may be the true way of stating the relation between art and morals, there is a close connection between good art and sound social conditions. If a people become selfish and brutalised, no national art, at least, can flourish. Far be it from me to attempt an accurate statement; but I cannot doubt that Ruskin's vehement assertions were at least approximations to a most important truth. He was thus in face of a dilemma. Delicate and refined natures, indeed, might shut themselves up in a Tennysonian 'palace of art,' and cultivate ideals as remote as possible from the prosaic ugliness of the modern world. Ruskin's sympathies and moral feelings were too strong. Even in his early writings, he objected to use the word 'æsthetic' because it suggested the effeminate taste which 'ministers to morbid sensibilities.' Like William Morris, on the same grounds, he held that art as a social product could only be renewed by regenerating society itself. That was a tolerably large enterprise, into which he threw himself with, perhaps, more energy than reflection; but which led, at least, to the utterance of some very pungent and much-needed truths.
About 1860 he began his warfare against the creed of the modern world, which for him was
