Chapter VIII: Section III: Time of "the Masters." (1)

252. (39.) _Study of the top of the Pilaster next the Castelbarco Tomb._
(R.)

The wild fig leaves are unfinished; for my assistant having
unfortunately shown his solicitude for their preservation too
energetically to some street boys who were throwing stones at them,
they got a ladder, and rooted them up the same night. The purple
and fine-grained white marbles of the pilaster are entirely
uninjured in surface by three hundred years' exposure. The coarse
white marble above has moldered, and is gray with lichens.

(40.) _Study of the base of the same Pilaster, and connected Facade._
(R.)

Showing the effect of differently colored marbles arranged in
carefully inequal masses.

253. (41.) _Interior Court of the Ducal Palace of Venice, with Giant's
Stair._ (R.)

Sketched in 1841, and perhaps giving some characters which more
finished drawing would lose.

(42.) _The Piazza d' Erbe, Verona._ (R.)

Sketched in 1841, showing general effect and pretty grouping of the
later Veronese buildings.

(43.) _Piazza de' Signori, Verona._

Sketched last year. Note the bill advertising Victor Hugo's "Homme
qui rit," pasted on the wall of the palace.

The great tower is of the Gothic time. Note its noble sweep of
delicately ascending curves sloped inwards.

(44.) _Gate of Ruined School of St. John, Venice._ (Photograph.)

Exquisite in floral sculpture, and finish of style.

(45.) _Hawthorn Leaves, from the base of Pilaster, in the Church of St.
Maria dé Miracoli, Venice._ (R.)

In the finest style of floral sculpture. It cannot be surpassed for
perfectness of treatment; especially for the obtaining of life and
softness, by broad surfaces and fine grouping.

(46.) _Basrelief from one of the Inner Doors of the Ducal Palace._

Very noble, and typical of the pure style.

(47.) _St. John Baptist and other Saints._ (Cima da Conegliano.)

Consummate work; but the photograph, though well taken, darkens it
terribly.

(48.) _Meeting of Joachim and Anna._ (Vettor Carpaccio.) (Photograph.)

(49.) _Madonna and Saints._ (John Bellini.) Portrait. (Mantegna.)
(Photographs.)

(50.) _Madonna._ (John Bellini.)

With Raphael's "Della Seggiola." Showing the first transition from
the style of the "Masters" to that of modern times.

_The Photographs in the above series are all from the Pictures
themselves._

CHRISTIAN ART AND SYMBOLISM.[15]

A PREFACE.

254. The writer of this book has long been my friend, and in the early days of friendship was my disciple.

But, of late, I have been his; for he has devoted himself earnestly to the study of forms of Christian Art which I had little opportunity of examining, and has been animated in that study by a brightness of enthusiasm which has been long impossible to me. Knowing this, and that he was able perfectly to fill what must otherwise have been a rudely bridged chasm in my teaching at Oxford, I begged him to give these lectures, and to arrange them for press. And this he has done to please me; and now that he has done it, I am, in one sense, anything but pleased: for I like his writing better than my own, and am more jealous of it than I thought it was in me to be of any good work--how much less of my friend's! I console myself by reflecting, or at least repeating to myself and endeavoring to think, that he could not have found out all this if I had not shown him the way. But most deeply and seriously I am thankful for such help, in a work far too great for my present strength; help all the more precious because my friend can bring to the investigation of early Christian Art, and its influence, the integrity and calmness of the faith in which it was wrought, happier than I in having been a personal comforter and helper of men, fulfilling his life in daily and unquestionable duty; while I have been, perhaps wrongly, always hesitatingly, persuading myself that it was my duty to do the things which pleased me.

255. Also, it has been necessary to much of my analytical work that I should regard the art of every nation as much as possible from their own natural point of view; and I have striven so earnestly to realize belief which I supposed to be false, and sentiment which was foreign to my temper, that at last I scarcely know how far I think with other people's minds, and see with anyone's eyes but my own. Even the effort to recover my temporarily waived conviction occasionally fails; and what was once secured to me becomes theoretical like the rest.

But my old scholar has been protected by his definitely directed life from the temptations of this speculative equity; and I believe his writings to contain the truest expression yet given in England of the feelings with which a Christian gentleman of sense and learning should regard the art produced in ancient days, by the dawn of the faiths which still guide his conduct and secure his peace.

256. On all the general principles of Art, Mr. Tyrwhitt and I are absolutely at one; but he has often the better of me in his acute personal knowledge of men and their ways. When we differ in our thoughts of things, it is because we know them on contrary sides; and often his side is that most naturally seen, and which it is most desirable to see. There is one important matter, for instance, on which we are thus apparently at issue, and yet are not so in reality. These lectures show, throughout, the most beautiful and just reverence for Michael Angelo, and are of especial value in their account of him; while the last lecture on Sculpture,[16] which I gave at Oxford, is entirely devoted to examining the modes in which his genius failed, and perverted that of other men. But Michael Angelo is great enough to make praise and blame alike necessary, and alike inadequate, in any true record of him. My friend sees him as a traveler sees from a distance some noble mountain range, obscure in golden clouds and purple shade; and I see him as a sullen miner would the same mountains, wandering among their precipices through chill of storm and snow, and discerning that their strength was perilous and their substance sterile. Both of us see truly, both partially; the complete truth is the witness of both.

257. The notices of Holbein, and the English whom he painted (see especially the sketch of Sir Thomas Wyatt in the sixth lecture), are to my mind of singular value, and the tenor of the book throughout, as far as I can judge--for, as I said, much of it treats of subjects with which I am unfamiliar--so sound, and the feeling in it so warm and true, and true in the warmth of it, that it refreshes me like the sight of the things themselves it speaks of. New and vivid sight of them it will give to many readers; and to all who will regard my commendation I commend it; asking those who have hitherto credited my teaching to read these lectures as they would my own; and trusting that others, who have doubted me, will see reason to put faith in my friend.

PISA, _30th April, 1872._

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 15: Preface to the above-named book, by the Rev. St. John Tyrwhitt. London: Smith, Elder, & Co., 1872.--ED.]

[Footnote 16: See Mr. Ruskin's pamphlet on "The Relation of Michael Angelo to Tintoret," being (although separately printed) the seventh lecture of the course (1872) published as _Aratra Pentelici_--ED.]

ART SCHOOLS OF MEDIÆVAL CHRISTENDOM.[17]

A PREFACE.

258. The number of British and American travelers who take unaffected interest in the early art of Europe is already large, and is daily increasing; daily also, as I thankfully perceive, feeling themselves more and more in need of a guidebook containing as much trustworthy indication as they can use of what they may most rationally spend their time in examining. The books of reference published by Mr. Murray, though of extreme value to travelers, who make it their object to see (in his, and their, sense of the word) whatever is to be seen, are of none whatever, or may perhaps be considered, justly, as even of quite the reverse of value, to travelers who wish to see only what they may in simplicity understand, and with pleasure remember; while the histories of art, and biographies of artists, to which the more earnest student in his novitiate must have recourse, are at once so voluminous, so vague, and so contradictory, that I cannot myself conceive his deriving any other benefit from their study than a deep conviction of the difficulty of the subject, and of the incertitude of human opinions.

259. It seemed to me, on reading the essays collected in this volume, as they appeared in the periodical[18] for which they were written, that the author not only possessed herself a very true discernment of the qualities in mediæval art which were justly deserving of praise, but had unusually clear understanding of the degree in which she might expect to cultivate such discernment in the general mind of polite travelers; nor have I less admired her aptitude in collation of essentially illustrative facts, so as to bring the history of a very widely contemplative range of art into tenable compass and very graceful and serviceable form. Her reading, indeed, has been, with respect to many very interesting periods of religious workmanship, much more extensive than my own; and when I consented to edit the volume of collected papers, it was not without the assurance of considerable advantage to myself during the labor of revising them.

260. The revision, however, I am sorry to say, has been interrupted and imperfect, very necessarily the last from the ignorance I have just confessed of more than one segment of the great illuminated field of early religious art, to which the writer most wisely has directed equal and symmetrical attention, and interrupted partly under extreme pressure of other occupation, and partly in very fear of being tempted to oppress the serenity of the general prospect, which I think these essays are eminently calculated to open before an ingenious reader, with the stormy chiaroscuro of my own preference and reprobation. I leave the work, therefore, absolutely Miss Owen's, with occasional note of remonstrance, but without retouch, though it must be distinctly understood that when I allow my name to stand as the editor of a book, it is in no mere compliment (if my editorship could indeed be held as such) to the genius or merit of the author; but it means that I hold myself entirely responsible, in main points, for the accuracy of the views advanced, and that I wish the work to be received, by those who have confidence in my former teaching, as an extension and application of the parts of it which I have felt to be incomplete.

OXFORD, _November 27, 1875._

NOTE.--The "notes of remonstrance" or approbation
scattered through the volume are not numerous. They are given
below, preceded in each case by the (italicized) statement or
expression: giving rise to them:--

(1) P. 73. "_The peculiar characteristic of the Byzantine churches
is the dome._" "Form derived first from the Catacombs. See Lord
Lindsay."

(2) P. 89. "_The octagon baptistry at Florence, ascribed to Lombard
kings...._" "No; it is Etruscan work of pure descent."

(3) _Id._ "_S. Michele, of Pavia, pure Lombard of seventh century,
rebuilt in tenth._" "Churches were often rebuilt with their
original sculptures. I believe many in this church to be Lombard.
See next page."

(4) P. 95. "_The revolution begun by Rafaelle has ended in the
vulgar painting, the sentimental prints, and the colored
statuettes, which have made the religious art of the nineteenth
century a by-word for its feebleness on the one side, its
superstition on the other._" "Excellent; but my good scholar has
not distinguished vulgar from non-vulgar naturalism. Perhaps she
will as I read on."

[Compare the last note in the book, pp. 487-8, where Miss Owen's
statement that "_the cause of Rafaelle's popularity ... has been
that predominance of exaggerated dramatic representation, which in
his pictures is visible above all moral and spiritual qualities,_"
is noted to be "Intensely and accurately true."]

(5) P. 108. "_It may be ... it is scarcely credible._" "What does
it matter what may be or what is scarcely credible? I hope the
reader will consider what a waste of time the thinking of things is
when we can never rightly know them."

(6) P. 109. On the statement that "_no vital school of art has ever
existed save as the expression of the vital and unquestioned faith
of a people,_" followed by some remarks on external helps to
devotion, there is a note at the word "people." "Down to this line
this page is unquestionably and entirely true. I do not answer for
the rest of the clause, but do not dispute it."

(7) P. 113. _S. Michele at Lucca._ "The church is now only a modern
architect's copy."

(8) P. 129. "_There is a good model of this pulpit_" (Niccola's in
the Pisan Baptistry) "_in the Kensington Museum, through which we
may learn much of the rise of Gothic sculpture._" "You cannot do
anything of the kind. Pisan sculpture can only be studied in the
original marble; half its virtue is in the chiseling."

(9) P. 136. "_S. Donato's shrine_" (by Giovanni Picano) "_in Arezzo
Cathedral is one of the finest monuments of the Pisan school._"
"No. He tried to be too fine, and overdid it. The work is merely
accumulated commonplace."

(10) P. 170. On Giotto drawing without compasses a circle with a
crayon, "_not a brush, with which, as Professor Ruskin explained,
the feat would have been impossible. See 'Giotto and his Works in
Padua.'_" "Don't; but practice with a camel's-hair brush till you
can do it. I knew nothing of brush-work proper when I wrote that
essay on Padua."

(11) P. 179. In the first of the bas-reliefs of Giotto's tower at
Florence, "_Noah lies asleep, or, as Professor Ruskin maintains,
drunk._" "I don't 'maintain' anything of the sort; I _know_ it. He
is as drunk as a man can be, and the expression of drunkenness
given with deliberate and intense skill, as on the angle of the
Ducal Palace at Venice."

(12) P. 179. On Giotto's "_astronomy, figured by an old man_" on
the same tower. "Above which are seen, by the astronomy of his
heart, the heavenly host represented above the stars."

(13) P. 190. "_The Loggia dei Langi_" (at Florence) ... "_the round
arches, new to those times ... See Vasari._" "Vasari is an ass with
precious things in his panniers; but you must not ask his opinion
on any matter. The round arches new to those times had been the
universal structure form in all Italy, Roman or Lombard, feebly and
reluctantly pointed in the thirteenth century, and occasionally, as
in the Campo Santo of Pisa, and Orcagna's own Or San Michele,
standing within three hundred yards of the Loggia arches 'new to
those times,' filled with tracery, itself composed of intersecting
round arches. Now, it does not matter two soldi to the history of
art who _built_, but who designed and carved the Loggia. It is out
and out the grandest in Italy, and its archaic virtues themselves
are impracticable and inconceivable. I don't vouch for its being
Orcagna's, nor do I vouch for the Campo Santo frescoes being his. I
have never specially studied him; nor do I know what men of might
there were to work with or after him. But I know the Loggia to be
mighty architecture of Orcagna's style and time, and the Last
Judgment and Triumph of Death in the Campo Santo to be the sternest
lessons written on the walls of Tuscany, and worth more study alone
than English travelers usually give to Pisa, Lucca, Pistoja, and
Florence altogether."

(14) P. 468. "_The Gothic style for churches never took root in
Venice._" "Not quite correct. The Ducal Palace traceries are shown
in the 'Stones of Venice' (vol. ii.) to have been founded on those
of the Frari."

(15) P. 471. Mantegna. "_No feeling had he for vital beauty of
human face, or the lower creatures of the earth._" To this Miss
Owen adds in a note, "Professor Ruskin reminds me to notice here,
in qualification, Mantegna's power of painting inanimate forms, as,
_e. g._, in the trees and leaves of his Madonna of the National
Gallery. 'He is,' says Professor Ruskin, 'the most wonderful
leaf-painter of Lombardy.'"

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 17: Preface to the above-named book by Miss A. C. Owen, edited by Mr. Ruskin. London: Mozley & Smith, 1876.--ED.]

[Footnote 18: _The Monthly Packet._--ED.]

THE EXTENSION OF RAILWAYS IN THE LAKE DISTRICT.[19]

A PROTEST.

261. The evidence collected in the following pages, in support of their pleading, is so complete, and the summary of his cause given with so temperate mastery by Mr. Somervell, that I find nothing to add in circumstance, and little to re-enforce in argument. And I have less heart to the writing even of what brief preface so good work might by its author's courtesy be permitted to receive from me, occupied as I so long have been in efforts tending in the same direction, because, on that very account, I am far less interested than my friend in this local and limited resistance to the elsewhere fatally victorious current of modern folly, cruelty, and ruin. When the frenzy of avarice is daily drowning our sailors, suffocating our miners, poisoning our children, and blasting the cultivable surface of England into a treeless waste of ashes,[20] what does it really matter whether a flock of sheep, more or less, be driven from the slopes of Helvellyn, or the little pool of Thirlmere filled with shale, or a few wild blossoms of St. John's vale lost to the coronal of English spring? Little to anyone; and--let me say this, at least, in the outset of all saying--_nothing_ to _me_. No one need charge me with selfishness in any word or action for defense of these mossy hills. I do not move, with such small activity as I have yet shown in the business, because I live at Coniston (where no sound of the iron wheels by Dunmail Raise can reach me), nor because I can find no other place to remember Wordsworth by, than the daffodil margin of his little Rydal marsh. What thoughts and work are yet before me, such as he taught, must be independent of any narrow associations. All my own dear mountain grounds and treasure-cities, Chamouni, Interlachen, Lucerne, Geneva, Venice, are long ago destroyed by the European populace; and now, for my own part, I don't care what more they do; they may drain Loch Katrine, drink Loch Lomond, and blow all Wales and Cumberland into a heap of slate shingle; the world is wide enough yet to find me some refuge during the days appointed for me to stay in it. But it is no less my duty, in the cause of those to whom the sweet landscapes of England are yet precious, and to whom they may yet teach what they taught me, in early boyhood, and would still if I had it now to learn,--it is my duty to plead with what earnestness I may, that these sacred sibylline books may be redeemed from perishing.

262. But again, I am checked, because I don't know how to speak to the persons who _need_ to be spoken to in this matter.

Suppose I were sitting, where still, in much-changed Oxford, I am happy to find myself, in one of the little latticed cells of the Bodleian Library, and my kind and much-loved friend, Mr. Coxe, were to come to me with news that it was proposed to send nine hundred excursionists through the library every day, in three parties of three hundred each; that it was intended they should elevate their minds by reading all the books they could lay hold of while they stayed;--and that practically scientific persons accompanying them were to look out for and burn all the manuscripts that had any gold in their illuminations, that the said gold might be made of practical service; but that he, Mr. Coxe, could not, for his part, sympathize with the movement, and hoped I would write something in deprecation of it! As I should then feel, I feel now, at Mr. Somervell's request that I would write him a preface in defense of Helvellyn. What could I say for Mr. Coxe? Of course, that nine hundred people should see the library daily, instead of one, is only fair to the nine hundred, and if there is gold in the books, is it not public property? If there is copper or slate in Helvellyn, shall not the public burn or hammer it out--and they say they will, of course--in spite of us? What does it signify to _them_ how we poor old quiet readers in this mountain library feel? True, we know well enough,--what the nine hundred excursionist scholars don't--that the library can't be read quite through in a quarter of an hour; also, that there is a pleasure in real reading, quite different from that of turning pages; and that gold in a missal, or slate in a crag, may be more precious than in a bank or a chimney-pot. But how are these practical people to credit us,--these, who cannot read, nor ever will; and who have been taught that nothing is virtuous but care for their bellies, and nothing useful but what goes into them?

263. Whether to be credited or not, the real facts of the matter, made clear as they are in the following pages, can be briefly stated for the consideration of any candid person.

The arguments in favor of the new railway are in the main four, and may be thus answered.

1. "There are mineral treasures in the district capable of development."

_Answer._ It is a wicked fiction, got up by whosoever has got it up, simply to cheat shareholders. Every lead and copper vein in Cumberland has been known for centuries; the copper of Coniston does not pay; and there is none so rich in Helvellyn. And the main central volcanic rocks, through which the track lies, produce neither slate nor hematite, while there is enough of them at Llanberis and Dalton to roof and iron-grate all England into one vast Bedlam, if it honestly perceives itself in need of that accommodation.

2. "The scenery must be made accessible to the public."

_Answer._ It is more than accessible already; the public are pitched into it head-foremost, and necessarily miss two-thirds of it. The Lake scenery really begins, on the south, at Lancaster, where the Cumberland hills are seen over Morecambe Bay; on the north, at Carlisle, where the moors of Skiddaw are seen over the rich plains between them and the Solway. No one who loves mountains would lose a step of the approach, from these distances, on either side. But the stupid herds of modern tourists let themselves be emptied, like coals from a sack, at Windermere and Keswick. Having got there, what the new railway has to do is to shovel those who have come to Keswick to Windermere, and to shovel those who have come to Windermere to Keswick. And what then?

3. "But cheap and swift transit is necessary for the working population, who otherwise could not see the scenery at all."

_Answer._ After all your shrieking about what the operatives spend in drink, can't you teach them to save enough out of their year's wages to pay for a chaise and pony for a day, to drive Missis and the Baby that pleasant twenty miles, stopping when they like, to unpack the basket on a mossy bank? If they can't enjoy the scenery that way, they can't any way; and all that your railroad company can do for them is only to open taverns and skittle grounds round Grasmere, which will soon, then, be nothing but a pool of drainage, with a beach of broken gingerbeer bottles; and their minds will be no more improved by contemplating the scenery of such a lake than of Blackpool.

4. What else is to be said? I protest I can find nothing, unless that engineers and contractors must live. Let them live, but in a more useful and honorable way than by keeping Old Bartholomew Fair under Helvellyn, and making a steam merry-go-round of the lake country.

There are roads to be mended, where the parish will not mend them, harbors of refuge needed, where our deck-loaded ships are in helpless danger; get your commissions and dividends where you know that work is needed, not where the best you can do is to persuade pleasure-seekers into giddier idleness.

264. The arguments brought forward by the promoters of the railway may thus be summarily answered. Of those urged in the following pamphlet in defense of the country as it is, I care only myself to direct the reader's attention to one (see pp. 27, 28), the certainty, namely, of the deterioration of moral character in the inhabitants of every district penetrated by a railway. Where there is little moral character to be lost, this argument has small weight. But the Border peasantry of Scotland and England, painted with absolute fidelity by Scott and Wordsworth (for leading types out of this exhaustless portraiture, I may name Dandie Dinmont and Michael), are hitherto a scarcely injured race, whose strength and virtue yet survive to represent the body and soul of England before her days of mechanical decrepitude and commercial dishonor. There are men working in my own fields who might have fought with Henry the Fifth at Agincourt without being discerned from among his knights; I can take my tradesmen's word for a thousand pounds; my garden gate opens on the latch to the public road, by day and night, without fear of any foot entering but my own, and my girl-guests may wander by road, or moorland, or through every bosky dell of this wild wood, free as the heather bees or squirrels.

What effect, on the character of such a population, will be produced by the influx of that of the suburbs of our manufacturing towns, there is evidence enough, if the reader cares to ascertain the facts, in every newspaper on his morning table.

265. And now one final word concerning the proposed beneficial effect on the minds of those whom you send to corrupt us.

I have said I take no selfish interest in this resistance to the railroad. But I do take an unselfish one. It is precisely because I passionately wish to improve the minds of the populace, and because I am spending my own mind, strength, and fortune, wholly on that object, that I don't want to let them see Helvellyn while they are drunk. I suppose few men now living have so earnestly felt--none certainly have so earnestly declared--that the beauty of nature is the blessedest and most necessary of lessons for men; and that all other efforts in education are futile till you have taught your people to love fields, birds, and flowers. Come then, my benevolent friends, join with me in that teaching. I have been at it all my life, and without pride, do solemnly assure you that I know how it is to be managed. I cannot indeed tell you, in this short preface, how, completely, to fulfill so glorious a task. But I can tell you clearly, instantly, and emphatically, in what temper you must set about it. _Here_ are you, a Christian, a gentleman, and a trained scholar; _there_ is your subject of education--a Godless clown, in helpless ignorance. You can present no more blessed offering to God than that human creature, raised into faith, gentleness, and the knowledge of the works of his Lord. But observe this--you must not hope to make so noble an offering to God of that which doth cost you nothing! You must be resolved to labor, and to lose, yourself, before you can rescue this overlabored lost sheep, and offer it alive to its Master. If then, my benevolent friend, you are prepared to take out your two pence, and to give them to the hosts here in Cumberland, saying--"Take care of him, and whatsoever thou spendest more, I will repay thee when I come to Cumberland myself," on _these_ terms--oh my benevolent friends, I am with you, hand and glove, in every effort you wish to make for the enlightenment of poor men's eyes. But if your motive is, on the contrary, to put two pence into your own purse, stolen between the Jerusalem and Jericho of Keswick and Ambleside, out of the poor drunken traveler's pocket;--if your real object, in your charitable offering, is, not even to lend unto the Lord by _giving_ to the poor, but to lend unto the Lord by making a dividend out of the poor;--then, my pious friends, enthusiastic Ananias, pitiful Judas, and sanctified Korah, I will do my best in God's name, to stay your hands, and stop your tongues.

BRANTWOOD, _22nd June, 1876._

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 19: Preface to a pamphlet (1876) entitled "A Protest against the Extension of Railways in the Lake District," compiled by Robert Somervell (Windermere, J. Garnett; London, Simpkin, Marshall & Co.). The pamphlet also contained a printed announcement as follows:--"The author of 'Modern Painters' earnestly requests all persons who may have taken interest in his writings, or who have any personal regard for him, to assist him now in the circulation of the inclosed paper, drawn up by his friend Mr. Somervell, for the defense of the Lake District of England, and to press the appeal, so justly and temperately made in it, on the attention of their personal friends."--ED.]

[Footnote 20: See--the illustration being coincidently given as I correct this page for press--the description of the horrible service, and history of the fatal explosion of dynamite, on the once lovely estates of the Duke of Hamilton, in the _Hamilton Advertiser_ of 10th and 17th June.]

THE STUDY OF BEAUTY AND ART IN LARGE TOWNS.[21]

266. I have been asked by Mr. Horsfall to write a few words of introduction to the following papers. The trust is a frank one, for our friendship has been long and intimate enough to assure their author that my feelings and even practical convictions in many respects differ from his, and in some, relating especially to the subjects here treated of, are even opposed to his; so that my private letters (which, to speak truth, he never attends to a word of) are little more than a series of exhortations to him to sing--once for all--the beautiful Cavalier ditty of "Farewell, Manchester," and pour the dew of his artistic benevolence on less recusant ground. Nevertheless, as assuredly he knows much more of his own town than I do, and as his mind is evidently made up to do the best he can for it, the only thing left for me to do is to help him all I can in the hard task he has set himself, or, if I can't help, at least to bear witness to the goodness of the seed he has set himself to sow among thorns. For, indeed, the principles on which he is working are altogether true and sound; and the definitions and defense of them, in this pamphlet, are among the most important pieces of Art teaching which I have ever met with in recent English literature; in past Art-literature there cannot of course be anything parallel to them, since the difficulties to be met and mischiefs to be dealt with are wholly of to-day. And in all the practical suggestions and recommendations given in the following pages I not only concur, but am myself much aided as I read them in the giving form to my own plans for the museum at Sheffield; nor do I doubt that they will at once commend themselves to every intelligent and candid reader. But, to my own mind, the statements of principle on which these recommendations are based are far the more valuable part of the writings, for these are true and serviceable for all time, and in all places; while in simplicity and lucidity they are far beyond any usually to be found in essays on Art, and the political significance of the laws thus defined is really, I believe, here for the first time rightly grasped and illustrated.

267. Of these, however, the one whose root is deepest and range widest will be denied by many readers, and doubted by others, so that it may be well to say a word or two farther in its interpretation and defense--the saying, namely, that "faith cannot dwell in hideous towns," and that "familiarity with beauty is a most powerful aid to belief." This is a curious saying, in front of the fact that the primary force of infidelity in the Renaissance times was its pursuit of carnal beauty, and that nowadays (at least, so far as my own experience reaches) more faith may be found in the back streets of most cities than in the fine ones. Nevertheless the saying is wholly true, first, because carnal beauty is not true beauty; secondly, because, rightly judged, the fine streets of most modern towns are more hideous than the back ones; lastly--and this is the point on which I must enlarge--because universally the first condition to the believing there is Order in Heaven is the Sight of Order upon Earth; Order, that is to say, not the result of physical law, but of some spiritual power prevailing over it, as, to take instances from my own old and favorite subject, the ordering of the clouds in a beautiful sunset, which corresponds to a painter's invention of them, or the ordering of the colors on a bird's wing, or of the radiations of a crystal of hoarfrost or of sapphire, concerning any of which matters men, so called of science, are necessarily and forever silent, because the distribution of colors in spectra and the relation of planes in crystals are final and causeless facts, _orders_, that is to say, not _laws_. And more than this, the infidel temper which is incapable of perceiving this spiritual beauty has an instant and constant tendency to delight in the reverse of it, so that practically its investigation is always, by preference, of forms of death or disease and every state of disorder and dissolution, the affectionate analysis of vice in modern novels being a part of the same science. And, to keep to my own special field of study--the order of clouds,--there is a grotesquely notable example of the connection between infidelity and the sense of ugliness in a paper in the last _Contemporary Review_, in which an able writer, who signs Vernon Lee, but whose personal view or purpose remains to the close of the essay inscrutable, has rendered with considerable acuteness and animation the course of a dialogue between one of the common modern men about town who are the parasites of their own cigars and two more or less weak and foolish friends of hesitatingly adverse instincts: the three of them, however, practically assuming their own wisdom to be the highest yet attained by the human race; and their own diversion on the mountainous heights of it being by the aspect of a so-called "preposterous" sunset, described in the following terms:--

* * * * *

A brilliant light, which seemed to sink out of the landscape all its reds and yellows, and with them all life; bleaching the yellowing cornfields and brown heath; but burnishing into demoniac[22] energy of color the pastures and oak woods, brilliant against the dark sky, as if filled with green fire.

Along the roadside the poppies, which an ordinary sunset makes flame, were quite extinguished, like burnt-out embers; the yellow hearts of the daisies were quite lost, merged into their shining white petals. And, striking against the windows of the old black and white checkered farm (a ghastly skeleton in this light), it made them not flare, nay, not redden in the faintest degree, but reflect a brilliant speck of white light. Everything was unsubstantial, yet not as in a mist, nay, rather substantial, but flat, as if cut out of paper and pasted on the black branches and green leaves, the livid, glaring houses, with roofs of dead, scarce perceptible rod (as when an iron turning white-hot from red-hot in the stithy grows also dull and dim).

"It looks like the eve of the coming of Antichrist, as described in mediæval hymns," remarked Vere: "the sun, before setting nevermore to rise, sucking all life out of the earth, leaving it but a mound of livid cinders, barren and crumbling, through which the buried nations will easily break their way when they rise."

* * * * *

As I have above said, I do not discern the purpose of the writer of this paper; but it would be impossible to illustrate more clearly this chronic insanity of infidel thought which makes all nature spectral; while, with exactly correspondent and reflective power, whatever _is_ dreadful or disordered in external things reproduces itself in disease of the human mind affected by them.

* * * * *

268. The correspondent relations of beauty to morality are illustrated in the following pages in a way which leaves little to be desired, and scarcely any room for dissent; but I have marked for my own future reference the following passages, of which I think it will further the usefulness of the book that the reader should initially observe the contents and connection.[23]

1 (p. 15, line 6--10). Our idea of beauty in all things depends on what we believe they ought to be and do.

2 (p. 17, line 8--17). Pleasure is most to be found in safe and pure ways, and the greatest happiness of life is to have a great many _little_ happinesses.

3 (p. 24, line 10--30). The wonder and sorrow that in a country possessing an Established Church, no book exists which can be put into the hands of youth to show them the best things that can be done in life, and prevent their wasting it.

4 (p. 28, line 21--36). There is every reason to believe that susceptibility to beauty can be gained through proper training in childhood by almost everyone.

5 (p. 29, line 33--35). But if we are to attain to either a higher morality or a strong love of beauty, such attainment must be the result of a strenuous effort and a strong will.

6 (p. 41, line 16--22). Rightness of form and aspect must first be shown to the people in things which interest them, and about the rightness of appearance in which it is possible for them to care a great deal.

7 (p. 42, line 1--10). And, therefore, rightness of appearance of the bodies, and the houses, and the actions of the people of these large towns, is of more importance than rightness of appearance in what is usually called art, and pictures of noble action and passion and of beautiful scenery are of far greater value than art in things which cannot deeply affect human thought and feeling.

The practical suggestions which, deduced from these principles, occupy the greater part of Mr. Horsfall's second paper, exhibit an untried group of resources in education; and it will be to myself the best encouragement in whatever it has been my hope to institute of Art School at Oxford if the central influence of the University may be found capable of extension by such means, in methods promoting the general happiness of the people of England.

BRANTWOOD, _28th June, 1883._

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 21: Introduction by Mr. Ruskin to a pamphlet entitled "The Study of Beauty and Art in Large Towns, two papers by T. C. Horsfall" (London, Macmillan & Co., 1883). The first of the two papers was originally read at the Congress at Nottingham of the Social Science Association, and the second at the Manchester Field Naturalists' Society.--ED.]

[Footnote 22: See "Art of England."]

[Footnote 23: The passages referred to are as follows:--

1. "Our idea of what beauty is in human being's, in pictures, in houses, in chairs, in animals, in cities, in everything, in short, which we know to have a use, in the main depends on what we believe that human beings, pictures, and the rest ought to be and do.

2. "Every bank in every country lane, every bush, every tree, the sky by day and by night, every aspect of nature, is full of beautiful form or color, or of both, for those whose eyes and hearts and brains have been opened to perceive beauty. Richter has somewhere said that man's _greatest_ defect is that he has such a lot of _small_ ones. With equal truth it may be said that the greatest happiness man can have is to have a great many little happinesses, and therefore a strong love of beauty, which enables almost every square inch of unspoiled country to give us pleasant sensations, is one of the best possessions we can have.

3. "It must be evident to everyone who watches life carefully that hardly anyone reaches the objects which all should live for who does not strive to reach them, and that at present not one person in a hundred so much as knows what are the objects which should be sought in life. It is astounding, therefore, that in a country which possesses an Established Church, richly endowed universities, and even several professors of education, no book exists which can be put into the hands of every intelligent youth, and of every intelligent father and mother, showing what our wisest and best men believe are the best things which can be done in life, and what is the kind of training which makes the doing of these things most easy. It is often said that each of us can profit only by his own experience, but no one believes that. No one can see how many well-meaning persons mistake means for ends and drift into error and sin, simply because neither they nor their parents have known what course should be steered, and what equipment is needed, in the voyage of life,--no one can see this and doubt that a 'guidebook to life,' containing the results of the comparison of the experiences of even half-a-dozen able and sincere men, would save countless people from wasting their lives as most lives are now wasted.

4. "That which is true with regard to music is true with regard to beauty of form and color. Because a great many grown-up people, in spite of great efforts, find it impossible to sing correctly or even to perceive any pleasantness in music, it used to be commonly supposed that a great many people are born without the power of gaining love of, and skill in, music. Now it is known that it is a question of early training, that in every thousand children there are very few,--not, I believe, on an average, more than two or three,--who cannot gain the power of singing correctly and of enjoying music, if they are taught well in childhood while their nervous system can still easily form habits and has not yet formed the habit of being insensible to differences of sound.

"There is every reason to believe that susceptibility to beauty of form and color can also be gained through proper training in childhood by almost everyone.

5. "In such circumstances as ours there is no such thing as 'a _wise_ passiveness.' If we are to attain to a high morality or to strong love of beauty, attainment must be the result of strenuous effort, of strong will.

6. "The principle I refer to is, that, as art is the giving of right or beautiful form, or of beautiful or right appearance, if we desire to make people take keen interest in art, if we desire to make them love good art, we must show it them when applied to things which themselves are very interesting to them, and about the rightness of appearance of which it is therefore possible for them to care a great deal.

7. "Success in bringing the influence of art to bear on the masses of the population in large towns, or on any set of people who have to earn their bread and have not time to acquire an unhealthy appetite for nonsense verses or nonsense pictures, will certainly only be attained by persons who know that art is important just in proportion to the importance of that which it clothes, and who themselves feel that rightness of appearance of the bodies, and the houses, and the actions, in short of the whole life, of the population of those large towns which are now, or threaten soon to be, 'England,' is of far greater importance than rightness of appearance in all that which is usually called 'art,' and who feel, to speak of only the fine arts, that rightness of appearance in pictures of noble action and passion, and of beautiful scenery, love of which is almost a necessary of mental health, is of far greater importance than art can be in things which cannot deeply affect human thought and feeling."--ED.]

* * * * *

NOTES ON NATURAL SCIENCE.

THE COLOR OF THE RHINE. 1834.

THE STRATA OF MONT BLANC. 1834.

THE INDURATION OF SANDSTONE. 1836.

THE TEMPERATURE OF SPRING AND RIVER WATER. 1836.

METEOROLOGY. 1839.

* * *

TREE TWIGS. 1861.

STRATIFIED ALPS OF SAVOY. 1863.

INTELLECTUAL CONCEPTION AND ANIMATED LIFE. 1871.

* * * * *

INQUIRIES ON THE CAUSES OF THE COLOR OF THE WATER OF THE RHINE.[24]

269. I do not think the causes of the color of transparent water have been sufficiently ascertained. I do not mean that effect of color which is simply optical, as the color of the sea, which is regulated by the sky above or the state of the atmosphere, but I mean the settled color of transparent water, which has, when analyzed, been found pure. Now, copper will tinge water green, and that very strongly; but water thus impregnated will not be transparent, and will deposit the copper it holds in solution upon any piece of iron which may be thrown into it. There is a lake in a defile on the northwest flank of Snowdon, which is supplied by a stream which previously passes over several veins of copper; this lake is, of course, of a bright verdigris green, but it is not transparent. Now the coloring effect, of which I speak, is well seen in the water of the Rhone and Rhine. The former of these rivers, when it enters the Lake of Geneva, after having received the torrents descending from the mountains of the Valais, is fouled with mud, or white with the calcareous matter which it holds in solution. Having deposited this in the Lake Leman[25] (thereby gradually forming an immense delta), it issues from the lake perfectly pure, and flows through the streets of Geneva so transparent, that the bottom can be seen twenty feet below the surface, jet so blue, that you might imagine it to be a solution of indigo. In like manner, the Rhine, after purifying itself in the Lake of Constance, flows forth, colored of a clear green, and this under all circumstances and in all weathers. It is sometimes said that this arises from the torrents which supply these rivers generally flowing from the glaciers, the green and blue color of which may have given rise to this opinion; but the color of the ice is purely optical, as the fragments detached from the mass appear white. Perhaps some correspondent can afford me information on the subject.

J. R.[26]

_March, 1834._

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 24: From London's _Magazine of Natural History_ (London, Longmans & Co., 1834), vol. vii., No. 41, pp. 438-9, being its author's earliest contribution to literature.--ED.]

[Footnote 25: This lake, however, if the poet have spoken truly, is not very feculent:--

"Lake Leman woos me with its crystal face,
The mirror where the stars and mountains view
The stillness of their aspect in each trace
Its clear depth yields of their far height and hue."

BYRON.]

[Footnote 26: In the number of the magazine in which this note appeared was an article by "E. L." on the perforation of a leaden pipe by rats, upon which, in a subsequent number (Vol. vii., p. 592), J. R. notes as follows: "E. S. has been, surely, too inattentive to proportions: there is an inconsistency in the dimensions of a leaden pipe about 1-1/4 in. in external diameter, with a bore of about 3/4 in. in diameter; thus leaving a solid circumference of metal varying from 1/2 in. to 3/4 in. in thickness.--_J. R._, _Sept. 1834._"--ED.]

FACTS AND CONSIDERATIONS ON THE STRATA OF MONT BLANC, AND ON SOME INSTANCES OF TWISTED STRATA OBSERVABLE IN SWITZERLAND.[27]

270. The granite ranges of Mont Blanc are as interesting to the geologist as they are to the painter. The granite is dark red, often inclosing veins of quartz, crystallized and compact, and likewise well-formed crystals of schorl. The average elevation of its range of peaks, which extends from Mont Blanc to the Tète Noire, is about 12,000 English feet above the level of the sea. [The highest culminating point is 15,744 feet.] The Aiguille de Servoz, and that of Dru, are excellent examples of the pyramidal and spiratory formation which these granite ranges in general assume. They rise out of immense fields of snow, but, being themselves too steep for snow to rest upon, form red, bare, and inaccessible peaks, which even the chamois scarcely dares to climb. Their bases appear sometimes abutted (if I may so speak) by mica slate, which forms the southeast side of the Valley of Chamonix, whose flanks, if intersected, might appear as (in _fig._ 72), _a_, granite, forming on the one side (B) the Mont Blanc, on the other (C) the Mont Breven; _b_, mica slate resting on the base of Mont Blanc, and which contains amianthus and quartz, in which capillary crystals of titanium occur; _c_, calcareous rock; _d_, alluvium, forming the Valley of Chamonix. I should have mentioned that the granite appears to contain a small quantity of gold, as that metal is found among the granite débris and siliceous sand of the river Arve [_Bakewell_, i. 375]; and I have two or three specimens in which chlorite (both compact and in minute crystals) occupies the place of mica.

J. R.

_March_, 1834.

* * * * *

With this paper were printed some observations on it by the Rev. W. B. Clarke, after which (p. 648) appears the following note by J. R.

* * * * *

271. "TWISTED STRATA.--The contortions of the limestone at the fall of the Nant d'Arpenaz, on the road from Geneva to Chamonix, are somewhat remarkable. The rock is a hard dark brown limestone, forming part of a range of secondary cliffs, which rise from 500 feet to 1000 feet above the defile which they border. The base itself is about 800 feet high. The strata bend very regularly except at _e_ and _f_,[28] where they appear to have been fractured.

* * * * *

_To what Properties in Nature is it owing that the Stones in Buildings, formed originally of the frailest Materials, gradually become indurated by Exposure to the Atmosphere and by Age, and stand the Wear and Tear of Time and Weather every bit as well, in some instances much better, than the hardest and most compact Limestones and Granite?_[29]

272. In addition to the fact mentioned by Mr. Hunter[30] relative to the induration of soft sandstone, I would adduce an excellent example of the same effect in the cathedral of Basle, in Switzerland. The cathedral is wholly built of a soft coarse-grained sandstone, of so deep a red as to resemble long-burned brick. The numerous and delicate ornaments and fine tracery on the exterior are in a state of excellent preservation, and present none of the moldering appearance so common in old cathedrals that are built of stone which, when quarried, was much harder than this sandstone. The pavement in the interior is composed of the same material; and, as almost every slab is a tomb, it is charged with the arms, names, and often statues in low relief, of those who lie below, delicately sculptured in the soft material. Yet, though these sculptures have been worn for ages by the feet of multitudes, they are very little injured; they still stand out in bold and distinct relief: not an illegible letter, not an untraceable ornament is to be found; and it is said, and I believe with truth, that they have now grown so hard as not to be in the least degree farther worn by the continual tread of thousands; and that the longer the stone is exposed to the air, the harder it becomes. The cathedral was built in 1019.