RUSKIN 



RUSSELL 



29 



mere exchangeable value, but intrinsic and effectual 

 wealth, consisting of things contributing to the 

 support of life in its fullest sense as land, houses, 

 furniture, instruments, food, medicine, clothing, 

 books, works of art. The subject of political 

 economy, therefore, embraces a large part of the 

 sphere of private and public morals, and of political 

 philosophy. It deals with the relation ot master 

 to servant, employer to workman, of the state to 

 its subjects, with the province of sanitary and com- 

 mercial legislation, and with the duty of the state 

 in promoting education, suppressing luxury, regu- 

 lating the hours and wages of labour, fie is as 

 confident as the most revolutionary reformer that 

 the conditions of modem society must be com- 

 pletely changed and reconstructed ; his ideals 

 coincide in many points with those of some 

 Socialists, though many of his aims would l>e 

 "Hoarded as distinctly reactionary. A ' violent 

 illiberal ' rather than a conservative, Ruskin 

 regards reverence for natural beauty, truth, and 

 godliness as the highest elements in life, and 

 would give properly constituted authority extensive 

 powers ; usury of any kind is as indefensible as 

 avarice or dishonesty. Till of late he was seldom 

 treated as a serious political economist ; but it has 

 recently been admitted that he has actually pointed 

 out some real weaknesses of the old abstract 

 political economy as a scientific theory. He de- 

 voted a great part of his originally large fortune 

 to founding the St George's Guild, which was in- 

 tended to be a kind of primitive agricultural com- 

 munity, where the old-world virtues should be 

 strenuously inculcated on young and old, and 

 where ancient and homely methods might be cher- 

 ished in defiance of all modern mechanical and 

 manufacturing processes. He also strove to pro- 

 mote home industries in various places. Not more 

 remarkable than the eloquence, power, and rich- 

 ii'-" of his English style are the confidence and 

 dogmatism of his assertions, the audacity of his 

 paradoxes, the fearlessness of his denunciations ; 

 while his earnestness, conviction, and self-denying 

 honesty of purpose are undisputed. His influence 

 in creating a new interest in the beauty of nature 

 and of art in England has been profound ; and 

 although the world rejects his theories of social 

 economy as perverse, paradoxical, and impractic- 

 able, he has done much to vivify ideals of life, and 

 ennoble our standards of conduct. 



See E. T. Cook, Studies on Ruskin ( 1890) ; Shepherd's 

 BibluxjrapAv (5th ed. 1882); J. P. Smart, Junr., A 

 Statin Bibliography (1890-91); W. G. Collingwood, 

 The Life and Work of John Suitin (2 Tola. 1893); 

 and various collection* of Ruskin's papers, unpublished 

 lectures (1894), and letters to a college friend (1R94). 

 A new edition of the works was appearing in 1894. 

 The Ruskin Society was founded in 1881 ; the Ruskin 

 Reading Guild, iu 1887. 



Russell, a great Whig house, whose origin has 

 IM-I-JI traced back to Thor, through ' Olaf thesharp- 

 j'.vivl, king of Rerik,' Drogo, brother of Rollo, the 

 first Iluke of Normandy, and Hugh Bertrand, lord 

 of Le Rozel, a follower of the Conqueror's. Any- 

 how, a John Russell was constable of Corfe Castle 

 in Dorsetshire in 1221 ; and from him have sprung 

 twenty-two generations of Russells, whose seats 

 have been Kingston Russell, near Dorchester; 

 Cheneys, in Bucks, near Amersham ; and Wnburn 

 Abbey, in Bedfordshire. Among them, besides 

 William Lord Russell and Earl Russell (both 

 noticed separately below), the following may lie 

 mentioned : Sir. John Russell, Speaker of the House 

 of Commons in 1424 and 1432 ; John, created in 

 1 .130 Huron Russell of Cheneys, and in 1550 Earl 

 of Bedforrl, who got the abl>py lands of Tavistock 

 ami \Voburn ; Sir William Russell, who in 1594 

 became Lord Deputy of Ireland, and in 1603 was 



created Baron Russell of Thornhaugh ; Francis, 

 fourth Earl (died 1641), the drainer of the Bedford 

 Level ; William, fifth Earl, created in 1694 Mar- 

 quis of Tavistock and Duke of Bedford ; Admiral 

 Edward Russell (1651-1727), who, semi-Jacobite 

 though he was, beat the French at La Hogue in 

 1692, and for his victory was made Earl of Orford ; 

 John, fourth Duke (1710-71), Lord-lieutenant of 

 Ireland ; his grandson, Lord William Russell 

 (1767-1840), who was murdered by his valet 

 Courvoisier; Francis, ninth Duke (1819-91); and 

 his brother Odo (1829-84), who from 1871 was 

 ambassador to the German court, and in 1881 was 

 made Baron Ampthill. 



See J. H. Wiffen's Historical Memoirs of the House of 

 Buitell ( 1833 ) and Froude's Short Studiei ( 4th ser. 1884 ). 



WILLIAM RUSSELL, LORD RUSSELL, was bom 

 29th September 1639, third son of the fifth Earl 

 of Bedford by Lady Anne Carr, daughter of the 

 poisoner Countess of Somerset ; by the death of his 

 brothers (one in infancy, the other in manhood) he 

 succeeded ( 1678) to the courtesy title of Lord Rus- 

 sell. He was educated at Cambridge, and trav- 

 elled on the Continent. At the Restoration he was 

 elected M.P. for Tavistock, and was 'drawn by the 

 court into some disorders' (debts and duelling), 

 from which lie was rescued by his marriage in 1669 

 with Lady Rachel Wriothesley (1636-1723), second 

 daughter and co-heiress of the Earl of Southampton 

 and widow of Lord Vaughan. He was a silent 

 member till 1674, when he spoke against the doings 

 of the Cabal, and thenceforth we find him an active 

 adherent of the Country party. He dallied unwisely 

 with France, but took no bribe; he shared honestly 

 in the delusion of the Popish Plot ; he presented 

 the Duke of York as a recusant ; and he carried the 

 Exclusion Bill up to the House of Lords. The 

 king and his brother resolved to be revenged on 

 him and the other leaders of the Whig party ; and 

 he, Essex, and Sidney were arrested as participators 

 in the Rve-house Plot. On 13th July 1683 he was 

 arraigned of high-treason at the Old Bailey, and, 

 infamous witnesses easily satisfying a packed jury, 

 was found guilty. His father's proffer, through 

 the Duchess of Portsmouth, of 100,000 for his life 

 availed nothing, nor his own solemn disavowal of 

 any idea against the king's life or any contrivance 

 of altering the government ; and on the 21st he was 

 beheaded in Lincoln's Inn Fields. The pity of his 

 judicial murder, the pathos of Bumet's story of his 

 end, ami the exquisite letters of his noble wife, who 

 at his trial appeared in court as his secretary, have 

 secured him a place in history that else he had 

 never attained to, for he was a man of virtues, not 

 genius, a Christian hero rather than a statesman. 



See his life by Lord John Russell ( 1819 ; 4th ed. 1853) ; 

 the Letters of Lady Russell (1773; 14th ed. 1853 ); and 

 the Lives of her by Miss Berry (1819), Lord John Russell 

 ( 1820), and Guizot ( Eng. trans. 1855). 



JOHN KVS.SKI.L, EARL RUSSELL, K.G. , was lx>rn 

 on 18th August 1792, in Hertford Street, Mayfair, 

 London, the third son of the sixth Duke of Bedford. 

 A sickly child, he was educated at Sunbury, at 

 Westminster (1803-4), and then at Woodnes- 

 borough vicarage, near Sandwich, until, in 1809, 

 after a nine months' visit with Lord and Lady 

 Holland to Spain and Portugal, he entered the 

 university of Edinburgh. He lived there three 

 years with Professor Playfair, studying under 

 Dugald Stewart and Dr Thomas Brown, first 

 exercising IUH powers of debate at the meetings of 

 the Speculative Society, and paying two more 

 visits to the Peninsula. In July 1813, while still a 

 minor, he was returned for the family borough of 

 Tavistock, but, though he spoke in 1815 against 

 the renewal of war with France, foreign travel and 

 literature for some years engrossed him rather than 



