In the very heart of the great city of London, shut in by dingy brick
walls that closed upon him to such an extent that it was only by going
into the middle of the street and looking up that he could ever see the
sky, in the early part of the century, was born the man who has the
finest eye for the beauties of the natural world, and the most eloquent
pen in describing them, that the century has produced.
We will make no exception of poet or painter in this statement; for John
Ruskin sees more and better than any poet of the day, and can give in
words a more vivid picture of a scene he loves than any painter can
produce. Indeed, few men have lived at any time who could color a
landscape as Ruskin colors it, or who have so delicate an eye for the
shyest and most sequestered beauties, as has this poet-painter. Probably
Wordsworth comes nearer to Ruskin than any other modern writer in his
love of the natural world, and he has given us the finest descriptions
we have of some phases of Nature; but there is a glow and a depth of
feeling about Ruskin's descriptions which even Wordsworth lacks. A real
worship of Nature runs through all that he has written. Think of a child
with such a nature as this brought up in a crowded city,--a city unlike
many others, especially in this country and on the Continent, where
lovely glimpses of Nature may be had from open squares, or streets
leading out into lovely country roads. In New York one can hardly walk
anywhere without catching glimpses of the water and the shores of New
Jersey or Long Island. Most boys, we fancy, penetrate to the Battery and
enjoy its superb outlook; or they have the run of Central Park, where
they make a sort of acquaintance with Nature, which, if somewhat
artificial, is much better than no knowledge at all. In Edinburgh the
inhabitants live under the shadow of its two fantastic mountains, and
from their windows can trace the windings of its glittering frith. Not
even the lofty houses of the Canongate or the battlements of the castle
afford the eye an equal pleasure. In Venice not even the Palace of the
Doge, the most beautiful building in the world, or the matchless walls
of fair St. Mark's, can keep the eye from seeking the blue waters of the
Adriatic or the purple outlines of the Alps. Beautiful Verona has a
broad and rushing river of deep blue sweeping through the heart of it;
it has an environment of cliffs, where grow the cypress and the olive,
and a far-away view of the St. Gothard Alps. Rome, from its amphitheatre
of hills, has views of unrivalled loveliness, and its broad Campagna is
a picture in itself. Paris even has its charms of external nature, as
have all the cities of the New World; but London is grim and gray, and
bare and desolate, wrapped in eternal fog. To be sure, it has the
Thames, and there are lovely suburbs; but we mean that vast, densely
crowded part of the city proper which we think of when we say London.
The father of John Ruskin was a London wine-merchant, who made and
bequeathed to him a large fortune. But they were very plain people, and
the youth knew nothing of ostentation or luxury. He says of his
childhood:--
"Nor did I painfully wish what I was never permitted for an instant
to hope, or even imagine, the possession of such things as one saw
in toy-shops. I had a bunch of keys to play with as long as I was
capable only of pleasure in what glittered and jingled; as I grew
older I had a cart and a ball, and when I was five or six years
old, two boxes of well-cut wooden bricks. With these modest, but, I
still think, entirely sufficient possessions, and being always
summarily whipped if I cried, did not do as I was bid, or tumbled
on the stairs, I soon attained serene and secure methods of life
and motion; and could pass my days contentedly in tracing the
square and comparing the colors of my carpet, examining the knots
in the wood of the floors, or counting the bricks in the opposite
houses, with rapturous intervals of excitement during the filling
of the water-cart through its leathern pipe from the dripping iron
post at the pavement edge, or the still more admirable proceedings
of the turncock, when he turned and turned till a fountain sprang
up in the middle of the street. But the carpet, and what patterns I
could find in bed-covers, dresses, or wall-papers to be examined,
were my chief resources; and my attention to the particulars in
these was soon so accurate that when at three and a half I was
taken to have my portrait painted by Mr. Northcote, I had not been
ten minutes alone with him before I asked him why there were holes
in his carpet."
He was once taken when a child to the brow of the crags overlooking
Derwentwater, and he tells of the "intense joy, mingled with awe, that I
had in looking through the hollows in the mossy roots over the crag into
the dark lake, and which has associated itself more or less with all
twining roots of trees ever since." He also speaks of his joy in first
treading on the grass; and, indeed, each fresh bit of acquaintance which
he made with Nature gave him unbounded delight. He says in his late
"Recollections:"--
"To my further great benefit, as I grew older I saw nearly all the
noblemen's houses in England, in reverent and healthy delight of
uncovetous admiration,--perceiving, as soon as I could perceive any
political truth at all, that it was probably much happier to live
in a small house and have Warwick Castle to be astonished at, than
to live in Warwick Castle and have nothing to be astonished at; but
that, at all events, it would not make Brunswick Square in the
least more pleasantly habitable to pull Warwick Castle down. And at
this day, though I have kind invitations enough to visit America,
I could not, even for a couple of months, live in a country so
miserable as to possess no castles."