churches, trees, flowers and herbs were drawn withlwonderful
precision, minuteness of detail and delicacy of hand, solely
to recall some specific aspect of nature or art, of which he
wished to retain a record. In his gift for recording the most
subtle characters of architectural carvings and details, Ruskin
has hardly been surpassed by the most distinguished painters.
In 1853 The Stones of Venice was completed at Herne Hill,
and he began a series of Letters and Notes on pictures and
architecture. In this year (aet. 34) he opened the long series of
public lectures wherein he came forward as an oral teacher and
preacher, not a little to the alarm of his parents and amidst
a storm of controversy. The Edinburgh Lectures (November
1853) treated Architecture, Turner, and Pre-Raphaelitism.
The Manchester Lectures (July 1857) treated the moral and
social uses of art, now embodied in A Joy for Ever. Some other
lectures are reprinted in On the Old Road and The Two Paths
(1859).. These lectures did not prevent the issue of various
Notes on the Royal Academy pictures and the Turner collections;
works on the H arbours of England (1856); on the Elements of
Drawing (1857); the Elements of Perspective (18 59), and at last,
after prolonged labour, the fifth and .final volume of Modern
Painters was published in ISOO (oet. 41). This marks an epoch
in the career of John Ruskin; and the year 1860 closed the
seriesof his works on art strictly so called; indeed, this was
the last of his regular works in substantial form. The last forty
years of his life were devoted to expounding his views, or rather
his doctrines, on social and industrial problems, on education,
morals and religion, wherein art becomes an incidental and
instrumental means to a higher and more spiritual life. And
his teaching was embodied in an enormous series of Lectures,
Letters, Articles, Selections and serial pamphlets. These are
now collected in upwards of thirty volumes in the final edition.
The entire set of Ruskin's publications amounts to more than
fifty works having distinctive titles.~ For some years before
1860 Ruskin had been deeply stirred by reflecting on the condition
of all industrial work and the evils of modern society.
His lectures on art had dealt bitterly with the mode in which
buildings and other works were produced. In 1854, he joined
Mr F. D. Maurice, Mr T. Hughes, and several of the new school
of painters, in teaching classes at the Working Men's College.
But it was not until 1860 that he definitely began to propound
a new social scheme, denouncing the dogmas of political
economy. Four lectures on this topic appeared in the Cornhill
Magazine until the public disapproval led the editor, then W. M.
Thackeray, to close the series. They were published in 1862
as Unto this Lost. In the same year he wrote four papers in
the same sense in Fraser's Magazine, then edited by ]. A.
F roude; but he in turn was compelled to suspend the issue.
They were completed and ultimately issued under the title
M unera Pulveris. These two small books contain the earliest
and most systematic of all Ruskin's efforts to depict a new social
Utopia: they contain a vehement repudiation of the orthodox
formulas of the economists; and they are for the most part
written in a trenchant but simple style, in striking contrast to
the florid and discursive form of his works on art.
In 1864 Ruskin's father died, at the age of 79, leaving his
son a large fortune and a fine property at Denmark Hill. John
still lived there with his mother, aged 83, inlirm, and failing
in sight, to whom came as a companion their cousin, ]oanna
Ruskin Agnew, afterwards Mrs Arthur Severn. At the end
of the year 1864 Ruskin delivered at Manchester a new series
on reading, education, woman's
expansion of his earlier treatises
afterwards was included with a
the fantastic title of Sesame and
of lectures-not on art, but
work and social morals-the
on economic sophisms. This
Dublin lecture of 1868 under
Lilies (perhaps the most popular of his social essays), of which 44,000 copies were issued down to 1900. He made this, in 1871, the first volume of his collected lectures and essays, the more popular and didactic form of his new Utopia of human life. It contains, with Fors, the most complete sketch of his conception of the place of woman in modern society. In the very characteristic preface to the new edition of 1871 he proposes never to reprint his earlier works on art; disclaims many of the views they contained, and much in their literary form; and specially regrets the narrow Protestantism by which they were pervaded. -In the year 1866' he published a little book about girls, and written for girls, a mixture of morals, theology, economics and geology, under the title of Ethics of the Dust; and this was followed by a more important and popular work, The Crown of Wild Olive. This. in its ultimate form contained lectures on “ Work, ” “ Traffic, ” “ War, ” and the “ Future of England.” It was one of his most trenchant utterances, full of fancy, wit, eloquence and elevated thought. But a more serious volume was- Time and Tide (1867), a series of twenty-tive letters to a Workman of Sunderland, upon various points in the Ruskinian Utopia. This little collection of “ Thoughts, ” written with wonderful vivacity, ingenuity and fervour, is the best summary of the author's social and economic programme, and contains some of his wisest and finest thoughts in the purest and most masculine English that he had at his command. In 1869 he issued the Queen of the Air, lectures on Greek myths, a subject he now took up, with some aid from the late Sir C. Newton. It was followed by some other occasional pieces; and in the same year he was elected Slade professor of art in the university of Oxford. He now entered on his professorial career, which continued with some intervals down to 1884, and occupied a large part of his energies. His lectures began in February 1870, and were so crowded that they had to be given in the Sheldonian Theatre, and frequently were repeated to a second audience. He was made honorary fellow of Corpus Christi, and occupied rooms in the college. In 1871 his mother died, at the age of 90, and his cousin, Miss Agnew, married Mr Arthur Severn. In that year he bought from Mr Linton, Brantwood, an old cottage and property on Coniston Lake, a lovely spot facing the mountain named the Old Man. He added greatly to the house and property, and lived in it continuously until his death in 1900. In 1871, one of the most eventful years of his life, be began Fors Clavigera, a small serial addressed to the working men of England, and published only by Mr George Allen, engraver, at Keston, in Kent, at 7d., and afterwards at 10d., but without discount, and not through thettrade. This was a medley of social, moral and religious reflections interspersed with casual- thoughts about persons, events and art. Fors means alternatively Fate, Force or Chance, bearing the Clovis, Club, Key or Nail, i.e. power, patience and law. It was a desultory exposition of. the Ruskinian ideal of life, , manners and society, full of wit, play, invective and sermons on things in general. It was continued with intervals down to 1884, and contained ninety-six letters or pamphlets, partly illustrated, which originally filled eight volumes and are now reduced to four. The early years of his Oxford 'professorship were occupied by severe labour, sundry travels, attacks of illness and another cruel disappointment in love. In spite of this, he lectured, founded a museum of art, to which he gave pictures and drawings and £ 5000; he sought to form at Oxford a school of drawing; he started a model shop for the sale of tea, and model lodgings in Marylebone for poor tenants. At Oxford he set his pupils to work on making roads to improve the country. He now founded “ St George's Guild, ” himself contributing £7000, the object of which was to form a model industrial and social movement, to buy lands, mills and factories, and to start a model industry on co-operative or Socialist lines. In connexion with this was a museum for the study of art and science at Sheffield. Ruskin himself endowed the museum with works of art and money; a full account of it has been given in Mr E. T. Cook's Studies in Ruskin (1890), which contains the particulars of his university lectures and of his economic and social experiments. It .is unnecessary to follow out the history of these somewhat unpromising attempts. None of them came to much good, except the Sheffield museum, which is an established success, and is now transferred to the town. In Fors, which was continued month by month for seven years. Ruskin poured out his thoughts, proposals and rebukes on
