of his thought, part to his candid spirit and evident familiarity with the subjects he treats, and part to the charming clearness and beauty of his literary style. No writer ever clothed his thoughts in finer garb. In clear, forceful, and graceful expres sion he is without a peer in English prose. Strength and beauty are the pillars which support this temple, as they did that of old. A temple in whose walls every stone is a gem, flashing prismatic hues; all as fair, and pure, and many-colored as the mosaics adorning St. Mark's in Venice, which he so graphically and worshipfully describes. True, at times he permits his rhetoric to dazzle himself, and his imagination to run riot; but these are mere sportive sallies, the exuberance of conceptions which fill his mind, and overflow from it like falling sheets and torrents of water from an overflowing fountain, or like the rainbow-spangled spray of a cataract as it dashes itself over a precipice. But usually his style moves on like a majestic river, crystal clear, winding amid beautiful and continually changing scenery. The Beauties of Ruskin can never be crowded into one volume. Attempt to gather all his flowers and you must gather every thing upon the sward, and instead of having a few bouquets you will have winrows of perfumed loveliness. The whole meadow is bespangled and variegated with color, and fragrant with every perfume. It is like a California road-side in the spring-time. The effect of this style upon the reader is marvelous. It fires his imagination and arouses and stimulates every power of his soul. One has said: "Naturally I have no poetry in me; figures of speech fly from me; but when I read Ruskin he so excites me that they throng upon me, and beautiful, too, as troops of angels." His finest writing is not found in his earlier works. Modern Painters contains hundreds of fine passages; so does the Seven Lamps of Architecture, Stones of Venice, and many of his smaller works; but his most vigorous, compact, forceful, and expressive writing is found in his later works, in many of his lectures, and especially in Fors Clavigera; or, Letters to Workingmen. These abound in gems of thought and expression. Satire, invective, pathos, poetry, beauty, and force are every where present. The nearer he approaches the insanity which overtook him a few years ago, the brighter and more glowing is the splendor of his style. The star of his genius blazes brightest as it hangs in poise between sanity and insanity. Here the fire of his ardor, the holiness of his anger, and the most vivid of his thoughts are found in their intensest forms and most forceful utterance. Ruskin's style is the farthest possible removed from any thing like rhapsody or "windy wordiness." It is not in the least like that of Krummacher, or Christmas Evans, or even Jean Paul Richter. There is no brilliancy in it like the brilliancy of the opium-eating De Quincey, or even like that of S. T. Coleridge, as illustrated in Christabel and the Ancient Mariner. It is simple, healthful, direct; removed alike from verbosity and an over-condensation. Smoother than Macaulay, simple as Addison, he always uses the exact language that expresses his meaning-enough words and no more. He says he never uses a word which he has not weighed thoroughly. He knows its root, its history, its development, and precisely what it expresses. This makes his meaning always clear. There is nothing esoteric, nothing secret, hidden away behind the frankness of its bright and glowing face, as it shines forth upon his page. There is nothing there Janus-faced, nothing diplomatic or capable of two interpretations. All is as clear, frank, and honest as himself. It may be asked, What is the practical worth of any thing Mr. Ruskin has written? We have all long known of his literary merit; but is there any other merit? Is he not an impractical visionary? and is any thing he has written valuable, either in art or economics? He has been, and is by many, considered untrustworthy as authority in these, and in other things. Even his literary attainments and work have been most unmercifully criticised. His descriptions of nature are said to be overdrawn; his theory of art foundationless; his dissertations upon political economy the ravings of a semi-madınan; and his biblical exegesis and theological teaching, heterodox. It is not the purpose of this paper to defend either Mr. Ruskin or his theories, but to point them out, show what they are, and how he has treated them; leaving them to defend themselves and the reader to draw his own inferences and form his own conclusions concerning them. It is worthy of remark, how ever, that the beauty of the world, nay, of all things, is in the see-er. To the dull, unimaginative mind, all description that rises above its own level will seem overdrawn. A poet can only be interpreted by a poet. Mr. Ruskin sees beautiful things where others do not, and he sees them because he has larger and keener eyes than others. He describes what he sees, and without doubt the description seems to himself tame indeed. There is a single stand-point from which Mr. Ruskin must be judged. He is a teacher of ethics. A moral philosopher. This is the root out of which all his opinions and theories grow. He looks at every thing from the moral stand-point; a standpoint the central object of which is the most elevated, æsthetically cultivated, morally perfect, in every way developed, disciplined, refined, and purified human being. Man, and his development in nobility and true manhood, is always his ideal. Art is nothing only as it pertains to and helps in this; only as it expresses man's aspirations and conceptions along the lines of his moral and spiritual nature, and his struggles after a higher perfectness. It is highest and best when it expresses the purity and elevation of our nature, as nature about us expresses the elevation and purity of the Godhead nature. Therefore, that art which is nearest to nature, which is most like nature-as far as it is possible for art to be like nature— and which represents that which is good in man, is the best art; because it is just these qualities that represent God. This must, therefore, be the only criterion of truth and beauty, and hence the only standard of true art; that which appeals to the higher and nobler within us, excites and develops it, and not that which appeals to the base and vile, and develops it. True art is the expression of truth, of love, of faith, of aspirations after the godlike and the divine. That art is base, no matter what it shows of the dexterous hand, or brilliant execution, which represents and ministers to pride, to vanity, to the sensual and fallen part of our nature. So it is, in his theories upon sociology and economics, Man is the central object, and not material wealth; man developed and cultivated, in his moral and spiritual nature as well as his physical, intellectual, and aesthetical. He is, therefore, opposed to every thing in our civilization that dwarfs man, physically, mentally, or morally; all that makes him a mere drudge, a beast of burden, or brutalizes him in the least; all that does not elevate and refine. And, as he believes our modern inechanical industries and forms of commercialism do debase man, he is opposed to them. The same thing is true concerning his views of modern science. He judges it from the same stand-point and applies to it the same tests. He is as merciless in his criticisms of Tyndall, Spencer, Huxley, and that school, as he is of the art of the Renaissance, or of Doré, the modern stage, or the whole school of political economists, from Ricardo to John Stuart Mill. In all things he must be judged of from this same standpoint. Any other judgment does him injustice. This explains all his peculiarities, and gives him his true place in art, in literature, and in sociology. Mr. Ruskin's criterion of the value of a work of art is not what the multitude think of it, but that which the refined and cultivated few think. The standards of art are the opinions of such persons, tested by time, and accepted by other persons of a kindred class, and only received by the many upon this testimony. The people who admire the gloss of a garment, or some tricks of the brush, or loudness of color in a painting, and pass by some work that reveals the most noble conception or most perfect truth because it is devoid of these, are not judges of art, and their opinions are worthless. We must remember always, that his idea of a refined and cultivated person embraces moral and spiritual culture as well as intellectual and aesthetical. He He says: Every kind of knowledge may be sought from ignoble motives and for ignoble ends, and in those who so possess it it is ignoble knowledge, while the very same knowledge is, in another mind, an attainment of the highest dignity, and conveying the greatest blessing.* All true art, in his estimation, has a religious basis, and is impossible without religious faith. All other is an advertisement, more or less, of human vanity, and an exhibition of immoral quality. The true master never, in his work, purposely advertises himself or his skill. In the reading of a great poem, in the hearing of a noble oration, it is the subject of the writer and not his skill, his passion * Preface to Second Edition Modern Painters. and not his power, upon which our minds are fixed. We see as he sees, but we see not him; feel with him, judge, behold with him, but we think of him as little as of ourselves. Do we think of Eschylus while we wait upon the silence of Cassandra, or of Shakespeare while we listen for the wailing of Lear? * His definitions and dissertations of truth, power, and beauty, are all based upon these principles. Truth of clouds, of mountains, of light, of space, etc. Beauty is the expression in material form of the attributes of God. Beauty is therefore based upon that which is godlike, and whether seen in inanimate form, or vital life, or wherever it may, it is always proclaiming its origin, and the nature of him who called it into being. Noth ing, therefore, that is not of this character can have a place in true art, or contribute to its mission, save as it is introduced to bring out in clearer light these qualities. This explains his Seven Lamps which are to guide in architecture-sacrifice, truth, power, beauty, life, memory, and obedience. Both material and work should represent an expenditure of means; not of money only or chiefly, but an expenditure of toil, of brain, of heart; of the soul and life, with its mightiest efforts and agonies, put into the work. Things made by machinery are not real art, because there has been no expenditure of heart and soul put into their production. The work should be truthful. All imitation of real material is an abomination; imitation, especially in the material of a church edifice, is worst of all. It is a lie blazoned on the face of God's temple, where we should expect only truth. "Obedience," he says, "is that to which polity owes its stability, life its happiness, faith its acceptance, and creation its continuance." All true greatness is signalized by obedience. "Gravitation is less quietly, less instantly, obeyed by a grain of dust, than it is by the sun and moon; and the ocean falls and flows under influences which the lake and the river do not recognize." † It was these principles which so arrayed him against the art of the Renaissance. It was no longer the expression of true faith, nor of pure character. It was material as well as feeble and false; it told alike of the decay of virtue and genius, and was blighting in its effects. The Egyptian, Greek, and Gothic Preface to Second Edition Modern Painters. |