RUSSELL. 



411 



the views adopted were those in vogue in Florence in the 

 fourteenth century, with some necessary modifications. 

 They were largely communistic, and took in charge 

 the health and education of the people, with special 

 arrangements of supply and demand, accumulation and 

 distribution of wealth. It is presumable that the laws 

 and industrial conditions of St. George's Guild are 

 those which liuskin believes should be applied to the 

 whole nation. If they were adopted every man, 

 woman, and child would be a ward of the state, 

 trained and compelled to move in the lines for which 

 nature and education fitted them ; food and clothing 

 would be dispensed by state agents and sold at an es- 

 tablished price ; communistic relations would exist 

 among the people ; the mode of building houses and 

 cities would be prescribed, and no city permitted to 

 contain more than 25,000 persons ; and co-operation 

 of all for the good of each would be the rulin<r prin- 

 ciple of society. In addition a fixed creed of religious, 

 social, and political duties would be taught and enforced, 

 in which all laws and orders of the monarch must be 

 obeyed except such as appeared inconsistent with what 

 each subject in his own conscience supposed to be the 

 law of God. 



There is much more of the same chimerical and im- 

 practicable tenor in Raskin's theory of society, and 

 though his purposes were instigated by a nobly un- 

 selfish desire for the good of man, his schemes have 

 necessarily proved failures. They were based on an 

 ignorance of human nature and a disdain of the 

 practically established laws of society, and while in some 

 of their conditions seeking to lead man forward cen- 

 turies into the future, in others they sought to take 

 hiin back centuries into the picst. In his treatise.-- on 

 political economy RuskiM, in fact, writes as a moralist, 

 not as a scientist, and is guided by feeling, not by 

 reason. He cares little about the established laws of 

 the science of society, but much for men and women, 

 attacks existing conditions blindly, and propi. 

 order of society which it would be impossible to estab- 

 lish. He attarks. fur instance, the principle of usury, 

 and declares that loans should be simply repaid, to de- 

 mand interest being in his view to take an unjust and 

 immoral advantage of the borrower. He would have 

 luxury and the possession of great riches forbidden by 

 the state, and is particularly opposed to the prevailing 

 theory of demand and supply, claiming that human 

 duties and sympathies make such a law void. Man 

 is in his view more than a figure in a sum, and he per- 

 mits sentiment to set aside the principles of natural 

 law_. He abhors democracy, and follows Carlyle in his 

 belief of the saving efficacy of a strong government. 

 He wants a strong man to rule, and the masses to be 

 taken care of by a paternal government, believing that 

 the ballot in their hands is worse than misapplied, ami 

 is the cause of many of the evils that have come upon 

 the working class. As one of his reviewers says, "he is 

 trying with Mrs. Partington's broom to sweep back the 

 ocean." Feudalism and absolutism arc of the past, 

 and the world has moved and is moving far beyond 

 them to better and higher conditions, liuskin sees 

 the gorgeous show and knightly pretence of feudalism. 

 not its baseness ami corruption. lie looks with the 

 eyes of the poet only, not with those of the historical 

 scientist, and sentiment in him is far uiorc dominant 

 than reason. The conditions of the modern world 

 therefore meet with his strong disapproval ; those of the 

 past with his strong approbation. He finds serious 

 fault with tlio railway system for its defacement of the 

 scenery of England, and with the factory system for 

 the blurring and blasting effects of its smoke. For 

 similar iea.-ons all modern industrial improvements 

 Meet, with his reprobation, and the preservation of 

 scenic effects and artistic conditions holds an im- 

 portant place in his ideas of political economy. In a 

 like spirit he objects to go to America because it has 

 no castles, and demands that there should be a special 

 dress for each class in society. Raskin's mental charac- 



teristic of poetical sensibility and emotional enthu- 

 siasm, in fact, while consonant with success in art 

 criticism, unfits him decidedly for scientific investiga- 

 tions, and in his social studies he has only perceived 

 that something is wrong with the world, while quite 

 incapable of reasoning out the true causes and proper 

 cure for the malady. 



Opposition and failure have made him petulant and 

 querulous, and he has lost much of his influence 

 by his fault-finding and spirit of contempt for what 

 displeases him. He has grown, indeed, wrong-headed 

 and wilful in little things, has criticised painters in 

 such a spirit as to be brought into court to answer, and 

 in many directions he has departed from reasonable 

 moderation. In art ha carries his zeal as a critic too 

 far, makes the moral aim unduly prominent, and in- 

 sists too strongly that only an artist of pure character 

 and conduct can accomplish a great work. He is 

 similarly too uncompromising a realist, and finds 

 strong fault with external details, such as Raphael's 

 clothing his apostles in the dress of Greek philosophers, 

 unmindful of the fact that if they are made apostles 

 in face and mien the dress is of minor consequence. 



These are faults, yet they detract little from Rus- 

 kin's merits as an art critic. In spirit he is intensely 

 and sincerely religious. The natural world is to him 

 the divine world, and he loves nature not for its beauty 

 alone, but as the tabernacle of the Divine Spirit. He 

 is always tme to his highest conceptions, always at 

 war with the evils of a materialistic and money-loving 

 age, and in all he writes a deep appreciation of the 

 innate goodness and beauty of man and nature ap- 

 pears. Though he may not be a safe critic in the 

 technical points of art, he is genuinely so in its under- 

 lying spirit, having a breadth of vision, a range of 

 sympathy, and a just conception of truth in art which 

 have enabled him to overthrow conventionalism and 

 bring art back to nature for its inspiration. 



In literature Ruskin has been much top diffuse for 

 the reputation of his works. He has written so pro- 

 fusely that few have the time to follow him. His 

 books need sifting, and few of them will live. Though 

 his later works contain many of his best and maturer 

 thoughts he will be probably known to the future by 

 Modern Painter*. Stones of Venice, and The Seven 

 Lumps of Ardiitecture alone. Yet he has had 

 and will have an influence on thought not to be 

 measured by the number of his readers, and like all 

 great thinkers has done much to mould the thoughts 

 of his generation and of those to follow. 



For more than half a century Ruskin resided on the 

 Ilernc Hill and Denmark lliil estates of his father. 

 In IN7,"> he bought an estate at Brantwood, on Coniston 

 Lake, on which he has since chiefly resided. His 

 father left him the large fortune of $785,000, of which 

 he has but $50.000 or $00.000 left. Immediately on 

 his father's death he distributed $35.000 among rela- 

 tives whom he deemed his father had overlooked, and 

 the remainder of his vanished fortune has been spent 

 in various plans for ameliorating the condition of the 

 poor. As a man and an author he has lived up to 

 his ideas, and well deserves even more than the appre- 

 ciative remark from Charlotte Bronte' : " Mr. Ruskin 

 appears to me one of the few genuine writers, as dis> 

 tinjrnished from book-makers, of this age." (c. M.) ' 



RUSSELL.Wii.MAM HOWARD, war-correspondent, 

 was born at Lily Vale, near Dublin, Ireland, May 28, 

 1821. He was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, 

 and became a lawyer at London. He had already 

 done good work for the London Time*, and in 1854 

 was sent to report the condition of the British army in 

 the Crimean war. He was the first war-correspondent 

 and received little favor from the military authorities. 

 His faithful exposures of the short-comings in the 

 commissary and hospital departments produced a sen- 

 sation in England, and led to important changes in 

 their administration. Afterwards his graphic sketches 

 of the battles and incidents of the long siege of Sebas- 



