression of the scene is feverish and somewhat painful ; I should think like yours of the valley of Sixt.' So he finished his drawing, tramped down the valley after his mule, in dutiful fear of increasing his cold, and found Cormayeur crowded, only an attic ' au quatrieme ' to be had. After trying to doctor himself with gray pill, kali, and senna, Coutet cured his throat with an alum gargle, and they went over the Col Feri'et. The courier Pfister had been sent to meet him at Martigny, and bring latest news and personal report, on the strength of which several days passed without letters, but not without a remonstrance from headquarters. On August 8 he writes from Zermatt : 'I have your three letters, with pleasant accounts of critiques, etc., and painful accounts of your anxieties. I certainly never thought of putting in a letter at Sion, as I arrived there about three hours after Fister left me, it being only two stages from Martigny ; and besides, I had enough to do that morning in thinking what I should want at Zermatt, and was engaged at Sion, while we changed horses, in buying wax candles and rice. It was unlucky that I lost post at Visp,' etc. A few days later he says : ' On Friday I had such a day as I have onlv once or twice 8—2 116 LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSION had the like of among the Alps. I got up to a promontory projecting from the foot of the Matterhorn, and lay on the rocks and drew it at my ease. I was about three hours at work a.s quietly as if in my study at Denmai-k Hill, tliough on a peak of baiTcn crag above a glacier, and at least 9,000 feet above sea. But tlie Matterhorn, after all, is not so fine a thing as the aiguille Dru, nor as any one of the aiguilles of Chamouni : for one thing, it is all of secondaiy rock in horizontal beds, quite rotten and shaly ; but there ai-e otlier causes of difference in impressiveness which lam endeavouring to analyze, but find considerable emban-assment in doing so. There seems no sufficient reason why an isolated obelisk, one- fourth higher than any of them, should not be at least as sublime as they in their dependent grouping ; but it assuredly is not. For this reason, as well as because I have not found here the near studies of primitive rock I expected, — for to my great surprise, I find the whole group of mountains, mighty as they are, except the inaccessible Monte Rosa, of secondai-y limestones or slates, — I should like, if it were possible, to spend a couple of days more on the Montanvert, and at the bases of the Chamouni aiguilles, sleeping at the Montanvert.' And so on, apologetically begging (as other sons beg money) for fivw, to gather the material of ' Modern Paintei-s," volume iv. ' I hope you will think whether the objects you are after are worth risks of sore throats or lungs,' replied his fathei", for he had ' personified a perpetual influenza ' until they got him to Switzerland, and they were very anxious ; indeed, Pfister's news fi-om Mai'tigny had scai-ed his mother — not very well her- self — into wild plaiis for recapturing him. However, Osborne Gordon was going to Chamouni with Mr. Pritchai-d, and so they gave him a little longer. And he made the best use of his time. ' Monday evening ' {August 20, 1849). ' My deauest Father, I have to-night a packet of back letters from Viege . . . but I have really baitlly time to read them to-night, I 'THE SEVEN LAMPS' 117 had so many notes to secure when I came from the hilJs. I walk up every day to the base of the aiguilles without the slightest sense of fatigue ; work there all day hammering and sketching; and down in the evening. As far as days by myself can be happy they are so, for I love the place with all my heart. I have no over-fatigue or labour, and plenty of time. By-the-by, though in most respects they are incapable of improvement, I recollect that I thought to-day, as I was breaking last nighfs ice away from the rocks of which I wanted a specimen, with a sharpish wind and small pepper and salt- like sleet beating in my face, that a hot chop and a glass of sherry, if they were to be had round the corner, would make the thing more perfect. There was however nothing to be had round the corner but some Iceland moss, which belonged to the chamois, and an extra allowance of north wind.' This next is scribbled on a tiny scrap of paper : 'GliACIBK Q]? GUEI'POND, ^August 21. ' My deadest Fatheh, ' I am sitting on a gray stone in the middle of the glacier, waiting till the fog goes away. I believe I may wait. I write this line in my pocket-book to thank my mother for hers which I did not acknowledge last night. I am glad and sorry that she depends so much on my letters for her comfort. I am sending them now every day by the people who go down, for the diligence is stopped. You may run the chance of missing one or two therefore. I am quite well, and very comfortable — sitting on Joseph's knapsack laid on the stone. The fog is about as thick as that of London in November, — only white ; and I see nothing near me but fields of daujpifh snow with black stones in it.' And then : ' I cannot say that on the whole the aiguilles have treated me well. I went up Saturday, Monday and Tuesday to their 118 LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN feet, and never obtained audience until to-day, and then they retired at twelve o'clock; but I have got a most valuable memorand um/ Meantime : 'G 15 NEVA, ' Monday, ' Augiist 20, 1849. ' My dearest John, ' I do not know if you have got all my letters, fully explaining to you in what way the want of a single letter, on two occasions, did so much mischief — made such havoc in our peace. I think my last Thursday's letter entered on it. We are grateful for many letters — that have come. It was merely the accident of the moment when first by illness and then by precipices we were most anxious — being exactly the moment the letters took it into their heads to be not forthcoming. Not writing so often would only keep us more in the dark, with little less ajixiety. Please say if you get a letter every day ;' and so forth. Space can hardly be afforded for more than samples of this voluminous correspondence, or interesting quotations might be given about the ' ghost-hunt yesterday and a crystal-hunt to-day,' and life at tire Montanvert, until at last (August 28) : ' I have taken my place in diligence for Thursday, and hope to be with you in good time. But I quite feel as if I were leaving home to go on a journey. I shall not be melancholy, however, for I have really had a good spell of it. . . . Dearest love to my mother. I don't intend to write again. ' Ever, my dearest lather, ' Youi' most affectionate son, 'J. RUSKIN. CHAPTER IV. • STONES OF VENICE.' (1849-1851.) ' I stood in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs, A palace and a prison on each hand ; I saw from out the wave her structures rise As from the stroke of the enchanter's wand.' Byeon ' And I, John, saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down from God, out of heaven.' — Kev. xxi. 2, A BOOK about Venice had been planned in 1845, during Mr. Ruskin's first long working visit. He had made so many notes and sketches both of architecture and painting that the material seemed ready to hand; another visit would fill up the gaps in his information ; and two or tlu'ee months' hard writing would work the subject oft", and set him free to continue ' Modern Painters.' So before leaving home in 1849, he had made up his mind that the next work would be ' The Stones of Venice,' which, on the appeai'ance of 'The Seven Lamps,' was announced by the publishers as in preparation. Like ' The Seven Lamps,' this new book was not to be a manual of practical architecture, but the further illustration of doctrines peculiar to the author ; the reaction, that is to say, of society upon art ; the close connection, in this case, of style in architecture with the life, the religious tone, the moral aims, of the people who produced it. Venice was the nearest analogy in the past, among the great influential nations of histoiy, to our own country. It was free, but 120 LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN IIUSKIN aristocratic and conservative ; Christian, but independent of the Pope ; it pui-sued a course of ' spirited foreign pohcy ^ in contrast with — but as a consequence of— its appai-ently peace- ful function of commerce. So tliat, by its example, the lessons of national virtue which, since IS'tS, the author had felt called upon to preach, could be illustrated and enforced in a far more interesting way than if he had merely ^vl•itten a volume of essays on political morality. But in the end the inquiry branched out in so many directions that the main purpose was all but hidden among flowers of rhetoric and foliage of technical detail, which most readers took for tlie sum and substance of its teaching. He left home again eaily in October ; by the end of November he was settletl with his wife at Venice for the winter. He expected to find \\ithout much trouble all the information he wanted a^ to tlie dates, styles mid history of Venetian buildings ; but after consulting and comparing all the native writers, it appeared that the questions he asked of them were just the questions they were unprepai-ed to answer, and that he must go into the whole matter afresh. So he laid himself out that winter for a thorough examination of St. Mark's and the Ducal Palace and the other remains — drawing, and measuiing, and comparing their details ; only to find tliat the woi'k he had undertaken Avas like a sea ' chi sempre si fa maggiore.' The old buildings were a patchwork of all styles and all periods. In St. Mai'k's alone, every pinnacle called for separate study ; every capital and balustrade, on minute inquiry, tux-ned out to have its own independent history. So that, after all his labour, he could give no com- plete and generalized survey of the subject, chronological and systematic, without much more time and thought. But at any rate, the details he had in his note-books were the result of personal observation ; he was no longer trusting to second- hand information or the vague traditions of liie ti'ibe of ciceroni. His father had gone back to England in September out of health, and the letters from homo did not report improve- 'STONES OF VENICE' 121 merit. His mother, too, was beginning to fear the loss of her sight ; and he could not stay away from them any longer. In February, 1850, he broke off his work in the middle of it, and returned to London, arriving about the middle of April. The rest of the year he spent in writing the first volume of ' Stones of Venice,' and in preparing the illustrations, together with ' Examples of the Architecture of Venice,' a portfolio of large lithographs and engravings in mezzotint and line, to accompany the work. The illustrations to the new book were a great advance upon the rough soft-ground etchings of ' Seven Lamps.' He secured the services of some of the finest engravers who ever handled the tools of their ait. TTie English school of engraving was then in its last and most accomplished period. Photography had not yet begun to supersede it, and the demand for delicate work in book-illustration had encouraged minuteness and precision of handling to the last degree. In this excessive refinement there were the symptoms of decline ; but it was most fortunate for Mr. Ruskin that his drawings could be interpreted by such men as Armytage and Cousen, Cuff and Le Keux, Boys and Lupton, and not without advantage to them that their masterpieces should be pre- served in his works, and praised as they deserved in his prefaces. Sometimes, as it often happens when engravers \vork for an artist who sets the standard high, they found Mr. lluskin a hard taskmaster. TTie mere fact of their skill in translating a sketch from a note-book into a gem-like vignette, encouraged him to ask for more ; so that some of the subjects which became the most elaborate were at first comparatively rough drawings, and were gradually worked up from successive retouchings of the proofs by the infinite patience of both parties. In other cases working drawings were prepared by Mr. Ruskin, as refined as the plates. How steady his hand was, and how trained his eye, can be seen by anyone who looks carefully at the etchings by him — not qfler him — in 'Modern Painters,' which show that he was fully competent to have produced his own illustrations had 122 LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN it been worth his while. The photogravure facsimiles in ' Poems,' the ' Poetry of Ai-chitecture,' and ' Studies in Both Arts' bear witness that, while in one mood he does those roughly -sketched chiaroscuro studies like the ' Seven Lamps ' illustrations, at other times he can * curb the liberal hand ' and lival a cameo in refinement. Like much else of his work, these plates for ' Stones of Venice ' Avere in advance of the times. The publisher thought them ' caviai-e to the general,' so Mr. J. J. Ruskin told his son ; but gave it as his own belief that 'some dealers in Ruskins and Turners in 1890 will get great prices for what at present will not sell.' Early in 1850, his father, at his mother's desire, and with the help of Mr. W. H. Harrison, collected and printed his poems, with a number of pieces that still remained in MS., the author taking no part in this revival of bygones, which, for the sake of their associations, he was not anxious to re- call, — though his father still believed that he might have been a poet, and ought to have been one. This is the volume of ' Poems, J. R., 1850,' so highly valued by collectors. Another resuiTection was ' The King of the Golden River,' which had lain hidden for the nine yeai-s of the Ai's Poetica. He allowed it to be published, with woodcuts by the famous ' Dicky ' Doyle. The little book ran through tliree editions that year, and, partly because School Boards have adopted it as one of their prizes, it still finds a steady sale. The first issue must have been torn to rags in the nurseries of the last generation, since copies are so rare as to have brought ten guineas apiece instead of the six shillings at which they were advertised in 1850. A couple of extracts from letters of 1850 will give some idea of Mr. Ruskin's impressions of London society and the Drawing Room : ' My DEAKEST MOTIIEE, ' Horrible party last night — stiff — large — dull — fidgety — strange, — run-against-everybody-know-nobody sort of par ty. 'STONES OF VENICE' 123 Naval people. Young lady claims acquaintance with nie — I know as much of her as of Queen Poniare — Talk : get away as soon as I can — ask who she is — Lady ( ) ; — as wise as I was before. Iirbroduced to a black man with chin in collar. Black man condescending — I abuse different things to black man : chiefly the House of Lords. Black man says he lives in it — asks where I live — don't want to tell him — obliged — go away and ask who he is — ( ) ; as wise as I was before. Introduced to a young lady — young lady asks if I like drawing — ^go away and ask who she is — Lady ( ). Keep away, with back to wall and look at watch. Get away at last. Very sulky this morning — hope my father better — dearest love to you both.' 'Pakk Streist, ' 4 o'duck ' (Mai/, 1850). ' My DliAllEST FATIIJili,, ' We got through gloriously, though at one place there was the most awkward crush I ever saw in my life — the pit at the Surrey, which I never saw, may perhaps show the like — nothing else. The floor was covered with the ruins of ladies' dresses, torn lace and fallen flowers. But E was luckily out of it, and got through unscathed — and heard people saying " What a beaubiful dress !" just as she got up to the Queen. It was fatiguing enough but not so awkward as I expected. . . . ' The Queen looked younger and prettier than I expected — very like her pictures, even like those which are thought to flatter most — but I only saw the profile — I could not see the front face as I knelt to her, at least without an upturning of the eyes which I thought Avould be unseemly — and there were but some two to three seconds allowed for the whole aflaii • The Queen gave her hand very graciously : but looked bored ; poor tbin^;;, well she might be, with about a quaiter of a mile square of people to bow to. ' 1 met two people whom I have not seen for many a day, 1-24 LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN UUSKIN Kildaie and Scott Murray — had a chat with the ioriuer and a word with Murray, but nothing of interest. ' Dcai-est love to my mother. ' Ever, my dearest father/ etc. As one of the chief literary figures of the day, Mr. Ituskin could not avoid society, and, as he tells in ' Praeterita,' he was rewarded for the reluctant performance of his duties by meet- ing with several who became his lifelong friends. CliiLf among these he mentions Mr. aiid Mrs, Cowper-Temple, afterwards Lord and Lady Mount Temple. The acquaint- ance with Samuel Rogers, inauspiciously begun many years before, now ripened into something like friendship ; Monckton IMilnes (Lord Houghton) and other men of letters were met at Rogers' breakfasts. A little later a visit to the Master of Trinity, Whewell, at Cambridge, brought him into contact with Professor Willis, the authority on Gothic architecture, and other notabilities of the sister University. There also he met Mr. and Mrs. Marshall of Leeds (and Coniston) ; and he pursued his journey to Lincoln, with Mr. Simpson, whom he had met at Lady Davy's, and to Farnley for a visit to Mr. F. H. Fawkes, the owner of the celebrated collection of Turners (April, 1851). In London he was acquainted with many of the leading ar Lists and persons interested in art. Of the ' teachers ' of the day he was known to men so diverse as Carlyle — and ]\'Iaurice, with whom he corresponded in 1851 about his ' Notes on Sheepfolds ' — and C. H. Spurgeon, to whom his mother was devoted. He was as yet neither a hermit, nor a heretic : but mixed freely with all sorts and conditions, with one exception, for Puseyites and Romanists were yet as heathen men and publicans to him ; and he noted with interest, while writing his review of Venetian history, that the strength of Venice was distinctly Anti-Papal, and her virtues Christian but not Roman. Reflections on this subject were to have formed part of his great work, but the first volume was taken up \vith the a priori development of 'STONES OF VENICE' 125 architectural forms ; and the treatment in especial of Venetian mattei's had to be indefinitely postponed, until another visit had given him the opportunity of gathering his material. Meanwhile, his wide sympathies had turned his mind toward a subject which then had received little attention, though since then loudly discussed — the reunion of (Protes- tant) Christians. He put together his thoughts in a pamphlet on the text ' There shall be one fold and one Shepherd,' calling it, in allusion to his architectural studies, ' Notes on the Construc- tion of Sheepfolds.' He proposed a compromise, trying to prove that the pretensions to priesthood on the high Anglican side, and the objections to episcopacy on the Presbyterian, were alike untenable ; and hoped that, when once these differ- ences — such little things he thought them — were arranged, a united Church of England might become the nucleus of a world-wide federation of Protestants, a civitas Dei, a New Jerusalem. There were many who agreed with his aspirations ; he received shoals of letters from sympathizing readers, most of them praising his aims and criticising his means. Others objected rather to his manner than to his matter; the title savoured of levity, and an art-critic writing on theology was supposed to be wandering out of his province. Tradition says that the ' Notes ' were freely bought by Border farmers under a rather laughable mistake ; but surely it was no new thing for a Scotch reader to find a religious tract under a catching title ; and their two shillings might have been worse spent. There were a few replies ; one by Mr. Dyce, the clerical R..A., who defended the Anglican view with mild persiflage and the usual commonplaces. And there the matter ended, for the nublic. For Mr. Ruskin, it was the beginning of a train of thought which led him far. He gradually learnt that his error was not in asking too much, but in asking too little. He wished for a union of Protestants, forgetting the sheep that are not of that fold, and little dreaming of the answer he got, after many days, in ' Christ's Folk in the Apennine.' 126 LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN Meanwhile the first volume of ' Stones of Venice ^ had appeared. Its reception was indirectly described in a pamphlet entitled ' Something on Ruskinism, with a " Vesti- iDule" in Rhyme, by an Ai-chitect' — a Puginist, it seems, who felt that his craft was in danger. He complains bitterly of the ' ecstasies of rapture "■ into which the newspapers had been thrown by the new work : ' Yonr book — since reviewers so sweax— may be rational, Still, 'tis certainly not either loyal or national ;' for it did not join in the chorus of congratulation to Prince Albert and the British public on the Great Exhibition of 1851, the apotheosis of trade and machinery. The ' Archi- tect ' finds also — what may surprise the modern reader who has not noticed that many an able writer has been thought unreadable on his first appearance — that he cannot under- stand Mr. Ruskin's language and ideas : ' Your style is so soaring — and some it makes sore — That plain folks can't make out your strange my.stical lore.' He will allow the author to be quite right, when he finds something to agi-ee upon ; but the moment a sore point is touched, then Ruskin is ' insane.' In one respect the ' Archi- tect ' hit the nail on the head : ' Readers who are not reviewers by profession can hardly fail to perceive that Ruskinism is violently inimical to sundry extstitig interests.'' The best men, we said, were the first to recognise Mr. Ruskin's genius. Let us throw into the opposite scale an opinion of more weight than the ' Architect's,' in a transcript of the original letter from Carlyle. ' Chelsea, ' March Q, 1851. ' Dear Ruskin, ' I did not know yesterday till your servant was gone that there was any note in the parcel ; nor at all what a feat you had done ! A loan of the gallant young man's Memoirs was what I expected ; and here, in the most chivalrous style, comes a gift of them. This, I think, must be in the style 'STONES OF VENICE' 127 p-ior to the Renaissance ! What can I do but accept 3'our kindness with pleasure and gratitude, though it is far beyond my deserts ? Perhaps the next man I meet will use me as much below them ; and so bring matters straight again ! Truly I am much obliged, and return you many hearty thanks. ' I was already deep in the ' Stones ' ; and clearly purpose to hold on there. A strange, unexpected, and I believe, most true and excellent Sermon in Stones — as well as the best piece of schoohnastering in Architectonics ; from which I hope to learn in a great many ways. The spirit and purport of these critical studies of yours are a singular sign of the times to me, and a very gratifying one. Right good speed to you, and victorious arrival on the farther shore ! It is a quite new " Renaissance," I believe, we are getting into just now : either towards new, wider manhood, high again as the eternal stars ; or else into final death, and the mask of Gehenna for evermore ! A dreadful process, but a needful and inevitable one ; nor do I doubt at all which way the issue will be, though which of the extant nations are to get included in it, and which is to be trampled out and abolished in the process, may be very doubtful. God is great : and sure enough, the changes in the " Construction of Sheepfolds ^ as well as in other things, will require to be very considerable. ' We are still labouring under the foul kind of influenza here, I not far from emancipated, my poor wife still deep in the business, though I hope past the deepest. Am I to understand that you too are seized .'' In a day or two I hope to ascertain that you are well again. Adieu ; here is an interruption, here also is the end of the paper. ' With many thanks and regards.' [Signature cut away.J Charlotte Bronte wrote to one of her friends: 'The " Stones of Venice " seem nobly laid and chiselled. How grandly the quarry* of vast marbles is disclosed ! Mr. * An allusion to the title of the first ch.ipteT. 128 IJFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN Ruskiu seems to me one of the few genuine writei-s, aa distinguished from book-makei-s, of this age. His eai-nest- ness even amuses me in certain passages, for I cannot help lauffhinff to think how utilitarians will fume and fret over his deep, serious and (as they mil think) fanatical reverence for Alt; But Mr. Ruskin himself would hardly share Charlotte Bronte's contempt for the utilitarians. A short while ago one of her own people, a Yorkshire working man not far from Haworth, got up in a public discussion, and said that he had once talked with Mr. Ruskin, and tried to say how much he had enjoyed his works. 'And he said to me, "I don't care whether you enjoyed them ; did they do 3'ou anv good.?"' As soon as the first volume of ' Stones of Venice ' and the ' Notes on the Construction of Sheepfolds " were published, Mr. Ruskin took a short Easter holiday at Matlock, and set to work at a new edition of 'Modern Painters.' This was the fifth reprint of the first volume, and the third of vol. ii. They were carefully and conscientiously revised ; some passages of rough, youthful criticism were cancelled, and wisely ; for more lasting good is done by expounding what is noble than by satirizing what is base. The work was left in its final form, except for notes added in later years ; and the Post- sci-ipt indulges, most justifiably, in a little triumpli at the changed tone of public criticism upon Turner. But it was too late to have been much service to the great artist himself. In 1845 — after saying good-bye and ' Why -Ltnll you go to Switzerland .-' there will be such a Jidge about you when you're gone ' — Turner was attacked by some form of paralysis or mental decay, and was never himself again. The last drawings he did for Mr. Ruskin (January, 1848), the ' Brlinig ' and the ' Descent from the St. Gothard to Airolo,' showed his condition unmistakably ; and the lonely restlessness of the last, disappointing years were, for all his friends, a melancholy ending to a brilliant career. Mr. Ruskin wrote : ' This year (1851) he has no picture on the walls of the 'STONES OF VENICE' 129 Academy ; and the Times of May 3 says : " We miss those works of INSPIEATION !" ' We miss ! Who misses ? The populace of England rolls by to weary itself in the great bazaar of Kensington,* little thinking that a day will come when those veiled vestals and prancing amazons, and goodly merchandise of precious stones and gold, will all be forgotten as though they had not been ; but that the light which has faded from the walls of the Academy is one which a million Koh-i-noors could not re- kindle; and that the year 1851 will, in the far future, be remembered less for what it has displayed, than for what it has withdrawn.' Too truly prophesied ; for Turner was in his last illness, hiding like a wild animal wounded to death. On Decem- ber 19, in the evening, the sunset shone upon his dishonoured corpse through the chamber window in Chelsea. Just so it shone upon another death -bed, for the sainted maid of Florence, prefiguring, they said, the aureole. 'The Sun is God, my dear,' Turner had told his house- keeper. Was there no ' healing in his wings ' for the fallen hero ? or was tliat reserved only for the spotless soul of Ida ? Were there still other sheep ? stones which the builders of sheepfolds rejected, all manner of precious stones ? * The Great Exhibition in Hyde Park. CHAPTER V. PRE-RA.PHABLITISM. (1851-1853.) • Don't go yet ! Are you aware that there will be a torch-race this evening on horseback, to the glory of Artemis ? ' That is entirely new to me, said Socrates. And do you mean that they will really have torches, and pass them from rider to rider in the race V — Plato, Eepuhlic, 328. THE Times, in May 1851, missed 'those works of in- spiration,'' as Ruskin had at last taught people to call Turner's pictures. But the acknowledged mouthpiece of public opinion found consolation in castigating a school of young artists who had ' unfortunately become notorious by addicting themselves to an antiquated style and an affected simplicity in painting. . . . We can extend no toleration to a mere servile imitation of the cramped style, false perspective, and crude colour of remote antiquity. We want not to see what Fuseli termed drajiery " snapped instead of folded " ; faces bloated into apoplexy, or extenuated into skeletons; colour borrowed from the jai-s in a druggist's shop, and ex- pression forced into caricature. . . . That morbid infatuation which sacrifices truth, beauty, and genuine feeling to mere eccentricity deserves no quarter at the hand of the public' Mr. Ruskin knew nothing personally of these young inno- 'Jators, and had not at first sight wholly approved of the apparently Puseyite tendency of Rossetti's 'Ecce Ancilla Domini,' Millais' 'Carpenter's Shop,' and Holman Hunt's ' Early Christian Missionary,' exhibited the yeai* before. All these months he had been closely kept to his ' Sheepfolds ' PRE-RAPHAELITISM 131 and ' Stones of Venice ' ; but now he was correcting the proofs of ' Modern Painters,' vol. i., as thus : ' Chapter the last, section 21 : The duty and after privikges of all students. . . . Go to Nature in all singleness of heart, and walk with her laboriously and trustingly, having no other thoughts but how best to penetrate her meaning, and re- member her instruction ; rejecting nothing, selecting nothing, and scorning nothing ; believing all things to be right and good, and rejoicing always in the truth/ He went to the Academy to look at the false perspective and snapped draperies, the infatuated untruth and eccentric ugliness. Yes ; the faces were ugly : Millais' ' Mariana ' was a piece of idolatrous Papistry, and there was a mistake in the perspective. Collins' ' Convent Thoughts ' — more Popery ; but very careful, — ' the tadpole too small for its age ' ; but what studies of plants ! And there was his own ' Alisma Plantago,' which he had been drawing for ' Stones of Venice ' (vol. i., plate 7) and describing : ' The lines through its body, which are of peculiar beauty, mark the different expansions of its fibres, and ai-e, I think, exactly the same as those which would be traced by the currents of a river entering a lake of the shape of the leaf, at the end where the stalk is, and pass- ing out at its point.' Curvatm-e was one of the special subjects of Mr. Ruskin, the one he found most neglected by ordinary artists. The ' Alisma ' was a test of observation and draughtsmanship. He had never seen it so thoroughly or so well drawn, and heartily wished the study were his. Looking again at the other works of the school, he found that the one mistake in the ' Mariana ' was the only error in perspective in the whole series of pictures ; which could not be said of any twelve works, containing architecture, by popular artists in the exhibition ; and that, as studies both of drapery and of every other minor detail, there had been nothing in art so earnest or so complete as these pictures since the days of Albert Diirer. He went home, and wrote his verdict in a letter to the Times. After subsequent examination of Hunt's ' Two 9—2 132 LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN Geutlenien of Veroua,' and Millais' 'Return of the Dove' he wTote again, pointing out beauties, and indications of power in conception, and observation of Natui-e, and handling, whei-e at fii'st he, like the rest of the public, had been re- pelled by the wilful ugliness of the faces. Meanwhile tlie Pi-e-RajAaelites wrote to tell him that they were neither Papists nor Puseyites. The day after his second letter was published he received an ill-spelt missive, anonymously abusing them. This was the sort of tiling to inta-est his love of poetical justice. He made the acquaintance of several of the Brethren. ' Charley ' Collins, as his friends affectionately called him, was the son of a respected R.A., and tlie brother of Wilkie Collins ; himself afteiwards tlie author of a delightful book of travel in Fiance, ' A Cruise upon Wheels.' Mr. Millais tmned out to be tlie most gifted, charming and handsome of young ai'tists. Mr. Holman Hunt was already a Ruskin-readei', and a seekei- aftei- ti'uth, serious and earnest in his religious nature as in his painting. The Pre-Raphaelites wei-e not, originally, Mr. Ruskin's pupils, nor was their movement, directly, of his ci-eation. But it was the outcome of a g-eneral tendency which he, more than any man, had helped to set in motion ; and it was the fulfilment, though in a way he had not expected, of his wishes. His advice to go to Nature, selecting nothing, rejecting nothing and scorning nothing, had been offei-ed to landscape students, and it had involved the acceptance of Turner as tlieir great exemplar and ultimate standaid. It was beginning to be accepted by many, but with timidity and modifications ; and, to indulge for a moment in tlie ' might have been," if the Pre-Raphaelite revolution had not happened, a school of modern landscape, naturalistic on the one hand, idealistic and poetical on the other, would probably have developed coiusiitiit'ionaUi/, so to speak ; Avith IMr. Ruskin as its prophet and Turner as its forerunner, — a school which would have been as truly national as the great school of porti'aiture had been, and as representative in one dii-ection PRE-RAPHAELITISM 133 of the spirit of the age, as the sixteenth-century Venetians in their own time. But history does not behave so reasonably. There are more wheels in the machine than we can count, 'cycle on epicycle,' not to hint at cometary orbits unknown to the almanac. The naturalistic movement, which had engaged Mr. Iluskin's whole attention at his start, was only one side of the nation's life. The other side was reactionary, leading to Tractarianism in some, in others to historical research, to Gothic revivals in architectui'e and painting and poetry ; in all cases betraying itself in the harking back to bygones, rather than in progressive modernism. The lower class of minds took one side or the other, and became merely radical and materialist, or Puseyite and romantic, as their sympathies led them. But the problem, to a thinker, was to mediate between these opposing tendencies ; to find the higher term that embraced them both ; to unite the two aims without compromise. So Mr. Buskin, who began as a naturalist, was met first by ancient Christian art, and spent his early manhood in dissolving the antithesis between modern English landscape- study, and the standpoint of Angelico. No sooner had he succeeded than a new element appeared — an element of life, as he perceived, and therefore necessary to accept — but at first sight iri'cconcilable with his arrangement of the world. So he brought it into his scheme, bit by bit : first the naturalism of the Pre-Raphaelites ; later on, their treatment of imaginative subjects. His attraction to Pre-Baphaelitism was none the less real because it was sudden, and brought about partly by the personal influence of his new allies. And in re-arranging his art-theory to take them in, he had before his mind rather what he hoped they would become than what they were. For a time, his influence over them was great; their first three years were their own ; their next three years were prac- tically his ; and some of them, the weaker brethren, leant upon him until they lost the command of their own powers. 134. LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN No ai'tist can aft'ord to use anotlier man's eyes; still less, another man's brain and heait. Mr. Ruskin, great as an exponent, was in no sense a master of artists; and if he cheered on the men who, he believed, were the best of the time, it did not follow that he should be saddled with the responsibilitj' of directing theui. Tlie famous pamphlet on ' Pre-Raphaelitism ' of August 1851 showed that the same motives of Sincei-ity impelled both the Pre-Raphaelite Brethren and Tin-nei-, and in a degree, men so diffei-ent as Prout, old Hunt, and Lewis. All these were opposed to tlae Academical School who worked by rule of thumb ; and they differed among one another only in differences of physical power and moral aim. Which was all perfectly true, and much truer than the cheap criticism which could not see beyond siiperficial differences, or the fossil theories of the old school, defended in the pamphlet war by men like Rippingille.* But Pre-Raphaelitism was an un- stable compound, liable to explode upon the experimenter, and its component pai'ts to return to their old antithesis of crude naturalism on the one hand, and affectation of piety or poetry or antiquai-ianism, on the other. And that their new champion did not then foresee. All he knew was that, just when he was sadly leaving the scene. Turner gone and night coming on, new lights ai'ose. It was really far more note- worthy that Millais and Rossetti and Hunt were nvn of geniits, than that the 'principles' they tried to ilhisti-ate wei'e sound. Mr. Ruskin, always safe in his intuitions, divined their power, and generously applauded the dexterous troop in their unexpected Lampadephoria. Indirectly he found his reward. For like Socrates in the dialogue, by joining in the festival he found youths to discourse with, and with them gradually evohed his own Republic, the ideal of life which is his real contribution to human progress. ' What gvod have his writings done us .J*' Hitherto they have been for our enjoyment; or, like f.lie ' Seven Lamps,' vague outcries ; or, like the ' Sheepfolds,' * To whose paper Mr. Bnakiii had formei'ly contributed. PRE-RAPHAELITISM 135 tentative ideals. In the later volumes of ' Stones of Venice we find distinct aims prefigured. Immediately after finishing the pamphlet on ' Pre- Raphaelitism,' he left for the Continent with his wife and friends, the Rev. and Mrs. Daniel Moore ; spent a fortnight in his heloved Savoy with the Pritchards ; and then crossed the Alps with Mr. Newton. On the first of September he was at Venice, for a final spell of labour on the palaces and churches. He settled at the Casa Wetzlar, Campo Sta. Maria Zobenigo, and one of his first visitors was Dean Mihnan. ' I am amused at your mode of ciceronizing the Dean of St. Paul's,' wrote his father, who kept up the usual close correspondence, and made himself useful in looking up books of reference and consulting authorities like Mr. James Fergusson, — for these chapters of easy eloquence were not written without a world of pains. The engravers and the business department of the new publications also required his co-operation, for they were now becoming large ventures. During the three and a half years preceding the summer of 1851 Mr. Ruskin seems to have spent ^1,680 of profits from his books, making by his writings at this period only about a third of his annual outlay ; so that the estimated cost of these great illustrated volumes, some ^1,200, was a matter of anxiety to his father, who, together with the publisher, deprecated large plates and technical details, and expressed some impatience to see results from this visit to Venice. He looked eagerly for every new chapter or drawing as it was sent home for criticism. Some passages, such as the descrip- tion of the Calle San Moise (' Stones of Venice,' II. iv.) were unfavourably received by him. Another time he says, ' You have a very great difficulty now in writing any more, which is to write up to yourself :' or again, — ' Smith reports slow sale of " Stones of Venice " (vol. I.) and " Pre-Raphaelitism." The times are sorely against you. The Exhibition has im- poverished the country, and literature of a saleable character seems chiefly confined to shilling books in green paper, to be 136 LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN had at railway-stations. Smith will have an account against us.' He always sent adverse pi-ess-notices, on tlie principle that it was good for John : and every little discom'agement or annoyance was discussed in full. The most serious news, threatening complete interruption of the work rapidly progressing in spite of all, was of Tm-ner's death (December 19, 1851). Old Mr. Ruskin heard of it on the 21st, a ' dismal day ' to him, spent in sad con- templation of the pictures his son had taught him to love. Soon it came out that John Ruskin was one of tlie executors named in the will, with a legacy of =^20 for a mourn- ing ring : — ' Nobody can say you were paid to praise,' says his father. It was gossipped that he was expected to wi-ite Turner's biography, — 'five yeai's' work for you,' says the old man, full of plans for gathering material. But when one scandal after another reached his eai-s, he changed his tone, and suggested dropping personal details, and giving a ' Life of his Art ' in the intended third and final volume of ' Modern Painters.' Something of the sort was done in the Edinburgh Lectures and at the close of vol. v. of ' Modern Painters ' : and the oflScial life was left to Walter Thornbury, with which Mr. Ruskin perhaps did not wish to intei-fere. But he collected a mass of still unpublished nmtei'ial about Turner, which goes fai* to prove that the kindly view he took of the strange man's morbid and unhappy life was not with- out justification. At the time, so many legal coni})lications developed that Mr. Ruskin was advised to resign his executor- ship ; later on he was able to fulfil its duties as he conceived them, in an-anging Turner's sketches for the National Gallery. Others of his old artist-friends were now passing away. Early in January Mr. J. J. Ruskin called on William Hunt and found him feeble : ' I like the little Elshie,' he says, nicknaming him after the Black D^avf, for Hunt was some- what deformed : ' he is softened and humanized. There is a gentleness and a greater honhomie — less reserve. I had sent him " Pre-Raphaelitism." He had marked it very much with pencil. He greatly likes your notice of people not keeping PRE-RAPHAELITISM 137 to their last. So many clever artists, he says, have been ruined by not acting on your principles. I got a piece of advice from Hunt, — never to commission a picture. He could not have done my pigeon so well had he felt he was doing it for anybody.' The pigeon was a drawing he had just bought ; in later years at Brantwood. In Febi-uary 1852 a dinner-party was given to celebrate in his absence John Ruskin's thirty-third birthday. 'On Monday, 9th, we had Oldfield, (Newton was in Wales,) Harrison, George Richmond, Tom, Dr. Grant, and Samuel Prout. The latter I never saw in such spirits, and he went away much satisfied. Yesterday at church we were told that he came home very happy, ascended to his painting -room, and in a quarter of an hour from his leaving our cheerful house was a corpse, from apoplexy. He never spoke after the fit came on. He had always wished for a sudden death.' Next year, in November 1853, he tells of a visit paid, by John's I'equest, to W. H. Deverell, the young Pre-Raphaelite, whom he found ' in squalor and sickness — with his Bible open — and not long to live — while Howard abuses his picture at Liverpool.' Early in 1852 Charles Newton was going to Greece on a voyage of discovery, and wanted John Ruskin to go with him. But the parents would not hear of his adventuring himself at sea ' in those engine-vessels.' ' Steam is infernal,' said the father of John Ruskin. ' Better have ships only with sails, machinery only with water-force, and carriages with horses. We went more slowly — so much the better ; what do we huiry for? We neither gain more, nor enjoy more. We are neither richer nor happier. The country, except to those who live in it, — and to those, all of it except their own neighbourhood, is for ever lost. We see nothing of it : we do not even breathe pure air. Steam and hydrogen are the odours of travellers from the engines, and we carry smoke with us to obscure the landscape.' So Newton went alone, and ' dug up loads of Phoenician antiquities.' One cannot help regretting that Mr. Ruskin lost this 138 LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSiaN opportunity of familiarizing himself with the early Greek art which, twenty yeai-s later, he tried to expound. For the time he was well enough employed on the ' Stones of Venice.' He tells the story of his ten months' stay in a letter to his venerable friend Rogers the poet, dated June 23 (1852). ' I was out of health and out of heart when I first got here. There came much painful news from home, and then such a detei-mined course of bad weather, and evei-y other kind of annoyance, that I never was in a temper fit to \mte to anyone : the worst of it was that I lost all Jeelin.g of Venice, and this was the reason both of my not writing to you and of my thinking of you so often. For whenever I found myself getting utterly hard and indifferent, I used to read over a little bit of the " Venice " in the " Italy," and it put me always into the right tone of thought again, and for this I cannot be enough grateful to you. For though I believe that in the summer, when Venice is indeed lovely, when pomegranate blossoms hang over every garden-wall, and green sunlight shoots through every wave, custom will not destroy, or even weaken, the impression conveyed at first ; it is far otherwise in the length and bitterness of the Venetian winters. Fighting with frosty winds at every turn of the canals takes away all the old feeling of peace and stillness ; the protracted cold makes the dash of the water on the walls a sound of simple discomfort, and some wild and dark day in February one starts to find oneself actually balancing in one's mind the relative advantages of land and water carriage, comparing the Canal with Piccadilly, and even hesitating whether for the rest of one's life one would rather have a gondola within call or a hansom. When I used to get into this humour I always had recourse to those lines of yours : — ' " The sea ia in the bro.id, the narrow streeta, Ebbing and flowing," etc. j and they did me good service for many a day ; but at last a time came when the sea was not in the nari'ow streets, and was always ebbing and not flowing ; and one day, when I found just a foot and a half of nniddy water left under the Bridge of Sighs, and ran aground in the Grand Canal as I PRE-RAPHAELITISM 139 was going home, I was obliged to give the canals up. I have never recovered the feeling of them.' He then goes on to lament the decay of Venice, the idle- ness and dissipation of the populace, the lottery gambling ; and to forebode the ' destruction of old buildings and erection of new ' changing the place ' into a modern town — a bad imitation of Paris.' Better than that he thinks would be utter neglect ; St. Mark's Place would again be, what it was in the early ages, a green field, and the front of the Ducal Palace and the marble shafts of St. Mark's would be rooted in wild violets and wi-eathed with vines. ' She will be beautiful again then, and I could almost wish that the time might come quickly, were it not that so many noble pictures must be destroyed first. ... I love Venetian pictures more and more, and wonder at them every day with greater wonder ; compared with all other paintings they are so easy, so instinctive, so natural ; everj'thing that the men of other schools did by rule and called composition, done here by instinct and only called truth. ' I don't know when I have envied anybody more than I did the other day the directors and clerks of the Zecca. There they sit at inky deal desks, counting out rolls of money, and curiously weighing the iiTegular and battered coinage of which Venice boasts ; and just over their heads, occupying the place which in a London counting-house would be occupied by a commercial almanack, a glorious Bonifazio — ' Solomon and the Queen of Sheba ' ; and in a less honour- able corner three old directors of the Zecca, very mercantile- looking men indeed, counting money also, like the living ones, only a little more living, painted by Tintoret ; not to speak of the scattered Palma Vecchios, and a lovely Benedetto Diana which no one ever looks at. I wonder when the Eui'opean mind will again awake to the great fact that a noble picture was not painted to be Jiimg, but to be seen ? I only saw these by accident, having been detained in Venice by some obliging person who abstracted some [of his wife's jewels] and brought me thereby into various relations with the I'esuectable body of people who live at the wrong end of 140 LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN the Bridge of Sighs — the police, whom, in spite of traditions of terror, I would very willingly have changed for some of those their predecessors whom you have honoured by a note in the " Italy." The present police appear to act on exactly contraiy principles ; yours found the puree and banished the loser ; these dovkt find the jewels, and won't let me go away. I am afi-aid no punishment is appointed in Venetian law for people who steal time.'' Mr. Ruskin returned to England in July 1852, and settled next door to his old home on Heme Hill. He said he could not live any more in Park Street, \vith a dead brick wall opposite his windows. And so, mider the roof where he wrote the first volume of 'Modern Painters,' he finished ' Stones of Venice.' These later volumes give an account of St. Mark's and the Ducal Palace and other ancient buildings ; a complete catalogue of Tintoret's pictures, — the list he had begun in 1845 ; and a history of the successive styles of architecture, Byzantine, Gothic, and Renaissance, inter- weaving illustrations of the human life and character that made the art what it was. The kernel of the work was the chapter on the Natui-e of Gothic ; in which he showed, more distinctly than in the ' Seven Lamps,' and connected with a wider range of thought, suggested by Pre-Raphaelitisra, the great doctrine that art cannot be produced except by artists ; that architecture, in so far as it is an art, does not mean mechanical execution, by iniintelligent workmen, from the vapid working-drawings of an architect's office ; and, just as Socrates postponed the day of justice until philosophers should be king-s and kings philosophers, so Ruskin postponed the reign of art until workmen should be artists, and artists workmen. It was no idle dream. The day dawned early when that chapter ' on the Nature of Gothic ' was taken as the manifesto of Maurice and Kingsley's Working Men's College : and surely the sun had risen, when the same words were chosen for his loving adornment by our groat ai-t-ci'aftsman, William ■ Morris. CIIAPTEll VI. THE EDINBURGH LECTURES. (1853, 1854.) ' Let him go up into the public chair ; We'll hear him.' Julius Gcesar. BY the end of July 1853 ' Stones of Venice ' was finished, as well as a descrijition of Giotto's works at Padua, written for the Arundel Society. The social duties of the season were over; and Mr. Ruskin took a cottage in Glenfinlas, where to spend a well-earned holiday. He invited Mr. Millais, by this time an intimate and heartily- admired friend,* to go down into Scotland with him for the summer's rest, — such rest as two men of energy and talent take, in the change of scene without giving up the habit of work. Mr. Ruskin devoted himself first to foreground studies, and made careful drawings of rock-detail ; and then, being asked to give a course of lectures before the Philosophical Society of Edinburgh, he was soon busy writing once more, and preparing the cartoon-sketches, ' diagrams ' as he calls them, to illustrate his subjects. Dr. Acland had joined the pai-ty ; and one day, in the ravine, it is said that he asked Millais to sketch their host as he stood contempla- tively on the rocks, with the torrent thundering beside him. The sketch was produced at a sitting ; and, with additional ♦ ' What a beauty of a man he is !' wrote old Mr. Ruskin, ' and high in intellect. . . . Millais' sketches are " prodigious " ! Millais is the painter of the age.' ' Capable, it seems to me, of almost everything, if his life and strength be spared,' said the younger Ruskin to Miss Mitford. 1-12 LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN work in the following winter, became the well-known portrait now at Oxford, in the possession of Sir Henry Acland, much the best likeness of this eai-ly period. Another portrait was painted — in words — ^by one of his audience at Edinburgh on November 1, when he gave the opening lecture of his course, his first appearance on the platform. The account is extracted from the EdinJnirgh Guardian of November 19, 1853 : ' Before you can see the lecturer, however, you must get into the hall, and that is not an easy matter, for, long before the doors are opened, the fortunate holders of season tickets begin to assemble, so that the crowd not only fills the passage, but occupies the pavement in front of the entrance and overflows into the road. At length the doors open, and you are carried through the passage into the hall, where you take up, of course, the best available position for seeing and hearing. . . . After waiting a weary time . . . the door by the side of the platform opens, and a thin gentleman with light hair, a stiff" white cravat, dark overcoat with velvet collar, walking, too, with a slight stoop, goes up to the desk, and looking round with a self-possessed and somewhat formal air, proceeds to take off" his great-coat, revealing thereby, in addition to the orthodox white cravat, the most orthodox of white waistcoats. ... " Dark hair, pale face, and massive marble brow — that is my ideal of Mr. Ruskin," said a young- lady near us. This proved to be quite a fancy portrait, as unlike the reality as could well be imagined. Mr. Ruskin has light sand-coloured hair ; his face is more red than pale ; the mouth well cut, with a good deal of decision in its curve, though somewhat wanting in sustained dignity and strength ; an aquiline nose ; his forehead by no means broad or massive, but the brows full and well bound together ; the eye we could not see, in consequence of the shadows that fell upon his countenance from the lights overhead, but we are sure that the poetry and passion we looked for almost in vain in other features must be concentrated there.* * ' Mary Russell Mitford found him as a young man " very eloquent and distinguished-looking, tall, fair, and slender, with a gentle play- THE EDINBURGH LECTURES 143 After sitting for a moment or two, and glancing round at the sheets on the wall as he takes oiF his gloves, he rises, and leaning slightly over the desk, with his hands folded across, begins at once, — "You are proud of your good city of Edinbiu-gh," etc. ' And now for the style of the lecture. Properly speaking, there were two styles essentially distinct, and not well blended, — a speaking and a writing style ; the former colloquial and spoken off-hand ; the latter rhetorical and carefully read in quite a different voice, — we had almost said intoned. . . . His elocution is peculiar ; he has a difficulty in sounding the letter "r"; and there is a peculiar tone in the rising and falling of his voice at measured intervals, in a way scarcely ever heard, except in the public lection of the service appointed to be read in churches. These are the two things with which, perhaj^s, you are most surprised, — his dress and manner of speaking — both of which (the white waistcoat notwithstanding) are eminently clerical. You naturally ex- pect, in one so independent, a manner free from conventional restraint, and an utterance, whatever may be the power of voice, at least expressive of a strong individuality ; and you find instead a Chi-ist Church man of ten years' standing, who has not yet taken orders; his dress and manner derived from his college tutor, and his elocution from the chapel- reader.' The lectures were a summing up, in popular form, of the chief topics of Mr. Ruskin's thought during the last two years. The first stated, with more decision and warmth than part of his audience approved, his plea for the Gothic fulness, and a sort of pretty waywardness that was quite charming.'' Sydney Dobell, again, in 1852, discovered an earnestness pervading every feature, giving power to a face that otherwise would be merely lovable for its gentleness. And, finally, one who visited him at Denmark Hill characterized him as emotional and nervous, with a soft, genial eye, a mouth " thin and severe," and a voice that, though rich and sweet, yet had a tendency to sink into a plaintive and hopeless tone. This is interesting enough, of course, but after all the man is in his books, not in his person.' — Literary World, May 19, 1893. 144 LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN IIUSKIN Revival, for the use of Gothic as a domestic style. He tried to show by the analogy of natural forms that the Gothic arch and gable were in themselves more beautiful, and more logical in construction, than the horizontal lintel and low pediment of the ordinary Renaissance-Classic then in vogue. The next lecture, given three days later, went on to contrast the wealth of ornament in mediteval buildings with the poor sm'vivals of conventionalized patterns which did duty for decoration in nineteenth-centuiy ' Greek ' architecture ; and he raised a laugh by comparing a typical stonemason's lion with a real tiger's head, drawn in the Edinburgh zoological gardens by Mr. Millais. He showed how a gradual Gothicizing of the common dwelling-house was possible, by introducing a porch here and an oriel window there, piece by piece, as indeed had been done in Venice. And he pointed out that this kind of work would give opportunities for freer and more artistic Avorkmanship ; it would be an education in itself, and raise the builder's man from a mere mechanical di-udge into an intelligent and interested craftsman. The last two lectures, on November 15 and 18, were on Painting ; briefly reviewing the history of landscape and the life and aims of Turner; and finally. Christian art and Sincerity in imagination, which was now put forth as the guiding principle of Pre-Raphaelitism. Public opinion was violently divided over these lectures ; and they were the cause of much trouble at home. The fact of his lecturing at all aroused strong opposition from his friends and remonstrances from his pai'ents. Before the event his mother wrote : ' I cannot reconcile myself to the thought of your bringing yourself personally before the world till you are somewhat older and stronger.' Afterwards, his father, while apologizing for the word ' degrading,' is dis- gusted at his exposing himself to such an interruption as occurred, and to newspaper comments and personal references. The notion of an ' itinerant lecturer ' scandalizes him. He hears from Harrison and Bolding that John is to lecture even at their very doors — in Camberwell. ' I see small bills THE EDINBURGH LECTURES 145 up,' he wi'ites, ' with the lecturers' names ; among them Mr. who gets your old clothes !' And he bids him write to the committee that his parents object to his ful- filling the engagement. He postponed his lecture — for ten years ;* but accepted the Presidency of the Camberwell Institute, which enabled him to appear at their meetings without offence to any. The printed Edinburgh lectures were fiercely assailed by the old school ; but little damage was done, except to their own cause, by writers who held, with the Athenaeum of that date, that the Middle Ages were characterized by canni- balism and obscenity ; and that Dante seldom drew an image from nature ; who, in the act of defending Greek art against Ruskin the Goth, had never heard of the important Stele of Aristion, known as ' The Soldier of Marathon ' ; who, as judges of modem art, found that 'water-colour painting can scarcely satisfy the mind craving for human action and human passion ' ; and objected to the painting of contemporary history because ' we have had enough of por- traits, and as for modern battles, they are mere affairs of smoke and feathers.' While staying at Edinburgh, Mr. Ruskin met the various celebrities of modern Athens, some of them at the table of his former fellow-traveller in Venice, Mrs. Jameson. One lifelong friendship was begun during this time, with Dr. John Brown, the author of ' Rab and his Friends ' and ' Pet Marjorie,' who met Mr. Ruskin at Sir Walter Trevelyan's, near Otterbum, and corresponded till his death in 1882, on terms of the greatest affection. The next May (1854) the Pre-Raphaelites again needed his defence. Mr. Holman Hunt exhibited the ' Light of the World ' and the ' Awakening Conscience,' two pictures whose intention was misunderstood by the public, though as serious, as sincere, as the religious paintings of the Campo Santo of Pisa. Mr. Ruskin made them the theme of two more letters to the Times; mentioning, by the way, the * See Book III,, chapter vL 10 146 LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN 'spurious imitations of Pre-Raphaelite work' which were already becoming common. And on starting for his summer tour on the Continent, he left a new pamphlet for publication on the opening of the Crystal Palace. There had been much rejoicing over the 'new style of architecture' in glass and iron, and its pui-pose as a palace of art. Mr. Ruskin who had declined, in the last chapter of the ' Seven Lamps,' to join in the cry for a new style, was not at all ready to accept this as any real artistic advance ; and took the opportunity to plead again for the great buildings of the past, which were being destroyed or neglected, Avhile the British public was glorifying its gigantic greenhouse. The pamphlet prac- tically suggested the establishment of the Society for the preservation of ancient buildings, which has since come into operation. This summer of 1854 he projected a study of Swiss history : to tell the tale of six chief towns— Geneva, Fribourg, Ba.sle, Thun, Baden and Schaffhausen, to which in 1858 he added Rheinfelden and Bellinzona. He intended to illustrate the work with pictures of the places described. He began with his drawing of Thun, a large binl's-eye view of the town with its river and bridges, roofs and towers, all exquisitely defined with the pen, and broadly coloured in fluctuating tints that seem to melt always into the same aerial blue ; the blue, high up the jiicture, beyond the plain, deepening into distant mountains. Suppose a Whistler etching and a Whistler colour-sketch combined upon one paper, and you form an idea of the style of this series ; except that Mr. Ruskin's work, being calculated for book-illustration, and not for decoration, can only be seen in the hand, and totally loses its effect by hanging— especially by exhibition hanging. But the delicate detail and studied use of the line are there, together with a calculated unity of effect and balance of colour which had nou yet begun to degenerate into a mannered purple. But his father wanted to see ' Modern Painters ' completed ; and so he began his third volume at Vevey, with the dis- THE EDINBURGH LECTURES 147 cussion of the grand style, in which he at last broke loose from Reynolds, as was inevitable, after his study of Pre- Raphaelitism, and all the varied experiences of the last ten years. The lesson of the Tulse Hill ivy had been brought home to him in many ways : he had found it to be more and more true that Nature is, after all, the criterion of art, and that the greatest painters were always those whose aim, so far as they were conscious of an aim, was to take fact for their starting-point. Idealism, beauty, imagination, and the rest, though necessary to art, could not, he felt, be made the object of study; they were the gift of heredity, of circum- stances, of national aspirations and virtues ; not to be produced by the best of rules, or achieved by the best of intentions. What his own view of his own work was can be gathered from a letter to an Edinburgh student, written on August 6, 1854 : ' I am sure I never said anything to dissuade you from trying to excel or to do great things. I only wanted you to be sure that your efforts were made with a substantial basis, so that just in the moment of push your footing might not give way beneath you ; and also I wanted you to feel that long and steady effort made in a contented way does more than violent effort made from some strong motive and under some enthusiastic impulse. And I repeat — for of this I am perfectly sure — that the best things are only to be done in this way. It is very difKcult thoroughly to understand the difference between indolence and reserve of strength, between apathy and severity, between palsy and patience ; but there is all the difference in the world; and nearly as many men are ruined by inconsiderate exertions as by idleness itself. To do as much as you can heartily and happily do each day in a well-determined direction, with a view to far- off results, with present enjoyment of one's work, is the only proper, the only essentially profitable way.' This habit of great industry not only enabled Mr. Ruskin to get through a vast amount of work, but it helped him over times of trouble, of which his readers and acquaintances, 10—2 148 LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN for the most part, had little idea. To them he appeared as one of those deities of Epicurus, sipping his nectar and hurling his thunderbolts, or, when it pleased him, showering the sunshine of his eloquence upon delighted crowds. He had wealth and fame, the society of wit and genius ; the delight of travel and intense appreciation of all the pleasures that travelling afforded. The fancy of the outside public pictured him in the possession of rare works of art, of admiring friends, of a beautiful wife. They did not know how the labour involved in his work and the drawback of constant ill - health made society distasteful to him and domestic life difficult. They did not see the disappointment and disillusioning of a young girl who found herself married to a man with whom she had nothing in common ; in habits of thought and life, even more than in years, her senior; taking ' small notice, or austerely,' of the gayer world she preferred, ' his mind half-buried in some weightier ai-gument, or fancy-borne perhaps upon the rise and long roll ' of his periods. And his readers and the public were intensely puzzled when she left him with apparent suddenness, and the separation ended in the annulment of the marriage. CHAPTER VII. THE WOKKING MEN'S COLLEGE. (1854-1335.) ' Sighing, I turned at last tu win Once more the London dirt and din.' ROSSE'l'TI. PHILANTHROPIC instincts, and a growing sense of the necessity for social reform, had led Mr. Ruskin for some years past towards a group of liberal thinkers with whom he had little otherwise in common. At Venice, in 1852, he had written several articles on education, taxation, and so forth, with which he intended to plunge into active politics. His father, like a cautious man of business who knew his son's powers and thought he knew their limitations, was strongly opposed to this attempt, and used every argu- ment against it. He appealed to his son's sensitiveness, and assiured him that he would be 'flayed' unless he wrapped himself in the hide of a rhinoceros. He assured him that, without being on the spot to follow the discussions of poli- ticians, it was useless to offer them any opinions whatsoever. And he ended by declaring that it would be the ruin of his business and of his peace of mind if the name of Ruskin were mixed up with Radical electioneering : not that he was unwilling to suffer martyrdom for a cause in which he believed, but he did not believe in the movements afoot, — neither the Tailors' Cooperative Society, in which their friend Mr. F. J. Furnivall was interested, nor in any outcome of Chartism or Chartist principles. And so for a time the matter dropped. In 1854, the Rev. F. D. Maurice founded the Working 150 LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN Men's College. Mr. Furnivall (as he states in a letter to Mr. T. J. Wise, printed in 'Letters to William Ward; 1893) sent the circulai-s to John Ruskin ; who thereupon wrote to Mauiice,* and offered his services. At the opening lectui'e on October SO, 1854, at St. Martin's Hall, Longacre, Mr. Furnivall distributed to all comers a reprint of the chapter ' On the Nature of Gothic,' which we have already noticed as a statement of the conclusions drawn from the study of art respecting the conditions under which the life of the work- man should be regulated. Mr. Ruskin thus appeai-ed as contributing, so to say, the manifesto of the movement. He took charge from the commencement of the drawing- classes, — first at 31 Red Lion Square, and afterwards at Great Ormond Street ; also superintending classes taught by Messrs. Jeffery and E. Cooke at the Working Women's (afterwards the Working Men and Women's) College, Queen Square. In this labour he had two allies ; one a friend of Maurice's, Mr. Lowes Dickinson, the well-known artist, whose portrait of Maurice was mentioned with honour in the ' Notes on the Academy ' ; his portrait of Kingsley hangs in the hall of the novelist-professor's college at Cambridge. The other helper was a new friend of Mr. Ruskin's. To people who know him only as the elegant theorist of art, sentimental and egotistic, as they will have it, there must be something strange, almost irreconcilable, in his devotion, week after week and year after year, to these night-classes. Still more must it astonish them to find the mystic author of the ' Blessed Damozel,' the passionate painter of the ' Venus Verticordia,' working by Ruskin's side in this rough navvy- labour of philanthropy. It was early in 1854 that a drawing of D. G. Rossetti was sent to Mr. Ruskin by a friend of the painter's. The critic already knew Millais and Hunt personally, but not Rossetti. He had scarcely noticed his works, as they were not exhibited at the Academy. Mr. Ruskin was just biinging out the Edinburgh Lectui-es in book form, and busy with the defence *With whom he had correspoiiJed in 1851. See p. 124. THE WORKING MEN'S COLLEGE 151 of the Pre-Raphaelites. He wrote kindly, signing himself ' yours respectfully,' which amused the young painter. He made acquaintance, and in the appendix to his book placed Rossetti's name with those of Millais and Hunt, especially praising their imaginative power, as rivalling that of the greatest of the old masters. He did more than this. He agreed to buy, up to a certain sum every year, any drawings that Rossetti brought him, at their market price ; and his standard of money -value for works of art has never been niggardly. This sort of help, the encouragement to work, is exactly what makes progress possible to a young and independent artist ; it is better for him than fortuitous exhibition triumphs — much better than the hack-work which many have to undertake, to eke out their livelihood. And the mere fact of being bought by the eminent art-cribic was enough to encourage other patrons. ' He seems in a mood to make my fortune,' said Rossetti in the spring of 1854) ; and early in 1855 Mr. Ruskin wrote : — ' It seems to me that, of all the painters I know, you on the whole have the greatest genius ; and you appear to me also to be — as far as I can make out — a very good sort of person. I see that you are unhappy, and that you can't bring out your genius as you should. It seems to me then the projier and necessary thing, if I can, to make you more happy ; and that I shall be more really useful in enabling you to paint properly, and keep your room in order', than In any other way.' He did his best to keep that room in order in every sense. Anxious to promote the jiainter's marriage with MissSiddal — ' Princess Ida,' as Mr. Ruskin called her, — he offered a similar arrangement to that which he had made with Rossetti ; and began in 1855 to give her =£'150 a year in exchange for drawings up to that value. Rossetti's poems also found a warm admirer and advocate. In 1856 'The Burden of Nineveh' was published anonymously in the Oxford and Canibrklge Magazine ; Mr. Ruskin wrote to Rossetti that it was 'glorious,' and that he wanted to know who was the author, — perhaps not without a suspicion that he w.os 152 LIFE AND WOKK OF JOHN RUSiaN addressing the man who could tell. In 1861 he guaiantetd, or advanced, the cost of ' The Early Italian Poets,' up to ^100, with Smith and Elder ; and endeavoured, but unsuc- cessfully, to induce Thackei-ay to find a place for other poems in The ComhiU, MagasAne. Mr. W. M. Rossetti, in his book on his brotlier 'as Designer and Writer ' and in ' His Family Lettei's ' draws a pleasant picture of the intimacy between the artist and the critic. ' At one time,' he says, ' I am suie they even loved one another.' But in 1865 Rossetti, never very tolerant of criticism and patronage, took in bad part his friend's remon- strances about the details of ' Venus Verticordia.' Mr. Ruskin, no doubt, wrote freely ; for their comradeship had seemed to warrant unreserved confidence and undisguised judgments. Eighteen months later, Mr. Ruskin tried to renew the old acquaintance. Rossetti did not return his call ; and farther eflTorts on Mr. Ruskin's part, up to 1870, met with little response. But the lecture on Rossetti in ' The Art of England ' shows that on one side at least ' their parting,' as Mr. W. M. Rossetti says, 'was not in anger;' and the portrait of 1861, now in the Oxford University Galleries, will remain as a memorial of the ten years' friendship of the two famous men. At Red Lion Square, during Lent term 1855, the three teachers worked together every Thursday evening. With the beginning of the third term, March 29, the increase of the class made it more convenient to divide their forces. Rossetti thenceforward taught the figure on another night of the week ; while the elementary and landscape class con- tinued to meet on Thursdays under Ruskin and Lowes Dickinson. In 1856 the elementally and landscape class was further divided, Mr. Dickinson taking Tuesday evenings, and Mr. Ruskin continuing the Thvu'sday class, with the help of Mr. William Ward as under-master. Later on, Messrs. G. Allen, J. Bunney, and W. Jeffery were teachers. Mr. (later Sir Edward) Burne-Jones, met in 1856 at Rossetti's studio, was also pressed into the sei'vice for a time. There were fovu- terms in the Working Men's College yeai", THE WORKING MEN'S COLLEGE 153 the only vacation, except for the fortnight at Christmas, being from the beginning of August to the end of October. Mr. lluskin did not always attend throughout the summer term, though sometimes his class came down to him into the country to sketch. He kept up the work without other intermission until May 1858, after which the completion of ' Modern Painters ' and many lecture-engagements took him away for a time. In the spring of 1860 he was back at his old post for a term ; but after that he discontinued regular attendance, and went to the Working Men's College only at intervals, to give addresses or informal lectures to students and friends. On such occasions the ' drawing-room ' or first floor of the house in which the College was held would be always crowded, with an audience who heard the lecturer at his best ; speaking freely among friends out of a full treasure- house 'things new and old' — accounts of recent travel, lately-discovered glories of art, and the growing burden of the prophecy that in those years was beginning to take more definite shape in his mind. As a teacher, Mr. Ruskin was most delightful. He spared no pains to make the work interesting. He provided — Mr. E. Cooke informs me that he was the first to provide — casts from natural leaves and fruit in place of the ordinary con- ventional ornament; and he sent a tree to be fixed in a corner of the class-room for light and shade studies. Mr. W. Ward in the preface to the volume of letters already quoted says that he used to bring his minerals and shells, and rare engravings and drawings, to show them. ' His delightful way of talking about these things afforded us most valuable lessons. To give an example : he one evening took for his subject a cap, and with pen and ink showed us how Rembrandt would have etched, and Albert Diirer engraved it. This at once explained to us the difierent ideas and methods of the two masters. On another evening he would take a subject from Turner's " Liber Studiorum," and with a large sheet of paper and some charcoal, gradually block in the subject, explaining at the same time the value and efiect 154 LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN of the lines and masses.'' And for sketching from nature he would take his class out into the country, and wind up with tea and talk. ' It was a treat to heai- and see him with his men,' wi-ites Dr. Fumivall. His object in the work, as he said before the Royal Commission on National Institutions, was not to make artists, but to make the workmen better men, to develop their powers and feelings, — ^to educate them, in short. He always has urged young people intending to study £ii"t as a pro- fession to enter the Academy Schools, as Tui'ner and the Pre-Iiaphaelites did, or to take up whatever other serious course of practical discipline was open to them. But he held very strongly that everybody could learn diawing, that their eyes could be brightened and their hands steadied, and that they could be taught to appreciate the great works of nature and of art, without wanting to make pictui-es or to exhibit and sell them. It was with this intention that he wrote the ' Elements of Drawing ' in 1856, supplemented by the ' Elements of Per- spective ' in 1859 ; which, though out of chi-onological order, may be noticed here as an outcome of his teaching, and a type of it. The ' Elements of Drawing ' are taught in thi-ee letters addressed to the general amateiu" ; the first devoted to practice with the point and brush, suggesting various ways of making such drudgery interesting. The methods of Rembrandt's etching and Durer's woodcut and Tui-ner's mezzotint are illustrated, and applied to naturalistic land- scape. In the next letter hints are given for sketching from Nature, especially showing the importance of matching colours, as students are now taught to do in the better schools. For the rest, the methods of old William Hunt are followed, in the use of body-colour and broken tints. Finally, the laws of Colour and Composition are analyzetl — not for the sake of teaching how to colour and how to com- pose, but, as he says again and again, to lead to greater appreciation of good colour and good composition in the works of the masters. THE WORKING MEN'S COLLEGE 155 In spite of the repeated statement that the book was not intended to show a short cut to becoming an artist, it has often been misused and misunderstood ; so much so, that after it had proved its popularity by a sale of 8,000, the author let it go out of print, intending to supersede it with a more carefully stated code of directions. But the new work, ' The Laws of Fesole,' was never finished ; and mean- while the ' Elements of Drawing ' remains, if not a standard text-book of art, yet a model of method and a type of object-lessons of the greatest value to those who wish to substitute a more natural, and more truly educational method for the old rigid learning by rote and routine. The illustrations for the book were characteristic sketches by the author, beautifully cut by his pupil, W. H. Hooper, who was one of a band of engravers and copyists formed by these classes at the Working Men's College. In spite of the intention not to make artists by his teaching, Mr. Ruskin could not prevent some of his pupils from taking up art as a profession ; and those who did so became, in their way, first- rate men. George Allen as a mezzotint engraver, Arthur Burgess as a draughtsman and wood-cutter, John Bunney as a painter of architectural detail, W. Jeifery as an artistic photographer, E. Cooke as a teacher, William Ward £is a facsimile copyist, have all done work whose value deserves acknowledgment, all the more because it was not aimed at popular effect, but at the severe standard of the greater schools. But these men were only the side issue of the Working Men's College enterprise. Its real result was in the proof that the labouring classes could be interested in Art ; and that the capacity shown by the Gothic workman had not entirely died out of the nation, in spite of the interregnum, for a full century, of manufacture. And the experience led Mr. Ruskin forward to wider views on the nature of the arts, and on the duties of philanthropic effort and social economy. CHAPTER VIII. 'MODERN PAINTERS' CONTINUED. (1855-1856.) * Nor feai'ed to follow, iu the offence Of false opinion, his own sense Of justice unsubdued.' Robert, Lokd Lytton. IT was in tlie year 1855 that Mr. Ruskin first published 'Notes on the Royal Academy and other Exhibitions.' He had been so often called upon to write his opinion of Pre-Raphaelite pictuies, either privately or to the news- papers, or to mark his friends' cataJogues, that he found at last less trouble in printing his notes once for all. The new plan was immediately popular ; three editions of the pamphlet were called for between June 1 and July 1. Next year he repeated the 'Notes' and six editions were sold; which indicated a great success in those times, when literature was not spread broadcast to the millions, as it is nowadays, and when the reading public was comparatively limited. In spite of a dissentient voice here and there, Mr. Ruskin was really by that time recognised as the leading authority upon taste in painting. He was trusted by a great section of the public, who had not failed to notice how completely he and his friends were winning the day. The proof of it was in the fact that they were being imitated on eill sides ; Ruskinism in writing and Pre-Raphaelitism in painting were becoming fashionable. Many an artist, who had abused the 'MODERN PAINTERS' CONTINUED 157 new-fangled style three years ago, now did his best to learn the trick of it and share the success. It seemed easy : you had only to exaggerate the colour and emphasise the detail, people thought, and you could ' do a Millais \ and if Millais sold, why shouldn't they f And thus a great mass of imitative rubbish was produced, entirely wanting in the freshness of feeling and sincerity of conception which were the real virtues of the school. But at the same time the movement gave rise to a new method of landscape -painting, which was very much to Mr. Ruskin's mind ; not based on Turner, and therefore not secured from the failure that all experiments risk ; and yet safe in so far as it kept to honest study of nature. So that, beside the Pre-Raphaelites proper, with their poetic figure- pieces, the ' Notes on the Academy ' had to keep watch over the birth of the Naturalist-landscape school, a group of painters who threw overboard the traditions of Turner and Prout, and Constable and Harding, and the rest, just as the Pre-Raphaelite Brethren threw over the Academical masters. For such men their study was their picture ; they devised tents and huts in wild glens and upon waste moors, and spent weeks in elaborating their details directly from nature, instead of painting at home from sketches on the spot. This was the fulfilment of Mr. Ruskin's advice to young artists ; and so far as young artists worked in this way, for purposes of study, he encouraged them. But he did not fail to point out that this was not all that could be required of them. Even such a work as Brett's ' Val d'Aosta,' marvellous as it was in observation and finish, was only the beginning of a new era, not its consummation. It was not the painting of detail that could make a great artist ; but the knowledge of it, and the masterly use of such knowledge. A great land- scapist would know the facts and effects of nature, just as Tintoret knew the form of the human figure ; and he would treat them with the same fe-eedom, as the means of expressing great ideas, of affording by the imagination noble grounds for noble emotion, which, as Mr. Ruskin had been writing at 158 LIFE AND WOKK OF JOHN RUSKIN Vevey in 1854, was poetry. Meanwhile the public and the critic ought to become familiar with the aspects of nature, in order to recognise the difference between the true poetry of painting, and the mere empty sentimentalism which was only the rant and bombast of landscape ai't. With such feelings as these he wrote the third and fourth volumes of ' Modern Painters.' The work was afterwards interrupted only by a recurrence of his old cough, in the exceptionally cold summer of 1855. He went down to Tunbridge Wells, where his cousin, William Richardson of Perth, was practising as a doctor ; it was not long before the cough gave way to treatment, and he was as busy as ever. About October of that year he wrote to Carlyle as follows, in a letter printed by Professor C. E. Norton, conveniently summing up his year : — ' Not that I have not been busy — and very busy, too. I have written, since May, good six hundred pages, had them rewritten, cut up, corrected, and got fairly ready for press — and am going to press with the first of them on Gunpowder Plot day, with a great hope of disturbing the Public Peace in various directions. Also, I have prepared about thirty drawings for engravers this year, retouched the engravings (generally the worst part of the business), and etched some on steel myself. In the course of the six hundred pages I have had to make various remarks on German Metaphysics, on Poetry, Political Economy, Cookery, Music, Geology, Dress, Agriculture, Horticulture, and Navigation,* all of which subjects I have had to "read up" accordingly, and this takes time. Moreover, I have had my class of workmen out sketching every week in the fields during the summer; and have been studying Spanish proverbs with my father's partner, who came over from Spain to see the Great Ex- hibition. I have also designed and drawn a window for the Museum at Oxford ; and have every now and then had to * Most of these subjects will be easily recogniaed in 'Modern Painlera,' vols. iii. and iv. The ' Navigation' refers to the ' Harbonra of England.' 'MODERN PAINTERS' CONTINUED 159 look over a parcel of five or six new designs for fronts and backs to the said Museum. 'During my above-mentioned studies of horticulture, 1 became dissatisfied with the Linnsan, Jussieuan, and Every- body -elseian arrangement of plants, and have accordingly arranged a system of my own ; and unbound my botanical book, and rebound it in brighter green, with all the pages through-other, and backside foremost — so as to cut off all the old paging numerals ; and am now printing my new arrangement in a legible manner, on interleaved foolscap. I consider this arrangement one of my great achievements of the year. My studies of political economy have induced me to think also that nobody knows anything about that ; and I am at present engaged in an investigation, on independent principles, of the natures of money, rent, and taxes, in an abstract fonan, which sometimes keeps me awake all night. My studies of German metaphysics have also induced me to think that the Germans don't know anything about them. ; and to engage in a serious enquiry into the meaning of Bunsen's great sentence in the beginning of the second volume of the " Hippolytus," about the Finite realization of Infinity ; which has given me some trouble. ' The course of my studies of Navigation necessitated ray going to Deal to look at the Deal boats; and those of geology to rearrange all my minerals (and wash a good many, which, I am sorry to say, I found wanted it). I have also several pupils, far and near, in the art of illumination ; an American young lady to direct in the study of landscape painting, and a Yorkshire young lady to direct in the pm-chase of Turners, — and various little bye things besides. But I am coming to see you.' The tone of humorous exaggeration of his discoveries and occupations was very characteristic of Mr. Ruskin, and it was likely to be brought out all the more in writing to another humourist like Carlyle. But he was then growing into the habit of leaving the matter in hand as he often did after- wards, to follow side issues, and to take up new studies with a IGO LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN hasty and divided attention ; the result of which was seen in his sub-title for the third volume of ' Modei-n Painters'— ' Of Many Things ■" : which amused his readers not a little. But that he still had time for his fi-iends is seen in the account of a visit to Denmark Hill, written this yeai" by James Smetham, an ai-tist who at one time promised to do great things. He was at any rate a singularly chai-ming and interesting man, admired by Mr. Ruskin for his personal character, and kno\vn now by the volume of his published letters. He ^vrote : ' I walked there through the wintry weather, and got in about dusk. One or two gossiping details will intei-est you before I give you what I care for ; and so I will tell you that he has a large house with a lodge, and a valet and footman and coachman, and grand rooms glittering with pictures, chiefly Turner's, and that his father ajid mother live with him, or he with them. . . . His father is a fine old gentleman, who has a lot of bushy gray hair, and eyebrows sticking up all rough and knowing, with a comfortable way of coming up to you with his hands in his pockets, and making you comfort- able, and saying, in answer to your remark, that " John's " prose works are pretty good. His mother is a ruddy, dignified, richly -dressed old gentlewoman of seventy -five, who knows Chamonix better than Camberwell ; evidently a good old lady, with the "Christian Treasury" tossing about on the table. She puts "John" down, and holds her own opinions, and flatly contradicts him ; and he receives all her opinions with a soft reverence and gentleness that is pleasant to witness. ' I wish I could reproduce a good impression of " John " for you, to give you the notion of his " perfect gentleness and lowlihood." He certainly bursts out with a remark, and in a contradictious way, but only because he believes it, witli no air of dogmatism or conceit. He is different at home from that which he is in a lecture befoi'e a mixed audience, and there is a spiritual sweetness in the half-timid expression of his eyes ; and in bowing to you, as in taking wine, with (if I 'MODERN PAINTERS' CONTINUED 161 heard aright) " I drink to thee,'" he had a look that has followed me, a look bordering on tearful. 'He spent some time in this way. Unhanging a Turner from the wall of a distant room, he brought it to the table and put it in my hands ; then we talked ; then he went up into his study to fetch down some illustrative print or drawing ; in one case, a literal view which he had travelled fifty miles to make, in order to compare with the picture. And so he kept on gliding all over the house, hanging and unhanging, and stopping a few minutes to talk.' But it was not only from his mother that he could brook contradiction, and not only in conversation that he showed himself — contrary to the general opinion of him — amenable to correction, when it came from persons whom he could respect. And yet there were many with whom he had to deal who did not look at things in his light ; who took his criticism as personal attack, and resented it with a bitterness it did not deserve. There is a story told (but not by himself) about one of the ' Notes on the Academy,' which he was then publishing — ^how he wrote to an artist therein mentioned that he regretted he could not speak more favourably of his picture, but he hoped it would make no difference in their friendship. The artist replied (so they say) in these terms : 'Dear Ruskin, — Next time I meet you, I shall knock you down ; but I hope it will make no difference in our friend- ship.' ' Damn the fellow ! why doesn't he stand up for his friends.?' said another disappointed acquaintance. Perhaps Mr. Ruskin, secure in his ' house with a lodge, and a valet and footman and coachman,' hardly realized that a cold word from his pen sometimes meant the failure of an important Academy picture, and serious loss of income — that there was bitter truth underlying PmicKs complaint of the R. A. : — ' I paints and painta, Hears no complaints, And sells before I'm dry ; Tin savage Ruskin Sticks hia tusk in, And nobody will buy,' 11 162 LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN Against these incidents should be set such a fine anecilote as the following, told by Mr. J. J. Ruskin in a letter of June 3, 1858. ' Vokins wished me to name to you tliat Cairick, when he read your criticism on " Weary Life," came to him with the cheque Vokins had given, and said your remarks were all right, and that he could not take the price paid by Vokins the buyer; he would alter the picture. Vokins took back the money, only agreeing to see the picture when it was done.' As a public man, it was his duty to ' be just and fear not '; and, hard as it is to be just, when one looks over these ' Notes on the Academy ' at this safe distance of time, one is surprised to see with what shrewdness he put his finger upon the weak points of the various artists, and no less upon their strong points ; how many of the men he praised as beginners have since risen to eminence, how many he blamed have sunk from a specious popularity into oblivion. Contrast his career as a critic with that of other well-known men, the Jeffreys and the GiflFords, not to mention writera of a later date; and note that his error was always to encourage too freely, not to discourage hastily. The men who laid their faihn-e to his account were the weaklings whom he urged to attempts beyond their powers, with kindly support, mis- construed into a prophecy of success. No article of his snuffed out a rising Keats, or drove a young Chatterton to suicide. And he never stabbed in the dark. 'Tout honnete homme doit avouer les livres qu'il publie,' says his proto-type Rousseau: and Mr. Ruskin, after publishing his first juvenile essays under a transparent pseudonym, always had the courage of his opinions and took the conse- quences of his criticisms. His relations with Carlyle show how far he was above the conceit of the ordinary clever man. The same comes out in his dealings with other of his friends, — ^for example, the Brownings. A letter from Mrs. Browning desci-ibes a visit to Denmark Hill, and ends, — ' I like Mr. Ruskin very much, and so does Robert : very gentle, yet earnest — refined and 'MODERN PAINTERS' CONTINUED 163 truthful. I like him very much. We count him one among the valuable acquaintances made this year in England.' This has been dated 1855; but Mr. Ruskin, writing to Miss Mitford from Glenfinlas 17th August 1853, says, 'I had the pleasure, this spring, of being made acquainted with your dear Elizabeth Browning, as well as with her husband. I was of course prepared to like her, but I did not expect to like him as much as I did. I think he is really a very fine fellow, and she is the only sensible woman I have yet met with on the subject of Italian politics. Evidently a noble creature in all things.' In June 1850, Mr. Ruskin had met Robert Browning, on the invitation of Coventry Patmore, and said he liked him. ' He is the only person whom I have ever heard talk rationally about the Italians, though on the Liberal side.' In these volumes of ' Modern Painters ' he had to discuss the Mediaeval and Renaissance spirit in its relation to art, and to illustrate from Browning's poetry, ' unerring in every sentence he writes of the Middle Ages, always vital and right and profound ; so that in the matter of art there is hardly a principle connected with the mediaeval temper that he has not struck upon in those seemingly careless and too nigged lines of his.' This was written twenty-five years before the Browning Society was heard of, and at a time when the style of Browning was an offence to most people. To Mr. Ruskin, also, it had been something of a puzzle ; and he wrote to the poet, asking him to explain himself ; which the poet accord- ingly did, in a letter too interesting to remain unprinted, showing as it does the candid intercourse of two such diflferent minds. ' Faeis, 'Dec. \Oth, '55. 'My dear Ruskin, — for so you let me begin, with thp honest friendliness that befits, — ' You never were more in the wrong than when yov professed to say " your unpleasant things " to me. This is pleasant and proper at all points, over-liberal of praise here 11—2 164 LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN and there, kindly and sympathetic everywhere, and with enough of youi'self in even — what I fancy — the misjudging, to make the whole letter precious indeed. I wanted to thank you thus much at once, — ^that is, when the letter reached me ; but the strife of lodging-hunting was too sore, and only now that I can sit down for a minute without self-reproach do I allow my thoughts to let go south-aspects, warm bedrooms, and the like, and begin as you see. For the deepnesses you think you discern, — may they be more than mere black- nesses ! For the hopes you entertain of what may come of subsequent readings, — all success to them ! For yom- bewil- derment more especially noted — how shall I help that ? We don't read poetry the same way, by the same law ; it is too clear. I cannot begin writing poetry till my imaginary reader has conceded licences to me which you demur at altogether. I hiww that I don't make out my conception by my language, all poetry being a putting the infinite within the finite. You would have me paint it all plain out, which can't be ; but by various artifices I try to make shift with touches and bits of outlines which siw-ceed if they bear the conception from me to you. You ought, I think, to keep pace with the thought tripping from ledge to ledge of my "glaciers," as you call them; not stand poking your alpenstock into the holes, and demonstrating that no foot could have stood there ; — suppose it sprang over there ? In p7-ose you may criticise so — because that is the absolute representation of portions of truth, what chronicling is to history — ^but in asking for more uUimates you must accept less mediates, nor expect that a Druid stone-circle will be traced for you with as few breaks to the eye as the North Crescent and South Crescent that go together so cleverly in many a suburb. AVhy, you look at my little song as if it were Hobbs' or Nobbs' lease of his house, or testament of his devisings, wherein, I grant you, not a " then and there," " to him and his heirs," " to have and to hold," and so on, would be superfluous ; and so you begin : — " Stand still, — why .P"* * Eeferring to the poem, ' Stand still, true poet that you are,' with the line, ' And Hobbs, Nobba, Stokes, and Nokes combine.' 'MODERN PAINTERS' CONTINUED 165 For the reason indicated in the verse, to be sure, — to let me draw him — and because he is at present going his way, and fancying nobody notices him, — and moreover, " going on " (as we say) against the injustice of that, — and lastly, inasmuch as one night he'll fail us, as a star is apt to di'op out of heaven, in authentic astronomic records, and I want to make the most of my time. So much may be in "stand still." And how much more was (for instance) in that " stay !" of Samuel's (I. xv. 16). So could I twit you through the whole series of your objurgations, but the declaring my own notion of the law on the subject will do. And why, — ^I prithee, friend and fellow-student, — why, having told the Poet what you read, — may I not turn to the bystanders, and tell them a bit of my mind about their own stupid thanklessness and mistaking ? Is the jump too much there ? The whole is all but a simultaneous feeling with me. ' The other hard measure you deal me I won't bear — about my requiring you to pronounce words short and long, exactly as I like. Nay, but exactly as the language likes, in this case. Foldshirts not a trochee.? A spondee possible in English ? Two of the " longest monosyllables " con- tinuing to be each of the whole length when in junction.'' Sentence : let the delinquent be forced to supply the stone- cutter with a thousand companions to " Affliction sore — long time he bore," after the fashion of " He lost his life — by a penknife" — "He turned to clay — last Good Friday," " Departed hence — nor owed six-pence," and so on — so would pronounce a jury accustomed from the nipple to say lord and landlord, bridge and Cambridge, Gog and Magog, man and woman, house and workhouse, coal and charcoal, cloth and broad-cloth, skirts and fold-skirts, more and once moi-e, — in short ! Once more I prayed ! — is the confession of a self- searching professor ! " I stand here for law !" ' The last charge I cannot answer, for you may be right in prefen'ing it, however unwitting I am of the fact. I may put Robert Browning into Pippa and other men and maids. If so, peccavi : but I don't see myself in them, at all events. 166 LIFE AND AVOKK OF JOHN RUSKIN ' Do you think poetry was ever generally understood — or can be ? Is tlie business of it to tell people what they know already, as they know it, and so precisely that they shall be able to cry out — " Here you should supply this — that, you evidently pass over, and I'll help you from my own stock ■" ? It is aU teaching, on the contraiy, and the people hate to be taught. They say otherwise, — make foolish fables about Orpheus enchanting stocks and stones, poets standing up and being worshipped, — all nonsense and impossible dreaming. A poefs affair is with God, — ^to whom he is accountable, and of whom is his reward ; look elsewhere, and you find misery enough. Do you believe people understand "Hamlet".'' The last time I saw it acted, the heai'tiest applause of tlie night went to a little by-play of the actor's owai — who, to simulate madness in a hurry, plucked forth his handkei'chie and flourished it hither and thither : certainly a third of the play, with no end of noble things, had been (as from time immemorial) suppi-essed, with the auditory's amplest acqui- escence and benediction. Are these wasted, therefore .'' No — they act upon a very few, who react upon the i-est: as Goldsmith says, "some lords, my acquaintance, that settle the nation, aie pleased to be kind." ' Don't let me lose my lord by any seeming self-sufficiency or petulance: I look on my own shortcomings too sorrow- fully, try to remedy them too eai-nestly: but I shall never change my point of sight, or feel other than disconcerted and apprehensive when the public, critics and all, begin to understand and approve me. But what right have you to disconcert me in the other way ? Why won't you ask the next perfumer for a packet of orm-root ? Don't evei-ybody know 'tis a corruption of im-root — the Florentine lily, the giaggolo, of world-wide fame as a good savour.'' And because "iris" means so many objects already, and I use the old word, you blame me ! But I write in the blind-dark, and bitter cold, and past post-time as I fear. Take my truest thanks, and understand at least this rough writing, 'MODERN PAINTERS' CONTINUED 167 and, at all events, the real affection with which I venture to regard you. And " I " means my wife as well as ' Yours ever faithfully, 'Robert Biiowning.' That Mr. Ruskin was open to conviction and conversion could be shown from the difference in his tone of thought about poetry before and after this period ; that he was the best of friends with the man who took him to task for narrowness, may be seen from the following letter, written on the next Christmas Eve. ' My deae Mk. Ruskin, — ' Your note having just arrived, Robert deputes me to write for him while he dresses to go out on an engagement. It is the evening. All the hours are wasted, since the morning, through our not being found at the Rue de Grenelle, but here — and our instinct of self-preservation or self-satisfaction insists on our not losing a moment more by our own fault. ' Thank you, thank you for sending us your book, and also for writing my husband's name in it. It will be the same thing as if you had written mine — except for the pleasure, as you say, which is greater so. How good and kind you are ! 'And not well. That is worst. Surely you would be better if you had the summer in winter we have here. But I was to write only a word — Let it say how affectionately we regard you. 'Elizabeth Bakeett Browning. ' 3, Rue du CoiiYs^E, ' Thursday Evening, 2ifh ' {December, 1855). So it came true — ' I've a JTriend, over the sea ; I like him, but he loves me. It all grew out of the books I write. . , .' T CHAPTER IX. 'THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART.' (1857-1858.) 'Pitch thy behaviour low, thy projects high.' Geokoe Herbert. HE humble work of the drawing -classes at Great Ormond Street was teaching Mi-. Ruskin even more than he taught his pupils. It was showing him how far his plans were practicable ; how they should be modified ; how they might be improved ; and especially what more, beside di'awing-classes, was needed to realize his ideal. It brought him into contact with uneducated men, and the seamy side of civilization, as it is usually thought to be — poverty and ignorance, and, most difficult of all to treat, the incompetence and the predestinated unsuccess of too many an ambitious nature. That was, after all, the great problem which was to occupy him ; but meanwhile he was anxiously willing to co-operate with every movement, to join hands with any kind of man, to go anywhere, do anything that might promote the cause he had at heart. Already at the end of 1854 he had given three lectures, his second course, at the Architectural Museum, specially addressed to workmen in the decorative trades. His subjects were design and colour, and his illustrations were chiefly drawn from mediasval illumination, which he had long been studying. These were informal, quasi-private affairs, which nevertheless attracted notice owing to the celebrity of the speaker. It would have been better if his addresses had been 'THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART' 169 carefully prepared and authentically published ; for a chance word here and there raised replies about matters of detail in which his critics thought they had gained a technical advantage, adding weight to his father's desire not to see him ' expose himself in this way. There were no more lectures imtil the beginning of 1857. On January 23rd, 1857, he spoke before the Architectural Association upon ' The Influence of Imagination in Archi- tecture,' repeating and amplifying what he had said at Edin- burgh about the subordinate value of mere proportion, and the importance of sculptured ornament based on natural forms. This of course would involve the creation of a class of stone-carvers who could be trusted with the execution of such work. Once grant the value of it, and public demand would encourage the supply, and the workmen would raise themselves in the effort. A louder note was sounded in an address at the St. Martin's School of Art, Castle Street, Long Acre (April 2nd, 1857), where, speaking after George Cruikshank, his old friend — practically his first master — and an enthusiastic philanthropist and temperance advocate, Mr. Ruskin gave his audience a wider view of art than they had known before : ' the kind of painting they most wanted in London was painting cheeks red with health.' This was anticipating the standpoint of the Oxford Lectures, and showed how the inquiry was beginning to take a much broader aspect. Another work in a similar spirit, the North London School of Design, had been prosperously started by a circle of men under Pre-Raphaelite influence, and led by Thomas Seddon. He had given up historical and poetic painting for natiu:alistic landscape, and had retm-ned from the East with the most valuable studies completed, only to break down and die prematurely. His friends, among them Mr. Holman Hunt, were collecting money to buy from the widow his pictuie of Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives, to present it to the National Gallery as a memorial of him ; and at a meeting for the pui-pose, Mr. Ruskin spoke warmly of his laboms in the 170 LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN cause of the working classes. ' The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church,' said the early Christians, and this public recognition sealed the character of the Pre-Raphaelite philanthropic movement ; though at what cost, the memoir of Thomas Seddon by his brother too amply proves. The next step in the propaganda was of a still more public nature. In the summer of 1857 the Art Treasures Exhibition was held at Manchester, and Mr. Ruskin was invited to lecture. The theme he chose was 'The Political Economy of Art.' He had been studying political economy closely for some time back, but, as we saw from his letter to Cai'lyle, he had found no answer in the ordinary text -books for the questions he tried to put. He wanted to know what Bentham and Ricardo and Mill, the great authorities, would advise him as to the best way of employing ai-tists, of educating work- men, of elevating public taste, of regulating patronage ; but these subjects were not in their programme. And so he put together his own thoughts into two lectures upon Art con- sidered as Wealth : first, how to get it ; next, how to use it.* He compared the body politic to a farm, of which the ' economy,' in the original sense, consisted, not iu sparing, still less in standing by and criticising, but in active direction and management. He thought that the government of a state, like a good farmer or housekeeper, should not be content with laissezjaire, but should promote everything that was for the true interests of the state, and watch over all the industries and arts which make for civilization. It should undertake education, and be responsible for the employment of the artists and craftsmen it produced, giving them work upon public buildings, as the Venetian state used to do. Meantime he showed what an enlightened public might aim at, what their standards of patronage should be ; how, for example, each and all might help the cause by preferring artistic decorative work, in furniture and plate and dress, to the * July 10 and 13, 1857. He went to Manchester from Oxford, where he had been staying with the Liddells, writing enthusiastically of the beauty of their children and the charm of their domestic life. 'THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART' 171 mechanical products of inai'tistic manufacture; how they might help in preserving the great standard buildings and pictures of the past, not without advantages to their own art-production ; how they might deal directly with the artist rather than the dealer ; and serve the cause of education by placing works of art in schools. And he concluded by suggesting that the mediaeval guilds of craftsmen, if they could be re-established, would be of great service, especially '.n substituting a spirit of cooperation for that of com- petition. There were very few points in these lectures that were not vigorously contested at the moment, and conceded in the sequel, — in some form or other. The paternal function of government, the right of the state to interfere in matters beyond its traditional range, its duty with regard to educa- tion, — all this was quite contrary to the prevailing habits of thought of the time, especially at Manchester, the head- quarters of the lahssezfaire school : but to Mr. Ruskin, who, curiously enough, had just then been referring sarcastically to German philosophy, knowing it only at second-hand, and unaware of Hegel's political work, — ^to him this Platonic con- ception of the state was the only possible one, as it is to most people nowadays. In the same way, his practical advice has been accepted, perhaps unwittingly, by our times. We do now understand the difference between artistic decoration and machine-made wares; we do now try to preserve ancient monuments, and to use art as a means of education. And we are in a fair Avay, it seems, of lowering the price of pictures, as he bids us, to 'not more than ^^500 for an oil pictiu'e and i&lOO for a water-colour.' Prom Manchester he went with his parents to Scotland ; for his mother, now beginning to gi'ow old, wanted to revisit the scenes of her youth. They went to the Highlands and as far north as the Bay of Cromarty, and then returned by way of the Abbeys of the Lowlands, to look up Turner sites, as he had done in 1845 on the St. Gothard. From the enjoyment of this holiday he was recalled to London by a 172 LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN letter from Mr. Wornum saying that he could aiTange the Turner drawings at the National Gallery. Mr. Ruskin's first letter on the National Gallery, in 1847, has heen noticed. He had written again to the Times (Dec. 29th, 1852), pressing the same point — namely, that if the pictures were put under glass, no cleaning nor restoring would be needed ; and that the Gallery ought not to be con- sidei-ed as a grand hall, decorated with pictures, but as a convenient museum, with a chronological sequence of the best works of all schools, — every picture hung on the line and accompanied by studies for it, if procurable, and en- gravings from it. Now, — in 1857, — question was raised of removing the National Gallery from Trafalgai- Square. The South Kensinsrton Museum was beins: formed, and the whole business of arranging the national ai't treasures was gone into by a Royal Commission, consisting of Lord Broughton (in the chair). Dean Milman, Pi-of. Faraday, Prof. Cockerell, and Mr. George Richmond. Mr. Ruskin was examined before them on April 6th, and re-stated the opinions he had ^vi-itten to the Times, adding that he would like to see two National Galleries, — one of populai- interest, containing such works as would catch the public eye and enlist the sympathy of the untaught ; and another containing only the cream of the collections, in pictm-es, sculpture and the decorative crafts, ananged for pmposes of study. This was suggested as an ideal ; of course, it would involve more outlay, and less display, than any Pai'liamentaiy vote would sanction, or party leader risk. Another question of importance was the disposal of the pictures and sketches which Turner had left to the nation. Mr. Ruskin was one of the executoi-s under the will ; but, on finding that, though Turner''s intention was plain, there were technical informalities which would make the administration anything but easy, he declined to act. It was not until 1856 that the litigation was concluded, and Tmner's pictures and sketches were handed to the Trustees of the National Gallery, 'THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART' 173 Mr. Ruskin, whose want of legal knowledge had made his services useless before, now felt that he could caiTy out the spirit of Turner's will by offering to arrange the sketches; which were in such a state of confusion that only some person with knowledge of the artist's habits of work and subjects could, so to speak, edit them ; and the editor would need no ordinary skill, patience and judgment, into the bargain. Meanwhile, for that winter (1856-7) a preliminary exhibi- tion was held of Turner's oil-paintings, with a few water- colours, at Marlborough House, then the headquarters of the Department of Science and Art, soon afterwards removed to South Kensington. Mr. Ruskin wrote a catalogue, with analysis of Turner's periods of development and character- istics ; which made the collection intelligible and interesting to curious sight-seers. They showed their appreciation by taking up five editions in rapid succession.* Just before lecturing at Manchester, he wrote again on the subject to the Times; and in September his friend R. N. Womum, Director of the National Gallery in succes- sion to Eastlake and Uwins, wrote — as we saw — that he might arrange the sketches as he pleased. He returned from Scotland, and set to work on October 7th. It was strange employment for a man of his powers; almost as removed from the Epicurean Olympus of ' cultured ease ' popularly assigned to him, as night-school teaching and lecturing to workmen. But, beside that it was the carrying out of Turner's wishes, Mr. Ruskin always had a certain love for experimenting in manual toil ; and this was work in which his extreme neatness and deftness of hand was needed, no less than his knowledge and judgment. During the winter, for full six months, he and his two assistants worked, all day and every day, among the masses of precious rubbish * Up to 1857 Claude's name nearly always appears in the annual reports of the National Gallery among the ' pictures most frequently copied.' In that year Turner's pictures were exhibited. Claude thence- forth lost the favour of the copyists. Turner gained it at once, and has kept it ever since. 174 LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN that had been removed from Queen Anne Street to the National Gallery. Mr. J. J. Ruskin m-ote, on February 19 and 21, 1852 : — 'I have just been through Turner's house with Griffith. His labour is more astonishing than his genius. There are i&SOjOOO of oil pictures done and undone — Boxes half as big as your Study Table, filled with Drawings and Sketches. There are Copies of Liber Studiorum to fill all your Drawers and more, and House Walls of proof plates in Reams — they may go at 1/- each. . . . ' Nothing since Pompeii so impressed me as the interior of Turner's house ; the accumulated dust of 40 years partially cleared off ; Daylight for the first time admitted by opening a window on the finest productions of art buried for 40 years. The Drawing Room has, it is reckoned, .£25,000 worth of proofs, and sketches, and Drawings, and Prints. It is amusing to hear Dealers saying there can be no Liber Studiorums — when I saw neatly packed and well labelled as many Bundles of Liber Studiorum as would fill your entire Bookcase, and England and Wales proofs in packed and labelled Bundles like Reams of paper, as I told you, piled nearly to Ceiling . . . 'The house must be dry as a Bone — the parcels were apparently quite uninjured. The very large pictures were spotted, but not much. They stood leaning one against another in the lai-ge low Rooms. Some Jinhhed go to Nation, many vmfinished not: no frames. Two are given un- conditional of Gallery Building — very Jim : if (and this is a condition) placed beside Claude. TTie style much like the laying on in Windmill Lock in Dealer's hands, which, now it is cleaned, comes out a real Beauty. I believe Turner loved it. The will desires all to be framed and repaired and put into the best showing state ; as if he could not release his money to do this till he was dead. The Top of his Gallery is one ruin of Glass and patches of paper, now only just made weather-proof . , . ' I saw in Turner's Rooms, Geo. Morhmds and WUsons and Claudes and portraits in vaiious stiles all by Tunier. He 'THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART' 175 copied every man, was every man first, and took up his own style, casting all others away. It seems to me you may keep your money and revel for ever and for nothing among Turner's Works.' Turner used frequently to sketch on thin paper which he folded across and across for packing, or rolled in tight bundles to go into his pockets. AVhen he got his sketches home, as they were only pour servir and of no value to any one but himself, they were crammed into drawers, anyhow, and left there, decade after decade. His sketch-books had rotted to pieces with the damp, their pages pressed together into mouldering masses. Soft chalk lay loose among the leaves, crushed into powder when the book was packed away. He economized his paper by covering both sides, and of course did not trouble to ' fix ' his sketches, still less to mount and frame them, as the proud amateur is careful to do. Among the quantities so recklessly thrown aside for dust, damp, soot, mice and worms to destroy — some 15,000 Mr. Huskin reckoned at first, 19,000 later on — there were many fine drawings, which had been used by the engi-avers, and vast numbers of interesting and valuable studies in colour and in pencil. Four hundred of these were extricated from the chaos, and with infinite pains cleaned, flattened, mounted, dated and described, and placed in sliding frames in cabinets devised by Mr. Ruskin, or else in swivel frames, to let both sides of the paper be seen. The first results of the work were shown in an Exhibition at Marlborough House during the winter, for which Mr. Ruskin wrote another catalogue. Of the whole collection he began a more complete account, which was too elaborate to be finished in that form ; but in 1881 he published a ' Catalogue of the Drawings and Sketches of J. M. W. Turner, R.A., at present exhibited in the National Gallery,' so that his plan was practically fulfilled. The collection — a monument of one great man's genius and another's patience — is still housed downstairs at Trafalgar Square, and it has never been so honourably viewed and so freely used as Mr. Ruskin once hoped. But in proportion 176 LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSinN to the means at the disposal of the powers that be, Turner is well treated. The sketches can at least be got at by those who know about them and care to study them, and many of the pictures ai-e now better shown than formerly. The historical aiTangement of the vai-ious schools, also, has been improved with every successive rehanging ; and the primitive masters, once neglected, have now almost the lion's shai-e of the show. Such are Time's revenges. During 1858 Mr. Ruskin continued to lecture at various places on subjects connected with his Manchester addresses, — the relation of art to manufacture, and especially the de- pendence of all great architectural design upon sculpture or painting of organic form. The first of the series was given at the opening of the South Kensington Museum, Januai'y 12th, 1858, entitled 'The Deteriorative Power of Con- ventional Ai-t over Nations'; in which he showed that naturalism, as opposed to meaningless pattern-making, was always a sign of life. For example, the strength of the Greek, Florentine and Venetian art arose out of the search for truth, not, as it is often supposed, out of striving after an ideal of beauty ; and as soon as nature was superseded by recipe, the greatest schools hastened to their fall. From which he con- eluded that modern design should always be founded on natural form, rather than upon the traditional patterns of the east or of the mediaevals. On February 16th he spoke on ' The Work of Iron, in Nature, Art and Policy,' at Tunbridge Wells; a subject similar to that of his address to the St. Martin's School of the year before, but amplified into a plea for the use of wrought-iron ornament, as in the new Oxford Museum, then building. The Oxford Museum was an experiment in the true Gothic revival. There had been plenty of so-called Gothic archi- tecture ever since Horace Walpole ; but it had aimed rather at imitating the forms of the Middle Ages than at reviving the spirit. The architects at Oxford, Sir Thomas Deane and Mr. IVoodward, had allowed their workmen to design parts 'THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART' 177 of the detail, such as capitals and spandrils, quite in the spirit of Mr. Ruskin's teaching, and the work was accordingly of deep interest to him. So far back as April 1856, he hacl given an address to the men employed at the Museum, whom he met, on Dr. Acland's invitation, at the Workmen's Read- ing Rooms. He said that his object was not to give labouring men the chance of becoming masters of other labouring men, and to help the few at the expense of the many, but to lead them to those sources of pleasure, and power over their own minds and hands, that more educated people possess. He did not sympathize with the socialism that had been creeping into vogue since 1848. He thought existing social arrange- ments good, and he agreed with his friends, the Carlyles, who had found that it was only the incapable who could not get work. But it was the fault of the wealthy and educated that working people were not better trained ; it was not the work- ing-men's fault, at bottom. The modern architect used his workman as a mere tool ; while the Gothic spirit set him free as an original designer, to gain — not more wages and higher social rank, but pleasure and instruction, the true happiness that lies in good work well done. That was his view in those times. The Oxford Museum prospered, and Dr. Acland and he together wrote a small book, reporting its aims and progress in 1858 and 1859, illustrated with an engraving of one of the workmen's capitals. It was no secret, then, that the Museum was an experiment ; and, like all experiments, it left much to be desired; but it paved the way, on the one hand, to the general adoption of Gothic for domestic purposes, and on the other, to the recognition of a new class of men — the art- craftsmen. Parallel with this movement for educating the ' working- class ' there was the scheme for the improvement of middle- class education, which was then going on at Oxford — the beginning of University Extension — supported by the Rev. F. Temple (Archbishop of Canterbury), and Mr. (after- wards Sir) Thomas Dyke Acland. Mr. Ruskin was heartily 12 178 LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN for them ; and in a lettei- on the subject, he tried to show how the teaching of Art might be made to work in with the scheme. He did not think that in this plan, any more than at the Working Men's College, there need be an attempt to teach drawing with a view to forming aa-tists ; but there were three objects they might hold in view : the first, to give every student the advantage of the happiness and knowledge which the study of Art conveys ; the next, to enforce some know- ledge of Art amongst those who were likely to become patrons or critics ; and the last, to leave no Giotto lost among hill sheplierds. The study of art-history he considered un- necessary to ordinary education, and too wide a subject to be treated in the usual curriculum of schools ; but the practice of drawing might go hand in hand with natural history, and the habit of looking at things with an artist's eye would be invaluable. He proposed a plan of studies, interweaving the ai't-lessons with every other depai'tment, instead of relegating them to a poor hour a week of idling or insubordination under a master who ranked with the drill-sergeant. Some- thing has been done, both by the delegates for local examina- tions (whom this movement created) and by the schools themselves, to improve the teaching of drawing ; but nothing like Mr. Ruskin's proposal has been attempted — simply because it would involve the employment of schoolmasters who could draw ; and the introduction of the object-lesson system into the higher forms. This intercourse with Oxford and willingness to help, even at the lower end^ of the laddei-, is a pleasant episode in the life of a man struggling in the wider world against Academicism and the various fallacies of traditional creeds and cultures. That his work had won him a high place in the esteem of his college, is shown by their giving him the highest honour in their power. In 1858 ' Honorary Student- ships ' were created at Christ Church by the Commissioners' ordinances. At the first election ever held, Dec. 6, 1858, there were chosen for the compliment Mr. Ruskin, Mr. Glad- 'THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART' 179 stone, Sir G. Cornewall Lewis, Dr. (Sir) H. W. Acland, and Sir F. H. Gore Ouseley. At the second, Dec. 15, 1868, were elected Henry Hallam, the Earl of Stanhope, the Earl of Elgin, the Marquis of Dalhousie and Viscount Canning.* ' NoscUur,^ it is said, ' a sociis.'' * From the Minute-Book, found and kindly communicated by the Rev. E. L. Sampson, censor of Christ Church. 12—2 CHAFIEK X. 'MODERN PAINTERS' CONCLUDED. (1858-1860.) ' The best iu this kind are but shadows.' Miihummer Mglit's Dream. OXFORD and old friends did not monopolise Mr. Ruskin's attention : he was soon seen at Cambridge — on the same platform with Mr. Richard Redgrave, R.A., the representative of Academicism and officialism — at the opening of the School of Art for workmen on October 29th, 1858. His Inaugm-al Address struck a deeper note, a wider chord, than previous essays ; it was the forecast of the last volume of ' Modern Painters,' and it sketched the train of thought into which he had been led during his torn* abroad, that summer. The battles between faith and criticism, between the historical and the scientific attitudes, which had been going on in his mind, were taking a new form. At the outset, we saw, naturalism overpowered respect for tradition — in the first volume of 'Modern Painters''; then the historical tendency won the day, in the second volume. Since that time, the critical side had been gathering stiength, by his alliance with liberal movements and by his gradual detach- ment from associations that held him to the older oi-dcr of thought. And just as in his lonely journey of 18-15 he first took independent ground upon questions of religion aiid social life, so in 1 868, once more travelling alone, he was led by his meditations, — freed from the restraining presence of 'MODERN PAINTERS' CONCLUDED 181 his parents, — ^to conclusions which he had been all these years evading, yet finding at last inevitable. He went abroad for a third attempt to write and illustrate his History of Swiss Towns. The drawings of the year were still in the style of fine pen-etching combined with broadly gradated and harmonious tints of colour; or, when they were simply pen or pencil outlines, they were much more refined than those of ten years earlier. He spent May on the Upper Rhine between Basle and Schaffhausen, June in the neighbourhood of the Swiss Baden, July at Bellinzona. In reflecting over the sources of Swiss character, as connected with the question of the nature and origin of art in morality, he was struck with the fact that all the virtues of the Swiss did not make them artistic. Compared with most nations they were as children in painting, music and poetry. And, indeed, they ranked with the early phases of many great nations — the period of pristine simplicity 'uncorrupted by the arts.' From Bellinzona he went to Turin on his way to the Vaudois Valleys, where he meant to compare the Walden- sian Protestants with the Swiss. Accidentally he saw Paul Vei'onese's 'Queen of Sheba' and other Venetian pictures; and so fell to comparing a period of fully ripened art with one of artlessness ; discovering that the mature art, while it appeared at the same time wibh decay in morals, did not spring from that decay, but was rooted in the virtues of the earlier age. He gi-asped a clue to the puzzle, in the generalisation that Art is the product of human happiness ; it is contrary to asceticism ; it is the expression of pleasure. But when the turning point of national progress is once reached, and ai't is regarded as the laborious incitement to f pleasure, — no longer the spontaneous blossom and fruit of it, . — ^the decay sets in for art as for morality. Art, in short, is • created hy pleasure, not^r pleasure. And so both the ascetics who refuse art are wi'ong, and the Epicureans who make it a means of pleasure-seeking ; the latter obviously and culpably, because in their hands it 182 LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN becomes rapidly degraded into a mere sensational or sensual stimulus, and loses its own finest qualities — technically as well as morally. But the ascetics are wrong, too ; because we cannot place ourselves at the fountain head again, and i-esume the pristine simplicity of nascent society. Such was the claim of the Modern Vaudois whom he had gone forth to bless as descendants of those ' slaughtered saints whose bones lay scattered on the Alpine mountains cold.' He found them keeping but the relics and grave clothes of a pure faith ; and that at the cost of abstention from all service to the struggling Italy of their time, — at the cost, too, of a flat refusal to reverence the best achievements of the past. No doubt there were exemplary persons among them; but the standard of thought, the attitude of mind, of the Walden- sians, Mr. Ruskin now perceived to be quite impossible for himself. He could not look upon every one outside their fold as heathens and publicans ; he could not believe that the pictures of Paul Veronese were works of iniquity, nor that the motives of great deeds in earlier ages were lying super- stitions. He took courage to own to himself and others that it was no longer any use trying to identify his point of view with that of Protestantism. He saw both Protestants and Roman Catholics, in the perspective of history, converging into a primitive, far distant, ideal unity of Christianity, in which he still believed ; but he could take neither side, after this. The first statement of the new point of view was, as we said, the Inaugural Lecture of the Cambridge School of Art. The next important utterance was at Manchestei-, Feb. 22nd, 1859, where he spoke on the ' Unity of Ai-t,' by which he meant — not the fraternity of handicrafts with painting, as the term is used nowadays — but that, in whatever branch of Art, the spirit of Truth or Sincerity is the same. In this lecture there is a very important passage showing how he had at last got upon firm ground in the question of art and morality : — ' / do not say in the least that in order to be a good painter you must be a good man ; but I do say that 'MODERN PAINTERS' CONCLUDED 183 in order to be a good natural painter there must be strong elements of good in the mind, however warped by other parts of the character.' So emphatic a statement deserves more attention than it has received from readers and writers who assume to judge Mr. Ruskin's views after a slight acquaint- ance with his earlier works. He was well aware himself that his mind had been gradually enlarging, and his thoughts changing ; and he soon saw as great a difference between himself at forty and at twenty-five, as he had formerly seen between the Boy poet and the Art critic. He became as anxious to forget his earlier great books, as he had been to forget his verse- writing ; and when he came to collect his ' Works,' these lectures, under the title of ' The Two Paths,' were (with 'The Political Economy of Art') the earliest admitted into the library. After this Manchester lecture he took a driving tour in Yorkshire — posting in the old-fashioned way — ^halting at Bradford for the lecture on 'Modern Manufacture and Design^ (March 1) and ending with a visit to the school at Winnington, of which more in a later chapter. In 1859 the last Academy Notes, for the time being, were published. The Pre-Raphaelite cause had been fully successful, and the new school of naturalist landscape was rapidly asserting itself. Old friends were failing, such as Stanfield, Lewis, and Roberts : but new men were growing up, among whom Mr. Ruskin welcomed G. D. Leslie, F. Goodall, J. C. Hook, — who had come out of his 'Pre- Raphaelite measles' into the healthy naturalism of 'Luff Boy!' — Clarence Whaite, Henry Holiday, and John Brett, who showed the ' Val d'Aosta.' Mr. Millais' ' Vale of Rest ' was the picture which attracted most notice: something of the old rancour against the school was revived in the Mornmg Herald, which called his works 'impertinences,' 'contemptible,' 'indelible disgrace,' and so on. It was the beginning of a transition from the delicacy of the Pre-Raphaelite Millais to his later style ; and as such the preacher of ' All great art is delicate' could not entirely defend it. But the serious strength 184 LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN of the imagination and the power of the execution he praised with unexpected warmth. He then started on the last tour abroad with his parents. He had been asked, rather pointedly, by the National Gallery Commission, whether he had seen the great Grerman museums, and had been obliged to reply that he had not. Perhaps it occurred to him or to his father that he ought to see the pictures at Berlin and Dresden and Mimich, even though he heartily disliked the Grermans with their art and their language and everything that belonged to them, — except Holbein and Diirer. By the end of July the travellers were in North Switzerland ; and they spent September in Savoy, returning home by October 7th. Old Mr. Ruskin was now in his seventy-fifth year ; and his desire was to see the great work finished before he died. There had been some attempt to write this last volume of ' Modem Painters ' in the previous winter, but it had been put off imtil after the visit to Grermany had completed Mr. Ruskin's study of the great Venetian painters — especially Titian and Veronese. Now at last, in the autumn of 1859, he finally set to work on the writing. He had to do for Vegetation, Clouds, and Water, what Vol. IV. had done for Mountains : and also to treat of the laws of Composition. To do this on a scale coiTesponding with his foregoing work, would have needed four or five more volumes. As it was, the author dropped the section on Water, with promises of a book which he never Avrote, and the rest was only sketched — somewhat ampler in detail than corresponding paits of the ' Elements of Drawing,' but still inadequately and half-heartedlj', as an artist would com- plete a work when the patron who commissioned it had died. The whole book had been simpl}' the assertion of Turner's genius — ^plucky and necessary in the young man of 1843, but superfluous in 1860, when his main thesis was admitted, and his own interests, as well as the needs of a totally different period, had drifted far away from the original subject. Turner was long since dead ; his fame thoroughly vindicated ; 'MODERN PAINTERS' CONCLUDED 185 his bequest to the nation dealt with, so far as possible. The Early Christian Art was recognised — almost beyond its claims; for Angelico and his circle, great as they were in their age, had begun to lead modern religious painters into affectation. The Pre - Raphaelites and naturalistic land- scapists no longer needed the hand which ' Modern Painters ' had held out to them by the way. Of the great triad of Venice, Tintoret had been expounded, Veronese and Titian were now taken up and treated with tardy, but ample recognition. And now, after twenty years of labour, Mr. Ruskin had established himself as the recognised leader of criticism and the exponent of painting and architecture. He had created a department of literature all his own, and adorned it with works of which the like had never been seen. He had enriched the art of England with examples of a new and beautiful draughtsmanship, and the language with passages of poetic description and eloquent declamation, quite, in their way, unrivalled. As a philosopher he had built up a theory of art, as yet uncontested ; and had treated both its abstract nature and its relations to human conduct and policy. As a historian, he had thrown new light on the Middle Ages and Renaissance, illustrating, in a way then novel, their chronicles by their remains. He had beaten down opposition, risen above detraction, and won the prize of honour — only to realise, as he received it, that the fight had been but a pastime tournament, after all ; and to hear, through the applause, the enemy's trumpet sounding to battle. For now, without the camp, there were realities to face ; as to Art — ' the best in this kind are but shadows.' BOOK III. HEBMIT AND EEBETIO. (1860-1870.) 'Hush I you must not speak about it yet, but. I have made a great discovery. The fact is that the strongest man upon earth is he who stands most alone.' — Ibsen's Enemy of Society. CHAPTEll I. •UNTO THIS LAST.' (18G0-1861.) ' He was forty before ho talked of any mission from Heaven.' — The Hero as Prophet. ' In this way he has lived till past forty ; old age is now in view of him, and the earnest portal of death and eternity.'— ^Ae Hero as King. Caelylb. AT forty years of age Mr. Ruskin finished 'Modern Painters,' and concluded the whole cycle of work by which he is popularly known as a writer on art. From that time art was sometimes his text, rarely his theme. He used it as the opportunity, the vehicle, so to say, for teachings of far wider range and deeper import; teachings about life as a whole, conclusions in ethics and economics and religion, to which he sought to lead others, as he was led, by the way of art. And in this later period, when he spoke of art in especial, the greater range of his inquiry naturally modified his aim and standpoint ; just as, in a vast wall-painting, the detail is viewed and treated otherwise than when it formed the subject of separate still-life studies. Some observers prefer the still-life; and indeed it may be good work. But the broad treatment is the greater. If we want to understand Mr. Ruskin, there is only one way of studying him; and that is to trace from point to point the growth of his mind. Now all those books, — 'Modern Painters,' 'Stones of Venice,' 'Seven Lamps,' the earlier Lectures and Letters on Axt, — are works of a young man, not yet forty ; that is to say, before the age at which 190 LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN most great authoi-s, paintei-s, and thiiikei-s have done their best. They contain much that is valuable and much that is characteiistic ; but they ai-e only the forecourt, not the presence-chambei-. They lead to his final conclusions, but they do not express them. What the juvenile poems are to these works, they aie to the later^ works, — seedlings and saplings, so like and so unlike the full-grown plant. It is no use quairelliug with the author for not composing a con- sistent explanation of his views : though it would have been convenient for students ; who might as well Avish that Plato had left them a handbook of his philosophy, or that Shakspere had appended notes to ' Hamlet.'' During the time when he was preaching his latei- doctrines, Mr. Ruskin wished to suppress the interfering evidences of the earlier; not so much because they contained mistaken estimates and misleading statements, as because they betrayed a tone of thought which differed fi-om the tone of his later period as much as a stained window diflt'ers from a Tintoret. He let his works on ai't run out of print, not for the benefit of second-hand booksellers, but in the hope that he could fix his audience upon the bmden of his prophecy for the time being. But the youthful works were still read ; high prices were paid for them, or they were smuggled in from America. And when the epoch of ' Fors ' had passed, he agreed to the reprinting of all that early material. He called it obsolete and trivial ; othei-s find it interestingly biographical — perhaps even classical. But when we read articles professing to analyse his life- work, and find that they estimate his art-theory from a few passages in ' Modern Paintei-s ' I. and H., obviously immature ; when, on the other hand, magEizine-writers criticise, as axioms of his social science, without tracing their origin and import, the winged words with which he tried, in his failing powers and forlorn hopes, to ai'ouse the dull conscience of a Philistine public ; when men of a different generation, an alien race, of traditions dissimilar and irreconcilable temperament, hastily sample his paragTaphs as customs-officers gauge a cargo ; we •UNTO THIS LAST' 191 turn at last to the historical method, and ask whether these things should be so. And as a geologist, puzzled at some inversion of strata, Nature's paradox, yet, on accurately plot- ting it out upon his map or model, sees the fitness and necessity of the phenomenon; so, with the biogiaphical scheme understood, the discrepancies and difficulties of Ruskin fall into their place and explain themselves. He at last stands revealed, and then can ■ be appreciated, as we appreciate any other thinking, growing man, — say Plato, Titian, Goethe, — who has left a long life's work behind him. This yeai-, then, 1860, the year of the Italian Kingdom, of Garibaldi, and of the beginning of the American war, marks his turning point, from the early work, summed up in the old 'Selections,' to the later work, which no one has yet thoroughly examined in print. Until he was forty, Mr. Ruskin was a writer on art ; after that his art was secondary to ethics. Until he was forty he was a believer in English Protestantism ; afterwards he could not reconcile current beliefs with the facts of life as he saw them, and had to reconstruct his creed from the foundations. Until he was forty he was a philanthropist, working heartily with others in a definite cause, and hoping for the amend- ment of wrongs, without a social upheaval. Even in the beginning of 1860, in his evidence before the House of Commons Select Committee on Public Institutions, he was ready with plans for amusing and instructing the labouring classes, and noting in them a 'thirsty desire' for improve- ment. But while his readiness to make any personal sacrifice, in the way of social and philanthropic experiment, and his interest in the question were increasing, he became less and less sanguine about the value of, such efforts as the Working Men's College, and less and less ready to co-operate with others in their schemes. He began to see that no tinkering at social breakages was really worth while; that far more extensive repairs were needed to make the old ship sea- worthy. So he set himself, by himself, to sketch the plans for the 192 LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN repairs. Natm-ally sociable, aiid accustomed to the friendly give-and-take of a wide acquaintance, he witlidrew from the busy world into a busier solitude. During the next few years he lived much alone among the Alps, or at home, thinking out the problem; sometimes feeling, fai- more acutely than was good for clear thought, the bui-den of the mission that was laid upon him. In March 1863 he wrote from his retreat at Mornex to Mr. Norton : — ' The loneliness is vei-y great, and the peace in which I am at present is only as if I had buried myself in a tuft of grass on a battlefield wet with blood — for the cry of the earth about me is in my ears continually, if I do not lay my head to the very ground.' And, a few months later: — 'I am still very unwell, and tormented between the longing for rest and lovely life, and the sense of this terrific call of human crime for resistance and of human misery for help, though it seems to me as the voice of a river of blood which can but sweep me down in the midst of its black clots, helpless.' Sentences like these, passages here and there in the last volume of ' Modern Paintei's,'' and still more, cei'tain passages omitted from that volume, show that about 1860 something of a cloud had been settling over him, — a sense of the evil of the world, a horror of great darkness. In his eai'lier yeai's, his intense emotion and vivid imagination had enabled him to read into pictures of Tintoret or Tm-ner, into scenes of nature and sayings of great books, a meaning or a moral which he so vividly communicated to the reader as to make it thencefoiward part and parcel of the subject, howevei* it came there to begin with. It is useless to wonder whether Turner, for instance, consciously meant what Ruskin found in his works. A great painter does not paint without thought, and such thought is apt to show itself whether he will or no. But it needs a powerful sympathy to detect and describe the thought. And when that powerful sympathy was given to suffering, to wide-spread misery, to ci-ying wrongs ; joined also with an intense passion for justice, which had already shown itself in the defence of slighted genius and 'UNTO THIS LAST' 193 neglected art ; and to the Celtic temperament of some high- strung seer and trance-prophesying bard ; it was no wonder that Mr. Ruskin became like one of the hermits of old, who retreated from the world to return upon it with stormy messages of awakening and flashes of truth more impressive, more illuminating than the logic of schoolmen and the state- craft of the wise. And then he began to take up an attitude of antagonism to the world, he who had been the kindly helper and minister of delightful art. He began to call upon those who had ears to hear to come out and be separate from the ease and hypocrisy of Vanity Fair. Its respectabilities, its orthodoxies, he could no longer abide. Orthodox religion, orthodox morals and politics, orthodox art and science, alike he rejected ; and was rejected by each of them as a brawler, a babbler, a fanatic, a heretic. And even when kindly Oxford gave him a quasi-academical position, it did not bring him, as it brings many a heretic, back to the fold. In this period of storm and stress he stood alone. The old friends of his youth were one by one passing away, if not from intercourse, still from full sympathy with him in his new mood. His parents were no longer the guides and com- panions they had been ; they did not understand the business he was about. And so he was left to new associates, for he could not live without some one to love, — that is the nature of the man, however lonely in his work and wanderings. The new friends of this period were, at first, Americans ; as the chief new friends of his latest period (the Alexanders) were American, too. Mr. Charles Eliot Norton, after being introduced to him in London, met him again by accident on the Lake of Geneva — the story is prettily told in ' Praeterita.'' And Mr. Ruskin adds, 'Norton saw all my weaknesses, measured all my narrownesses, and, from the first, took serenely, and as it seemed of necessity, a kind of paternal authority over me, and a right of guidance. ... I was entirely conscious of his rectorial power, and affectionately submissive to it, so that he might have done anything with 13 194 LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN me, but for the unhappy diflference in our innate, and un- changeable, political faiths.' So, after all, he stood alone. Another friend about this time was Mrs. H. Beecher Stowe, to whom he wrote on June 18th, 1860, from Greneva : — ' It takes a great deal, when I am at Geneva, to make me wish myself anywhere else, and, of all places else, in London ; nevertheless, I very heai-tily wish at this moment that I were looking out on the Norwood Hills, and wei-e expecting you and the childi-en to breakfast to-morrow. ' I had very seiious thoughts, when I received your note, of running home ; but I expected that veiy day an American friend, Mr. Stillman, who, I thought, would miss me more here than you in London, so I stayed. ' What a dreadful thing it is that people should have to go to America again, after coming to Eui-ope ! It seems to me an inversion of the order of natiure. I think America is a soi-t of " United " States of Probation, out of which all wise people, being once delivei-ed, and having obtained enti-ance into this better world, should never be expected to return* (sentence irremediably imgrammatical), particularly when they have been making themselves anielly pleasant to friends here. My friend Norton, whom I met first on this very blue lake water, had no business to go back to Boston again, any more than you. . . . ' So you have been seeing the Pope and all his Easter per- formances ! I congratulate you, for I suppose it is something like "Positively the last appearance on any stage." What was the use of thinking about him f You should have had yoiur o^vn thoughts about what was to come after him. I don't mean that Roman Catholicism will die out so quickly. It will last pretty neai'ly as long as Protestantism, which keeps it up ; but I wonder what is to come next. That is the main question just now for everybody." Ml". Stillman had been a cori-espondent about 1851, ' involved in mystical speculations, partly gi-owing out of * ' Good Americans when they die go to Paris.' — ' The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table,' quoting from Lewis Appleton. 'UNTO THIS LAST' 195 the second volume of " Modern Painters," ' as he says of him- self in an article on ' John Ruskin ' in the Century Magazine (January, 1888). He tells us that he wrote to the author for counsel, and quotes a long letter in which Mr. Ruskin advises ' on no account to agitate nor grieve yourself, nor look for inspirations — for assuredly many of our noblest English minds have been entirely overthrown by doing so — but go on doing what you are sure is quite right — ^that is, striving for constant pm-ity of thought, purpose and word.' With Mr. Stillman he spent July and August of 1860 at Chamouni. He did but little drawing, and in the few sketches that remain of that summer there is evidence that his mind was far away from its old love of mountains and of streamlets. His lonely walks in the pinewoods of the Arveron were given to meditation on a great problem which had been set, as it seemed, for him to solve, ever since he had written that chapter on ' The Nature of Gothic.'' Now at last, in the solitude of the Alps, he could grapple with the questions he had raised ; and the outcome of the struggle was ' Unto this Last.'* The year before, from Thun and Bonneville and Lausanne (August and September 1859) he had written letters to Mr. E. S. Dallas, suggested by the strikes in the London building trade. In these he appears to have sketched the outline of a new conception of social science, which he was now elaborating with more attempt at system and brevity than he had been accustomed to use. These new papers, painfully thought out and carefully set down in his room at the Hotel de TUnion, he used — as long before he read his daily chapter to the breakfast party at Heme Hill — to read to Mr. Stillman : and he sent them to the Cornhill Magazine, started the year before by Smith and * The title, quaintly but aptly hinting the gist of the work, was taken from the motto prefixed to the collected series : — ' Friend, I do thee no wrong. Didst not thou agree with me for a penny 1 Take that thine is, and go thy way. I will give unto this last e,veu sm unto thee.' 13—2 196 LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN Elder. Mr. Ruskin had alrefidy conti-ibuted to it a paper on ' Sir Joshua and Holbein,' a stray chaptei- from Vol. V., ' Modem Painters.'' His reputation as a writer and philan- thropist, together with the friendliness of editor and pub- lisher, secured the insertion of the first three, — ^from August to October. The editor then wrote to say that they were so unanimously condemned and disliked, that, with all apologies, he could only admit one more. The series was brought hastily to a conclusion in November : and the author, beaten back as he had never been beaten before, dropped the subject, and ' sulked,' so he called it, all the winter. It is pleasant to notice that neither Thackeray, the editor nor Smith, the publisher quarrelled with the author who had laid them open to the censure of their public, — ^nor he with them. On December 21st, he wrote to Thackeray, in answer, apparently, to a letter about lecturing for a charitable pur- pose : and continued : — ' The mode in which you direct your charity puts me in mind of a matter that has lain long on my mind, though I never have had the time or face to talk to you of it. In somebody's drawing-room, ages ago, you were speaking accidentally of M. de Marvy.* I expressed my great obligation to him ; on which you said that I could prove my gratitude, if I chose, to his widow, — ^which choice I then not accepting, have ever since remembered the circum- stance as one peculiarly likely to add, so far as it went, to the general impression on your mind of the hollowness of people's sayings and hardness of their hearts. ' The fact is, I give what I give almost in an opposite way to yours. I think there are many people who will relieve hopeless distress for one who will help at a hopeful pinch ; and when I have the choice I nearly always give where I think the money will be fmitful rather than merely helpful. I would lecture for a school when I would not for a distressed author; and would have helped De Marvy to perfect his * Louis Marvy, an engraver, and political refugee after the French Revolution of 1848. He produced the plates, and Thackeray the text, of ' Landscape Painters of England, in a series of steel engravinws, with short Notices.' ' UNTO THIS LAST ' 197 invention, but not — unless I had no other object — his widow after he was gone. In a word, I like to prop the falling more than to feed the fallen.' The winter passed without any great undertakings. Mr. G. F. Watts proposed to add Mr. Raskin's portrait to his gallery of celebrities ; but he was in no mood to sit. Rossetti did, however, sketch him this year. In March he presented a series of Turner drawings to Oxford, and another set of twenty-five to Cambridge. The address of thanks with the great seal of Oxford University is dated. March 23rd, 1861 ; the Catalogue of the Cambridge collection is dated May 28th. During this month he paid a visit to Winnington, and some time in the early part of the year went to Ireland as the guest of friends in county Kildare. On April 2nd he addressed the St. George's Mission Working Men's Institute, and shortly afterwards, though at this time in a much enfeebled state of health, gave a lecture before ' a most brilliant audience,' as the Loiidon Review reported, at the Royal Institution (April 19th, 1861). Carlyle wrote to his brother John : — ' Friday last I was persuaded — in fact had inwardly compelled myself as it were — to a lecture of Ruskin's at the Institution, Albemarle Street. Lecture on Tree Leaves as physiological, pictorial, moral, symbolical objects. A crammed house, but tolerable even to me in the gallery. The lecture was thought to " break down," and indeed it quite did " as a lecture " ; but only did from enibarras de rkhesses — a rare case. Ruskin did blow asunder as by gunpowder explosions his leaf notions, which were manifold, curious, genial ; and in fact, I do not recollect to have heard in that place any neatest thing I liked so well as this chaotic one.' Papers on ' Illuminated Manuscripts ' (read before the Society of Antiquaries on June 6th) and on ' The Preserva- tion of Ancient Buildings ' (read to the Ecclesiological Society a fortnight later) show that old interests were not wholly forgotten, even in the stress of new pursuits, by this man of many-sided activity. CHAPITER II. •MUNERA PULVERIS.' (1861-1862.) ' Nor kind nox- coinage buys Aught above its rate ; Feai-, Craft and Avarice Caunot rear a State.' EUERSON. IT is not every traveller nowadays vrho knows the Saleve. One goes thi'ough the Alps too quickly to linger among the foothills, and a mere three thousand feet of crag ahove the plain does not stop the way to aiguilles and glaciers. But the tourist of the future, after seeing Voltaire's Femex in the morning, will perhaps pick his way among the fields beyond Carouge and through the gorge of Monnetier, or drive on his pilgrimage by Annemasse round the Petit Saleve, to another shrine at Mornex. There, two thousand feet above sea-level, basking in the morning sun, and looking always over the broad valley of the Arve at Mont Blanc and its panorama, are country retreats of the modem Grenevese, beneath the old mother-castle ' of Savoy ': and there, with its shady little garden and rustic summer-house, is the chalet, or cottage ornee, where Mr. Ruskin went into hermitage, and wrote his ' Political Economy.' You can enter, now : it is a place of public entertainment ; and in the cool, broad- windowed dining-room, you can drink a glass to the memory. His retreat is described in one of his lettei-s home : — ' My dearest Mother, 'This ought to arrive on the evening before your birthday : it is not possible to reach you in the morning, ' MUNERA PULVERIS ' 199 not even by telegraph as I once did from Mont Cenis, for — (and may Heaven be devoutly thanked therefore) — there are yet on Mont Saleve neither rails nor wires. ' The place I have got to is at the end of all carriage-roads, and I am not yet strong enough to get farther, on foot, than a five or six miles' circle, within which is assuredly no house to my mind. I cast, at first, somewhat longing eyes on a true Savoyard chateau — ^notable for its lovely garden and orchard — and its unspoiled, unrestored, arched gateway between two roimd turrets, and Gothic - windowed keep. But on examination — finding the walls, though six feet thick, rent to the foundation — and as cold as rocks, and the floors all sodden through with walnut oil and rotten-apple juice — heaps of the farm stores having been left to decay in the ci-devant drawing room, I gave up all mediasval ideas, for which the long-legged black pigs who lived hke gentle- men at ease in the passage, and the bats and spiders who divided between them the corners of the turret-stair, have reason — if they knew it — to be thankful. ' The worst of it is that I never had the gift, nor have I now the energy, to make anything of a place ; so that I shall have to put up with almost anything I can find that is healthily habitable in a good situation. Meantime, the air here being delicious and the rooms good enough for use and comfort, I am not troubling myself much, but trying to put myself into better health and humour; in which I have already a little succeeded.' After describing the flowers of the Saleve he continues : ' My Father would be quite wild at the " view " from the garden teiTace — but he would be disgusted at the shut in feeling of the house, which is in fact as much shut in as our old Heme Hill one ; only to get the " view " I have but to go £is far down the garden as to our old " mulben-y tree." By the way there's a magnificent mulberry tree, as big as a common walnut, covered with black and red fruit on the other side of the road. Coutet and Allen are very anxious 200 LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN to do all they can now that Crawley is away ; and I don't think I shall manage very badly,' etc. Of his lonely rambles, he wrote latei" on : — ' Keswick, ' mh August, 1867. 'The letter I have sent to Joanna to-day will seem a strange answei' to your hope " that I have always some one with me on my mountain rambles " — but that would be quite impossible. If I have a definite point to reach, and common work to do at it — I take people — anybody — with me ; but all my best mental work is necessarily done alone; whenever I wanted to think, in Savoy, I used to leave Coutet at home. Constantly I have been alone on the Glacier des Bois — and far among the loneliest aiguille recesses. I found the path up the Brezon above Bonneville in a lonely walk one Sunday ; I saw the grandest view of the Alps of Savoy I ever gained, on the 2nd of January, 1862, alone among the snow wi-eaths on the summit of the Saleve. You need not fear for me on " Langdale Pikes " after that ; humanly speaking I have never the least fear on these lonely walks — I tilways think them the safest — for as I never do anything foolhaidy, nor without careful examination of what I am about, I have always, even in my naughtiest times, felt that I should be taken care of, and that — though if I was to suffer any accident, it might come, of coui'se, at any time — yet it was more likely to come when I had people witii me, than when I was alone. 'And, in mere paltry and arithmetical calculation of danger, I assure you there is more, nowadays, in a walk in and out of London — from possible explosion of all sorts of diabolical machines and compositions, with which its shops and back streets are filled — than in twenty climbings of the craggiest peaks in Cumberland. 'I have however been very shy of the bogs which are a new acquaintance to me, and of which I had heard awful stories — usually I have gone a good way round, to avoid them. But that hot day, whether I would or no, I couldn't 'MUNERA PULVERIS' 201 yet from one pike of Langdale to the other without crossing one. I examined it carefully — and I am sure all the bog- stories about these mountam bogs are nonsense : it was as sound brown earth under the squashy gi'ass as anybody need wish to walk on — though, of course, in a dark night — one might have tumbled into pools, as one might on Clapham Common into a horsepond.' After a winter among the Alps, including a short stay at Lucerne, hearing that the Turner di'awings in the National Gallery had been mildewed, he ran home to see about them in February 1862 ; and was kept until the end of May. He found that his political economy work was not such a total failure as it had seemed. Mr. IVoude, then editor of Fraser's Magazine, thought there was something in it, and would give him another chance. So, by way of a fresh start, he had his four Cornhill articles published in book form ; and almost simultaneously, in June 1862 the first of the new series appeared. The author had then returned to Lucerne ; and he soon crossed the St. Gothard to Milan, where he tried to forget the harrowing of hell in a close study of Luini, and in copying the ' St. Catherine ' now at Oxford. Mr. Ruskin has never said so much about Luini as, perhaps, he intended. A short notice in the ' Cestus of Aglaia,' and occasional refer- ences scattered up and down his later works, hardly give the prominence in his writings that the painter held in his thoughts. He re-crossed the Alps, and settled to his work on political economy at Momex, where he spent the winter except for a short run home, which gave him the opportunity of addressing the Working Men's College on November 29. In September the second article appeared in Fraser. ' Only a genius like Mr. Ruskin could have produced such hopeless rubbish,' says a newspaper of the period. Far worse than any newspaper criticism was the condemnation of Denmark Hill. His father, whose eyes had glistened over 202 LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN early poems aud prose eloquence, sti'ongly disapproved of thio heretical economy. It was a bitter thing that his son should become prodigal of a hardly earned reputation, and be pointed at for a fool. And it was intensely painful for a son ' who had never given his father a pang that could be avoided,' as old Mr. Ruskin had once written, to find his father, with one foot in the grave, turning against him. In December the third paper appeared. History repeated itself, — as usual, with variations. This time not only the public but the publisher interfered ; and with the fourth paper the heretic was gagged. A year after, his father died ; and these Fraser articles were laid aside mi til the end of 1871, when they were taken up again, and published on New Year's Day 1872, as ' Munera Pulveris.' It is hardly necessary here, and now, to discuss or to defend Mr. Ruskin's protest against the political economy of the old school. Step by step it has won its way to audience, and, in most quarters, to approval of the main theses it advanced. And even if it be said that the victory was gained in disguise, — ^for other men have entered into his labotirs and restated his ideas, — ^the fact remains that we owe the larger hope and kindlier authority of what was once the ' dismal science ' to the daring pioneer- work of ' Unto this Last' and ' Munera Pulveris.' From the outset, ]\Ir. Ruskin was not without supporters. Carlyle wrote on June 30, 1862 : — ' I have read, a month ago, yom* First in Fraser, and ever since have had a wish to say to it and you, Euge, macte nova virtute. I approved in every particular ; calm, definite, clear ; rising into the sphere of Plato (our almost best), wh** in exchange for the sphere of Macculloch, Mill and Co. is a mighty improvement ! Since that, I have seen the little green book, too ; reprint of your CornhiU operations, — about f of wh'^ was read to me {knoun only from what the contradict" of sinners had told me of it) : — in every part of wh'' I find a high and noble sort of truth, not one doctrine that I can intrinsically dissent from, or count other than salutfiry in the extreme, and pressingly needed in Engl"* above all.' ' MUNERA PULVERIS ' 203 Erskine of Linlathen wrote to Carlyle, 7 August 1862 : — ' I am thankful for any unveiling of the so-called science of political economy, according to which, avowed selfishness is the Rule of the World. It is indeed most important preach- ing — to preach that there is not one God for religion and another God for human fellowship — and another God for buying and selling — that pestilent polytheism has been largely and confidently preached in our time, and blessed are those who can detect its mendacities, and help to disenchant the brethren of their power. ' I feel much self-condemnation on reading this little book — not that it declares what I did not know before, as to every man's duty to every man — and I can only wish the writer increased light and increased power, to carry on his good work.' [Then, referring to the cataract which was threaten- ing him with blindness, he adds — ] ' The little book is valuable on its own account, and coming from you, it is doubly so.' Mr. J. A. Fronde, then editor of Fraser, and to his dying day Mr. Ruskin's intimate and affectionate friend, wrote to him on October M (1862 .?)— ' The world talks of the article in its usual way. I was at Carlyle's last night. . . . He said that in writing to your father as to subject he had told him that when Solomon's temple was building it was credibly re- ported that at least 10,000 sparrows sitting on the trees round declared that it was entirely wrong — quite contrary to received opinion — hopelessly condemned by public opinion, etc. Never- theless it got finished and the sparrows flew away and began to chirp in the same note about something else.' CHAPTER III. THE LIMESTONE ALPS. (1863.) ' In delectu autem narrationum et experimentorum melius hominibiia cavisse uos arbitramur quam qui adhuc in historia natural! versati sunt. —Bacon, Inst. Magna. OUR hermit among the Alps of Savoy differed in one respect from his predecessors. They, for the most part, saw nothing in the rocks and stones around them except the prison walls of their seclusion ; he could not be Avithin constant sight of the movmtains without watching them and thinking over them, and the wonders of their scenery and structure. And it was well for him that it could be so. The terrible depression of mind which his social and philanthropic work had brought on, found a relief in the renewal of his old mountain-worship. After sending off the last of his Fraser papers, in which, when the verdict had twice gone against him, he tried to show cause why sentence should not be passed, the strain was at its severest. He felt, as few others not directly interested felt, the sufferings of the outcast in English slums and Savoyard hovels ; and heard the cry of the oppressed in Poland and in Italy : and he had been silenced. What could he do but, as he said in the letters to Mr. Norton, ' lay his head to the very ground,' and try to forget it all among the stones and the snows ? He wandered about geologizing, and spent a while at Talloires on the Lake of Annecy, where the old Abbey had been turned into an inn, and one slept in a monk's cell and THE LIMESTONE ALPS 205 meditated in the cloister of the monastery, St. Bernard of Menthon's memory haunting the place, and St. Germain's cave close by in the rocks above. About the end of May Mr. Ruskin came back to England, and was invited to lecture again at the Royal Institution. The subject he chose was ' The Stratified Alps of Savoy.' At that time many distinguished foreign geologists were working at the Alps ; but little of conclusive importance had been published, except in papers embedded in Trans- actions of various societies. Professor Alphonse Favre's great work did not appear until 1867, and the ' Mechanismus der Gebirgsbildung ' of Professor Heim not till 1878 ; so that for an English public the subject was a fresh one. To Mr. Ruskin it was familiar : he had been elected a Fellow of the Geological Society in 1840, at the age of twenty-one ; he had worked through Savoy with his Saussure in hand nearly thirty years before, and, many a time since that, had spent the intervals of literary business in rambling and climbing with the hammer and note-book. Indeed, on all his travels and even on his usual afternoon walks he was accustomed to keep his eyes open for the geology of any neighbourhood he was in ; and his servant regularly carried a bag for specimens, which rarely came home empty. The note-books of the 'Modem Painters' period contain infinite memoranda and diagrammatic sketches, of which a very small fraction have been used. In the field he had compared Studer's meagre sections, and consulted the available authorities on physical geology, though he had never entered upon the more popular sister-science of palaeontology. He left the determination of strata to specialists : his interest was fixed on the structure of mountains — the relation of geology to scenery; a question upon which he had some right to be heard, as knowing more about scenery than most geologists, and more about geology than most artists. His dissent from orthodox opinions was not the mere blunder of an ill-informed amateur ; it was a protest against the adoption of certain views which had become fashionable, owing chiefly to the popularity of the 206 LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN men who had propounded them. Parallel with the state- religion in England there has been a state-science; the prestige of the science-bishops has been no doubt as wisely used as that of the church-bishops : it has certainly prevailed with their o^vn inferior clergy and laity in much the same way. Mr. Ruskin, who had been the admirer and to some extent the personal pupil of several of the leading geologists of the last generation, questioned the infallibility of the more recent school, and now, as the Journal de Geneve reported, ' la foule se pressait dans les salles de 1' Institut royale de Londres, pour entendre la lecture des fragments d'un ouvrage scien- tifique, dont Tauteur compte parmi les ecrivains les plus estimes de I'Angleterre. M. Ruskin s'est fait connaitre depuis longtemps par des publications remarquables sur Tart en general et la peinture en particulier, mais il se presentait cette fois a son auditoire sous un nouveau jour. Cetait le geologue que Ton venait entendre, et Tevenement a prouve qu'il n'etait point inferieur au litterateur et au critique.' The main object of this lecture was to draw attention to a series of mountain forms which could not have been produced merely by erosion, conditioned as they are by internal struc- ture and original elevation;* and to protest against the extravagant application of the glacier-theories then coming into vogue. In this, also, he was doing pioneer work : for the views of 1863 have gradually undergone very considerable modification, in the direction which Mr. Ruskin then endeavoured to indicate. As examples of Savoy mountains this lecture described in detail the Saleve, on which he had been living for two winters, and the Brezon, the top of which he had tried to buy from the commune of Bonneville — one of his many plans for settling among the Alps. The commune thought he had found a gold-mine up there, and raised the price out of all reason. Other attempts to make a home in the chateaux or chalets of * Described in farther detail in ' The Limestone Alps of Savoy ' : supplementary volume to ' Depaalion.' THE LIMESTONE ALPS 207 Savoy were foiled, or abandoned, like his earlier idea to live in Venice. But his scrambles on the Saleve led him to hesitate in accepting the explanation given by Alphonse Favre of the curious north-west face of steeply inclined vertical slabs, which he suspected to be created by cleavage, on the analogy of other Jurassic precipices. The Brezon — brisant, breaking- wave — ^he took as type of the billowy form of limestone Alps in general, and his analysis of it was serviceable and substan- tially correct. This lecture was followed in 1864< by desultory correspond- ence with Mr. Jukes and others in the Reader, in which he merely restated his conclusions, too slightly to convince. Had he devoted himself to a thorough examination of the subject — but this is in the region of what might have been. He was more seriously engaged in other pursuits, of more immediate importance. Three days after his lecture he was being examined before the Royal Academy Commission, and after a short summer visit to various friends in the north of England, he set out again for the Alps, partly to study the geology of Chamouni and North Switzerland, partly to con- tinue his drawings of Swiss towns at Baden and LaufFenburg, with his pupil John Bunney. But even there the burden of his real mission could not be shaken off, and though again seeking health and a quiet mind, he could not quite keep silence, but wrote letters to English newspapers on the depreciation of gold (repeating his theory of currency), and on the wrongs of Poland and Italy ; and he put together more papers, never published, in continuation of his ' Munera Pulveris.' But this desultory habit, by which Mr. K-uskin's strength was broken up into many channels, — while it prevented his doing any one great work with convincing thoroughness in his later period, — ^was not by any means an unbalanced mis- fortune. It is quite impossible for a man who has no feeling for art and no interest in science to regard life as a whole, — especially modem life : and this Mr. Ruskin was better fitted than any of his contemporaries to do. 208 LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN In the last century, Samuel Jolinson, great thinker as he was, found his influence decisively limited by his ignorance of the arts, and his consequent inability to take into his purview a whole range of emotions, activities and influences which are really important in the sphere of ethics, as motives of action and indices of character. So in this century, Johnson''s spiritual successor, Carlyle, from a similar lack of S3Tnapathy with art and an indolence in acquiring even the rudiments of physical science, — from a cei-tain want of ear for poetry* and eye for nature, — was left short-handed, short-sighted, in many an enterprise. In framing an ideal of life he is narrow, ascetic, rude, as compared with the wider and more refined culture of a Ruskin. Something of this contempt for scientific facts and theories which he had never faced, and easy admission of mysteries he cared not to solve, is traceable in a letter written soon after the period we have been describing, and in sequel to the Savoy Alps discussion. I print it, with a few others of his, from the originals, as illustrating the intercourse of our British Elijah with his Elisha. Since about 1850, Carlyle had been gradually becoming more and more friendly with Mr. Ruskin; and now that this social and economical work had been taken up, he began to have a real esteem for him, though always with a patronizing tone, which the younger man's open and confessed discipleship accepted and encouraged. This letter especially shows both men in an unaccustomed light : Ruskin, hating tobacco, sends his ' master ' cigars ; Carlyle, hating cant, replies rather in the tone of the temperance advocate, taking a little wine for his stomach's sake : — ' Chelsea, ' Dear Ruskhu, ' 22 Fehv, 1865. ' You have sent me a munificent Box of Cigars ; for wh*" what can I say in ans' ? It makes me both sad and glad. Ay de mi. * As proved by liia line — 'And weave for God the garment thou seest Him by,' — if proof be needed. It is not suggested that he did not find, and admirably illustrate, the ethical interest of poetry. THE LIMESTONE ALPS 209 " We are such stuff, Gone with a puff — Then think, and smoke Tobacco !" ' The Wife also has had her Flowers ; and a letter wh"^ has charmed the female mind. You forgot only the first chapter of " Aglaia " ; — don't forget ; and be a good boy for the future. ' The Geology Book wasn't Jukes ; I found it again in the Magazine, — reviewed there : " Phillips,"* is there such a name .'' It has ag" escaped me. I have a notion to come out actually some day soon ; and take a serious Lecture from you on what you really know, and can give me some intelligible outline of, ab' the Rocks, — hones of our poor old Mother ; wh*" have always been venerable and strange to me. Next to nothing of rational could I ever learn of the subject. That of a central fire, and molten sea, on wh*^ all mountains, continents, and strata are spread floating like so many hides of leather, knocks in vain for admittance into me these forty years • who of mortals can really believe such a thing ! And that, in descending into mines, these geological gent" find them- selves approaching sensibly their central fire by the sensible and undeniable increase of temperature as they step down, round after round, — has always appeared to argue a length of ear on the part of those gent", wh*" is the real miracle of the phenomenon. Alas, alas : we are dreadful ignoramuses all of us ! — Ans' nothing ; but don't be sin^rised if I turn up some day. ' Yours ever 'T. Cahlyle.' * ' Jukes,'— Mr. J. B. Jukes, F.E.S., with whom Mr. Euskin had been discussing in the Reader. 'Phillips,' the Oxford Professor of Geology, and a friend of Mr. Buskin's. 14 CHAPTER IV, ' SESAME AND LILIES.' (1864.) ' Wherefore we ought alle women to obeye In al goodnesse : I can no more saye.' Chauceb. WIDER aims and weaker health had not put an end to Mr. Ruskin's connection with the Working Men's College, though he did not now teach a drawing-class regularly. He had, as he said, ' the satisfaction of knowing that they had very good masters in Messrs. Lowes Dickinson, Jeffery and Cave Thomas,' and his work was elsewhere. He was to have lectured there on December 19th, 1863 ; but he did not reach home until about Christmas ; better than he had been ; and ready to give the promised addi'ess on January 30th, 1864. Beside which he used to visit the place occasionally of an evening to take note of progress, and some of his pupils were now more directly under his care. This more than ten years' connection with a very practical work of education must not be forgotten when we try to estimate his ideals of culture and social arrangements, which hasty readers are apt to suppose the table-talk of an arm- chair philosopher. So energetic a man, one who spent no time in the ordinary recreations of hfe — more the pity, ultimately, for his own usefulness and happiness in later periods — so busy a mind, found opportunity for many occu- pations. And he does not deserve to be rated as a dilettante or a visionary simply because other folk cannot imagine how he managed to do more work than they. 'SESAME AND LILIES' 211 It was from one of these visits to the College, on February 37thj that he returned, past midnight, and found his father waiting up for him, to read some letters he had written. Next morning the old man, close upon seventy- nine years of age, was struck with his last illness ; and died on the 3rd of March. He was buried at Shirley Church, near Addington, in Surrey, not far from Croydon ; and the legend on his tomb records : ' He was an entirely honest merchant, and his memory is to all who keep it dear and helpful. His son, whom he loved to the uttermost, and taught to speak truth, says this of him.' Mr. John James Ruskin, like many other of our successful merchants, had been an open-handed patron of art, and a cheerful giver, not only to needy friends and relatives, but also to various charities. For example, as a kind of personal tribute to Osborne Gordon, his son's tutor, he gave ^"5000 toward the augmentation of poor Christ-Church livings. His son's open-handed way with dependants and servants was learned from the old merchant, who, unlike many hard- working money-makers, was always ready to give, though he could not bear to lose. In spite of which he left a con- siderable fortune behind him, — considerable when it is under- stood to be the earnings of his single-handed industry and steady sagacity in legitimate business, without indulgence in speculation. He left ^"120,000, with various other property, to his son. To his wife he left his house and ^37,000, and a void which it seemed at first nothing could fill. For of late years the son had drifted out of their horizon, with ideas on religion and the ordering of life so very different from theirs ; and had been much away from home — ^he sometimes said, selfishly, but not without the greatest of all excuses, necessity. And so the two old people had been brought closer than ever together ; and she had lived entirely for her husband. But, as Browning said, — ' Put a stick in anywhere, and she will run up it ' — so the brave old lady did not faint under the blow, and fade away, but transferred her affections and interests to her son. Before his father's death the 14—2 212 LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN difference of feeling between them, arising out of the heretical economy, had been healed. Old Mr. Ruskin's will treated his son with all confidence in spite of his unorthodox views and unbusiness-like ways. And for nearly eight years longer his mother lived on, to see him pass through this probation- period into such recognition as an Oxford Professorship implied, and to find in her last years his later books ' becoming more and more what they always ought to have been to ' her. At the same time, her failing sight and strength needed a constant household companion. Her son, though he did not leave home yet awhile for any long journeys, could not be always with her. Only six weeks after the funeral he was called away for a time. Before going he brought his pretty young Scotch cousin, Miss Joanna Ruskin Agnew to Denmark Hill for a week's visit. She recommended herself at once to the old lady, and to Carlyle, who happened to call, by her frank good-nature and unquenchable spirits ; and her visit lasted seven years, until she was married to the son of the Ruskins' old friend, Joseph Severn, British Consul at Rome. Even then she was not allowed far out of their sight, but settled in the old house at Heme Hill : ' nor virtually,' says IMr. Ruskin in the last chapter of ' Prfeterita,' ' have she and I ever parted since.' All through that year he remained at home, except for short necessary visits, and frequent evenings with Cai-lyle. And when, in December, he gave those lectures in Manchester which afterwards, as ' Sesame and Lilies,' became his most popular work, we can trace his better health of mind and body in the brighter tone of his thought. We can hear the echo of Carlyle's talk in the heroic, aristocratic, Stoic ideals, and in the insistence on the value of books and free public libraries,* — Carlyle being the founder of the London Library. * The i3rst lecture, ' On Kiuga' Treasuries,' was given, December 6th, 1864, at Eusholme Town Hall, Manchester, in aid of a library fund for the Eusholme Institute. The second, ' Queens' Gardens,' was given, December 14th, at the Town Hall, King Street, now the Free Reference Library, Manchester, in aid of schools for Amcoats. ' SESAME AND LILIES ' 213 And we may suspect that his thoughts on women's influence and education had been not a little directed by those months in the company of ' the- dear old lady and ditto young ' to whom Carlyle used to send his love. Tlaese lectures were the following up of his economic writing in tliis sense, — that he had required a certain moral culture as the necessary condition for realising his plans. It was as if one should say, 'Here is an engine; on these principles it works ; but it must be kept clean, oiled and polished.'' He did not demand, — and this is important to note, — he did not demand a state of society hopelessly imlike the present, such as the altruistic guild-bi'ethren of Mr. Morris's Epoch of Rest, or the clock-work harmony of Mr. Bellamy's American Utopia. He took human nature as it is, but at its best ; not, as the older economists did, at its worst. He tried to show how the best could be brought out, and what the standards should be towards which education and legislation should direct immediate public attention. ' Sesame and Lilies ' puts in popular form his explanation of the phrase in 'Munera Pulveris,' — 'certain conditions of moral culture.'' In 1864 a new series of papers on Art was begun, the only published work upon Art of all these ten years. The papers ran in the Art Joii/rnal from January to July 1865, and from January to April 1866, under the title of ' Tlie Cestus of Aglaia,' by which was meant the Girdle, or restraining law, of Beauty, as personified in the wife of Hephaestus, ' the Lord of Labour.' Their intention was to suggest, and to evoke by correspondence, ' some laws for present practice of art in our schools, which may be admitted, if not with absolute, at least with a sufficient consent, by leading artists.' As a first step the author asked for the elementary rules of drawing. For his own contribution he showed the value of the ' pure line,' such £is he had used in his own early drawings, learnt originally from Cruikshank etchings and Prout lithographs, and practised — with what success can be judged from such drawings as the ' Ilouen ' reproduced in the ' Poems.' Later 214 LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN on, he had adopted a looser and more picturesque style of handling the point ; and in the ' Elements of Drawing ' he had taught his readers to take Rembrandt's etchings as exem- plar}'. But now he felt that this 'evasive"' manner, as he called it, had its dangers. It had, in fact, originated the ordinary type of popular free draughtsmanship, degenerating sometimes into that black blotting and scribbling with which Mr. Ruskin's ideals of delicacy, purity, dignity, to say nothing of the actual fineness of organic form, have nothing in common. And so these papers attempted to supersede the amateurish object lessons of the eai'lier work by stricter rules for a severer style ; prematurely, as it proved, for the chapters came to an end before the promised code was formulated ; though they contained interesting — if rather free — criticism of current art, and many passages of lively wit and pretty description. The same work was taken up again in 'The Laws of Fesole'; but the use of the pure line, which Mr. Ruskin's precepts failed to enforce, was, in the end, taught to the public by the charming practice of Mr. Walter Crane and Miss Greenawa}'. A lecture at the Camberwell Working Men's Institute on ' Work and Play ' was given on January 24th, 1865 ; wliich, as it was printed in 'The Crown of Wild Olive,' we will notice further on. Various letters and papers on political and social economy and other subjects hardly call for separate notice : with the exception of one very important address to the Royal Institution of British Architects, given April 15tli, ' On the Study of Arcliiteclui'e in our School*.' CHAPTER V. 'ETHICS OF THE DUST.' (1865.) 'Si cette enfant m'etait confine je ferais d'elle, non pas une savante, car je lui veux du bien, mais une enfant brillante d'intelligence et de vie et en laquelle toutes les belles choses de la nature et d'art se refleterait avec un doux eclat. Je la ferais vivre en sympathie aveo les beaux paysages, avec les scenes id^alea de la po^sie et de I'histoire, avec la musique noblement emue. Je lui rendrais aimable tout ce que je voudrais lui faire aimer.' — Anatole France, Le Grime de Sylvestre Bonnard, WRITING to his father from Manchester about the lecture of February 22, 1859—' The Unity of Art ' — Mr. Ruskin mentions, among various people of interest whom he was meeting, such as Sir Elkanah Armitage and Mrs. Gaskell, how ' Miss Bell and four yomig ladies came from Chester to hear me, and I promised to pay them a visit on my way home, to their apparent great content- ment.'' The visit was paid on his way back from Yorkshire. He wrote : — ' WiNNINGTON, ' NoRTHwiCH, Cheshire, ' 12 March, 1859. ' This is such a nice place that I am going to stay till Monday : an enormous old-fashioned house — full of galleries and up and down stairs — but with magnificently large rooms where wanted : the drawing-room is a huge octagon — I suppose at least forty feet high — like the tower of a castle (hung half 216 LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN way up all round with large and beautiful Turner and Raphael engravings) and with a baronial fireplace : — and in the even- ing, brightly lighted, with the groups of girls scattered round it, it is a quite beautiful scene in its way. Their morning chapel, too, is very interesting : — though only a large room, it is nicely fitted with reading desk and seats like a college chapel, and two pretty and rich stained-glass windows — ^and well-toned organ. They have morning prayers with only one of the lessons — and without the psalms: but singing the Te Deum or the other hymn — and other choral parts : and as out of the thirty-five or forty girls perhaps twenty-five or thirty have really available voices, well trained and divided, it was infinitely more beautiful than any ordinary church service — like the Trinita di Monte Convent service more than any- thing else, and must be very good for them, quite different in its effect on their minds from our wretched penance of college chapel. ' The house stands in a superb park, full of old trees and sloping down to the river ; with a steep bank of trees on the other side; just the kind of thing Mrs. Sherwood likes to describe : — and the girls look all healthy and happy as can be, down to the little six-years-old ones, who I find know me by the fairy tale as the others do by my large books : — so I am quite at home. ' They have my portrait in the library with three others — Maurice, the Bp. of Oxford, and Archdeacon Hare, — so that I can't but stay with them over the Sunday.' It was not an ordinary school — still less a pensiomiat de demoiselles of the type described in ' Le Crime de Sylvestre Bonnard,'* in which the pettiness and tyranny of the woi-st * The quotation at the head of the chapter is one marked with approval by Mr. Kuakin, who was greatly interested in the book on its appearance, not only for its literary charm and tender characterisation, but ' aa finding there some image of himself ' in the old Membre de I'Institut with his ' bon dos rond ' and his passion for missals, and Gothic architecture, and Benedictine monks, and natural scenery ; and ' ETHICS OF THE DUST ' 217 kind of schoolmistress of — let us hope — a bygone age, are pilloried. The principles of Winnington were advanced ; the theology, — Bishop Colenso's daughter was among the pupils • the Bishop of Oxford had introduced Mr. Ruskin to the managers, who were pleased to invite the celebrated art-critic to visit whenever he travelled that way, whether to lecture at provincial towns, or to see his friends in the north, as he often used. And so between March 1859 and May 1868, after which the school was removed, he was a frequent visitor ; and not only he, but other lions whom the ladies entrapped : — mention has been made in print (in ' The Queen of the Air ') of Charles Halle, whom Mr. Ruskin met there in 1863 and greatly admired. ' I like Mr. and Mrs. Halle so very much,"' he wrote home, ' and am entirely glad to know so gi-eat a musician and evidently so good and wise a man. He was very happy yesterday evening, and actually sat down and played quadrilles for us to dance to — which is, in its way, some- thing like Titian sketching patterns for ball-dresses. But afterwards he played Home, sweet Home, with three varia- tions — quite the most wonderful thing I have ever heard in music. Though I was close to the piano, the motion of the fingers was entirely invisible — a mere mist of rapidity; the hands moving slowly and softly, and the variation, in the ear, like a murmur of a light fountain, far away. It was beautiful too to see the girls' faces round, the eyes all wet with feeling, and the little coral mouths fixed into little half open gaps with utter intensity of astonishment.' Mr. Ruskin could not be idle on his visits ; and as he was never so happy as when he was teaching somebody, he improved the opportunity by experiments in a system of education ' tout intime et parfaitement incompatible avec Torganisation des pensionnats les mieux tenus,' and yet permitted there for his defiance of the Code Napolfon and the ways of the modern world ; with many another touch for which one could have sworn he had sat to the painter. 218 LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN his sake. Among other things, he devised singing dances for a select dozen of the girls, with verses of his own writing, ' noblement emues ' ; one, a maze to the theme of ' Twist ye, twine ye,' based upon the song in ' Guy Mannering,' but going far beyond the original motive in its variations weighted with allefforic thouijht : — ' Earnest Gladness, idle Fretting, Foolish Memory, wise Forgetting ; And trusted reeds, that broken lie, Wreathed again for melody. . ■ . ' Vanished Truth, but Vision staying ; Fairy riches, lost in weighing ; And fitful grasp of flying Fate, Touched too lightly, traced too late. . . .' Deep as the feeling of this little poem is, there is a nobler chord struck in the Song of Peace, the battle-cry of the good time coming ; in the faith — who else has found it ? — that looks forward to no selfish victory of narrow aims, but to the full reconciliation of hostile interests and the blind internecine struggle of this perverse world, in the clearer light of the niillennial morning. 'Thine aiTows are sharp in the hearU of the King's enemies, whereby the people fall under thee ;' — ' Yea, in all these things we are more than conquerors, through Him that loved us.' ' Put off, put off your mail, ye kings, and beat your brands to dust ; A surer grasp your hands must know, your hearts a better trust ; Nay, bend aback the lance's point, and break the helmet bar, — A noise is on the morning winds, but not the noise of war ! ' Among the gra-ssy mountain-paths the glittering troops increase : They come ! they come ! — how fair their feet — they come that publish peace ; Tea, Victory ! fair Victory ! our enemies' and ours, And all the clovids are clasped in light, and all the earth witli flowers. ' Ah ! still depressed and dim with dew, but yet a little while And radiant with the deathless Rose the wilderness shall smile, And every tender living thing shall feed by streams of rest, No lamb shall from the fold be lost, nor nursling from the nest.' 'ETHICS OF THE DUST' 219 These dances were not mere play. They were taught as lessons, and practised as recreation. ' On n'apprend pas en s'amusant,' says the villain of the story to M. Bonnard. ' On n'apprend qu'en s'amusant,'' he replies, — vigorously underlined and side-lined by Mr. Ruskin. ' Pons dig&er le savoir, il faut Tavoir avale avec appetit.' The art of teaching is to stimulate that appetite in a natural and healthy way. ' On n'est pas sur la terre pour s'amuser et pour faire ses quatre cents volontes,' says the objector, again; to which he answers : ' On est sur la terre pour se plaire dans le beau et dans le bien et pour faire ses quatre cents volontes quand elles sont nobles, spirituelles et genereuses. Une education qui n'exerce pas les volontes est une education qui deprave les ames. II faut' — here the pencil-marks are very thick — ' il faut que I'instituteur enseigne a vouloir.' ' Je crus voir,' continues M. Bonnard, ' que maitre Mouche m'estimait un pauvre homme ' ; and I observe that Mr. Ruskin's method of teaching, as illustrated in ' Ethics of the Dust,' has been variously pooh-poohed by his critics. It has seemed to some absurd to mix up Theology, and Crystal- lography, and Political Economy, and Mythology, and Moral Philosophy, with the chatter of school-girls and the romps of the playground. But it should be understood, before reading this book, which is practically the report of these Winnington talks, that it is printed as an illustration of a method. The method is the Kindergarten method carried a step, many steps, further. With very small children it is comparatively easy to teach as a mother teaches ; but with children of larger growth it is not the first-comer who can replace the wise father, whose conversation and direction and example would form an ideal education. Still, an experiment like this was worth making. It showed that play-lessons need not want either depth or accuracy ; and that the requirement was simply capacity on the part of the teacher. The following letter from Carlyle was written in acknow- ledgment of an early copy of the book, of which the preface is dated Christmas, 1865. 220 LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN ' Chelsea, '20 Z»«c'' 1865. ' Dear Ruskin, ' Don't mind the " Bewick " ;* the indefatigable Dixon has sent me, yesterday, the Bewick's " Life " as well (hunted it up from the " Misses Bewick " or somebody, and threatens to involve me in still farther bother about nothing) — and I read the greater part of it last night before going to bed. Peace to Bewick : not a great man at all ; but a very true of his sort, a well completed, and a very enviable, — living there in communion with the skies and woods and brooks, not here in d° with the London Fogs, the roaring witchmongeries and railway yellings and bowlings. ' The " Ethics of the Dust," wh*" I devoured with* pause, and intend to look at ag", is a most shining Performance ! Not for a long while have I read anything tenth-part so radiant with talent, ingenuity, lambent fire (sheet — and other lightnings) of all commendable kinds ! Never was such a lecture on Crt/stallographt/ before, had there been nothing else in it, — and there are all manner of things. In power of expression I pronounce it to be supreme ; never did anybody who had siich things to explain explain them better. And the bit of Egypt" mythology, the cunning Dreams ab' Pthah, Neith, &c, apart from their elucidative quality, wh** is ex- quisite, have in them a poetry that might fill any Tennyson with despair. You are very dramatic too ; nothing wanting in the stage-direct"', in the pretty little indicat"' : a very pretty stage and dramatis personce altogeth'. Such is my first feeling ab* y' Book, dear R. — Come soon, and I will tell you all the Jaults of it, if I gradually discover a great many. In fact, come at any rate ! ' Y" ever, ' T. Carlyle.' The Real Little Housewives, to whom the book was dedicated, were not quite delighted — at least, they said they * Bewick was being studied by Mr. Buskin in connection with the problem of the Pure Line, for ' Oestus of Aglaia,' 'ETHICS OF THE DUST' 221 were not — at the portraits drawn of them, in their pinafores, so to speak, with some little hints at failings and faults which they recognised through the mask of dramatis personce. Miss ' Kathleen ' disclaimed the singing of ' Vilikins and his Dinah,' and so on. It is difficult to please everybody. The public did not care about the book ; the publisher hoped Mr. Ruskin would write no more dialogues: and so it remained, little noticed, for twelve years. In 1877 it was republished and found to be interesting, and in the next twelve years 8,000 copies were called for. This was only one of many cases in which Mr. Ruskiu was in advance of his age. CHAPTER VI. 'THE CROWN OP WILD OLIVE.' (1865-1866.) ' Still to our gains our chief respect is had : Reward it is that makes us good or bad.' Heejuck. MENTION has been made of an address to working men at the Camberwell Institute, January 24th, 1865. This lecture was published in 1866, together with two others,* under the title of ' The Crown of Wild Olive'— that is to say, the rewai'd of human work, a rewai'd ' which should have been of gold, had not Jupiter been so poor,' as Aris- tophanes said. What work is thus rewarded ? the speaker asked. What rewaid is to be hoped for ? And how does it influence, how ought it to influence, the aims and the conduct of the vaiious classes of men who make up the active world, the three great distinct castes of labourers, traders, and soldiers ? In fact, these three lectui-es, on Work, Traffic, and War, — one before a suburban institute, one at a great manufacturing centre, and one addressed to the young soldiers of Woolwich, — sketch out Mr. Ruskin's political ethics in sequel to his economy and educational ideals. True work, he said, meant the production (taking the woi-d production in a broad sense) of the means of life ; not the using of them as mei-e counters for gambling. So that a great part of commerce, as it is genei-ally practised, is not * Republished in 1873, with a fourth lecture added, and a Preface and notes on the political growth of Prussia, from Carlyle's ' Frederick.' 'THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE' 223 work, and deserves no consideration, still less justification, by political science. On the other hand, if true work were properly understood and its laws made plain, it would appear that every one ought to take some share in it, according to his powers : some working with the head, some with the hands ; but all acknowledging idleness and slavery to be alike immoral. And, as to the remuneration, he said, as he had said before in ' Unto this Last,' Justice demands that equal enei'gy expended should bring equal reward. He did not consider it justice to cry out for the equalization of incomes, for some are sure to be more diligent and saving than others ; some work involves a great preliminary expenditm-e of energy in qualifying the worker, as contrasted with unskilled labour. But he did not allow that the possession of capital entitled a man to unearned increment ; and he thought that, in a community where a truly civilized morality was highly de- veloped, the general sense of society would recognise an average standard of work and an average standard of pay for each class. Where all took their share, many hands would make light work. Where all received their fair reward, although absolute equality would be impossible, great in- equality could not prevail, and the struggle for life would be minimised. Such was his first suggestion for an organization of labour, extremely ridiculous thirty years ago ; not quite so ridiculous now. * In the next two lectures he spoke of the two great forms of Play, the great Games of Money-making and War. He had been invited to lecture at Bradford, in the hope that he would give some useful advice towards the design of a new Exchange which was to be built ; in curious forgetfulness, it would appear, of his work during the past ten years and more. It might have been expected, after all he had written, that he would have remarks to make on the architecture of an ' Exchange,' of all places, which an unprepared audience would hardly welcome ; and indeed the picture he drew them of an ideal ' Temple to the Goddess of Getting-on ' was as daring a sermon as ever prophet preached. But when he 224 LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN came to tell them that the employers of labour might be true captains and kings, the leaders and the helpers of their fellow-men, and that the function of commerce was not to prey upon society but to provide for it, there were many of his heai-ers whose hearts told them that he was right, and whose lives have shown, in some measure, that he did not speak in vain. Still stranger, to hearei-s who had not noted the conclusion of his thii-d volume of ' INIodern Painters,' was his view of war, in the address to the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich, in December 1865. The common view of war as destroyer of arts and enemy of morality, the easy acceptance of the doctrine that peace is an unqualified blessing, the obvious evils of battle and rapine and the waste of resources and life throughout so many ages, have blinded less clear-sighted and less widely-experienced thinkers to another side of the teaching of history, which Mr. Ruskin dwelt upon with unexpected emphasis. He showed that in Greece and Rome and in the Middle Ages, war had brought out the highest human faculties, and in doing so had stimulated the tuts. This was not the case, he said, in civil wars, such as that waging in America; though perhaps we may now see that even there the gi-eat war did eventually develop national virtues and powers hardly known before. But he showed that, as Bacon said, ' No Body can be healthful without Exerme, neither Naturall Body, nor Politique: and cer» tainly, to a Kingdom or Estate, a lust and Honourable Warre, is the true Exercise.'' As little John Ruskin had written in 1828, "'Tis vice, not war, that is the curse of man ' : but the aim of public morality was to limit war to 'just and honourable ' occasions, and to confine it to those on either side who had a direct interest in it, and could wage it in a just and honourable manner. It is curious that Ruskin the Goth, who had begun by attacking the ' Greek ' tradition in art, should now be of ail men the most complete exponent of the Greek spirit in policy. They had permitted only their freemen, their 'THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE' 225 gentlemen, to fight; their public morality called a slave a slave, but did not expect him, or allow him, to share in the terrible, fascinating game. And Mr. Ruskin showed how that policy was rewarded. But modern war, horrible, not from its scale, but from the spirit in which the upper classes set the lower to fight like gladiators in the arena, he de- nounced; and called upon the women of England, with whom, he said, the real power of life and death lay, to mend it into some semblance of antique chivahy, or to end it in the name of religion and humanity. In the New Review for March 1892, there appeared a series of ' Letters of John Ruskin to his Secretary,' which, as the anonymous contributor remarked, illustrate ' Ruskin the worker, as he acts away from the eyes of the world; Ruskin the epistolographer, when the eventuality of the printing-press is not for the moment before him ; Ruskin the good Samaritan, ever gentle and open-handed when true need and a good cause make appeal to his tender heart: Ruskin the employer, considerate, generous — an ideal master.' Charles Augustus Howell became known to Mr. Ruskin (in 1864 or 1865) through the circle of the Pre-Raphaelites ; and, as the editor of the letters puts it, ' by his talents and assiduity' became the too-trusted friend and protege of Mr. Ruskin, Mr. Gabriel Rossetti and others of their acquaintance. It was he who proposed and carried out the exhumation, reluctantly consented to, of Rossetti's manuscript poems from his wife's grave, in October 1869; for which curious service to literature let him have the thanks of pos- terity. But he was hardly the man to carry out Mr. Ruskin's secret charities, and long before he had lost Rossetti's con- fidence* he had ceased to act as Mr. Ruskin's secretary. From these letters, however, several interesting traits and incidents may be gleaned, such as anecdotes about the canary which was anonymously bought at the Crystal Palace Bird Show (February 1866) for the owner's benefit : about the * In the manner described by Mr. W. M. Eosaetti at p. 351, vol. i., of ' D. G. Eossetti, his family letters,' to which the reader is referred, 15 226 LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN shopboy whom Mr. Ruskin was going to train as an artist ; and about the kindly proposal to employ the aged and im- poverished Cruikshank upon a new book of faiiy tales, and the struggle between admiration for the man and admission of his loss of power, ending in the free gift of the hundred pounds promised. In April 1866, after writing the Preface to ' The Crown of Wild Olive,' and preparing the book for publication, Mr. Ruskin was carried off to the Continent for a holiday with Sir Walter and Lady Trevelyan, her niece Miss Constance Hilliard (Mrs. Churchill), and Miss Agnew (Mrs. Severn), for a thorough rest and change after three years of uninter- mitting work in England. They intended to spend a couple of months in Italy. On the day of starting, Mr. Ruskin called at Cheyne Walk with the usual bouquet for Mrs. Carlyle, to learn that she had just met with her death, in trying to save her little dog, the gift of Lady Ti'evelyan. He rejoined his friends, and they crossed the Channel gaily, in spite of v/hat they thought was rather a cloud over him. At Paris they read the news. ' Yes,' he said, ' I knew. But there was no reason why I should spoil your pleasure by telling you.' After the proper interval he wrote to Carlyle. The letter of condolence brought the following reply, addressed ' Poste Restante, Milan ' : — ' Chelsea, ' London, ' 10 May, 1866. ' Dear Ruskdj, 'Y' kind words from Dijon were welcome to me: thanks. I did not doubt y' sympathy in what has come ; but it is better that I see it laid before me. You ai-e y'self very unhappy, as I too well discern ; heavy-laden, obstructed and dispirited ; but you have a great work still ahead ; and will gradually have to gird y'self up ag'' the lieat of the day, wh'' is coming on for you, — as the night too is comino-. Think valiantly of these things.' ' THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE ' 227 After giving way to his grief — ' my life all laid in ruins, and the one light of it as if gone out,' — he continues : — 'Come and see me when you get home; come oftener and see me, and speak more frankly to me (for I am very true to y' highest interests and you) while I still remain here. You can do nothing for me in Italy; except come home im- proved,' — in health and spirits ; and so on. But before this letter reached Mr. Raskin, he too had been in the presence of death, and had lost one of his most valued friends. Their journey to Italy had been undertaken chiefly for the sake of Lady Trevelyan's health, as the following extracts indicate : — ' Paris, ' 2nd May, 1866. ' Lady Trevelyan is much better to-day, but it is not safe to move her yet — till to-morrow. So I'm going to take the children to look at Chartres cathedral — we can get three hours there, and be back to seven o'clock dinner. We drove round by St. Cloud and Sevres yesterday; the blossomed trees being glorious by the Seine, — the children in high spiribs. It reminds me always too much of Turner — every bend of these rivers is haunted by him.' ' Dijon, ' Sunday, ' Uh May, 1866. * Lady Trevelyan is much better, and we hope all to get on to Neufchatel to-morrow. The weather is quite fine again though not warm ; and yesterday I took the children for a drive up the little valley which we used to drive through on leaving Dijon for Paris. There are wooded hills on each side, and we got into a sweet valley, as full of nightingales as our garden is of thrushes, and with slopes of broken rocky ground above, covered with the lovely blue milk- wort, and purple columbines, and geranium, and wild strawberry-flowers. The children were intensely delighted, and I took great care that Constance should not run about so as to heat herself, and we got up considerable bit of hill quite nicely, and with 15—2 228 LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN greatl}' increased appetite for tea, and general mischief. They have such appetites that I generally call tliem " my two little pigs." There is a delightfiil French waiting-maid at dinner here — who says they ai-e both " charmantes," but highly approves of my title for them, nevertheless.' ' Neufchatel, ' lOth May, 1860. 'Lady Ti-evelyan is still too weak to move. We had (the children and I) a delightful day yesterday at the Pierre a Bot, gathei'ing vetches and lilies of the valley in the woods, and picnic afterwards on the lovely mossy grass, in view of all the Alps — Jungfrau, Eiger, Blumlis Alp, Altels, and the rest, with intermediate lake and farmsteads and apple- blossoms — very heavenly.' Here, within a few days, Lady Trevelyan died. Through- out her illness she had been following the progress of the new notes on wild-flowers (afteiwaids to be 'Proserpina') with keen interest, and Sir Walter lent the help of an authority on botanical science to Mr. Ruskin's more poetical and artistic observations. For the sake of this work, and for the ' children,' and with a wise purpose of beai-ing up under the heavy blow that had fallen, the two friends continued their journey for a while among the mountains. Fiom Thun, on May 21st, he could write to Howell, with the stoicism he affects when he least feels it : — ' Tve had a rather bad time of it at Neuchatel, what with death and the north wind ; both devil's inventions as far as I can make out. But things are looking a little bettei" now, and I had a lovely three hours' walk by the lake shoi-e, in cloudless calm, from five to eight this morning, under hawthorn and chestnut — iiere just in full blossom, and among other pleasantnesses — too good for mortals, as the north wind and the rest of it ai-e too bad. We don't deserve either such blessing or cureing, it seems to poor moth me.' From Thun he went to Interlachen and the Giessbach, with his remaining friends : and he occupied himself closely 'THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE' 229 in tracing Studer's sections across the great lake-furrow of central Switzerland — 'something craggy for his mind to break upon,' as Byron said when he was in trouble. At the Giessbach there was not only geology and divine scenery, enjoyable in lovely weather, but an interesting figure in the foreground, the widowed daughter of the hotel landlord, beautiful and consumptive, but brave as a Swiss girl should be. They all seem to have fallen in love with her, so to speak ; the young English girls as much as the impression- able art-critic : and the new human interest in her Alpine tragedy relieved, as such interests do, the painfulness of the circumstances through which they had been passing. Her sister Marie was like an Allegra to this Penserosa; bright and brilliant in native genius. She played piano-duets with the young ladies ; taught Alpine botany to the savants ; guided them to the secret dells and unknown points of view ; and with a sympathy unexpected in a stranger, beguiled them out of their grief, and won their admiration and gratitude. Marie of the Giessbach was often referred to in letters of the time, and for many years after, with warmly affectionate remembrances. A few bits from his letters to his mother, which I have been permitted to copy, will indicate the impressions of this summer's tour. ' Hotel du Giesbach, ' 6«A June, 1866. ' My dearest Mother, ' Can you at all fancy walking out in the morning in a garden full of lilacs just in rich bloom, and pink hawthorn in masses; and along a little terrace with lovely pinks coming into cluster of colour all over the low wall beside it ; and a sloping bank of green sward from it — and below that, the Giesbach ! Fancy having a real Alpine waterfall in one's garden, — seven hundred feet high. You see, we are just in time for the spring, here, and the strawberries are ripening on the rocks. Joan and Constance have been just scrambling about and gathering them for me. Then there's the blue-green lake below, 230 LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN and Inter] aken and the lake of Thun in the distance. I think I never saw anything so beautiful. Joan will write to you about the people, whom she has made great friends with, already.' ' 1th June, 1866. ' I cannot tell you how much I am struck with the beauty of this fall : it is diflPereut from everything I have ever seen in torrents. There are so many places where one gets near it without being wet, for one thing ; for the falls are, mostly, not vertical so as to fly into mere spray, but over broken rock, which crushes the water into a kind of sugar-candy-like foam, white as snow, yet glittering ; and composed, not of bubbles, but of broken-up water. Then I had forgotten that it plunged straight into the lake ; I got down to the lake shore on the other side of it yesterday, and to see it plunge clear into the blue water, with the lovely mossy rocks for its flank, and for the lake edge, was an unbelievable kind of thing ; it is all as one would fancy cascades in fairyland. I do not often endure with patience any cockneyisms or showings ofi' at these lovely places. But they do one thing here so interesting that I can forgive it. One of the chief cascades (about midway up the hill) falls over a projecting rock, so that one can walk under the torrent as it comes over. It leaps so clear that one is hardly splashed, except at one place. Well, when it gets dark, they burn, for five minutes, one of the strongest steady fireworks of a crimson colour, behind the fall. The red light shines right through, turning the whole waterfall into a torrent of fire.' ' Wth June, 1866. 'We leave, according to our programme, for Interlachen to-day, — with great regret, for the peace and sweetness of this place are wonderful, and the people are good ; and though there is much drinking and quarrelling among the younger men, there appears to be neither distressful poverty, nor deliberate crime : so that there is more of the sense I need, and long for, of fellowship with human creatures, than in any place I have been at for years. I believe they don't 'THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE' 231 so much as lock the house-doors at night ; and the faces of the older peasantry are really very beautiful. I have done a good deal of botany, and find that wild-flower botany is more or less exhaustible, but the cultivated flowers are infinite in their caprice. The forget-me-nots and milkworts are singularly beautiful here, but there is quite as much variety in English fields as in these, as long as one does not climb much — and I'm very lazy, compared to what I used to be.' 'Lautekbeunnen, ' 13th June, 1866. ' We had a lovely evening here yesterday, and the children enjoyed and understood it better than anything they have yet seen among the Alps. Constance was in great glory in a little walk I took her in the twilight through the upper meadows : the Staubbach seen only as a grey veil suspended from its rock, and the great Alps pale above on the dark sky. She condescended nevertheless to gather a great bunch of the white catchfly, — to make " pops " with, — her friend Marie at the Giesbach having shown her how a startling detonation may be obtaiiied, by skilful management, out of its globular calyx. ' This morning is not so promising, — one of the provoking ones which will neither let you stay at home with resignation, nor go anywhere with pleasure. I'm going to take the children for a little quiet exploration of the Wengern path, to see how they like it, and if the weather betters — we may go on. At all events I hope to find an Alpine rose or two.' In June 1866 the Professorship of Poetry at Oxford was vacant; and Mr. Ruskin's friends were anxious to see him take the post. He, however, felt no especial fitness or inclination for it, and the proposal fell through. Thi-ee years later he was elected to a Professorship that at this time had not been founded. ' Tout vient a qui sait attendre.' After spending June in the Oberland, he went homewards 232 LIFE AND WOKK OF JOHN KUSKIN through Berne, Vevey and Gfcneva, to find his private secretary with a bundle of begging letters, and his friend Carlyle busy with the defence of Governor Eyre. In 1865 an insurrection of negroes at Morant Bay, Jamaica, had threatened to take the most serious shape, when it was stamped out by the high-handed measiures of Mr. Eyre. After the first congratulations were over another side to the question called for a hearing. The Baptist missionaries declared that among the negroes who were shot and hanged in terrorem were peaceable subjects, respectable members of their own native congregations, for whose character they could vouch : they added that the gravity of the situation had been exaggerated by private enmity and jealousy of their work and creed : and sympathisers at home pointed out that the executions were not even 'judicial' murders, since Mr. Eyre was not governor of Jamaica, and really had no right to take extreme measures. A strong committee was formed under Liberal auspices, supported by such men as John Stuart Mill and Thomas Hughes, the author of ' Tom Brown's Schooldays ' — men whose motive was above suspicion — to bring Mr. Eyre to account. Carlyle, who admired the strong hand, and had no interest in Baptist missionaries, accepted Mr. Eyre as the saviour of society in his West Indian sphere; and there were many, both in Jamaica and at home, who believed that, but for his prompt action, the white population would have been massacred with aU the horrors of a savage rebellion. Mr. Ruskin had been for many years the ally of the Broad Church and Liberal party ; he had supported the candida- tinre of Mr. Mill and Mr. Hughes in Westminster and Lambeth. But he was now coming more and more under the personal influence of Carlyle ; and when it came to the point of choosing sides, declared himself, in a letter to the Daily Telegraph (Dec. 20th, 1865) a Conservative and a sup- porter of order ; and joined the Eyre Defence Committee ^vith a subscription of ^^100. The prominent part he took, for example in the meeting of September 1866, was no doubt ' THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE ' 233 forced upon him by his desire to save Carlyle, whose recent loss and shaken nerves made such business especially trying to hiin. Letters of this period remain, in which Carlyle begs Ruskin to ' be diligent, I bid you !' — and so on, adding ' I must absolutely shut wp in that direction, to save my sanity.' And so it fell to the younger man to work through piles of pamphlets and newspaper corre- spondence, to interview politicians and men of business, and — what was so very foreign to his habits — to take a leading share in a party agitation. But in all this he was true to his Jacobite instincts. He had been brought up a Tory; and though hq had drifted into an alliance with the Broad Church and philosophical Liberals, he was never one of them. Now that his father was gone, pei-haps he felt a sort of duty to own himself his father's son ; and the failure of liberal philanthropy to realize his ideals, and of liberal philosophy to rise to his economic standards, combined with Carlyle to induce him to label himself Conservative. But his conservatism could not be accepted by the party so called. Fortunately, he did not need or ask their recognition. He took no real interest in party politics, and never in his life voted at a Parliamentary election. He only meant to state in the shortest terms that he stood for loyalty and order. CHAPTER VII 'TIME AND TIDE.' (1867.) ' Yea, the voiceless wrath of the wretched Aud their unlearned discontent, We must give it voice and wisdom, Till the waiting-tide be spent.' W. MOKKis, Poems by the Way. DEAR Ruskin,' writes Carlyle from Meutoiie* (Feb- ruary 15th, 1867), ' if the few bits of letters I have written from this place had gone by the natural priority and sequence, this would have been the first, or among the very first: — and indeed it is essentially so — the first that I have written except upon compulsion, or in answer to something written. My aversion to writing is at all times great. But I begin to feel a great want of having some news from you, at least of hearing that you are not fallen unwell ; and there is no other method of arousing you to your duty.' He goes on to tell how ' the impetuous Tyndall tore me out from the sleety mud abysses of London, as if by the hair of the head ; and dropped me here ' : and then follows a long story about the place and the people. At last : — ' Often I begin to think of my route home ag", and what I shall next do then. . . . The only point I look forward to with any fixed satisfact" as yet, is that of having Ruskin * The letter mentioned in ' Time and Tide,' letter 6 : ' I heard from him last week at Mentoue,' etc. 'TIME AND TIDE' 235 again eve^ Wedny evS, and tasting a little human conversat° once in the week, if oftener be not practicable ! . . . Adieu my Friend, I want a little Note from you (juam prvrnum. I send many regards to the good and dear old lady, and am ever ' Y" gratefully, 'T. Caklyle.' One reason why Mr. Ruskin had not written was, perhaps, that he had already begun the series of letters published as ' Time and Tide by Weare and Tyne,' which is the same thing as saying that he was engaged upon a new and im- portant book. These letters were addressed* to Thomas Dixon, a working cork-cutter of Sunderland, whose portrait by Professor Legros is familiar to visitors at the South Kensington Museum. He was one of those thoughtful, self- educated working men in whom, as a class, Mr. Ruskin had been taking a deep interest for the past twelve years, an interest which had purchased him a practical insight into their various capacities and aims, and the right to speak without fear or favour. At this time there was an agitation for Parliamentary reform, and the better representation of the working classes ; and it was on this topic that the letters were begun, though the writer went on to criticise the various social ideals then popular, and to propose his own. He had already done something of the soi-t in ' Unto this Last ' ; but ' Time and Tide ' is much more complete, and the result of seven years' farther thought and experience. His ' Fors Clavigera' is a continuation of these letters, but written at a time when other work and ill health broke in upon his strength. ' Time and Tide ' is not only the statement of his social scheme as he saw it in his central period, but, written as these letters were — at a stroke, so to speak — condensed in exposition and simple in language, they deserve the most careful reading by the student of Ruskin. * During February, March and April, 1867, and published in the Manchester Examiner and Leeds Mtrcv/ry. 236 LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN The earlier letters are mainly a criticism of popular ideals, and the panaceas which were prescribed for the Body Politic. There was Parliamentary Reform, there was Co-operation, as populai-ly understood, and there was the Redistribution of Land, already beginning to be demanded ; all these he criticised as inadequate. The mere preaching of Thrift, of Education and of Religion he regarded as a delusion or a mockery. Competition and laissez-faire he denounced. Then he proceeded to construct his own ideal, as Plato had done in his ' Republic,' only within stricter limits. He points out repeatedly that this is an ideal, and not a suggestion for immediate adoption; and yet it differs from other people's Utopias in being far nearer realization. It is, indeed — though he does not definitely say so — based on a system which has already worked well, the system by which the barbarian Teutonic tribes and degraded Latin races of the lower empire, were gradually developed into the great kingdoms of Europe, evolving the religion, laws, arts and sciences which the Renaissance found at its coming. And if it be true that we are now in much the same position, mutatis mutandis, as in Charlemagne's days — our degenerate ' upper classes' with their Renaissance culture and traditions re- presenting the Roman element, and oiu- discontented ' lower classes,' with their restlessness and vitality and overwhelming preponderance representing the invaders — if the problem be to weld these into a new cohesion, and out of them to create a new civilization, then it was surely well thought of, to apply the ancient cui'e, mutatis mutandis, to the parallel case. To state the ideal constitution as shortly and conveniently as possible, we might put it under four heads, though the author does not so divide it ; but he seems to have adopted, and adapted, from the Middle Ages their guild system, their chivalry, their church, and something of their feudal scheme. To get entirely rid of competition, he proposed an organisation of labour akin to the ancient guilds, which he regarded as the combination, in each trade and in every kind 'TIME AND TIDE' 237 of manufacture, agriculture and art, of all the masters with all the men. But while the old guilds were local, he would have them universal. By their own rules, and for their own advantage, they would secure good workmanship, honest production ; they would fix fair wages for their men and provide against the bankruptcy of their members who were masters. Retail trade would be neither precarious nor de- grading if it were carried on by the salaried officers of the guild. The workman, holding a well-defined position, and possessing some share of control, through the trade council, over his work and his wages, would have no ground for discontent. And the masters, for Carlyle's Elisha had no idea of a world without masters, would be ' captains of labour,' the friends and not the enemies of their men ; with their superior talents recognised and used, not without a certain pecuniary advantage, but without that disproportion of income, and of responsibility, which is the plague of modern commerce and manufacture. Book-learning was not Mr. Ruskin's notion of education : and while he would have everybody educated, he would not make every boy and girl learned, for, as Sylvestre Bonnai-d says, he wished them well. The physical and moral education he proposed would make finer creatures of them ; would go a long way, of itself, to eradicate disease and stupidity and vulgarity. To do this more effectually he proposed to regulate marriage by permitting it only to those young people who had qualified themselves by attaining a certain standard of general physical and moral culture — ' bachelors ' and 'rosieres' they might be dubbed, on the analogy of chivalry. To ensure the sufficient and yet frugal bringing up of a family, he would secure them an income from the state, if necessary, for the first seven years ; or, if they were of the wealthier class, keep them down to that income, and reserve the surplus for their use later on. Indeed he would limit all incomes to some fixed maximum ; on attaining which, if a man were independent, he might retire, to pursue his own hobbies or to serve the state. But, in his Polity, it 238 LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN would be the part of gentlefolks — ^for some would still be unavoidably both wealthier and more refined than others — to set the example of plain li\ang and high thinking. As to the church, that, as in the ' Notes on Sheepfolds,' was to be strictly a state-church, in the sense that such officers as it possessed would be salaried by the government ; and that their work would be in harmony with the state, not opposed to it, nor independent of it, in sects and schisms. These clergy would be confined to pastoral care, and have no right to preach their varying vie^vs of dogma. Names, of course, matter nothing in schemes of this sort ; but in calling these officers ' Bishops ' and suggesting that they should have the ovei-sight of a hundred families each, Mr. Ruskin points to the practice of the primitive church. Though at this time he had renounced any definite adhesion in orthodox religion, he did not think that human nature, as a whole, would or could become completely irreligious; but he leaves it quite open to the families of his ideal state whether they will admit the administrations of their bishops, or not. Finally, he adapted the feudalism of the Middle Ages in the sense that the whole body politic would be distinctly organic, and not anarchic : that its organisation would be based on a military scheme. He had said, in ' The Crown of Wild Olive,' that a military despotism is the only cure for a diseased society; and while minimising the occasions and opportunities for war, he felt that, to effisct the development of the present ' Dai-k Age ' into a more perfect civilisation, some use of force would be necessary in the administration. Believing sti'ongly in human nature, he did not pretend that everybody is virtuous. Laws must be made, and laws must be administered : and to do this effisctively requires the strong hand. In his state every man would be a soldier (as in Swtzerland) ; but just as in the guilds some would necessarily be dilFerentiated into mastership, so, in the Avhole of society, individuals and families would rise into eminence and take the lead. And as the captains, judges, bishops, and school- masters would be salaried state officials, so to these distin- « TIME AND TIDE ' 239 guished men and families he would be glad to assign such moderate incomes as might keep them in the public service, with such estates in land as might afford them the means of exemplifying the arts and graces of life ; not to be landlords, but only the tenants of the state, just as the agriculturists, through their guild, are to have the use of the soil rent-free. Such, in rough outline, is the ideal commonwealth of ' Time and Tide.' The scheme has the support of historical analogy : it is in harmony with modern scientific views of the evolution of mankind ; it is elastic enough to give play to the varying aims of individuals and classes ; and since it does not premise universal virtue, nor promise universal happiness, it is not rightly described as Utopian. Before this work was ended, Carlyle had come back to Chelsea, and was begging his friend, in the warmest terms, to come and see him. Shortly afterward, a passage which Mr. Ruskin would not retract gave offence to Carlyle. But the difference was healed, and later letters reveal the sage of Chelsea just as kindly and affectionate as ever. It is a poor friendship that is broken by a free speech : and this friend- ship, between the two greatest writers of their age, between two men, we may add, of vigorous individuality, outspoken opinions, and widely different tastes and sympathies, is a fine episode in the history of both. In May, Mr. Ruskin was invited to Cambridge to receive the honorary degree of LL.D., and to deliver the Rede Lecture. The Cambridge Chronicle of May 25th, 1867, says : ' The body of the Senate House was quite filled with M.A.'s and ladies, principally the latter, whilst there was a large attendance of undergraduates in the galleries, who gave the lecturer a most enthusiastic reception.'' A brief report of the lecture was printed in the newspaper; but it was not otherwise published, and the manuscript seems to have been mislaid for thirty years. I take the liberty of copying the opening sentences as a specimen of that Academical oratory which Mr. Ruskin then adopted, and used habitually in his earlier lectures at Oxford. 240 LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN The title of the discoui-se was ' The Relation of National Ethics to National Arts.' — ' In entering on the duty to-day enti-usted to me, I should hold it little respectful to my audience if I disturbed them by expression of the diffidence which they know that I must feel in first speaking in this Senate House; diffidence which might well have prevented me from accepting such duty, but ought not to interfere with my endeavour simply to fulfil it. Nevertheless, lest the direction which I have been led to give to my discourse, and the narrow limits within which I am compelled to confine the treatment of its subject may seem in anywise inconsistent with the purpose of the founder of this Lecture — or with the expectations of those by whose authority I am appointed to deliver it, let me at once say that I obeyed their command, not thinking myself able to teach any dogma in the philosophy of the arts, which could be of any new interest to the members of this University : but only that I might obtain the sanction of their audience, for the enforcement upon other minds of the truth, which — after thirty years spent in the study of art, not dishonestly, however feebly — is manifest to me as the clearest of all that I have learned, and urged upon me as the most vital of all I have to declare.' He then distinguished between true and false art, the true depending upon sincerity, whether in literature, music or the formative ai-ts : he reinforced his old doctrine of the dignity of true imagination as the attribute of healthy and earnest minds ; and energetically attacked the commercial art-world of the day, and the notion that drawing-schools were to be supported for the sake of the gain they would bring to our manufacturers. ' Mr. Ruskin concluded his lectui-e,' says the Chronicle, ' with a very fine peroration, the first part of which he addi'essed to the younger members of the academic body, the second to the elder. On the younger men he urged the infinite importance of a life of virtue and the fact that the hereafter must be spent in God's presence or in dai'kness. Their time in this miracle of a universe was but as a moment ; with one brief astounded gaze of awe they looked on all 'TIME AND TIDE' 241 around them — saw the planets roll, heard the sound of the sea, and beheld the surroundings of the earth ; they were opened for a moment as a sheet of lightning, and then instantly closed again. Their highest ambition during so short a stay should be to be known for what they were — to spend those glittering days in view of what was to come after them. Then on the Masters of this, which had for years been pre-eminent as the school of science, he urged that their continued prosperity must rest on their observance of the command of their Divine Master, in whose name they existed as a society — " Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness." . . . All mere abstract knowledge, indepen- dent of its tendency to a holy life, was useless. . . His concluding remarks were an eloquent exhortation to the seniors diligently to perform the solemn trust given to them in the proving of youth — " Lead them not into temptation, but deliver them from evil." 'Long and hearty cheers greeted the learned lecturer from all parts of the Senate House as he resumed his seat.' In this lecture we see the germ of the ideas, as well as the beginning of the style, of the Oxford Inaugural course, and the ' Eagle's Nest ' ; something quite different in type from the style and teaching of the addresses to working men, or to mixed popular audiences at Edinburgh or Manchester, or even at the Royal Institution. At this latter place, on June 4th, Sir Henry Holland in the chair, he lectured on ' The Present State of Modern Ai't, with reference to advis- able arrangement of the National Gallery,' repeating much of what he had said in ' Time and Tide ' about the taste for the horrible and absence of true feeling for pure and dignified ait in the theatrical shows of the day, and in the admiration for Gustave Dore, then a new fashion. Mr. Ruskin could never endure that the man who had illustrated Balzac's 'Contes Drolatiques' should be chosen by the religious public of England as the exponent of their most sacred aspirations and ideals. In July he went to Keswick for a few weeks, from whence 16 242 LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN he wrote the rhymed letters to his cousin at home, quoted (with the date wrongly given as 1857) in ' Prasterita ' to illus- trate his ' heraldic character ' of ' Little Pigs ' and to shock exoteric admirers. Like, for example, Rossetti and Carlyle, Mr. Raskin was fond of playful nicknames and grotesque terms of endearment. He never stood upon his dignity with intimates; and was ready to allow the liberties he took, much to the surprise of strangers. He reached Keswick by July 4, and spent his time chiefly in walks upon the hills, staying at the Derwentwater Hotel. He wrote : — ' Keswick, ' 19th July, '67, ' Afternoon, J past 3. ' My dearest Mother, 'As this is the last post before Sunday I send one more line to say Fve had a delightful forenoon's walk — since \ past ten — ^by St. John's Vale, and had pleasant thoughts, and found one of the most variedly beautiful torrent beds I ever saw in my life ; and I feel that I gain strength, slowly but cei-tainly, every day. The great good of the place is that I can be content without going on great excursions which fatigue and do me harm (or else worry me with problems ;) — I am content here with the roadside hedges and streams ; and this contentment is the great thing for health, — and there is hardly anything to annoy me of absurd or calamitous human doing ; but still this ancient cottage life — very rude, and miserable enough in its torpor — but clean, and calm, not a vile cholera and plague of bestirred pollution, like back streets in London. There is also much more real and deep beauty than I expected to find, in some of the minor pieces of scenery, and in the cloud effects.' 'I have the secret of extracting sadness from all things, instead of joy, which is no enviable talisman. Forgive me if I ever write in a way that may pain you. It is best that you should know, when I write cheerfully, it is no pretended cheer- fulness ; so when I am sad — I think it right to confess it.' 'TIME AND TIDE' 243 ' 30th July. * Downes* amved yesterday quite comfortably and in fine weather. It is not bad this morning, and I hope to take him for a walk up Saddleback, which, after all, is the finest, to my mind, of all the Cumberland hills— though that is not saying much ; for they are much lower in effect, in proportion to their real height, than I had expected. The beauty of the country is in its quiet roadside bits, and rusticity of cottage life and shepherd labour. Its mountains are sorrow- fully melted away from my old dreams of them.' Next day he ' went straight up the steep front of Saddle- back by the central ridge to the summit. It is the finest thing I've yet seen, there being several bits of real crag-work, and a fine view at the top over the great plains of Penrith on one side, and the Cumberland hills, as a chain, on the other. Fine fresh wind blowing, and plenty of crows. Do you remember poor papa's favourite story about the Quaker whom the crows ate on Saddleback ? There were some of the biggest and hoarsest-voiced ones about the cliff that I've ever had sympathetic croaks from ; — and one on the top, or near it, so big that Downes and Crawley, having Austrian tendencies in politics, took it for a " black eagle." Downes went up capitally, though I couldn't get him down again, because he would stop to gather ferns. However, we did it all and came down to Threlkeld — of the Bridal of Triermain, ' The King his way pursued By lonely Threlkeld's waste and wood,' in good time for me to dress and, for a wonder, go out to dinner with Acland's friends the Butlers.' As an episode in this visit to Keswick, ten days were given to the neighbourhood of Ambleside, ' to show Downes Windermere.' * The gardener at Denmark HilL 16—2 244 LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN ' Wateuhead, ' Windermere, ' 10th August, 1867, ' Evening. ' I was at Coniston to-day. Our old Waterhead Inn, where I was so happy playing in the boats, exists no more. — Its place is grown over with smooth Park grass — the very site of it forgotten ! and, a quarter of a mile down the lake, a vast hotel built in the railroad station style — making up, I suppose, its fifty or eighty beds, with coffee-room — smoking- room — and every pestilent and devilish Yankeeism that money can buy, or speculation plan. 'The depression, whatever its cause, does not affect my strength. I walked up a long hill on the road to Coniston to-day (gathering wild raspbemes) — then from this new Inn, two miles to the foot of Coniston Old Man; up it; down again — (necessarily !) — and back to dinner, without so much as warming myself — not that there was much danger of doing that at the top ; for a keen west wind was blowing drifts of cloud by, at a great pace ; and one was glad of the shelter of the pile of stones, the largest and oldest I ever saw on a mountain top. I suppose the whole mountain is named from it. It is of the shape of a beehive, strongly built, about 15 feet high (so that I made Downes follow me up it before I would allow he had been at the top of the Old Man) and covered with lichen and short moss. Lancaster sands and the Irish sea were very beautiful, and so also the two lakes of Coniston and Windermere, lying in the vastest space of sweet cultivated country I have ever looked over, — a great part of the view from the Rigi being merely over black pine forest, even on the plains. Well, after dinner, the evening was very beautiful, and I walked up the long hill on the road back from Coniston — and kept ahead of the carriage for two miles ; I was sadly vexed when I had to get in : and now — I don't feel as if I had been walking at all — and shall probably lie awake for an hoiu: or two — and feeling as if I had not had exercise enough to send me to sleep.' 'TIME AND TIDE' 245 ' Langdale, ' 13«A August, ' Hvening. ' It is perfectly calm to-night, not painfully hot — and the full moon shining over the mountains, opposite my window, which are the scene of Wordsworth's " Excursion." It was terribly hot in the earlier day, and I did not leave the house till five o'clock. Then I went out, and in the heart of Lang- dale Pikes found the loveliest rock-scenery, chased with silver waterfalls, that I ever set foot or heart upon. The Swiss torrent-beds are always more or less savage, and ruinous, with a terrible sense of overpowering strength and danger, lulled. But here, the sweet heather and ferns and star mosses nestled in close to the dashing of the narrow streams ; — while every cranny of crag held its own little placid lake of amber, trembling with falling drops — but quietly trembling — not troubled into ridgy wave or foam — the rocks themselves, ideal rock, as hard as iron — no — not quite that, but so hard that after breaking some of it, breaking solid white quartz seemed like smashing brittle loaf sugar, in comparison — and cloven into the most noble masses ; not grotesque, but majestic and full of harmony with the larger mountain mass of which they formed a part. Fancy what a place ! for a hot afternoon after five, with no wind — and absolute solitude ; no creature — except a lamb or two — ^to mix any ruder sound or voice with the plash of the innumerable streamlets.' After spending September with his mother at Norwood under the care of Dr. Powell, he was able to return home, prepare 'Time and Tide' for publication, and write the preface on Dec. 14th. On the 19th the book was out, and immediately bought up. A month later the second edition was issued. CHAPTER VIII. AGATES, AND ABBEVILLE. (1868.) * And whenever the way seemed long, Ov his heart began to fail, She would sing a more wonderful song. Or tell a more marvellous tale.' Longfellow. OF less interest to the general reader, though too im- portant a part of Mr. Ruskin's life and work to be passed over without mention, are his studies in Mineralogy. We have heard of his early interest in spars and ores ; of his juvenile dictionary in forgotten hieroglyphics ; and of his studies in the field and at the British Museum. He had made a splendid collection, and knew the various museums of Europe as familiarly as he knew the picture- galleries. In the ' Ethics of the Dust ' he had chosen Crystallography as the subject in which to exemplify his method of education ; and in 1867, after finishing the letters to Thomas Dixon, he took refuge, as before, among the stones, from the stress of more agitating problems. In the lecture on the Savoy Alps in 1863 he had referred to a hint of Saussure's, that the contorted beds of the lime- stones might possibly be due to some sort of internal action, resembling on a large scale that separation into concenti-ic or curved bands which is seen in calcareous deposits. The con- tortions of gneiss were similarly analogous, it was suggested, to those of the various forms of silica. Mr. Ruskin did not adopt the theory, but put it by for examination in contrast a AGATES, AND ABBEVILLE 247 with the usual explanation of these phenomena, as the simple mechanical thrust of the contracting surface of the earth. In 1863 and 1866 he had been among the Nagelfliih of Northern Switzerland, studying the pudding-stones and breccias. He saw that the difference between these forma- tions, in their structural aspect, and the hand-specimens in his collection of pisolitic and brecciated minerals was chiefly a matter of size; and that the resemblances in form were very close. And so he concluded that if the structure of the minerals could be fully understood, a clue might be found to the very puzzling question of the origin of mountain- structure. Hence his attempt to analyze the structure of agates and similar banded and brecciated minerals, in the series of papers in the Geological Magazine ,-* an attempt which, though it was never properly concluded, and fails to come to any general conclusion, is extremely interestingf as an account of beautiful and curious natural forms too little noticed by ordinary scientific mineralogists. Mr. Ruskin began by naming the different ways in which solid rocks became fragmentary ; of which one was by homo- geneous segregation, as seen in oolites and pisolites ; and another, by segregation of distinct substances from a homo- geneous paste. He showed how this latter way might explain some curious conditions of jasper ; how an example of brec- ciated malachite proved that the banded structure was not prior to the fractures, but that both tendencies were at work together ; and how in many forms of agate the same pheno- mena made it impossible to believe that simple successive deposition, and violent concussion from without, wholly explained their origin. He thought that enough attention had not been drawn to the processes of segregation ; and * August and November, 1867, January, April and May, 1868, December, 1869, and January, 1870, illustrated with very fine mezzotint places and woodcuts. f See the testimony of Prof. Rupert Jones, F.R.S., in the ' Proceed- ings of the Geologists' Association,' vol. iv., No. 7. 248 LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN suggested that many conglomerates might not be merely a collection of pebbles, but concretionary, like orbicular granite (Napoleonite) and other nodule -structures in metamorphic rock. On these analogies he suspected that some contortions and faults on a large scale might not be the result of mechanical violence, but colossal phenomena of retractation and con- traction; and even that many apparent strata had been produced by segregation. This idea, he said, had been suggested to him in a paper by Mr. George Maw, the son of the Mr. Maw who took him to task years before about ' Reflections in Water.' I have not seen the paper alluded to, and I should not like to fix Mr. Ruskin's heresies on its author, who is so well known in the world of science by his work in geology and botany, and to the public by the encaustic tiles and lustre pottery of his firm. But while palaeontology makes it evident that the great limestone strata of the Alps are the result of successive deposition, it does seem probable that Mr. Ruskin was right in his hesita- tion to accept the compression-theory of mountain origin.* In the following papers, written during 1868, he described the different states of semi-crystalline silica, and the two great families of agates, and drew attention to the com- plexity of the laws under which they had been formed, and the insufficiency of the old theory. Meanwhile the conditions of crystallisation were becoming the subject of a new school of research, led by Dr. Clifton Sorby, to which Mr. Ruskin looked with eagerness for the clearing up of his difficultits ; but his Oxford Professorship, with the many new enterprises of the next ten years, forced him to lay aside the agate- question as a serious study. And though from time to time the results of the new investigations were kindly communi- cated to him by Dr. Sorby and Mr. Clifton Ward, and followed by him in the published memoirs of the microscopic mineralogists ; though Professor Chandler Roberts helped * See ' The Origin of Mountain-Ranges,' by T. Mellard Reade, C.E P.G.S., elc. (1886). AGATES, AND ABBEVILLE 249 him in the chemistry of gelatinous states of silica, Mr. Henry Willett in the study of flints, and many others in various departments ; he never was able to bring himself to handle the modern microscope and work out the whole business afresh, from the modern point of view. He had to leave his pet study, very reluctantly, to younger men ; not without parting cautions against hasty theorising, nor without claims for a wider scope in their view of the subject. The student who cares to make himself acquainted with the spirit in which Mr. Ruskin approached one department of the subject, should take the ' Catalogue of a series of specimens in the British Museum (Natural History), illus- trative of the more common forms of Native Silica, arranged [presented for the most part] and described by John Ruskin, F.G.S.,' and spend a few hours at Cromwell Road with the pamphlet in his hand, over the mineral cases, just as tourists in Venice are seen comparing his notes with the pictures in the Academy. And as the shilling catalogue is by no means abstruse, and the specimens are more beautiful than most picture-shows, the unscientific reader would not find his time lost in learning something new about Nature, and something new to most readers, I suspect, about Ruskin. One other outcome of the analogy between minerals and mountains, was Mr. Ruskin's scepticism in the matter of cleavage and jointing, which he thought insufficiently studied and explained by the holders of the mechanical theory, and suspected to be rather akin to crystalline cleavage, both in aspects and origin. Not to dwell on these details, I merely note that a great recent authority. Professor Prestwich,* says, after weighing the evidence : ' The system of joints, therefore, seems to me to be not a simple mechanical action, but one combined with a condition of crystallisation; and though, from the influences of other mechanical forces to which the rocks have been exposed, and from the varying proportions of their constituent ingi-edients, we cannot expect the angles to present the exact definition which a crystal of the pure * Gcolony (1886), vol. i., p. 283. 250 LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN mineral would have, still there is every appearance of the plane-lines of shi-inkage and jointing having been guided in many cases, if not in all, by planes of crystalline cleavage, in consequence of these being those of least resistance.' We must now recover the thread of our story and carry it hastily over the year spent chiefly, though by no means wholly, in these mineral researches. And first to tell a characteristic anecdote, preserved in ' Arrows of the Chace.' ' The Daily Telegraph of January 21st, 1868, contained a leading article upon the following facts. It appeared that a girl, named Matilda Griggs, had been nearly murdered by her seducer, who, after stabbing her in no less than thirteen places, had then left her for dead. She had, however, still strength enough to crawl into a field close by, and there swooned. The assistance she met with in this plight was of a rare kind. Two calves came up to her, and disposing themselves on either side of her bleeding body, thus kept her warm and partly sheltered from cold and rain. Temporarily preserved, the girl eventually recovered, and entered into recognizances, under a sum of forty pounds, to prosecute her murderous lover. But "she loved much," and, failing to prosecute, forfeited her recognizances, and was imprisoned by the Chancellor of the Exchequer for her debt. " Pity the poor debtor," wrote the Daily Telegraph, and in the next day's issue appeared the following letter, probably not in- tended for the publication accorded to it. " Sir, — ^Except in ' Gil Bias,' I never read of anything Astraean on the earth so perfect as the story in your fourth article to-day. I send you a cheque for the Chancellor. If forty, in legal terms, means four hundred, you must explain the farther require- ments to your impulsive public. ' I am, Sir, ' Your faithful servant, 'J. RusiaN."' The wi-iter of letters like this naturally had a large cor- respondence, beside that which a circle of private friends and AGATES, AND ABBEVILLE 251 numberless admirers and readers elicited. About this time it grew to such a pitch that he was obliged to print a form excusing him from letter-writing on the ground of stress of work. And indeed this year, though he did not publish his annual volume, as usual, he was fully occupied with frequent letters to newspapers, several lectures and addresses, a preface to the reprint of his old friend Cruikshank's ' Grimm,' and the beginning of a new botanical work, ' Proserpina,' in addition to the mineralogy, and, I believe, a renewed interest in classical studies. Of the public addresses the most im- portant was that on 'The Mystery of Life and its Arts,' delivered in the theatre of the Royal College of Science, Dublin (May 13th), and printed in ' Sesame and Lilies.' After this visit to Ireland he spent a few days at Win- nington; and late in August crossed the Channel, for rest and change at Abbeville. For the past five years Mr. Ruskin had found very little time for drawing ; it was twenty years since his last sketching of French Gothic, except for a study (now at Oxford), of the porch at Amiens, in 1856. He took up the old work where he had left it, after writing the 'Seven Lamps,' with fresh interest and more advanced powers of draughtsmanship, as shown in the picture engraved as frontispiece to his ' Poems,' and in the pencil study of the Place Amiral Courbet, now in the drawing school at Oxford. The following are extracts from the usual budget of home- letters ; readers of ' Fors ' will need no further introduction to their old acquaintance, the tallow-chandler. ' Abbeville, * Friday, ' lUh Sept., 1868. ' You seem to have a most uncomfortable time of it, with the disturbance of the house. However, I can only leave you to manage these things as you think best — or feel pleasantest to yourself. I am saddened by another kind of disorder. France is in everything so fallen back, so desolate 252 LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN and comfortless, compared to what it was twenty years ago — the people so much rougher, clumsier, more uncivil — every- thing they do, vulgar and base. Remnants of the old nature come out when they begin to know you. I am drawing at a nice tallow-chandler's door, and to-day, for the first time had to go inside for rain. He was very courteous and nice, and warned me against running against the candle-ends — or bottoms, as they were piled on the shelves, saying — " You must take care, you see, not to steal any of my candles " — or " steal from my candles," meaning not to rub them off on my coat. He has a beautiful family of cats — papa and mamma and two superb kittens — half Angora.' ' I am going to my cats and tallow-chandler. ... I was very much struck by the superiority of manner, both in him and in his two daughters who serve at the counter, to persons of the same class in England. When the girls have weighed out their candles, or written down the orders that are sent in, they instantly sit down to their needlework behind the counter, and are always busy, yet always quiet ; and their father, though of course there may be vulgar idioms in his language which I do not recognize, has entirely the manners of a gentleman.' ' ZOth Sept. ' I have one advantage here I had not counted on. I see by the papers that the weather in England is very stormy and bad. Now, though it is showery here, and breezy, it has always allowed me at some time of the day to draw. The air is tender and soft, invariably — even when blowing with force ; and to-day, I have seen quite the loveliest sunset I ever yet saw, — one at Boulogne in '61 was richer ; but for delicacy and loveliness nothing of past sight ever came near this.' Earlier on the same day he had written : — ' I am well satisfied with the work I am doing, and even with my own power of doing it, if only I can keep myself AGATES, AND ABBEVILLE 263 from avariciously trying to do too much, and working hurriedly. But I can do very little quite loell, each day: with that however it is my bounden duty to be content. ' And now I have a little piece of news for you. Our old Heme Hill house being now tenantless, and requiring some repairs before I can get a tenant, I have resolved to keep it for myself, for my rougher mineral work and mass of collection; keeping only my finest specimens at Denmark Hill. My first reason for this, is affection for the old house : — my second, want of room ; — my third, the incom- patibility of hammering, washing, and experimenting on stones, with cleanliness in my stores of drawings. And my fourth is the power I shall have, when I want to do anything very quietly, of going up the hill and thinking it out in the old garden, where your greenhouse still stands, and the aviary — without fear of interruption from callers. ' It may perhaps amuse you, in hours which otherwise would be listless, to think over what may be done with the old house. I have ordered it at once to be put in proper repair by Mr. Snell ; but for the furnishing, I can give no directions at present : it is to be very simple, at all events, and calculated chiefly for museum work and for stores of stones and books : and you really must not set your heart on having it furnished like Buckingham Palace. ' I have bought to day, for five pounds, the front of the porch of the Church of St. James. It was going to be entirely destroyed. It is worn away, and has little of its old beauty ; but as a remnant of the Gothic of Abbeville — as I happen to be here — and as the church was dedicated to my father's patron saint (as distinct from mine) Fm glad to have got it. It is a low arch — with tracery and niches, which ivy, and the Erba della Madonna, will grow over beautifully, wherever I rebuild it.' At Abbeville Mr. Ruskin had with him as usual his valet Crawley ; and as before he sent for Downes the gardener, to give him a holiday, and to enjoy his raptures over every new 254 LIFE AND AVORK OF JOHN RUSKIN sight. ISIr. C. E. Norton aime ou a short visit, and Mi". Ruskiu followed him to Tails, where lie met the poet Long- fellow (October 7). At last on Monday, 19th October, he wrote : — ' Only a line to-day, for I am getting things together, and am a little tired, but veiy well, and glad to come home, though much mortified at having failed in half my plans, and done nothing compared to what I expected. But it is better tlian if I were displeased with all I had done. It isn't Tiu-nei- — and it isn't Cori"eggio — it isn't even Pi-out — but it isn't bad.' Returning home, he gave an account of his autumn's work in the lecture at the Royal Institution, January 29th, 1869, on the ' Flamboyant Architectui-e of the Valley of the Somnie.' This lecture was never published in full ; but psirt of the original text is printed in the third chapter of the work we have next to notice, ' The Queen of the Air.' CHAPTER IX. •THE QUEEN OF THE AIR.' (1869.) ' For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves.' — St. Paul (Rom. ii. 14). IN spite of a 'classical education' and the influence of Aristotle upon the immature art-theories of his earlier works, Mr. Ruskin was known, in his younger days, as a Goth, and the enemy of the Greeks. When he began life, his sense of justice made him take the side of Modern Painters against classical tradition ; his sympathy, much wider than that of ordinaiy critics, led him to praise Gothic architecture, and his common sense prompted him to recom- mend it as a domestic style more convenient than the pseudo-classic of the decadent Renaissance. Later on, when considering the great questions of education and the aims of life, he entirely set aside the common routine of Greek and Latin grammar as the all-in-all of culture. But this was not because he shared Carlyle's contempt for classical studies. In ' Modern Painters,' vol. iii., he had followed out the indications of nature-worship, and tried to analyse in general terms the attitude of the Greek spirit towards landscape scenery, as betrayed in Homer and Aristophanes and the poets usually read. Since that time his interest in Greek literature had been gradually increasing. He had ma.de efforts to improve his knowledge of the language; and he had spent many days in sketching and studying the ten'a* 256 LIFE AND WOKK OF JOHN RUSKIN cottas and vases and coins at the British Museum. He hiul also taken up some study of Egyptology, through ChampoUion and Bunsen and Birch, in the hope of tracing the origin of Greek decorative art. At that stage of ai-chseological discovei'y it was not so clearly seen as it is to-day that Egypt was only one factor in the development of Greece. The discoveries at Hissarlik and Mycenae, and in Cyprus and elsewhei-e, had not shown the Aiyan and Assyrian paientage of many Greek customs and myths and forms of art. Comparative mythology, twenty-five years ago, was a department of philology, intro- duced to the English public chiefly by Professor Max Miiller. Under his influence Mr. Ruskin entered step by step upon an inquiry which afterwards became of singular importance in his life and thought. In 1865 he had told his hearers at Bradford that Greek Religion was not, as commonly supposed, the worship of Beauty, but of Wisdom and Power. They did not, in their great age, woi-ship ' Venus,' but Apollo and Athena. And he regarded their mythology as a sincei-e tradition, efifective in forming a high moral type, and a great school of ait. In the 'Ethics of the Dusf he had explained the mytli of Athena as parallel to that of Neith in Egypt; and in his fable of Neith and St. Bai-bara he had hinted at a compai-ison, on equal terms, of Ancient and Mediaeval mythology. He ended by saying that, though he would not have his young hearers believe 'that the Greeks were better than we, and that their gods were real angels,' yet their art and morals were in some respects greater, and their beliefs wei-e worth respectful and sympathetic study. The ' Queen of the Air ' is his contribution to this study. Like much of his work, it is only a fragment indicating what he would have done, and began to do. Ever since he has been accumulating material for farther investigation of the vast, bewildering sphere which embraces, too amply for one man's review, the orbits of art, and science, and ethics, and religion, as they rise and set upon his limited horizon, and roll, in a mazy dance, by laws that elude his reckonings, ' THE QUEEN OF THE AIR ' 257 round some ' far-off, divine event, to which the whole creation moves.' On March 9th, 1869, his lecture at University College, London, on « Greek Myths of Cloud and Storm,' began with an attempt to explain in popular terms how a myth differs from mere fiction on the one hand and from allegory on the other, being ' not conceived didactically, but didactic in its essence, as all good art is.' He showed that Greek poetry dealt with a series of Nature-myths with which were inter- woven ethical suggestions; that these were connected with Egyptian beliefs, but that the full force of them was only developed in the central period of Greek history, and their interpretation was to be read in a sympathetic analysis of the spirit of men like Pindar and Aeschylus. 'The great question,' he said, ' in reading a story is, always, not what wild hunter dreamed, or what childish race first dreaded it ; but what wise man first perfectly told, and what strong people first perfectly lived by it. And the real meaning of any myth is that which it has at the noblest age of the nation among whom it was current.' This, of course, is a higher view than that of the anthropological and archaeological specialist : but at the same time, the historical method is necessary as a preliminary and a check upon the tendency to fanciful interpretation, which Mr. Ruskin, in common with the whole philological school, does not escape. With certain amendments, however, his work is most valuable, as an exposi- tion of the system of Greek religion, the worship of four groups of nature-powers, in earth, water, fire and air ; and rising out of a low animism and fetishism into high ionoral and intellectual conceptions. He traced with appreciation the development of the notion of Athena, as the chief power of the air, from her character of actual atmosphere to that of the breath of human life ; and thence to the higher belief in a Divine spirit, indistinguishable at first, and among simple folk always, from the material breath in the nostrils of man ; but leading up to healthy views of morahty and sincere faith in Omnipresent Deity, not far 17 258 LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN remote in its practical outcome from that which we have received from the Hebrews. In the next chapter he worked out, as a sequel to his lecture, two groups of Animal-myths ; those connected with birds, and especially the dove, as type of Spirit, and those connected with the serpent in its vaiious significances. These two studies were continued, more or less, in 'Love's Meinie ' and in the lecture printed in ' Deucalion,' as the third group, that of Plant-myths, was carried on in ' Proserpina.' The volume contained also extracts from the lectiu-e on the Architectm-e of the Valley of the Somme, and two numbers of the ' Cestus of Aglaia,' and closed with a paper on The Hercules of Camarina, read to the South Lambeth Art School on Mai-ch 15th. This study of a Greek coin had already formed the subject of an address at the Working Men's College, and anticipated the second course of Oxford Lectures. For the rest, ' The Queen of the Air ' is marked by its statement, more clearly than before in Mr. Ruskin's ^vriting, of the dependence of moral upon physical life, and of physical upon moral science. He speaks with respect of the work of Darwin and Tyndall ; but, as formerly in the Rede Lectiure, and afterwards in the ' Eagle's Nest,' he claims that natural science should not be piursued as sui end in itself, paramount to all other conclusions and considerations ; but as a department of study subordinate to ethics, with a view to utility and instruction. In later times it was this principle which guided Mr. Ruskin in the view he took of Vivi- section, and other forms of scientific research. Premising that science was subordinate to ethics, when the two clashed, as he held they did in some cases, science, he thought, was to give way. Before this book was quite ready for publication, and after a sale of some of his less treasured pictures at Christie's, Mr. Ruskin left home for a journey to Italy, to revisit the subjects of ' Stones of Venice,' as in 1868 he had revisited i those of the 'Seven Lamps.' At Vevey, on the way, he| wrote his preface (May 1st). ' THE QUEEN OF THE AIR ' 259 By quiet stages he passed the Simplon, writing from Domo d'Ossola, 5th May 1869 :— ' My dearest Mother, ' I never yet had so beautiful a day for the Simplon as this has been ; though the skin of my face is burning now ail over — ^to keep me well in mind of its sunshine. I left Brieg at 6 exactly — light clouds breaking away into perfect calm of blue. Heavy snow on the col — about a league — with the wreaths in many places higher than the carriage. Then, white crocus all over the fields, with Soldanelle and Primula farinosa. I walked about three miles up, and seven down, with great contentment ; the waterfalls being all in rainbows, and one beyond anything I ever yet saw ; for it fell in a pillar of spray against shadow behind, and became rainbow alto- gether. I was just near enough to get the belt broad, and the down part of the arch : and the whole fall became orange and violet against deep shade. To-morrow I hope to get news of you all, at Baveno.' ' Baveno, ' Thursday, '6th May, 1869. ' It is wet this morning, and very dismal, for we are in a ghastly new Inn, the old one being shut up; and there is always a re-action after a strong excitement like the beauty of the Simplon yesterday, which leaves one very dull. But it is of no use growlhig or mewing. I hope to be at Milan to-morrow — at Verona for Simday. I have been reading Dean Swift's life, and ' Gulliver's Travels ' again. Putting the delight in dirt, which is a mere disease, aside. Swift is very like me, in most things : — in opinions exactly the same.' At Milan, next day, he went to see the St. Catherine of Luini which he had copied, and found it wantonly damaged by the carelessness of masons who put their ladders up against it, just as if it were a bit of common, whitewashed wall. On the 8th he reached Verona after seventeen years' absence, and on the 10th he was in Venice. There, looking 17—2 260 LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN at the works of the old painters wth a fresh eye, and with feelings and thoughts far different from those with which he had viewed them as a young man, in 1845, he saw beauties he had passed over before, in the works of a painter till then little regarded by connoisseui'S, and entirely neglected by the public. Historians of art like Crowe and Cavalcaselle* had indeed examined Carpaccio's works and investigated his life, along with the lives and works of many another obscure master: artists like Mr. Hook and Mr. Burne- Jones had admired his pictui'es ; Mr. Ruskin had mentioned his back- grounds twice or thrice in ' Stones of Venice.' But no \vi-iter had noticed his extraordinary interest as an exponent of the mythology of the Middle Ages, as the illustrator of poetical folk-lore derived from those antique myths of Greece, and newly presented by the genius of Christianity. This was a discovery for which Mr. Ruskin was now ripe. He saw at once that he had found a treasure-house of things new and old. He fell in love with St. Ursula as, twenty-four yeais earlier, he had fallen in love with the statue of Ilaria at Lucca ; and she became, as time after time he revisited Venice for her sake, a personality, a spiritual presence, a living ideal, exactly as the Queen of the Air might have been to the sincere Athenian in the pagan age of faith. The story of her life and death became an example, the conception of her character, as read in Carpaccio's picture, became a standai'd for his own life and action in many a time of distress and discom-agement. The thought of ' What would St. Ursula say.f' led him — not always, but far more often than his correspondents knew — to burn the letter of sharp letoi't upon stupidity and impertinence, and to force the wearied brain and overstrung neives into patience and a kindly answer. And later on, the playful credence which he accorded to the myth deepened into a renewed sense of the possibility of spiritual realities, when he learnt to look, with those mediaeval believers, once more as a little child upon the unfathomable mysteries of life. * Their ' History of Painting in North Italy,' containing a detailed account of Carpaooio, was published in 1871. ' THE QUEEN OF THE AIR ' 261 But this anticipates the story ; at the time, he found in Carpaccio the man who had touched the full chord of his feelings and his thoughts, just as, in his boyhood, Turner had led him, marvelling, through the fire and cloud to the mountain-altar ; and as, in his youth, Tintoret had inter- preted the storm and stress of a mind awakening to the terrible realities of the world. It was no caprice of a change- ful taste, nor love of startling paradox, that brought him to ' discover Carpaccio '; it was the logical sequence of his studies, and widening interests, and a view of art embracing far broader issues than the connoisseurship of 'Modem Painters,' or the didacticism of 'Seven Lamps,' or the historical research of ' Stones of Venice.' Soon after the 'Queen of the Air' was published Carlyle wrote : — ' Chelsea, 'Augtnth, 1869. ' Dear Roskin, 'Y"^ excell* kind and loving little note from Vevey reached me; but nothing since, not even precise news at second hand, wh*" I much desired. The blame of my not answering and inciting was not mine, but that of my poor rebellious right-hand, — wh*" often refuses altog' to do any writing for me that can be read ; having already done too much, it probably thinks !* . . . ' what I wish now is to know if you are at home, and to see you instantly if so. Inst*'^ ! For I am not unlikely to be off in a few days (by Steamer Some whither) and ag" miss you. Come, I beg, quam primilm ! ' Last week I got y' " Queen of the Air," and read it. Euge, Euge. No such Book have I met with for long years past. ITie one soul now in the world who seems to feel as I do on the highest matters, and speaks mir aus dem Herzen, exactly what I wanted to hear ! — As to the natural-history of those old myths I remained here and there a little uncert" ; but as * Carlyle was then losing the use of his hand, and this letter is scribbled in blue peucil. 262 LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN to the meanings you put into them, never anywhere. All these things I not only "agree" with, but W^ use Thor's Hammer, if I had it, to enforce and put in action on this rotten world. Well done, well done ! — and pluck up a heart, and continue ag" and ag". And don't say " most g' tho'' are dressed in shrouds'": many, many are ihe Phoebus Apollo celestial arrows you still have to shoot into the foul Pythons, and poisonous abominable Megatheriums and Plesiosaurians that go staggering ab*, large as cathedi'als, in oui' sunk Epoch ag . . . e CHAPTER X. VERONA AND OXFORD. (1869-1870.) ' A professorship At Basil I Since you see so much in it, And think my life was reasonably drained Of life's delights to render me a match For duties arduous as such post demands, — Be it far from me to deny my power.' Browning's Paracelsus. THE main object of this journey was, however, not to study mythology, but to continue the revision of old estimates of architecture, and after seventeen years to look with a fresh eye at the subjects of ' Stones of Venice.' The churches and monuments of Verona had been less thoroughly studied than those of Venice, and now they were threatened with imminent restoration. On May 25th Mr. Ruskin wrote : — ' It is very strange that I have just been in time — after 17 years' delay — to get the remainder of what I wanted from the red tomb of which my old drawing hangs in the passage ' — (the Castelbarco monument ; the drawing is reproduced in ' Studies in Both Arts.') ' To-morrow they put up scaffolding to retouch, and I doubt not, spoil it for evermore.' He succeeded in getting a delay of ten days, to enable him to paint the tomb in its original state ; but before he went home it ' had its new white cap on and looked like a Venetian gentleman in a pantaloon's mask.' He brought away one of the actual stones of the old roof. On June 3 he wrote : — ' I am getting on well with all my 264 LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN own work ; £uid much pleased with some that Mr. Bunney is doing for me; so that really I expect to carry ofF a great deal of Verona. . . . The only mischief of the place is its being too rich. Stones, flowei-s, mountains — all equally asking one CO look at them ; a history to every foot of ground, ajid a picture on every foot of wall ; frescoes fading away in the neglected streets — like the colom'S of the dolphin.' As assistants in this enterprise of recording the monuments of Venice and Verona, and of recording them more fully and in a more interesting way tlian by photogTaphy, he took with him Arthur Burgess and John Bminey, his former pupils. Mr. Burgess was the subject of a memoir by Mr. Ruskin in the Century Guild Hobby Horse (April 1887), appreciating his talents and lamenting his loss. Mr. Bunney, who had travelled with Mr. Ruskin in Switzerland in 1863, and had lately lived near Florence, thenceforward settled in Venice, where he died in 1882, after completing his great work, the St. Mark's now in the Ruskin Museum at Sheffield. A memoir of him by Mr. Wedderbum appeai-ed in the catalogue of the Venice Exhibition, at the Fine Art Society's Gallery in November 1882. At Venice Mr. Ruskin had met his old friend Mr. Rawdon BrowTi,* and Count Giberto Borromeo, whom he visited at Milan on his way home, with deep interest in the Luinis and in the authentic bust of St. Carlo, so closely resembling Mr. Ruskin himself. Another noteworthy encounter is recorded in a letter of May 4th. * As I was drawing in the square this morning, in a lovely, quiet, Italian light, there came up the poet Longfellow with his little daughter — a girl of 12 or 13, with spr'mgy-cax\eA flaxen hair, — curls, or waves, that wouldn't come out in damp, I mean. They stayed talking beside me some time. I don't think it was a very vain thought that came over me, that if a photograph could have been taken of the beautiful square of * Whose book on the English in Italy (from Venetian documents) was shortly to be published, with funds supplied by Mr. Ruskin. VERONA AND OXFORD 265 Verona, in that soft light, with Longfellow and his daughter talking to me at my work — some people both in England and America would have liked copies of it.' Readers of ' Fors ' will recognise an incident noted on the 18th of June. ' Yesterday, it being quite cool, I went for a walk ; and as I came down from a rather quiet hillside, a mile or two out of town, I past a house where the women were at work spinning the silk off the cocoons. There was a sort of whirring sound as in an English mill ; but at intervals they sang a long sweet chant, all together, lasting about two minutes — then pausing a minute and then beginning again. It was good and tender music, and the multitude of voices prevented any sense of failure, so that it was very lovely and sweet, and like the things that I mean to try to bring to pass.' For he was already meditating on the thoughts that issued in the proposals of St. George's Guild, and the daily letters of this summer are full of allusions to a scheme for a great social movement, as well as to his plans for the control of Alpine torrents and the better irrigation of their valleys. On the 2nd of June he wrote : — ' I see more and more clearly every day my power of showing how the Alpine torrents may be — not subdued — but " educated." A torrent is just like a human creature. Left to gain full strength in wantonness and rage, no power can any more redeem it : but watch the channels of every early impulse, and fence them, and your torrent becomes the gentlest and most blessing of servants.' His mother was anxious for him to come home, being persuaded that he was overworking himself in the continued heat which his letters reported. But he was loath to leave Italy, in which, he said, his work for the future lay. He made two more visits to Venice, to draw some of the sculp- tured details, now quickly perishing, and to make studies of Tintoret and Carpaccio. Among other friends who met him there was Mr. Holman Hunt, with whom he went round his favourite Scuola di San Rocco (1st August). Two days later he wi'ote : — ' You will never believe it ; but I have actually 266 LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN been trying to draw — a baby. The baby which the priest is holding in the httle copy of Tintoret by Edward Jones which my father liked so much, over the basin stand in his bed- room.* All the knowledge I have gained in these 17 years only makes me more full of awe and wonder at Tintoret. But it M so sad — so sad ; — no one to care for him but me, and all going so fast to ruin. He has done that infant Christ in about five minutes — and I worked for two hours in vain, and could not tell tehy in vain — the mystery of his touch is so great.' Final farewell was said to Verona on the 10th of August, for the homeward journey by the St. Gothard,and Giessbach, whei-e he found the young friend of 1866 now near her end, — and Thun, where he met Professor C. E. Norton. On the way he wrote : — ' LUSANO, ' Saturday, ' lith August, 1869. ' My dearest Mother, 'Yesterday — exactly three months from the day on which I entered Verona to begin work, I made a concluding sketch of the old Broletto of Como, which I drew first for the 7 lampsf — I know not how many yeai-s ago, — and left Italy, for this time — ^having been entirely well and strong every day of my quarter of a year's sojourn there. ' This morning, before breakfast, I was sitting for the first time before Luini's Crucifixion : for all religious-art qualities the greatest picture south of the Alps — or rather, in Europe. ' And just after breakfast I got a telegram from my cousin George announcing that I am Professor of Art — the first — at the University of Oxford. ' Which will give me as much power as I can well use — and would have given pleasure to my poor father — and therefore to me — once. It will make no difference in my general plans, * Mr. and Mrs. Burne-Jonea had been in Venice in June, 1862 ; the artist, then young and comparatively unknown, with a commission to copy for Mr. Buskin. -|- ' Stones of Venice,' vol. i., plate 5. VERONA AND OXFORD 267 about travel etc. I shall think quietly of it as I drive up towards St. Gothard to-day. ' Ever, my dearest mother, ever your loving son, J. RusKiv.' Six years earlier, while being examined before the Royal Academy commission, he had been asked : ' Has it ever struck you that it would be advantageous to art if there were at the universities professors of art who might give lectures and give instruction to young men who might desire to avail themselves of it, as you have lectures on geology and botany ?'' To which he had replied : ' Yes, assuredly. The want of interest on the part of the upper classes in art has been very much at the bottom of the abuses which have crept into all systems of education connected with it. If the upper classes could only be interested in it by being led into it when young, a great improvement might be looked for, therefore I feel the ex- pediency of such an addition to the education of our universities.' His interest in the first phase of University Extension, and his gifts of Turners to Oxford and Cambridge, had shown that he was ready to go out of his way to help in the cause he had promoted. His former works on art, and reputation as a critic, pointed to him as the best qualified man in the country for such a post. He had been asked by his Oxford friends, who were many and influential, to stand for the Professorship of Poetry, three years earlier. There was no doubt that the election would be a popular one, and creditable to the University. On the other hand, Mr. Ruskin as Professor would have a certain sanction for his teaching, he believed ; the title, and the salary of J'358 a year were hardly an object to him ; but the position, as accredited lecturer and authorised instructor of youth opened up new vistas of usefulness, new worlds of work to conquer ; and he accepted the invitation. On August 10th he was elected Slade Professor.* * The electors were the Very Reverend Dr. Lid dell, Dean of Ch. Ch., Dr. Acland, and the Rev. G. Rawliuson, being three of the curators of the University galleries, the Rev. H. O. Coxe, Bodley's Librarian, Sir 268 LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN He returned home by the end of August to prepare him- self for his new duties. During the last period he had been giving, on an average, half a dozen lectures a year, which amply filled his annual volume. Twelve lectures were required of the professor. Many another man would have read his twelve lectures and gone his way ; but Mr. Ruskin was not going to work in that perfunctory manner. He undertook to revise his whole teaching; to write for his hearers a completely new series of treatises on art, beginning with first principles and broad generalisations, and proceeding to the different departments of sculpture, engraving, landscape- painting and so on ; then taking up the history of art : — an encyclopaedic scheme, for which, no doubt, he was qualified ; which he could have carried out if he had found nothing else to do. But he took this Oxford work not as a substitute for other occupation, exonerating him from farther claims upon his energy and time ; nor as a bye-play that could be slurred. He tried to do it thoroughly, and to do it in addition to the various work already in hand, under which, as it was, he used to break down, yearly, after each climax of efiFort. This autumn and winter, with his first and most important course in preparation, he was stUl writing letters to the Daily Telegraph ; being begged by Carlyle to come — ' the sight of your face will be a comfort,' says the poor old man — and undertaking lectures at the Royal Artillery Institution, Woolwich, and at the Royal Institution, London. The Woolwich lecture, given on December 14th, was that added to later editions of the 'Crown of Wild Olive,' under the title of ' The Future of England.' The other, February 4th, 1870, on ' Verona and its Rivers,' involved not only a lecture on art and history and contemporary political economy, but an exhibition of the drawings which he and his assistants had made during the preceding summer. Foiu: days later he opened a new period in his career with his inauffural Lecture in the Sheldonian Theatre at Oxford. Fi-ancia Grant, President of the Royal Academy of London, George Grote, Esq., President of Univereity College, London, and R. Fisher, Esq., one of the exeeutx)rs of the will of the late Felix Slade, Esq., the donor. BOOK IV. PROFESSOR AND PROPHET. (1870-1889.) ' Essa e la luce eterna di Sigieri, Che leggendo nel vico degli strami Sillogizzo invidiosi veri.' Dantjj, Farad., i. 136. CHAPTER I. FIRST OXFORD LECTURES. (1870-1871.) ' Canuot we hire some Abelard to lecture to us V Thoeeatt, Walden. ON Tuesday, 8th February, 1870, the Slade Professor's lecture-room was crowded to overflowing with members of the University, old and young, and their friends, who flocked to hear, and to see, the author of ' Modern Painters.' The place was densely packed long before the time; the ante-rooms were filled with pei'sonal friends of Mr. Ruskin, hoping for some corner to be found them at the eleventh hour; the doors were blocked open, and besieged outside by a disappointed multitude. Professorial lectures are not usually matters of great excitement : it does not often happen that the accommoda- tion is found inadequate. After some hasty arrangements Sir Henry Acland pushed his way to the table, announced that it was impossible for the lecture to be held in that place, and begged the audience to adjourn to the Sheldonian Theatre. At last, welcomed by all Oxford, the Slade Professor appeared, to deliver his inaugural address. TTiose earlier courses are still fresh in the memory of many a young hearer who has forgotten, in the stress of busy life, much else of what he saw and learned at Oxford, twenty years ago. We undergraduates used to run out to the Museum or to the Drawing School, where the lectures were given, in a scrambling hurry from our Ethics or Prose Class, 272 LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN or of an afternoon leaving the hasty luncheon, — and giving up the river — grumbling at the awkward hours which, as the Professor often told us, he could never arrange to suit every- body. And when we reached the place it was to find half the seats taken by earlier comers, whose broad hats, then in the fashion, were completely in the way of seeing the lecturer and the illustrations he had brought. But still we went, crowds of us; for there was always something to interest, and a dim sense that it was an opportunity which might soon be lost, of hearing one that spoke with authority, and not as the dons.* It was not strictly academic, the way he used to come in, with a little following of familiars and assistants, — exchange recognition with friends in the audience, arrange the objects he had brought to show, — fling off his long-sleeved Master''s gown, and plunge into his discourse. His manner of delivery had not altered much since the time of the Edinburgh Lectures. He used to begin by reading, in his curious intonation, the carefully-written passages of rhetoric, which usually occupied only about the half of his hour. By-and-by he would break off, and with quite another air extemporise the liveliest interpolations, describing his diagrams or specimens, restating his arguments, re-enforcing his appeal. His voice, till then artificially cadenced, suddenly became vivacious ; his gestures, at first constrained, became dramatic. He used to act his subject, apparently without premeditated ait, in the liveliest pantomime. Pie had no power of voice-mimicry, and none of the ordinary gifts of the actor. A tall and slim figure, not yet shortened from its five feet ten or eleven by the habitual stoop, which ten years later brought him down to less than middle height ; a stiff, blue frock-coat ; prominent, half-starched wristbands, and tall coUai-s of the Gladstonian type ; and the bright blue stock which every one knows for his heraldic bearing : no sings or gewgaws, but a long thin gold chain to his watch : — a plain old-English * The inaugural course was given Feb. 8, 16, 23 ; March 3, 9, 16 and 23, 1870. FIRST OXFORD LECTURES 273 gentleman, neither fashionable bourgeois nor artistic mounte- bank. But he gave himself over to his subject with such unreserved intensity of imaginative power, he felt so vividly and spoke so from the heart, that he became whatever he talked about, never heeding his professorial dignity, and never doubting the sympathy of his audience. Lecturing on birds, he strutted like the chough, made himself wings like the swallow; he was for the moment a cat, in explaining that engraving was the art of scratching. If it had been an affectation of theatric display, we ' emancipated school-boys,' as the Master of University used to call us, would have seen through it at once, and scorned him. But it was so evidently the expression of his intense eagerness for his subject, so palpably true to his purpose, and he so carried his hearers with him, that one saw in the grotesque of the performance only the guarantee of sincerity. If one wanted more proof of that, there was his face, still young-looking and beardless ; made for expression, and sensitive to every change of emotion. A long head, with enormous capacity of brain, veiled by thick wavy hair, not affectedly lengthy but as abundant as ever, and darkened into a deep brown, without a trace of grey ; and short light whiskers growing high over his cheeks. A forehead not on the model of the heroic type, but as if the sculptor had heaped his clay in handfuls over the eyebrows, and then heaped more. A big nose, aquiline, and broad at the base, with great thoroughbred nostrils and the ' septum ' between them thin and deeply depressed ; and there was a turn down at the comers of the mouth, and a breadth of lower lip, that reminded one of his Verona griffin, half eagle, half lion; Scotch in original type, and suggesting a side to his character not all milk and roses. And under shaggy eyebrows, ever so far behind — Kar'qpe^tel'i — the fieriest blue eyes, that changed with changing expression, from grave to gay, from lively to severe; that riveted you, magnetised you, seemed to look through you and read your soul; and indeed, when they 18 274 LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN lighted on you, you felt you had a soul of a sort. What they really saw is a mystery. Some who had not persuaded them to see as others see, maintained that they only saw what they looked for ; others, who had successfully deceived them, that they saw nothing. No doubt they might be deceived ; but I know now that they often took far shrewder measurements of men — I do not say of women — than anybody suspected. For the Inaugural Course, he was, so to speak, on his best behaviour, guaiding against too hasty expression of indi- viduality. He read careful orations, stating his maturest views on the general theory of art, in picked languag-e, suited to the academic position. The little volume is most valuable as giving Ruskin on Art at his best. It is not discursive or entertaining, like ' Modem Painters,' and con- tains no pictures either with pen or pencil ; but it is crammed fiill of thought, and of the results of thought; for any one whose general knowledge is equal to interpreting it, the most valuable guide. One understands why the public which loves its ' Modem Painters ' does not read the ' Lectures on Art,' but it is surely an oversight on the part of many would-be critics of Ruskinism to ignore the re- statement, in a serious course of lectures before an educated audience, of views which youthful works either failed to expound, or expounded in a loose and inadequate manner. The Slade Professor was also expected to organise and superintend the teaching of drawing ; and his first words in the first lecture expressed the hope that he would be able to introduce some serious study of Art into the University, which, he thought, would be a step toward realising some of his ideals of education. He had long felt that mere talking about Art was a makeshift, and that no real insight could be got into the subject without actual and practical dealing witli it. He found a South Kensington School in existence at Oxford, with an able master, Mr. Alexander Macdonald ; and though he did not entirely approve of the methods in use, tried to make the best of the materials to bis hand, FIRST OXFORD LECTURES 275 accepting but enlarging the scope of the system. The South Kensington method had been devised for industrial designing, primarily ; Mr. Ruskin's desire was to get undergraduates to take up a wider subject, to familiarise themselves with the technical excellences of the great masters, to study nature, and the different processes of art, — drawing, painting and some forms of decorative work, such as, in especial, goldsmiths' work, out of which the Florentine school had sprung. He did not wish to train artists, but, as before in the Working Men's College, to cultivate the habit of mind that looks at nature and life, not analytically, as science does, but for the sake of external aspect and expression. By these means he hoped to breed a race of judicious patrons and critics, the best service any man can render to the cause of art. And so he got together a mass of examples in addition to the Tiu-ners which he had already given to the University galleries. He placed in the school a few pictures by Tintoret, some drawings by Rossetti, Holman Hunt, and Bume-Jones, and a great number of fine casts and engravings. He arranged a series of studies by himself and others, as ' copies,' fitted, like the Turners in the National Gallery, with sliding frames in cabinets for convenient reference and removal. After spending most of his first Lent Term in this work, he went home for a month to prepare a catalogue, which was published the same year : the school not being finally opened until October 1871. During these first visits to Oxford he was the guest of Sir Henry Acland; on April 29, 1871, Pro- fessor Ruskin, already honorary student of Christ Church, was elected to an honorary fellowship at Corpus, and enabled to occupy rooms, vacated by the Rev. Henry Fumeaux, who gave up his fellowship on marrying Mr. Ai'thur Severn's twin- sister.* * In a charming paper {Pelican Record for June, 1894) Mr. J. "W. Oddie gives some reminiscences of ' Buskin at Corpus'; describing the ceremony of his admission, his quaint and humorous conversation in the Common Boom, and his rooms (Fellows' buildings, No. 2 staircase, first floor right) with their Turners and Titian, Raphael portrait and Meissonier ' Napoleon.' 18— '2 276 LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN After this work well began, he went abroad for a vacation tour with a party of friends — as in 1866 ; Lady Trevelyan's sister, Mrs. Hilliard, to chaperone the same young ladies, and three servants with them. They started on April 27th ; stayed awhile at Meurice's to see Paris ; and at Geneva, to go up the Saleve, twice, in bitter black east wind. Then across the Simplon to Milan and Venice, where he made the careful drawing given to the Oxford Schools (engraved in Cook's ' Studies in Ruskin '). This however was to be a com- plete holiday, and he devoted himself to his company. After a month at Venice and Verona, where he recurred to his scheme against inundation, then ridiculed by Punch, but afterwards taken up seriously by the Italians, they went to Florence, and met Professor Norton. In the end of June they turned homewards, by Pisa and Lucca, Milan and Como, and went to visit theii- friend Marie of the Giessbach. At the Giessbach they spent a fortnight, enjoying the July weather and glorious walks,* in the middle of which war was suddenly declared between Germany and France. The summons of their German waiter to join his regiment, brought the news home to them, as such personal examples do, more than columns of newspaper print ; and as hostilities were rapidly beginning, Mr. Ruskin, with the gloomiest fore- bodings for the beautiful country he loved, took his party home straight across France, before the ways should be closed. August was a month of feverish suspense to everybody ; to no one more than to Mr. Ruskin, who watched the progress of the armies while he worked day by day at the British Museum preparing lectures for next term. This was the course on Greek relief- sculpture, published as *Aratra Pentelici.^f It was a happy thought to illustrate his subject from coins, rather than from disputed and mutilated fragments ; and he worked into it his revised theory of the origin of art — not Schiller's nor Herbert Spencer's, and yet * During one of which occurred the adventure of the snake that Blinwed presence of mind, told in the ' Eagle's Nest,' § 101. t Delivered Nov. 24, 26, Dec. 1, 3, 8 and 10, 1870. FIRST OXFORD LECTURES 277 akin to theirs of the ' Spieltrieb,' — involving the notion of doll-play ; — man as a child, re-creating himself, in a double sense ; imitating the creation of the world, and really creating a sort of secondary life in his art, to play with, or to worship. This book, too, the critics of Ruskin have unanimously over- looked; except for the last lecture of the series (published separately) in which the Professor compared — as the outcome of classic art in Renaissance times — Michelangelo and Tintoret, greatly to the disadvantage of Michelangelo. This heresy against a popular creed served as text for some severe criticism of Mr. Ruskin's art teaching by followers of the academic school ; but as he said in a prefatory note to the pamphlet, readers ' must observe that its business is only to point out what is to be blamed in Michael Angelo, and that it assumes the fact of his power to be generally known,' and he refers to Mr. Tyrwhitt's ' Lectures on Christian Ai't ' for the opposite side of the question. Meanwhile the war was raging. Mr. Ruskin was asked by his friends to raise his voice against the ravage of France ; but he replied that it was inevitable. At last, in October, he read how Rosa Bonheur and Edouard Frere had been permitted to pass through the German lines, and next day came the news of the bombardment of Strasburg, with anticipations of the destruction of the Cathedral, library, and picture galleries, foretelling, as it seemed, the more terrible and irreparable ruin of the treasure-houses of art in Paris. His heart was with the French, and he broke silence in the bitterness of his spirit, upbraiding their disorder and showing how the German success was the victory of ' one of the truest monarchies and schools of honour and obedience yet organised under heaven.' He hoped that Germany, now that she had shown her power, would withdraw, and demand no indemnity. But that was too much to ask. Before long Paris itself became the scene of action, and in January 1871 was besieged and bombarded. So much of Mr. Ruskin's work and affection had been given to French Gothic that he could not endure to think of his beloved 278 U¥E AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN Sainte Chapelle as being actually under fire — to say nothing of the hoiTor of human suffering in a siege. He joined Cardinal (then Archbishop) Manning, Professor Huxley, Sir John Lubbock and Mr. James Knowles in forming a ' Paris Food Fund,' which shortly united with the Lord Mayor's committee for the general relief of the besieged. The day after writing on the Sainte Chapelle he attended the meeting at the Mansion House, and gave a subscription of £50. He followed events anxiously through the storm of the Commune and its fearful ending, angered at the fratricide and anarchy which no Mansion-House help could avert or repair. It was no time for talking on art, he felt : instead of the full course, he could only manage thi-ee lectures on landscape, and these not so completely prepared as to make them ready for printing. Before Christmas he had been once more to Woolwich, where Colonel Brackenbury invited him to address the cadets at the prize-giving of the Science and Art depart- ment,* in which the Rev. W. Kingsley, an old friend of Mr. Ruskin's and of Turner's, was one of the masters. Two of the lectures of the ' Crown of Wild Olive ' had been given there, with more than usual animation, and enthusiastically received by crowded and distinguished audiences, among whom was Prince Arthur (the Duke of Connaught), then at the Royal Military Academy. This time it was the ' Story of Arachne,' an address on education and aims in life ; open- ing with reminiscences of his own childhood, and pleasantly telling the Greek myths of the spider and the ant, with in- terpretations for the times. The three lectures on landscape,-]- or rather, the contrast of the Greek and Gothic spirit as seen chiefly in landscape painters, were briefly reported in the AthenoBum. In these he dwelt on the necessity of human and historic interest in scenery ; and compared Greek ' solidity and veracity ' with Gothic 'spirituality and mendacity,' Greek chiaroscuro and tranquil activity with Gothic colour and 'passionate rest,' Botticelli's ' Nativity ' (now in the National Gallery) was then * Dec. 13, 1870. f Given Jan. 20, Feb. 9 and 23, 1871. FIRST OXFORD LECTURES 279 being shown at the Old Masters' Exhibition, and Mr. Ruskin took it, along with the works of Cima, as a type of one form of Greek Art. Rubens and Rembrandt he considered as less refined developments of the same spirit. In the greatest painters, he said, the excellences of the two schools were imited: Titian and Tintoret were Gothic colourists approaching the Greek ideal : Holbein and Turner were chiaroscurists of the Greek type, blossoming into colour. In landscape, he said, there was little that perfectly illustrated the Gothic spirit. The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and their school tried to revive it, but they undervalued the difficulty of their art, and took refuge in dramatic sensation instead of making themselves the competent exponents of real beauty ; and foiled. This 1871 was an eventful year in Mr. Ruskin's home life. In April his cousin. Miss Agnew, who had been seven years at Denmark Hill, was married to Mr. Arthur Severn, and left her friends as sheep without a shepherdess. Mr. Ruskin, who had added to his other work the additional labour of ' Fors Clavigera,' went for a summer's change to Matlock. July opened with cold, dry, dark weather, dangerous for out-of-door sketching. One morning early — for he was always an early riser — he took a chill while painting a spray of wild rose before breakfast (the drawing now in the Oxford Schools). He was already overworked, and it ended in a severe a>ttack of internal inflammation which nearly cost him his life. He was a difficult patient to deal with. Though one of his best friends was a physician and another a surgeon he usually pre- ferred to be his own doctor, as long as he could, believing more in diet and exercise than in medicine. The local practitioner who attended him used to tell how he refused remedies, and in the height of the disease asked what would be worst for him. I was told at Matlock that the answer was 'sherry'; Mr. Ruskin himself said it was beef! Anyhow, he took it ; and to everybody's surprise, recovered.* * Mrs. Arthur Severn, in a note on the proof, says : ' It was a slice of cold roast beef he hungered for, at Matlock (to our horror, and dear 280 LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN But it had been a painful scare to his friends— especially to those who could get no news. Carlyle, who had been in the Highlands, with his right hand useless, and his amanuensis. Miss Aitken, far away, was surprised and distressed at the silence of his friend, and at last wi-ote anxiously : — ... ' There came the most alarming rumours of your illness at Matlock ; and both Lady Ashburton and myself (especially the latter party, for whom I can answer best) were in a state really deserving pity on your account, till the very newspapers took compassion on us, and announced the immediate danger to be past. . . . Froude has returned, and is often asking about you ; as indeed are many others, to whom the radiant qualities which the gods have given you and set you to work with, in such an element, are not unknown. Write me a word at once, dear Ruskin.' During the illness at Matlock his thoughts reverted to the old ' Iteriad ' times of forty years before, when he had travelled with his parents and cousin Mary from that same ' New Bath Hotel,' where he was now lying, to the Lakes ; and again he wearied for ' the heights that look adown upon the dale. The crags are lone on Coniston.' If he could only lie down there, he said, he should get well again. He had not fully recovered before he heard that Mr. W. J. Linton, the poet and wood-engraver, wished to sell a house and land at the very place : ^61500, and it could be his. Without question asked he bought it at once; and as it Lady Mount Temple's, who were nursing him) : there was none in the hotel, and it was late at night ; and Albert Goodwin went oflf to get some, somewhere, or anywhere. All the hotels were closed ; but at last, at an eating-house in Matlock Bath, he discovered some, and came back triumphant with it, wrapped up in paper ; and J. E. enjoyed his late supper thoroughly ; and though we all waited anxiously till the morning for the result, it had done no harm ! And when he was told pepper was bad for him, he dredged it freely over his food in defiance ! It was directly after our return to Denmark Hill he got Linton's letter offering him this place (Brantwood), There are, I believe, ten acres of moor belonging to Brantwood.' Mr. Albert Goodwin, E.W.S., the landscape painter, travelled, about this time, in Italy with Mr. Buskin. FIRST OXFORD LECTURES 281 would be impossible to lecture at Oxford so soon after his illness, he set off, before the middle of September, with his friends the Hilliards to visit his new possession. They found a rough-cast country cottage, old, damp, decayed ; smoky chimneyed and rat-riddled ; but ' five acres of rock and moor and streamlet; and,' he wrote, 'I think the finest view I know in Cumberland or Lancashire, with the sunset visible over the same.' The spot was not, even then, without its associations : Gerald Massey the poet, Mr. W. J. Linton, and his wife Mrs. Lynn Linton the novelist, Dr. G. W. Kitchin (Dean of Durham) had lived and worked there, and former inhabitants had adorned it outside with revolutionary mottoes — ' God and the people,' and so on. It had been a favourite point of view of Wordsworth's; his 'seat' was pointed out in the grounds. Tennyson had lived for a while close by : his ' seat,' too, was on the hill above Lanehead. But the cottage needed thorough repair, and that cost more than rebuilding, not to speak of the additions of later years, which have ended by making it into a mansion sur- rounded by a hamlet. And there was the furnishing ; for Denmark Hill, where his mother lived, was still to be head- quarters. Mr. Ruskin gave carte-blanche to the London upholsterer with whom he had been accustomed to deal ; and such expensive articles were sent that when he came down for a month next autumn, he reckoned that, all included, his country cottage had cost him not less than ,£4000. But he was not the man to spend on himself without sharing his wealth with others. On Nov. 22nd, Convocation accepted a gift from the Slade Professor of ^£5000 to endow a mastership of drawing at Oxford, in addition to the pictures and ' copies ' placed in the schools ; he had set up a relative in business with £15,000, which was unfortunately lost; and at Christmas he gave £7000, the tithe of his remain- ing capital, to the St. George's Fund ; of which more here- after. On November 23rd he was elected Lord Rector of St. 282 LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN Andrew's University by 86 votes against 79 for Lord Lytton. After the election it was discovered that, by the Scottish Universities Act of 1858, no one holding a professorship at a British University was eligible. Professor Ruskin was dis- qualified, and gave no address ; and Lord Neaves was chosen in his place. Mrs. Ruskin was now ninety years of age : her sight was nearly gone, but she still retained her powers of mind, and ruled yrith severe kindliness her household and her son. Her old servant Anne had died in March. Anne had nursed John Ruskin as a baby, and had lived with the family ever since, devoted to them, and ready for any disagreeable task, ' so that she was never quite in her glory,' ' Praeterita ' says, ' unless some of us were ill. She had also some parallel speciality for saying disagreeable things, and might be reUed upon to give the extremely darkest view of any subject, before proceeding to amehorative action upon it. And she had a very credit- able and republican aversion to doing immediately, or in set terms, as she was bid ; so that when my mother and she got old together, and my mother became very imperative and particular about having her teacup set on one side of her little round table, Anne would observantly and punctiliously put it always on the other : which caused my mother to state to me, every morning after breakfast, gi-avely, that if ever a woman in this world was possessed by the Devil, Anne was that woman.' But this gloomy Calvinism was tempered with a bene- volence quite as imcommon. It was from his parents that Mr. Ruskin learned never to turn off a servant, and the Denmark HiU household was as easy-going as the legendary ' baronial ' retinue of the good old times. A young friend asked Mrs. Ruskin, in a moment of indiscretion, what such a one of the ancient maids did, — for there were several without appai-ent occupation about the house. Mrs. Ruskin diew herself up and said, 'She, my deai", puts out the dessert.' And yet, in her blindness, she could read character un- FIRST OXFORD LECTURES 283 hesitatingly. That was, no doubt, why people feared her. When Mr. Secretary Howell, in the days when he was still the oracle of the Ruskin-Rossetti circle, had been regaling them with his wonderful tales, after dinner, she would throw her netting down and say, ' How can you two sit there and listen to such a pack of lies i''' She objected strongly, in these later years, to the theatre ; and when sometimes her son would wish to take a party into town to see the last new piece, her permission had to be asked, and was not readily granted, unless to Miss Agnew, who was the ambassadress in such affairs of diplomacy. But while disapproving of some of his worldly ways, and convinced that she had too much indulged his childhood, the old lady loved him with all the intensity of the strange fierce lioness nature, which only one or two had ever had a glimpse of. And when (Dec. 5th, 1871) she died, trusting to see her husband again — not to be near him, not to be so high in heaven, but content if she might only see him, she said — her son was left ' with a sur- prising sense of loneliness.' He had loved her truly, obeyed her strictly and tended her faithfully ; and even yet hardly realized how much she had been to him. He buried her in his father's grave, and wrote upon it, ' Here beside my father's body I have laid my mother's : nor was dearer earth ever returned to earth, nor purer life recorded in heaven.'* * This inscription was added about 1885 : the monument was Mr. Euskiu's design. The place had been chosen rather for its picturesque surroundings than for family associations ; Shirley being merely a favourite drive. Its name is now well known to garden- lovers from the Shirley poppy, first grown there by the clergyman of the place, Canon "Wilkes. CHAPTER II. 'FOES' BEGUN. (1871-1872.) * Nona ne recevons I'exiatence Qu'afin de travailler pour nous, ou pour autrui ; De ce devoir sacr^ quicouque se dispense Est puni par la Providence, Pal' le besoiu, ou pai- I'euuui.' Florian. ON January 1st, 1871, was issued a smaU pamphlet, headed 'Fors Clavigera," in the form of a lettei" to the working men and labourers of England, dated from Denmark Hill, and signed ' John Ruskin.' It was not published in the usual way, but sold by the author's engraver, Mr. George Allen, at Heathfield Cottage, Keston, Kent. It was not advertised ; press-copies were sent to the leading- papers ; and of course the author's acqueuntance knew of its publication. Strangers, who heard of this curious proceeding, spread the report that in order to get Ruskin's latest, you had to travel into the country, with your sevenpence in your hand, and transact your business among Mr. Allen's beehives. So you had, if you wanted to see what you were buying ; for no arrangements were made for its sale by the booksellers : sevenpence a copy, cairiage paid, ho discount, and no abate- ment on taking a quantity. By such pilgrimages, but more easily through the post, the new work filtered out, in monthly instalments, to a limited number of buyers. After three years the price was raised to tenpence. In 1875 the first thousands of the earlier numbers 'FORS' BEGUN 285 were sold : — ' the public has a very long nose,' Mr. Ruskin once said, 'and scents out what it wants, sooner or later,' A second edition was issued, bound up into yearly volumes, of which eight were ultimately completed. Meanwhile the work went on, something in the style of the old Addison Spectator ; each part containing twenty pages, more or less, by Mr. Ruskin, with added contributions from various coiTespondents. ' Fors Clavigera ' is practically a continuation of ' Time and Tide,' and addressed, not to ' working men ' only, but to the workers of England, those who, like Thomas Dixon, had ears to hear, in whatever rank of life. Its name, like itself, is mystic, and changes content as it goes on. The Fate or Force that bears the Club, or Key, or Nail : that is, in three aspects, — as Following, or Fore-ordaining, Deed (or Courage), and Patience, and Laws, unknown or known, of nature and life ; so that the ' Third Fors,' that plays so large a part in this later period, is simply Fortune. The general sense of the title expresses the general drift of the work ; to show that life is to be bettered by each man's honest effort, and to be borne, in many things he cannot better, by his wise resignation ; but that above all, and through all, and in all, there works a Power outside of him, to will and to do, to reward and to punish, eventually, by laws which, if he choose, he may partially understand, and, for the remainder, may trust. To read ' Fors ' is like being out in a thunderstorm. At first, you open the book with interest, to watch the signs of the times. While you climb your mountain — shall we say the Old Man of Coniston ? — at unawares there is a darkening of the cloud upon you, and the tension of instinctive dread, as image after image arises of misery, and murder, and lingering death, with here and there a streak of sun in the foreground, only throwing the wildness of the scene into more rugged relief ; and through the gaps you see broad fields of ancient history, like lands of promise left behind. By-and-by the gloom wraps you. The old thunder of the Ruskinian 286 LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN paragraph, shortened now to whip-lash cracks, reverberates unremittingly from point to point, raising echoes, sounding deeps ; allusions, suggestions, intimations, stin-ing the realm of chaos, that ordinai-ily we are glad to let slumber, but now terribly discern, by flashes of thought, most unexpectedly arriving. Fascinated by the hammer-play of Thor, berserk- ing among Rime-giants— customs that ' hang upon us, heavy as frost'— you begin to applaud; when a sudden stroke rolls your own standpoint into the abyss. But if you can climb forward, undismayed, to the summit, the storm drifts by; and you see the world again, all new, beneath you— how rippling in Thor's laughter, how tenderly veiled in his tears ! The charm of ' Fors ' is neither in epigram nor in anecdote, but in the sustained vivacity that runs through the textiu-e of the work; the reappearance of golden threads of thought, ghttering in new figures, and among new colours; and throughout all the variety of subject a unity of style unlike the style of his earlier works, where flowery rhetorical passages are tagged to less interesting chapters, separately studied sermonettes interposed among the geology, and Johnson, Locke, Hooker, Carlyle— or whoever happened to be the author he was reading at the time— frankly imitated It was always clever, but often artificial ; like the composition of a Renaissance painter who inserts his bel corpo ignudo to catch the eye. In 'Fors,' however, the web is of a piece all sparkling with the same life ; though as it is gradually unwound from the loom it is hard to judge the design. That can only be done when it is reviewed as a whole— an easy task now, since the 96 letters have been printed in four small volumes. At the time, his mingling of jest and earnest was mis- understood even by friends. The author learnt too painfully the danger of seeming to trifle with cherished beliefs He forswore levity, but soon relapsed into the old style out of Jeer sincerity : for he was too much in earnest not to be frankly himself m his utterances, without writing up to or down to, any other person's standard. " ' 'FORS' BEGUN 287 With all the declamation, and all the wit, there was substance enough of solid and reasonable purpose to knit the work together. It was hardly, as one of his old friends said, his mind's wastepaper basket ; but the unfolding of wrappings, perhaps unnecessary, round a definite proposal. He began by declining all connection with ordinary political life in any form ; he said that the existing order of things was wholly wrong, and just for that reason the existing methods of government could not set them right, by acts of a parliament which he simply declined to recognise as efficient to cope with the question. Instead of that, rescue was to come from in- dividuals, as it has always done before in times of barbarism and anarchy. If men would, each in his place, carry out the rudiments of justice and social morality — doing good work well, helping others, harming none, and showing themselves law-worthy — if such-minded men and women would withdraw from the struggle for success in the world and set the example of better things in a wholesome country life ; that, he felt, would really effect a change. It was like the old scheme of St. Benedict ; the formation of agricultural communities ; by which Eiu-ope was, even more than by the feudal and chivalric institutions imitated in ' Time and Tide,' founded and civilised out of swampy forests and lawless barbarism. Mr. Ruskin did not wish to lead a colony or to head a revolution. He had been pondering for fifteen years the cause of poverty and crime, and the conviction had grown upon him that modem commercialism was at the root of it all. Other men in other lands were being gradually led to the same conclusion by different ways ; and French Communism, German SociaHsm, Russian Anarchism, were the expressions of a kindred movement — but very differently developed. On the Continent the wrong was open and obvious, in the form of tyrannical government in church and state; the remedy suggested by precedent was violent rebellion. Here, in England, with apparent liberty of conduct and opinion, the same evils took a more subtle shape ; and were practised by the kindliest men and women with the best intentions. The 288 LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN slow and sure pace of our constitutional reforms accustomed us to a grumbling content, and a disinclination for extreme measures. Mr. Ruskin's attacks on commercialism — his analysis of its bad influence on all sections of society — were too vigorous and uncompromising for the newspaper editors who received ' Fors," and even for most of his private friends. There were, however, some who saw what he was aiming at : and let it be remarked that his first encouragement came from the highest quarters. Just as Sydney Smith, the chief critic of earlier days, had been the first to pi-aise ' Modern Painters,' in the teeth of vulgar opinion, so now Carlyle spoke for ' Fors.' '5, Cheyne Row, ' Chelsea, ' April 30ih, 1871. ' Dear Ruskin, ' This " Fors Clavigera,'"' Letter 5th, which I have just finished reading, is incomparable ; a quasi-sacred consolation to me, which almost brings tears into my eyes ! Every word of it is as if spoken, not out of my poor heart only, but out of the eternal skies ; words winged with Empyrean wisdom, piercing as lightning, — and which I really do not remember to have heard the like of. Continue, while you have such utterances in you, to give them voice. They will find and force entrance into human hearts, whatever the "angle of incidence " may be ; that is to say, whether, for the degraded and inhuman Blockheadism we, so-called " men," have mostly now become, you come in upon them at the broadside, at the top, or even at the bottom. Euge, Euge ! — ' Yours ever, 'T. Carlyle.' Others, like Sir Aithur Helps, joined in this encouragement. But the old struggle with the newspapers began over again. They united in considering the whole business insane, though they did not doubt his sincerity when Mr. Ruskin put down his own money, the tenth of what he had, as he 'FORS' BEGUN 289 recommended his adherents to do. By the end of the year he had set aside ^7000 toward establishing a conij)any to be called of ' St. George,' as representing at once England and agriculture. Sir Thomas Dyke Acland and the Right Hon. W. Cowper-Temple (afterwards Lord Mount Temple), though not pledging themselves to approval of the scheme, undertook the trusteeship of the fund. A few friends subscribed ; in June 1872, after a year and a half of 'Fors,' the first stranger sent in his contribution, and at the end of three years £2S6 IBs. were collected, to add to his ,£7000, and a few acres of land were given. A start was made, of which we shall have to trace the fortunes in the sequel. Meanwhile Mr. Ruskin practised what he preached. He did not preach renunciation ; he was not a Pessimist any more than an Optimist. Sometimes he felt he was not doing enough; he knew very well that others thought so. I remember his saying, in his rooms at Oxford in one of those years : ' Here I am, trying to reform the world, and I suppose I ought to begin with myself. I am trying to do St. Bene- dict's work, and I ought to be a saint. And yet I am living between a Turkey carpet and a Titian, and drinking as much tea' — taking his second cup — ' as I can swigP That was the way he put it to an undergraduate ; to a lady friend he wrote later on, ' I'm reading history of early saints, too, for my Amiens book, and feel that I ought to be scratched, or starved, or boiled, or something unpleasant; and I don't know if I'm a saint or a sinner in the least, in medisEval language. How did the saints feel themselves, I wonder, about their saintship !' It is very easy to preach, and not so difficult to practise the great Renunciation. But what then ? It is very hard to see clearly, and infinitely hard to follow, the straight path of even-handed justice, and the fulfilment of duty to all the complex claims of life in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation. If he had forsaken all and followed the vocation of St. Francis, — he has discussed the question candidly in ' Fors ' 19 290 LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN for May 1874, — would not his work have been more effectual, his example more inspiring ? Conceivably : but that was not his mission. His gospel was not one of asceticism ; it called upon no one for any sort of suicide, or even mai-tyrdom. He requii-ed of his followei-s that they should live theii- lives to the full in ' Admiration, Hope and Love ': and not that they should sacrifice themselves in fasting and wearing of camels'- hair coats. He wished them to work, to be honest, and just, in all things immediately attainable. He asked the tenth of their living — not the widow's two mites ; and it was deeply painful to him to find, sometimes, that they had so interpreted his teaching : as when he wrote, later", to Miss Beever : — ' One of my poor " Companions of St. George '" who has sent me, not a widow's but a parlour-maid's (an old schoolmistress) " all her living," and whom I found last night, dying, slowly and quietly, in a damp room, just the size of your study (which her landlord won't mend the roof of), by the light of a single tallow candle, — dying, I say, slowly of consumption, not yet near the end, but contemplating it with soiTow, mixed partly with fear lest she should not have done all she could for her children ! The sight of this and my own shameful comforts, three wax candles and blazing fire and dry roof, and Susie and Joanie for friends ! Oh me, Susie, what is to become of me in the nest world, who have in this life all my good things !' — ^All ? No, not nearly all. But even of what he had no man was ever readier to spend and sacrifice. After carrying on ' Fors ' for some time his attention was drawn by Mr. W. C. Sillar to the question of ' Usury.' At first he had seen no crying sin in Interest. He had held that the 'rights of capital' were visionary, and that the tools should belong to him that can handle them, in a perfect state of society ; but he thought that the existing system was no worse in this respect than in others, and his expectation of reform in the plan of investment went hand-in-hand with his hope of a good time coming in everything else. So he quietly accepted his rents, as he accepted his Professorship, for example, 'FORS' BEGUN 291 thinking it his business to be a good landlord and spend his money generously, just as he thought it his business to retain the existing South Kensington drawing school, and the Oxford system of education — not at all his ideal — and to make the best use of them. I A lady who was his pupil in drawing, and a believer in his ideals of philanthropy, Miss Octavia Hill, undertook to help him in 1864 in efforts to reclaim part — though a very small part — of the lower-class dwellings of London. Half a dozen houses in Marylebone left by Mr. Ruskin's father, to which he added three more in Paradise Place, as it was euphemistic- ally named, were the subjects of their experiment. They were ridiculed at first; but by the noblest endeavour they succeeded, and set an example which has been followed in many of our towns with great results. They showed what a wise and kind landlord could do by caring for tenants, by giving them habitable dwellings, recreation ground and fixity of tenure, and requiring in return a reasonable and moderate rent. Mr. Ruskin got five per cent, for his capital, instead of twelve or more, which such property generally returns, or at that time returned. But when he began to write against rent and interest there were plenty of critics ready to cite this and other investments as a damning inconsistency. He was not the man to offer explanations at any time. It was no defence to say that he took less and did more than other landlords. And so he was glad to part with the whole to Miss Hill ; nor did he care to spend upon himself the .fSSOO, which I believe was the price. It went right and left in gifts : till one day he cheerfully re- marked, ' It's a' gane awa' Like snaw aff a wa'.' ' Is there really nothing to show for it ?' he was asked. ' Nothing,' he said, ' except this new silk umbrella.' The tea-shop was one of Mr. Ruskin's ' experiments ' in connection with 'Fors.' He himself disliked the word, be- cause it savoured of failure. But words are what we make of 19—2 292 LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN them ; and in this case he made experiment mean success. He had talked so much of the possibility of carrying on honest and honourable retail trade, that he felt bound to exemplify his principles. He took a house, No. 19, Padding- ton Street, with a corner shop, near his Marylebone property, and set himself up in business as a teaman. Mr. Arthur Severn painted the f'gn, in neat blue letters ; the window was decked with fine old china, bought from a Cavaliere near Siena, whose unique collection had been introduced to notice by Professor Norton ; and Miss Harriet Tovey, an old servant of Denmai'k Hill, was established there, like Miss Mattie in ' Cranford,' or rather like one of the salaried officials of ' Time and Tide,'' to dispense the unadulterated leaf to all comers. No advertisements, no self-recommendation, no catchpenny tricks of trade were allowed ; and yet the business went on, and, I am assured, prospered with legitimate profits. At first, various kinds of the best tea only were sold ; but it seemed to the tenant of the shop that coffee and sugar ought to be included in the list. This was not at all in Mr. Ruskin's programme, and there were great debates at home about it. At last he gave way, on the understanding that the shop was to be responsible for the proper roasting of the coffee according to the best recipe. After some time Miss Tovey died. And when, in the autumn of 1876, Miss Octavia Hill proposed to take the house and business over and work it with the rest of the Marylebone property,, the offer was thankfully accepted. Another of his principles was cleanliness; 'the speedy abolition of all abolishable filth is the first process of educa- tion.'' Indeed, it was one of his chief differences with an ill world that fouled its own nest — with sewage in its rivers and smoke in its lungs. There was ' nothing so small and mean,' as his George Herbert had said, that it did not come into his province. If the prophet had bidden us do some great thintr ! But his teaching was to attack the enemy in detail, and carry on a guerilla warfare with all the powers of darkness. It was a very unimportant outpost of the Devil, it min-ht 'FORS' BEGUN 293 appear, that he attacked when he undei-took to keep certain streets, not crossings only, cleaner than the public seemed to care for, between the British Museum and St. Giles'. But that labour came to his hand, and he did it with his might. He took the broom himself, for a start, put on his gardener, Downes, as foreman of the job, and engaged a small staff of helpers. The work began, as he promised, in a humorous letter to the Pall Mall Gazette upon New Year's Day, 1872, and he kept his three sweepers at work for eight hours daily ' to show a bit of our London streets kept as clean as the deck of a ship of the line.' There were some difficulties, too. One of the staff was an extremely handsome and lively shoeblack, picked up in St. Giles'. It turned out that he was not unknown in the world : he had sat to artists — to Mr. Edward Clifford, to Mr. Severn ; and went by the name of ' Cheeky.' Every now and then Mr. Ruskin ' and party ' drove round to inspect the works. Downes could not be everywhere at once : and Cheeky used to be caught at pitch and toss or marbles in unswept Museum Streeb. Mr. Ruskin rarely, if ever, dismissed a servant; but street sweeping was not good enough for Cheeky, and so he enlisted. The army was not good enough, and so he deserted ; and was last seen disappearing into the darkness, after calling a cab for his old friends one night at the Albert Hall. The Oxford diggings and St. George's farms afterwards claimed Downes' sei-vices. Enough however had been done to set the example, and to show that ' Who sweeps a — .