same period of life has ever done so much to set people thinking in a fresh direction. The generous desire to do justice to Turner, which prompted the book, led, I suppose, to the most triumphant vindication of the kind ever published. In any case, the argument was so forcibly put as to fall like a charge of dynamite into the camp of the somnolent critics of the day. The book, whatever its errors, is, I fancy, the only one in the language which treats to any purpose what is called æsthetics. It is amusing to notice what difficulty the young critic has in finding any previous authorities to confute. He goes back to Locke's essay, and Burke on the 'Sublime and Beautiful,' and Alison on 'Taste,' and the papers by Reynolds in Johnson's Idler, which have also, as he remarks, the high sanction of their editor. In truth, English speculation on such matters was nearly a blank. Untrammelled by any solemn professors of æsthetics, Ruskin could be all the fresher; and perhaps the better able to impress readers who were neither philosophical nor æsthetic. People who shared the indifference to art of those dark ages (I can answer for one) were suddenly fascinated, and found to their amazement that they knew a book about pictures
