RUSKIN, JOHN. 



631 



crush them under your carriage wheels; the Bible 

 tells you to do judgment and justice, and you do 

 no't know, nor care to know, so much as what the 

 Bible word ' justice ' means. Do but learn so much 

 of God's truth as that comes to; know what he 

 means when he tells you to be just; and teach 

 your sons that their bravery is but a fool's boast, 

 and their deeds but a firebrand's tossing, unless 

 they are indeed just men and perfect in the fear 

 of God, and you will soon have no more war unless 

 it be such as is willed by him of whom, though 

 Prince of Peace, it is also written, ' In righteous- 

 ness he doth judge and maketh war.' " 



This passage gives the key to much of Ruskin's 

 failure to act harmoniously with his fellow-men. 

 Clear and just of vision when his eye was fixed 

 on a distant and pure ideal, he was purblind and 

 cross-eyed when gazing upon the every-day scenes 

 of life about him. He walked with a free stride 

 on alpine heights that dizzied the brains of com- 

 mon mortals, but fell sprawling in a muddy pool 

 for lack of ability to turn gracefully into the path 

 that skirts it. Even Ruskin's iron will and true 

 desire and financial power could not make a home 

 for workingmen where their heart had laid no gift 

 on the altar. A sacred fire will not glow to order. 



He discerned and pointed out the fact that war- 

 fare in a noble cause is humanity's effort to lay 

 upon the altar of sacrifice the noblest gifts; and 

 that as such it advances the cause of true and 

 lasting peace infinitely more than can a supine 

 and meretricious truce with evil. He recognized 

 the pow r er of woman's influence, and then he 

 poured forth commonplace and ridiculous denun- 

 ciation against all w r ar and against womankind 

 as its sole instigator and abettor. And the rem- 

 edy he proposed was as absurd as his opinions. 

 The present confusion of thought on this subject 

 of war and woman's responsibility concerning it 

 are perhaps partly due to the errors of this mag- 

 netic writer and speaker. 



In 1839 Ruskin gained the Newdigate prize for 

 English poetry, at Oxford, by a poem entitled 

 Salsette and Elephanta. He was graduated in 



1842. He studied painting under Copley Field- 

 ing and Harding, but he says himself that his 

 real masters were Rubens and Rembrandt. The 

 first volume of his Modern Painters appeared in 



1843. He says it was called forth by a desire to 

 reply to a criticism of Turner's works which ap- 

 peared in Blackwood's Magazine. His purpose 

 was to show the superiority of Turner to all the 

 modern landscape painters, and to show, as well, 

 the superiority of modern landscape painters to 

 the old masters in that branch of art. He spared 

 no reputation that seemed to him undeserved, and 

 condemned old and new alike with such severity 

 that he created bitter animosity. But so tran- 

 scendent was the beauty of his style, and so orig- 

 inal and sincere the criticism, that he held the pub- 

 lic and began to have great weight in swaying 

 opinion. In 1846 he republished the volume in a 

 greatly altered form. Three other volumes on the 

 Modern Painters appeared later; the fifth and 

 last was not published until 1860. The whole 

 work had then become an extended discussion of 

 the principles of art, an artistic and symbolical 

 treatment of natural scenery and life, imaginative 

 and poetic descriptions illustrated with drawings 

 from his own hand. A revised and altered edi- 

 tion of the whole work appeared in 1860-'67, and 

 another in 1873, and an edition in 6 volumes, 

 with some additional plates, an epilogue, and a 

 new index, in 1889. In 1849 he published The 

 Seven Lamps of Architecture, and in 1851-'53 

 The Stones of Venice. Both were exquisitely illus- 

 trated by himself, and they were designed to 



present lofty and beautiful ideals of domestic 

 architecture. 



Preraphaelitism meantime had begun to as- 

 sume the form of a distinct phase or school of 

 art in England, and Ruskin espoused its cause 

 with his usual ardor. He wrote notes, pamphlets, 

 and letters on the Academy Exhibition from 

 1855 to 1860. Indeed, Ruskin may be said to 

 have made a cult of what was merely an opinion. 

 He defined the underlying principle of preraph- 

 aelitism to be the determination " to paint 

 things as they probably did look and happen, 

 not as, by rules of art developed under Raphael, 

 they might be supposed gracefully, deliciously, 

 or sublimely to have happened." In 1854 Ruskin 

 published Lectures on Architecture and Painting 

 and The Two Paths, these being lectures on art 

 and its application to decoration and manufac- 

 ture. In 1857 appeared The Elements of Draw- . 

 ing, and in 1859 The Elements of Perspective. 

 Among his other books on art are Aratra Pen- 

 telici, on the principles of sculpture; The Laws of 

 Fesole, the elements of painting and drawing; 

 Frondes Agrestes, which is made up of readings 

 from Modern Painters; Giotto and his Works; 

 Val d'Amo, lectures on the art of the thirteenth 

 century in Pisa and Florence; Pleasures of Eng- 

 land, containing lectures on the modern art of 

 England and the history of England; Mornings 

 in Florence, studies of Christian art for English 

 travelers; and St. Mark's Rest, on the history of 

 Venice. Kindred to the books on art were the 

 books on the studies of Nature made while Rus- 

 kin was studying and welding his art material. 

 These include Ethics of the Dust, lectures on 

 crystallization; Ariadne Florentina, lectures on 

 wood engraving; Love's Meinie, on birds; Deu- 

 calion, studies of the lapse of waves and life of 

 stars; The Eagle's Nest, which directly discusses 

 the relation of natural science to art; and Pros- 

 erpina, studies of wayside flowers. Of other gen- 

 eral writing, striking instances are seen in Notes 

 on the Construction of Sheepfolds, which deals 

 w r ith church discipline; The Queen of the Air, a 

 study of the Greek myths of cloud and storm ; 

 Sesame and Lilies, two lectures on the education 

 of men and women; The King of the Golden 

 River, a fairy story with a moral and a study of 

 Nature. 



This series of works presents one side of Rus- 

 kin's nature, or rather one phase of his life work, 

 for, in reality, all his work is one, though from 

 the subjects treated and the methods of working 

 them out they appeared to be at war with one 

 another or to have no relation. Such as they 

 are, they belong together. Side by side with the 

 art and Nature study and literature is the life- 

 long picturing of and experiment with politico- 

 social conditions. While actively engaged, after 

 studying painting and architecture abroad, in 

 writing at home from the gathered material, Rus- 

 kin for several years taught drawing at the 

 Workingmen's College, and began to lecture to 

 workingmen. He became widely popular in the 

 latter field, and delivered courses of lectures, 

 which were freely and lovingly given, at South 

 Kensington Museum, Manchester, Bradford, to 

 members of the Architectural Association in 

 Lyon's Inn Hall, and at Tunbridge Wells. His 

 Two Paths was meant to teach the dependence of 

 all noble design on organic form, and the diver- 

 gence of the two paths of study the conventional 

 or dead, and the organic or living, in art. He said 

 his writings on art had not been matters of 

 choice, as it had always seemed to him he might 

 have done more good in other ways, but of neces- 

 sity. He believed he saw injustice done, and 



