CHAPTER X

"Last week I got y'r 'Queen of the Air,' and read it.Euge, Ettge.No such Book have I met with for long years past. The one soul now in the world who seems to feel as I do on the highest matters, and speaksmir 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'n; but as to the meanings you put into them, never anywhere. All these things I not only 'agree' with, but w'd 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'n andag'n. And don't say 'most g't tho'ts are dressedin shrouds': many, many are the Phoebus Apollo celestial arrows you still have to shoot into the foul Pythons, and poisonous abominable Megatheriums and Plesiosaurians that go staggering ab't, large as cathedrals, in our sunk Epoch ag'n...."

NOTE:

Their "History of Painting in North Italy," containing a detailed account of Carpaccio, was published in 1871.

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 he 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). "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 own work; and much pleased with some that Mr. Bunney is doing for me; so that really I expect to carry off a great deal ofVerona.... The only mischief of the place is its being too rich. Stones, flowers, mountains—all equally asking one to look at them; a history to every foot of ground, and a picture on every foot of wall; frescoes fading away in the neglected streets—like the colours 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 than by photography, he took with him Arthur Burgess and John Bunney, his former pupils. Mr. Burgess was the subject of a memoir by Ruskin in theCentury Guild Hobby Horse(April, 1887), appreciating his talents and lamenting his loss. Mr. Bunney, who had travelled with 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. Wedderburn appeared in the catalogue of the Venice Exhibition, at the Fine Art Society's Gallery in November, 1882.

At Venice Ruskin had met his old friend Rawdon Brown17, 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 Ruskin himself. Another noteworthy encounter is recorded in a letter of May 4th.18

"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, withspringy-curled 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 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 fencethem, 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 sculptured 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 wentround his favourite Scuola di San Rocco (1st July). Two days later he wrote:

"You will never believe it; but I have actually been trying to draw—a baby.Thebaby which the priest is holding in the little copy of Tintoret by Edward Jones which my father liked so much, over the basin stand in his bedroom.19All the knowledge I have gained in these 17 years only makes me more full of awe and wonder at Tintoret. But itisso 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 tellwhyin vain—the mystery of his touch is so great."

Final farewell was said to Verona on the 10th August, for the homeward journey by the St. Gothard, and Giessbach, where 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:

"Lugano,Saturday, 14th 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 lamps20—I know not how many years 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 differencein my general plans, 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. Ruskin."

"Lugano,Saturday, 14th 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 lamps20—I know not how many years 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 differencein my general plans, 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. Ruskin."

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 expediency 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, Ruskin as Professor would have a certain sanction for his teaching, he believed; the title and the salary of £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.

He returned home by the end of August to prepare himself for his new duties. During the last period hehad 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 he 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 encyclopædic scheme. He took this Oxford work not as a substitute for other occupation, exonerating him from further 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 effort.

This autumn and winter, with his first and most important course in preparation, he was still writing letters to theDaily 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.

Four days later he opened a new period in his career with his inaugural Lecture in the Sheldonian Theatre at Oxford.

NOTES:

Whose book on the English in Italy (from Venetian documents) was shortly to be published, with funds supplied by Ruskin.

This date ought to be "June 4th," as Mr. E.T. Cook notices (Library Edn. XIX., p. liv.).

Mr. and Mrs Burne-Jones had been in Venice in June, 1862; the artist, then young and comparatively unknown, with a commission to copy for Ruskin.

"Stones of Venice," Vol. I., plate 5.

On Tuesday, 8th February, 1870, the Slade Professor's lecture-room was crowded to over-flowing 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 personal friends, 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 accommodation 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.21

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 plungeinto 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 art, in the liveliest pantomime. He 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 collars of the Gladstonian type; and the bright blue stock which every one knows for his heraldic bearing: no rings or gewgaws, but a long thin gold chain to his watch:—plain old-English gentleman, neither fashionable bourgeois nor artistic mountebank.

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, when he explained (not "in scorn") that engraving was the "art of scratch." 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 sawin 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 corners 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, 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 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, guarding against too hasty expression of individuality. He read careful orations, stating his maturest views on the general theory of art, in picked language, suited to the academic position. The little volume is not discursive or entertaining, like "Modern Painters," and contains nopictures either with pen or pencil; but it is crammed full of thought, and of the results of thought.

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 towards 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 with 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 his hand, accepting but enlarging the scope of the system. The South Kensington method had been devised for industrial designing, primarily; 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 Turners 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 Burne-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 slidingframes 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, Professor 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 Furneaux, who gave up his fellowship on marrying Mr. Arthur Severn's twin-sister.22

After this work well begun, 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 Salève, twice, in bitter black east wind. Then across the Simplon to Milan. After a month at Venice and Verona, where he recurred to his scheme against inundation, then ridiculed byPunch, 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 their 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, Ruskin, with the gloomiest forebodings 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 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."23It 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 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. In the last lecture of the series (published separately) 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; 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 referred to Mr. Tyrwhitt's "Lectures on Christian Art" for the opposite side of the question.

Meanwhile the war was raging. 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 Frère 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 brokesilence 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 Ruskin's work and affection had been given to French Gothic that he could not endure to think of his beloved Sainte Chapelle as being actually under fire—to say nothing of the horror of human suffering in a siege. He joined Cardinal (then Archbishop) Manning, Professor Huxley, Sir John Lubbock and 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 of 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 three 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 Department, December 13, 1870, in which the Rev. W. Kingsley, an old friend of 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 andaims in life; opening with reminiscences of his own childhood, and pleasantly telling the Greek myths of the spider and the ant, with interpretations for the times.

In the three lectures on landscape, given January 20, February 9 and 23, 1871, 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 being shown at the Old Master's Exhibition, and Ruskin took it, along with the works of Cima, as a type of one form of Greek Art.

In April, 1871, his cousin, Miss Agnew, who had been seven years at Denmark Hill, was married to Mr. Arthur Severn. 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 roses before breakfast (the drawing now in the Oxford Schools). He was already overworked, and it ended in a severe attack of internal inflammation, which nearly cost him his life. He was a difficult patient to deal with. The local practitioner who attended him used to tell how he refused remedies, and in the height of the disease asked what would beworstfor him. He took it; and to everybody's surprise, recovered.24

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 W.J. Linton, the poet and wood-engraver, wished to sell a house and land at the very place: £1,500, and it could be his. Without question asked he bought it at once; and as it 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, Linton, and his wife Mrs. Lynn Linton the novelist, Dr. G.W. Kitchin (Dean of Durham) had lived and worked there, and Linton 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 surrounded by a hamlet. And there was the furnishing; for Denmark Hill, where his mother lived, was still to be headquarters. 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 £4,000.

But he was not the man to spend on himself without sharing his wealth with others. On November 22nd, Convocation accepted a gift from the Slade Professor of £5,000 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 £7,000, the tithe of his remaining capital, to the St. George's Fund; of which more hereafter.

On November 23rd he was elected Lord Rector of St. 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 disqualified, 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 with 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," "Præterita" says, "unless some of us were ill. She had also someparallel speciality forsayingdisagreeable things, and might be relied upon to give the extremely darkest view of any subject, before proceeding to ameliorative action upon it. And she had a very creditable 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, gravely, 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 benevolence quite as uncommon. It was from his parents that Ruskin learned never to turn off a servant, and the Denmark Hill 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 apparent occupation about the house. Mrs. Ruskin drew herself up and said, "She, my dear, puts out the dessert."

And yet, in her blindness, she could read character unhesitatingly. 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, "Howcan youtwo sit there and listen to such a pack of lies?" 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 oneor two had ever had a glimpse of. And when (December 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 onlyseehim, she said—her son was left "with a surprising 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."

NOTES:

The inaugural course was given Feb. 8, 16, 23; March 3, 9, 16 and 23, 1870.

His rooms were in Fellows' buildings, No. 2 staircase, first floor right.

Delivered Nov. 24, 26, Dec. 1, 3, 8 and 10, 1870.

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 Lady Mount Temple's, who were nursing him): there was none in the hotel, and it was late at night; and Albert Goodwin went off 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.R. 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, R.W.S., the landscape painter, travelled, about this time, in Italy with Ruskin.

On January 1st, 1871, was issued a small pamphlet, headed "Fors Clavigera," in the form of a letter 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 acquaintance 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, carriage paid, no discount, and no abatement 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 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 AddisonSpectator; each part containing twenty pages, more or less, by Ruskin, with added contributions from various correspondents.

The charm of "Fors" is neither in epigram nor in anecdote, but in the sustained vivacity that runs through the texture of the work; the reappearance of golden threads of thought, glittering 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 hisbel corpo ignudoto 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.

At the time, his mingling of jest and earnest was misunderstood 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 sheer sincerity: for he was too much in earnest not to be frankly himself in his utterances, without writing up to, or down to, any other person's standard.

Ruskin did not wish to lead a colony or to head arevolution. He had been pondering for fifteen years the cause of poverty and crime, and the conviction had grown upon him that modern commercialism was at the root of it all. But his 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 praise "Modern Painters," in the teeth of vulgar opinion, so now Carlyle spoke for "Fors."

"5, Cheyne Row, Chelsea,April 30th, 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,whateverthe 'angle of incidence' may be; that is to say, whether, for the degraded andinhuman 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 Arthur 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 Ruskin put down his own money, the tenth of what he had, as he recommended his adherents to do. By the end of the year he had set aside £7,000 toward establishing a company 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 £236 13s. were collected, to add to his £7,000, and a few acres of land were given.

Meanwhile 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. Benedict'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 canswig!"

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 mediæval language. How did the saints feel themselves, I wonder, about their saintship!"

If he had forsaken all and followed the vocation of St. Francis,—he has discussed the question candidly in "Fors" 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 martyrdom. He required of his followers that they should live their 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 wishedthem 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:

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