410 



ursKix. 



judgment is not irifaHil>li>, hisr cput.ition as a critic lias 

 steadily increased, and his division mi :ui art subject is 

 ot (lie highest value. He declares that the laws of 

 painting are as unerring as those of music and chem- 

 istry, mid that any one who masters them has all that 

 is necessary to make a capable critic. In his view a 

 painter is great if by any means he has laid open noble 

 truths or aroused noble emotions, and 11 matiei- tmt 

 what he paints so that he paint* honestly and truly. 

 with love of virtue and hatred of vice ; while the sum 

 of all the qualities needed to the highest production in 

 art is the sum of all the best powers of man. 



Few writers have put their mental personality inure 

 fully into their works than Uii.-kin. Sympathetic and 

 confidential, touched with egotism and responsive to 

 every inward influence, it is impossible for him to stand 

 outside his works, and his passing moods and changing 

 convictions are expressed without thought of the con- 

 tradictions which they frequently involve. For case 

 and beauty of style he has lew equals in Knglis.li prose 

 literature, his sentences being, stately in manner, richly 

 ornate, musical, and eloquent, while an intensitv of 

 feeling and expression manifests itself in everything 

 he'writes. Yet in giving free vent lo his emotional 

 imagery he is heedless of logical consistency, so that 

 there is much less of reasoning than of impassioned 

 sentiment in his works. As a consequence there is 

 great lack of system and of orderly unfolding of pur- 

 pose, his matter often losing power by too many words, 

 while his habit of putting down whatever enters his 

 mind at the moment, however irrelevant, makes his 

 books discursive and to some extent tiresome, despite 

 all their charms of style. In the language of one 

 of his reviewers his merits may be summed up in a 

 few words. He is the critic, rather than the philos- 

 opher of art. He has the keenest sensibility to the 

 influence of nature, observes with accuracy and at the 

 same time with strong poetic feeling, lew men being 

 more alive to beauty or having studied its manifesta- 

 tions more diligently. His knowledge of the beauties 

 of nature is applied to the study of works of art, and 

 enables him to judge their comparative merits with 

 rare taste and warm sympathy. As a Judge he is pos- 

 itive and severe but enthusiastic, praising and blaming 

 alike front the heart, yet apt to decree from momentary 

 impulse instead of criticising from well-digested study, 

 yielding to instinct rather than to reason in forming his 

 judgments. Fortunately his instinct, is usually apt to 

 be correct, and his opinions as a rule defensible, but by 

 no means always so, his works being full of extrava- 

 gances both of thought and expression, and of opinions 

 whose lack of cogency is covered up with grace of 

 rhetoric. Despite his faults he is an active and tearless 

 thinker, strong in his likes and dislikes, and an eloquent 

 exponent of refined tastes and noble sentiments. 



The Pre-Raphaelite school of art, developed by such 

 British artists as Millsis, Ilollman, Hunt, and the 

 Roesettis, about 1850, was largely instigated by Rus- 

 kin's early works, and aroused his deep interest. The 

 title of this school is hardly a. correct one. Its pur- 

 pose was not to blindly cony the methods of the artists 

 preceding Raphael, but like them to go to nature for 

 inspiration, and escape that tyranny of the old masters 

 which so long had prevailed. It was the inevitable 

 revolt against the conventionalism of the schools and 

 the spirit of naturalism, rather than of medievalism, 

 that instigated these artists as it had instigated Huskin 

 before them, though some degree of a new mannerism 

 arose in both cases from the too close study of mediaeval 

 art. Yet the revival of interest in Gothic art. so 

 strongly helped forward by Ruskiu, was the necessary 

 step of escape from the prevailing classic con , 

 alism, and of progress into that devotion to nature as 

 the only true basis of art which has grown and is etill 

 growing therefrom. Huskin is the prophet of this 

 new diupciisation in art. and has been undaunted in 

 teaching anil developing it. 



Only a portion <! lluskin's contributions to art 



stmly have here been mentioned. Other works and 

 pamphlets on the subject. both before and alt< r If 

 I flowed from his pen, besides many review articles, 

 while his numerous lectures have also Inirii collivt.d 

 into liook form. He gave a course of lectures on 

 (iothic art at Edinburgh in !>:">:;. WM Appointed pro- 

 fessor at the Cambridge school of art in Ix'iS. Kedu 

 lecturer at Cambridge in ISi'.T. and held the BlfXU pro- 

 fessorship of Fine Art* at Oxford from IM'.'.I to isT'.i ; 

 in _1883 he was re-elected to the last-named pn 

 ship, but resigned in iss.'i in consequence of the intro- 

 duction of vivisection into the Oxford schools. In 

 addition to his writings on art, Kiiskin practised draw- 

 ing and painting, and illustrated several of his own 

 books, such as Xtimrx f Venice, but as a painter dis- 

 played no special merit 



The new idiase of lluskin's life, which began in 

 1800, lias subjected him to severe criticism, while his 

 enthusiasm has not been tempered with worldly wisdom. 

 Turning from the study of art to that of society, ho 

 came forward as a reformer in social science and polit- 

 ical 1 1 oiioiny, and has since worked in this field with 

 all the force and earnestness of his older labors in art, 

 but with less of knowledge and judgment. His 

 writings in this direction Ix-gan with a scries of articles 

 on "Political Economy," contributed to the Corn/till 

 M/i;/ii~iin' in lsij( i. These have been followed by nu- 

 merous works, many of them with fantastic titles, on 

 the same general subject. Of these maybe named 

 <i,l Lili'rx (1864); Tlir Kthi'i-x 'f tin Dttrf 

 T/,r Crutn, ,,f \\iltl Oln-f: Time Lectures on 

 \Vorh; Tmffic, <n,<l \\'<,r (ISM); The Qiirni ,,f the. 

 Air : ot in;/ ii Sttnly af the Greek Myths of ( '/<nj nml 

 Slnrni (1869) ; AtMUM Aiji;vt,n (1876) : /Cation Fair 

 and Fbvl(lfil);*aAAnvtMqfduChice(l8&9). Mag- 

 azine articles on political economy have since IT, n 

 published under the titles Un/n tin's I. oat, and Mumrn 

 /'iilrrrix, while two lectures on the "Political Economy 

 of Art " have been published as A Joy fur fiber. 

 lluskin began in 1S7I a scries of monthly letters to 

 workingmen, under the title of / '/>/(/. with 



the declared purpose of establishing a fund to rescue 

 British workmen from the tyranny of machinery. 

 lies of letters continued till 1SS4. The most 

 interesting of his later publications is his frank and 

 garrulous autobiography, /'nitn-itu ('2 vols., lsSti-87). 



It must be saiu that Ituskin's labors in behalf of 

 workingmen has called forth no ardent response from 

 the class they were intended to benefit, and that his 

 crusade against machinery and desire to bring back 

 the happy days of hand-work has met with contumely 

 rather than assistance Irom the world of industry. The 

 fact is that Kuskin's principles of political economy, 

 while containing much that is wise and sensible, contain 

 much also that is impractical and chimerical, while the 

 new ideas which he has sought to instil into the minds 

 of workingmen have roused fierce opposition among 

 employers, who look upon him as a dangerous radical, 

 seeking to break down the existing industrial relations. 

 His contributions on political economy to the ('m-iiliill 

 'iic, indeed, raised such a fierce outcry that the 

 editor was compelled to refuse their further publica- 

 tion. Frnsi-rs Mn;/<i~i>ii' then accepted them, but was 

 likewise compelled to cease publishing them. 



Ruskin, finding that his published utterances were 

 not having the effect upon the political and industrial 

 world that he desired, attempted next to put his own 

 theories in practice, and demonstrate to the world that 

 his views were well founded and capable of practical 

 realization. He built a number of model lion- 

 the poor in London, and in 1.^71 established St. 

 George's Guild, an industrial society of which he 

 became grand roaster. Its purpose was to reclaim a 

 tract of waste land on which his views of labor might 

 be realized, develop education and culture among agri- 

 culturists, and help the industrial IK -or to better their 

 lot in life. The ordinary relations of capitalist and 

 laborer, master and tenant, were here discarded, and 



