advanced his theory of first seeing accurately, and then, through the
creative imagination, carrying up to ideal perfection flowers, faces and
landscapes often marred by the storms and upheavals of life. It is
altogether probable that John Ruskin saw as accurately the scene of
loveliness as Turner himself. It seems quite certain that Ruskin was
altogether unique in his capacity for enjoyment. It was not simply that
his eyes saw accurately, and his intellect registered his impressions
without flaw, but that his imagination and his emotions were sensitive
to the last degree, as sensitive as the silken threads of an Æolian harp
that responds to the lightest wind that blows. Many people know the
intense flavour of a strawberry, but Ruskin's soul was pierced with an
intense and tumultuous pleasure at the sight of the clouds piled up upon
the mountains. He loved Nature with all the passion with which Dante
loved Beatrice. In Ruskin's forty odd volumes the scholar can find
registered a hundred experiences in the presence of the mountain glory
and the mountain gloom, in which this delight and happiness sent his
whole body shivering with the piercing intensity that shook the soul of
Romeo during his passionate interview with Juliet. Coarse natures,
gluttonous, avaricious, full of hate, can no more understand the
happiness of Ruskin's life than a deaf man can understand Mozart's
rapture, when he listened to the music in the cathedral. Not even a
tornado can make a crowbar vibrate, but the flutter of a lark's wing can
set a silken thread vibrating and singing.
Ruskin has spread out, like a rich map, the story of the people who
educated him. The overmastering influence in his life was that of his
mother. He tells us that he received from his home in childhood the
priceless gift of peace, in that he had never seen a "moment's trouble
or disorder in any household matter, or anything whatever done in a
hurry or undone in due time." To this gift was added the gift of
obedience. "I obeyed word, or lifted finger, of father or mother,
simply as a ship her helm; not only without idea of resistance but as
necessary to me in every moral action as the law of gravity in
leaping. To the gifts of peace and obedience my parents added the gift
of Faith, in that nothing was ever promised me that was not given;
nothing ever threatened me that was not inflicted, and nothing ever
told me that was not true." And to these was added the habit of fixed
attention with both eyes and mind--this being the main practical
faculty of his life, causing Mazzini to say of Ruskin that he had "the
most analytic mind in Europe."
The books from which Ruskin had his style in childhood were Walter
Scott's novels, Pope's translation of the _Iliad_, Defoe's _Robinson
Crusoe_, Bunyan's _Pilgrim's Progress_, and above all, the Bible. "My
mother forced me, by steady and daily toil, to learn long chapters of
the Bible by heart; as well as to read it every syllable through
aloud, hard names and all, from Genesis to the Apocalypse, about once
a year; and to that discipline, patient, accurate, and resolute, I owe
much of my general power of taking pains, and the best part of my
taste in literature." The great chapters of the Bible from which
Ruskin says he had his style included the fifteenth and twentieth of
Exodus; the twenty-third Psalm, and also the thirty-second, ninetieth,
ninety-first, one hundred and third, one hundred and twelfth, one
hundred and nineteenth, one hundred and thirty-ninth, the Sermon on
the Mount, the conversion of Paul, his vision on the road to Damascus,
Paul's Ode to Love and Immortality. "These chapters of the Bible,"
Ruskin says, "were the most precious, and, on the whole, the one
essential part of my education."
Ruskin's message upon education is of vital importance to the people
of our republic. Strictly speaking, education should teach each
citizen to think aright upon every subject of importance, and to live
a life that is worthy, making the most out of the gifts received from
God and one's ancestors. Ruskin traced the national faults and
miseries of England, to illiteracy and the lack of education in the
art of living. The inevitable result of this illiteracy was that
England "despises literature, despises compassion, and concentrates
the soul on silver." From this illiteracy came physical ugliness,
envy, cowardice, and selfishness, instead of physical beauty, courage
and affection. To the dry facts taught, therefore, he proposed to add
inspiration, and the art of seeing.
Above all, he feared the results of uniformity and the manufacture of
men by machinery, until all youths coming out of the same school, having
studied the same facts, in the same way, became as uniform as crackers,
and also as dry. The important man, he thinks, is the occasional boy,
who has received a gift and can open up new realms for the rest.
"Genius? You can't manufacture a great man, any more than you can
manufacture gold. You find gold, and mint it. You uncover diamonds, but
do not produce them. You find genius, but you cannot create it." Getting
on, therefore, does not mean "more horses, more footmen, more fortune,
more public honour,--it means more personal soul. He only is advancing
in life whose heart is getting softer, whose blood warmer, whose brain
quicker, whose spirit is entering into living peace." Education is a
preparation for complete living; therefore Ruskin adopts Milton's
definition of the complete and generous education as, "that which fits a
man to perform justly, skillfully, and magnanimously, all the duties of
all the offices of life."
Frederic Harrison gives Ruskin's _Unto This Last_ first place as the
most original book in modern English literature. He ranks it as a
masterpiece of pure, incisive, brilliant, imaginative writing, "a book
glowing with wit and fire and passion." The heart of the message is that
every man is born with a gift appointed by his fathers, and that
happiness begins with grasping the handle of one's own being. The
greatest and most enduring work is done for love, and not for wage. The
soldier's task is to keep the state in liberty, and when the second or
third battle of Gettysburg or Ypres comes, he does not go on a strike,
but puts death and duty in front of him and keeps his face to the front;
in like manner the physician is appointed to keep the state in health
and in time of yellow fever or the Black Death he works as hard for
nothing as for a large fee, even as a father, in time of famine,
shipwreck or battle, will sacrifice himself for his son.
Ruskin held that the commercial text, "Buy in the cheapest market and
sell in the dearest," was part truth, and part falsehood. "Buy in the
cheapest market? Yes; but what made your market cheap? Charcoal may be
cheap among the roof timbers after a fire, and bricks may be cheap in
your streets after an earthquake, but fire and earthquake may not be,
therefore, national benefits. Sell in the dearest market? Yes; but
what made your market dear? Was it to a dying man who gave his last
coin rather than starve, or to a soldier on his way to pillage the
bank, that you put your fortune? The final consummation of wealth is
in full-breathed, bright-eyed and happy-hearted human creatures."
Therefore, said Ruskin, "I can imagine that England may cast all
thoughts of possessive wealth back to the barbaric nations among whom
they first arose; and that, while the sand of the Indias and adamant
of Golconda may yet stiffen the housings of the charger, and flash
from the turban of the slave, she at last may be able to lead forth
her sons, saying, 'These are my jewels!'"
Whether, therefore, property shall be a curse or a blessing depends upon
man's administrative intelligence. "For centuries great districts of the
world, rich in soil, and favoured in climate, have lain desert, under
the rage of their own rivers, not only desert, but plague-struck. The
stream which, rightly directed, would have flowed in soft irrigation
from field to field,--would have purified the air, given food to man and
beast, and carried their burdens for them on its bosom--now overwhelms
the plain, and poisons the wind, its breath pestilence, and its work
famine. In like manner, wealth may become water of life, the riches of
the hand and wisdom, or wealth may be the last and deadliest of national
plagues, water of Marah, the water of which feeds the roots of all
evil." Man's body alone is related to factory and mine. No amount of
ingenuity will ever make iron and steel digestible. Neither the avarice
nor the rage of men will ever feed them. And however the apple of Sodom
and the grape of Gomorrah may spread the table with dainties of ashes
and nectar of asps,--so long as men live by bread, the far-away valleys
laugh only as they are covered with the gold of God, and echo the shouts
of His happy multitudes.
During the closing and most fruitful period of his career, Ruskin's
supreme thought had to do with the manufacture of souls of good
quality. Quite beyond the influence of some hero or statesman was the
influence, hidden, constant, but immeasurable, of the spirit of the
invisible God. "If you ask me for the sum of my life-work, the answer
is this,--whatever Jesus saith unto you, do that." Daniel Webster
himself never made a more powerful plea for the Christian Church and
preacher than Ruskin's statement on the importance of the hour on
Sunday, after the people have been exposed for six days to the full
weight of the world's temptation. That hour when men and women come
in, breathless and weary with the week's labour and "a man sent with a
message, which is a matter of life or death, has but thirty minutes to
get at the separate hearts of a thousand men, to convince them of all
their weaknesses, to shame them for all their sins, to warn them of
all their dangers, to try by this way and that to stir the hard
fastenings of those doors, where the Master Himself has stood and
knocked, yet none opened, and to call at the openings of those dark
streets, where Wisdom herself has stretched forth her hands and no man
hath regarded,--thirty minutes to raise the dead in!--let us but once
understand and feel this, and the pulpit shall become a throne like
unto a marble rock in the desert, about which the people gather to
slake their thirst."
And in the very fullness of his power, when his bow was in full
strength, and every sentence and arrow tipped with fire, Ruskin
gathered his strength for a final study of the obligations of wealth
to poverty, of wisdom to ignorance,--the opportunity of rich men to
serve their generation, and make the world once more an Eden garden of
happiness and delight. Just as men sweep together an acre of red
roses, and condense the blossoms into a little vial filled with the
precious attar, we may condense several volumes of Ruskin into a
single parable. Why has one man ten-talent power? Why have ninety-nine
men only one-talent power? Why is one boy ten years of age and strong,
while in the same orphan asylum are ninety-nine little boys one year
old? And what if some kind hand hath spread the table with orange,
date, and plum, with every sweet fruit and nutritious grain? Has the
ten-year-old boy, answering to the ten-talent man, a right to dash up
to the table, and with one hand sweep together all the fruits, and
with the other hand, all the cereals, milk and cream, while he shouts
to the ninety-nine little one-year-old children, "Every fellow for
himself! Get all you can! Keep all you can! The devil take the
hindmost!" This, says Ruskin, is the fashion of certain rust-kings,
and moth-kings. Why is that one boy ten years of age? Is his strength
not for the sole purpose of carrying these foods to the little
one-year-old children, scarcely able to provide for themselves? It is
said of the Master and Lord of us all, that "being rich, for our sakes
He made Himself poor." And the kings in the realm of art, or song, of
industry or finance, have been ordained by God, not to loot the world
of its blossoms, not to squeeze men, like so many purple clusters,
into their own cups. In the vegetable world the expert pinches off
ninety-nine roses, and forces the rich and vital currents into one
great rose at the end of the stock. But what if a ten-talent man
should pinch out ninety-nine lesser men as competitors, and force the
vital elements of all their separate factories and stores, that were
intended to be distributed among many men, of lesser gifts, into his
one treasure house?
Ruskin not only pointed the moral but fashioned his own life after it.
He was one of the few men who have lived what they taught. He fell
heir to what his generation thought was a very large fortune. He made
another fortune by sheer force of genius. But he held his treasure as
a trust fund in the interest of God's poor. And so-called practical
men turned upon him, with the bitterness and hate of wolves that try
to pull down some noble stag. His articles were shut out of the
_Cornhill Magazine_. Through the influence of selfish men who feared
the influence of his teachings upon the people, he was for a time
bitterly assaulted. Scoffed at and maligned, he overworked and passed
from one attack of brain fever to another. When it was too late, the
angry voices died out of the air, and his sun cleared itself of
clouds. When at last a wreath of honour was offered Ruskin, it was as
if an old man had taken the blossoms and the laurel leaf, and carried
them out to God's acre, to be placed in the snow upon his mother's
grave. But ours is a world that first slays the prophet and then
builds his sepulchre. It is indeed, as the wise man said, a world that
crucifies the Saviour.
And we can say of Ruskin what James Martineau said of the world's
injustice, that "in almost every age which has stoned the prophets,
and loaded its philosophers with chains, the ringleaders of the
anarchy have been, not the lawless and infamous of their day, but the
archons and chief priests, who could protect their false idols with a
grand and stiff air, and do their wrongs in the halls of justice, and
commit their murders as a savoury sacrifice; so that it has been by no
rude violence, but by clean and holy hands that the guides, the
saints, the redeemers of men have been poisoned in Athens, tortured in
Rome, burned in Florence, crucified in Jerusalem." And we ought not to
be surprised that a world that threatened Milton, starved Swammerdam,
imprisoned Bunyan, and assassinated Lincoln, should break the health
and the heart of John Ruskin, who poured out his very life-blood to
redeem the people from ignorance, and sloth, and wrong.
Index
Abelard and Héloise, 19
Achilles, 37
Act of Toleration, The, 114
_Adam Bede_, 146
Æneas, The wanderings of, 35
Alexander the Great, 86, 103
Alexander the Sixth, 42, 51
Alva, Duke of, 61, 66, 67, 68, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75
Angelo, Michael, 11, 12, 15, 27, 39, 123, 140
_Areopagitica_, 131, 132
Aristotle, 25
Arnold, Matthew, 144
Asbury, Francis, 162
Asia Minor, 55
Athens, 26, 37, 50, 84, 195
Augustus Cæsar, 36
Bacon, Francis, 32
Balfour, Lord, 89
Barnett, Canon, 197
Barrett, Elizabeth, 39
Beatrice, 19, 20, 21, 22, 24, 26, 30, 205
Bedford Jail, 32, 85
Beecher, Henry Ward, 158
"Beggars," The fleet of, 73, 74, 77
Bernard the Monk, 105
Birrell, Augustine, 144
Black Death, The, 97, 100
"Bloody Council," The, 57
Booth, William, 199
Boswell's _Life of Johnson_, 151
Bradford, William, 57
Brescia, 43
Brougham, Henry, 103
Browning, Robert, 39
Bunyan, John, 12, 32, 85, 105, 142, 216
Burke, Edmund, 132
Calvin, John, 54
Carlyle, Thomas, 89, 145
Cateau-Cambresis, Treaty of, 70
Cavour, 39, 166
Cecilia, St., 21
Cervantes, 84
Charles I of England, 94, 95, 99, 101, 102, 103, 109, 110, 112, 123,
132, 133
Charles II of England, 111, 112
Charles V, Emperor of Germany, 69
Charles VIII of France, 48
Charles IX of France, 74
Childe Harold, 23
Church, The, 15, 41, 53, 63, 93
Columbus, Christopher, 14, 35, 200
Common people in the Dark Ages, The, 14
_Comus_, 121
Constantinople, 36, 40, 88, 168
Copernicus, 35
Cromwell, Oliver, 57, 85, 86, 87, 88, 91, 97, 98, 102, 103, 106, 107,
108, 109, 110, 111, 112, 113, 114, 123, 132, 133, 134, 135
"Crowning Mercy of Worcester, The," 109
Curtis, George William, 9
Dante, Alighieri, 10, 11, 13, 15, 16, 18, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26,
27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 34, 40, 50, 105, 123, 136, 140, 142,
205
Dark Ages, The, 14, 36
Dekker, 118
De Quincey, Thomas, 129
_Divine Comedy, The_, 19, 22, 23, 24, 136
Divine Right of Kings, The, 91, 113, 123
Easter Day, 25
Eclipse in English literature, 125
Edison, Thomas, 191
Eliot, George, 39, 146
Eliot, Sir John, 95, 101
England's darkest hour, 89
England in the days of Charles I, 97, 98, 99
Erasmus, 54, 57
Este, Duke of, 41
Farmer of Huntingdon, The, 90, 108
Ferrara, 40
Feudalism, 14
Ficino, 45
Florence, 14, 16, 37, 38, 43, 45, 46, 47, 50, 52, 216
Foch, Marshal, 86
Francis of Assisi, 105
Franklin, Benjamin, 12, 147, 178
French Revolution, The, 144
Garibaldi, 39, 166, 167, 168, 169, 170, 171, 173, 174, 176, 177, 179,
180, 181, 182, 184, 186, 187;
in the United States, 177
Garibaldi's aim--a united Italy, 182;
Anita, 174, 175, 177;
charmed life, 168, 169;
power over his troops, 185;
life in South America, 175;
reckless courage, 171, 172;
refusal of throne, 181;
return to Italy, 175;
loyalty to Victor Emmanuel, 179;
victories, 181
Geography, The science of, 15
George, David Lloyd, 89
Geryon, 25
Gioberti, 38
Giotto, 7, 38
Gladstone, 180
Goethe, 27
Grant, General, 86
Great Remonstrance, The, 102
Gulf Stream, Influence of the, 163
Hallam the historian, 10
Hamilton, Alexander, 168, 178
Hamlet, 13
Hampden, John, 101, 104, 108, 123
Harrison, Frederic, 106, 209
Helen of Troy, 36, 37
Henry of Navarre, 103
History, The scope of, 18
Hogarth, William, 145
Holland, 55, 56, 57, 59
Homer, 10, 11, 12, 13, 123
Horace, 136
House of Lords, The, 12
Hume, David, 145
_Idylls of the King_, 23
_Imitation of Christ_, 154
_In Darkest England_, 199
_Inferno, The_, 31, 32
Inquisition, The, 65, 74
Italian language, The, 11
Italian literature, 18
James I of England, 117
Jonson, Ben, 90, 117
Julius Cæsar, 86
Keats, John, 12
Kenilworth Castle, 96
King Alfred's Bible, 12
Kipling, Rudyard, 190
Kossuth, Louis, 178
_Last Judgment, The_, 27
Law's _Serious Call_, 154
Latin tongue, The, 11
Lecky the historian, 144, 155
Leonardo, 35
Leyden, Siege of, 77, 78, 79, 80
Lincoln, Abraham, 57, 58, 99, 102, 113, 182, 194
Lorenzo the Magnificent, 45, 46, 47
Lowell, James Russell, 31, 137, 140, 141
Lucifer, 25
Luther, Martin, 49, 54
_Lycidas_, 121
Macaulay, Lord, 116 117, 137, 138, 144
_Macbeth_, 13
Marlow, 90, 117
Marston Moor, Battle of, 103, 109
Martineau, James, 216
Mary Queen of Scots, 99
Massacre of St. Bartholomew, 74
Massinger, Philip, 118
"Mayflower, The," 115
Mazzini, 39, 166, 168, 170
Mæcenas, 36
Medici, The, 48
"Mermaid" Tavern, The, 116
Methodists, The early, 146
Methodism, world-wide sphere of, 162
Michelet, 183
Middle Ages, The, 26
Mill, John Stuart, 16
Milton, John, 16, 103,106, 112, 115, 116, 117, 119, 120, 129, 132,
138, 139, 140, 142, 216;
and his studies, 120, 121;
at Cambridge, 120;
made Secretary of State, 133
Milton's belief in himself, 121;
fight for relationships, 126;
pamphlets, 131;
views on divorce, 126, 127
Mirandola, Picadella, 44, 45
Modern world, The dawn of, 37, 38
Monte Rosa, 13
Moravians, The, 155
Morley, John, 111
Morley's _Life of Gladstone_, 156
Morris, William, 196
Napoleon, 103, 164
Naseby, Battle of, 109
Nelson, Lord, 146
Newton, Sir Isaac, 200
_Othello_, 13
Paradise, 26, 28
_Paradise Lost_, 123, 136, 139
_Paradise Regained_, 123
Pattison, Mark, 129
Paul II, 41
Penelope, 36, 37
Pericles, 37
Peter the Hermit, 49
Petrarch, 34
Philip II of Spain, 56, 57, 61, 63, 65, 68, 69, 70, 74
Phillips, Wendell, 90, 158
Pius II, 41
_Pilgrim's Progress, The_, 85
Pitt, William, 144, 146
Plato, 45
Pope, Alexander, 16
Prince Djem, 51
Prince Rupert, 109, 111
Priors of Florence, The, 16
Purgatory, 25, 29, 30, 32
Puritanism, 142
Puritans, The, 138, 139
Pym, John, 101, 108, 123
Queen Victoria, 180, 191
Raleigh, Sir Walter, 103
Raphael, 11, 21, 112, 123
Ravenna, 32
"Renaissance, The Morning Star of," 10
Renaissance, The, 35
Restoration, The, 135
Revival of learning, The, 34
Richelieu, 144
_Ring and the Book, The_, 39
Rodin's _Thinker_, 191
Rome, 35, 41, 51, 216
_Romola_, 39
Ruskin, John, 57, 190, 192, 193, 195, 196, 197, 198, 199, 200, 203,
205, 206, 207, 208, 210, 211, 213, 214, 215, 216;
and social reform, 194;
books of his childhood, 207;
world's debt to, 205
Savonarola, 37, 39, 40, 41, 42, 44, 46, 49, 51, 53, 84
Shakespeare, 10, 11, 13, 90, 117, 141
Shelley, 141
Socrates, 50, 84
St. Peter's Cathedral, 15
_Story of the Dutch Republic_, Motley's, 39
Swammerdam, 216
Tasso, 99
Taylor's _Purity of Intention_, 154
Tennyson, 106, 115
Torquemada, 64
Toynbee, Arnold, 197, 198
Truth, Sojourner, 202, 203
Turner, J. W., 205
Tyndale, William, 54
Ulysses, 13, 36, 37
Venice, 55
Verona, Bishop of, 53
Virgil, 24, 29
_Vita Nuova_, 21
Voltaire, 26, 115
Walpole, Horace, 145, 151
Washington, George, 99, 102, 113, 143, 168, 182
Webster, Daniel, 103, 178, 212
Wellington, Duke of, 146
Wesley, Charles, 147, 148
Wesley, John, 143, 144, 145, 150, 152, 153, 154, 155, 158, 159, 160,
161, 162, 163, 164;
at Oxford, 154;
growth of followers, 143;
_Journal_ of, 150, 153;
labours of, 100, 152, 153, 156, 157;
last words of, 164;
liberality of, 161;
moral courage of, 157;
persecution of, 158;
personal traits, 159;
plan for world evangelization, 162
Wesley, Samuel, 153
Wesley, Susannah, 153
Whitefield, George, 147, 148, 149, 155
Wilberforce, William, 194
William the Silent, 56, 57, 59, 61, 66, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 76,
77, 80, 82
Wordsworth, William, 200
_Printed in the United States of America_
Transcriber's Note
Hyphenation inconsistencies left as in the original
Obvious punctuation and spelling errors repaired
Pg 84: "...the path the heroes' trod." to "...the path the heroes
trod."
Pg 156: Removed extraneous blank line from August 23, 1733 journal
entry