JOHN RUSKIN.
Mr. John Ruskin was born in London in 1819. He gained the Newdigate Prize for English verse at Oxford in 1839. Four years afterwards, in 1843, the first volume of his great work, 'Modern Painters,' appeared. The object with which the book was begun was a very noble one. It was to defend an old man and very great artist from the attacks of critics, who neither understood Turner's pictures nor his art. On its first appearance the book was rather scoffed at; but as it contained great truths about art, expressed in language of unsurpassed purity and eloquence, it soon made its way into circles beyond the reach of the critics. Three years afterwards, the second volume of 'Modern Painters' was published. Ten years after that, the third volume appeared; and it was not until 1860 that the book was completed.
Altogether, seventeen years elapsed between the first appearance of 'Modern Painters' and the completion of this great work.
It would be impossible in a small space to give a clear analysis of the contents of the five volumes of which it is composed. The motive for the publication of the first volume we have stated. This was the vindication of the greatest genius the English school of painters has produced from the calumnies of the then existing writers on art.
Turner was the butt of their ignorance. The only element necessary to the composition of a critic they seem to have possessed was an acquaintance with the art of penmanship. That generation has passed away; and we may thank Mr. Ruskin for having left the race of art-critics who have taken the place of the writers of 1843 no excuse for being ignorant of the elements or sources of pleasure in art—ideas of truth, of beauty, and of relation.
'In these books of mine,' says their author, 'their distinctive character as essays on art is their bringing everything to a root in a human passion or hope;' and he adds that they arose first, 'not in any desire to explain
